The Yucatan Adventure Continues: Vegan Food, Hotels, Beaches, & More Meridaby Randi / September 10, 2019 It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Preludes at the Southwark Playhouse until October 12.
If you hear that a play is a “musical fantasia set in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff”, you’d be forgiven for thinking that sounds forking bonkers. It is forking bonkers. But it’s also at times brilliant, and like other work from creator Dave Malloy, it’s challenging in a fantastic way. Beginning what we are calling our Autumn of Dave Malloy here on laughfrodisiac (we have lots of his shows lined up!), the new production of Preludes at the Southwark Playhouse tests the bounds of musical theatre’s abilities. If anyone still wrongly assumed that musical theatre could only or does only tell certain kinds of stories in certain kinds of ways, Preludes will show them that this spectacular art form has no limits.
Now, yes, it does take place in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff, the Russian composer famous for his unbelievably difficult and intricate piano pieces, including the stark raving genius of the title piece. The brilliance of that piece haunts the composer as portrayed in this show, as like every artist he fears his creative output peaked with that, the glorious piece he banged out at 19 years old. In fact, ‘Serg’ hasn’t been able to write for three years when we meet him and his supportive fiancee/first cousin (eeeeek) Natalya, after the disastrous performance of his first concerto thanks to a drunk conductor (why the composer has to suffer and not the conductor is a shame of the universe).
In order to get his shit together, Serg starts seeing a hypnotherapist. Then the line between what is happening in Serg’s life and what he and his doctor are working through in his hypnotized brain starts to blur, just as the distinction between what music is original Rachmaninoff and what is Dave Malloy’s starts to blur, in a fantastic method of musical storytelling. The most powerful and successful parts of the show combine the inner workings of Serg’s mental processes with his anguish and with the genius of the music, like when Serg explains in a growing ranting monologue how he wrote Preludes, as his pianist counterpart (a separate actor/pianist, not only a necessary choice but a brilliant one, showing how Serg feels divorced from his own self) plays a mesmerizing almost violent rendition of Preludes. This scene, using Rachmaninoff’s own music to tell his story, best captures what this show aims to achieve and best shows what Malloy is capable of.
As with Malloy’s other work, the risk of being the composer/lyricist/book writer/all around creator/we love you and falling into moments of over-indulgence is high, and not avoided here. As usual, Malloy makes those moments of genius count because they stand out, but also because they come against a backdrop of imperfection. His work is challenging, weird, strikingly different, and that makes him such an exciting composer. But there are a few moments that feel unedited, like the 2x too long Act II opener “Loop” performed by Serg’s opera singer friend Chaliapin (a great performance and a perfectly Malloyesque scene, but just 2x too long) and the 3x too long hypnotherapist’s walk through the mountains towards the end. Malloy’s work shines in its imperfections and its challenging nature, but these moments could have had more impact if they were more efficient.
The performances are mostly great though, with Keith Ramsay giving a gripping star turn, all nervous energy and anxiety and physical tics and uneasy laughter (though a little too much of that) to become an all-consuming embodiment of the composer’s neuroses and self-doubt. It’s a remarkable performance. Georgia Louise’s Natalya shines as one of the best vocalists heard on stage in recent months, and it helps that she’s given the chance to show off in the Act I closer “Natalya”, the only classic musical theatre song in the score (and very reminiscent of “No One Else” from Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, which full disclosure is one of my Best Show Evers). The only questionable performance issue came from the portrayal of the Czar – it was funny to give him a Tony Soprano accent but aside from the initial laughter there wasn’t actually a compelling reason for it.
Overall, Preludes is an exciting new-to-London show (it premiered off-Broadway in 2015) that tests the bounds of the genre and should inspire other creators to do the same, something London’s musical theatre scene needs. Malloy has built a fantastical, strange, wild rhapsody of the creative process using music old and new and showing that the struggle is timeless, which seems fitting as this composer of fantastical, strange, wild works finally starts to get the acclaim he deserves.
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The View Upstairs at the Soho: Heartfelt Yet Uneven Tribute with Potential
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is The View Upstairs, playing at London’s Soho Theatre until August 24.
The best kinds of theatre tell a story somehow relevant to today, regardless of the time period or subject matter of the show, and get the message across in nuanced, powerful ways. In The View Upstairs, Max Vernon’s 2017 musical about the LGBTQ+ community, they’re getting a lot right, but there’s room for improvement. They’ve got the emotion, the politics, the lofty goals of what they want the end product to do, and a game and talented cast, but the nuance and art of it need work to make the show as a whole sing. With all that emotional honesty at the ready, the show has the potential to be great with some focus on fixing the weak spots.
Going into this production, the European premiere of Vernon’s musical that played off-Broadway in 2017, I didn’t know what it was about. I didn’t even know it was a musical (best kind of surprise you could ever gift me, universe), and I definitely didn’t know it was about the 1973 New Orleans arson attack on a gay bar called the UpStairs, the biggest, deadliest attack on the queer community until Pulse. If you read that and thought ‘they made that horrible depressing story a musical?’ then you don’t know the power of musical theatre to tell any and every kind of story. The musical treatment feels right for this intimate, heartfelt play, with it becoming overall a lovely tribute to the victims. However, it wasn’t cohesive enough as a whole to be truly great theatre just yet. I feel like if they were willing to make some changes at this stage (preview period baby!), it can be.
Roughly, the story is about a 2019 fab-u-lous young influencer named Wes (a fabulous Tyrone Huntley, like wow you are a star and must be exhausted) who is trying to redefine and grow his brand by buying an abandoned building in New Orleans, the future home to his clothing line/influencing products I don’t know I don’t understand instagram. The realtor explains that some of the damage is the result of a fire, obviously the Chekhov’s gun of realtor comments even if you didn’t know what the show was about. I was like OH SHIT OH SHIT WE’RE GONNA SEE THE FIRE I HATE FIRE AHHH WHERE ARE THE EXITS. Wes sings the best song in the show, “#HouseholdName (I’m sorry the # is in the name I have to do it), does some drogas, and suddenly is in 1973, his building now (/then) a fun semi-secret gay bar filled with all sorts of characters. He’s a little confused – is he tripping? is he time-travelling? (Mantzoukas voice:) what’s going ON?! – but quickly rolls with whatever’s happening. His rolling with the punches/homies is uneven, because he doesn’t seem to ask any questions or do a ‘wait, what?’ moment, which is fine I guess, but then later in the show Wes begins a song with a lyric about how he’s been freaking out all night trying to figure out what’s happening and I was like, um no you haven’t? you were just kind of immediately cool with this?
The cast of characters Wes drops in on in 1973 are enjoying the UpStairs bar, a place where they can be themselves without worrying (too much) about the outside world. There’s Buddy (John Partridge), the lounge’s piano player (who reminded me so much of some old-timey musician but also of Jack Skellington), a closeted gay man with a wife and family whose resentment comes out to hurt everyone and not just himself, but for some reason no one seems to mind what an asshole he is. They mind that Dale (Declan Bennett), a clearly troubled man who needs help, is an asshole, but is he that much more of an asshole than Buddy? His song was really moving; I just wish it (and others) weren’t set up so clunkily.
The talented cast all get some moments to shine, some more than others, but some are miscast or mistreated. A standout for me was Cedric Neal’s Willie, who gets the perfect balanced role of making both funny and poignant comments while showing off his ridiculous voice. I loved Carly Mercedes Dyer as Henri, always reliable for belting her face off, but it was strange that she didn’t get a solo but Freddy’s mother had two?? I mean wtf. I loved Victoria Hamilton-Barritt in In the Heights, but her Puerto Rican accent did not work here, and the Ines character, mother of Freddy, has two too many songs. They bring the action to a screeching halt. Also, she looks at oldest in her early 30s, so casting her as the mother of someone who looks…also in his early 30s is beyond ridiculous. Yes yes actors should be able to play whoever and whatever they want (just ask ScarJo) but if you want to portray the emotional beats of a mother and son, they shouldn’t look like man + little sister who just came from church.
But the most disappointing part is how the pivotal role of Patrick is treated. Andy Mientus has come over from the great broad way to teach us how it’s done over here, and while he himself is fantastic as always, Patrick is not fleshed out as much as the role should be. First of all, Andy, one of the best musical theatre performers of his type right now, is given the two worst songs to sing. They do nothing to show off his voice; they kind of feel like first drafts. The second song was so close to being strong but it was clearly in the wrong key, and like, minor? Make it major and it would improve exponentially without hurting the song’s message. As for his character, Patrick seems like all the other ‘70s people, living their normal lives when Wes just drops in on them. But at the end, he acts like he’s been some sort of narrator or leader to Wes like forking Cuba Gooding Jr. in What Dreams May Come. But he wasn’t! But make him one! It would be so interesting (and really help with cohesiveness) if there was this constant thread of Patrick as narrator or guide. His talking to Wes at the end makes no sense (especially his big joke line about being ‘f-ing magical’, though funny) unless the character is retooled throughout the body of the show to actually be f-ing magical, some sort of guide through this memory.
Although I wanted to ignore any problems and focus on how important this story was, the problems are too obvious. The transitions between dialogue and songs feel very amateur and clunky, with a lot of spoken moments between characters that might as well have set up the next song like, “here, let me sing about what I mean.” It diminishes the flow of the story and the character development to set it up that way. It kind of felt like Working. It shouldn’t.
One more problem I had was the contrast they kept trying to force between the community in the ‘70s versus today. There are sooo many compelling differences to discuss, yet the focus seemed to be on how people today are vapid attention whores who just want influence online and strong branding, at the expense of real relationships and love, and that the gay community is purely and coldly transactional. That’s true for Wes, clearly, but I don’t see that as true for many people today. Yes, many spend lots of time forging internet presences, but most of them also have real lives, so that’s not a universal problem and shouldn’t be treated as one. I mean maybe the message of the importance of community is just meant for like YouTube stars who go to see it but I doubt that. It would be stronger if it focused more on Wes’s personal struggle instead of trying to blame an entire generation for the bad parts of the internet.
This feels like an opportune time to point out one of Laughfrodisiac’s favorite – and defining – movie quotes:
I’ve shared a lot of not-nice thoughts about this new musical but only because it’s all there, all the groundwork, all the emotion, all the heart they need to make it magical. (Now I need to quote Cuba: ‘I’M ALL HEART MUFUCKA!’) With a bit of work it can be great.
INFORMATION
During early previews, the show ran 2 hours straight through, no interval. There were several moments were it would have been fine to break the show and have an interval, which is highly recommended so other people don’t get UTIs. Also, not worrying about keeping it to one act could let more transitions be fleshed out fully.
STAGE DOOR
The Soho doesn’t really allow for regular stage-dooring, so you just wait outside the main entrance (as of now) for actors who want to come out from the lobby bar to come out. Cedric Neal came out first and was incredibly lovely and amazing, followed by Mientus who was also really nice. I left before anyone else came out. I think they were all hanging in the bar so if you are cool and at ease in bars you could just stick around in there.
A FANTASTIC Shirley Valentine at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the classic Shirley Valentine, which just finished its run in Pitlochry.
Okay I said ‘classic’ because I know now that it is but to be honest, I had never heard of this show/movie/amazingess before seeing it last weekend. I think it’s probably an American millennial pop culture gap, because after the show we mentioned the name to my parents and they were like “oh my god Shirley Valentineeee what a great movie” and went on for hours (not hours) recalling the cast, and then we mentioned it to our our-age British friends and they were like “oh yeah for sure Shirley Valentine, it was big here!” So apologies Shirls, but better late than never. Anyway WHAT A SHOW. My takeaway: Sally Reid as Shirley is giving a performance that argues for the Oliviers to award regional theatre treats.
Shirley Vals is about a very bored, very neglected housewife who spends her days talking to a wall about literally everything, man she can talk. The whole first act is watching her talk ‘to the wall’ about her whole life — her shitass husband, her annoying-seeming kids, her full-of-shit faux feminist friend, all the people she went to school with, all her fears and anxieties and preoccupations, mince. It’s a two-hander (real definition) but you’d never know it, with all the vibrant pictures she paints and all the relatable takes on mid-life housewifery and just life in general for all humanssss we all have more in common than we thiiiink. The gist of the action is, her friend has invited her on a vacay to Greece for two weeks, already paid for. People who have been lucky will read that and be like ‘okay awesome lezzzzgooooo, maybe make it 3’, but people like Shirley fret over how she could possibly unglue her feet from her kitchen floor, explain to her not-listening-anyway husband, and generally, mostly, how she could dare to do something with or in her life that isn’t to simply suffer in silence and watch it pass by. SHIRLEY! GOOOOO!
You know I get v v close to screaming when I’m riveted by the action up on that stage, and Shirley’s hemming and hawing and ‘I couldn’t possibly’ and ‘but oh I must’ and ‘no no I mustn’t!’ and ‘but mustn’t I’ left me so scared that she wouldn’t go, but hooray huzzah she does, and she liked it, and she loved it. And so did we. On her whole journey of telling us her life story and then living one, she shares with simplicity and straightforwardness some revelatory things about humanity, shared insecurities, assumptions people make. The threads of these various aspects were the best part of the play, by far. She shares about the girl from school that she was jealous of, intimidated by, and then recounts how she ran into her the other day and they had tea, and both learned that the other felt the exact same way. They could have been friends but they were too in their own heads, deciding what the other thought and felt without actually bothering to find out the truth. I MEAN THAT IS VERY UNIVERSAL. (Also this provided one of my favorite accent parts: when the friend revealed she now works as a classy escort, Shirley says ‘hawker’ or at least I thought that’s what she said. I was like what does being a hawker mean. A salesman?)
In a similar manner, the interaction with Shirley’s judgmental neighbor was beautiful and touching. Shirley always felt small around her but when the neighbor revealed she thought she was brave, I mean, that was the most emotional part of the whole very emotional show, I think. Like with the friend, it showed how assumptions about others are rarely right (I’m sometimes right) and you’re never alone in what you’re thinking or feeling. SO TOUCHING. Just lovely. I said interaction but it’s just one woman up there. Sally does such a gorgeous job of delivering a whole world that as I’m remembering the play I’m actually seeing a whole cast of characters in my mind.
Anyway I’m so happy this not-real-but-she-became-so-real-so-I’m-thinking-of-her-as-real-and-anyway-there-are-plenty-too-many-really-people-just-like-her-in-real-life-so-I-hope-they-also-get-theirs woman went to Greece and had a ball and rethought her life because life is too short to be stuck talking to a wall. What a flawless production of a great, moving play. Liked it, loved it.
INFORMATION
The Pitlochry Festival Theatre is an enormous space that I don’t think could ever be filled even if everyone in town during the height of tourist season came, so there’s usually room to move around away from people, which is the greatest thing you could ever ask for when out in public. The theatre went through a recent refurb and it shows, except for the bathrooms which didn’t get the memo, which is a shame but there’s never really a line. The bar has vegan treats (still no ice cream) and little water fountain spouts. All in all a fantastic theatre.
