Vegan In Mexico City Part 2: Coyoacan! Frida! Nacho Libre!by Randi / November 20, 2019It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Noises Off at London’s Garrick Theatre, playing until January 4.
During the mind-boggling ‘wrong’ choreography of Act II, I thought giddily to myself “Omg Noises Off is like the original Play that Goes Wrong! I’m going to use that for my title! I’m so clever!” Cut to me after the show, looking at the giant billboards and marquees outside the theatre, and seeing that they are actually using that as the tagline. Smdh.
Despite not being able to take credit for this clever connection, and despite being seemingly the only person in the world who didn’t learn about this show in high school, I wholeheartedly recommend a trip to the Garrick to see the fantastic comedic classic about a bad play that goes to absolute shit, because it is always a good idea to see this play. Noises Off, the 1982 British farce-within-a-farce by Michael Frayn, is hysterical, frenzied, ridiculous fun no matter how many times you’ve seen it, and this latest West End production, a transfer from the Lyric Hammersmith, is no exception.
The show focuses on a small theatre company the night before their first public performance of the fake (and seemingly terrible) play Nothing On – and then the early morning before that first performance – and how ill-prepared they are for the quickly approaching curtain. Everything goes wrong, all the actor-characters are complete disasters, and if I were in the audience of Nothing On I’d be demanding a refund, and it is all absolute silly ludicrous perfection. I love when the director character stands up from the audience for the first time and starts to reprimand his unnaturally sloppy cast, and you get that feeling that everything is going to be great, because everything is going to go wrong in the most outlandish and ludicrous ways, without ever being annoying.
This play is so well crafted that every time you think they’ve done all they can with one joke or storyline, they elevate it. Just when you think ‘okay, please not another joke about sardines,’ they use the endless plates of sardines in another ridiculous manner, or they add another abandoned plate, and it’s preposterous that it’s hilarious. And the perspective switch and time jump of Act II let the comedy unfold in an even more ridiculous manner that never fails to blow my mind. I honestly cannot wrap my head around how director Jeremy Herrin (actual director, not character-director of the play-within-the-play, that’s Lloyd Owen who’s great) (see how confusing it is already!) kept track of all the frenetic nonstop choreography of Act II, let alone how the actors do it. How do you communicate what needs to happen when what needs to happen needs to be wrong? My brain, it explodes.
And this cast does it all brilliantly. It’s a true ensemble piece where everyone gets a chance to shine, even Tim and Poppy with their hilarious final act front-of-house calls (I would LOVE for that to happen in real life) (I mean I would riot and it would be terrible but my god it would be so funny), and I love that with every new production, there’s a different standout performer, depending on the direction and how the ensemble gels. When I last saw the show, on Broadway, Megan Hilty’s Brooke was the standout, earning a much-deserved Tony nomination for a role that is usually just the ditzy blonde. She made it the funniest part of the whole g-d thing, along with, of course, Andrea Martin’s Dotty. Those two were so sublime, so much funnier than I honestly could have ever imagined their roles to be, that I don’t even recall the role of Garry. Whereas here, Brooke and Dotty were fine, and our Garry (Daniel Rigby) was the standout, making his inability to end a sentence solidly instead of trailing off with a ‘you know?’ the most comically brilliant acting I’ve enjoyed in a while. His every perfectly pitched ‘you know’ had us crying. Just as Garry is best with a British actor who really gets how to speak that silly role, I think this show, which is such a British show, is at its best with a British cast, and I never really knew that before seeing this, my first UK production. I mean even aside from all the talk about Inland Revenue. If you need to laugh at ridiculous antics that somehow never get to be irritating, go see this before it closes.
INFORMATION
We got the restricted view aisle seats of O23 and 22, because they are significantly cheaper than the rest of the stalls. The restriction comes in the form of a pillar, and it’s really not that bad. It’s actually not a true aisle, so you know – it’s against the wall, but there’s enough room to squeeze through around the seat in front (and in front of that is a wide open space). It’s a VERY poorly designed stalls section, with lots of weird empty spaces and a terrible rake. Also, this is a very poorly priced show. The rest of our row was empty so we moved down to the seats that were sold for twice as much if not more. These seats shouldn’t be empty for a weekend performance, but as we found when we were looking for tickets, the stalls are way overpriced, especially given how claustrophobic and dark they seem with the low circle overhang. Shame.
I definitely recommend sitting in the circle for the Garrick – it’s actually at street level (which is why the stalls below ground seems so dungeony), and it’s tiny, and the ladies room is right next to the door to the seats, so.
At our 7:30 curtain, Act I ended at 8:41. There’s a brief pause between Acts II & III, and the show ended at 9:40. Perfect length!
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The Autumn of Dave Malloy Continues with London’s Ghost Quartet
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Ghost Quartet, playing at London’s new Boulevard Theatre until January 4.
About 10 seconds into our performance of Ghost Quartet, husbo and I smiled at each other giddily: It sounds like Dave. It is remarkable that a modern composer has so assuredly developed his own unique sound, that you immediately recognize as His (Dave’s not god’s) as soon as you hear it. There are maybe 4 working composers you can say that about. I am grateful for Dave Malloy’s weird and wacky and uncanny sound, what can I say.
As usual with his shows, Ghost Quartet is a challenging assortment of brilliant moments, beautiful music, and lovely abstract storytelling, plus some too-vague storytelling, songs that don’t fit, and moments that should have been cut. Going into a Malloy show, you know that the seeming lack of editing down to its best form is part of the package (common when one individual is writing the music, lyrics, and book (collaboration leads to tighter shows)) but that seems to be a key aspect: he forces you to reckon with what you might consider the fat. He mixes absolute gorgeousness with a lack of clarity, with ridiculous noise, sometimes boring bits, things that go on too long, &c. They sometimes feel like a dare, like he’s daring us to question what he decided to keep in order to understand the project more deeply. And sure I am again questioning what he decided to keep, but I almost kind of love the mixture of high and low, good and not so good.
Ghost Quartet in particular has an exceptionally vague ‘story’ being told through the song cycle sung by the four talented cast members, who announce the side and track number of this ‘album’ before each song. Okay so I just read the synopsis on Wikipedia and said ‘really? what?’ like 18 times. Like I said, the story is so unclear and is actually four interweaving stories told in chaotic order, which helps with the whole mystical tone but I did not get 90% of what the wiki says. It seems generally that there is a woman named Rose, who fell in love, but the guy chose her sister and Rose wanted to get revenge, and then Rose took a picture of her ghost, and then there was a young woman who bought a camera from a witchy lady who also had a sister named Rose who died and was this the camera that Rose used to take the ghost picture?? And then there was a family named Usher in the story (based on the Poe story apparently) and the woman lost her daughter, and then the daughter’s daughter too but I think that daughter was the one who became the starchild? and then the sister was also Rose’s lover in another incarnation and even though it seemed to take place a few 100 years ago someone got pushed on a train platform? When did trains start? ALSO at some point Rose meets The Bear, who wants to help her with her revenge maybe? So The Bear starts Rose (I think) off on a new scavenger hunt of four items to give the Into the Woods “the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, the slipper as pure as gold” list a run for its money: the bear requests 1) one pot of honey (naturally), 2) one piece of stardust (not suuure how to acquire that but okay) 3) one secret baptism (wat), and 4) a photo of a ghost (oh). It’s just the eensiest bit harder that Sondheim’s but you gotta hand it to the bear, that’s some f-ing list. (I remembered this because I loved its ridiculousness.) I actually cracked up at ‘one secret baptism’; I just wanted to shout ‘FUCK THAT IS SO DAVE. SO. DAVE.’
Oh and also there’s like a scene with Thelonius Monk, or maybe his ghost. Fork me I have no idea what was happening, but it doesn’t really matter what the details are, just that you feel the essence of it through the music, often haunting, sometimes fun, almost always interesting. And the cast of four definitely conveyed the desired eccentric, eerie, provoking essence beautifully. The two women, Carly Bawden and Maimuna Memon, carry the show with their incredible vocal talents and versatility, while the two men, Niccolo Curradi and Zubin Varla (the latter of whom is almost ready to join our list of Jenna Russell, Imelda Staunton, and Michael Ball for Actors Who Seem to be Cast in Everything (except he has actually been well cast whenever we’ve seen him)) provide strong support. All four have moments of brilliance and even hilarity, all while playing numerous instruments and ever-changing characters. They also hand out shaker eggs and serve several types of whiskey to most of the audience (though not to us; I don’t even drink and I was upset at not getting anything) and ask people to join them for the finale, which was cute but distracted from the power of it. The astonishingly gorgeous and moving a cappella quartet that I believe ends Side 3 should have been the finale.
So, whatever’s going on in this story is super confusing but that’s kind of the point; you shouldn’t have full clarity when talking about ghosts. It helped achieve the right vibe to be so nebulous, since the focus is and should be on what the music makes you feel. And they definitely succeed on that front.
INFORMATION
A pre-show informational email said the show was about 90 minutes with no interval but it was 100 minutes. Given that there were 4 ‘sides’ of the ‘album’ and not 2, this show really would have benefited from an interval. I realize it’s still short for an interval but it would really work here. Also it felt much longer, which is a disservice to the show. (ALSO – it should just be 3 sides. The audience expects there to be 2 sides, so much so that when they announced “Side 3, Track 1” there was a bit of a giggle. It totally flows with the whole Ghosty Weirdness to have 3 sides because that’s a little odd. The 4th side was so short anyway and like, too conventional since it completes the set. Don’t complete the set! Let it be weird!)
Sit in the front row if you want to be involved/get whiskey. Sit in our seats (B13 and B14) if you don’t want ANYTHING AT ALL. I’m not mad. (But I was hundo p that I had booked aisle seats, so I was shocked SHOCKED to find that our seats were smack dab in the center of a long row. Luckily, the ‘stalls’ in the round is only 3 rows, and there’s a big gap between B and C so I hopped over at the end to beat the rush to the bathroom because the toilets are FAR (downstairs and on the far side of the restaurant, which blows).
Aside from the toilet sitch, this new theatre is super lovely. I can’t wait to see more shows use this space in interesting ways. (Apparently the balcony section spins. INTO IT.)
Fairview at the Young Vic: White People, Feel Bad!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Fairview, playing at London’s Young Vic until January 23.
I really hate when writers include spoilers in reviews, like they can’t write about the show without ruining it for everyone. I’ll do my best to avoid them here, but it’s kind of impossible to talk about the power of Fairview, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, without spoilers, so gird your loins/stop reading if you are going to see it. Now making its London debut, the play by Jackie Sibblies Drury ends in a way I can’t say any other theatrical work ever has. Even aside from that ending, it’s hard to talk about the play in general because it’s about that incredibly difficult thing to talk about as a white person: race and how terrible white people are. Okay that second part might not be the point, but if you are a white audience member who walks away from the show not feeling completely shitty then you maybe weren’t paying attention (like to the world either). I’ll try to not say anything ignorant, but I am a whitey, so, WE’LL SEE.
Fairview tells of a middle-class black family preparing for Grandma’s big birthday dinner: You have the mom trying to do everything perfectly, the feisty (and hilarious) aunt with the strong opinions, the husband who actually remembered to buy the root vegetables!, the daughter who is nervous about graduating high school. You have the set of a very large, plush home, very beigey-pinks and grays, very Miami in the 1980s that felt a little sitcommy at first and then, as the play progresses, a lot sitcommy. The first section of the play, as the family prepares dinner and argues and jokes with each other, is – like a sitcom – extremely pleasant, very funny, and opens a lot of doors to what kind of action could come next for the family.
And then, no further action comes. Instead of showing what happens with the big birthday dinner, or if the uncle’s plane will take off, or what the daughter will decide about college, instead the rug is pulled out from under you and the sitcommy feel is substantiated. The actors restart, and they go through the entirety of the first section blocking again, but silently. We see the movements and spills and gestures and little dances for the second time, but now the audio is the voiceover conversation of four white people watching this program, talking about the characters, talking about race. It’s a shock, and it’s awkward, interesting, and disturbing the whole time. The four viewers are the kind of people who will proclaim nicely “I’m definitely not racist!” but then in the same breath say a lot of racist things that aren’t obviously mean or cruel but are still wrong, the kind of people who, as we hear, casually converse about ‘what race you’d pick if you could change’. It is a bold gear change into a provocative flat-out conversation about race, except without a knowledgeable or culturally sensitive voice in the bunch.
And that’s the bit that’s slightly disappointing. It’s not the play’s fault but that of its marketing/other reviews, for saying that this is ‘the play that will make ‘woke’ white liberals realize their mistakes’ or whatever. As a white liberal, I was, as I am with all things purporting to show me how wrong I am, eager to learn what I’m doing wrong and try to improve. But these four white people are blatantly terrible people. They are not ‘woke’ and they are nothing like the people who would be described as or would describe themselves as being ‘woke’, at least if the people had any idea what that (annoying) word was supposed to mean. And liberal? I’m sure at least some of them would be Trump voters. They say clearly racist things and treat race like it’s a fashion choice. It’s worthwhile to show that the things they say and think and eventually do are problematic, but anyone who didn’t already know how problematic these ideas were already miiiiiiight be racist! Or living under a rock.
The third section dives even more into the surreal, with the two worlds mixing into eventual chaos, perhaps representing the kinds of conversations we try to have without better guidance, and perhaps representing the problems we face when white people ‘want to help’ but also don’t want to acknowledge, or give up, their privilege. That reluctance to give up your privilege comes to a head at the end, when the tables turn and the white audience members literally become the object of stage-lit scrutiny, and their (our) hesitance to listen to the cast’s urgings become the subject of this wider, provocative discussion on privilege, entitlement, and expectations. I can’t imagine any white person seeing this, experiencing this ending especially, and not feeling exposed, guilty, uncomfortable at the very least, so that’s good, I guess, for self-reflection. But who knows how many people who needed to feel that momentary guilt and shame took it into their actual lives? And it’s not up to me to say that that momentary guilt and shame was worth making the people of color in the audience feel even more like the objects of white gaze, under scrutiny as well.
So I was left afterwards with a kind of numbed sensation, embarrassed (in part because of stage fright). The play is the definition of provocative, leaving your mind a blur of jumbled thoughts and emotions, which can be the mark of a successful dramatic work. It’s confrontational, it’s fascinating, and you feel uncomfortable the whole time. Now, after trying to write something the least bit coherent (I failed didn’t I) I feel even more ignorant and needing to do and be better, which might after all be what Drury had in mind.
