On Bear Ridge: Sometimes Captivating, Often Confusingby Randi / November 26, 2019It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Touching the Void, playing at the Duke of Yorks Theatre in London until February 29.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been terrified of outer space. Whenever I watch a movie like Gravity, my head is usually in my lap for most of the space parts and while I hyperventilate I’m like ‘please for the love of god never ever make me go into space.’ And now, making me climb a mountain where you need to use ice axes and where as soon as you take a break you get hypothermia sounds so much worse. Do not make me do this.
That I kept my shit together (well enough) during this stress-test-gone-insane of a play to realize how well they were telling this story is a testament to just how well they did it. I feel so lucky to be, I think, one of the very very few people in the audience and maybe in the world who had nooooo idea about this true story before I saw this play. There’s a really famous documentary about the real people who did this climb and what went wrong and I guess ‘everyone’ knows about it and I knew nnnnothing about it even though it won a BAFTA. (Both works are based on a book, and I don’t want to tell you who wrote the book because that’s a spoiler and I don’t futz with spoilers.) I can’t compare the play to the documentary, as a result, but I can say that if you don’t know the story, holy wow are you in for a wild ride. And given the rest of the audience’s reaction, I’m pretty sure it will be just as gripping and impressive if you do know the story. But I am so grateful that I got to experience this thrilling theatre as a blank slate.
In 1985, Joe Simpson (Josh Williams (those are like the same name)) and Simon Yates (Edward Hayter) set out to become the first climbers to reach the summit of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes, a mountain climb so difficult that no one had done it and yet these two bros are like oh but we can do it and we should do the west face because it’s impossible and also we’ll climb the old fashioned way, just the two of us with no team to help us so like YEAH they’re GONNA die. The play begins with a wake post-tragedy, as Joe’s sister Sarah (Fiona Hampton) attempts to understand why her brother felt the need to do crazy bananas shit like this. I was unsure at the beginning of the ability to translate this story to the stage, because the wake start felt rough and struggled to get off on the right foot. (Also, I couldn’t help but feel anger at Joe for putting his sister through this, as well as the family we don’t see, but that’s a whole nother conversation about living your life I guess.) The super loud booming club music pounding through the theatre before showtime (and during the interval, PASS) didn’t help. That interval music is even odder considering the action that comes before it.
But rather quickly, once they started telling the story via flashback, so it seemed, and really once they started climbing (even Sarah’s climb on the chairs), it kicked off and became riveting. With Tom Miller’s direction and incredible physicality from the cast, doubts about this story’s stageworthiness dissipated. Somehow, watching them climb onstage made for truly gripping theatre, thanks to the brilliant set design and climbing choreography. You’d think that the biggest difference between the play and the movie, and where the movie wins out, is the ability to show the actual mountain and their actual climbing. But how they recreate it on an enormous dinosaur skeleton-made-out-of-printer-paper sort of thing is mind-blowing. And sure it’s probably incredible to see all this action on the real mountain in the movie, but what they accomplished onstage is super impressive.
Williams’ physical performance in Act II is even more impressive, and I completely bought that I was watching an injured man trying to move at all. I saw his pain and suffering and it felt real. The cast overall was good, and any weakness I thought I recognized in Hampton in the beginning was just my difficulty with the opening gambit, as in Act II she and everyone really shine, even Richard (Patrick McNamee), the annoying guitar-playing dork, hitting the right notes for needed comic relief.
How the story unfolds is shocking and emotional and exciting and a surefire way to raise your blood pressure, and if you have anxiety you’ll def need to prepare yourself. But I mean all that in the best way. I still can’t believe this is a true story. And I still can’t believe people would choose to do things like this on their own volition. Please do not make me.
INFORMATION
The show is about 2 hours 20 minutes, with the first act ending at our performance at 20:37.
At the Duke of Yorks, I recommend sitting in the circle, because that’s ground level. I forgot and was in the stalls and the whole being below ground thing is no fun when you try to leave. Also, the Ladies bathroom is right next to the house right door of the circle (the same one you climb the stairs to if you’re in the front stalls). For this show especially, you want to make sure you have a clear view all the way up – do not sit in the back of the stalls.
Related Posts
Barber Shop Chronicles at the Roundhouse: Uneven but Enjoyable
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Barber Shop Chronicles, at London’s Roundhouse theatre until August 24.
Last weekend, we trekked up to Camden to see the latest production of Barber Shop Chronicles (hard for me to remember that it is three words but one is not ‘the’), Inua Ellams 2017 play about the important role barbershops play in black male communities the world over. It makes sense, giving this location the theatrical treatment, considering that barbershops in certain neighborhoods can play the role of community center, home, church, public square, political stage, and more. The entertainment factor of the wide-ranging conversations is built-in; the challenge is putting these conversations together into a cohesive work, which Barber Shop struggles with. Making quick stops in London’s Peckham neighborhood and locations all over Africa, all on the same day, this cheery ensemble piece gives glimpses of what these community centers share despite their distance.
It sounds like a slam-dunk idea, and for most of the audience it was. The actors are entertaining and energetic, and the set design is wonderful – there’s a wire globe that (patchily) lights up with the action’s current location as it spins, and all the international hair salon ads hanging from the ceiling are also lit depending on which city we’re currently in. And, great for audience members with shorter attention spans, the fast pace from location to location keeps the material from getting bogged down. But, that rapid anecdotes-only pace also keeps it from developing into something more meaningful, a story you can sink into. And it would be one thing if the anecdotal set-up were trusted, but the creators tried that for the first half and then tried to dramatize the non-story for the second half, resulting in an inconsistent outcome.
That first half, where we dropped in on Peckham, Lagos, Accra, and more to briefly listen to what the men were discussing today, showcased brief anecdotes and easy jokes – exclamations, silly voices, the stuff that audiences eat up. Although they did cleverly establish that this was all happening on the same day, by having everyone discuss a big football match, the focus was clearly more on joking around. And the jokes felt cheap, if not offensive. I mean, clearly this show wasn’t written for me and I’m okay with that, but I’m not okay with jokes about every other group of people that felt more mean-spirited than not. One of the longer (still not long, but longer) bits in this first half has a guy tell the others about his friend with an autistic child who tends to make scenes in public, and how they were told to beat the autism out of her – and everyone, onstage and off, erupts into insane laughter. Is…is that funny? There are also lots of macho jokes about gay men and wearing down women who reject you, which felt very troubling. Again, I’m not the target demographic here, but I don’t think that matters when you’re joking about these topics. And if the excuse is that this was just showing how normal men talk in these places – you know, ‘locker-room’ talk – well then that’s definitely a problem.
Soon, the cheap jokes gave way to a sort of late-stage attempt to create dedicated characters and narrative, and by that point it felt unearned. We had a young Peckham man angry at his boss because he thinks he put his dad in jail for no reason, when obviously, you could guess from a mile away the father actually committed the crime and we were going to find out about with the boy, obviously, and then he was going to forgive the boss, obviously, and we were going to all witness the emotional ‘reconciliation’ that honestly would have been emotional if the rest of the show built towards any kind of emotion, but as is, it felt out of left field and the emotion was unwarranted. There’s another cross-continental emotional bridge they try to build between another Peckham youth and a man we met in one of the African shops, but again, with no such foundation established, no emotional groundwork laid with all the time they had, it’s a last-minute bridge to nowhere, an attempt at an emotional punch that doesn’t land.
Despite all my problems with the story, or lack thereof, the show still remains a decent time, an interesting look at this crucial hub of black communities. And even when the action onstage is negative, the show itself still feels imbued with an overall sense of optimism, which is valuable. That’s definitely helped by the pre-show dance party happening with the cast and any audience members wanting to join in the fun, establishing a jovial high that’s hard to bring down, for most of the audience.
INFORMATION
Barber Shop Chronicles plays at the Roundhouse Theatre in Camden until August 24.
The show began at 8:05pm and ended at 9:55pm. There is no interval.
The ushers made a big deal pre-show of telling each and every person (hence a suuuper slow entry to the theatre) that there was no readmission during the show, and if you got up from your seat you’d be resat further back, because it’s performed in the round and you’d be a spectacle. Despite this warning, people came in super late and walked up and down the aisles right to the stage level the entire time, so, I guess do what you want. Also be prepared for people doing whatever they want regarding phone use, as in, everyone is on their phones the entire time and you just have to accept it. We knew going in to just breathe and accept all the phones and not say anything to anyone nearby, but we were surprised at the constancy of full-volume conversations. So, if you go you have to let go of any qualms about theatre etiquette.
London’s “42nd Street”: Come and Meet Those Dancing Feet and the Appalling Sexists Attached to Said Feet…And Peggy
Hey remember how my last few reviews have covered really stellar shows and I mentioned that it’s much more fun to write about not-so-stellar shows? Wheee!
A few days ago, I saw the revival of “42nd Street” on the West End. P.S., I still don’t know if it’s ‘on’ the West End or ‘in’ the West End, and this is an example of the type of thing I was distractedly thinking about during this positively ludicrous musical. At several moments during the show, I was struck by the thought that Jane the Virgin’s season 2 feminist killjoy of a thesis advisor would have stopped the show and JUMPED onto the stage to stop the atrocities of sexism from continuing. Every few minutes I could see Professor Donaldson shaking her head, then dropping her jaw, and then refusing to be a party to it any longer and marching onstage to shout “NO NO NO!!” And sure I have an overactive confrontation-imagination but I was as livid as the professor was. Enraged by both the rampant sexism in the show and the fellow audience members on their phones, confused by the lack of plot and the fellow audience members who wouldn’t stop talking, I tried to calm myself down by thinking over and over “this show is from almost 100 years ago, it’s okay, it was a product of its time, everyone knows that this sexist crap wouldn’t fly today, at least the dancing is great.” But it didn’t work because I think the majority of people (helloooo Trump voters) don’t actually know that misogyny belongs in the bygone era, and what was being presented onstage was very problematic to be tapping our feet along to.
Okay, so the musical is only from 1980, but it’s based on a 1933 movie about the time right after the Depression, so I was effectively right and there is cause for concern as to why the production team in 1980 thought this story was okay as is. The story from the movie is pretty much the same as the show, as is the music: the film score by the composing team of Dubin and Warren was used in the musical, along with a few of their songs from other works. I’m sure it’s pretty clear that I didn’t know much about this show going in, other than that it was a classic, super old (not that old but still) musical with tap dancing about a theatre company putting on a musical. Despite not knowing too much about the story, I knew a few famous songs going in that I was excited to hear – “I Only Have Eyes for You”, “We’re in the Money”, and especially “Lullaby of Broadway” – and one famous song that isn’t actually in the show but I could have sworn was – “Too Darn Hot”. It’s really from “Kiss Me Kate” which I KNEW but Christine Ebersole sang it in concert once and I really thought she intro’ed it by saying this was from the show she won a Tony for and it sure as hell wasn’t in “Grey Gardens” so I kept thinking it would be in the show but then it was curtain call and I was like ohhhh riiiight.
Another thing I didn’t know? That Sheena Easton was the star! I usually know if there’s anyone famous in the show I’m about to see but for this I literally sat down in my seat, opened the programme that I just bought that wouldn’t fit in my purse because it’s one of those unnecessarily giant ones, and then said ‘Oh…what.” Sheena Easton is a pretty famous recording artist from the ‘80s and ‘90s who won some Grammy awards and sang one of the Bond themes, “For Your Eyes Only”, which I can’t remember but I can tell you is better than the Bond theme that won an Oscar last year because everything is. I knew her because of her song with Kenny Rogers “We’ve Got Tonight” (who needs tomorrowwww) (you should watch a 1983 concert performance of that song pretty much JUST FOR HER INSANE OUTFIT WHAT IS SHE WEARING) and because I have a foggy memory of Danny Tanner mentioning her on “Full House”.
I know I said ‘lack of plot’ before but the show is of course roughly ‘about’ something. It starts absolutely stunningly, which is almost worse because my high hopes for finally seeing this show performed were lifted even higher and I was like whoaaa ahhhhhhhhh and then it all came crashing down. But not yet! The heavy red velvet curtain slowly rose to reveal 50 pairs of feet tap-a-tap-a-tapping like their lives depended on it, and as it continued going up we see oh yes their lives do indeed depend on it – it’s an audition. The dozens and dozens of gorgeous dancers flail about in perfect unison as a musical director shouts stuff and demos stuff and they just keep going and it was glorious!! I really love watching incredible dancing, and this show had tons of it. This classic opening is one of the good bits. So the music and dance directors pick their chorus girls and boys and the audition is over but then eeeeee! in storms a little spitfire of a dancer named Peggy Sawyer (Clare Halse) who is late and dressed like a lavender sailor but still wants to try out. She tells everyone she just got off the train from Allentown, Pennsylvania, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t that far, dear, you were one state away. The musical director, having just seen 50 great dancers, has no need for her, but the young male star of the show, Billy Lawlor (Stuart Neal), is like ‘Oh hey you are a non-ugly non-old female person I am going to touch you inappropriately and not let go of your arm as I flirt obnoxiously with you and tell you how we are going to end up just swell lovers so I will help you get their attention and audition even though there’s no reason to allow this to happen.’ So Billy and Peggy sing a song in front of everyone about how they are young and healthy so they might as well hook up I’m not joking, but like I said the show was cast and the dance director tells Peggy to ‘amscray, toots!’ which is clearly another of the good bits, and she runs off and barrels right into Julian Marsh, the hot-shot big-time director (Tom Lister), who is like whoooo is this football player tackling me but hey I kind of liked it. He really says that, it is gross. Peggy is mortified as she should be and runs out, forgetting her purse. What a lucky coincidence because of course she has to come back for her purse later! What mature story-telling devices! So Peggy comes back another day, but she is wearing the same lavender sailor suit and by now I just feel bad for the girl. She wears it most of the show, btw. But it has to be another day because everyone is there for a legit rehearsal, and rehearsals never start immediately after auditions that would be crazy. But so is this outfit. Anyway, songwriter Maggie Jones (Jasna Ivir) and a few of the more prominent chorus girls invite Peggy to eat lunch with them, where they don’t actually eat but have a DANCE OFF. This is another very sophisticated way to let the story tell us that Peggy is the best dancer of the lot, it is not forced at all no sir. So this scene is ridonkulous as a book scene, but it is amazing as a dance scene because Clare Halse really is the best tap dancer like ever. It might have a lot to do with the very difficult things they were making her do but her dance-off tapping ranks up there with “Shuffle Along” in terms of how worried I was that dancers’ legs were going to fall off.
In YET ANOTHER oh so clever and not at all eye-rolly twist, the show is suddenly short a girl so the curbside dance-off in the middle of Times Square pays off because Julian the director sees Peggy and is like ‘you’ll do!’ It’s not clear, though, whether they really are short a girl or whether Julian is just a gross old man who likes what he sees. Well no, the latter is very clear, it’s just a question of whether the former is true also. It doesn’t matter thought because all of a sudden Sailor Moon is in a new musical’s cast because she was late, assaulted the director, absentmindedly left behind her belongings, and then danced like nobody was watching when the director was watching. Well I’m inspired. By the way Julian refers to her sometimes as ‘Allentown’ which is cute once and then very annoying the rest of the time.
The show that Peggy is now in is a big new risky expensive musical called “Pretty Lady”, starring the legendary Dorothy Brock (Easton), who is a difficult and stubborn diva who refuses to do things like sing for the creatives when she doesn’t feel like it. Although she is talented, Brock is not a dancer, so they have the ensemble just dance around her while she sings. The team needed to hire her because she brings the financial backing – her old rich southern sugar daddy is putting up the money to produce the show. Why a woman of such renown and seemingly money of her own would spend time with a man purely for his money is unclear, but it is presented as ordinary in the show because women are terrible and do dumb things. Brock has a boyfriend, Pat Denning (Norman Bowman), who sneaks around to see her, but Julian Marsh, the director, doesn’t want him distracting his leading lady or complicating things with old moneybags so he hires ‘goons’ to beat him up. Totally normal. Oh it’s important to note here that I started to get the sense we were supposed to see Julian Marsh as a romantic leading man. I mean. No. But then every interaction with Peggy confirmed this, because he flirted with her a lot yet was cruel and a textbook abuser. It was very strange. We will return to this later.
The show leaves for its out-of-town pre-Broadway tryout, which is moved from Atlantic City to Philadelphia for reasons I don’t remember because I was too busy shouting ‘woooooo Phillayyyyy!’ At a party one night, Peggy overhears Julian ordering the goons to come again to teach a lesson to Pat Denning, who won’t leave the woman he loves alone. Peggy rushes to warn Pat that his life is in danger, but she is interrupted by that intolerable Billy Lawlor, who is not her boyfriend or even her friend, but still feels that he is entitled to control Peggy because he is a man. He asked her hey pretty lady where you off to, and she is frantically like ‘I have to warn a friend his life is in danger!’ or something and Billy chooses the wrong thing to focus on and says, ‘what…a male friend?’ and walks away dejected and it took all my might not to yell down to the stage ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT. This little prick has seriously had one previous conversation with Peggy and he’s mad at her for trying to save someone’s life? Fragile white masculinity is THE WORST. This is the type of man who punches a woman on the dance floor after she politely turns down his invitation to dance. (This happens often by the way. Men are A MESS and I blame ‘30s-era musical comedy for a lot of it no I’m just joking obviously but all this kind of crap presented as normal makes it normal!)
Luckily, Peggy reaches Pat and Dorothy in time, but the inane misogyny is far from over. When Peggy rushes into their private room to warn Pat, Dorothy immediately assumes that they are having an affair. I MEAN. I know things were different in the ‘30s but were men and women just not allowed to speak to each other unless they were a couple? My goodness. Then Dorothy goes down the party all upset and decides this is the perfect moment to tell her southern sugar daddy that it’s over and that she doesn’t love him at all, and he of course threatens to pull his money from the show. The creatives are terrified, so to distract him from ruining their show, they throw chorus girls at him. One prominent girl, Annie, had to flaunt her boobs like 10 different times in the show, and four times in this party scene alone to distract and calm down various old men. It was very bad. But it worked because he left his money in the show. And then he got together with the songwriter Jones, which was expected because she was overweight and these types of ‘comedies’ always throw the few non-perfect non-young bodies together.
Okay so this is all act one, and I know it seems like a lot of plot even though I said there was no plot. It is not a lot of plot though. I am devoting many, many more words to all the action I just described than the actual show’s book does. All of what I just described takes maybe five minutes to work out onstage. The show is mostly big dance numbers from the show within the show and I don’t get how this is a show or how I could say show more times in one sentence. It is 99% the ensemble practicing the musical numbers in “Pretty Lady”. Seriously. It’s dance scene after dance scene, all taken from this new musical “Pretty Lady” that also has no plot and even less of a story, so it seems from what we see, and the drama going on with the cast happens very briefly around these big dance numbers. I’ve never seen a show with more big dance numbers. Every one of them pretended to be the showstopper, but then another one was right behind it. And they were all wonderful. Even though I am harping on the story here and will continue to do so because it is abominable and gets worse, the dancing and the performances were all incredible. But, there’s a reason no other show has as many showstopping dance-heavy musical numbers – when they have nothing to do with the plot, it gets boring. It’s like being at an advanced tap recital and yes they are all insanely amazing but the dances have nothing to do with anything and nothing to do with the other dances we’re seeing. It’s just a mess of great dancing but just like too much of anything it starts to get intolerable. I had a bad headache.
In one of the early big dance numbers, Billy sings a song called “Dames”. It’s about how as long as there are beautiful dames around, nothing else matters. This is a very meta song, telling the audience just to enjoy the beautiful girls dancing all around the whole time and not to worry about the very thin book and very offensive dialogue. I felt like Billy was singing to me being like ‘stop complaining said the farmer who told you a calf to be just enjoy yourself!’ You might think I’m overreacting but look at these lyrics:
Who writes the words and music
For all the girly shows?
No one cares and no one knows.
Who is the handsome hero
Some villain always frames?
But who cares if there’s a plot or not
When they’ve got a lot of dames!
What do you go for
Go see a show for?
Tell the truth
You go to see those beautiful dames!
My god. I mean they are flat out telling us that this whole show is really just an excuse to stare at pretty women. They have no remorse.
Just when you thought that was enough, “Dames” ends and the cast has to rehearse the next song in “Pretty Lady” called “Keep Young and Beautiful”. YOU HEARD RIGHT. It’s an ensemble number with all the girls dressed in skin colored, very bare, lingerie-like costumes and they are told to KEEP YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL. Lyrics from this winner:
Keep young and beautiful
It’s your duty to be beautiful
Keep young and beautiful
If you want to be loved.
If you’re wise, exercise all the fat off
Take it off, off of here, off of there…
Take care of all those charms
And you’ll always be in someone’s arms.
Keep young and beautiful
If you want to be loved.
F-ING CHRIST ON A CRACKER. I thought I was being pranked and not the good too much tuna kind of pranking. This is a new level of sexist nonsense in theatre to me, on par with if not surpassing “Funny Girl”.
Throughout these musical numbers, Peggy trips and falls and bumps into people at every turn. I don’t understand. She is supposed to be the best dancer they’ve ever seen, and according to folklore the audience is supposed to be rooting for her success the entire show. Um. She kept falling, though? Why would I want someone to become a big Broadway star if she fell into everyone every time she danced? That kind of nonsense is not covered by insurance. It’s very confusing, because Peggy is an amazing dancer – amazing. I was really stunned at how talented Clare Halse was. But how can you reconcile Peggy being the best dancer ever with her falling all over the place when she dances?! Is it just to continue the trend of women in this show being flighty and/or incompetent? All it does is show her to be unqualified to perform live, and I would have fired her after she bumped into her fellow performers the first time. Then, at the big first preview finale in Philly (the song “42nd Street” and our real Act I finale), Peggy knocks Dorothy Brock over and breaks her ankle. True, someone else knocked into Peggy, but she still was flying all over all the time. Peggy FINALLY gets fired, and we’re supposed to be upset for her because we’re supposed to be rooting for her, but why would we be rooting for someone who can’t dance without bumping into people? Ahhh!
Then in Act II, when they think they have to close the show because they don’t have a star (why Brock can’t still sing while doing the same stand-and-deliver planted method she was doing before, I don’t understand), the chorus girls convince Julian that Peggy could be the star. Peggy who he just fired. Julian, who is a very unkind, frightening man, IMMEDIATELY believes them that the mess of a dancer he just fired could certainly be his star, so he runs to the train station to stop her from going back to Allentown. They say Allentown SO many times. To continue the trend of nonsensical things happening, Peggy doesn’t WANT to go back to the show and doesn’t WANT to be the star. It is yet again hard to root for someone to become a big star when she doesn’t jump for joy at this invitation. So Julian, freshly convinced that she’s the best there is even though he has never heard her sing or act, has to persuade Peggy to come back. And he does this by singing one of the most beloved songs from early musicals, “Lullaby of Broadway”. The fact that this delightful song that is forever linked to the great Jerry Orbach is used in this show at this absurd scene makes me very upset. Why would this prominent director need to use everything’s he got to convince a chorus girl who ostensibly wanted to be a star to in fact be a star, I do not understand. Also, in this context and given how creepy Julian is, a lot of the lyrics became creepy. He calls her baby a lot and clearly thinks exactly like Billy Lawlor about her except worse because he is in a position of power over her. At least Tom Lister has a very strong voice and sounded great.
The rest of Act II features more big dance numbers that have nothing to do with anything, and Peggy trying to learn the entire show in 48 hours, because Julian, professional abusive man, decides to open cold in two days and cancel out-of-town tryouts AND previews FOR NO GOOD REASON. Ugh this man is the devil. We get a big dance scene from “Pretty Lady”, and then a glimpse of Julian forcing Peggy to insanity in nonstop rehearsal. Then we get another big dance from “Pretty Lady”, and then we see Julian hurting Peggy’s arms and not letting her rest or eat or sleep or stop dancing until the curtain rises on opening night. See that’s not the best way to get a great performance out of someone. She breaks down from exhaustion and stress, and Julian gives her an energy boost by KISSING HER. I really almost screamed ‘this is harassment at the very leeeeassssstttt he should be in jaaaaaiiiiillll.’ But because this was written by dirty old men, Peggy gets a new wave of energy and is just an adorable ball of joy again because she liked it, of course she did, he’s a powerful man and why wouldn’t she! UGHASDJF;ALKWEJ FAW.
One of the random dances we see from “Pretty Lady” is the song “We’re in the Money”. I bet you can’t guess how it is staged. So four orphan children (four dancers dressed up in sooty faces and clothing from ‘Annie’) are playing under a bridge and they find a dime in a grate! And then they sing ‘We’re in the Money’. I can’t make this shit up it was INSANE. After the orphans sing a verse, the rest of the enormous ensemble comes out dressed in shiny gold costumes dancing with GIANT DIMES and the set changes to a gilded one and the dancers hoist their giant dimes into the light and then they put them down and dance atop them and if you listen closely you will hear the sound of a girl who thinks she is going crazy whispering ‘just like what is happeninggggg’.
Then there is more abuse of Peggy from Julian but as long as he kisses her she is revived! It’s not abuse if he really likes you!
Then. Oh then. We finally see the full version of their big “Pretty Lady” finale, the song “42nd Street”, that was cut short before when Dorothy was injured. The song is atrociously rhymed and I was audibly groaning every time the chorus sang “Naughty, bawdy, gawdy, sporty, forty-second streeeet.” SPORTY!!!! WHAT! Thank god this is in England so the words kind of rhyme but what on earth did they do in New York with this song? Holy cow. Peggy and Billy dance in the grungy, dark, twisted Times Square, in a much more adult and serious style than all the other dancing. Various players fill the stage, including a man who looks like a mime, wearing red gloves. But oh no, it’s not a mime, it’s a mugger! Well maybe he is a mime and a mugger but anyway he steals a lady’s purse and two cops shoot him dead. While Peggy and Billy are dancing. As your jaw drops open and you wonder um HOW did “Pretty Lady” go from repeated drivel about how great attractive young girls are to a gritty scene in Times Square where SOMEONE GETS SHOT, the cops drag the mugger’s body offstage and Peggy and Billy begin to dance again. WHAT THE HELL IS PRETTY LADY ABOUT?!!??!!!
Well, we have to just guess, because that’s pretty much how “Pretty Lady” ends, and “42nd Street” ends shortly thereafter, when opening night ends and Peggy is a huge star who has a huge crush on her abusive director. I just. I’m very tired. Julian is a textbook abuser and it is revolting that he is considered a romantic part and that the whole Marsh/Peggy dynamic is a classic one in the musical theatre canon. Blechhh. I wish it ended with her punching him and being like now that I’m a star I’m going to make sure you never work in this town again. I need to do a revival that is really a rewrite but the estates would never sign off on it. Maybe it would be excused as fair use because it would really be a social commentary on the original. Hmm.
Anyway, you might be wondering why Sheena Easton is considered the star but all I really talked about was Peggy. Well, aside from singing a few songs (and Sheena did a fantastic job), Dorothy isn’t in it that much. She only has one short scene in ALL of Act II! But Dorothy Brock is considered the leading role and Peggy the featured, and Christine Ebersole won the Tony for Leading Actress for playing Brock. BUT THIS MAKES NO SENSE. The show is all about Peggy, and she is in it 10 times as much as Brock is! and 20 times as much as Julian is! Yet Dorothy and Julian get the final bow at curtain call! Whyyyyy oh this makes me so angry!
So I obviously have a few strong feelings about this drivel and you probably think that this was the most I’ve ever hated a show. But while I hate the story and the character interactions and everything it says about women, it was still a very enjoyable production because the performances and the dancing are so wonderful. If you plug your ears while characters talk and during a few garbage songs, and you just watch the dancing and listen to the singing, it’s a decent time at the theatre. It’s the pesky story and characters and yeah everything it says about women that foul it all up. So don’t think of it as a show. Try to convince yourself that it’s a cabaret performance, all unconnected dances and songs just for their own sake, and not telling any larger story, and then it is enjoyable. I mean it’s not telling any story anyway, really. Ugh what a shitshow.
HI HOW PROUD ARE YOU OF ME FOR NOT SAYING ‘AND PEGGY’ THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE THING
