One Short Day in the Capital City: A Quick Tour of Brusselsby Randi / January 6, 2020Today’s theatre review is Curtains, currently playing at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre until January 11.
Let’s address the elephant in the room first. I love David Hyde Pierce (who doesn’t?), but I am still a bit of a salty salty dog over his semi-surprise Tony Award win over Raul Esparza (in Company) in 2007. DHP won for the then-new musical comedy-murder mystery Curtains, which I enjoyed on Broadway due to clever story-telling and pitch perfect casting, which, okay fine, included DHP’s flawless performance as one of the most inventive new musical theatre characters in recent memory. Now that the sting of Raul’s loss is somewhat faded, I was eager to see Curtains again without the resentment my younger self harbored over a nonsense award. Currently in the West End for just a few days more, and starring English comedian Jason Manford, I can newly appreciate Curtains as a fun romp of a show that despite its flaws guarantees a good time.
Curtains features a score by Kander & Ebb – I know – so right off the bat you’re like ‘oh this is for real.’ Though it doesn’t boast any future classics, the score is serviceable and fine, with some really good parts. I find the book, by Rupert Holmes, more impressive and funny. It helps that the story this musical tells is so clever: It’s opening night of a musical’s pre-Broadway premiere in Boston (I was just at one of those!), and the horrendously untalented leading lady is murdered during final bows! Egads! Lt. Frank Cioffi of the Boston PD is on the case, investigating cast and crew as they’re on lockdown in the theatre, which is too perfect for him since he is…an enormous musical theatre fan and amateur performer. I just love that SO MUCH. What a fantastic character! (I said that in Fred Armisen’s Mr Birch voice from Big Mouth, if you couldn’t tell but you could.) More murders happen and more twists and unexpected turns, but through it all the most important thing isn’t that people keep dying – it’s that a musical is being made, people! No okay the lackadaisical attitude most of the characters have to multiple murders is kind of weird, but I do understand valuing good theatre above all else so can you really blame them. (Ok no it is kind of weird.)
Though comparisons to a master like DHP are unavoidable and no good for anyone, Manford is very capable and fun and his Cioffi is an amiable goof who can’t help but comment on the show – and actually help improve it – instead of focusing on his investigation. His departures from his intended role and inability to control his enthusiasm for musical theatre is a MOOD, as the yoots say, and I love it, obviously. As writer-turned-unwitting-star of the show-within-a-show (called Robbin’ Hood of the Old West…it seems…terrible), Georgia is played by Carley Stenson, best known by most of the UK from the classic TV show Hollyoaks but a veritable West End star on her own merit. Her voice is wonderful, and her performance in general, although I could deal without all the Robbin’ Hood choreo trying to make her overly sexy. Other performers who stood out included Emma Caffrey as Bambi, the allegedly ditzy dancer, and the too hilarious Samuel Holmes as the bitchy director.
This show could benefit from about 20 minutes of fat trimmed off; it would make it a much snappier show that vibes better with its intended tone. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was at most 2 ½ hours on Broadway, but the moments of too-slow pacing in London have extended it to almost 3 hours! That’s nuts! And it’s too bad that the score highlights the show-within-a-show numbers more than the ones that tell the story, like the repeated “In the Same Boat” bits and the entire Robbin’ Hood saloon/brothel-y number “Thataway!”, which felt like it was 15 minutes. Even with the important events at the end of that number, it should be at least half as short. Same with the Singin’ in the Rain style “A Tough Act to Follow”, it felt way too long (but maybe because the love story between Cioffi and Niki, one of the actresses, is too hard to buy). But there are some great songs that are performed very well, like the best of the score “Show People”.
So even with some slow moments, and too much focus on Robbin’ Hood, and despite how godawful I’m sure Robbin’ Hood is, Curtains is a fun and funny whodunit that succeeds despite some flaws. What struck me most is how perfect this show is for high school and college, since there are SO MANY great parts, all of which get a chance to really show off. And there’s so much humor and good will that it’s always pretty enjoyable.
INFORMATION
Curtains ends its run at the Wyndham’s Theatre on January 11. This audience was shockingly well behaved!!
The Wyndham’s toilets situation is a travesty: if you are seated in the stalls, the ladies bathroom is house right/stage left and only has TWO STALLS. If you sit in Row E or F, as I did, you will be the first there, but otherwise you have to go upstairs to the lobby to have a chance. TWO STALLS.
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London’s Production of “The Birthday Party” Could Actually Make Someone a Fan of Pinter
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about ‘The Birthday Party’, Harold Pinter’s play currently playing at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre (I know) until April 14.
I’ve said in the past that I am not a huge fan of Harold Pinter plays, but I keep seeing them because Elaine Stritch tells me to. I just don’t understand them. They never make any sense and I always leave the theatre going, ‘…what?’ And it’s not just me being stupid; apparently, that’s his thing. Pinter got his jollies by giving audiences vague hints at plot and truth and then letting them decide what’s what. Which I guess is a valid thing for you to do if you have a purpose, but I never know what that purpose is. It’s not like I’m having deep epiphany-like thoughts when trying to figure out wtf was happening. But, anyway, it turns out that FINALLY, you can enjoy a Pinter play even though you don’t know what’s going on, as I learned from London’s new production of “The Birthday Party”. There’s a lot of crazy going on and there’s no real sense of what’s true or even who is real, but it’s a really enjoyable, provocative time.
I’m not saying I like Pinter now or anything, merely that his work doesn’t have to be synonymous with agony. And maybe I was just won over by how cute it is for a Pinter play to be showing at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It’s so cute. If the situation were a doggo I’d pat its head. I wondered for a minute if from now on they could only produce Pinter plays in that house because otherwise it would feel like backpedaling but I just looked it up and the next thing coming in after ‘The Birthday Party’ leaves is ‘Cirque Berserk!’ so, no. Anyway, TBP was the first Pinter show I didn’t need a drink after (I don’t drink but you get what I mean) (well I did require ice cream and so we got soft serve and I liked it and I loved it) and it’s for a few reasons: 1. The direction by Ian Rickson felt well considered and correct for conveying the bits of the story. The cast was phenomenal, but the casts have been great in all the Pinter plays I’ve seen, so I think it comes down to the direction here. 2. This play is actually interesting. Unlike past shows, I didn’t despise all the characters and I actually cared about some. The only Pinter play I’ve seen twice (Broadway and West End) was ‘No Man’s Land’ and I wanted all of those characters to die, or at least suffer torture, maybe like having to watch their play. But here, I cared about poor wobbly-brained Meg and her nice, benign husband, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to poor sad-sack Stanley. Well at least at first. If he’s real. Let’s get down to it.
TBP (not The Bad Place (well maybe The Bad Place)) tells the story of Meg and Petey, an old couple living in a quiet English seaside town, running a boarding house. Petey works by the shore, setting up deck chairs for the tourists and Meg makes him bowls of cornflakes and inquires incessantly as to whether they’re ‘nice’, as that’s how British English describes food and I think no matter how long I live here I will never stand for it. As a long-married couple, they seem boring but inoffensive, and Meg’s unremitting questions about the weather and whether it’s ‘nice’ like the cornflakes and whether the fried bread she made Petey is ‘nice’ are annoying but in a ‘oh you old biddy’ type way and not in a rage-inducing way. They’re harmless, bland, so they seem at first. Petey is played by Peter Wright, and I just love when actors play characters with the same name. It makes me laugh to imagine costars saying ‘Oh hey Pete – oops, I mean Pete’ it’s nonsense don’t worry about it. Meg is played by the great Zoe Wanamaker and she is all kinds of unstable genius. Her state of mind, at first easily brushed aside as that of an old biddy, is really the centerpiece of the play, and the question of whether she’s a trustworthy commentator on her surroundings and the people around her shockingly morphs into whether everything we saw was just in her head. And Zoe conveys that with restraint and precision.
The boarding house has one lodger, a man named Stanley who is as peculiar as he is disheveled. Played by the outstanding Toby Jones, Stanley raises more questions than he or anyone in any Pinter play will ever answer. He’s been staying at Meg & Petey’s house for a year now, after working as a concert pianist all over the world…or maybe just all over England…or maybe he just played once. Meg treats him like a son, forcing him to wake up before too late, making him all his food, &c. At first I thought it was her son, and so you wonder about their relationship and then you wonder about Meg’s ‘offhand’ comment about how she always wanted a son. Does that explain why she treats him like this? or does that hint that he’s a figment of her imagination? Every little comment in this play is there for a reason. We will never be able to say for sure what they all add up to, but they definitely suggest that you can’t trust anything people say.
Everything changes when two men in business suits arrive, two mysterious men whose work and purpose for being in town are unknown and yet sinister. There’s the clear boss of the operation, Goldberg, played by Stephen Mangan who is usually hilarious but is here is terrifying. And sometimes hilarious but mostly terrifying. He’s Jewish and they mention that a lot. His colleague is an Irish man named McCann (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), who is an unfrocked priest (from the village of Kamenka?), maybe, and seems nice but can be equally frightening when he gets riled up, which seems right for a priest. The two men take up a room at the house – which Petey is surprised that Meg has available for guests, which is surprising to us because we’re like aren’t you a boarding house? Stanley asks the men why on earth they would choose to stay here. Well, it’s a boarding house, right? Meg says repeatedly that it’s ‘on the list’ for seaside accommodations. Stanley scoffs and says that it isn’t a boarding house, but no one really makes anything of that.
The first act flies by and is really flawless. Well, it’s only 45 minutes so it better fly by, but still every bit felt necessary and enjoyable. The second act is a lot longer, an hour and a half maybe, and it’s a lot darker. Meg decides to throw Stanley a birthday party now that they have the men to be guests, along with neighbor Lulu (Pearl Mackie). Stanley resists and quite often tells Meg and the others that it’s not his birthday, that it’s actually next month, but no one seems to hear him or if they do they don’t mind. Meanwhile, Goldberg and McCann’s business is ever more clouded and yet more menacing, and they seem to know Stanley. And sometimes Stanley seems to know them. They have similar memories from their pasts and yet they deny them. Goldberg and McCann’s first names change at every mention. And while you first consider Stanley to be the unwitting victim in whatever game the men are playing, he morphs at times into the predator, albeit in an unknown fight. Everything feels up in the air and uncertain and nothing will stick as truth.
The actual birthday party is even stranger, with Meg too drunk to notice that the two men are psychologically torturing Stanley, who at one point freaks out and then tries to strangle Meg. It’s unclear who turns the lights out or why, but when they come back on it 100% looks like Stanley has killed Lulu. It’s undeniable and so I think it’s purposeful, for you to be so convinced of something only to find out later that that’s false, to further the entire theme of this play. (Pearl herself said at stagedoor that everyone always says to her ‘I thought you were dead!’ so we are clearly supposed to think that.) Every few minutes you think you figured out what’s happening, who’s good, who’s bad, but then that would all get turned on its head and you’d be back to square one.
It’s the kind of drama that makes you hold your breath a lot of the time, because there’s no predicting what is going to happen next and how bad it’s going to get for someone. And because so much is unknown and unclear, it’s overall very chilling. We don’t know what’s happening, the characters don’t know who each other are or what they want, and everything can very quickly turn even darker. While there’s a good deal of humor, that often makes everything scarier. Nothing like watching the terrifying Stephen Mangan laugh at something and then instantaneously become more threatening than before. Although my favorite part of the show is a very non-threatening joke, when McCann tells his boss, “You’ve always been a true Christian”, and Goldberg replies “…in a way.” But the best moment of perfect directing and acting and menace all around comes when Stanley erupts at Goldberg and yells at him for being a ‘dirty joke’, but Toby Jones holds the ‘j’ on joke in a way where it’s clear Stanley was about to say ‘dirty Jew’. It’s brilliantly done.
In the last scene, things sort of fell apart for me, simply because we don’t know what’s happening or why or where the men are taking Stanley. And all the unknown elements started to annoy me instead of inspire me to think more creatively or whatever Pinter wants us to do. It just got to be a bit much. But Zoe as Meg brings it home, as she reminisces about the party the night before, the utter shitshow of a party that led to attempted murders and other illegal activity, including the abduction of Stanley to who knows where. But she doesn’t know or care, she just knows she was the belle of the ball. And it’s framed exactly the same as the opening scene, just her talking to her placating husband, and you wonder if any of the intervening scenes actually happened or if reality, whatever that is, has been just this the whole time, just the two of them living their humdrum lives, talking over cornflakes with no one else around.
If I were watching this at home I would have been screaming the entire time. What are you doing! Who are you! Why wouldn’t you comment on what JUST HAPPENED? But as a whole, the play is really remarkably well done, and the acting is stellar. There are a few moments where you question why on earth an actor chose to deliver a line that way, not the way you would have expected it (often with Mangan’s character), but it makes a certain odd sense that everything even down to the delivery would be uncomfortable and often off-putting. A part of me wants to shake the ghost of Pinter and be like what the ffffffff happened but you know what, I think I’m okay just wondering about it. Or maybe I’ve reached that point in my Pinter experiences where I just don’t care anymore.
INFORMATION
This production is playing at the Harold Pinter theatre until April 14. The theatre is a mess and is the one most in need of a refurbishment. The lobby and entrance area is so small that not many people can actually fit there, which is for sure a fire hazard. If you are sitting in the stalls, sit in the area at stage right (house left) because that’s closer to the good toilets (they are like right there if you are in rows E-H, which we were yayyyyy) and the exit.
AUDIENCE
No phones, thank god, but somehow a LOT of talkers who didn’t understand that they shouldn’t be talking to their companions the entire time and like, NOT in a whisper??? Wtf is wrong with people.
STAGE DOOR
Everyone but Zoe came out and signed and took pictures! They were very nice. Actually Zoe may have come out but I bounced after a little because I needed the aforementioned ice cream. It’s not a bad walk to the vegan ice cream shoppe Yorica! so I strongly recommend going there afterwards. I love their soft serve. I love all soft serve but theirs is particularly good because it has that bland lightness I enjoy. What were we talking about? Oh theatre. Go see theatre.
“Hello, Dolly!” on Broadway: Bette Midler is a Ham & You’ll Eat It Up
It’s Theatre Thursday y’all! Woot! Today’s review is of the Broadway revival of “Hello, Dolly”, starring Bette Midler until January 14 (when Bernadette Peters takes over).
Today happens to be Thanksgiving (#govegan), so it’s fitting to dedicate this Theatre Thursday to a show I’m incredibly thankful (and surprised!) that I got to see: “Hello, Dolly” starring Bette Midler. Everything you’ve heard about this lavish, hilarious production is probably true. Bette has the audience in the palm of her hand and is the biggest ham I’ve ever seen, to everyone’s delight. It’s pure beautiful joy up on that stage, with every actor looking like they’re having the time of their lives – especially Bette. Well Bette tied with the guy in the right mezzanine box who shouted ‘YASS QUEEEEEN!’ every time Bette did something funny, which was a lot. He was definitely having the time of his life and he definitely helped the rest of us to laugh the entire time, but it was mostly due to Bette, a true star having a ball up on that stage.
I had written off seeing this show last year, when ticket sales broke Broadway records and nearly sold out Bette’s run completely – nearly, because some ultra-premium single seats were still available here and there for $675 or even $998! NAH THANKS. I like seeing everything but come on, that’s ridonk. (And those are face value prices, from the box office – not from scalpers!) But luckily, a kindly fellow Broadway nut told me the big secret: those unsold scattered premium seats are cut down to regular price the day or so before the performance. I KNOW! So if you’re patient and flexible (and only looking for one ticket) and able to keep checking Telecharge, you could snag a fantastic premium seat for the price of a regular Broadway show! I don’t know if I’m patient but I can check the other boxes, and at 8am on a recent Wednesday, I got a seat in the second row center of the mezzanine (insane seats) for the cost of a show not starring Bette Midler, for that same day’s matinee. We so excited!
Everyone in that theatre was buzzing with excitement. I mean 99% of the audience members bought their tickets a year ago and have been counting the days. I didn’t brag to anyone near me about how I paid hundreds less than they did and only had to count the hours but I was tempted. I also refrained from bragging to the people around me that unlike them I was not swimming in old lady perfume, but unfortunately my prize for showing that restraint was NOT to be free from the stench of said old lady perfume. Par for the course when seeing a show like “Hello, Dolly”.
A show, by the way, that…I didn’t really know. I knew it was an old classic from 1964 written by Jerry Herman (boyoyoy), originally starring Carol Channing in her most renowned role. I of course knew the famous songs “Before the Parade Passes By” and “Put On Your Sunday Clothes”, as well as the title song, but that’s about it for the score. I knew Bette would be freaking hilarious and amazing but I knew that I mainly wanted to see it because Gavin Creel was in it. This is all I knew. Nothing about the plot or the other characters. I love seeing shows without knowing too much but it’s hard to do that for shows that have been around this long! Luckily, there’s not much to it. There’s a cute little plot with cute little side plots but none of it really matters; it’s all set dressing for the central performance. Bette could have improvised all of her lines with no regard to the story and the audience would have eaten it up with the same amount of enjoyment. It’s written for a star giving a star turn and that’s what she’s doing.
But what is it really about? Dolly Levi is a famous ‘meddler’ in New York and its environs. Whether matchmaking or instructing in literally every pastime one could think of, she meddles. She’s the original New York yenta and talking faster than anyone who has come before. Her current matchmaking assignment is for the widowered Horace Vandergelder of Yonkers, a famous ‘half-millionaire’ played by David Hyde Pierce in ridiculous farmer accent matched with too long facial hair straight out of the Civil War. He’s a disheveled dorky mess, yet despite Dolly’s promise to set him up with the lovely hat-making widow Irene Molloy (the glorious Kate Baldwin), she confides to us that she’s going to marry him herself. Maybe it’s just for the half million, but it doesn’t really matter. Nothing really matters it’s all just incredibly fun.
Like her first big song says, Dolly really does have her hand in every matter. On the same day that Dolly is going to take Horace to meet Irene Molloy in her adorable hat shop in the city, she convinces Horace’s niece Ermengarde (ermagerd) and her boyfriend who Horace disapproves of to enter a polka competition in NYC at a fancy restaurant where Horace and his match – whether it ends up being Irene or another socialite named Ernestina Money (omg) – will be eating dinner at that night because what fancy restaurant doesn’t have a polka contest and what grumpy old man wouldn’t be swayed to approve of a young man by watching him dance polka? Like I said, plot is nonsense and it doesn’t matter. Even better, Horace’s two clerks in his Yonkers Hay & Feed shop(pe), Cornelius and Barnaby (erma with these names), decide that this is the day, the one day, where they won’t work and will instead close the store while the boss is gone and will go have a grand old time in New York City for the first time in their lives. There’s a lot going on in this one day! Cornelius, the head clerk (Head Boy), is played with utter glee by my fave Gavin Creel. I had really high expectations for him since a) he’s the best and b) he won the Tony over my pick, Lucas Steele in “The Great Comet”. While I think I would have still voted for Lucas, Gavin proved he was completely worthy of the win with his excellent and beyond delightful performance.
There are so many ‘best parts’ of this show, and my first best part ever is when Cornelius and Barnaby embark upon their journey into the city. They board the train with all the other fancy people going into the city (only fancy people go to New York City!) along with Dolly, Ermagerd, and her floppy haired artist boyfriend who looks like he’s late for a regional production of “Hair”. These five venture cityward with socialites and rich people and how-de-do’s (I don’t know) to “Put On Your Sunday Clothes”, which most people know from “Wall-E” and that’s such a great movie that I don’t even mind and I also don’t mind because when you are watching this flawless scene, nothing can bother you at all, not that you have to pee or that you’re breathing in terrible perfume or even that a jackwagon is checking their phone in the row in front of you (which are the house seats, ps, so 9/10 chance that they know someone involved with the production what a jackwagon). This musical number is pure joy, with bright, colorful, elaborate costumes, flawless choreography, the moving trains I LOVE TRAINS. Everything comes together so exhilaratingly perfectly. I had a huge smile on my face the entire time I watched this show but during this number is when it got so big it hurt.
And that pain only increased with another first act piece of perfection that I grinned like an idiot during. For some reason Cornelius and Barnaby end up at Irene Molloy’s hat shop(pe) right before Horace and Dolly do. Of course they do, it’s like a great big farce and everything has to be comical and ‘coincidental’ (hey that’s ‘joincidence’ with a ‘c’) and even though it’s contrived, this scene is the embodiment of the 100 emoji, even more than Gina Linnetti is. First of all, Kate Baldwin’s Irene sings the beautiful song “Ribbons Down My Back” in her beautiful ginger voice to her young kind of goofy shop girl Minnie Fay, who is played by the amazing Beanie Feldstein (I know her real name is even better than her ridic show name). Both of these ladies are incredible, Kate for her lovely voice and overall loveliness, Beanie for her unmatched hilarity and also for having the most Jewish name in all of NYC and all of history too. Then Cornelius and Barnaby enter the shoppe pretending to be rich men, which is hilarious in itself, but then they see Horace and Dolly approaching the shoppe and all hell breaks loose. C & B have to hide in the closets, under tables, in plain sight wearing ornate hats, to avoid Horace catching them playing hooky from work. This scene is a masterpiece of comic timing and direction and was worth the ticket price in itself. In a show that is pure hilarity and pure fun, this scene was like the most hilarious and fun. This is when I was like ‘okay it was worth paying so much for this show’ (unclear if the people who paid premium prices (or scalper prices in the thousands jfc!) thought the same but that’s not my concern). This is also when I decided I want to be bff with Beanie.
After Horace angrily leaves the shoppe, not knowing that his clerks were there but knowing that some men were hiding in there (don’t ask it doesn’t matter just enjoy it), Dolly teaches Cornelius and Barnaby how to dance with the ladies so that they can take them out to dinner that evening in the fancypants Harmonia Gardens, where Horace and Dolly will be dining with Horace’s match – not Irene, since he’s mad about the whole men hiding thing (and because Dolly hinted (falsely) that Irene killed her husband (remember Dolly is trying to keep Horace to herself so she has to taint all his potential matches)) but probably the outlandish clown Ernestina Money. Why the boys would agree to go to a dinner that a) they can’t afford to pay for and b) their boss will be at too, the boss they’ve been trying to hide from all day so he doesn’t fire them, is…unclear, and yes, their vision has been clouded by love for these girls they just met so maybe that can explain it and no, it doesn’t matter. Just smile and enjoy them learning to dance and going from tripping over their feet to gliding across the floor in literally 15 seconds.
As everyone goes to watch the 14th Street Parade (yes there’s a big parade happening it doesn’t matter), Dolly decides that she needs to move on and says goodbye to the spirit of her late husband Ephraim whom she talks to quite often. She does this by bringing the house down in “Before the Parade Passes By”, and even though she has to put the hamming on pause for her one serious moment, Bette shines just as brightly as she does in the other comic moments. She’s incredible, she really is, and she’s giving every moment her all when she could easily not work as hard and still delight the audience. She could phone it in and people would still shout brava every minute (which it seemed like they did). That she’s so devoted to making this role and this show the best they could be makes it all even better.
As act one ends, so too does any interest in the subplots and other characters. Act two is about revering Dolly(/Bette) and letting her go absolutely wild with comic madness. Everyone is heading to the Harmonia Gardens restaurant, and when Dolly enters, in the famous red gown with red feather headdress, the entire restaurant staff (the huge ensemble) sings “Hello, Dolly!” in appreciation of her long-awaited return to the place and to the NYC scene in general, but really it’s just so everyone can thank Bette for coming back to Broadway in such a classic (and PERFECT FOR HER) role and so everyone can rejoice in watching her dazzle and delight. The audience is enraptured during this, as it’s mostly a meta way to thank Bette for thrilling us with her presence. It doesn’t matter that waitstaff would never be so ecstatic to see an old patron return – actually, most of the waitstaff who worked during Dolly’s prime wouldn’t still be there – but nothing in the plot matters. It’s all about Bette just hamming it up and being admired.
The hamming it up continues. At one table, Horace is on a short-lived, excruciatingly painful date with Ernestina Money – played by the hilarious Jennifer Simard in clownish makeup and a dress resembling a chicken costume – who mainly shrieks and whines in a terrible voice. Simard is a freaking hilarious performer (see: “Disaster!”) but this is a waste of a role for her. It’s so unnecessary to have an over-the-top side character like this when the lead character is an over-the-top comic genius. But remember none of it really matters. Horace is flustered with all his potential matches failing and when he hails a waiter, Barnaby does so at the same time, and they both drop their wallets and accidentally pick up the others. HA HA FARCE. Barnaby and Cornelius are excited to be able to pay for dinner for their dates (whom they now like, love or something whatever) and Horace, of course, is in despair at having barely a dollar.
Then the polka competition begins.
I know, this show. ermagerd.
Speaking of, Horace’s niece Ermagerd and her artist boy dance among the crowd and because Ermagerd is played by Melanie Moore of “So You Think You Can Dance” fame, you know they are going to win, and they do, and because polka is the measuring stick by which all potential husbands of heiresses are measured, they think Horace will give his blessing (side note where are her parents) and she shrieks again but this time in happiness instead of annoying sadness (Ermengarde’s entire role, besides polka dancing, is to shriek and wail in sadness it gets old but the old biddies loved it). But then Horace sees her and the guy and his clerks and Irene and Dolly and he’s like what’s happening and you’re like I don’t really know BUT, look at Dolly –
This whole time, this whole Harmonia Gardens scene, Dolly is eating an entire turkey plus sides. The entire f-ing platter, and it looks like real food. Despite all the ‘plot’ happening with the others, the audience is fully fixated on watching Bette devour what could feed a family of four today (thanksgiving remember so thankful hashtag blessed) and ROARING with laughter. Yes she eats the whole thing, down to every last drop in the gravy boat, but she makes it even funnier with her mannerisms, chewing on the bones like a squirrel or something, what chews on bones. Anyway the meal is made with some kind of rapidly disintegrating business like cotton candy, so she’s not really eating an entire turkey, but it looks real and the audience mainly thinks it’s real and Bette is SELLING it and it’s HYSTERICAL.
When she’s done and almost in a food coma, Horace sees the others and everything erupts into chaos and NATURALLY, they all go to NIGHT COURT. Dolly convinces the judge to let the boys go (what was their crime…) because they are just fools in love and Cornelius sings a lovely song about how he loves Irene and it’s all well and good but like they’re in Night Court I was cracking up. Unforch, the judge doesn’t let Horace go like he does the others, and makes Horace pay damages. Dolly says to Horace that he should marry her and Horace is like what is this day, no.
The next day at the Hay & Feed store (so romantic), Cornelius and Irene, Barnaby and Minnie, and Ermagerd and Hairboy are all happy and coupled and it’s unclear why exactly they’re all in the Hay & Feed store but whatever, NOTHING MATTERS. Then Dolly shows up again I don’t know why because Horace had turned her down the night before but now he pleads with her to marry him because she would make his boring humdrum life so much better (first order of business: trim your beard) and she’s like DAMN RIGHT and her late husband Ephraim (how she always refers to him it’s great) sends her a sign and so she says yes and they decide to get married so now there are four couples (OG four weddings & a funeral) but none of this matters because Bette Midler just dazzled you for more than two hours and it was splendid and we liked it and we loved it. the end.
INFORMATION
I gave you some pretty stellar ticket-acquiring advice back in the beginning; I expect you to try now.
Scott Rudin is the producer, and he’s a big ole jerk. For all his productions, there is no late seating like for other shows. If you arrive a second after the show starts, you’re shit out of luck until intermission. So harsh okay but that’s not why he’s a jerk; I actually like that rule because nothing ruins a show like latecomers. Except phones okay and then latecomers is second. No he’s a jerk because he makes the bagcheckers at the door confiscate water bottles. It doesn’t matter if they’re empty; they claim it’s because of the ‘noise they make’ if you crinkle them but then a) they would care that the biddies were still eating cellophane wrapped candies like their lives depended on it, wouldn’t they? and b) they wouldn’t care if the water was in hard reusable bottles now would they? GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT, RUDIN. Luckily I knew about this from past shows and I had an empty plastic bottle (I’m traveling I’m sorrryyyyy) on top of my bag to distract the doorman who confiscated it from the FULL PLASTIC BOTTLE AT THE BOTTOM OF MY BAG HEYOOOO.
STAGEDOOR
Unfortunately, my new BFF Beanie didn’t come out, but it was a matinee on a two-show day so I actually didn’t expect anyone to come out (unlike the rest of the crowd who SIGHED with SUCH SADNESS when the security guard announced that Bette wouldn’t be coming out like come on people did you REALLY think Bette would stagedoor? Even disregarding that it was a matinee? What are you, new??). Luckily, Melanie Moore and Kate Baldwin both came out and signed. I want to say that both took selfies too but I didn’t even ask Kate because I was so distracted by her gingery goodness that I just took a picture of her instead of with her. No ensemble members signed which was a shame if they were assuming that no one cared because I CARE, but not a shame if they just didn’t want to stagedoor.
