Fairview at the Young Vic: White People, Feel Bad!by Randi / January 9, 2020Today’s show is the new production of RAGS the Musical at Park Theatre in London’s Finsbury Park, playing until February 8.
There is nothing more incredible than when musical theatre shares something magical that changes my life from that point forward. Sometimes it’s a superb, gorgeous score that will forever live in my heart. Sometimes it’s a performance so magnificent it remains indelible. And then you have the new production of RAGS, which hath bequeathed upon me the most fantastic term of endearment for my husband: my Shabbos goy.
Now it sounds like I’m joking but I’m so serious, this is the best thing ever, and I wonder how I never before came across this perfect phrase for a non-Jew who comes into a Jewish household to do the prohibited work (like turning on the lights) on Shabbat. I LOVE IT. No matter how I felt about the rest of the show, this is what I’d call a successful night at the theatre. And you know husbo’s happy with his new title [Ed. Note – he is not].
But fortunately for theatre fans in London, the new production of RAGS at the Park Theatre is a good one, providing much more than a bit of fun with Yiddish. The tale of Jewish immigrants making a new life in 1910s America may be predictable and clichéd but it’s enjoyable and ultimately moving, featuring classic immigrant struggles, good pacing, some great comic relief (sup Rachel Izen), and above all, great performances, especially from Carolyn Maitland reigning over the stage as Rebecca and an adorable Jude Muir (alternating) as her young son David. Honestly, the bones of the show itself are not that strong. It’s an overall mediocre score (with highlights) and a trouble-making book if there ever was one (more infra), with a truly unnecessary Hamlet (*cough* Haim-let) bit. But the production as a whole is strong enough to elevate the material, making this quite a successful undertaking of a show most people have written off not only as lesser known but also as less than.
When RAGS premiered on Broadway in 1986, it closed after only four (4!) performances, making it one of the most infamous flops in musical theatre history. Whether it was due to the somewhat pedestrian score, the confused and overloaded book, or just the lack of interest, I don’t know (I do know most theatregoers were still making their way to the ridiculous spectacle of Cats that year), but it came, went, and was mostly forgotten, failing to achieve what Ragtime would with a very similar story a decade later. With RAGS, Joseph Stein set out to ostensibly write the sequel to Fiddler on the Roof (which he also wrote the book for, you knew that), imagining what would have happened next for the victims of the pogroms if they made it out of the shtetl and sailed to America. You can’t blame him for wanting so badly to convey the emotional and dramatic heft of what these people would have gone through that he overfilled the story, but unfortunately, he focused on the results he wanted from the audience and not the means of authentically getting there. So much of RAGS clearly demands an emotional reaction, but unlike with Fiddler, it doesn’t build up the necessary world or develop characters sufficiently to reach that point as often as it wants to. The moments where Stein et al. wanted us to CRY are so blatantly demanding emotional connection, and when you demand it instead of earn it, you don’t get it.
In the decades since its premiere, RAGS has been rewritten, refocused, and retooled to try to make it something worth salvaging. Now with a revised book by David Thompson, this current incarnation may not be perfect, but it’s definitely an improvement and definitely worth the effort, though there are still blatant moments where there may as well be a light-up sign flashing CRY or BE MOVED (as opposed to the sign actually held onstage at one point that read NO DOGS NO JEWS, which is terrible but made me laugh because I was like ‘those are literally the best things on earth idiots, why not add NO CHOCOLATE and NO TV to it, Nazi morons’). Luckily for us, the performances manage to earn the desired outcome: Dave Willetts’ grief-stricken Avram, Maitland’s repeat anguish, Muir’s remembered terrors – the performances manage to move us where the book wishes it could.
And this revised book is HUNDO P better than the original. Not to be morbid but killing off Rebecca’s husband before the story begins makes much more sense. Not saying the name of the factory where Bella goes to work is a necessity (or maybe I just didn’t hear it?), because once you hear Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (which is, as we learned on Crazy Ex Girlfriend, the favorite fire of Rebecca and Greg, which is supes dark), you been know what’s going down: more than 100 factory workers died, mostly young Jewish and Italian girls so yeah, it’s good they don’t have her say “I got a job at the TSF” because then you’d just be sitting there waiting for it to happen, whereas it’s more of a shock (though not at all a surprise, what a gd mess industry was at this time) this way. The character of Bella is still underserved, banking on bullshirt traits like ‘nice’ and ‘good’ and ‘pretty’ instead of making a fully fleshed character, but it’s improved, and Martha Kirby gives a winning performance nonetheless. And making the character of Saul now Salvatore, an Italian, (the supes charming Alex Gibson-Giorgio) pays off in several ways. I especially loved the scene of the Sabbath prayer mixed with the Italians at prayer (so well done). However, I’m shocked that the proposed love affair with Rebecca never leads to any conversation or hesitation about him being a gentile (given the black hats and David’s payot, I assumed they were Orthodox). It’s cool to think of Rebecca as like the OG interfaith relationship proponent (does my fam bam have her to thank?) but it would need some shoring up in the story, or like, any commentary at all.
Best of all, moving the one SPECTACULAR song in the score, “Children of the Wind”, from early on to now the very end is a genius move, because that’s what we remember. Charles Strouse’s music suffers from the blahs for some of this show but this is where he comes through. (Though it’s Stephen Schwartz’s lyrics that felt surprisingly pedestrian (surprising, I guess, when my favorites from Pippin and Wicked are in the forefront of my mind; not so much when you remember much of Godspell or “Something bad is happening in Oz/something bad/happening in Oz” (I’m sorry no one has a perfect track record.))) I don’t know how Maitland has any voice left in the show to deliver this final number (espesh after shouting at Avram, which seems mean I mean he’s grieving) but she does and it’s worth seeing the show for this moment alone. This song is a sweeping, gorgeous summary of why this tale keeps feeling so necessary and so relevant. As an American, I was crushed to realize just how little progress we’ve made in welcoming immigrants (and, you know, Nazis are in power), and as a Brit (heyoo that’s right) I was depressed to consider how this country is also falling down the idiot slide of blaming immigrants and Jews for its problems. But as a Jew, this song was a revelation: I don’t consider myself a Zionist and I definitely don’t approve of Netanyahu’s government, but wow if this song isn’t the best explanation for why Jewish people feel the need to have a land that is truly and safely theirs. I get it. I don’t understand how anyone could hear this song or watch this show and not get it – for any minority – which is a testament to the power of theatre.
INFORMATION
RAGS plays at the Park Theatre until February 8.
The Park Theatre was designed by, to quote Lewis Black, a guy with scoliosis who is really forking pissed. At least in the circle (just two rows! Not a bad seat in the house, really, view-wise), the seats are all love seats (for two) and there is no leg room, so the entire row has to like, exit the area for anyone to move down it. It felt like sitting on a high bar stool for 2 ½ hours (complete with the inability to reach my purse on the floor). I think it’s a new theatre too so like, what? How!
The circle bathrooms are upstairs in the bar, 3 stalls for ladies. RUN BITCHES.
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“Oslo” on the West End: The Emperor’s New Clothes But For Theatre
Wooot! It’s Theatre Thursday y’all! Today we talk about “Oslo” which is now at the Harold Pinter Theatre on London’s West End. I wish I left at intermission.
Remember how mad I got at Birdman? Because it was so artsy fartsy without really saying anything worthwhile and I seemed to be the only person who didn’t think it was Jesus in movie form? It’s absolutely nothing compared to my anger at “Oslo”. I would vote for Birdman right now for this year’s Oscars ffs. At least Birdman had objectively good acting and objectively impressive cinematography. “Oslo” has none of that. It is a mess of terrible writing (terrible!), awful overacting (awful!), and obvious lack of any editing (obvious!). But worst of all, it wastes the opportunity of writing great art based on this subject matter, AND, because it is important subject matter, it seems to have tricked everyone into assuming that it is indeed great art. The greatest trick the devil ever played is convincing everyone in theatre that “Oslo” is quality.
Remember how mad I got at Birdman? Because it was so artsy fartsy without really saying anything worthwhile and I seemed to be the only person who didn’t think it was Jesus in movie form? It’s absolutely nothing compared to my anger at “Oslo”. I would vote for Birdman right now for this year’s Oscars ffs. At least Birdman had objectively good acting and objectively impressive cinematography. “Oslo” has none of that. It is a mess of terrible writing (terrible!), awful overacting (awful!), and obvious lack of any editing (obvious!). But worst of all, it wastes the opportunity of writing great art based on this subject matter, AND, because it is important subject matter, it seems to have tricked everyone into assuming that it is indeed great art. The greatest trick the devil ever played is convincing everyone in theatre that “Oslo” is quality.
This seriously revered (and mind-bogglingly so) play by J.T. Rogers tells the behind-the-scenes drama of the secret meetings in the development of the Oslo Peace Accords, between representatives of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Pretty important subject matter, right? and rife with dramatic potential. “Oslo” premiered in New York a few years ago, transferred to Broadway, and won the Tony for Best New Play. The importance of the subject matter apparently blinded audiences into thinking the play itself was good, and because they were just like oh this is good I’m having fun, the potential was squandered because no one will ever write a play about this again. This amazingly interesting idea for a play will never get to be fully realized into the strong work it deserves because the shit that was churned out first won the Tony and who on earth is going to write a new version when the old one won a Tony! Grahhhh. We all lose when audiences aren’t critical.
But of course we had no idea that “Oslo” was going to be the theatre equivalent of a chicken in a magician’s hat and everyone including the chicken is like ‘what, no’ when we excitedly bought tickets and when we excitedly went to the theatre and when we excitedly pranced about the lobby before the show started. I had heard such good things and hellooo it won the Tony! How many times am I going to say that, I hear you asking? I get it, it won the Tony! Well I just still can’t believe it. I’ve been against some Tony wins in the past – David Hyde Pierce for “Curtains” over Raul Esparza for “Company”, anyone at all over Rachel Bay Jones for “Pippin” – but those winners were still deserving as hell, they just weren’t my vote. But “Oslo” winning anything but a Razzie is like when Joe Fox’s child-aunt sings “Tomorrow” while his new temporary stepmother makes a pass at him. JUST A LOT OF NO.
Anyway so there we were all hyped up for some Middle East peace process goodness preshow when I realized that the Harold Pinter Theatre in London was CHOCKABLOCK full of every Jew in Europe, squashed into the poorly designed too-small lobby like sardines, which old Jews love. Oh my goodness I don’t think I saw that many Israelis when I was IN Israel. I was happy at first because I like to force a camaraderie with my fellows when Nazis are back in power but then the whole theatre started smelling like Yom Kippur breath and that’s hard to get past.
Still I couldn’t wait to be blown away by the intellect and the intrigue and the excellent writing I expected. The show began, I was so revved up to be smacked in the face with genius…and then the old lady next to me – NEXT TO ME – took out her tote bag, pulled out a plastic bag, and out of that pulled two very tightly wrapped sandwiches with some sort of mayo-based salad, probably chicken given the demographics. So those of you who know me know that I am not only Theatre Police, I’m regular Theatre Police’s worst nightmare. I grab phones out of hands, I get ushers to admonish talkers, I jump out of my seat to tell people to get in line or gtfo. Boorish behavior at the theatre drives me insane. I just want people to not behave like monsters; is that so much to ask? So the fact that this sandwich-eating monster who thinks it’s okay to whip out a plastic-wrapped sandwich and slowly unwrap it and then munch on it IN THE THEATRE was NEXT TO ME was like the universe getting drunk and seeing how crazy they could make me while it watches, cracking up while eating potato chips and laughing to universe friends going ‘LOOK AT ‘ER LOOK AT ‘ER SHE’S GONNA LOSE IT’. That’s how I pictured the universe at this moment. I honestly almost stood up and shouted “oh THIS is the bad place!” If Ted Dansen wanted to torture me for eternity this was the brilliant way to do it. I was frozen for a minute as I just sat horrified that someone was actually doing this not only in the theatre but next to me of all people, before I gathered my wits and whispered ‘omg stop’. She didn’t hear me, of course, what with her loud chewing blocking any sound from entering her ears. A kindred spirit in the row in front of us and a few seats down kept turning around in shock to stare at this brazenly bad behavior, making eye contact with me and we shook our heads in disbelief and disgust together. Friends! I tried again: ‘please put that away’. Old sandwich lady seemed completely shocked that anyone would have a problem with an audience member sitting in the fourth row center of the orchestra, right where the actors look most of the time, proudly eating a chicken salad sandwich in the middle of a drama about the motherfreaking Middle East. She stopped but still, the damage was done. She and her even older husband talked a lot during the show too. “WHAT DID HE SAY?” “HE SAID HE’S TIRED, RIGHT? TIRED.” I mean me too lady.
Amid all the old people conversations and the bursts of Yom Kippur breath hitting us like hot air darts from absolutely nowhere (it was horrid), we tried to focus on the play, and we really tried to love it even a smidgen as much as we had hoped to. It tells the story of two Norwegian diplomats, Mona Juul and Terje Rod-Larsen (obviously their names are properly spelled with some fun Scandinavian alphabet marks that I’m not going to bother to find and add in because this show isn’t worth the effort), who organize secret negotiations between representatives sent by Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yassir Arafat in 1993, keeping their experiment a secret from the rest of the world. Everything could have gone wrong, and a lot did, but the Norwegian couple risked everything to try to get people from both sides to talk to each other as fellow human beings, to find some common ground, and to reach agreements on important issues using Terje’s newfangled methods, which are never explained in the show but apparently work. We meet frumpy Jews, slick Matrix-wannabe Jews, friendly Arabs, scary stoic Arabs, all the various, passionate players in these backdoor dealings, all trying to behave somewhat peaceably and fairly while aiming for a win for their side.
It could have been so moving, so important and dramatic and educational.
Instead, it’s a total shitshow of immature writing, overacting, lack of edits, and stupid jokes aimed at super old uncritical audiences. It sounds so great but the stellar idea had its potential completely destroyed in the execution. It was like The Big Bang Theory of theatre, aimed at the lowest common denominator – incredibly basic and unsophisticated and barely shooting above the baseline but still capable of winning lots of awards (and viewers and money and acclaim). But the difference is that I sometimes laugh at Big Bang, It can be funny despite its uninspired attempts at easy humor (not to mention its sexism and racism). “Oslo” is worse than Big Bang in every way – writing, directing, acting, enjoyment. I know, I can’t believe I’m saying this either, that a Tony-winning play is so much worse than the most insipid show on TV in recent years. But it’s true.
A huge problem with “Oslo”, besides everything I already mentioned, is that despite the subject matter being such a selling point for it, it doesn’t have any faith in it. The writer and everyone in the creative team apparently didn’t believe that it could stand as an important show because they cram it full of the worst jokes you’ve ever heard, I guess to keep the older-skewing audience thinking they’re having fun. When the Israelis were talking about potential representatives to send, one would say “Oh he can’t handle it – he’s from HAIFA!” and the oldest, deafest Jews in the audience would roar with laughter while I sat there just jaw-dropped from disbelief at how bad these would be even for Borscht Belt comedy acts. Or when in the middle of talking about important issues, one guy would make a joke about how he loves gefilte fish and everyone would laugh simply because he said gefilte fish and old Jewish men think that’s the funniest thing to talk about. I cannot. There was also an extended bit when the Norwegian chef of Mona and Terje tell the guests how she makes her waffles. It was tortuous enough to put you off waffles for good, and I love waffles. I thought my husband’s head was going to explode during that part. He didn’t say anything – he knows me; even in the worst of shows you behave – but I could sense the heat coming off the whirring of his brain cells as they tried with all their might to keep the blood in the head.
Aside from the very, very dumb jokes…no, none of it was any better. The negotiation scenes should have been strong, but the writing, oh god it was so weak. You know from reading my travel posts how much I love cursing, right? I do it a lot. I am not shy about it and I appreciate when cursing is used well. This play is the best case I’ve ever seen for outlawing cursing in all forms. It was so frustrating how poorly it used what could be a great tool. How do you ruin that? They would shoehorn the f word into almost every sentence, and it never made sense or sounded good or worked to increase drama. It just sounded stupid. “Let’s get these fucking talks going.” “I only have fucking until six o’clock.” “I’m fucking hungry let’s get the fucking dinner.” These aren’t exact quotes but they are decent examples of how poorly written this show was. How can you be so bad at cursing? And that wasn’t the only tool that was so overused that it became a shivering pile of ash that only hinted at once being metal. The actors shouted 98% of their lines. When everything is shouting, there’s nowhere to build, and so nothing stands out as being dramatic or important. You can’t start at 10 and then have nowhere to build when you are talking about the Middle East. The only result of all the shouting and screaming was that I tuned everything out, which I doubt was the intent.
Even more frustrating and tasteless was how the sole important woman was treated – and that the creators I doubt even realize how it came across. Every single time a man entered the room, they would comment on how great Mona was and how she was such a wonderful woman. Every single time, they would single out her as a the sole woman and point out how they wished she could be their wife. Always in a jovial, friendly manner, always so easygoing as to make most of the audience (and I’m guessing the playwright) assume that this was just men being friendly. But it came across to us, woke af millennials, as so despicably sexist, so demeaning to this woman who was A DIPLOMAT, equal in importance if not more so to her diplomat husband and colleagues, that it makes me fear that every man involved in the creation of this show is indeed a good ol’ boy type of sexist, not even realizing when they are being disgusting to women.
The saddest thing about this show, aside from the fact that the peace talks obviously didn’t really do much, was that it was artless. Theatre is art, and this clumsy, vulgar attempt was so completely devoid of any merit that it made me sad for this great love of mine. Well not completely devoid – Peter Polycarpou, always terrific, is the best part of this production. His acting as Ahmed from the PLO was somehow able to shine past the terrible writing he was given. But that’s really it. I cannot believe my beloved Barlett Sher directed this mess. He really needs to stick to golden age musicals starring Kelli O’Hara. It breaks my art that this show is so bad because it’s the worst kind of badness – the insidious kind, that no one else believes you about. Everyone – LITERALLY everyone else – thinks this show is amazing. The show SHOULD be amazing! I wanted it to be! I guess the silver lining is that we haven’t lost our critical sense yet?
The best part was when we both broke our rules. At the end, they do that awful ‘what happened next to every character?’ bit that is soooo annoying usually but you can give a pass when it’s about real-life people (and in Legally Blonde). But they had all the side characters do their what-I-did-next bits too! That is unnecessary. When one lady who had LITERALLY one line had her turn and said ‘I had a heart attack and I died’ we both suppressed (or tried to at least) guffaws and I kind of whispered ‘good’. This show is so bad it makes me awful. When the raucous applause finally died down, my husband and I looked at each other in disbelief. Husband had the best line we heard the entire night: “Oh that was so bad…oh I’m so unhappy!” And then we cracked up for like 10 minutes as we shook our heads at the rest of the world.
INFORMATION
The play is terrible, but at least it’s overly long!! The first act is an hour and 15 minutes. The second? AN HOUR AND 45 MINUTES. OH THISSS IS THE BAD PLACE!
STAGEDOOR
lol no.
Uncle Vanya at the Harold Pinter: Boy those Russians Know From Debilitating Depression
It’s Theatre Thursday during a pandemic, which means I’m going to rave about a show that you can no longer see because THIS! WORLD! IS ON FIIIIIIIRE.
Man alive, Chekhov needed a friend, am I right? Christopher Durang could have easily made a less-funny Chekhovian play called Vanya & Sonya & Depression & Sadness and we’d all get it. Actually, it should still be funny, because Chekhov, the master, infused his gloomy, depressing (if you drink every time I use this word in this piece you will get through quarantine like a champ) classic Uncle Vanya with just as much humor as sadness, and just as much heart as melancholy, just as much humanity and sad beauty as grief. The current London production of Uncle Vanya is a fantastic, nearly flawless revival, one of the many heartbreaking casualties of this strange time of isolation. Toby Jones in the titular role redefines how fully felt this unforgettable character can be, and he leads a pretty great cast in this magnificent production.
If you don’t know Chekhov’s classic of countryside despair, Uncle Vanya tells about a man named Vanya who lives with his niece Sonya in a crumbling country estate where every day looks the same and their future looks bleak but they just go through each day doing their paperwork and drinking their vodka and, like, sighing, I guess. But excitement enters with the unwelcome arrival of Vanya’s brother/Sonya’s father Aleksandr (played by the wonderful Ciaran Hinds), a famous professor who is lauded as a genius but is really just an annoying and ignorant blowhard and my favorite part was when Vanya tried to shoot him and my least favorite part was when he missed. Aleksandr has a hot new young wife Yelena (played by understudy Afia Abusham when I saw it, who was decent but didn’t seem to quite get her footing enough to make an impression among this stellar cast) and Vanya is like OH DIP A HOT WOMAN AND ONE I’M NOT RELATED TO I HAVEN’T SEEN ONE IN YEARS! And he falls in love with her but Yelena is like mmm pass and falls instead for the hot town doctor who pays ever increasing visits since her arrival. Sadly, Sonya, who is good (and Natasha’s young and Andrei isn’t heeere) but plain is like SUPES in love with hot doctor (Richard Armitage, magnetic) but he is not attracted to her in the least even though he is as lonely as everyone else and it would be nice if he and Sonya saved each other from a life of dreary solitude but hey he just doesn’t love her you can’t force it so instead he ALSO falls for Yelena (who is MARRIED, my dudes) (okay to an old buffoon but STILL). So everyone is super unhappy and lonely and depressed because they know this is their lot in life and it will never change. Russians, man.
Toby Jones’s Vanya is, well, everything. He so completely and perfectly inhabits Vanya’s despair with every joke and gesture and gaze, a despair that informs everything Vanya says or does though he tries to keep it bubbling under the surface, at least part of the time. It’s heartbreaking that he has lived a life so barren and knows that there’s nothing he can do to change it (I mean, I’m optimistic that if he really wanted to, he could change his life, but Russians man). Jones also infuses his Vanya with a sad but incredible humor, because I admit nothing is funnier than self-hate, it’s true. His seemingly nonstop movement, even at rest, and elastic facial expressions added to the creation of a dynamic Vanya for the ages.
In a cast this starry, it’s surprising and impressive that despite Toby’s complete encompassing of his character, the standout is young Aimee Lou Wood as Sonya. I can’t think of a more efficient performance in recent times, with so much done with comparatively little. With only a few lines at the end of the first act, she broke my heart, and continued breaking it throughout the rest of the show. Her sad monologue that ends the show had me riveted. Husbo thought the delivery was painfully labored and it took him out, but for me, I needed all that time to breathe in between words because I was still so shaken by her final interaction with the doctor, an interaction so subtle and so exquisitely performed that I wanted to gasp but instead cried. She’s an incredible young actor that I can’t wait to see more of. Her performance is a huge part of what makes this production so beautiful, so heartbreaking, and so – one more for the road – depressing.
INFORMATION
After a 7:30pm start (probably 7:33 or so, happily not as late as most shows), Act I ended at 8:44pm and Act II at 10:12, so note that it is 12 minutes longer than it says on the official show website which might not seem like a lot to you but it’s enough to be wrong.
Vanya’s annoying mother is extra annoying because they have her smoke a lot. She has like 4 lines but it was important to establish that her character smokes?? MISS ME WITH THIS UNNECESSARY LUNG DAMAGE PLEASE.
This was supposed to run until May 2 but the world is on a break from life so I suggest reading the play and perhaps acting out all the parts with the people you are locked down with. If you are locked down alone, do all the parts yourself like when I sing “Moscow” from The Great Comet it doesn’t make you look or feel crazy no sirree I promise totally a normal thing to do.
