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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American Buffalo on the West End: Not About The Wild Animal, Sadly
You know how you hate going to stuffy smoky bars because it makes you uncomfortable and you hate making forced small talk and you just want to go home and watch TV but sometimes you go because you feel obligated or you just forget how much you dislike it and how little you’ll enjoy it? that’s how I feel about David Mamet plays.
While I recognize that Mamet captures well the kind of unsettling dialogue and awful relationships that awful people have…who cares about those awful characters that I don’t care about? They give me agita and they’re always unbelievably unsympathetic and hateful and whoa sexist (I continually feel cringely bad for Zosia and not just because she is still on “Girls”). So, his plays aren’t for me because I don’t like being made to feel nervous and agitated and unsatisfied that bad people don’t learn lessons or get punished, so I extra don’t want to pay for these feelings when at my happy place, the theatre. It gives me the terribles.
But. I had to see “American Buffalo”, now on the West End at the Wyndham theatre for a limited engagement, because it stars Damian Lewis and John Goodman, one actor I love for how convincingly he can do an American accent (so far we are 2/98 this season on the West End, I’m keeping track) and one I love for being in nearly every cultural touchstone during my life and usually playing the dad, like “Coyote Ugly”. Such a great cast surely could assuage my tremblesads at the play itself.
Well. That’s a lot of pressure to put on them. Joined by Tony-nominee Tom Sturridge, they’re fine actors but they’re not miracle workers. Literally nothing happens. Yet it’s enough to show us how vile everyone is and how gross life is, especially when you wear a purple leisure suit.
Okay, let’s backtrack. John Goodman plays Don, who runs a junk shop, not a pawn shop, I think there’s a difference, but anyway it’s a shop full of funk. The overly busy, junk-filled, crazy crammed set is quite remarkable and effective, like as soon as the lights hit it, I got nauseous because ugly things make me nauseous, like how I get when I watch sitcoms that don’t star beautiful people. (That’s a joke that’s the Mamet residue talking.) That’s some good set design. Don talks to his clearly-formerly-drug-ridden and bedraggled young friend, or protégé perhaps, named Bobby (Tom Sturridge). We learn that they’re thieves, con men of sorts, even though Goodman is wearing old man glasses on a chain like a nice boy and a Mr. Rogers cardigan.
Then a past-his-prime ginger pervert in the aforementioned purple leisure suit waltzes in (like really I think he waltzed) to show off his enormous side burns (real) and his hella pornstache and the audience got visibly excited because it was Damian Lewis. I was so excited to finally hear an English actor do a completely perfect American accent for the first time since I saw Andy Nyman in “Assassins”. But he opened his mouth, and shooting out like keg-stand-fueled projectile vomit by a skinny little teenager at his first frat party came a Chicago accent. A pretty perfect Chicago accent that he obviously trained seriously for, but a freaking strong as hell Chicago accent. It was insane. Most people in the audience I am sure don’t know that Chicagoans have a very very particular accent and probably just thought he was having a stroke. But the strongest accent in the history of Chicago was coupled with over-the-top shtick and hamming and it was too much, super distracting from the shitty character and the shitty play. They should hang him in Iran for that.
Sturridge, meanwhile, adopted the very accurate lazy drawl and rubbery physique of a former addict trying to stay clean minute by minute. He also had a teardrop tattoo on his face so he wasn’t the most sympathetic person, even though he was the most sympathetic person on stage.
Damian played “Teach”, a professional “businessman” as they say repeatedly to convince themselves they aren’t criminals. But you could tell he was professional and real business-like because he was wearing that suit. The three characters discuss how a well-dressed guy came in the day before and paid $90 for a Buffalo head nickel, which is why it’s called American Buffalo. Wow, $90 for a coin, he’s probably a collector, they say. So they decide to rob his house. Naturally.
So the whole two-act play is Teach and Don planning this robbery and trying to get rid of poor messed-up not-all-there Bobby, because Teach doesn’t trust him. That distrust warps Don’s formerly fatherly view of Bobby and he turns on him as well, even though Bobby didn’t do anything wrong. Except I mean probably kill a guy in prison or whatever the teardrop means. They plan this robbery based on absolutely zero facts and they decide they need an unseen player named Fletcher to help them. Fletcher is apparently the ‘businessman’ to end all ‘businessmen’ (like literally probably end them), and if even Teach admits that freely, hoo boy, he must be wearing f-ing neon tails or something. But as Teach and Don wait for Fletcher to arrive at the appointed time for the burgling, Bobby arrives at the junk shop to tell them that Fletcher is in the hospital! Oh no! PS OMG, this is where I think the director changed Mamet’s words, because every single time any character referred to Fletcher being in the hospital in this scene, which is A LOT, they said ‘in hospital’, which is a British thing. Americans don’t say ‘in hospital’, we say ‘in THE hospital’. Fletcher would have been in the hospital, not in hospital. And Mamet is American so that was REALLY weird to keep hearing.
Well. That’s a lot of pressure to put on them. Joined by Tony-nominee Tom Sturridge, they’re fine actors but they’re not miracle workers. Literally nothing happens. Yet it’s enough to show us how vile everyone is and how gross life is, especially when you wear a purple leisure suit.
Okay, let’s backtrack. John Goodman plays Don, who runs a junk shop, not a pawn shop, I think there’s a difference, but anyway it’s a shop full of funk. The overly busy, junk-filled, crazy crammed set is quite remarkable and effective, like as soon as the lights hit it, I got nauseous because ugly things make me nauseous, like how I get when I watch sitcoms that don’t star beautiful people. (That’s a joke that’s the Mamet residue talking.) That’s some good set design. Don talks to his clearly-formerly-drug-ridden and bedraggled young friend, or protégé perhaps, named Bobby (Tom Sturridge). We learn that they’re thieves, con men of sorts, even though Goodman is wearing old man glasses on a chain like a nice boy and a Mr. Rogers cardigan.
Then a past-his-prime ginger pervert in the aforementioned purple leisure suit waltzes in (like really I think he waltzed) to show off his enormous side burns (real) and his hella pornstache and the audience got visibly excited because it was Damian Lewis. I was so excited to finally hear an English actor do a completely perfect American accent for the first time since I saw Andy Nyman in “Assassins”. But he opened his mouth, and shooting out like keg-stand-fueled projectile vomit by a skinny little teenager at his first frat party came a Chicago accent. A pretty perfect Chicago accent that he obviously trained seriously for, but a freaking strong as hell Chicago accent. It was insane. Most people in the audience I am sure don’t know that Chicagoans have a very very particular accent and probably just thought he was having a stroke. But the strongest accent in the history of Chicago was coupled with over-the-top shtick and hamming and it was too much, super distracting from the shitty character and the shitty play. They should hang him in Iran for that.
Sturridge, meanwhile, adopted the very accurate lazy drawl and rubbery physique of a former addict trying to stay clean minute by minute. He also had a teardrop tattoo on his face so he wasn’t the most sympathetic person, even though he was the most sympathetic person on stage.
Damian played “Teach”, a professional “businessman” as they say repeatedly to convince themselves they aren’t criminals. But you could tell he was professional and real business-like because he was wearing that suit. The three characters discuss how a well-dressed guy came in the day before and paid $90 for a Buffalo head nickel, which is why it’s called American Buffalo. Wow, $90 for a coin, he’s probably a collector, they say. So they decide to rob his house. Naturally.
So the whole two-act play is Teach and Don planning this robbery and trying to get rid of poor messed-up not-all-there Bobby, because Teach doesn’t trust him. That distrust warps Don’s formerly fatherly view of Bobby and he turns on him as well, even though Bobby didn’t do anything wrong. Except I mean probably kill a guy in prison or whatever the teardrop means. They plan this robbery based on absolutely zero facts and they decide they need an unseen player named Fletcher to help them. Fletcher is apparently the ‘businessman’ to end all ‘businessmen’ (like literally probably end them), and if even Teach admits that freely, hoo boy, he must be wearing f-ing neon tails or something. But as Teach and Don wait for Fletcher to arrive at the appointed time for the burgling, Bobby arrives at the junk shop to tell them that Fletcher is in the hospital! Oh no! PS OMG, this is where I think the director changed Mamet’s words, because every single time any character referred to Fletcher being in the hospital in this scene, which is A LOT, they said ‘in hospital’, which is a British thing. Americans don’t say ‘in hospital’, we say ‘in THE hospital’. Fletcher would have been in the hospital, not in hospital. And Mamet is American so that was REALLY weird to keep hearing.
ANYWAY, Teach obviously thinks Bobby is lying because he suspects him of spying on Don for this scary Chinese lady down the street who makes their bacon sandwiches every morning and gives them coffee and is suuuuper scary, apparently, sounds it. So based on this unfounded suspicion, Teach beats the shit out of Bobby for lying to them and trying to mess up their burgling, and Don just lets it happen. Bobby goes unresponsive, and Don finally is like, “Oh Teach…um…hey…sorry to bother you dude…bro…hey…maybe go get your car, maybe let’s take him to the hospital? I mean to hospital? This is really serious.” But of course they go on talking about nothing and doing nothing instead, resulting probably in further brain damage to Bobby. And then they find out that Fletcher really WAS in the hospital, I mean in hospital, and so they beat up poor Bobby for absolutely no reason. So after learning this information, Don again says quarter-heartedly, “Oh hey Teach…oh did I compliment your suit yet? it goes real nice with your sideburns…anyway…um…hey maybe go get your car?” THIS GOES ON FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES AND THE POOR BOY IS DYING. I have NEVER been SO CLOSE to breaking the fourth wall as an audience member and yelling GO GET YOUR F-ING CAR, TEACH! GET THE F-ING CAR! I was literally squirming in my seat trying not to flip my shit. It was INSANE. Finally Bobby wakes a little, bleeding from his head wound, and I think Teach left to get his car and I think they drive him to the hospital but at this point my surroundings were all glittery shooting stars produced as a result of my blinding furytrembles and agitation.
So I think that’s how it ended, they don’t do the robbery and stuff but I’m sure they go on to do something equally bad the next night. And that’s all. DAMMIT MAMET.
AUDIENCE: Pretty decent! I didn’t notice any phones, and I only heard a little whispering. I’m very impressed, London! BUT, I must warn you if you see this show (haha are you going to???) or if you see any subsequent show at the Wyndham: The Upper Circle is AWFUL. Do not sit up there, you won’t be able to see down to the stage. I don’t know what pissed off the architect so much when he designed this building, but you do not want to sit up top, period. We were in the first row of the upper circle, so that was good, but that’s because no one was in front of us and we could lean forward to look down. I don’t think the people behind us could see anything except the 100 old bicycles hanging from the ceiling. So crazy! Don’t do it!
Beckett’s Endgame at the Old Vic Successfully Captures the Yearning for the Sweet Release of Death
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Endgame by Samuel Beckett, playing a double bill with his short piece Rough for Theatre II, now at the Old Vic if you like torture.
To sort something straight off the bat: this is NOT about the last Avengers movie (which, amazingly enough, I still have not seen. I really do not care anymore about those superheroes. It’s too much). Endgame is a famous play by Samuel Beckett, the playwright of ‘theatre of the absurd’, famed for his dreary, bleak look at the human existence. He did not seem happy. People say his work is ‘tragi-comic’ but I did not get the comic part. He famously said that nothing is funnier than unhappiness…which after seeing this production, I promise you is false: I was very unhappy, and very much not amused. I have never been so close to being sure that a piece of theatre was pranking me as I was during this evening at the Old Vic, nearly shouting “oh THIS is the bad place” despite the beloved talent onstage (Daniel Radcliffe and Alan Cumming). I’ve also never seen so many people walk out of a show, unable to wait till an interval or the end, and I’ve seen some shit.
Let’s start with Rough for Theatre II, since it’s a little nothing of a show. This production serves a double bill with Beckett’s little one-act that’s about two like, afterlife accountants but not in the brilliant Good Place way, who show up when someone is about to commit suicide and they go through his life and see whether he should or not? At least I think that’s what it’s about. It was odd and vague and incredibly short. Daniel Radcliffe gets to do a lot of box jumps which is fun for him but not for me when watching because I was like I wanna do box jumps instead of watch this. I honestly have to give Beckett props for naming it what it is.
Endgame, the main course, is one of the most unreasonable pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen. Remember how Alex Borstein did that episode of Friends where she had a one-woman show about why men don’t like her and talked about getting her first period, and Chandler made everyone go see it as punishment? I didn’t know Sammy Beckett but I feel like he really hated theatergoers. He’s the playwright equivalent of Lewis Black’s joke about how airplane seats in economy were created by a guy with scoliosis who is really f-ing pissed. This piece is about an invalid (Alan) and his servant (Daniel) and Alan is mean to Daniel and Daniel has a limp but Alan can’t walk or stand at all and they just are like, waiting for death? It’s considered a sort of sequel to Waiting for Godot and I guess they just replaced Godot with Death. Alan’s parents live in trashcans at the foot of the stage and sometimes they pop up and say nonsense things that are weird and not funny and he replies in ways that are absurd because I guess this is Theatre of the Absurd but just because it has an official title doesn’t make it worthwhile.
Daniel is fine, but there’s only so much you can do performance-wise with the material you are given, especially when most of your requirements are carrying a ladder to and fro and climbing up and shimmying down, over and over and over in an act that serves no purpose except to delight people who find delight in incongruous slapstick, a cheap laugh ploy that, of course, works because people love cheap laughs that don’t have anything to do with anything. Alan Cumming is fine, though overly hammy much of the time. But I don’t know what we can ask of them when they are forced to do this absolute nonsense show. Why, why is this considered a great piece of theatre? The only thing I can think of is, it’s about people waiting for the sweet release of death and when you watch it, it’s such torture that the audience feels the yearning for death along with the characters. Is that it, that the show so successfully makes the audience feel what the characters feel so that they too anticipate sweet release from the torment of this show? Is that what he was going for, because if so, man, well done Sammy, what a gottamn masterpiece of pain you’ve created. It’s a f-ing triumph. If he didn’t want us to feel that death was preferable to watching this show for much longer, then I, along with everyone who left, missed something.
INFORMATION
Rough for Theatre II was just under a half hour, which means your interval bathroom break comes when you don’t need it, adding to the whole torture vibe of the evening. Endgame is then an hour and half, which is the exact amount of time it’s safe to watch this show for before one loses one’s mind.
The Old Vic renovation is fine – there’s still not enough room in the lobby (what a mess) but the bathrooms in the basement (where you go if you sit in the stalls, so get an aisle towards the back if you need) are better and bigger. Also, they are not defined by gender, just by whether they contain stalls or urinals, which is how every bathroom should be since it’s great for everyone (except men who need to go #2) (hey that’s what Beckett is with this show!).
STAGE DOOR
Like all Danny Rad shows, people were SPRINTING to the stage door in droves, so I skipped out on adding ‘trampled by horrible crowds’ to the night’s list of agonies. (Also what was I gonna say to them, yeesh.)
