My Mixed Day at MTFest: The Assassination of Katie Hopkins & Soapdishby Randi / February 20, 2020The Wedding Singer & London Theatre’s Jewish Problem
London theatre has a Jewish problem. Whether the fault of creative teams, prejudice in the community and thus audiences, or a mix of both (it’s both), there’s an obvious ‘othering’ happening that feels offensive and demoralizing. Suffice it to say, I’m tired. Ain’t you tired Miss Hilly? I recently saw The Wedding Singer – a show I loved when I saw it on Broadway – and had to leave at the interval. I NEVER do that. (Okay, once.) (I mean one other time; this isn’t a Simpsons thing.) I felt ridiculed and ridiculous, with everyone around me in on a joke that is not funny. And I realized that this problem that I’ve been noticing in tiny bits and pieces is larger than I wanted to believe.
As we saw with last season’s Falsettos debacle, many productions fail to make a concerted effort to ensure that Jewish voices are involved with Jewish content. Not to start playing an unwinnable battle of the minorities, but you would never see a production of e.g. The Normal Heart without gay men involved, or The Inheritance. Or Falsettos! And this isn’t only about the acting talent, because yes, it’s the job of actors to play other identities, like Scarlett Johansson and her tree. It’s about having representation in the creative process, whether onstage or off, someone in the room to speak up, to ensure that representation onstage isn’t problematic or insulting. I didn’t support last season’s Falsettos by seeing it, but according to some people who did go, it was indeed insulting.
If it was anything like the Bar Mitzvah scene of The Wedding Singer, I’m glad I didn’t go. In this show, based on the great Adam Sandler movie, the lead needs a break from singing at weddings, and the scene changes to a Bar Mitzvah. It’s semi-funny in the movie because of Sandler and the content of the scene. But here, presenting the scene of a Bar Mitzvah was the joke in itself. As soon as men dressed in traditional Hasidic black suits and vests and hats come out, the audience roars. It doesn’t matter whether it’s funny that Robbie now has to change his act or do things he’s not used to doing – the joke was clearly Judaism. You could barely hear the lines or music because the audience was laughing at the pure visuals of Jewish men in their suits and payot (yes, they wore fake payot). That was the punch line. I felt my entire body burning with anger, as well as shame. And it got worse: the feature of this new act was Robbie’s queer keyboardist (I could write a whole nother piece on how offensively homophobic the direction around this character and everything else slightly queer was and how it was used for weird cheap laughs (and this was hundo p a right-wing crowd laughing at not with)) singing Hebrew prayers to the tune of an ’80s song.
I don’t remember whether this is done in the movie or the original production, but even if it was, it does not go over well here. Comedy has different effects on different crowds and communities, and you can tell when it’s good natured. Here, it is pure mockery of the sound of the Hebrew language and prayers, amid the sheer look of Jewish people as a punch line. In the movie, Sandler is a known Jewish performer whose comedy has the ability to poke good-natured fun at his culture. Here, it wasn’t good-natured, it was ridicule, and the laughter around me was based in contempt, which is why I left. (The production isn’t very good so I wasn’t heartbroken to leave – the pacing is about twice as slow as it should be, like the directorial metronome is broken, which makes all the actually good parts of the show fail.) Also, just because something plays appropriately in New York does not mean it will here. You have to be cognizant of the differences in the communities. In a Broadway theatre, you’re surrounded by Jews, and Jewishness is part of New York culture, especially in the theatre. In the UK, Jews are still considered rare, outsiders, and blamed for all sorts of things (like Labour losing). And there aren’t that many. In London, I was for sure the only Jewish person in the audience at my performance of Wedding Singer, and I wasn’t even surprised. Productions have to be aware of how something will play in different places and think about whether it works or not.
Falsettos wasn’t the start to the problem, and clearly not the end. I’ve noticed this in many shows over the past few years, and I’m new. The last production of Caroline, or Change was my first shocking moment. There’s a line in the show where Caroline says to her young Jewish charge that his people burn in hell. On Broadway, this line was met with a kind of hushed “oh shit” reaction, like wow that was dark, and cruel. In London, it was met with a hearty chuckle. Not a nervous laugh, a real laugh. If that doesn’t show how differently the same thing can play in the two cities and how important it is to make sure you have someone in the room (Caroline had no Jews) to account for potential offensive representation, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Recent (and great) productions like Rags at the Park Theatre and Leopoldstadt (review next week) at Wyndham’s are promising in their inclusivity and representation, although the latter still had a few very strange moments of laughter when I saw it. I am still continually surprised at what London audiences will laugh at. And yesI have a different sense of humor as an American, but sometimes it’s not that. Sometimes the laughter is quite troubling (like in Caroline and parts of Appropriate). We know that anti-Semitism is just as strong as ever in this country (and around the world), and that’s something to be aware of when you are creating art that involved Jews or Jewishness. My horror at The Wedding Singer may seem misplaced or overblown to you, but that show’s missteps are symptoms of a much larger problem in British theatre and the country itself.
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Aspects of Love at the Southwark Playhouse: A.L. DUBS YOU GOT SOME SPLAININ TO DO!!!!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about the new revival of Aspects of Love at London’s Southwark Playhouse, on until February 9. Run, don’t walk, to miss it.
Certain demons down at Bad Place headquarters are waiting for the creators of “Aspects of Love” – Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart, and Don Black – to join them in their circus of torture, and have been ever since the show was written in 1989 (based on a novella by David Garnett). They will move into the neighborhood where Jared from Subway is heading, along with the guy who created Girls Gone Wild. They’ll all fit together nicely. And into their little torture neighborhood, we will add whoever though it was a good idea to revive this monstrosity of a show at the Southwark Playhouse this season. A rare miss from a theatre whose work we usually adore, “Aspects of Love” is an affront to decent humans. Sure, we are realizing with each passing day that there are fewer and fewer decent humans among us in this brave new world of ours, but that doesn’t excuse this portrayal of domestic abuse, misogyny, incest and more as normal, or worse, as anything remotely resembling love.
Certain demons down at Bad Place headquarters are waiting for the creators of “Aspects of Love” – Andrew Lloyd Webber, Charles Hart, and Don Black – to join them in their circus of torture, and have been ever since the show was written in 1989 (based on a novella by David Garnett). They will move into the neighborhood where Jared from Subway is heading, along with the guy who created Girls Gone Wild. They’ll all fit together nicely. And into their little torture neighborhood, we will add whoever though it was a good idea to revive this monstrosity of a show at the Southwark Playhouse this season. A rare miss from a theatre whose work we usually adore, “Aspects of Love” is an affront to decent humans. Sure, we are realizing with each passing day that there are fewer and fewer decent humans among us in this brave new world of ours, but that doesn’t excuse this portrayal of domestic abuse, misogyny, incest and more as normal, or worse, as anything remotely resembling love.
Frank Rich’s 1990 review of the Broadway production in the failing New York Times has one of my favorite Frank Rich lines of all time OF ALL TIME. He states that while ALW has written a musical about people (as opposed to cats), “whether ‘Aspects of Love’ is a musical for people is another matter.” I mean get Dubs to the ER for those burns am I right. The story presented here is offensive, despicable, and all around gross. The main idea is that it’s about love in all these various forms, in all these different romances depicted. The problem is, none of it is love, NONE OF IT, and putting some of these relationships forward as love – as opposed to what they really are, toxic power trips or ACTUAL CRIMES – is irresponsible and disturbing.
Let’s get into it, shall we? “Aspects of Love” is about a boy named Alex living in France who is obsessed with a local actress. Alex is 17 years old, so a minor, if they count things like that in France. He goes to the actress, Rose, after a show one night and is like, hot damn I love you, even though I don’t know you and this is the first time we’ve ever spoken, that’s love. Rose’s show is cancelled and she’s broke, so Alex says she can come stay with him in his uncle’s villa for a few weeks. Rose decides that spending a few weeks having an affair with a minor is a good solution to a problem that could also be solved ANY OTHER WAY. Off Rose and the child Alex go to the uncle’s villa, happy in their disgusting little bubble of impropriety until the uncle finds out and goes to disrupt their fun. The uncle, George, finds them one evening when Rose is wearing George’s dead wife’s gown. Naturally, this upsets him, but not because it’s a flagrant overstep on the part of a guest. No, it’s because he is attracted to Rose, who looks a lot like his dead wife in this gown, and he apologizes to her for his being upset instead of making her apologize to him for wearing the damn dress and at THIS point I was ready to scream at everyone for being wrong and dumb so you can imagine how I felt when shit really hit the fan. Rose decides to leave Alex after a week or so and go back to the stage. They say that they love each other a few times and you are like a) you don’t even know each other and b) so gross.
Two years later, Alex has joined the army so he has a gun, important plot point. He goes to visit his uncle George and lo and behold, guess who is at his apartment? ROSE, who is now George’s mistress. Alex is so upset and scolds Rose for sleeping with his uncle just for his money, but Rose says she really loves George. She ALSO says that she really loved Alex two years ago and so they have sex again in George’s apartment. The next day, Rose tells Alex he has to go before George returns, so Alex THREATENS TO SHOOT HER, because that’s what real love is. How dare you not love me back when I love you so much, Alex says, I love you so much that I’d rather kill you than see you be happy with someone else! SURE GUYS. Rose is like dude stop it and she throws a candlestick at him, which makes him fire the gun “accidentally” but not really an accident because you’re forking POINTING A LOADED GUN AT HER and threatening to shoot her so like not really an UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCE YOU LITTLE SHIT, and Rose is shot in the arm and faints. And then George arrives and instead of taking Rose to a hospital or something, he and Alex sing about how much they love her and how they think the other one is the best man for her AS SHE IS PASSED OUT. George is literally singing to Alex that maybe he is the right man for Rose because he clearly loves her so much and has such strong passion that it made him shoot her. I CANNOT.
George goes to see his other mistress, Giulietta, and it looks like Rose and Alex will stay together even though he just shot her but she soon orders him to leave so she can go race after George. Rose and Giulietta meet, and they’re like ‘oh you’re not as bad as I expected you to be, let’s be friends/lovers’ and then Rose and George get married with Giulietta as the witness and they form this gross little threesome and George is skeevily elated and that’s Act 1.
I didn’t think Act II could be worse, but I was mistaken. In Act II, the married couple George and Rose have a daughter, Jenny, who has a crush on Alex, HER COUSIN. When Jenny is 14 and Alex is 34, Alex is visiting the villa and Jenny puts on the gown that Rose first put on, the dead wife’s gown. George, instead of being like ‘it’s forking weird that my daughter is dressing up like my dead wife and I’m super attracted to women who wear this gown’, decides the right thing to do is dance with Jenny in a gross manner. When alone, Jenny and Alex dance in a very very inappropriate manner. Jenny tells Alex that she loves him and they kiss. Again, 14, and 34. AND COUSINS.
Later, Alex is putting Jenny to bed one evening and Jenny tells him how much she loves him. Alex sings to himself about all his complicated feelings (he is attracted to his child cousin; not complicated, go away from her) and George overhears and assumes they’ve been having sex and he HAS A HEART ATTACK AND DIES.
At George’s wake, Alex and Giulietta meet and they have sex. Then Alex tells Jenny that their relationship can’t continue, and then he tries to leave but Rose begs him not to leave because she loves him too, and then the whole building explodes from the sheer unbelievability of how fucked up this show is and how they are treating domestic abuse, incest, and pedophilia as acceptable kinds of love.
I know what you’re thinking – all of this must be put forth as satire or criticism of these people and what they think love is, right? Like the art of it must be that they are presenting this as super fucked up and not love at all, RIGHT? Sadly, no. There would be merit in presenting this story with a commentary on how it’s wrong or bad or literally ANY kind of commentary, but this is purely a celebration of this super fuckeduppery as ‘love’.
If you would like to know how the show is aside from the plot, because the entire story is something you can definitely ignore to focus on what, the melodies? then sure let’s talk about that. It is garbage. True, it has created a standard in musical theatre, the opening song “Love Changes Everything”, and it is indeed a catchy, hummable tune that is inoffensive and extraordinarily ordinary. So that’s say five points in their favor. But an easy way to lose those points is, instead of writing other decent melodies and improving the rest of the score, simply repeating “Love Changes Everything” ad infinitum in seemingly endless reprises. If we say minus 1 point for every reprise or repetition of the main LCE theme, they end the show with a total of negative eleventy billion points. And the rest of the score is cringeworthy. I honestly have never cringed so much at a score. It doesn’t help that virtually all of it is sung-through, with what should be dialogue in book scenes replaced with opera-style recitative. It is very hard to make that stylistic choice work in musicals. It does not work here. The melodies chosen for these scenes are the equivalent of when Buddy the Elf in ‘Elf’ tries to explain to Zooey Deschanel that singing is just like talking but you move your voice up and down and then to demonstrate he just sing-shouts “I’M SINGING! I’M IN A STORE AND I’M SIIIINGIIIING” to no real tune, just random tones. That’s what this score is. And the lyrics, good god. When the uncle finds out that his (minor) nephew is affairing it up at his country house with an actress, he sing-shouts “How handy! My bed, my brandy!” I literally HEARD the sound my husband’s face made as he tried to contain his shudder of abhorrence. It hurts in my tumnus to think about that line and the hundreds like it.
I honestly don’t believe that someone okayed this revival of this production like it’s a classic that doesn’t need modern social commentary or new direction to show that none of this is okay. It is clear that those involved don’t see any problem with these storylines and are okay with saying that ‘that’s love.’ And none of the (old men) reviewing this for the big publications seem to find any problem with it because men are disgusting. I can’t believe this is a real show. Also it’s 2 hours and 40 minutes, which is just adding insult to injury. Unless this show was redone as a primer on What Not to Do in the #MeToo Era, it needs to be put away for good. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.
Let’s get into it, shall we? “Aspects of Love” is about a boy named Alex living in France who is obsessed with a local actress. Alex is 17 years old, so a minor, if they count things like that in France. He goes to the actress, Rose, after a show one night and is like, hot damn I love you, even though I don’t know you and this is the first time we’ve ever spoken, that’s love. Rose’s show is cancelled and she’s broke, so Alex says she can come stay with him in his uncle’s villa for a few weeks. Rose decides that spending a few weeks having an affair with a minor is a good solution to a problem that could also be solved ANY OTHER WAY. Off Rose and the child Alex go to the uncle’s villa, happy in their disgusting little bubble of impropriety until the uncle finds out and goes to disrupt their fun. The uncle, George, finds them one evening when Rose is wearing George’s dead wife’s gown. Naturally, this upsets him, but not because it’s a flagrant overstep on the part of a guest. No, it’s because he is attracted to Rose, who looks a lot like his dead wife in this gown, and he apologizes to her for his being upset instead of making her apologize to him for wearing the damn dress and at THIS point I was ready to scream at everyone for being wrong and dumb so you can imagine how I felt when shit really hit the fan. Rose decides to leave Alex after a week or so and go back to the stage. They say that they love each other a few times and you are like a) you don’t even know each other and b) so gross.
Two years later, Alex has joined the army so he has a gun, important plot point. He goes to visit his uncle George and lo and behold, guess who is at his apartment? ROSE, who is now George’s mistress. Alex is so upset and scolds Rose for sleeping with his uncle just for his money, but Rose says she really loves George. She ALSO says that she really loved Alex two years ago and so they have sex again in George’s apartment. The next day, Rose tells Alex he has to go before George returns, so Alex THREATENS TO SHOOT HER, because that’s what real love is. How dare you not love me back when I love you so much, Alex says, I love you so much that I’d rather kill you than see you be happy with someone else! SURE GUYS. Rose is like dude stop it and she throws a candlestick at him, which makes him fire the gun “accidentally” but not really an accident because you’re forking POINTING A LOADED GUN AT HER and threatening to shoot her so like not really an UNFORESEEN CONSEQUENCE YOU LITTLE SHIT, and Rose is shot in the arm and faints. And then George arrives and instead of taking Rose to a hospital or something, he and Alex sing about how much they love her and how they think the other one is the best man for her AS SHE IS PASSED OUT. George is literally singing to Alex that maybe he is the right man for Rose because he clearly loves her so much and has such strong passion that it made him shoot her. I CANNOT.
George goes to see his other mistress, Giulietta, and it looks like Rose and Alex will stay together even though he just shot her but she soon orders him to leave so she can go race after George. Rose and Giulietta meet, and they’re like ‘oh you’re not as bad as I expected you to be, let’s be friends/lovers’ and then Rose and George get married with Giulietta as the witness and they form this gross little threesome and George is skeevily elated and that’s Act 1.
I didn’t think Act II could be worse, but I was mistaken. In Act II, the married couple George and Rose have a daughter, Jenny, who has a crush on Alex, HER COUSIN. When Jenny is 14 and Alex is 34, Alex is visiting the villa and Jenny puts on the gown that Rose first put on, the dead wife’s gown. George, instead of being like ‘it’s forking weird that my daughter is dressing up like my dead wife and I’m super attracted to women who wear this gown’, decides the right thing to do is dance with Jenny in a gross manner. When alone, Jenny and Alex dance in a very very inappropriate manner. Jenny tells Alex that she loves him and they kiss. Again, 14, and 34. AND COUSINS.
Later, Alex is putting Jenny to bed one evening and Jenny tells him how much she loves him. Alex sings to himself about all his complicated feelings (he is attracted to his child cousin; not complicated, go away from her) and George overhears and assumes they’ve been having sex and he HAS A HEART ATTACK AND DIES.
At George’s wake, Alex and Giulietta meet and they have sex. Then Alex tells Jenny that their relationship can’t continue, and then he tries to leave but Rose begs him not to leave because she loves him too, and then the whole building explodes from the sheer unbelievability of how fucked up this show is and how they are treating domestic abuse, incest, and pedophilia as acceptable kinds of love.
I know what you’re thinking – all of this must be put forth as satire or criticism of these people and what they think love is, right? Like the art of it must be that they are presenting this as super fucked up and not love at all, RIGHT? Sadly, no. There would be merit in presenting this story with a commentary on how it’s wrong or bad or literally ANY kind of commentary, but this is purely a celebration of this super fuckeduppery as ‘love’.
If you would like to know how the show is aside from the plot, because the entire story is something you can definitely ignore to focus on what, the melodies? then sure let’s talk about that. It is garbage. True, it has created a standard in musical theatre, the opening song “Love Changes Everything”, and it is indeed a catchy, hummable tune that is inoffensive and extraordinarily ordinary. So that’s say five points in their favor. But an easy way to lose those points is, instead of writing other decent melodies and improving the rest of the score, simply repeating “Love Changes Everything” ad infinitum in seemingly endless reprises. If we say minus 1 point for every reprise or repetition of the main LCE theme, they end the show with a total of negative eleventy billion points. And the rest of the score is cringeworthy. I honestly have never cringed so much at a score. It doesn’t help that virtually all of it is sung-through, with what should be dialogue in book scenes replaced with opera-style recitative. It is very hard to make that stylistic choice work in musicals. It does not work here. The melodies chosen for these scenes are the equivalent of when Buddy the Elf in ‘Elf’ tries to explain to Zooey Deschanel that singing is just like talking but you move your voice up and down and then to demonstrate he just sing-shouts “I’M SINGING! I’M IN A STORE AND I’M SIIIINGIIIING” to no real tune, just random tones. That’s what this score is. And the lyrics, good god. When the uncle finds out that his (minor) nephew is affairing it up at his country house with an actress, he sing-shouts “How handy! My bed, my brandy!” I literally HEARD the sound my husband’s face made as he tried to contain his shudder of abhorrence. It hurts in my tumnus to think about that line and the hundreds like it.
I honestly don’t believe that someone okayed this revival of this production like it’s a classic that doesn’t need modern social commentary or new direction to show that none of this is okay. It is clear that those involved don’t see any problem with these storylines and are okay with saying that ‘that’s love.’ And none of the (old men) reviewing this for the big publications seem to find any problem with it because men are disgusting. I can’t believe this is a real show. Also it’s 2 hours and 40 minutes, which is just adding insult to injury. Unless this show was redone as a primer on What Not to Do in the #MeToo Era, it needs to be put away for good. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.
The American Clock at London’s Old Vic: What was the Depression Like? Depressing.
| It’s Theatre Wednesday! Aren’t we lucky! It’s the height of the season and we have a lot of shows to talk about so they’re coming at you fast and furious. Today’s show is The American Clock, playing at the Old Vic until March 30. Not only was he married to Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller wrote some plays, babies! We’ll see another one of his celebrated works later this season (you’ll have to wait to see which one) but first up is his vaudevillian look at the Great Depression, his play The American Clock. Turns out, Miller and I have (had, RIP) a lot in common: We’re of Polish Jewish descent (all for him, part for me), we both went to Big 10 schools for undergrad (and I bet neither of us had to bribe our way in!), and I’m guessing we both love theatre. Best of all, we both can be guilty of writing too much and not editing the final work enough! This show was HELLA LONG. I would never complain about running times if they use the time wisely; I have a great attention span (although I did just have the urge to shouttype SQUIRREL). But nothing bothers me more than when shows should have been edited and would have been much better off had they been. Like that sentence! The first act of The American Clock is an hour and a half, the second is just over an hour, so with the interval it’s three hours of your day. Given what works in this play and what doesn’t, they could have easily cut an hour. A whole hour! That’s why I’m opening this by talking about length. There were some moments of brilliance, but they would have shone much brighter had they not been sandwiched by dullness. Surprisingly, I haven’t had a great experience at the Old Vic since Groundhog Day (the show, not the day). And the last time I was there, the show (Sylvia) suffered a similar problem (I think that one was like 3 ½ hours and had fewer moments of brilliance). I wish there was a required Editor job in the theatre, although with them being cut from journalism I guess that’s a pipe dream. Anyway, when you enter the Old Vic right now, you’re first shocked by the mess. It’s under renovations – a much needed development given the horrible toilet situation (only in the basement level!) – but instead of closing up shop, they are making do with a construction site vibe. And good for them, I guess, the show must go on and all that. It’s a little rough for winter, though, given that now the only toilets are outside (like big concert venue portables (or as Jeopardy would call them Potent Portables (pray for Trebek))) at street level so kind of crazy. Oh man, I’m off on a toilet tangent again! as I do! Luckily, the production onstage is the smooth, professional opposite of the current look of the theatre. With one of my favorite directors, Rachel Chavkin, at the helm, it’s a good looking production, although there seems to be no reason for it to be in the round (a way overused ploy recently). Early on, the show seems to really click, due to a few important facts: The narrator is featured heavily; the setting of the Depression about to dawn is established; the set, especially the chalkboard stock lists and high ladders, seems well used. The narrator is a smooth and fantastic Clarke Peters, who I am ashamed to say I knew best as the actor in the Julia Roberts space movie-within-a-movie in “Notting Hill”, when Hugh Grant is pretending to be a journalist from Horse & Hound and he asks Clarke if there were any bits of the movie he especially enjoyed filming and Clarke says to Hugh “Why don’t you tell me the bits you liked and I’ll tell you if I enjoyed making them” which is like so something a tired actor would snarkily say to a journalist at the tail end of a junket. Anyway, Giles Terrera, the original Burr of London’s production of Hamilton, was supposed to play this role, but at the last minute he pulled out (so he won’t get preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegnant) (no it was like for a family thing and I hope all is well) and Clarke swapped in. I honestly can’t imagine Terrera in this role, as it was perfect for Clarke. When he was onstage, the show worked, if only for his charisma and command of the stage and your attention. After the first few scenes, the narrator role ended up being too small for that kind of power Clarke has, and the show falls the flattest when he isn’t leading the brigade. But then the flat moments outshine the great moments, mainly because there is no real chance for emotional connection with the characters. Since it’s a series of Depression-era vignettes, showing how far-reaching the personals traumas were, you don’t get to really live with any of the characters enough to care as deeply as you want to in a play. The only characters you follow and return to are the mother, father, and son of the Baum family. Presumably, since you see a lot of them, you’d obtain the necessary emotional connection through them. However, in a rare misfire from Chavkin, the Baum family was triple-cast, meaning three different sets of actors played those three characters, rotating scene by scene. Although the sentiment – showing that the Depression was Depressing for an endless stream of people, of all ethnicities and walks of life – is understandable, the effect was that we didn’t get to connect with anyone as we should have. As a result, the action feels extra removed and eventually extra dull. Only a few brilliant moments come when Clarke isn’t onstage, like when Ewan Wardrop appears as a tap-dancing CEO about to quit his job (seriously, in this economy?), and when Golda Rosheuvel (not a little old Jewish lady buying the last babka! I know!) appears both as a communist activist and a forking BOOMING-voiced singer. For a non-musical, there are a lot of great musical moments like these producing the magic, perhaps because that’s what Chavkin’s best at. But the vignettes continuously disappoint, perhaps because of the missing link of the Baum family, perhaps because a lot of them are simply unnecessary. The best one comes thanks to the talents of Abdul Salis, who I also only knew because he was also in the movie “Notting Hill” but when it was “Love Actually”, as Tony, the friend of Colin (Colin being the bellend who goes to America and is the worst character and storyline in the whole movie). Abdul plays a café owner in Mississippi, who, as a black man, can do little to protest the exploitative actions of the local sheriff. Abdul gets the biggest line in the whole thing, when he comments that “The main thing about the Depression is that it finally hit the white people.” When he said that line, a black lady across the way from me clapped and shouted ‘yes!’ and nudged the white girl sitting next to her and pointed at the stage and honestly that was the best moment of my week. I would have loved more of Abdul’s café owner, seeing what happened to him, following him long enough to forge a connection, but that wasn’t going to happen. And then there was just too much filler and fat. I don’t understand the entire near-end scene with all the ladies playing cards. It was the kind of moment in a play where I’d almost stand up and say “oh THIS is the bad place!” Why was that in there? And why did they have Francesca Mills play EVERY SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER? Flora Dawson, another actor onstage in the ensemble, had literally one line, but Mills, I just checked her bio, played SEVEN different named characters in this? I don’t get ittttt. It is great, however, that Mills was cast (she is a little person), in this theatre town that desperately needs more diversity in casting. Chavkin’s productions continue to be the most diverse in the game, across ethnicities, body types, everything. She’s really paying attention to the changes that need to happen when there’s no need for cookie-cutter interchangeable chorus girls. Overall, it’s a decent play, with some great performances (and yes Clarke Peters was my favorite but his run is now over; his role is played by Sule Rimi) but there were just too many overly long, often dull moments. Fortunately, at the very end the power of the stories came together a bit, when they reminded us that this wasn’t just a wee look at the past; it was a warning for what’s likely to hit us soon with Brexit (slash fill-in-your-country’s-turmoil across the world). A shame they saved the majority of the emotional heft for the last minute, but that is what you walk away remembering. Like I said, Depressing! INFORMATION We were notified a few weeks before the show that our seats had been relocated, possibly due to the change in staging or the construction. I was now in Row H in the center, which sounded like a claustrophobic frequent pee-er’s nightmare (I always need aisles) but it ended up being the front row on the main side of the stalls (the good side, right by the exit to the outdoor toilets) and there is HELLA legroom in that front row so it didn’t matter that it was central, I could easily run past the rest of my row with my arms fully extended to the sides. It ended up being an amazing Best Seat Ever situation, except for the jackass lady behind us who refused to shut off her phone (and we weren’t even the ones who asked her to turn it off! Other people cared for once too! Yay other people who care!). Because the whole outdoor loo sitch is inconvenient, there are two staff workers outside them with buckets of candy, which is hilarious and adorable. No vegan candy but still, I love that they tried to be nice. |
1 Comment
And a problem it is . Damn what a world we live in.
I guess love is love is love has no meaning in London theater .
Well written 😍
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