January 19, 2023
Vegan in Jamaica? Yah Mon!by Randi / February 26, 2020It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Leopoldstadt, playing at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre in an open-ended run.
I mean, man alive. If you want to feel like you’ve been punched in the gut but are really grateful for it, then you are ready for Tom Stoppard’s new, and possibly his last, play Leopoldstadt. Following an extended Jewish family from 1899 in Vienna until, well, later, the play is a heavy exploration of how this family’s fortunes changed from one generation to the next and how their country treated them over time. The giant cast and the constantly changing ages of the characters prevent real attachment to any individual – or real grasping of who’s who – but the details are less important than the serious emotional pull created in this powerful work.
And that emotional heft is considerable. Despite not fully understanding how each relative was connected (there’s a family tree in the programme, but good luck keeping it all straight (you won’t!)), those particulars weren’t necessary to understand who these people were and to care in general about what was going to happen as we get further into the 20th century. The play achieves an almost immediate sense of intimacy with this family, helped by little glimpses of how all the members interact, throwing us right into their gatherings and conversations without wasting time explaining. The visuals help as well, with the lush Christmas celebration at the start and the same room slowly changing, and dwindling, scene by scene.
The family quickly feels familiar, even though with each scene change and time jump you have new faces to put to somewhat-old names as well as new names and faces to try to connect to those old names you sort of remember. (Don’t think about it too hard, too too hard.) When the names do stick, the payoff is remarkable (especially when you think e.g. ‘oh that little tot Heini is supes adorbs’ and then at the last part of the show you squeaky cry remembering who he is). We follow the family through a changing Vienna and a changing Leopoldstadt, the Jewish quarter, as they go from well-to-do members of the business community, to people forbidden from working, owning property, being citizens of their own land. You know what’s coming, but it never feels predictable, only powerful.
I’m fascinated by how a master playwright can take aspects of a show that would otherwise be somewhat trying and make it wonderful. The broken cup coming on the night of broken glass felt poetic and not at all transparent. There’s a lot of speechifying in this show, the sort where I’d often be like ‘ALRIGHT WRAP IT UP CUBA’ and think about how much more effective and efficient it would have been to express those ideas shared through dialogue or action. But the long monologues, especially between the two brothers in the first scene on what it means to be Jewish and never be able to stop being it, I found riveting. Despite several long speeches, breadth of characters instead of depth, and the overall feeling of impending doom, I never felt antsy (nor did I consider how I would fix this show, which as you know is one of my main hobbies).
As usual with plays of this subject matter, the relevance for society today is pretty overwhelming. It’s an important, powerful play that’s aware of its importance without being obvious about it. There’s so much for audiences to learn from it, especially London audiences (including one lesson from Fritz, an asshole for sure, as I wish more anti-Semites would take their lead from him and refuse to fight Jews. I mean that would help a lot of American rallies for one thing.)
All my belly-aching about how Jews and Jewishness are treated (spoiler: badly) in London theatre, and Stoppard comes along with a play doing everything right. Patrick Marber’s direction is great (jew!), Tom’s son Ed is acting in it (jew!), and not to assume things but at least some of the many Jewish-sounding names in the cast have to pan out (jews!). Aside from sobbing at the end so hard that I had literally yoga breathe to not make squeaky noises in the silent theatre, I left feeling pleased with what this powerful show does to improve London’s track record in this regard.
INFORMATION
The show is 2 ½ hours. Act I ended at 20:30 on the dot, so it’s a rare occurrence of a second act being longer but the play still being good.
We sat for the first time at Wyndham’s in the stalls boxes – it’s a private box but instead of up the sides of the theatre, it’s behind the last row of the stalls at ground level. None of the ushers seemed to know how to get to it (it has its own door from outside!) but luckily the house manager who took care of us was amazing. Weird, but we kind of loved it! There’s no one whispering behind you! No one around you bothering the everloving fork out of you! No one in front who you can see trying and failing to sneakily use their phones on their laps (although the people in front of us were full on Seinfeld-at-Schindler’s-Listing, which is forking nonsense. you’re at a HOLOCAUST SHOW. have some g-d DECENCY). Anyway would sit again.
Related Posts
“Best of Enemies” at the Young Vic Uneven but Entertaining
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the play ‘Best of Enemies’ that I recently saw via livestream thanks to the Young Vic’s incredible decision to make all their shit available while you sit on your couch, which I love.
In 1968, American politics seemed volatile and people were fighting publicly and openly in a way that made everyone think ‘oh mg we are never going to be able to agree so we will never be able to get along or live in harmony and everything should be dictated by hate and I hate you’ and that only lasted a few years and everything is different now. I joke! See name of website! “Best of Enemies”, the new play by James Graham based on the documentary based on the famous TV segments, is the story of how television shifted to profit off of this opposition politics by pitting two well-known yellers against each other: William F. Buckley Jr. (would be a trumper today?) and Gore Vidal (would be getting into trouble on Twitter today?).
Buckley was a shlamiel conservative who founded the National Review and was super big on ‘Christian values’ in the American political sense and not the actual Christian sense; Vidal was the intellectual and author known for his wit and being in the same social circle as Andy Warhol and stuff I guess. During the 1968 primaries, ABC, then trailing in the ratings, had the great/fateful idea to pit these two figures against each other in a string of live debates where they could be like ‘no I’m right and you’re wrong’ ‘no I’M right and you’re wrong and here’s why’ ‘here’s your old man!’ kind of stuff.
Discussion of these debates have lasted all these years because 1) it changed how TV networks reported on politics and 2) Buckley called Vidal a queer and threatened to punch his face apart, on live TV. The play covers both of these aspects, though I would have loved more on the former, which I found fascinating. As Buckley, David Harewood (from Homeland) is strong and as unlikeable as he should be, and I appreciated the colorblind casting for someone known for being on the wrong side of civil rights issues so often (and sometimes he admitted as such, which is rare for his ilk today). Charles Edwards’ Gore Vidal hit that perfect note of ‘I know this guy’s right and I mostly totally agree with him but man is he pompous’, which is spot on. Both were infuriating to watch at times, making me want to yell at my TV, which is exactly what ABC was originally going for so they captured that well.
The scenes of their actual debates were among the most compelling, as the drama was fully harnessed then. The extensive look into both of their personal lives was well intentioned and seems necessary in concept for fleshing out the drama, but in practice it contributed to the parts that dragged. What stood out for me in this play was actually, as I mentioned, the interesting behind-the-scenes talks at ABC about how they could boost their ratings, and the old-school journalists who gasped and clutched their pearls at the idea of having such opinionsss presented front-and-center instead of cold hard facts. Would watch a whole 10-part documentary on that shit.
The other aspect of the play that stood out for me was how positively astounding Syrus Lowe’s performance as James Baldwin was. When he came out on stage and said his first maybe three words, husband and I said at the same time ‘oh that’s James Baldwin?’, that’s how uncanny his physical presence and manner of speaking was. LOVES IT. His role in the story was a nice way to ground it historically, as was the tiny Andy Warhol ‘cameo’ (so funny). Other historical figures, like Aretha Franklin, didn’t deliver, but that could be a problem of comparison, outshined as anyone would be by Lowe.
What worked well in this play was the interplay between the dramatization of the events and the real speeches or photos shown in projections, out-Ivo-ing Ivo yet again. It positioned this event well in its point in history and served as a reminder of how history is made at night repeats itself, as this could have largely been taken from TV today.
I could have done without the super loud scene changes and loud music. We know from Mrs. Buckley’s lime green dresses that it’s the ’60s; the music is extraneous.
Act II drags quite a bit compared to the first; watching political arguing in a world that is 99% political arguing is exhausting, y’all. It was heavily personal attacks instead of ever talking about real important issues, which I guess is all political commentary at its core, but it’s very frustrating nonetheless. The frustration is not helped by the epilogue-y part with the woman decades later pontificating on what it all ‘really meant’ without really saying anything. It felt tedious and bloated. And I could have done without the whole ‘imagine what they’d say to each other now!’ bit. Didn’t they hate each other? Weren’t they real people? Don’t put words in their mouth, especially when the words don’t measure up to the ones they were famous for. So the play would benefit from some tightening up, but it does have a lot of captivating moments.
Other bits:
The livestream didn’t have an interval countdown clock, which is very stupid.
My favorite part is when one audience member had her mask below her nose and I groaned and said ‘ughhh pick up your mask lady’ and then the next time she was onscreen her mask was on properly; it’s like she heard me.
May I remind the entire UK theatre world of my long-standing offer to give your American-accent-featuring plays a once-over during a rehearsal so that no one ends up shouting ‘conTROversy’ during actual performances.
Anything ANYthing ANYTHING GOOOOES at the Barbican is Pure Silly Joy
In 2011, the absolute ledge Sutton Foster gave us the definitive Reno Sweeney in the definitive production of Anything Goes, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall in a way that warned anyone who tried to do it differently in the future to buzz off, Bambadjan. Heeding that warning, I imagine this is what happened to get this production back in action: the peeps at the Barbican were like ‘we want a new production of Anything Goes!’ and everyone was like ‘you can’t beat the 2011 Broadway revival!’ and the Barbican was like ‘so let’s just do that one!’ and everyone was like ‘ok cool but it really needs Sutton Foster too’ and Barbs was like ‘ok let’s get her!’ and everyone was like ‘can she still do it it’s been 10 years’ and Barbs was like ‘let’s ask’ and Sutton and the rest of the conscious world was like ‘of course she can still do it and probably better than ever she’s Sutton Foster for chrissakes!’ and I was like OH MY GOOD GOD I GET TO SEE MY FAVORITE THING AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! /end scene. (Yes I know it was originally supposed to be Megan Mullally and Sutton came in last minute but Megan would have been more of a Patti LuPone Reno and we cannot go back to those tapless days.)
Now I realize if you search ‘this is my favorite thing!’ in the search box at the top of this site, almost every single post of the thousands I’ve written will come up (barring everything from Mongolia and Mamet) but this is truly one of my faves. By ‘this’ of course I mean Marshall’s incredible, jaw-droppingly amazing 10-minute tap extravaganza of the title song that ends Act I. Me and Jonathan Groff are literally the same person (not literally (or figuratively (we just have this in common) and our love of Lin)) because we were both so obsessed with this number that we learned the whole darn thing, step-by-step, day-by-day, hilarious-Sutton-inflection-by-hilarious-Sutton-inflection.
Literally all of this is chiselled in my mind grapes forever. Okay so I can’t actually DO it, mind you, but I KNOW it, okay.
No matter what the rest of the show is, no matter who the rest of this London cast was going to be, I was in. I was going to see Sutton do this again. I remember every time I saw it on Broadway sitting in shocked excited silence as the curtain came down at intermission, which you KNOW is huge because you know I had to pee. So even though it is still a pandemic, which no one at the Barbican seems to realize, I was going to double mask and double down on seeing my favorite tap number of all time.
Even if the rest of the show was garbage and the rest of the cast was weak, it would still be worth it because that number is just as strong as ever. But fortunately the rest of the show is just as good (mostly) and the rest of the cast is wonderful (mostly).
Before we saw this production, husbo asked me what Anything Goes was about, and even though I know it so well, I really didn’t know how to answer besides to say it’s a lot of silly fun and lots of tapping and that’s all that matters.’ And he was like ‘come on’ and I was like ‘okay it’s like a cruise ship and there’s all these characters like gangsters and fake priests and rich old ladies and a boring debutante and Yale men and Richard you’re a Yale man and your father was a Yale man well we want Rory to be whatever kind of man she wants..I’ve gotten off track.’
The Barbican production was funnier than I remember, truly. ‘Anything Goes’ is a classic Cole Porter romp in which Sutton Foster is a famous New York singer (true!) who loves men, and loves-ish one in particular, her good friend who for some reason doesn’t want to marry her (not believable!) but wants instead to marry the most boring drip of a socialite girl named Hope (also not believable! men hate boring!) who is engaged to a rich British man who seems boring but actually isn’t, but Hope and her mom need his money so they aren’t ruined. So there’s like a sort of love triangle in there among the endless comic antics, but it doesn’t truly matter because you’re just laughing the whole time (except when Hope sings). The physical comedy of this production is endlessly hysterical, and the hundo p Porteresque double entendres and asides and references squeezed into every inch of the show are hilarious (and risque!!) as ever. And no matter how often you see this show, you are still (well I am) surprised at just how many classic Porter songs it features. Of course the title song, and the close second-best number ‘Blow Gabriel Blow’, but also “I Get a Kick Out of You’, ‘Delovely’ (I always forget Delovely!), ‘You’re the Top’, so many! At the Barbican, I found ‘You’re the Top’ even funnier and more enjoyable than ever, poss/prob because Sutton has become so much more comfortable and can mine all the humor possible. Her jovial Billy Crocker, Samuel Edwards, was a great match for her and the two were having an obvious blast with the endless Dad joke lyrics of this song. I love this song because I can never remember any of the actual lyrics. When I sing it it’s like, “You’re the Rockford Peaches, that kid from Beaches…you’re cellophane” or “There’s something startin’/It’s John McMartin…you’re cellophane.” That cellophane lyric really sticks. I don’t like that Sutton still has the harmony on the final line because her voice cuts through EVERYTHING so you mainly hear her kind of weird harmony sounding like the leading vocal instead of the melody line but WHO CARES.
Although the 2011 cast (I will never stop regaling this perfect production, sorry) was definitive (that’s the word of the day/show) cannot be beat — you had muhfucking Joel Grey, Jessica Walter (RIPYAL), Colin Donnell, John McMartin (it wasn’t just random before!), Adam Godley, all absolute perfection — this cast was very enjoyable. It’s not definitive in every single way like the prevs were because that’s not possible, but the all did a fine job. I think the show’s pacing would be improved by cutting the gd blue bird song in Act II – if you don’t have Joel Grey doing it there’s no reason to suffer through it (even with Joel it was a stretch!). Haydn Oakley as Lord Oakleigh (omg is that why they hired him??) was good fun but Adam Godley was just a bit more silly and joyous (and made that ‘gypsy in me’ song funnier…which btw they REALLY need to update. Just change it to Spanish or something instead of Gypsy; it’s already totally a Spanish dance). And Hope was fine, perfectly serviceable but not a standout. I am spoiled by how perfect Laura Osnes (RIP) (she’s not dead just dead to me) was in the role, because come on — a beautiful and angelic-sounding but dull as dishwater debutante with zero character development or depth who just has to sound lovely and move gracefully and be as deep as a sheet of looseleaf? OSNES TO A TEE!
It really doesn’t matter what little qualms I have because it’s the best, it’s so much fun, it’s de-lovely. Marshall’s production is a joy to watch. It’s still way too long – like 2 hours 45 which is kind of pushing the rompness of a romp – but it’s hard to know what hilarious bits you could possibly live without (just kidding it’s the blue bird song and the THREATS TO THE DOG, OVVIAMENTE). Sutton has now left, because she has to go be Marion the Librarian on Broadway and I hope prove to everyone (including me) that she actually will be right for that part, and Rachel York has filled her shoes. I guess Rachel can tap? Awesome. Regardless, so fun, so joy, so wow. Loves it.
What is NOT FUN or joy or wow is the Barbican’s compleeeete laaaaack of caring that we are still in a pandemic. This was by far the worst showing for masks/caring we had ever seen (until this past weekend’s show; look out for a post on that later this week). They recommend that people wear masks, but unless and until staffers actually enforce an actual mask mandate, no one is going to wear one. I really wish that ushers would a) be visible anywhere and b) legit kick people out if you can see their noses. I honestly would volunteer my time to do the kicking out. Ugh it was really bad. I especially loved the unmasked family with two teens (too young to be vaxed at that time!) coughing the entire time. I’m not going to say RIP for the third time in this post but you know I’m thinking it. DO BETTER, BARBICAN AND EVERY LONDON THEATRE.
