January 19, 2023
Uncle Vanya at the Harold Pinter: Boy those Russians Know From Debilitating Depressionby Randi / March 19, 2020I LOVE CONTENT! All the Thoughts/Things/Theatre I’ve Been Having/Doing/Watching
So it’s been a very long time since I last blogged! These two months have absolutely flown by, and it’s the longest I’ve gone without posting in probably 6 years. WHICH IS NONSENSE. I’m back, mes babies, and as long as my brain stays okay I shant I say SHANT be gone that long again. During this time, we’ve been watching hella content, from all the theatre recordings and livestreams to lots of new TV shows (but not Tiger King; I don’t futz with animal cruelty for fun?) to movies and screeners I’m probably not allowed to talk about yet. You know on 30 Rock when Kenneth says to Pete “I just love television so much” and Pete nods and says “we all do”? I mean if a line of dialogue could define a person, hoo boy.
Some of you know why I haven’t posted in a long time, and it’s not just because the theatres have closed and I’m lost without it. I got sick (before the UK implemented lockdown measures (hooray for countries with ineffectual governments headed by people who look like gross blond puffy twins!)) and it suuuucked. Slash, sucks, because the virus caused some residual effects that haven’t gone away yet. I had probably a mild case, which is hilarious, because it was the worst I ever felt in every way. My experience was like if a really, really uncoordinated squirrel was given a gun and told to shoot at the target, the target being me. Every day, the pain would be in a different random spot, running the gamut of everything a human body can feel. Seriously, name a symptom of anything, and I bet I had 90% of them. Not the Dara O’Briain sort like ‘sudden blindness’ or ‘loss of height’ but almost everything else you can think of. The unpredictability was about as fun as the pain sounds. One constant was the fatigue. That shit was no joke. I thought I knew from tired before since I’m like alwayyys tired but this was like ‘hi I would like to get up to pee but…cannot’ type legit fatigue, where I was actively trying to get my brain to send movement commands to limbs and just failing miserably. But now I am able to put sentences together (enjoy!) again and stay out of bed for most of the day (I do get up at noon most days but that’s by accident, I do not plan to nor want to, so that doesn’t really count…or something).
The crazy thing is, again, this was probably mild. I had to go to the hospital once but they sent me home with meds, and I had to get blood drawn a few times, but that’s it. And I’m like the healthiest goddamn dancer in the American Ballet Academy, who the hell are you, so people who are crying about wearing masks should get in the g-d bin. It doesn’t just affect old people or people with underlying conditions (which is like…suuuper vague and probably 90% of the population has some sort of underlying condition?? what kind of stupid mental gymnastics is this for people to pretend they are not at risk) but even if it was it would still be awful and worth protecting other people, you absolute bellends who don’t think safety precautions or grandma matter because you let your roots look truly atrocious and now you are blaming coronavirus when it’s really just your own preexisting bullshit.
Anyway that’s enough of that. You know I love to overshare on here (hello Mongolia posts) but let’s talk about CONTENT! I LOVE CONTENT! Honestly if I hadn’t been sick, and if my neighbors weren’t rude pieces of 8 who don’t care about the people around them, I’m very lucky that I would be fine with this quarantine. (Oh and if London friends need a small bottle of hand sanitizer or a roll of toilet paper, hit me up, we have some extra and don’t want to be considered a hoarder of anything but beans, beans, the special beans, I let him go but I didn’t know he’d stolen my beanssss.) On that note, I am going to share a few thoughts on the things we’ve watched!
THEATRE
Praise to the powers that be for releasing recordings of live theatrical productions for our entertainment during this time, and praise to the ones who had already had their goodies available online on places like YouTube and BroadwayHD.
Before I get to the specifics, I feel the need to comment on the ongoing discussion of theatre bootlegs, especially given the Patti Murin business from a few days ago. If you don’t follow Broadway stan twitter, well first of all that’s wonderful and I wish I had also gone my life without seeing the truly mind-numbing ‘arguments’ on it. Broadway star Patti said something about how bootlegs would put Broadway out of business if they were ever allowed to reopen. Which is, not true. However, the fact that that is not true does not mean that bootlegs are great wonderful things that should be widely made and disseminated. These are not the only two options in this argument, as, sadly, lots of gen z bway stanz seem to think. Yes, it’s unfair that those of us who don’t live in NYC or have lots of money cannot see every Broadway show every season. Broadway is inaccessible in the grand scheme of things. But we are not entitled to see every Broadway show every season. This isn’t a right of ours. I’m upset that I have missed dozens and dozens of productions I would have loved to have seen since moving out of the tri-state area. It sucks. I would love if they released recordings of, at the very least, productions after they close. But just because I want that doesn’t mean I deserve to have that, or that live theatre productions are required to think about being available to any audience that isn’t live in their theatre.
Obviously, this is even harder for people who don’t live near any live theatre hub, but there are so many productions online already LEGALLY. The feeling of entitlement that we all must have access to every single current production is insane. Not only is it theft, guys, must I remind you of my lauded 2015 Vida Vegan Con presentation called “Stop Breaking the Law, Assholes!”, but every bootleg you watch ruined the experience of another audience member, and probably enraged performers (you are not slick, chief; we all see your phone). My theatre-going experience has been ruined lots of times by people trying to record. The arguments made in favor of bootlegs are like an endless barrage of begged questions. The one with any validity is that theatre can be inaccessible to so many who want to experience it. That is true (though not an excuse for whatever solution you civilian come up with). The funniest thing for me is that the people actually taking the videos are there. They don’t have the ‘but it’s inaccessible!’ argument on their side, so what do they have? A ticket to the Bad Place, I hope.
Also, this pandemic has revealed just how much content is online already. No it’s not all or most of what has played on Broadway or the West End. But it’s something. So people people arguing will make it seem like there’s positively nothing available to them, and that’s not true. Yes we all want more, we all want to see the theatre we missed out on and especially new modern works. And it would be great if producers &c were more forthcoming and forward-thinking about making recordings available at some point, especially for shows that close early. But wanting that to happen isn’t sufficient reason to jump in and fill in the problem with your own solutions, especially when that ‘solution’ is something that everyone involved in this thing you profess to ‘love’, despises.
Maybe, we can hope, that the success and popularity of online recordings will lead to more when things get back to normal. But you aren’t going to get there this way. It’s really quite mind-boggling how growing up with the internet, with everything available to access instantly, has given younger generations this ill-conceived notion of entitlement to every sort of content. The psychology of that is super interesting, and something I’d love to learn more about, but alas, I am not an expert here to school you on that. You know what I *am* an expert in? IP LAW. STOP BREAKING THE LAW, ASSHOLES.
So here is a partial list of all the theatre content we have watched legally recently. I want to emphasize that this is a partial list. I’m not including shows I really disliked because that would just be rude, and I’m not including things lots of you probably watched like last week’s Cats livestream because I thought I had more time (I really dislike that ALW’s drops are only 24 hours in the UK, but 48 for the rest of the world. I HIGHLY DISLIKE THAT THAT RULE CAUSED ME TO MISS THAT SHOW BUT OH WELL, I AM NOT ENTITLED TO SEE THAT JUST BECAUSE I WOULD LIKE TO.) Anyway, my point is, there is SO MUCH to watch. I have a to-watch list a mile long. Tell me again how there’s just nooo way to see anything good legally??
- Into the Woods – The original Broadway production (well with a replacement Cinderella (who is fabulous)) is on YouTube. I KNOW. The more I watch this show, the more I impressed I am. It has some of the most genius lyrics that are also incredibly efficient, like my favorite “careful the things you wish/wishes come true/not free.” THAT’S THE WHOLE THING, wishes are not free. Ugh this show is so good.
- Sunday in the Park with George – The original Broadway production, also on YouTube, was shown on PBS decades ago. I remember my mom, obsessed with Mandy Patinkin, watched it in awe and I was like in single digits but remember watching with her and being like ‘oh theatre is magic, I get it, I’m gonna love this shit’. This show is my happy place, and I watched it a lot while I was stuck in bed. I think ‘Move On’ is my favorite Sondheim song. So deep and so moving and oh my god the choice may have been mistaken the choosing was not??? FUCK ME UP FAM.
- Cyprus Avenue – Speaking of stuff that forking destroys you, this 2016 play starring Stephen Rea did just that but not in a good way. It tricks you into thinking it’s funny but then nooope it is beyond harrowing. Really well done and really effective but my god, I was messed up for days.
- I and You – This production with Maisie Williams at the Hampstead Theatre was not my favorite; in fact, I despised her character with every fiber of my being, so annoying. But the ending was pretty interesting, even if it loses some of it’s power from the coincidence that Maisie’s Game of Thrones castmate did a romcom last year with the exact same twist. Hey, hey that’s joincidence with a c.
- One Man, Two Guvnors – The National Theatre’s worldwide livestreams have been an very welcome addition to the quarantine online viewing, and this is definitely my favorite. We saw this show, with pre-USA-famous James Corden, on Broadway, so to see the London production (the same cast, I believe) was a treat. It’s always fun to note what the two different audiences laugh at. Oliver Chris’s pompous posh boy was one of the funniest performances I have ever, ever seen, and we are still quoting him all the time, yop, yop, yop. It’s almost sad to realize that the hummus bit wasn’t unique to our performance, but THANK GOD the audience member who gets absolutely tortured was in on it.
- Jesus Christ Superstar – ALW’s weekly show drops have been a lot of fun because he is forking insane. His catalogue is as random as my symptom squirrel, but I love it. This one was a great weekend afternoon treat, with a fantastic performance from Tim Minchin as Judas. The music in this show is largely great and fun, and this production’s extra rock concert vibe and setting worked.
- Pride & Prejudice the Musical – This new musical, recording in a regional theatre in California, was SO fun. I absolutely love P&P (who doesn’t) and this was a very pleasant and enjoyable version, although I wish the songs were more memorable. We watched the full 100 hour Colin Firth miniseries soon after, so worth it, although I think I prefer the Keira movie!
- Jane Eyre – Okay so this play from the National is long, but it is very effective. I hated the horse noise interludes, but that is in large part due to how absolutely horrendous the sound quality on YouTube is, with the dialogue being too quiet but the horse noises shaking our walls. I found the lead performance very moving and wonderful.
- Bandstand – The Playbill.com paid release of this exquisite 2016 Broadway show solidified that it’s one of my favorites, even though it makes me cry literally the entire time. You can search ‘bandstand’ at the top of this page to read my review from back then so I won’t go into all the details now, but man alive it is perfection. HOT DAM COREY COTT. Why this was a short-term release is beyond me, especially if it’s paid, just keep making that bank guys and leave it up.
- Beardo – Okay so we ABSOLUTELY ADORE Dave Malloy, especially when his work is super weird (always), but this was probably his weirdest show yet. It was enjoyable and the music my god I LOVE that he has such a recognizable sound. But it was so f-ing weird.
- Drawing the Line – This play from the Hampstead Theatre about how India and Pakistan were divided by British buffoons was interesting, if not my favorite or the most exciting show.
- Phantom of the Opera – ALW dropped the Sierra Boggess – Ramin Karimloo version, and Sierra is my favorite Christine so I was happy that his was husbo’s first full-length exposure to this BONKERS show. I love it. The music is so good and the story is so batshit, god ALW you one crazy mufucka.
- Love Never Dies – I had heard that this sequel to Phantom was bonkerballs as well, and it was not. It was actually quite tame compared to the original, with only one generally memorale/good song. I enjoyed it, actually, but I wanted more batshit besides how awful they made Raoul. It is quite an accomplishment, however, that they made him so bad that you actually root for Christine to be with the crazy deformed murderer guy, did everyone forget that he was a murderer?
- The Arrest of Ai Weiwei – this was ANXIETY ON A STICK, jfc. The Chinese government, woof. I guess that means it was hella effective and successful.
- Frankenstein (Jonny Lee Miller as the Creature) – I love that the National released both version of this acclaimed production, with JLM and Bandersnatch Cummerbund switching roles of the doctor and his creature. This was some heavy, dark shit, and wow, it was AMAZING. I loved JLM as the creature because he was so sympathetic and even though he pulls a Phantom and starts a-murdering, you feel for him. (Thanks Cadry for that tip!)
- By Jeeves – This was hilariously painful, ALDubs. Not even Donna Lynne Champlin saved this for me. However, I’m sharing it because if you are a) British or b) a fan at all of PG Wodehouse, you will enjoy this. I am technically #a but not really, and apparently defffffinitely not #b.
- Sea Wall -This 30 minute monologue written for and performed by Andrew Scott is on YouTube if you want to get tricked into thinking it’s fun to watch the Hot Priest do something new to you but then somehow start bawling and feeling sick with grief for a fictional person, so.
- Legally Blonde – Back when MTV did the reality show “The Search for Elle Woods” (inferior to the amazing “Legally Brown” search for the new piragua guy) to find the Broadway cast’s new star, they shared this proshot of the original production, which is on YouTube. It is such a fun show, with the BEST opening number (hello Annaleigh Ashford you queen). However, be warned that the MTV audience was very much the precursor to the NBC/ABC live musical event audiences where the producers aparrently tell them ‘just scream and shout and wooo as much as you possible can! it’ll be great!’ it is not great.
- Shrek – The proshot of the original Broadway production is on Netflix for most of the world, but luckily for those of us in the UK, it’s also on Amazon to rent for £3.49. One of the most surprising shows with a wonderful score, Shrek will fill you with joy and make you cry at how moving Brian D’arcy James is and how jealous even Eugene Levy would be of his eyebrows.
- Oh, Hello – This may be the most I ever paid for a show in person (and we took my brother too, and it was the hardest we’ve ever laughed maybe, oh my god they are geniuses) but I still am giddy over getting this free on Netflix (well free after Netflix costs). Jon Mulaney and Nick Kroll are sick geniuses. I’ve been listening to their new Oh, Hello p’dcast where they…talk about Princess Diana and it is just as ridic and hilarious as it sounds, I adore them.
- Newsies – Available to rent on Amazon, this recording of the original Broadway cast is a joy. You get Jeremy Jordan and you get the most gymnastic choreography Broadway maybe ever saw, what more could you want? I saw this standing room, so this is one online experience I think I prefer (sooo funny to be like ‘ow my feet and back hurt’ when you are watching boys do like, 1000 backflips on newspapers).
- West Side Story – The classic movie version, the absolute best, is on Netflix. I still cry a whole forking lot it’s so damn wonderful.
- South Pacific – The 1958 movie was on TV here on my birthday! What a treat! It’s also on Amazon! Mitzi Gaynor is no Kelli O’Hara but it’s still pretty great!
- Hello, Dolly! – The Barbra Streisand version is on Amazon people. Helloooooo Dolly welcome into my hoooooome Dolly.
- Oklahoma! – we saw the new dark Broadway production last year and fell head over heels for it, it was so flipping amazing. This original movie is much lighter but a great watch, on Amazon.
- Pippin – The original Broadway production from 1981 is on Amazon, what are you EVEN DOING if you aren’t watching it.
- Eugenius – This sweet and clever London musical about a teen who writes comics about superheroes is on YouTube. I really enjoyed this show in London and I’m so glad they are making it available online. So fun!
- Passing Strange – On YouTube to buy or rent, this Broadway show from Stew was compelling and unique. I don’t think I appreciated it when I saw it live, so it’s a treat to reexamine and reexperience it.
- Miss Saigon -The 2016 West End 25th Anniversary Gala performance is on Amazon, with Eva Noblezada as Kim. She is. Forking. Amazing.
- 21 Chump Street – a 20 minute musical written by Lin-Manuel? Yes please. Free on YouTube and worth the extremely short time commitment, even if you will be angry because ACAB.
- Take Me to the World: Sondheim’s 90th Birthday Celebration – I have watched this YouTube tribute at least 500 times in the past few weeks. I wasn’t even a huge fan of Melissa Errico or Elizabeth Stanley before but after hearing their versions of “Children and Art” and “The Miller’s Son”, respectively, I would kill for them.
- Smash Reunion Concert – I’m sure I will watch this one 500x as well. Here’s the link!
A lot of these were available for years before the pandemic. There are dozens of productions out there, at least. Many more than most people get to see live in their lifetimes. Tell me again how there’s nothing??
I’ve also watched 10 or so full Tony Awards broadcasts from the previous century, it’s so fun. Audra still dominates, what a ledge. They used to wait to applaud each announced nominee until all 4-5 were announced, SO POLITE. But that stopped about the same time they started playing off every speech after only 8 seconds. It’s really fun to watch how the awards show changed, from a calm polite event with little intro speeches from like Bernadette to the raucous energy parades of like NPH jumping through a hoop while singing. LOVES IT.
I’ve obviously watched even more television and movie content, which I will share in a separate post since this, as per my uzh, is Quite Long. What have you watched? I want to know! I want to talk about theatreeee it’s my favorite thing to do! Is there anything on my list that you didn’t know about and are going to watch? dooo itttt.
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London’s “Caroline, or Change”: I BELIEVED IN YOU! WE ALL BELIEVED IN YOU!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re talking about the Hampstead Theatre’s production of “Caroline, or Change” playing until April 21. It transfers to the West End in November.
I was always obsessed with musical theatre, and in 2004 I could finally travel alone to NYC whenever I wanted/whenever my college schedule allowed and see Broadway shows more often. It was a big year – that was the year of ‘Wicked’, ‘Avenue Q’, ‘The Boy From Oz’, Alfred Molina’s ‘Fiddler’, Donna Murphy’s ‘Wonderful Town’, Audra in ‘Raisin in the Sun’. Such a busy season! I got to see Idina in ‘Wicked’, but another new show with a supposedly killer leading lady role slipped under my radar. That was ‘Caroline, or Change’, starring Tonya Pinkins as Caroline, a Tony-winning Anika Noni Rose as her daughter Emmie, and a score by Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner. It seemed pretty beloved, an interesting civil rights-age drama taking place in Louisiana, about a black maid working for a Jewish family but also with singing electrical appliances. How did that work, I wondered? It remained high on my list of shows I wanted to see someday, and so when the current English revival moved closer to the West End – to the Hampstead Theatre up north of the city – I did a little jig and said halleluyer, because I would finally see it.
It was not good.
I feel terrible saying it, because I know so many theatre fans like myself really love it, but I do not understand why. I wanted to love this show SO BADLY and no matter how much I was putting out there, hoping that it would offer me just the eeniest bit of love back, it gave me nothing. The book was a mess. How can you mess up the drama and complexities of relationships between black people and their white bosses, during the ‘60s, in the American south, right when JFK gets assassinated? I mean come on, that setting is PRIME for dramatic mining. Well, you mess it up by trying to shoehorn into a single show the stories about the relationship between the black maid and the white child of the family she works for, AND how the white boy’s mother had recently died, AND how the boy’s musician father remarried his wife’s best friend so they would have a wife/mother, AND how the white boy is handling the new mother, AND how the maid is handling the new boss, AND how the maid is dealing with raising her kids alone, AND how the maid’s kids are growing up, AND how the white boy’s grandparents from each side clash with each other over politics, AND how those grandparents conflict with the maid’s daughter over politics, AND how the maid has to deal with her pride, AND how the maid is a real B word to her fellow maids that she sees at the bus stop and refuses to be civil toward, AND how the other maid that we see like maybe twice is going to night school and wearing bobby socks, AND how the moon is an actual character AND how the electrical appliances in the basement where the maid spends most of her time SING AND DANCE and it’s all supposed to mean something? Oh and how the one thing that bonds the maid and the white boy is that she lets him light her daily cigarette.
That’s a lot of story threads that instead of braiding together and forming a solid yarn, they diminish into little wisps and amount to nothing. All these little nothing wisps mashed together mean that there’s simultaneously wayyy too much going on and yet there’s zero emotional heft, zero connection with the material when there should be loads. I know ‘Angels in America’ is a masterpiece but I’m a little wary of seeing it now, Tony Toni Tone. It was like this was going for ‘Love, Actually’ with that many threads but instead it gave us ‘Valentine’s Day’. And like the stories in that movie, you end up not being satisfied with any thread and walking out thinking it was pedestrian at best. If they focused on the relationship between Caroline and Noah, and how Noah imagined his maid’s family life versus what it was actually like (the one minute where they do that is the most compelling part), then we’d have a worthwhile story. Oh, and if Caroline were anything close to being sympathetic or even a little kind. But she’s not. She’s been through a lot of hardship, and as a black woman in the ‘60s south her hardships will never end, but that’s not enough of a reason to accept her being a vessel of pure hatred towards everyone around her. I get that anti-heroes are popular nowadays, but they usually have an appealing trait of some sort, or the whisper of charm or a sense of humor or something. Caroline gives us nothing, and maybe the point is that she doesn’t have to, and in real life she wouldn’t have to, she wouldn’t owe anyone anything, but if you want me to care about this character in a play she’s going to have to be worth caring about. If we’re supposed to feel something besides revulsion, there’s no opportunity or reason for doing so.
The main story is: Caroline is the maid working for the Gellmans, a jewish family with a little boy named Noah, who is dealing with his mother’s loss and his new stepmother, Rose. You think at first that Caroline and Noah might have a sweet relationship, bonding in the basement after school as Caroline does her work, but she’s pretty mean to him all the time. Their one thing, like I said above, is that she lets Noah light her cigarette and he’s like ‘oh boy oh boy!’ and she’s like ‘hurry up I need a smoke then get out of my face’ and we’re like this is neither cute nor sweet nor appropriate for this kid, also his mother died from smoking. The stepmother, Rose, is upset with Noah because he always leaves his money in his pockets, which Caroline finds every day as she does the laundry, and she fills the bleach cup with it and returns it to the Gellmans, every penny of it. Rose tells Caroline, you know what, to teach Noah to value his money, let’s say that everything he leaves in his pockets, everything in the bleach cup at the end of the week, is yours to keep. This is difficult for Caroline to accept because it makes her seem like a beggar, scrounging for pennies, while Rose doesn’t see the problem with it. The extra money would help Caroline so much, but taking it is a huge blow to her pride. And so the ‘change’ of the title is both the change in the times and the literal change in the bleach cup. It’s kind of trite. Caroline has it hard, with four kids, one at war, and an ex-husband who was abusive. She’s understandably mean to everyone – her employers, Noah, the other maids in the neighborhood – but just because it’s understandable doesn’t mean it’s forgivable. She kind of sucks, and then at the end, as she gets meaner and meaner and for some reason unleashes her rage on Noah, she’s reprehensible.
Tony Kushner also wrote the lyrics, and they had me cringing in my seat. There were so many clunkers. I remember in the opening one of the grandfather’s sings about his deceased daughter’s smoking: “It killed her. She died. It killed her. She’s dead.” JESUS. Every other song mentioned how in Louisiana, the dead – and Caroline as she’s always in the basement – aren’t underground, but underwater. It’s kind of poetic and sets a certain mood, right? Yeah, the first 4 times. When you’re getting to the 20th, 30th mention of how we aren’t underground but underwater, it’s no longer profound or elegant or anything other than repetitive and annoying. We also hear a lot about how Noah’s mother played the bassoon. That’s an interesting fact, I guess. They talk about it a lot. Like a lot a lot. It does not seem that important the 15th time.
I wish that I could say Jeanine Tesori’s score was great despite Tony Kushner’s abysmal lyrics, but it wasn’t. Everything sounded the same and that same was pretty dull. It’s a real shame because I love Tesori’s other works – ‘Fun Home’ is a masterpiece, a true masterpiece, but I guess partnering with Lisa Kron was required for that one to shine. She wrote the great ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’, with lyricist Dick Scanlon. And she wrote ‘Violet’, which I adore, with Brian Crawley, and ‘Shrek’, which is surprisingly magical, with David Lindsay-Abaire. Suffice it to say, she doesn’t have a steady writing partner, and she needed one for ‘Caroline’. She’s such a legendary, wonderful musician and I just don’t get what she was doing here. The only song that I remembered when I left was the one when Noah sings, revolving round and round the stage, ‘On the first day day day Caroline stayed away way way and she didn’t come back back back and she didn’t come back back back.’ Repeat 5 times. And yes the melody is just as you think, like just a childhood rhyme. Omg it was painful. Now it’s in my head again dammit.
When I first realized I was trying incredibly hard, too hard, to enjoy this show, I figured it’s because the book and score, the bones of the show, are weak and inadequate. I assumed this production did the best it could with what meager bones it was working with, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. Directing this show is a huge challenge, and as I’ve only seen it once I can’t say what is this production’s doing differently. But I can say that the tone was all over the place, impossible to pin down. We have all the troubled relationships, all the misery and despair of the south, and then we have the bubbly singing washing machine, the terrifying singing dryer, the singing trio of girls (with ever-changing matching outfits that were impressive) representing the radio. At first I thought that was cute, and I assumed that the show would be the sort that could handle such bizarre portrayals of home goods, but it isn’t. Things only fell apart more when the moon arrived – the actress sits in a moon-shaped seat and floats through the rafters for a good chunk of the show – and still refuses to make any sense when paired with the dismal realism of the rest of the show. Nothing ever really gels, and yes a huge reason for that is because of the material, but the direction doesn’t help at all, nor do the performances, and I really hate saying that because this show has a great cast. But while Abiona Omonua’s Emmie was winning and adorable, Anika Noni Rose has that incredible voice that could really rip into her songs and make more out of them. I didn’t even realize until I looked at the programme after the fact that Rose was played by Lauren Ward, as in Miss Honey from the original West End and Broadway “Matilda” cast. Just had no idea. It’s hard to shine in that role. The Noah we saw was Aaron Gelkoff, a really talented kid who successfully made us feel for Noah even though he’s super annoying. And I always like Ako Mitchell but playing the dryer is just weird; there’s not much he can do with it even though it’s somehow one of the biggest parts.
But the biggest issue is with Caroline. She’s played by one of the few West End actors I actually really like, Sharon D. Clarke, who has been exceptional in everything I’ve seen her in. I thought she was fine here, making do with an unrewarding role, playing a woman who hates everyone and so we hate her back. But since seeing it, I’ve fallen down the youtube rabbit hole (fun fact: ‘Rabbit Hole’ was written by Tesori’s ‘Shrek’ writing partner Lindsay-Abaire) to watch videos of the original Caroline, Tonya Pinkins. Sharon was very one-note the entire time, but Pinkins adds layers that made it just a little easier to not hate her the entire time. Pinkins’s rendition of the one big song, “Lot’s Wife”, the 11 o’clock number, shows so much more emotion. Instead of just seething with anger and resentment, Pinkins’s performance shows anguish and hope and regret and a wish with her entire being that she could be better. Sharon’s Caroline was just stone-cold anger and hate; I got nothing else from her, and I think that’s a huge reason why it didn’t work for me.
Of course, Caroline isn’t a likable character, as written, and so there’s not much the actress can do with her anyway. She has no positive attributes to make an audience root for her. And instead of coming around at the end, maybe giving Noah a hug or even an encouraging word to show that their relationship is warmer than it seems, she unleashes all her venom onto him, all the hate that bubbles within her, and tells him that “Hell is where Jews go when they die.” I choked a little bit on the pure hatred that fills this statement — and the rest of the audience laughed. And I don’t mean nervous, tense laughter; I mean they belly laughed like this was a funny joke. I ran this by my Broadway people to see if it happens usually in other productions and, except for one person who said that a few people laughed when she saw it but it was really disturbing and most people gasped, everyone was like, ‘what, no that’s not a laugh line, that is so fucked up.’ It really is. Is Europe so awash in anti-Semitism again that London audiences are laughing at stuff like this? I’m horrified, as a NORMAL person would be, FFS. Anyway, after Caroline says a line that that to a little child, you lose whatever care you had for her and since she never makes amends for it or any of her bad behavior, it just loses you completely.
Even though this is all prettayyy prettayyy negative, it’s not entirely painful to watch. The cast is good, the vocals are all good. The story, or hodgepodge of potential stories, just really didn’t work for me, no matter how badly I wanted it to. I wonder if it will change at all before the West End transfer, but I don’t know how much of what’s problematic they actually could improve.
AUDIENCE
Clearly fucked up and terrifying.
HAMPSTEAD THEATRE
Whoever designed the Hampstead Theatre is batshit crazy. The only bathrooms are by the entrance, behind the box office. That’s REAL DUMB. God people are paid to do jobs like this, I can’t even believe it.
The bathrooms are cool though, with each stall featuring a full-length portrait of a famous actress from a role played at this theatre. Well, all famous actresses save for Simon Russell Beale, who is pictured from a show where he played a woman. Fun times.
I feel terrible saying it, because I know so many theatre fans like myself really love it, but I do not understand why. I wanted to love this show SO BADLY and no matter how much I was putting out there, hoping that it would offer me just the eeniest bit of love back, it gave me nothing. The book was a mess. How can you mess up the drama and complexities of relationships between black people and their white bosses, during the ‘60s, in the American south, right when JFK gets assassinated? I mean come on, that setting is PRIME for dramatic mining. Well, you mess it up by trying to shoehorn into a single show the stories about the relationship between the black maid and the white child of the family she works for, AND how the white boy’s mother had recently died, AND how the boy’s musician father remarried his wife’s best friend so they would have a wife/mother, AND how the white boy is handling the new mother, AND how the maid is handling the new boss, AND how the maid is dealing with raising her kids alone, AND how the maid’s kids are growing up, AND how the white boy’s grandparents from each side clash with each other over politics, AND how those grandparents conflict with the maid’s daughter over politics, AND how the maid has to deal with her pride, AND how the maid is a real B word to her fellow maids that she sees at the bus stop and refuses to be civil toward, AND how the other maid that we see like maybe twice is going to night school and wearing bobby socks, AND how the moon is an actual character AND how the electrical appliances in the basement where the maid spends most of her time SING AND DANCE and it’s all supposed to mean something? Oh and how the one thing that bonds the maid and the white boy is that she lets him light her daily cigarette.
That’s a lot of story threads that instead of braiding together and forming a solid yarn, they diminish into little wisps and amount to nothing. All these little nothing wisps mashed together mean that there’s simultaneously wayyy too much going on and yet there’s zero emotional heft, zero connection with the material when there should be loads. I know ‘Angels in America’ is a masterpiece but I’m a little wary of seeing it now, Tony Toni Tone. It was like this was going for ‘Love, Actually’ with that many threads but instead it gave us ‘Valentine’s Day’. And like the stories in that movie, you end up not being satisfied with any thread and walking out thinking it was pedestrian at best. If they focused on the relationship between Caroline and Noah, and how Noah imagined his maid’s family life versus what it was actually like (the one minute where they do that is the most compelling part), then we’d have a worthwhile story. Oh, and if Caroline were anything close to being sympathetic or even a little kind. But she’s not. She’s been through a lot of hardship, and as a black woman in the ‘60s south her hardships will never end, but that’s not enough of a reason to accept her being a vessel of pure hatred towards everyone around her. I get that anti-heroes are popular nowadays, but they usually have an appealing trait of some sort, or the whisper of charm or a sense of humor or something. Caroline gives us nothing, and maybe the point is that she doesn’t have to, and in real life she wouldn’t have to, she wouldn’t owe anyone anything, but if you want me to care about this character in a play she’s going to have to be worth caring about. If we’re supposed to feel something besides revulsion, there’s no opportunity or reason for doing so.
The main story is: Caroline is the maid working for the Gellmans, a jewish family with a little boy named Noah, who is dealing with his mother’s loss and his new stepmother, Rose. You think at first that Caroline and Noah might have a sweet relationship, bonding in the basement after school as Caroline does her work, but she’s pretty mean to him all the time. Their one thing, like I said above, is that she lets Noah light her cigarette and he’s like ‘oh boy oh boy!’ and she’s like ‘hurry up I need a smoke then get out of my face’ and we’re like this is neither cute nor sweet nor appropriate for this kid, also his mother died from smoking. The stepmother, Rose, is upset with Noah because he always leaves his money in his pockets, which Caroline finds every day as she does the laundry, and she fills the bleach cup with it and returns it to the Gellmans, every penny of it. Rose tells Caroline, you know what, to teach Noah to value his money, let’s say that everything he leaves in his pockets, everything in the bleach cup at the end of the week, is yours to keep. This is difficult for Caroline to accept because it makes her seem like a beggar, scrounging for pennies, while Rose doesn’t see the problem with it. The extra money would help Caroline so much, but taking it is a huge blow to her pride. And so the ‘change’ of the title is both the change in the times and the literal change in the bleach cup. It’s kind of trite. Caroline has it hard, with four kids, one at war, and an ex-husband who was abusive. She’s understandably mean to everyone – her employers, Noah, the other maids in the neighborhood – but just because it’s understandable doesn’t mean it’s forgivable. She kind of sucks, and then at the end, as she gets meaner and meaner and for some reason unleashes her rage on Noah, she’s reprehensible.
Tony Kushner also wrote the lyrics, and they had me cringing in my seat. There were so many clunkers. I remember in the opening one of the grandfather’s sings about his deceased daughter’s smoking: “It killed her. She died. It killed her. She’s dead.” JESUS. Every other song mentioned how in Louisiana, the dead – and Caroline as she’s always in the basement – aren’t underground, but underwater. It’s kind of poetic and sets a certain mood, right? Yeah, the first 4 times. When you’re getting to the 20th, 30th mention of how we aren’t underground but underwater, it’s no longer profound or elegant or anything other than repetitive and annoying. We also hear a lot about how Noah’s mother played the bassoon. That’s an interesting fact, I guess. They talk about it a lot. Like a lot a lot. It does not seem that important the 15th time.
I wish that I could say Jeanine Tesori’s score was great despite Tony Kushner’s abysmal lyrics, but it wasn’t. Everything sounded the same and that same was pretty dull. It’s a real shame because I love Tesori’s other works – ‘Fun Home’ is a masterpiece, a true masterpiece, but I guess partnering with Lisa Kron was required for that one to shine. She wrote the great ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’, with lyricist Dick Scanlon. And she wrote ‘Violet’, which I adore, with Brian Crawley, and ‘Shrek’, which is surprisingly magical, with David Lindsay-Abaire. Suffice it to say, she doesn’t have a steady writing partner, and she needed one for ‘Caroline’. She’s such a legendary, wonderful musician and I just don’t get what she was doing here. The only song that I remembered when I left was the one when Noah sings, revolving round and round the stage, ‘On the first day day day Caroline stayed away way way and she didn’t come back back back and she didn’t come back back back.’ Repeat 5 times. And yes the melody is just as you think, like just a childhood rhyme. Omg it was painful. Now it’s in my head again dammit.
When I first realized I was trying incredibly hard, too hard, to enjoy this show, I figured it’s because the book and score, the bones of the show, are weak and inadequate. I assumed this production did the best it could with what meager bones it was working with, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. Directing this show is a huge challenge, and as I’ve only seen it once I can’t say what is this production’s doing differently. But I can say that the tone was all over the place, impossible to pin down. We have all the troubled relationships, all the misery and despair of the south, and then we have the bubbly singing washing machine, the terrifying singing dryer, the singing trio of girls (with ever-changing matching outfits that were impressive) representing the radio. At first I thought that was cute, and I assumed that the show would be the sort that could handle such bizarre portrayals of home goods, but it isn’t. Things only fell apart more when the moon arrived – the actress sits in a moon-shaped seat and floats through the rafters for a good chunk of the show – and still refuses to make any sense when paired with the dismal realism of the rest of the show. Nothing ever really gels, and yes a huge reason for that is because of the material, but the direction doesn’t help at all, nor do the performances, and I really hate saying that because this show has a great cast. But while Abiona Omonua’s Emmie was winning and adorable, Anika Noni Rose has that incredible voice that could really rip into her songs and make more out of them. I didn’t even realize until I looked at the programme after the fact that Rose was played by Lauren Ward, as in Miss Honey from the original West End and Broadway “Matilda” cast. Just had no idea. It’s hard to shine in that role. The Noah we saw was Aaron Gelkoff, a really talented kid who successfully made us feel for Noah even though he’s super annoying. And I always like Ako Mitchell but playing the dryer is just weird; there’s not much he can do with it even though it’s somehow one of the biggest parts.
But the biggest issue is with Caroline. She’s played by one of the few West End actors I actually really like, Sharon D. Clarke, who has been exceptional in everything I’ve seen her in. I thought she was fine here, making do with an unrewarding role, playing a woman who hates everyone and so we hate her back. But since seeing it, I’ve fallen down the youtube rabbit hole (fun fact: ‘Rabbit Hole’ was written by Tesori’s ‘Shrek’ writing partner Lindsay-Abaire) to watch videos of the original Caroline, Tonya Pinkins. Sharon was very one-note the entire time, but Pinkins adds layers that made it just a little easier to not hate her the entire time. Pinkins’s rendition of the one big song, “Lot’s Wife”, the 11 o’clock number, shows so much more emotion. Instead of just seething with anger and resentment, Pinkins’s performance shows anguish and hope and regret and a wish with her entire being that she could be better. Sharon’s Caroline was just stone-cold anger and hate; I got nothing else from her, and I think that’s a huge reason why it didn’t work for me.
Of course, Caroline isn’t a likable character, as written, and so there’s not much the actress can do with her anyway. She has no positive attributes to make an audience root for her. And instead of coming around at the end, maybe giving Noah a hug or even an encouraging word to show that their relationship is warmer than it seems, she unleashes all her venom onto him, all the hate that bubbles within her, and tells him that “Hell is where Jews go when they die.” I choked a little bit on the pure hatred that fills this statement — and the rest of the audience laughed. And I don’t mean nervous, tense laughter; I mean they belly laughed like this was a funny joke. I ran this by my Broadway people to see if it happens usually in other productions and, except for one person who said that a few people laughed when she saw it but it was really disturbing and most people gasped, everyone was like, ‘what, no that’s not a laugh line, that is so fucked up.’ It really is. Is Europe so awash in anti-Semitism again that London audiences are laughing at stuff like this? I’m horrified, as a NORMAL person would be, FFS. Anyway, after Caroline says a line that that to a little child, you lose whatever care you had for her and since she never makes amends for it or any of her bad behavior, it just loses you completely.
Even though this is all prettayyy prettayyy negative, it’s not entirely painful to watch. The cast is good, the vocals are all good. The story, or hodgepodge of potential stories, just really didn’t work for me, no matter how badly I wanted it to. I wonder if it will change at all before the West End transfer, but I don’t know how much of what’s problematic they actually could improve.
AUDIENCE
Clearly fucked up and terrifying.
HAMPSTEAD THEATRE
Whoever designed the Hampstead Theatre is batshit crazy. The only bathrooms are by the entrance, behind the box office. That’s REAL DUMB. God people are paid to do jobs like this, I can’t even believe it.
The bathrooms are cool though, with each stall featuring a full-length portrait of a famous actress from a role played at this theatre. Well, all famous actresses save for Simon Russell Beale, who is pictured from a show where he played a woman. Fun times.
Broadway’s “On The Town” Is On The Crack
“New York, New York, a wonderful town! The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down!” I’m sure you know that line from the classic musical “On The Town”, because it’s the only memorable line in the whole shebang. Did you see the ol’ movie? With Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, freaking wonderful cast? I’m sure I saw it, but I don’t remember. If I remembered it, I’m pretty sure I would have been more prepared for the heavy onslaught of absolute CAH-RAZY that hit me in the Lyric Theatre when I saw the current musical revival.
I really don’t understand how this wacky, bizarre musical is considered a classic, and I reeeeally don’t understand whoever calls it a family show. The current revival is really good, very well done, but the material is off the charts nuts, just a gallimaufry of seemingly unrelated scenes, sight gags, baudy jokes, and nonsense that will have you wide-eyed and asking the stranger sitting next to you “Hey…hey man…what the hell is happening on that stage?…it’s happening, right?” P.S., this is the only instance where I condone talking in the theatre. Just to find out if you are hallucinating real fast.
It begins innocently enough, as innocently as sailors can be.
Three sailor boys in their little white uniforms and their cute little Purim hats have 24 hours of leave in NYC and are so excited! Like three little puppies except not as cute or as lovable! Because they are dirty! Dirty dirty boys! 24 hours in NYC, what do you do? Eat some bagels and pizza? Go to the Empire State Building? See a show? No! You troll the streets for random women for their one night. Oy!
Tony Yazbeck, a Tony nominee for his work here, plays Gabey, so yeah he’s 9 years old, and he has his heart set on a certain Miss Turnstiles, the girl whose poster is all over the subways because she won a weird creepy little beauty pageant. We flashback to the actual creepy ass pageant, where our heroine (?) Ivy wins. She has an annoying voice but is a beautiful dancer. We like her fine. So obviously we worry that some rando sailor is on the loose searching for her. (She’s played by actual New York City Ballet-erina Megan Fairchild, whose little brother Robert is a few blocks away kicking ass in “An American In Paris”! Both starring in Tony-nominated-famous-for-Gene-Kelly shows! I hope they don’t have another sibling.)
Our other two sailors, Chip and Ozzie, vow to help Gabey (we are either working with preschoolers or chipmunks here) find Ivy. Chip (Jay Armstrong Johnson) and Ozzie (Clyde Alves) separate to try to find her, because, well, it’s easier to find a random girl in NYC if you split up. P.S., I’m going to use the words ‘rando’ and ‘random’ 100x here and I thought it was worth mentioning that the director of this show is John Rando. Can’t make this shit up.
Chip hops into a cab that happens to be driven by a youngish white woman, but instead of being cool about how women can be cab drivers, the woman Hildy (Alysha Umphress) pretty much kidnaps Chip and assaults him. He begs to be let off at any of the famous places he wants to see but she refuses and instead takes him to her apartment, while singing a song to this perfect stranger called “Come Up To My Place”. But it’s okay because she’s a woman! It’s cool! No it’s not. It’s so freaking weird and creepy that we are supposed to laugh and love their dynamic when it’s still a victim and a sex offender. It’s like she’s an Uber driver and not a yellow cabbie.
Chip is too dumb to mind, really, which I guess is lucky. Alysha has a great booming voice (you may recognize her as one of the trolls in the Frozen 2 (Frozen Again) video. He indeed goes up to her place and is like fine with it? but still dumb and totally confused? And he meets Hildy’s sad pathetic roommate who is really probably the least necessary character in any show ever. She has a cold and sneezes a lot. I do too.
Our third Sailor, Ozzie, seems equally dumb but I think he’s a bit of a calculating genius, because he offers to look for Ivy in NYC landmarks and big museums. Meaning, he gets to see the stuff he wants to see. He’s a smart cookie. Named Ozzie. He goes to the Museum of Natural History and is in the Early Humans room with apes and Neanderthals and what not and there’s a blonde sitting on the bench writing! Look! A blonde! Her name is Claire de Loone (not joking, and yes she is a loon) (played by Elizabeth Stanley who is like the Ann Veal of Broadway musicals) and she is doing anthropology research. She asks Ozzie if she can measure him, because apparently her advanced scientific research is to find men and record their measurements, so apparently she is less apt for anthropology than she is for just anthropologie.
When Claire takes men’s measurements, she naturally finds them irresistible and, even though she is engaged to a judge, she seduces them. Again, family show. So she and Ozzie get carried away and sing one of the most hideous songs I’ve ever heard, not joking, called “Carried Away”, which is in some godawful minor key with a horrible melody. Then the early humans on display and the primate models COME TO LIFE and they all dance and sing this acne song with the apes and the homo habilis and everyone is like acid tripping more than Willy Wonka and at this point my companion said ‘What is happening?’ and it was insane. What is this show.
Back to sailor #1, Gabey, who is so depressed and lonely wandering about NYC because he hasn’t found this girl on the poster yet. I’m pretty sure he sings “I’m So Ronery” at this point; could have been something else. In a flash of smarts/stalkerness, he goes to Carnegie Hall because the poster said she studied there. And hey will you look at that, he goes in to the rehearsal rooms and she’s there! Yay! Show over! No it’s not. They meet and he asks her out and she says yes! I wanted to yell “No Ivy don’t! He’s some random sailor!” but I didn’t.
Luckily, Ivy’s voice teacher is Jackie Hoffman, the funniest person, the best thing about most productions she’s in or even not in. She’s a drunk voice teacher here as well as an angry old lady running through the streets during the rest of the show. Most of her anger is from seeing the sailors vandalize property and harassing people. We’re supposed to think she’s crazy and laugh at her but she’s actually the only sane character in the entire show.
Gabey and Ivy plan to meet that night, but sadly the voice teacher forces Ivy to work that night (as a dancer on Coney Island it’s not weird) or else she’ll smear her reputation. I mean she was doing her a favor. So Ivy stands Gabey up and Gabey is sad because he’s nine.
Act II
The sailors and the two non-Ivy random women all agree to meet up at a club where Claire and her judge-fiancé are having an engagement party with no guests. Gabey is so so sad, and Jackie Hoffman is a lounge singer singing a song called “I Wish I Was Dead”. It’s a weird start. The group bar hops a few times, each time leaving Claire’s judge-fiancé (who is okay with her having affairs) to pay the bills, each time entering a new club to find Jackie Hoffman singing the same song. Finally Jackie Hoffman is in a bar not as a lounge singer but as the drunk vocal coach, and Gabey gets out of her that Ivy is at Coney Island. So they all RUN to Coney Island! Yay!
On the way to Coney Island, Gabey dreams about meeting Ivy, and they have a beautiful dream ballet which is the real reason for seeing this show. Considering Ivy is played by a ballerina and not really an actress, and that the rest of the show is nonsense and this is beautiful, this is where she and the show come to life. It’s really the saving grace of this show.
Gabey finds Ivy on Coney Island pretty easily. She’s a belly dancer sort of thing in a club’s harem. Awwwkward. Gabey “accidentally” rips her costume off, and she’s arrested for indecent exposure! The cops come about the time the rest of the boys and their girls come. The three sailors are taken to the naval authorities for cavorting with this CRIMINAL who dared show her belly and all seems lost as the boys board their ship, but then the three women chase them saying how the judge helped clear all the police mess. And they all get to say goodbye and happily look back on the ridiculously random and disturbing day they had.
The whole thing makes so little sense that it was almost hilarious and worth seeing for that reason. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so surprised by a show. I guess I had no idea what it was about. The cast is uniformly great, they’re just given the wackiest material to work with. Godspeed to them.
Tony Yazbeck, a Tony nominee for his work here, plays Gabey, so yeah he’s 9 years old, and he has his heart set on a certain Miss Turnstiles, the girl whose poster is all over the subways because she won a weird creepy little beauty pageant. We flashback to the actual creepy ass pageant, where our heroine (?) Ivy wins. She has an annoying voice but is a beautiful dancer. We like her fine. So obviously we worry that some rando sailor is on the loose searching for her. (She’s played by actual New York City Ballet-erina Megan Fairchild, whose little brother Robert is a few blocks away kicking ass in “An American In Paris”! Both starring in Tony-nominated-famous-for-Gene-Kelly shows! I hope they don’t have another sibling.)
Our other two sailors, Chip and Ozzie, vow to help Gabey (we are either working with preschoolers or chipmunks here) find Ivy. Chip (Jay Armstrong Johnson) and Ozzie (Clyde Alves) separate to try to find her, because, well, it’s easier to find a random girl in NYC if you split up. P.S., I’m going to use the words ‘rando’ and ‘random’ 100x here and I thought it was worth mentioning that the director of this show is John Rando. Can’t make this shit up.
Chip hops into a cab that happens to be driven by a youngish white woman, but instead of being cool about how women can be cab drivers, the woman Hildy (Alysha Umphress) pretty much kidnaps Chip and assaults him. He begs to be let off at any of the famous places he wants to see but she refuses and instead takes him to her apartment, while singing a song to this perfect stranger called “Come Up To My Place”. But it’s okay because she’s a woman! It’s cool! No it’s not. It’s so freaking weird and creepy that we are supposed to laugh and love their dynamic when it’s still a victim and a sex offender. It’s like she’s an Uber driver and not a yellow cabbie.
Chip is too dumb to mind, really, which I guess is lucky. Alysha has a great booming voice (you may recognize her as one of the trolls in the Frozen 2 (Frozen Again) video. He indeed goes up to her place and is like fine with it? but still dumb and totally confused? And he meets Hildy’s sad pathetic roommate who is really probably the least necessary character in any show ever. She has a cold and sneezes a lot. I do too.
Our third Sailor, Ozzie, seems equally dumb but I think he’s a bit of a calculating genius, because he offers to look for Ivy in NYC landmarks and big museums. Meaning, he gets to see the stuff he wants to see. He’s a smart cookie. Named Ozzie. He goes to the Museum of Natural History and is in the Early Humans room with apes and Neanderthals and what not and there’s a blonde sitting on the bench writing! Look! A blonde! Her name is Claire de Loone (not joking, and yes she is a loon) (played by Elizabeth Stanley who is like the Ann Veal of Broadway musicals) and she is doing anthropology research. She asks Ozzie if she can measure him, because apparently her advanced scientific research is to find men and record their measurements, so apparently she is less apt for anthropology than she is for just anthropologie.
When Claire takes men’s measurements, she naturally finds them irresistible and, even though she is engaged to a judge, she seduces them. Again, family show. So she and Ozzie get carried away and sing one of the most hideous songs I’ve ever heard, not joking, called “Carried Away”, which is in some godawful minor key with a horrible melody. Then the early humans on display and the primate models COME TO LIFE and they all dance and sing this acne song with the apes and the homo habilis and everyone is like acid tripping more than Willy Wonka and at this point my companion said ‘What is happening?’ and it was insane. What is this show.
Back to sailor #1, Gabey, who is so depressed and lonely wandering about NYC because he hasn’t found this girl on the poster yet. I’m pretty sure he sings “I’m So Ronery” at this point; could have been something else. In a flash of smarts/stalkerness, he goes to Carnegie Hall because the poster said she studied there. And hey will you look at that, he goes in to the rehearsal rooms and she’s there! Yay! Show over! No it’s not. They meet and he asks her out and she says yes! I wanted to yell “No Ivy don’t! He’s some random sailor!” but I didn’t.
Luckily, Ivy’s voice teacher is Jackie Hoffman, the funniest person, the best thing about most productions she’s in or even not in. She’s a drunk voice teacher here as well as an angry old lady running through the streets during the rest of the show. Most of her anger is from seeing the sailors vandalize property and harassing people. We’re supposed to think she’s crazy and laugh at her but she’s actually the only sane character in the entire show.
Gabey and Ivy plan to meet that night, but sadly the voice teacher forces Ivy to work that night (as a dancer on Coney Island it’s not weird) or else she’ll smear her reputation. I mean she was doing her a favor. So Ivy stands Gabey up and Gabey is sad because he’s nine.
Act II
The sailors and the two non-Ivy random women all agree to meet up at a club where Claire and her judge-fiancé are having an engagement party with no guests. Gabey is so so sad, and Jackie Hoffman is a lounge singer singing a song called “I Wish I Was Dead”. It’s a weird start. The group bar hops a few times, each time leaving Claire’s judge-fiancé (who is okay with her having affairs) to pay the bills, each time entering a new club to find Jackie Hoffman singing the same song. Finally Jackie Hoffman is in a bar not as a lounge singer but as the drunk vocal coach, and Gabey gets out of her that Ivy is at Coney Island. So they all RUN to Coney Island! Yay!
On the way to Coney Island, Gabey dreams about meeting Ivy, and they have a beautiful dream ballet which is the real reason for seeing this show. Considering Ivy is played by a ballerina and not really an actress, and that the rest of the show is nonsense and this is beautiful, this is where she and the show come to life. It’s really the saving grace of this show.
Gabey finds Ivy on Coney Island pretty easily. She’s a belly dancer sort of thing in a club’s harem. Awwwkward. Gabey “accidentally” rips her costume off, and she’s arrested for indecent exposure! The cops come about the time the rest of the boys and their girls come. The three sailors are taken to the naval authorities for cavorting with this CRIMINAL who dared show her belly and all seems lost as the boys board their ship, but then the three women chase them saying how the judge helped clear all the police mess. And they all get to say goodbye and happily look back on the ridiculously random and disturbing day they had.
The whole thing makes so little sense that it was almost hilarious and worth seeing for that reason. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so surprised by a show. I guess I had no idea what it was about. The cast is uniformly great, they’re just given the wackiest material to work with. Godspeed to them.
3 Comments
Johnny Lee Miller was Frankenstein? I love him!!
I remember watching Mandy as George Seurat-Sunday in the Park wow 😳 I was mesmerized and as a little girl I am glad it had an impact on you.
I loved Bandstand… great story great music 🎼
I missed your blogs
Missed your writing
Keep in writing
Book in the future?
Thank you for sharing your experience with COVID. I’ve been gathering bits and pieces of what you experienced from your socials, but it’s interesting to read it all here in one spot. You’re right that it’s scary your weeks long illness and hospital trip (!) would likely be considered a “mild” case. I think the “mild” misnomer makes people who are already dubious about the seriousness of this underestimate the experience. The U.S. government and my state government have really let us down. Currently our only option is to stay home… which would be a lot more effective if other people were too. (Our state was one of the few that never had an official stay at home policy.)
Also, what a good point around the entitlement of content – whether it’s expecting journalism to be free, all theatre to be free & available online, or recipe creators to “just get to the recipe.” People have lots of demands for things they aren’t buying.
So glad you enjoyed Frankenstein!
Thanks Cadry! & I really appreciate your thoughts on the entitlement since it was your excellent piece that made me recognize that I was guilty of being impatient with recipe blogs too. It all stems from the same problem I think! & thanks again for the Frankenstein info. LOVED JLM.