Why Jack Black Needs to be the Next Tevye in Fiddler on the Roofby Randi / March 30, 2021It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the concert stream of “Treason” the musical, recorded at Cadogan Hall and shown earlier in March with an encore last weekend.
What I knew previously about Guy Fawkes: Bonfire Night. Gunpowder Plot. V for Vendetta masks. After watching the concert stream of the new concept musical “Treason”, based on the events and players in England’s 1605 gunpowder plot, I also know that his name was Guido. (All I can hear is his name replacing Sweeney Todd: “not Guido…not Guido Fawkes! the demon plotter of some! thing!”). The show focuses not on that mysterious man but on the group of his co-conspirators, yet it wasn’t so much intent on history as it was expressing the emotional beats of the stories of those involved. With some critical and editorial touches, “Treason” could achieve that intention, and maybe even become a successful full-fledged musical. But it needs work.
The Gunpowder Plot was essentially a group of Catholics plotting to assassinate King James I by blowing up the House of Lords, ostensibly because of anti-Catholic persecution but who knows why men do anything. “Treason” begins at the end of the plot, when conspirators are executed and their wives are mourning. Without having met anyone yet or heard anything about the events, this reverse prologue feels unearned. This flat opening exemplified the quintessential problem of telling instead of showing. Completely cutting these first two songs will give the show a chance to begin in a more energetic, dynamic way – with the group of conspirators starting to chat and meet and plan. We could get to know them naturally, as they get to know each other. Start with showing – showing the men talking and plotting. With this odd, stale beginning, it felt plodding, and only started to get moving at the thirty minute mark.
“Treason” is billed as “a historic tale of religious persecution and brutality”, but honestly, none of it felt as weighty as that tagline makes it out to be. There’s a lot of talk talk into our earholes about how persecuted the Catholics were, and how they were the victims, but without any nuance of the historical situation (surely it’s important to note what came before…maybe someone named Bloody Mary?) it’s coming across as “these poor yt mens tried to blow up a building and kill people and they GOT STOPPED!” We need a reason to not be like “…and?”
I think a full version of this show would succeed if it focuses on Catesby as the main character with all the other conspirators are interesting side characters. As is, it tries to put too many characters on equal footing, but splitting the spotlight with the others ends up diminishing all of their stories. It would be more compelling with a clear main character. Don’t half ass so many things. Whole ass one thing.
Of course a full musical would flesh out the format more, but even so I can’t see how opening with the aftermath and mourning and then repeating that segment in its entirety when the plot reaches that point is worth it. It doesn’t have any emotional power to have the audience realize “oh we already saw this bit…now it’s making chronological sense…so they are repeating it…cool.” It was the same two songs they repeated too, so if they really want that to work, they have to work on those songs too. There’s a lot of promise but they aren’t great yet. The song meant to be an emotional wallop, where Lucie Jones sings about kissing her husband’s white cold corpse in the cold hard ground is…I mean…those lyrics. We were like “ugh please stop saying how you want to kiss his cold corpse” I mean YEESH. There are a few instances where the lyrics need a little polishing, like when the men start plotting and Catesby hints at taking the lead and things feel like they’ll get moving but they blow it by singing this song in which the men literally say the word ‘blow’ 483 times. We started joke-singing along with it just repeating the word ‘blow’ and we were right
Also, is every single musical portrayal of a British king going to make them the hokey joke comedic part from now on? It kind of felt obviously derivative.
Okay that’s a lot of negativity and I was supposed to be putting more positivity out there this year. This feels very first draft but really there’s a lot of potential, and with some obvious changes, some critical reformatting, and some work on the music, this could be as epic as they want it to be.
Related Posts
The Tragedy of the Horny Teenagers: Spring Awakening at the Almeida
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the new production of Spring Awakening at London’s Almeida theatre, which runs until Jan. 29.
One of the best productions in London right now is Rupert Goold’s new take on Spring Awakening, Duncan Sheik & Steven Sater’s Tony-winning musical that originally starred Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff as wee naked babies. The show tells of a bunch of mad horny German teens coming of age as the adults and authority figures in their lives try to keep them ignorant and in line, and the tragic ramifications of trying to control children in such a way. It’s a sad song, it’s a tragedy, one that always felt relevant in Bible-thumping-abortion-hating America, and it has a bit of extra resonance in this climate of the supposed grown-ups failing the youths (and extra extra rez for these particular yoots, trying to build careers in theatre while the grown-ups are like ‘nah theatre isn’t important enough to us, you could try coding?, also we’re gonna tell audiences they don’t need to wear masks anymore so they cough all over you and your shows will probably continually get cancelled’).
Any dreadful outcomes you might imagine resulting from adults keeping truth from kids and holding them to impossible standards and not telling them about what their own bodies can do and being abusive &c happen in Spring Awakening, but the incredible music, story-building, and energy of a youthful cast keep it from feeling like on onslaught of depression porn. Even though there’s so much tragedy and frustration, it’s shown with emotional poignancy that prevents the feeling of utter darkness. There’s also lots of humor, as you’d expect from a show with several songs about masturbating. I particularly loved Hanschen’s (I think?) line to another boy about studying together and maybe ‘doing a little Achilles and Patroclus’, which I now better appreciate having just read “The Song of Achilles”.
I had high hopes for this production, as Spring Awakening is one of my all-time favorite shows and scores that I grew up on, and I saw the original cast an exorbitant number of times and I consider the 2015 Deaf West Broadway production to be one of the top five greatest productions of anything ever done anywhere throughout history, and I am not exaggerating, so yeah going in I was like show me what you got, fire that sucker up and throw it at my face. I wish they were still taking some tips, because my #1 thing is that these kids needed to be miked. There were so many brilliant parts of the score that felt too quiet or literally went unheard against the loud band (not that they were too loud, just the voices were not loud enough). The worst victim of this was “Touch Me”, which never rose with that incredible crescendo that is written into it, when Otto (I think?) belts the best belted line of all-time ‘WHERE I GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WHEN I GO THERE/NO MORE SHADOWWWWWWWWWWW ANYMORE’ I mean, it was just a lil quiet baby lullaby and I wanted to shout ‘SING OUT LOUISE’, it’s THE BEST LINE.
But otherwise, the staging is what makes this production special. It’s a small intimate space, and the stage is entirely giant steps so the cast goes up and down the whole time building insane calves. I loved the use of all the projections on the steps, from their own scribblings to their graffiti to the gravestones. Some of the staging was a miss for me — the glass cage of emotion (husbo and I were telepathically imitating Ron Burgundy to each other, confirmed post-show), the excessive silent pauses in Act II, and I still wish that the audience found out about Wendla at the same time as Melchior (it packs more punch). But overall it was thoughtful and provocative, and there were moments of actual gasp-worthy brilliance — the beginning of “All That’s Known”, when all the schoolboys come up from below the stage in a vertical line of desks (I mean, the MOTHERFORKING TIMING on that one), and the entirety of “Mirror Blue Night”, which I’ve never seen staged to so perfectly capture the emotional turmoil of Melchior at that moment. That in particular made me think much differently about a scene I usually am a tiny bit whatever about.
The cast is good, with their high energy making up for a lack of high calibre vocal performances. The standout by far is Laurie Kynaston as Melchior Gabor, which works out because Melchior carries the show. We last saw him in Florian Zeller’s The Son, which ALSO went VERY badly for him, so fingers crossed he one day gets to star in a comedy or at least some sort of death-free romp. As for their direction, I was not a fan at how over-the-top evil they made the adult characters. They were presented in a clownish way for humor, but their evil and wrongdoing when played straight is so much more powerful.
Although you probably don’t care, I’ve buried the lead here with the part that stands out most to me that I honestly can’t stop shouting about: The bonus track from the original cast album, Duncan Sheik’s song ‘There Once Was a Pirate’, is included in this! Not only that, it OPENS ACT II. Not only that, IT GETS A REPRISE IN THE FINALE. This marked one of the top five moments I’ve almost screamed in a theatre. What a shock. The song worked so well, and the staging of it the first time was poetic. Its reprise as an intro to the finale was fine, but I was left wanting with the finale in general, because they have rewritten my favorite lines of what is one of my favorite songs ever, “The Song of Purple Summer”. The way the voices have always split into harmonies on “a swallow brings/a song too hard to follow/that no one else can sing” always gives me the feels something terrible and seals the show emotionally for me, making everything make sense and provide hope in a Pandora’s-Box-after-all-the-endless-shit kind of way, especially since the song is about how a new dawn has to be rising. So to have that line gone, along with many others, was aaaaquite the theatrical blueballing. Nonetheless, this is altogether a wonderful, powerful production of one of the great modern musicals.
AUDIENCE
Okay so we could not get over two things: First, that these two jamokes dead front and center were maskless and like BREATHING ON THE CAST. Second, that this complete jackwagon (also up front) absolutely living for “Totally Fucked” was rocking around in her seat and literally fist-pumping the air throughout the number. Look, I GET that it’s a forking banger and you’re definitely feeling it, but you’re still at the theatre and not a mosh pit. It was hilarious though how hard she committed to the part — this production has the kids silently staring at the audience at the end of the song RIGHT up close to us for a long time, powerfully implying ‘what the fuck have you done to us, we actually despise you, you ruined everything, you stupid bitch’, and this girl STILL KEPT FIST-PUMPING. IN AN EXTENDED AND HEAVY AND GROWING HEAVIER BY THE SECOND MOMENT OF SILENCE. Now that’s commitment to being a bellend, I’ll give her that.
INFO
Show is 2 1/2 hours.
The space only has one exit and there is no way to the House Right side of the rows (which have no center aisle btw, a nightmare) around the back, so if you are sitting in the right half of seats, you have to go through the front row and often step onto the first step of the stage, which, well, blows.
The Almeida needs a second set of toilets. Be ready for QUEUES, and the men’s was longer!!
Thanks for the water dispensers on the bar, loves it.
Present Laughter at the Old Vic: Old Timey Fun, for the Most Part
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Present Laughter at the Old Vic, playing until August 10.
Noel Coward is such a goofball, am I right?! In one of his classic plays, Present Laughter, he basically goes autobiographical and has a jolly old time caricaturing his own outsized persona. Representing Coward is the lead character Garry Essendine, a famous actor who has several romantic exploits and several exaggerated breakdowns over the course of the few days we see. More than anything, Present Laughter is a vehicle for a star to have the time of his life as Garry. Recently, Kevin Kline won a Tony for his portrayal, because he was probably perfect as always. The draw of this current Old Vic production is Andrew Scott, hot off his stint as the hot priest on the universally acclaimed Fleabag. The show is worth seeing for his fantastic performance, but the changes to the source material are less than ideal.
While the show starts out strong, with an impeccable, uproariously funny first act, it quickly turns maddening, as all farce and farce-adjacent work tends to do. Andrew’s Garry wakes the show by trying to usher out a flaky one-night-stand named Daphne Stillington (a very funny Kitty Archer; they could have swapped the real and character names for perhaps an improvement) amid the judgmental eyes of his household staff (all three the steady highlights of the show). With this material, Andrew gets to play so much, it’s amazing. He shines so bright, so pitch perfect and hilarious in this first act that it’s almost distasteful. He looks to be having the time of his life, relishing some of Coward’s funniest lines and his ability to turn the regular ones into the funniest lines.
But then, it starts farcing all over the place and it took all my might to not shout at everyone to just communicate better. Okay so in this 1940s play, they were obsessed with marital affairs to get their minds off war. Garry is dealing with an issue in his close-knit ‘family’ of people who work for him: his secretary Monica, his ex-wife Liz who is still pretty much his wife, his manager Morris, his producer Henry. Henry is married to Joanna, who is rumored to be having an affair with Morris. Monica has a serious conversation with Garry about finding out whether this is true about Morris and Joanna, and instead of Garry trying to put a stop to this lest it destroy their little family, Garry goes and shtupps Joanna himself. Bad call Gar! As people find out, things get SHOUTY, like MAN ALIVE SHOUTY, and Garry gets apoplectic a lot, like a LOT a lot, and Morris is like BUT I LOVE JOANNA, and Henry is like BUT SHE’S MY WIFE (and John Mulaney is like THAT’S MY WIFE) and Daphne for some reason comes back to audition for a theatre school?, and Liz is like I’m fine and calm because monayyyyy, and for some reason Garry’s staff KEEPS LETTING some random stranger INTO HIS HOUSE who is very clearly going to murder everyone in the sequel (Luke Thallon was so funny as Roland but OMG) and everyone’s like WHEEEE THIS IS CRAZY and I’m like MY BLOOD PRESSURE.
But in this production, because, I’m guessing, people realized that the whole idea of three rich men fighting over a married woman like she’s property is…kinda gross, they took a note from the recent success of the Company revival and had some fun with gender switches! In theory, I love this idea, because it would have been too outdated and frustrating to watch Joanna get treated simultaneously like a piece of meat and an uncontrollable hoo-er. So, in theory, they made the right call making Joanna now ‘Joe’, a man, married to the producer ‘Helen’, a woman. This change does several things. First, it makes literally everyone in the cast bisexual, which, okay fine, I’ll go along with that (“it’s 2018! More people should be bi! It’s like, get over yourselves!”). But it throws off the dynamic like hella hard, because the casting is not done well. There’s no way the couplings in the show would happen and I just couldn’t buy it. But most of all, worst of all, the actor playing Joe is miscast. Whereas Joanna is a flighty and glamorous young woman who seduces all these men but like is fun, Joe is a too-serious, gloomy, severe mufucka who brings the action to a screeching halt. It makes no sense that Garry would say anything to him when he comes a’knocking other than like “gtfo my house you’re in the wrong show, this is a fun one not an Italian murder mystery where you’re clearly the butler and you clearly did it.” With the wrong actor playing Joe, you’re just like, why.
The changes continue in the same direction the quality of play goes in after that first act. Most of all, I was disappointed in the ending. Through all of Garry’s breakdowns, all his mid-life crises and all his issues he’s clearly dealing with, it’s clear most of all he wants someone to love the real him and cure his loneliness. (Oh another burning question I had several times: why doesn’t this famous actor have a bodyguard or someone who actually sleeps at his house to prevent 100 of the annoying things that happen.) It’s obvious throughout the play that his ex-wife Liz is still this person, and at the end they reconcile. In this version, after Liz announces that she’s coming back to him, and you expect Garry to be like YES PLEASE THANK GOD I NEED YOU, he literally is silent, and walks over to the window while he has a drink, and I truly thought he was going to jump out the window. It was a weird vibe and did not work for me, and definitely not as an ending. It made the original ending of Pippin look like a Mamma Mia!-style dance party.
Regardless, it’s still overall a fun time, and it’s worth seeing Andrew shine in a role that seems tailor-made for him.
INFORMATION
Get ready for big bunches of small purple fruit as said by an Australian because I have me some gripes. First of all, yes the Old Vic is still under hella construction, which you can’t hold against them. But I am so over theatres not giving paper tickets at will call and telling you to just use your phone, and it was an especially bad move here: Given all the construction, the staff have to check your tickets frequently because to get to the temporary toilet area or the bar you have to leave the building entirely (toilets are outside only on one side! Don’t sit upstairs you’ll never get there!). But hi, hello, this is the theatre, where people should be TURNING THEIR PHONES OFF! Everyone stop with the e-tickets please and thank you. Any decent people have shut their phones off.
Secondly, speaking of phones, London theatres in general need to forking quit it with those little white NO PHONES signs that two ushers in dark corners of the theatre hold up like any forking person in the audience notices them. Make a GOTTAM preshow announcement that everyone must shut their phones off and not use them during the show like a GROWN ASS ADULT.
Third, there was a super frustrating technical problem that I’m not even sure the stage managers or lighting people realized: During most of the show, an amber light was reflected out of the mirror by Garry’s bar table, and it was blinding us from looking at the stage. INFURIATING. That’s the kind of technical thing you’d think would have been caught and handled by now. It was the worst in the 20-minute scene right before the interval and for most of Act II (so, just Act I was fine (maybe that’s why it was my favorite, because I was able to watch it without corneal damage)).
Lastly (lol am I ever done), I am sick and tired of plays trying to establish characterization with smoking. Literally, I am sick and tired from it, because it gives me breathing issues. If you can’t establish something without having an actor harm their own health with cigarettes, then you aren’t doing a good job.
Oh I thought of another: I am tired of the Old Vic’s boring af programmes and show art. For the love of god add an image. I’m not going to pay $5 for block letters and weird color schemes.
STAGE DOOR
This is the saddest part for me to recount, because I love(d) Andrew Scott. Who doesn’t adore the Hot Priest? I was excited to see that the stage door (wisely) had a barricade up and a security guard at the ready, telling everyone to line up in single file and that you could either get an autograph from OR a photo with Andrew. So with things progressing like that, with a security guard already taking care of business, with maybe 80 people already lined up?? all of that suggests that Andrew was coming out. Now, I’m the first person to state that actors have no obligation to come to the stage door (hell, they have no business doing it; why on earth would anyone want to greet a crazy mob) and that they should absolutely not face any scrutiny for not doing it. BUT, that’s a different situation from lining up your crowd in single file, making sure they know all your rules, &c…and then making them wait a frankly offensive amount of time. I’d be saying absolutely nothing except ‘good on you’ if he had decided not to stage door. But to make sure his crowd was organized to his requirements and then just not come out for hours is plain rude, showing zero respect for anyone’s time. That security and staff waiting outside (but hidden from our view after a while so they didn’t have to answer any questions) didn’t relay any message was bullshit. We left after about 50 minutes of waiting, but I was told on the socials that Andrew came out at about 11:40 – an hour after we left. That sucks. Just don’t come out if you don’t want to! But to make people wait and wait and not say anything is a weird kind of torture, and it sucks.
