January 19, 2023
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
“Oppenheimer”: Decent But Unedited New London Play
The story of the American scientist who created the atomic bomb sounds like it could be either interesting or boring. The new London show achieves both. The first act is well done and pretty compelling, but the second act had seven end points and needs hella cutting. Still, it’s an interesting story that’s worth seeing – especially if they fix it before the next production.
We begin in Oppy’s (as his “friends” call him) house as his (repeatedly described non-monogamous) girlfriend hosts a drunken neurotic fundraiser for ‘the Spanish crisis’ in the early stages of World War II. Her agitated uneasy speeches show us 1) they’re all proud Communists and b) she, Jean, is quite mentally unstable. I wouldn’t want to be friends with these people. All pretentious in their highly educated status, showing how caring and cultured they are by getting drunk and dancing all night in the name of supporting the less fortunate who are being tortured, starved, and killed. It struck me as an ugly scene but extremely illustrative of this group of middle class people. I was told that Oppenheimer was famously hard to get along with, but instead of showing us that, we see that compared to his social circle he was the lovable puppy in the crowd, at least at the beginning. So that was a curious creative choice.
This whole show is pretty much questionable creative choices, actually. Considering how curious a choice of subject matter this wholly American story is for a small British production to begin with, every decision thereafter seemed rushed or at least ill-advised. The frequent little science lessons were the most effective and entertaining parts of the show, kind of like how the best part of “The Big Bang Theory” is any actual science you learn amid the drivel. As far as I could tell, the mini lectures and the discussion-based lessons Oppy’s protégés gave us were accurate. Then again I wouldn’t really know. I mean they were talking about the science behind the atom bomb. If you really understood it you would have been there. When they talked about science, the play was at its most natural and interesting. Then again I liked school. We learn about atom composition, atom splitting, all kinds of things. Through these lessons and science-focused conversations, we learn with them that Germans split the atom, letting loose a whole bunch of crap and energy. Our Murkan scientists freak the f out, as you do, and realized holy crap, this could lead to enormous explosions to end all explosions, possibly igniting the earth’s atmosphere, or destroying the earth, or at least countries! Then they realized, holy crap, we really need to get ahead of the Germans on this so we win the war. That was at least one of the accurate points, that they were always racing to get ahead of the Germans, whom we assumed were indeed ahead of us, when in fact they knew pretty much nothing the whole time.
Things pick up from here, as Oppy gathers the finest minds in science (or at least northern California), then the military takes over as it does, and the whole shebang becomes the super secret Manhattan Project.
The military’s involvement/control is obviously a mixed blessing. They get resources, power, land, and uranium, but also lots of bullshit and awfulness. Any red-leaning brains (everyone we met in the beginning) get shipped off to war or to Alaska because Murka was awful afear’d back then of people who may have thought differently. The interference with (or, often, hindrance of) science in the name of democracy is an extremely frustrating and terrifying thing that the military enjoyed doing. Good thing the government lets science be now!
As more progress is made on the bomb, Oppy becomes more and more of a righteous jackass, as the weight of what he’s doing weighs on him. Or doesn’t. We hear a lot of big speeches about how Oppy is lead and ytterbium and iron, stable at the core, and that he carries the responsibility without it breaking him. I guess it was supposed to be an ironic statement of stability? or disaffectedness? Because obviously it broke or at least injured him. But that wasn’t clear. It was more of a disconnect between words and actions than it was irony. Like unintentional disjunction. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Director.)
A lot is said about how Oppy was chosen to lead the project because the military could control or at least predict his behavior. As they wanted, he broke off contact with his commie brother for a long time, he turned friends in to the inquisitors, he shipped off some of his best students to war and refused to help them when they returned. He got real jerky like. I mean, if you were spending the prime of your life devoted to ending others’ lives, you’d prob go dark like Emma’s doing right now on “Once Upon A Time” (best show ever??). but the repeated thesis that he was unbreakable (they alive, dammit!) and resilient came across more incorrect than poignant.
At least Oppy was played by a decent actor, John Heffernan. I thought he was pretty good and then when I recognized him from the new BBC series “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” (which I was lucky enough to see a sneak preview of recently because I’m so important in the London entertainment scene) my thoughts were confirmed because only the best people are in that show. But there was a lot of not-so-decent acting on display here. I have issues with mainstem West End shows lately, so this (it’s like an off-West End production) had more. Everyone seemed a slight notch below where they should have been, especially with their American accents. Say your freaking r’s! And every time anyone said the word ‘sir’ but with another word coming after it, it became ‘suh’ and just ugh come on. Also no one could say ‘apparently’ without it getting super loose in the vowels when in American the vowels need to be constricted. I feel like dialect coaches are not valued anymore.
Everything just seemed a little jumbled, likely due to direction. Funnily enough, at the beginning, I despised Oppy’s girlfriend Jean and his friend’s wife Charlotte with the weird New England WASP country club/faux Katherine Hepburn accent. But by the end, these two actresses, Catherine Steadman and Sandy Foster, were my favorites. I don’t know if they got better with more meaty scenes, if I got nicer, or if it was just the power of comparison working in their favor.
One person I did not like was Oppy’s wife Kitty, played by Thomasin Rand. Maybe because that name is ludicrous, but I couldn’t get a handle on her. I don’t know if you’re supposed to hate her of if you’re supposed to feel bad for her because her husband is so preoccupied and she’s always (always) pregnant (and drinking to the point of alcoholism and smoking like a chimney throughout), but I didn’t. Or maybe her hatefulness comes from her husband’s stated lack of ability to connect or form real bonds and she’s like I left that foppish but super polite British guy for this? (And yes we see the very awkward courtship between Oppy and Kitty as they have an affair, get pregnant, and then ask said British guy for a divorce. He, by the way, had the funniest accent in the whole play, which was odd because he’s the only one who gets to be his real nationality. It was like an American doing an over-the-top British accent but the actor was really British, so I loved it. I hope it was on purpose.)
Or maybe it’s because her husband may have been in love with another woman the whole time. His earlier love, Jean, was clearly always special to him and their deep connection seemed to have persisted until her unfortunate suicide. She was unable to deal with her chemically unbalanced mind and the FBI agents tapping her phone and sitting outside her house all day and night because of her political views and ties to Oppy. It was all very upsetting and tragic. After her death, we get more reason to despise Oppy and Kitty as they agree that suicide is extremely self-centered and that Jean was super selfish for killing herself. At least they agreed on something? I wonder how accurate this portrayal was, because that’s a big black mark to paint on a person’s character. Do not like.
I wonder how accurate all of it was, actually. If all of Oppy’s contacts were under government surveillance for their political views, if the general in charge was really somehow everywhere all the time and in every important science discussion, if the captain on the project talked in an exaggerated American accent like he was just pulled from the set of “A Few Good Men”, if one of Oppy’s protégés apparently learned his American accent from the aforementioned “Big Bang Theory” (he sounded exactly like Sheldon and was my fave part). One of my favorite characters was Edward Teller, the Hungarian scientist who created the hydrogen bomb, or ‘super’. In the show, he was pushing Oppy to focus on the super during WW2, which seemed early but was apparently accurate, despite no real work being done on it until after the war. Ben Allen, the actor playing Teller, was pretty funny at times and made Teller one of the most sympathetic characters onstage, which I’m not sure was the intent given that Teller in real life was kind of a lunatic. So I’m told, I don’t know.
The first act had a lot of good learning and commies and New Mexico and more commies and excitement and stuff. The second act, hoo boy, it kind of fell apart in ways you could not imagine. First of all, at 1.5 hours each act, the play was way too long for what they did with the time. Do shows not have editors anymore? Act II could easily be 30-40 minutes shorter. Here’s what they should do: First, cut the kid. When we are supposed to assume they’ve dropped the first bomb, a child climbs out of the sunroof of the bomb, which is on stage, and he GIVES A MONOLOGUE. A kid that we have not met before, just this random punk kid with THE WORST American accent who has a few ridiculously pretentious paragraphs to recite about life and death and ephemerality maybe and who knows what and of course he messed up a line. He had literally one job. CUT THAT. It was nonsense and it brought the show to a screeching halt and not only added nothing but significantly detracted from the impact. I almost screamed for them to get the hook.
Next, cut the really freaky deaky and out of place bongo-drum circle and drug-induced drunken rave that followed the first test run of the bomb that occurred UNDER THE BOMB ACTING AS A DISCO BALL. I kid you not. I’m sure this wackadoo scene may have worked in some incarnation of this play, but it was not the one I saw. You can’t have a straight serious play and then throw in one super trippy conceptual scene for shits and giggles. It was completely weird with every character giving mini pretentious monologues about, well, life and death and ephemerality and who knows what while the rest of the cast was waving their arms in prayer to the gods of explosions in the fire and doing tribal chants like they were in a goddamn regional production of “Hair” while on acid. For like 10 minutes, sandwiched between serious science and black & white scenes, we uncomfortably watched this rave while the actors said lines like “The sun shone brightly like a diamond.” Well that might be Rhianna but you get my point. Omg.
Then, cut the next false ending of big grand speeches (yes there are more) that are terribly written and unnatural in Oppy and Bob’s classroom. I REALLY didn’t need to hear that bit about the horse Bob saw in Hiroshima after the bomb dropped. It was really graphic and disturbing but without the slightest need for it. I really didn’t appreciate that. So many sentences in this back half of Act II no one would ever say in real life, like overly wordy high school English essay kind of writing, when you think you sound smart but it actually makes you sound dumber.
I was thinking, such an important story should have been done better. But, then I thought, wait, is it such an important story? It is necessary to know the guy who built the atomic bomb and what not, but is this section of his life story necessary? Do we need to know he was kind of a jerk and had shitty friends and was a shitty friend and suffered a lot? And if so, why? His brilliant mind helped us do massacring of a newfangled variety, which the world is thankful for in a grotesque way, but was he necessary? Even his wife asks the general at some point why they didn’t pick Einstein or another great scientist who could have done it. The answer in this show is that the leader of this project needed this project to be his career highlight, and the other big name scientists already had other significant achievements in their careers. Cool. A more interesting story would have continued to the government’s turning on him after the war and their awful investigation into his political views, kind of like how the British government turned on Alan Turing after the war after he freaking saved their lives those ungrateful ignorant assholes. God knows in three hours would could have covered all of that. But we didn’t really get to it, probably because of all the unnecessary speechifying. So there were some really interesting choices made in this play. I’m not sure they worked, but despite all the weirdness it was still pretty good. I just wish they had hired an editor.
AUDIENCE: CONGRATULATIONS, Oppenheimer audience! This was the first time in many years that I did not see a cell phone being used during the show. I mean, that is pretty remarkable. However, there was this awful young couple behind me who talked the entire time. And I mean the entire time. I regret not saying something at intermission but I feared them cutting my hair during Act II or something. I did give them the good old death stare a few times though. I am proud of that.
Things pick up from here, as Oppy gathers the finest minds in science (or at least northern California), then the military takes over as it does, and the whole shebang becomes the super secret Manhattan Project.
The military’s involvement/control is obviously a mixed blessing. They get resources, power, land, and uranium, but also lots of bullshit and awfulness. Any red-leaning brains (everyone we met in the beginning) get shipped off to war or to Alaska because Murka was awful afear’d back then of people who may have thought differently. The interference with (or, often, hindrance of) science in the name of democracy is an extremely frustrating and terrifying thing that the military enjoyed doing. Good thing the government lets science be now!
As more progress is made on the bomb, Oppy becomes more and more of a righteous jackass, as the weight of what he’s doing weighs on him. Or doesn’t. We hear a lot of big speeches about how Oppy is lead and ytterbium and iron, stable at the core, and that he carries the responsibility without it breaking him. I guess it was supposed to be an ironic statement of stability? or disaffectedness? Because obviously it broke or at least injured him. But that wasn’t clear. It was more of a disconnect between words and actions than it was irony. Like unintentional disjunction. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Director.)
A lot is said about how Oppy was chosen to lead the project because the military could control or at least predict his behavior. As they wanted, he broke off contact with his commie brother for a long time, he turned friends in to the inquisitors, he shipped off some of his best students to war and refused to help them when they returned. He got real jerky like. I mean, if you were spending the prime of your life devoted to ending others’ lives, you’d prob go dark like Emma’s doing right now on “Once Upon A Time” (best show ever??). but the repeated thesis that he was unbreakable (they alive, dammit!) and resilient came across more incorrect than poignant.
At least Oppy was played by a decent actor, John Heffernan. I thought he was pretty good and then when I recognized him from the new BBC series “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” (which I was lucky enough to see a sneak preview of recently because I’m so important in the London entertainment scene) my thoughts were confirmed because only the best people are in that show. But there was a lot of not-so-decent acting on display here. I have issues with mainstem West End shows lately, so this (it’s like an off-West End production) had more. Everyone seemed a slight notch below where they should have been, especially with their American accents. Say your freaking r’s! And every time anyone said the word ‘sir’ but with another word coming after it, it became ‘suh’ and just ugh come on. Also no one could say ‘apparently’ without it getting super loose in the vowels when in American the vowels need to be constricted. I feel like dialect coaches are not valued anymore.
Everything just seemed a little jumbled, likely due to direction. Funnily enough, at the beginning, I despised Oppy’s girlfriend Jean and his friend’s wife Charlotte with the weird New England WASP country club/faux Katherine Hepburn accent. But by the end, these two actresses, Catherine Steadman and Sandy Foster, were my favorites. I don’t know if they got better with more meaty scenes, if I got nicer, or if it was just the power of comparison working in their favor.
One person I did not like was Oppy’s wife Kitty, played by Thomasin Rand. Maybe because that name is ludicrous, but I couldn’t get a handle on her. I don’t know if you’re supposed to hate her of if you’re supposed to feel bad for her because her husband is so preoccupied and she’s always (always) pregnant (and drinking to the point of alcoholism and smoking like a chimney throughout), but I didn’t. Or maybe her hatefulness comes from her husband’s stated lack of ability to connect or form real bonds and she’s like I left that foppish but super polite British guy for this? (And yes we see the very awkward courtship between Oppy and Kitty as they have an affair, get pregnant, and then ask said British guy for a divorce. He, by the way, had the funniest accent in the whole play, which was odd because he’s the only one who gets to be his real nationality. It was like an American doing an over-the-top British accent but the actor was really British, so I loved it. I hope it was on purpose.)
Or maybe it’s because her husband may have been in love with another woman the whole time. His earlier love, Jean, was clearly always special to him and their deep connection seemed to have persisted until her unfortunate suicide. She was unable to deal with her chemically unbalanced mind and the FBI agents tapping her phone and sitting outside her house all day and night because of her political views and ties to Oppy. It was all very upsetting and tragic. After her death, we get more reason to despise Oppy and Kitty as they agree that suicide is extremely self-centered and that Jean was super selfish for killing herself. At least they agreed on something? I wonder how accurate this portrayal was, because that’s a big black mark to paint on a person’s character. Do not like.
I wonder how accurate all of it was, actually. If all of Oppy’s contacts were under government surveillance for their political views, if the general in charge was really somehow everywhere all the time and in every important science discussion, if the captain on the project talked in an exaggerated American accent like he was just pulled from the set of “A Few Good Men”, if one of Oppy’s protégés apparently learned his American accent from the aforementioned “Big Bang Theory” (he sounded exactly like Sheldon and was my fave part). One of my favorite characters was Edward Teller, the Hungarian scientist who created the hydrogen bomb, or ‘super’. In the show, he was pushing Oppy to focus on the super during WW2, which seemed early but was apparently accurate, despite no real work being done on it until after the war. Ben Allen, the actor playing Teller, was pretty funny at times and made Teller one of the most sympathetic characters onstage, which I’m not sure was the intent given that Teller in real life was kind of a lunatic. So I’m told, I don’t know.
The first act had a lot of good learning and commies and New Mexico and more commies and excitement and stuff. The second act, hoo boy, it kind of fell apart in ways you could not imagine. First of all, at 1.5 hours each act, the play was way too long for what they did with the time. Do shows not have editors anymore? Act II could easily be 30-40 minutes shorter. Here’s what they should do: First, cut the kid. When we are supposed to assume they’ve dropped the first bomb, a child climbs out of the sunroof of the bomb, which is on stage, and he GIVES A MONOLOGUE. A kid that we have not met before, just this random punk kid with THE WORST American accent who has a few ridiculously pretentious paragraphs to recite about life and death and ephemerality maybe and who knows what and of course he messed up a line. He had literally one job. CUT THAT. It was nonsense and it brought the show to a screeching halt and not only added nothing but significantly detracted from the impact. I almost screamed for them to get the hook.
Next, cut the really freaky deaky and out of place bongo-drum circle and drug-induced drunken rave that followed the first test run of the bomb that occurred UNDER THE BOMB ACTING AS A DISCO BALL. I kid you not. I’m sure this wackadoo scene may have worked in some incarnation of this play, but it was not the one I saw. You can’t have a straight serious play and then throw in one super trippy conceptual scene for shits and giggles. It was completely weird with every character giving mini pretentious monologues about, well, life and death and ephemerality and who knows what while the rest of the cast was waving their arms in prayer to the gods of explosions in the fire and doing tribal chants like they were in a goddamn regional production of “Hair” while on acid. For like 10 minutes, sandwiched between serious science and black & white scenes, we uncomfortably watched this rave while the actors said lines like “The sun shone brightly like a diamond.” Well that might be Rhianna but you get my point. Omg.
Then, cut the next false ending of big grand speeches (yes there are more) that are terribly written and unnatural in Oppy and Bob’s classroom. I REALLY didn’t need to hear that bit about the horse Bob saw in Hiroshima after the bomb dropped. It was really graphic and disturbing but without the slightest need for it. I really didn’t appreciate that. So many sentences in this back half of Act II no one would ever say in real life, like overly wordy high school English essay kind of writing, when you think you sound smart but it actually makes you sound dumber.
I was thinking, such an important story should have been done better. But, then I thought, wait, is it such an important story? It is necessary to know the guy who built the atomic bomb and what not, but is this section of his life story necessary? Do we need to know he was kind of a jerk and had shitty friends and was a shitty friend and suffered a lot? And if so, why? His brilliant mind helped us do massacring of a newfangled variety, which the world is thankful for in a grotesque way, but was he necessary? Even his wife asks the general at some point why they didn’t pick Einstein or another great scientist who could have done it. The answer in this show is that the leader of this project needed this project to be his career highlight, and the other big name scientists already had other significant achievements in their careers. Cool. A more interesting story would have continued to the government’s turning on him after the war and their awful investigation into his political views, kind of like how the British government turned on Alan Turing after the war after he freaking saved their lives those ungrateful ignorant assholes. God knows in three hours would could have covered all of that. But we didn’t really get to it, probably because of all the unnecessary speechifying. So there were some really interesting choices made in this play. I’m not sure they worked, but despite all the weirdness it was still pretty good. I just wish they had hired an editor.
AUDIENCE: CONGRATULATIONS, Oppenheimer audience! This was the first time in many years that I did not see a cell phone being used during the show. I mean, that is pretty remarkable. However, there was this awful young couple behind me who talked the entire time. And I mean the entire time. I regret not saying something at intermission but I feared them cutting my hair during Act II or something. I did give them the good old death stare a few times though. I am proud of that.
A Taste of Honey at Trafalgar Studios: Slice of Really, Really, Really Crappy Life
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is A Taste of Honey, currently playing at London’s Trafalgar Studios until February 29…which is a thing this year!
Okay not to be like controversial but this play is the reason I help people get abortions. WOOF. In A Taste of Honey, Shelagh Delaney’s 1958 that she famously wrote when she was 19, a mother and daughter in the north west of England are down on their luck and also are the most annoying people ever. This interpersonal drama throws a bunch of ideas at the stage – classism, homosexuality, interracial couples, teen pregnancy. Unfortunately, not much sticks, so there’s only a dusting of various would-be interesting topics and the only real story seems to be, at least to me, these people suck and it’s sad but they suck. It’s a ‘slice of life’ drama but reminded me too much of Phoebe’s take on a certain classic (see below). Strong performances and a solid production can’t completely fix the insufficiencies in this play, although it helps to remember it’s hella old.
Okay the ‘real story’ is that there’s a bad mother who had a child she probably didn’t want and definitely didn’t know what to do with and now her child has a child she probably doesn’t want and definitely doesn’t know what to do with. One thing that it has going for it is, despite being written 60 years ago, it still feels relevant, since sad awful people with sad lives still abound and enjoy making everyone else as sad and awful as they are. In A Taste of Honey, Helen, the mother, is a wild woman who enjoys finding men to sleep with and drinking, oh my so much drinking, didn’t she hear about Dry January, and she does not enjoy having a teenage daughter who cramps her style. The teenage daughter, Jo, enjoys yelling at her mother for rundown lodgings and abandoning her to have flings with gross ass men (valid), as well has skipping school and having her own thang with a black sailor…and of course, getting pregnant. Instead of CALLING ME FOR HELP, Jo fulfills the whole predestined full-circle thing that Amy Sherman Palladino wanted to achieve with the end of Gilmore Girls but didn’t, and becomes yet another young woman with a baby determining the rest of her life, just like her mother, and the cycle of being stuck in a such a way continues. It’s a powerful subject matter, for sure, but it’s presented as merely depressing and sad. It does show somewhat that they are victims of circumstances, but they also aren’t good people.
The performances are pretty good, some great. Durone Stokes’ Jimmie the sailor boy is wonderful, a strong performer who somehow makes the guy who impregnates a teenage girl and then peaces out one of the more likable characters on the stage. Jodie Prenger as Helen starts off with a bang as they’ve incorporated musical numbers into the show, and damn she can fill a house with that powerful voice. It helps to be impressed with her singing before you want to scream at her (character). She is a bad bad mother. I’ve just binge-watched Spinning Out (please talk to me about it if you have, oh my god that ending) and it’s full of everyone calling January Jones a bad mother (which like, we knew, did you not watch Mad Men) but WOOF, she’s a saint compared to Helen. Prenger’s performance is strong, yet Helen is such an unlikable character that you can’t help but despise her, pity her a little for her circumstances, sure, but still despise her. Same for Jo (Gemma Dobson), whose youth and ignorance helps a little but she still sucks, especially in her treatment and dismissal of gay new best friend Geoff (a strong Stuart Thompson), who only ever tried to help and asked only for friendship in return and she was such a c word to him and she let her mother be the queen of all c words to him. Geoff was the only really decent person in the show and he was treated like dirt so like what am I supposed to learn except that I’m right in hating most people.
So my gripes are mostly with the play, which I guess is excused by its age and its being purposefully about people who suck and how they suffer systemically, yes, but also how they personally are not good. Regarding this production, my gripe is mainly the partial musicalization it underwent: If you are going make it musical (not A Musical but musical) and have an onstage band, then be consistent. The first act had some rousing numbers (that Prenger though) and used music well, but the second act had Geoff sing “Nature Boy” (with UGH annoying audience members whispering to their friends ‘OMG THE MOULIN ROUGE SONG’ like YEAH WE KNOW, THE TIME KNIFE, YOU DON’T HAVE TO SAY IT RIGHT NOW) and maybe one reprise but nothing else. The second act also dragged, so the lack of music to help out was obvious, so much so that the onstage musicians looked suuuuper bored despite all their effort not to, and I didn’t envy their having to sit through that dull second act every day with little to do.
Despite all my grievances, the heaviness of the play hit me where the characters and story didn’t. There’s something in there that sticks with you, a sadness about these people and subsequently all sad people like them. If you like wallowing in hopelessness about humanity, go nuts.
INFORMATION
The show runs 2 ½ hours with an interval. It’s playing in Trafalgar Studios Studio One until February 29. Trafalgar Studios is always an annoying theatre because if you are seated above row G, there’s nooowhere to wait/mill around, just one way too narrow hallway with the upstairs bathrooms, also way too narrow and small. If you can sit in the front 5-6 rows, it’s much better because your bathroom is through the bar, where you might actually grab a foot of space to yourself.
There is smoking. One day someone might successfully defend the use of smoking in the theatre but that day has not come yet.
