The Dumb Waiter at the Old Vic: I Try Pinter Again!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the recent livestream of The Dumb Waiter from The Old Vic’s In Camera series.
Man, I feel like over the years I have seen every Pinter play (and piece of Mahler’s) and every time I’m like “…yeah okay.” Like I GET IT (do I?) he’s a genius and they’re all classics (really?) but it’s just…not my thing. The Dumb Waiter reinforced my whole ‘I mean sure’ vibe about Pinter.
The Dumb Waiter is widely considered one of Harry’s best shortypops, and I did appreciate that it was only about an hour long. The four-hander (that’s right) stars the very fine duo of Daniel Mays and Daniel Thewlis (who we enjoyed in Harry Potter and the Dude who Turns into a Werewolf) as two apparent hit men who wait in a prison cell-like room for instructions on their next target. I’m not the biggest fan of hit men, so at the start it’s an uphill battle for me to care about anything besides wondering if someone else in their universe could turn them in without using or glorifying the role of cops.
Instead of that, we had these two jackwagons sitting, reading the paper out loud, pacing, &c. And then they hear something in the wall and it’s a working dumbwaiter! Like for moving food between floors! Fun! Houses should have these! They start receiving messages – an envelope under the door, and then an order through the dumbwaiter. They’re like ‘well we don’t have any of these items’ so naturally they send back up whatever snacks they had on them. LIKE, WHY. I guess this humorous turn is kind of funny but the nonsense of it felt inconsistent. The men keep communicating with an unseen someone at the other end of the dumbwaiter, without really knowing who it is or what’s going on. Who is giving the instructions? Where are these messages coming from? These and more question will not be answered and will stand in for deep meaning!
I guess the whole twisty point of what, not knowing who you can trust? the destructiveness of power? everyone suffering under an unjust system? could have worth, but it had the emotional impact of a faux-motivational poster without supporting material helping any maxim feel earned. It kind of felt like Pinter trying to be Beckett. A loose plotline, slow pacing. a bit convoluted. As ever, I feel like Pinter plays are best appreciated by people who say ‘wow it really makes you think’ in a way that lets you know they have no idea what they are thinking.
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The second important thing that let me unhunch my shoulders just a tad was that Giles Terera, as Aaron Burr, made clear right off the bat that he has the best enunciation I ever heard. It’s so clear and perfect without sounding forced and without sacrificing any of the musicality. I worried before about whether the 2 or 3 people who don’t know all the words would be able to follow what’s going on, but luckily Giles’s impeccable diction made his rapping as clear as day. True, it also helps that many parts of the show are an almost-unobservable touch slower than they are in the USA, but while this sucks, it’s not a huge deal if it helps the slower british brains stay with it. (Get it that’s a joke because they’re brains aren’t slower so like wtf (that’s a why not a what) is this necessary?)
Speaking of British brains, one of the most enjoyable aspects of this production was simply noticing what parts got more laughs, or less response, than lines in New York. Like, even though everyone absolutely adores King George, the audience responded even more to the line “When you’re gone, I’ll go mad” because they were like “oh how positively brillliant, he does indeed go mad! huhhah!” And there was a definite murmur of recognition when Alexander sings “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day”, because everyone in England knows every line of Shakespeare, apparently, and they did NOT need for him to clarify in the next line that he was talking about Macbeth. These people knew.
So anyway, back to the start, we know that Burr is going to be fantastic from the start, or at least we know he will be understandable. What about the rest? The meeting of the three friends – Hercules Mulligan, Lafayette, and John Laurens – is one of my favorite parts, and all three were pretty strong in that first scene. As John Laurens, Cleve September (I know it’s like a Tori Amos or Fiona Apple song, an erma name) looks scarily similar to the original cast’s Anthony Ramos, and I really don’t think that’s just me being racist. He really gave off the same vibe and had such a similar face that I was like yesss this is good. He did a great job as Laurens and then in the second act as Phillip. As usual, the sight of a grown ass man playing a nine-year-old boy was lovably hysterical as always, and then of course heartbreaking. He was solid the whole show. As for the second and most joyful member of the gang, Lafayette had to go in a completely different direction from the og cast, and rightly so, because no one can ever touch Daveed Diggs. He was the breakout star from the show and created such an iconic performance that to try to emulate it would be foolish. Instead, Jason Pennycooke gave Lafayette a whole new vibe. First of all I think he is half the size of Daveed, which gives him a little bit of an impish spirit, which worked. He uses his size well and creates this mischievous sort of rascal in both Lafayette and Jefferson (of course in different ways). His French accent was great, probably because all British people can speak French, and his physicality added a lot of fun to the portrayal. It helps that he is a professional choreographer too, so he can really effectively use movement to his advantage. His “What’d I Miss” was hilarious, mostly because of his hysterical dancing, even if I didn’t really buy his Jefferson as the villain. Not that he’s the villain, but he’s put forward as such so we can love Alexander. Here, it was much clearer that Alexander was ruining stuff for himself.
As for Hercules Mulligan (the part I would be the best at except for I’m a white and a girl), this brings up the thing that makes me maddest about this production, the theatre, whatever cotton-headed ninny muggins are running this thing up in here. I am furious. Hercules and Madison are played by Tarinn Callender, who I’m looking at in the programme and this isn’t the guy we saw. At our performance, Hercules/Madison was played by Aaron Lee Lambert. Now, yeah, I didn’t know he was the understudy, he was great. Lambert really was a fantastic Mulligan and aside from resembling the actor playing George Washington a little too much, which caused confusion, I was fully on board with him. So I’m angry (furious, really) because nowhere in the entire theatre was any mention of Lambert made. On Broadway, you have to announce an understudy in two of three ways: by a slip in the playbill, by a posting at the box office/entrance of the theatre, and/or by making an announcement after the lights go down. There was nothing here – no slips in anyone’s programmes, no announcement made, no sign or posting of any sort anywhere in the theatre. Do you know how I found out? From Lambert’s personal twitter account. The show’s official twitter didn’t even say anything! This is not okay, guys. This is unacceptable for a professional theatre production. This guy did an amazing job, and yet he doesn’t get to have anyone in the audience recognize his efforts? Not even know or hear his name? Understudies deserve acclaim too! It’s so unfair to him to not have anyone even know that it was him up there. At least Kathy Seldon was going to get a line in the credits! I asked the show’s twitter about it but they didn’t respond because they are too busy being terrible.
At least that is the fault of minor players, people running the theatre or box office and doing a shit job of it. At least the production itself is wonderful and, apparently, their bench runs deep.
Now where was I. Oh okay, we met the boys, next we meet the girls – the Schuyler Sisters! I heard the (super annoying) girls behind me go ‘this one is my favorite!!!’ and although I wished ill upon them for talking, they were right. This number is super fun, even if the talent feels the slightest bit less exciting than you hope. My favorite part was seriously Christine Allado’s “and Peggy”, because even with that one-second line, she made it her own and she made it funny. Rachel John’s Angelica was pretty strong, but there was a spark missing. And Rachelle Ann Go’s Eliza was the weakest part of the production for me. She’s an incredible vocalist but her enunciation was the exact opposite of Giles’s, and her energy just seemed weirdly off. This song should be pure thrilling fun and it was just like normal levels of fun.
So yeah, I am really nitpicking here, because to most people everything here would look absolutely perfect. And it was one of the best productions I’ve seen in London. But when you can cast anyone in the entire world for these roles, I expect them to be the best in the world. Luckily, things were looking up in Duloc with the introduction of Michael Jibson and Obioma Ugoala. Jibson came on as King George III, and the audience was in stitches from the moment he took his first step. I usually consider George’s three songs very funny, but more like palate cleansers, to take a breath before the next incredible song comes up. But in this production, his songs were a highlight. Equally so for Ugoala’s George Washington (I guess the Georges were the standouts in this show!). Because of Daveed Diggs and how perfect his casting was, usually Lafayette/Jefferson outshines the rest of the supporting men. But here, I thought Washington prevailed as the most impressive supporting male character. Against all odds, I would award him the supporting actor Olivier for his work here. It’s not that he’s better than Chris Jackson, or that his voice is as great (it is great though), it’s that the whole dynamic of the group is changed here, so that Washington is the one who stood out. At least to me. His gravelly voice has this imposing, commanding essence to it that Washington needs to establish his dominance over the others, and it worked so well. Yay for greatness!
So you’re probably like hellooooo what’s this show called, you haven’t even talked about Alexander yet! I know. Jamael Westman was very strong as Ham, but I’m still conflicted. His first big moment centers around how he’s ‘young, scrappy, and hungry’, but Jamael’s Alexander didn’t seem that at all. He seemed very decisive, very mature, contained, sure of himself. It was a completely different take (which you really have to do when originating the role in a new production) and definitely valid, but I don’t know if it was my favorite move. The sparkle wasn’t there, the drive to do anything to be successful and to work as hard as possible, the tendency to make enemies sometimes. The scrappiness. Instead, it seemed like he didn’t even have to try, that his intelligence just came to him, that his endless words poured out of him without any effort. I’m sure that’s a compelling take for some, but I missed that roguish spirit, the one driven by impulse and guts. The one that made it more believable that he had a deep love for Angelica and the one that led to his affair. As for the former, Rachel’s performance of ‘Satisfied’ more than made up for any other issues I had with her performance. Sure I didn’t really see her love for Alexander in the rest of the show, but that number was sheer perfection. As for the latter, Christine did a great job with ‘Say No To This’, but it seemed like a lesser role than it has in the past. I think what wins that song is the money note, and it wasn’t as exhilarating as it should have been.
Another single song that lifted my overall impression of a performer was Rachelle’s ‘Burn’. She didn’t really do it for me, dawg, not for me, in this show but her performance of ‘Burn’ was killer. I wish that intensity and certainty of character was present in other scenes. Honestly, more than anything, this production made me appreciate Phillipa Soo. She did so much to create a full-bodied, completely realized depiction of Eliza, and it made it seem like Eliza was a bigger role than it actually is, which is why she was nominated in the lead actress category instead of featured, like many thought she should have been. It’s because of what she did with the role, elevating it from how it’s written. Rachelle is great, she really is, but Eliza seemed much more like a featured role. Considering how good her ‘Burn’ was, I think she will only improve – as everyone will – the longer they live with these characters. I am super excited to see them in a few months and see how far they go. I know I go on and on about how perfect the original cast was (they were though), but people forget that before Broadway they had at least a full year living with their characters and developing every inch of the portrayals at the Public and in rehearsals between productions. The London cast started previews at like the end of November. That’s less than two months. I really think it’s just because they are still new, and all the kinks will be worked out and all the weaknesses will be gone soon. (Why they didn’t have a longer rehearsal period though is beyond me (it’s not, it’s because they’d make the same extraordinary amounts of money regardless.))
But aside from the people who need more time, the person I’m most excited to see again is Giles as Burr. He really was the best part of this production. His wide-eyed calculating yet decorous nature is based in calm tension, and you are just waiting for that flame to erupt. It happens so slowly and so surely. I think his ‘Wait For It’ will improve with the slow-burning fire of emotion that it needs, but his showstopper ‘The Room Where it Happens’ was incredible. Oh man, I was so in.
I’m not really talking about the actual show because I doubt anyone reading this is unfamiliar with it. Also you can read my first review from a few years ago here, which talks more about the actual story and score. But there were three changes to the libretto, at least three that I noticed. First, in “Take a Break”, after Eliza says “Angelica tell this man, John Adams spends the summer with his family”, instead of saying “Angelica tell my wife, John Adams doesn’t have a real job anyway”, they changed it to “Angelica tell my wife, vice-president is not a real job anyway.” A minor detail that does make a lot of sense, considering Brits don’t know who John Adams was and so wouldn’t know that his job was vice president and that that’s the job that Alexander is mocking. But when most of the audience knows the words and most have since learned about the parts they didn’t understand, I think it is more jarring than helpful. Similarly with the other two changes: In ‘The Room Where it Happens’, when Madison says “Well I propose the Potomac”, they changed it to a more generic line that I don’t remember exactly but there’s no mention of Potomac. And, at the end, before the duel, Burr said “Then stand, Alexander. Jersey, dawn” instead of “Weehawken, dawn.” Now, with both of these location name changes, they make a ton of sense on paper because Brits don’t know Weehawken or the Potomac. But it’s weird because most people have learned what Weehawken and the Potomac are since listening to the album. After the show, all I heard leaving the building was people with British accents talking about the changes: “did you notice they didn’t see Weekhawken!” and things like that. Overall it’s not a big deal, and it doesn’t really affect anything, but when you have literally the most famous show and score ever, I don’t think catering to the local land’s knowledge is necessary. When I don’t understand things about British history in the many, many such shows to play in the USA, I either look them up afterwards or it just doesn’t matter for my enjoyment of the show, you know?
Obviously these are incredibly minor quibbles. These changes are slight; the cast will improve with time, and the ensemble’s dancing with get tighter. Oh yeah, at times the choreography felt a tiny bit sloppy, but again that’s because of the very short time they’ve been working on this so far. It will get better and tighter, I’m sure. Really, the only thing that I noticed in a slightly negative way that I don’t think can improve, is that the choreography gets too busy in the second act. This has some of my favorite choreography, it really does (especially ‘Yorktown’ and ‘The Room Where it Happens’, but I hate to say that later in the second act, I noticed how busy it remains at all times. It’s like Blanks was operating at 110% every moment and wanted to fill in every second, every nook and cranny with intricate movement. And it’s all gorgeous and intelligent, but sometimes it’s just too much. I never noticed that before.
But it doesn’t matter, nothing I said matters because this is still for sure the best musical, insanely genius with endless great songs where any one of the songs would be any other show’s best song and yet here they all are in one space. This show could be performed by children in a smelly basement and it would still be awesome to watch because the material is so unbelievably strong. I’m being overly critical with this production because that’s all you can criticize, the production, when the material itself is unassailable. And, with all the money in the world behind it, all the power of being the best show in the world attracting the best talent in the world, it should be perfection. It’s not right now, but it’s wonderful and I think very quickly it will progress more and more towards perfection.
INFORMATION
The theatre refurbishment is lovely, if confusing. It’s like a maze and I couldn’t ever remember which bathroom I used but it didn’t matter because there are tons of them. There are two merchandise shops as well, and they have different stuff than in New York! Like a tree ornament! Whee so fun.
I’m not going to let up on their lack of understudy policy so hopefully they will make positive changes in that regard.
STAGE DOOR
It was forking freezing, and they don’t have barricades. People just made a line on the main road, which is crowded because it’s right across from Victoria station! Pretty stupid! They need to get barricades for the fans to stand behind because it’s going to get crazier as the weather gets warmer, and really they need to move it away from the main road because regular people were pushing their way down and they could have endangered our precious actors. A few people came out, which was more than I expected considering it was a matinee and it was so cold, so yay.
London’s “Girl from the North Country”: A Fine Time Despite the Nonsense
As I’ve said hundreds of times, I love going into shows cold, not knowing any spoilers, not knowing the words to all the music yet, just a blank slate ready to be won over. But I may have gone overboard this week because not only did I know nothing about London’s new play “The Girl from North Country”, I knew wrong information. I thought this was about farming life in Ireland. Cue all the laughing-crying emojis because it’s about MINNESOTA. Duluth, specifically. I guess that is easily confused with Dublin? Regardless of my hysterical laughing when the show started and I heard them say ‘Duluth, Minnesota’ (internalized laughing, of course), and despite the awkwardness of this disjointed, rickety show, it’s a nice piece of theatre, enjoyable in spite of itself.
There are two patent examples of large, bad decisions that aren’t compelling. One is the completely annoyingly unnecessary framing device of the narrator. One actor, who plays the town doctor, also narrates the story and gives a lot of details to the audience that we don’t need. Using this needless device shows a lack of faith in the story to present what the author is aiming for. And never once did the narrator’s monologues share anything worthwhile to the story or anything that would not have been better left to the imagination. The play is pretty decent as is, but this device, borne out of a lack of confidence, distracts from the parts of quality.
The second example is the reason why I haven’t used the word ‘musical’ yet, even though everyone else (and the Oliviers) calls this production a musical. To me, it is the very epitome of a play with music, not a musical, because the music does not drive the story-telling. Instead of having the characters sing to each other to further the plot, a play with music uses the songs for their own sake unrelated to the plot, like in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” when Billie Holiday was simply performing at a concert. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing to choose, not at all, but the use of the chosen music seems haphazard. The music should still be well considered and there for a reason, and if the characters in the show are singing, the songs chosen should somewhat reflect on them enough to make sense. Here, the songs sometimes make sense, but often don’t. The one thing I knew going in was that this show uses the music of Bob Dylan. So every so often, the characters will sing a Bob Dylan song, and it will have nothing to do with the plot, but the problem was they often didn’t make sense for the characters or for what the show was ostensibly trying to achieve. I’ll point to specific examples later.
Aside from these missteps (huge as they are), the show is decent, inoffensive and overall pleasant. It tells the story of the Laine family in Duluth, headed by the stern, imposing Nick (Ciaran Hinds (I know)), whose wife Elizabeth (Shirley Henderson) is suffering from a form of dementia that keeps her alternating between having no idea what is going on to having zero filter on her speech and actions. Their son, Gene (Sam Reid), has amounted to nothing and is a piece of a nothing shithead, we see because of how he treats a black man, but I honestly think the writer wants us to feel bad for him for some reason, which um no. Their daughter, Marianne, is a black woman (Sheila Atim) that was left in their inn as a baby, so they decided to raise her as their own. There’s a whole other show to be made just about this relationship and how their town reacted to it, but we strangely don’t get much in the way of racial unease, which is odd because it for sure would have created some. I wonder if the writer wanted us to think highly of all the characters for not calling attention to this, but it just seems unrealistic. I mean come on it’s Minnesota in the 1930s. Or, it’s America at any time. People would have torches.
Marianne is pregnant, and single – she won’t tell anyone who the father is. At one point, she tells someone that she was impregnated by the ghost of the wind of Jesus or something weird like that and I have no idea what they were going for with that. It seemed meant to add a mystical element, but such an element had no business in a straightforward show like this. An old man in town, Mr. Perry (Karl Johnson), has offered to marry Marianne and raise the baby, which seems like a nice offer but he’s super ancient and Marianne is like nah thanks. Unfortunately, her father has no patience for her idealistic decision-making, wanting to marry someone she actually loves and all. Elizabeth, in one of her unfiltered episodes, shares that Mr. Perry once assaulted her when she was young (he’s hella old so he was an older man even when she was young) and no one seems to care, which is the most realistic part of this show. I love that Elizabeth, in all her raw, crude honesty, is often the only voice of reason in the community.
Soon two men arrive to spend the night, a man presenting himself as a reverend but he is really a slimy Bible salesman (Finbar Lynch (I mean can we talk about that name? that’s the real name of the actor. Man alive)), and a former boxer named Joe Scott. Joe for my performance was played by the understudy Emmanuel Kojo, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled because Kojo is one of the West End names I actually remember from several past productions, so lucky me. The men join existing guests Mrs. Neilsen (Debbie Kurup), a hot widow who is sleeping with Nick and maybe loves him even though he’s old and wrinkly and mean; and the Burke family, an older married couple with a grown but developmentally disabled son, Elias (Jack Shalloo). The Burkes have an interesting but ultimately unfulfilled storyline about how the grown son may have killed a woman unintentionally, and how they may be fleeing from the authorities. It sounds a lot worse than it is. Not the crime, the crime is bad, but how this fit into the show. It was random and nuts but it kind of all worked, because we’re learning about all the sad stories of those involved.
And then we have the town doctor (Adam James) who should have remained a doctor instead of moonlighting as a narrator.
The first act is actually quite well done. The chosen Bob Dylan songs, although they don’t really inform the story or characters, seem at least a little bit relevant. And if not, at least the choices are mediocre and not aggressively bad. The twangy Dylan sound of the less famous songs worked with this setting. It helps that I didn’t know 90% of the songs, so for a while everything seemed suitable and interesting. The second act, however, falls apart. They perform songs back to back (to back, I think) apropos of nothing, and you can feel the thing falling off the rails and see that the songs are the desperate attempt to keep it moving. Then, the character of Joe Scott, a really interesting, well performed and mysteriously drawn character, is done a huge disservice by having to sing “Hurricane”. This is not a song that jives well with the small, rural action of the play, a huge contrast to the other songs used, so it is seriously shoehorned in to make it fit, and it was a bad idea. Like I said, Joe is a former boxer, which seemed acceptable in the first act, but having him sing “Hurricane” made me think, wait, did they make up his backstory in order to fit this song? It’s hard to believe otherwise when the writing reveals him to have committed a robbery and be on the run from authorities. This is where they really lost me. Forcing this song into the show and molding the story around it felt so amateur and for all the damage it does to the story, the payoff is exactly nil.
After that, the action seems to happen without compelling reason shoring it up. Truly dramatic things occur, and rarely do they feel earned or warranted. Marianne’s character is poorly drawn, for such a central character, and her decision to leave town without saying goodbye to her family feels unjustified. It’s hinted at (more than hinted at) that Nick might resort to a little murder-suicide and just, like, what? And don’t get me started on the ambiguity of what actually happens to Elias (who has the second best musical performance of the night, but it is very ill-suited to the story).
What keeps the show largely afloat are the performances. Not all – most of the ensemble was obviously focusing on their American accents to the detriment of their acting. This was especially clear in the case of the poor sad Mrs. Neilsen, whose ‘I just came from my elocution class’-style of speaking was inappropriate for this setting. “Oh I will MEETUH you OUTUH-SIDUH,” she said once. She was the female equivalent of Gary Oldman when he guested on “Friends”, spitting all his t’s and popping all his p’s. Then we had other ladies giving full-on Fargo-style accents, dontcha know, because North Dakota is pretty much Minnesota, yah fer sure, so the clash was blatant and upsetting. Why don’t West End shows all have dialect coaches?? But the leading performances by Ciaran Hinds and Shirley Henderson are the compelling parts of this show and what makes it worth seeing. Ciaran, whose name I literally just found out yesterday is not pronounced as written (I’m sorry), as the gruff, well-meaning but wrong-headed patriarch Nick Laine, is so natural and believable. The tinge of his Irish accent works really well actually to convey mid-West America, and even though his character is wrong so often, he’s such an incredible actor that he makes you want to understand why.
The real star turn here is that of Shirley Henderson as Elizabeth Laine. At first, she just kind of sits in her chair and makes faces at the goings-on, and I was thinking ‘she got an Olivier nomination for this?’ However, slowly but surely her performance grows and builds so much that I would honestly think about voting for her over the “Follies” ladies. (Don’t get me started on the fourth nom.) I didn’t know at first that Shirley was that Shirley, the one I know best as Bridget Jones’s brunette friend and as Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter. Yeah, her. She’s fantastic. Her portrayal of a woman with dementia is so honest and uncomfortable and you have fremdschamen watching the whole time and you want to look away because it’s so painful, funny at times but painful, but you can’t because what she is doing is extraordinary. It’s mostly a physical role, peppered by line deliveries that could not be more perfect. She takes these words and chews them up and spits them out at such perfect moments with timing and venom that could be deadly. And then when she breaks into song, my goodness, I had no idea this lady could sing. She has the strongest voice in the whole production (and gets to do most of “Like a Rolling Stone”) and why hasn’t she been in more musical theatre? She could have single-handedly been saving British musical theatre! (Okay they still need someone besides Tim Minchin who can write scores but still.) Her performance is remarkable, how she does so much with so little and makes you invested in this story for her sake.
So clearly there are a lot of things wrong with this show, but in spite of all of that, it’s still enjoyable and a little bit moving, which I think is a testament to the performances, and also the writing. If this play could have been just a play, forgetting the weird Bob Dylan constraints, and if Conor had someone reigning him in and editing this draft, it could have been excellent. As it stands, it’s just fine, but entertaining.
AUDIENCE
Oh the joy – this was one of the best audiences I’ve witnessed in London. I didn’t see ANY phones during the show – and I was sitting in the way way back of the stalls, which usually means all you see is phones. There was a super old lady singing along sometimes and slapping her knees to the music and I shot her death stares but she was so old that that was probably dangerous. The girl next to me was coughing literally the entire first act so I moved for the second so that was fine. Honestly, most of the bad behavior came from the ushers I heard talking in the back and the back of house staff I could hear through the doors! Nonsense! Cameron Mackintosh better get his people under control.
STAGE DOOR
There were only like one or two weirdos there so I didn’t want to stay too long and also be a weirdo. The cast seemed super uninterested in talking to anyone anyway so best to skip this one.
Update: The show, with a new cast, will return to the West End from December 10, 2019 for 8 weeks.