Chichester's Current Production of 'South Pacific' is a Decent Timeby Randi / August 12, 2021It’s a special Theatre Tuesday! because last week’s Theatre Thursday was actually Yom Kippur so we were offline because as this show teaches you Judaism is important and deserves respect!
I’ve been complaining about how Jewishness is treated on London stages for as long as I can remember, and I know some of you are sick of it. Thankfully for you clowns, this week’s show, the new UK production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent at the Menier Chocolate Factory, tells its heart-breaking, full-bodied Jewish tale with respect for its subject matter and the people represented. Not that one show solves an endemic problem, but I cried through the whole thing and not just at the sad parts. At the fact that a Jewish story was being treated lovingly, and with actual Jewish people involved, onstage and offstage, (Joey Tribbiani voice:) IN LONDON! This beautiful production of the Tony-winning Broadway hit is nearly two hours long with no intermission — which as you know means I had to pee horribly for half the show (and true to form I got a UTI in post) — and I still loved it. That’s as much love I can send a show, truly.
Indecent treats a narrowly defined and unassuming subject — the lifespan of a Yiddish play from inception through celebration and on to suppression — on an epic scale. Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance is the (real) work, and we see a troupe of actors (well, various troupes, in various plays-within-plays, don’t think about it too hard too too hard) tell the story of Asch’s writing of the play, the first reading of it, the first production, and onto worldwide fame…and then censorship of it on Broadway, of all places. Asch’s play tells of a young Jewish girl whose father runs a brothel, and the girl falls in love with one of the prostitutes, and the girls’ father gets like, so mad. Likewise, people in the real world were equally displeased, Jews and goys alike. Two women in love! Jewish people treated as complicated living breathing beings and not paragons of perfection! The horror!
God of Vengeance was ahead of its time, but luckily a few people believed in it, recognizing its art and beauty and how tenderly it treated the central love story, and they helped make it happen. (Believing in art is necessary!) People like my man Lemmel (Finbar Lynch), a man who was at the very first reading of the play in someone’s living room, and was with it all the way through its Euro tour, to NYC, and back to Europe just in time to perform it in a ghetto attic in hushed tones. Yeah, this play gets to the Holocaust, and you might be like ‘ugh we get it the Holocaust’ but the Holocaust was a really big deal (“remember that we suffered!”)! Going in, I was most excited to see American queen Alexandra Silber and Molly Osbourne (double Tzeitels!) playing various actresses playing the lovers, and they were as great as I expected, but Lemmel was the one who really grabbed our hearts and broke them. His love for God of Vengeance and for the love story in that play is the real heart of this play. Like I thought the love story in GOV might be the central emotional core of Indecent but it’s really Lemmel’s love for the GOV love story that was the real one all along. The real good place was the friends we made along the way. Finbar was so good, and not just because you know how I feel about small old Jewish men (I don’t think he is Jewish but he is now on the official list of goyim who are allowed to play Jews) who make me sad, like Eli Wallach in The Holiday, oh man. So good. Right at those heartstrings.
Several times during the show, I thought hmm maybe this bit isn’t totally necessary, maybe like 10-15 minutes could be cut, like the Berlin cabaret scene that makes you feel like when you watch R-rated movies with your parents. But this is hundo p one of those shows that upon reflection you realize were masterfully set. Rebecca Taichman’s compassionate and thoughtful direction treats the piece so kindly and with such care that that’s its own piece of art. (And I’m not just saying that because I especially enjoyed all the Yiddish projected on the backdrop, proving you can learn from using Duolingo (I was so proud of how much I could read and understand.)) All the moving parts, all the various characters the actors portray prove to be necessary to show GOV’s trajectory as a parallel to the history of Jews during this time period. They’re all the puzzle pieces necessary to put the story of this underlying play together, and you know like not all puzzle pieces are the dogs’ faces but you still need the ones that make the grass and trees and stuff to make it all complete. Yes I have done one puzzle in the past 20 years and it was of a dog. No I don’t enjoy puzzles.
From the Lodz section onwards, my crying was real bad. The audience was so quiet, and I was so nervous that I would do my choking-hiccupping crying loud enough to disrupt the theatre so I had to do the Joey-thinking-about-Chandler thing and distract myself a little bit and the only thing that I could think of (because it was still relevant subject matter, at least) was the Crazy Ex Girlfriend song I quoted above, ‘Remember that we Suffered”, so while I was crying outwardly at Lemmel my dude, in my head I was going “The sweet and the bitter/Remember that we suffered/Streisand and Hitler/Remember that we suffered/Spielberg and Hitler/Remember that we suffered/Have we mentioned Hitler? I’m just saying that we suffered!” It’s the best song. Anyway. The impact of seeing the words ‘an impossibly long line’ projected again towards the end broke me, absolutely broke me. It was brilliant and powerful writing and also so mean, because I was wearing two masks and it’s really hard to cry with two masks.
I knew from friends who had seen it on Bway that ‘the rain scene’, when you finally get to see what everyone had been talking about the whole time, was the most beautiful and emotional part, but I didn’t even imagine what the context would be. That aspect — who is imagining that scene and why — is something that I will both treasure and be haunted by.
Above all, it was glorious to see (during the high holidays no less) a play about Jewish people and Jewish subject matter actually performed and created by Jewish people. And in London! It’s a 5782 miracle! I hope it’s a sign of permanent change, although the fact that the Guardian review of this play felt it at all appropriate to say ‘hey you know who else is a Jew, Philip Roth!” as a way to shoehorn in yet another message about their view of the Israel conversation (that’s def what they were doing, btw) shows how much work this place still has to do.
But I digress, like the Guardian writer. This play will stick with me, and I’m sure many other audience members, as a paradigm of caring, protected, heartfelt, authentic theatre-making. I’m so grateful that this was well done, so grateful to the people involved for giving Jews one little corner of respite in a year filled with disrespect and other shit.
INFORMATION
Indecent plays at the Menier Chocolate Factory (not a chocolate factory) until November 27. I recommend you get tickets and if you’d like to get me one too I would go again (the NHS loves giving me antibx).
The Menier asks audience members to wear masks, but like every other theatre, it doesn’t have a mandate. So other people don’t have wear one and many won’t, although this crowd was better about it than at any other theatre we’ve been to recently.
Toilets are down the stairs in the restaurant part of the cafe, so if you will have to run at the end, you want to sit near the aisles, because the rows are suuuuper long, all the way across the theatre jawns.
I don’t know if any of the cast are stage-dooring because I didn’t try, because we are in a pandemic.
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‘Night, Mother at the Hampstead A Strong Production of a Provocative Play, + TRIGGER WARNINGS
Jed! It’s a play about suicide Jed!
(Yes, sorry, this is my Stockard impression, based on her West Wing persona, Jed!)
Marsha Norman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama ‘Night, Mother (ahh ahhh ahhhhh fighter of the Day Mother ahh ahhh ahhhhh) feels like it’s happening in real-time. Now playing at London’s Hampstead Theatre, the four-hander (remember) manages to create 80 minutes of straight intensity, like a tightrope of drama created by the question posed in the beginning that you wait until the very end to have answered: Is she actually going to kill herself?
The ‘she’ in question is Jessie (Rebecca Night), the adult daughter of Thelma (Stockard Channing (yes really) (she’s gonna be big you heard it here folks))(Jed! I’m gonna be in ‘Night, Mother, Jed!), who opens the action by asking her mother for old towels or plastic sheets for keeping a coming mess in check before announcing the type of mess she intends to make by the end of the night. Her mother, obviously, thinks she must be joking or exaggerating at first, but Jessie’s calm, measured, almost detached and monotone demeanor shows otherwise. She has been deliberating for a while and she has long since decided: she will commit suicide tonight.
True confession, while I have long been familiar with the existence of ‘Night, Mother, and equally the decades-long rumor of an ‘imminent’ production starring Audra McDonald and Oprah (huge if ever true), I never saw it before. I knew it was ‘about suicide’ but I didn’t know that it was entirely about a specific suicide and waiting to see if it would happen or not. And so I had no idea what the resolution would be, and this ignorance made for a gripping albeit stressful af experience, a waiting game to see which of these women would prevail in getting what they wanted. I thus can’t say whether the play would have as dramatic an effect on people who know how it ends, but the strong performances definitely made the intensity of the drama more harrowing. Stockard really is such a presence, and Rebecca held her own. It was like a subtle tug of war between the two women playing a game with no real winners, with Thelma little by little trying to get through to her daughter but using ideas and concepts that Jessie has long since rejected as being able to be swayed by.
The familiarity of their everyday routine, as Jessie fills all the various candy jars and goes through instructions for the milkman and the garbage collection, provides a kind of alarming contrast to the main subject of their discussion. A lot of their evening has threads of humor, like when Jessie requests a cup of cocoa even though neither of them like it, but the context keeps it all unsettling. The play’s structure takes the emotional family drama and heightens it with this overarching question, so you have the mother-daughter-conflict dynamic, with its familiar and unfamiliar aspects, and it’s put on this crazy other level when so much rides on their conversation, all the little things they say or don’t say having the power to determine what comes next. Everything they say creeps them closer to a final something. As the night wears on and as Thelma has fewer means of delaying Jessie’s plan, the anxiety increases. It’s like a (mostly) calm constant battle between the two about whether Jessie can be overruled, until the very end. Thelma uses what she knows – routine and familiar comforts and topics – to try to get through to her daughter, when these are exactly the things she wants no more of. The ways Thelma tries to make her realize how much life contains reveal how little their lives actually contain, and while for Thelma this is everything, and enough, it isn’t for Jessie.
I don’t know how I feel about what the play is saying, or trying to say. They show someone set on committing suicide who explains matter-of-factly that it is a logical and fine decision, as though it’s not in and of itself the sign of a need for mental help, as though the making of the decision doesn’t necessarily show that the person is not of sound mind (I know I just forked you right up there with double negatives, Jed!). Maybe the whole success of the play is in that strange uneasy confusion, about what shape our remorse is supposed to take, and for which character and why. Overall, you feel bad for everyone, and when you were distracted by the candy jars the provocative framing of the subject sneaks in through their mundane lives.
‘Night, Mother originally premiered in the UK (after Broadway) at the Hampstead in 1985, so it’s nice that this solid new production of such an important play in the canon is here, and with such a star as Stocks McBocks. It would be a great first production of the play for newbies like me. For people who know the show well, I am really interested in knowing whether it’s ever as interesting as the first time.
TRIGGER WARNINGS
The Hampstead, like all good theatres, provides content warnings on their shows. For this one it said simply “The play includes themes of suicide throughout.”
Now, I’ve noticed in recent years that shows’ warnings will include things like loud bangs, fireworks, flashing lights, and gun shots to help prepare audiences. And I am ALL FOR thorough warnings. However, I realize there is a line that many do not want crossed, for when warnings give too much away. When warnings are spoilers.
I have always argued for the balance to be on the side of people who need to be mentally prepared for certain content, and who can then make a more informed decision about whether they can safely consume the content or whether they should avoid it. And I still do believe that, for sure; it will always be more important to help protect someone’s emotional and/or mental state than to keep a show completely spoiler-free. (And theatres like the Hampstead have a great system: On their website, you have to click on a separate page for the content warnings for each play, so that people who have no trauma concerns and don’t want anything close to spoilers will never have to see the warnings if they don’t want to.)
However, for this show, I’m a little stuck on how they would ever do a more complete, and helpful, warning. Hampstead got around it by simply saying ‘themes of suicide’. But if the theatre decided to address the inclusion, or not, of gun shots, then they would be telling us how it ends. Whether or not there is a gun shot in this play, it would be spoiled by whether or not the trigger warning includes gun shots. (A literal trigger warning.) I don’t want to spoil this particular play (even though I’m sure I’m the only person who didn’t know what was going to happen), but my entire experience of this play was the suspense, that tension in not knowing how it would end. If the trigger warning had said “warning; contains gunshots” well, then, the suspense is gone, isn’t it? I’d assume what was going to happen. And that’s too bad. But, if I’m someone who has stressful reactions to gun shots (and I am!) and I wasn’t told that a play had one, then I would be upset at that too. I’m not sure how you could ever give a complete content warning for this play without spoiling the action. It’s an interesting problem to consider, I guess. I really don’t know how to solve it. This might be the first time I’m ending a theatre post by saying I DON’T know exactly what to do to make this experience better!
London’s “Made In Dagenham” Is Super Lame, When It’s Not Super Offensive
The “fun” starts even before the performance starts. Symbolizing the half-assed attempt at zaniness to come, the show curtain reads “Made In Dagenham” in kooky block letters in varying ‘60s flower power prints – as a random maid scrubs the edge of the stage. (I assume this person and/or action will factor in later. You know what happens when you assume!)
The curtain rises – to reveal the title still spelled out as it was! How is this possible! Oh, because they are giant Lucite block letters actually on the stage and in the house set. Big block letters used as random set pieces. Just like next to the main character’s bed and in her kitchen and pantry and stuff. Letters. In future scenes, random ‘A’ and ‘E’ 5-foot blocks will appear on the stage. I would love if someone explained why. My guess is because they wanted to distract us from thinking about how bad this show is.
“Made in Dagenham”, the new London musical inspired by the film of the same name, tells the true story of how female Ford factory workers in Dagenham fought for equal pay in 1968. That event, incredible and wonderful and inspiring as it is, should be perfect fodder for a musical. Unfortunately, the creative team didn’t deem the importance of this story important enough, and they made this musical adaptation with amateur and offensive music, beyond unnecessary book scenes, poor character development, lack of editing, and all-around crappiness.
You need a compelling reason to turn a story into a musical. That is step 1. It can’t just be because you want songs in your story. This show satisfied step 1. It’s a great idea for a musical! But step 2 is vital: The music and lyrics need to work. The music needs to enhance the storytelling, not replace it, and it definitely cannot drag the story down. Dagenham’s music brought the whole show crashing down.
It starts with Gemma Arterton, who may have been a Bond girl at one point but will now forever be haunted by “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters”, at home with her oaf of a husband and her two little kids. She’s singing a song repeating that if you want anything done, you should ask a busy woman. And she irons and cleans and cooks and stuff. It sets the stage for the time period well, the height of women as housewives, but it doesn’t do anything for the story. The song is too lame, in lyrics and pacing, to open a show. Luckily, even though Gemma isn’t much of a singer, she has a lovely stage presence (and deserves better).
At breakfast, Gemma, as Rita O’Grady, tells her aspiring doctor of a young daughter to remember that girls are nurses, not doctors. Good start to the day! The book writer obviously meant for this opening remark to allow us to track Rita’s journey from brainwashed subordinate and housewife to brave gender equality pioneer. Great idea. However, we don’t see such a journey at all. The play shows Rita as timid and complacent in this struggle, and then all of a sudden she’s giving a rousing speech to Ford execs. There is absolutely no journey, no growth. Zero to sixty in half an act.
Of course it’s wonderful when Rita does stand up for women’s rights, but it comes out of nowhere. This is the main point of this show, her journey and her struggle, and it is missing. Any semblance of character development is hard to notice. And then all of a sudden Rita herself is leading the strike, going to neighboring towns to get their factory workers to strike with the Dagenham girls (it’s girls in this show, never women, which is important to demonstrate part of the struggle, but I don’t actually think this was deliberate).
The big ‘let’s all go on strike song’ is one of the saddest parts of the show. It’s the end of Act One, and it goes on for a good 10 minutes, but it’s completely lacking in energy, in wit, in anything positive. Rita is on top of moving stairs, singing ‘Everybody out!’ (the name of the song) over and over. People are dancing and holding signs and stuff below her, but it feels like nothing is happening. ‘Everybody Out’ works a few times when the accompanying lyrics are indeed about striking, but mostly it feels like advice for the audience.
I may have groaned the most during Act Two’s obligatory Things Are Getting Hard song. The strike is hurting everyone, and the girls are losing hope. So they sing a song called – I’m not kidding – “Storm Clouds Montage”. Characters say things to each other, different interactions occur, and in between each spotlight, the chorus sings “Storm clouds on the horizon, tension in the town.” Does it get any triter than that? It doesn’t. And this prolonged number is pretty much this line repeated over and over and overrrrrr again as other crap happens but you don’t even realize it because you are too stunned by this awful lyric that you know everyone thought was super sophisticated.
I would direct you to youtube videos of some of these songs, but just take the titles or lyrics I provide and try to sing them, and you will pretty much have the right melody on your first try. That’s apparently how this show was written. During most musical numbers, I was struck by how similar the songs were to those too long, forced-rhyme poems that bridesmaids and sisters always recite at bridal showers. You know the type. “As soon as we saw you and Dave together, we knew you would love each other through all kinds of weather.” That’s what this music is like. A lyric from one of these songs is (as far as I can remember) “I have no doubt, I know what this is all about.” They also rhyme ‘loads’ with ‘sod’ in a repeating motif. I have never groaned so much. Even during the Spice Girls musical, I was more in awe of its awfulness than in pain. Not the case here.
I don’t know how this music got the green light. Aside from the trite, childish lyrics, the music offers no new melodies. It’s all familiar. Worse yet, too many songs end with a crescendo into a key change, the most well-known device for tricking listeners into thinking a song is moving and powerful. They double up on the end-of-song power punch by having one of the girls belt some riffs all the freaking time, another trick. Both of these at the same time just look super desperate.
The book is a big old mess too. It makes me so sad that this wasn’t edited at all. This show is a first draft script, I am telling you. There are wayyy too many storylines occurring: 1) the strike, 2) Rita’s marital problems because her man isn’t okay with her fight, 3) Rita’s son being abused at school, 4) a Ford executive’s wife being bored as a housewife, 5) who ALSO has an abused son in the school, 6) the prime minister and his cabinet trying to stop the strike, 7) a new Secretary appointed to deal with the strike, 8) one of the girls dying of cancer one night after diagnosis. What the hell. First, obviously, the cancer bit was not done well at all; there is too much going on for that to feel anything but cheap. Also, there is absolutely NO reason for the school abuse thread. None at all. It’s such a waste of story telling that I still can’t believe it made the cut. It allows Rita to meet the exec’s wife, who helps their cause so much by lending Rita a dress to wear at her big speech, but they could have met much more simply. I can’t believe how stupid. The same goes for the prime minister. His only real purpose is to get cheap laughs from the audience by walking hunched over and making easy gross jokes. I had hopes that the new Secretary of Fighting the Unions, a woman, would help the factory workers in their fight, but she ends up being on the wrong side because she’s part of the government. Meaning, her plot line was entirely unnecessary. Her opposition doesn’t spur the strikers on even more or anything. It’s just empty.
For a show about fighting sexism, it’s surprisingly sexist. You could tell it was directed by men and that the book, music, and lyrics were also written by men. Somehow, they make a show about fighting for gender equality sexist. It’s quite a feat. In the first factory scene, when we get to meet all the female workers, all they talk about is sex. One woman asks everyone if they are ‘getting any’, and they make jokes and talk about it because all women can ever talk about is men, right? Apparently that’s what these writers think. It IS the only thing worth talking about right girls! Ugh. Worse, when they have their chance of telling the union leaders all the changes they want, their list goes: “equal pay, chocolate that doesn’t make you fat, perfume, the same rights as the male workers, and OH! more chocolate!” I’m not joking. Later, Rita gets a big tearjerker number when her husband leaves her because obviously the husband will leave once the wife starts doing something important that isn’t making him dinner. She cries instead of using some of her newfound strength to convince her husband and everyone else that the fight is important and that he should make his own dinner. It’s offensive that this tearjerker ballad is expected because it’s a female protagonist, NOT because of sexism back then but of sexism now. In other shows, male characters facing important struggles rarely get the tearjerker ballad about how nothing is important without their wives, yet for female characters it is nearly obligatory. I am sick of it.
What pushed me over the edge was the opening Act Two number “This is America”. Because the strike is causing the factory to lose money, the American Ford executives have to come over. They sing a song about how Americans get shit done and how English people, women, shorter men, and anyone who isn’t the main exec is a ‘faggot’. The guy says faggot at least 10 times. It is awful. But worse is the song, written solely for cheap laughs (that sadly they get a lot of) by making fun of Americans. It’s beyond offensive, not to me as an American but as a person who is alive on this earth. It’s one thing to make good-natured fun of Americans, with jokes as stale and tired as vegan jokes but good-natured and harmless mostly. It is quite another thing to include lyrics that actually are harmful, that forgo the promise to be good-natured and instead rely on ignorance. I don’t understand how the producers haven’t changed these lyrics yet. An army tank rolls in, all the chorus girls in camo bikinis holding machine guns. Gay jokes are made, women are reinforced as being for show. And at one point, the exec actually sings, “Our cops have guns and will blow you away.” Now. At this time. When cops are actually killing unarmed civilians with those guns, this piece of shit song in a piece of shit show IS STILL SINGING THIS LINE.
I wanted to like this show. Even though it was not good, I always always want plays to succeed. Even though it wasn’t great, I was still planning to tell people “Eh it’s not great but you’ll probably enjoy yourself.” But how the people behind this show could leave these lyrics in this song, knowing what is going on in America, I don’t understand. The producers never responded to my complaints about this line and others like it, and now I have no qualms calling bullshit. This is not okay. Another unarmed black man was shot by cops yesterday, did you see that? It’s in the news over here even. But don’t let that keep “Made In Dagenham” from laughing about it. And no, the lyrics in this song are not presented as a serious reflection on our society. They are included for laughs. And yes, the audience laughs. Shame on everyone involved until they make changes.
Also, that random maid? She shows up in most scenes in the background, cleaning things or just listening. It makes no sense. Piece. Of. Crap.
You need a compelling reason to turn a story into a musical. That is step 1. It can’t just be because you want songs in your story. This show satisfied step 1. It’s a great idea for a musical! But step 2 is vital: The music and lyrics need to work. The music needs to enhance the storytelling, not replace it, and it definitely cannot drag the story down. Dagenham’s music brought the whole show crashing down.
It starts with Gemma Arterton, who may have been a Bond girl at one point but will now forever be haunted by “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters”, at home with her oaf of a husband and her two little kids. She’s singing a song repeating that if you want anything done, you should ask a busy woman. And she irons and cleans and cooks and stuff. It sets the stage for the time period well, the height of women as housewives, but it doesn’t do anything for the story. The song is too lame, in lyrics and pacing, to open a show. Luckily, even though Gemma isn’t much of a singer, she has a lovely stage presence (and deserves better).
At breakfast, Gemma, as Rita O’Grady, tells her aspiring doctor of a young daughter to remember that girls are nurses, not doctors. Good start to the day! The book writer obviously meant for this opening remark to allow us to track Rita’s journey from brainwashed subordinate and housewife to brave gender equality pioneer. Great idea. However, we don’t see such a journey at all. The play shows Rita as timid and complacent in this struggle, and then all of a sudden she’s giving a rousing speech to Ford execs. There is absolutely no journey, no growth. Zero to sixty in half an act.
Of course it’s wonderful when Rita does stand up for women’s rights, but it comes out of nowhere. This is the main point of this show, her journey and her struggle, and it is missing. Any semblance of character development is hard to notice. And then all of a sudden Rita herself is leading the strike, going to neighboring towns to get their factory workers to strike with the Dagenham girls (it’s girls in this show, never women, which is important to demonstrate part of the struggle, but I don’t actually think this was deliberate).
The big ‘let’s all go on strike song’ is one of the saddest parts of the show. It’s the end of Act One, and it goes on for a good 10 minutes, but it’s completely lacking in energy, in wit, in anything positive. Rita is on top of moving stairs, singing ‘Everybody out!’ (the name of the song) over and over. People are dancing and holding signs and stuff below her, but it feels like nothing is happening. ‘Everybody Out’ works a few times when the accompanying lyrics are indeed about striking, but mostly it feels like advice for the audience.
I may have groaned the most during Act Two’s obligatory Things Are Getting Hard song. The strike is hurting everyone, and the girls are losing hope. So they sing a song called – I’m not kidding – “Storm Clouds Montage”. Characters say things to each other, different interactions occur, and in between each spotlight, the chorus sings “Storm clouds on the horizon, tension in the town.” Does it get any triter than that? It doesn’t. And this prolonged number is pretty much this line repeated over and over and overrrrrr again as other crap happens but you don’t even realize it because you are too stunned by this awful lyric that you know everyone thought was super sophisticated.
I would direct you to youtube videos of some of these songs, but just take the titles or lyrics I provide and try to sing them, and you will pretty much have the right melody on your first try. That’s apparently how this show was written. During most musical numbers, I was struck by how similar the songs were to those too long, forced-rhyme poems that bridesmaids and sisters always recite at bridal showers. You know the type. “As soon as we saw you and Dave together, we knew you would love each other through all kinds of weather.” That’s what this music is like. A lyric from one of these songs is (as far as I can remember) “I have no doubt, I know what this is all about.” They also rhyme ‘loads’ with ‘sod’ in a repeating motif. I have never groaned so much. Even during the Spice Girls musical, I was more in awe of its awfulness than in pain. Not the case here.
I don’t know how this music got the green light. Aside from the trite, childish lyrics, the music offers no new melodies. It’s all familiar. Worse yet, too many songs end with a crescendo into a key change, the most well-known device for tricking listeners into thinking a song is moving and powerful. They double up on the end-of-song power punch by having one of the girls belt some riffs all the freaking time, another trick. Both of these at the same time just look super desperate.
The book is a big old mess too. It makes me so sad that this wasn’t edited at all. This show is a first draft script, I am telling you. There are wayyy too many storylines occurring: 1) the strike, 2) Rita’s marital problems because her man isn’t okay with her fight, 3) Rita’s son being abused at school, 4) a Ford executive’s wife being bored as a housewife, 5) who ALSO has an abused son in the school, 6) the prime minister and his cabinet trying to stop the strike, 7) a new Secretary appointed to deal with the strike, 8) one of the girls dying of cancer one night after diagnosis. What the hell. First, obviously, the cancer bit was not done well at all; there is too much going on for that to feel anything but cheap. Also, there is absolutely NO reason for the school abuse thread. None at all. It’s such a waste of story telling that I still can’t believe it made the cut. It allows Rita to meet the exec’s wife, who helps their cause so much by lending Rita a dress to wear at her big speech, but they could have met much more simply. I can’t believe how stupid. The same goes for the prime minister. His only real purpose is to get cheap laughs from the audience by walking hunched over and making easy gross jokes. I had hopes that the new Secretary of Fighting the Unions, a woman, would help the factory workers in their fight, but she ends up being on the wrong side because she’s part of the government. Meaning, her plot line was entirely unnecessary. Her opposition doesn’t spur the strikers on even more or anything. It’s just empty.
For a show about fighting sexism, it’s surprisingly sexist. You could tell it was directed by men and that the book, music, and lyrics were also written by men. Somehow, they make a show about fighting for gender equality sexist. It’s quite a feat. In the first factory scene, when we get to meet all the female workers, all they talk about is sex. One woman asks everyone if they are ‘getting any’, and they make jokes and talk about it because all women can ever talk about is men, right? Apparently that’s what these writers think. It IS the only thing worth talking about right girls! Ugh. Worse, when they have their chance of telling the union leaders all the changes they want, their list goes: “equal pay, chocolate that doesn’t make you fat, perfume, the same rights as the male workers, and OH! more chocolate!” I’m not joking. Later, Rita gets a big tearjerker number when her husband leaves her because obviously the husband will leave once the wife starts doing something important that isn’t making him dinner. She cries instead of using some of her newfound strength to convince her husband and everyone else that the fight is important and that he should make his own dinner. It’s offensive that this tearjerker ballad is expected because it’s a female protagonist, NOT because of sexism back then but of sexism now. In other shows, male characters facing important struggles rarely get the tearjerker ballad about how nothing is important without their wives, yet for female characters it is nearly obligatory. I am sick of it.
What pushed me over the edge was the opening Act Two number “This is America”. Because the strike is causing the factory to lose money, the American Ford executives have to come over. They sing a song about how Americans get shit done and how English people, women, shorter men, and anyone who isn’t the main exec is a ‘faggot’. The guy says faggot at least 10 times. It is awful. But worse is the song, written solely for cheap laughs (that sadly they get a lot of) by making fun of Americans. It’s beyond offensive, not to me as an American but as a person who is alive on this earth. It’s one thing to make good-natured fun of Americans, with jokes as stale and tired as vegan jokes but good-natured and harmless mostly. It is quite another thing to include lyrics that actually are harmful, that forgo the promise to be good-natured and instead rely on ignorance. I don’t understand how the producers haven’t changed these lyrics yet. An army tank rolls in, all the chorus girls in camo bikinis holding machine guns. Gay jokes are made, women are reinforced as being for show. And at one point, the exec actually sings, “Our cops have guns and will blow you away.” Now. At this time. When cops are actually killing unarmed civilians with those guns, this piece of shit song in a piece of shit show IS STILL SINGING THIS LINE.
I wanted to like this show. Even though it was not good, I always always want plays to succeed. Even though it wasn’t great, I was still planning to tell people “Eh it’s not great but you’ll probably enjoy yourself.” But how the people behind this show could leave these lyrics in this song, knowing what is going on in America, I don’t understand. The producers never responded to my complaints about this line and others like it, and now I have no qualms calling bullshit. This is not okay. Another unarmed black man was shot by cops yesterday, did you see that? It’s in the news over here even. But don’t let that keep “Made In Dagenham” from laughing about it. And no, the lyrics in this song are not presented as a serious reflection on our society. They are included for laughs. And yes, the audience laughs. Shame on everyone involved until they make changes.
Also, that random maid? She shows up in most scenes in the background, cleaning things or just listening. It makes no sense. Piece. Of. Crap.
