January 19, 2023
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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New weekend theatre: An Elephant in the Garden
Today’s show is ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ presented by the Barn Theatre in association with Exeter Northcott Theatre. It streams from tonight until the 18th.
I found it kind of hilarious that I got the press night info for ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ on the same day as I discovered dozens upon dozens of Nazi apologists in a seemingly benign Reddit post. What a day for sympathizing with Germans during World War II! Of course regular German citizens were victims of their government and suffered terribly, but what fun timing. ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ is the stage version of Michael Mortugo’s book inspired by stories of zookeepers during the war, who tried to save animals destined for death in the event of bombings (they couldn’t have animals roaming the streets if their enclosures and caretakers were harmed – animals moving about freely, perish the thought). In this tale, teenage Lizzie and her mother flee on foot from Dresden after it’s destroyed, and they take Marlene, a baby elephant, with them.
Alison Reid in this two-hander (she has two hands) does a good job of keeping her energy up and keeping the story alive. Some cringey lines had us doing Chrissy Teigen’s Golden Globes face, but altogether it’s decent. The tone felt 60% for adults and 40% clearly for kids, so it’s a bit uneven. Reid’s handling of the handful of characters is nicely done. Yet the story as a whole felt a little unearned. Like the only thing I could say in response was “okay, and…” It feels like so much modern theatre and other art is focusing on Germans during the war in a purposeful attempt to not do more ‘obvious victim’ stories, but often without good reasons, trying to rely on the whole ‘we don’t think enough about these victims!’ idea but without sufficient justification for it being a play in the first place. Why am I supposed to care about this person, this family? I care about the elephant, for sure, but the reviews talking about how the elephant becomes the hero of the story, the main focus, are full of crap.
This play exists in a weird political limbo, alluding to bad German behavior but nothing tooo bad, never sharing any real political views and then all of a sudden calling Hitler an enemy towards the end just to make sure they made that clear in a CYA move that felt super obvious. There’s a bit with a horribly racist aunt and uncle, but their evilness is still kind of kid-friendly, as is the narrator’s happy obliviousness at the end, where she says ‘I like to believe my aunt and uncle changed for the good’ after the war. What, by staying silent about their bigotry? I do not like the implied message of this part. I feeeeel liiiiiike you should need to do more to prove goodness, especially if you wanted this war and loved ya boy Adolf. Do not like the message this sends to audiences, kids and the veryyyy problematic general British adult public alike. So, although this was fine, I’m a little peeved about its purpose in general.
Regardless of how much I would like a second, stronger draft that answers my questions, you have to hand it to the Barn Theatre for their content this year. They’ve been putting out so much theatre for home viewing, seemingly nonstop, and that is something to be commended. Also – they seem to acknowledge and respect that our attention spans are absolutely shot. The vast majority of their content has been around an hour – perfect for the home viewer who struggles to spend even thirty minutes watching something without simultaneously scrolling on their phone. I’m sure I could handle a longer thing – I have been watching serious movies and mostly concentrating, but it’s still a mental hurdle to even begin watching something when you know you have to concentrate for a long time. (It probably goes without saying that I am very very behind on work.) Anyway, thanks to the Barn, even though I didn’t love this one (but again, that could be in part because of all the Nazi sympathizers running rampant nowadays! Don’t let them get away with it!)
Photo credit: Farrows Creative
“Sunset Boulevard” in London: Glenn Close is Amazing, That’s All That Matters
For some unknown reason (*cough* sexism *cough* misogyny), the biggest roles for women in musical theatre are characters considered past their prime, doomed to fail, and most importantly cah-freaking-razy, with the crazy level ranging from simmering to boiling to overflowing and knocking the pot off the stove, all in one big belting song. Oh and written by men, naturally, but that’s because female composers aren’t given as much opportunity just as in any field and you know what, that’s an issue for another day. Today, we are talking about the current toast of the West End, “Sunset Boulevard” starring the astonishing Glenn Close. (Just Sunday evening, Imelda Staunton won an Olivier Award (rightly so) for her performance in “Gypsy” as the other extremely important crazy-old-lady musical theatre role in a production that was the toast of London last year. Funnily enough, the last great Mama Rose in “Gypsy” on Broadway was Patti LuPone, and in 1993 Patti famously originated the role of Norma Desmond in “Sunset” in London and was supposed to open it on Broadway but Andrew Lloyd Webber? hates her! she hates him too! And he cast Glenn Close for the Broadway version without telling Patti. Musical theatre trivia is FLAMES.)
Last night, “Sunset Boulevard” opened in London for the first time since that original production more than 20 years ago, starring original Broadway lead Glenn Close for her West End debut. (I saw the show’s first preview Friday night, but given that the preview period was only one weekend, I believe no changes were made.) As Norma Desmond, Glenn is riveting and haunting, carefully releasing the crazy rope with the utmost control so you believe every step of her journey. You believe it, you don’t support it. No one in the show is likeable, which is hard, but the whole purpose of this production is Glenn’s performance. Despite the source material specifying that Norma is 50 years old, Glenn is perfectly cast now as the aging former queen of silent film, at almost 70 years old herself. When the movie first came out, 50 being the age of haggard and scary old ladies whose I don’t know skin and toes fall off if you startle them seemed acceptable, but now that’s just laughable, so yeah, this is a good if unspoken change.
As you probably know from the movie and if you don’t you should go watch it, Norma Desmond used to be the biggest star in Hollywood, the most important and greatest face in silent films, but then she stopped having a 1 in front of her age and everyone was like bye Felicia, you gross and old, like not just for this movie, like for the earth. So she did what most celebrities do when they lose their status but still have lots of money – she became a recluse in her enormous, gaudy mansh on Sunset Boulevard (get it, that’s the title, and it’s where she lives), with only her creepy AF manservant Max tending to her day and night. When young screenwriter Joe Gillis lands at the house trying to flee from old-timey gangstas (fedoras, suits, and all), Norma is ecstatic that this handsome man can a) help her with her behemoth script for her comeback film ‘Salome’ (though she spits on the word comeback, hates it!) and b) be her kept boy for all kinds of gross things. Let’s talk about Joe for a minute. Joe sucks. Joe wears terrible pants but thinks he’s hot shit. He’s apparently behind on bills, and that’s why the gangstas are after him and his car, but like, are they so wrong? Does he really owe them money? What kind of business did he get himself into? What kind of man flees from his responsibilities and shacks up with a strange (both meanings) lady just because it’s super comfortable and he likes fancy things and doesn’t care about dignity? Such a weak-willed diddadoof. You’re like, who’s supposed to care that he gets shot? Me? Oh you’re serious? No. Oh, not a spoiler p.s., even if you haven’t seen the movie it’s not, because before a word of the play is spoken there is a body floating (hanging from wires) in the pool (over the very coolly lit orchestra pit), dressed in the clothes Joe is wearing. So you’re like, oh cool at least it ends well.
Glenn is in such control that she actually makes you understand Norma. Instead of playing her at full-tilt psycho like she easily could be, she vacillates between batty and harmless to delusional to dangerous and psychotic and all things in between with expert restraint. You easily see the changes that Joe’s company brings to her and in turn the changes she undergoes when threatened with his departure, so that at the end, when she is lost in her delusions (with her famous “I’m ready for my close-up” line) you are there with her, accepting her lunacy completely and not in a detached way that a lesser actress might leave you. She effectively shows that some roles are meant to be played by an actress that sings and not a singer who acts. Fully the former, Glenn’s acting is indeed beyond wonderful, but her singing is pretty wrecked. And this is actually so powerful that it seems impossible that the character could be performed any other way. Several years ago, when “Next to Normal” came out, reviewers said Alice Ripley’s raw and ragged vocal performance was like a razor’s edge that cut you to the core. (Alice Ripley has a fantastic voice; the raggedness was a mixture of acting choice and the role tearing her apart emotionally and physically. And it was spectacular.) Glenn’s voice here is like that but 100x more pronounced. It’s frayed and uneven and reminded me of woven baskets for unidentifiable reasons, but at times it is that same blade cutting through everything else. Somehow, oddly, her quieter, seemingly easier parts were where she faltered most, and then on the big numbers with huge belted high notes, she delivered on those! The exact opposite of what you would expect from a normal person. In a role like this, all of this totally worked because she is supposed to be very damaged but strong in her delusions. And, it showed that she was acting the songs above all, which is most important. Given that her two big numbers, “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye” are also the most famous and most important songs of the show, it’s pretty wonderful that those are the ones she fully delivered on. No matter the reasons why they stood apart, as long as they did.
I am saying repeatedly that Glenn’s acting is what makes this show worth seeing (not that you can get tickets really; it’s sold out and ending in a month). That’s because it’s a crap show otherwise. This production is done exceedingly well, but it’s a crap show underneath. With music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics and book by people who aren’t peculiar billionaires, “Sunset” has 3 strong songs and then a WHOLE BUNCH of terrible, mind-numbing recitative repeated. You get the schmoozy “Let’s Have Lunch” at the beginning, which does establish the era and the schmooziness of makin’ pictures back then, but I don’t see how that demonstration is worth the sacrifice of art, enjoyment, pleasure, musicality, anything else. What about hooking the audience and building excitement? It’s just bleh. Who cares if it tells you what decade we’re in – costumes can do that better, and oh yeah, everyone seeing this already knows. This past week, my showtune rotation has been stuck on “Ragtime” and “In The Heights”, two great shows with impressive, blood-pumping, heart-racing openings. I love a good opening number. “Sunset” doesn’t have one, and so it becomes incredibly easy not to care about the story. And then immediately we go into “Every Movie’s A Circus”, which introduces us to Betty (a fine-voiced Siobhan Dillon) and the melody that will be repeated 1000000 times before the curtain falls. See, at first, you hear the melody of “Every (beat) movie’s a circus” and think, whatever, not exactly inspired music or lyrics but let’s move on to better things. But no, you never get to move on to better things because this melody is repeated for Every. Single. Book Scene. That and one other motif are repeated ad nauseam, and I mean nauseam. Someone decided that it would be a good idea if all the dialogue were sung to the same shitty melody over and over again, so much so that people (cough husband cough) were ready to cut off their ears if it meant being spared yet another tortuous go-round. Sometimes repeated recitative melody works, like for example in “Hamilton”, you get the melody from “Daddy said to be home by sundown” “Daddy doesn’t need to know” repeated several times throughout the show, as well as other core motifs. But they have purpose and meaning in their repetition, and they don’t beat you over the head with it so consistently that you want to beat your own head. It got physically painful to hear towards the end, when things are supposed to be dramatic and changing and you’re feeling the climax build and then like a sad clown coming back for a lame joke you get that same bullshit “every (beat) something’s a something” and it takes all your might not to F-ING SCREAM from the front of the dress circle to JUST STOP IT. 80% of this score is the stuff that gets played on the Sirius XM Broadway channel that makes my dad yell “Who do they think wants to listen to this schlock! Play the good stuff!” And sure, you could be arguing, ‘hey you even said there were 3 really strong songs and a few fine ones, so why complain about the recitative parts or say this isn’t a great show’ and I will answer because those repetitious sung book scenes were completely unnecessary, and unnecessary bullshit garbage makes me angry. There was no reason the book scenes couldn’t have been spoken instead of repeating the 2 motifs over and over beyond all semblance of purpose.
The opening of Act II, Joe’s big title number, is so much stronger than every other non-Glenn moment, thank goodness for that (although some of the lyrics are super cringe-worthy). Right before this number, to start the act, Joe emerges from the ‘pool’ in only a skimpy bathing suit, and someone in the balcony started applauding (he’s quite ripped) and then others joined in. It was hilarious. Joe is played by Michael Xavier, and he did a fine job with a terrible character. He really showed us Joe’s grappling with his own pitifulness and desperation and, by the end, self-loathing. Another very strong non-Glenn aspect was Fred Johanson as Max, Norma’s steadfast butler/servant/assistant and, we find out, former director and first husband. I feel like in the movie this latter revelation felt much more revelatory, but here it was stated and then completely glossed over, robbing it of all dramatic potential. Very odd. But great news, Johanson has a terrifically booming operatic voice and actually sang a non-annoying song very well. When we finally got to his solo number, husband actually sighed in relief and said at least someone up there can sing. No but seriously it was nice to hear. His voice in this cacophony of whatever was 100% in “Love Actually” when the little girls ask Hugh Grant to sing a carol and he starts singing “Old King Wenceslas” and then his driver joins in and has this enormous strong baritone and Hugh’s like whaaaat! That’s what Max is to this production. I mean, Glenn Close is still Hugh Grant and that’s why you’re watching, but it’s nice to hear a strong voice cut in.
Siobhan Dillon as Betty also has a beautiful voice, but by the time she gets to show off, it’s late in Act II and you’ve learned by now that Betty is a thankless character with no chemistry with Joe, and thank goodness for it, because as we established earlier, Joe sucks, and Betty has a good life ahead of her and is better off without him. So they have this big love-song duet that is supposed to be very emotional, but you feel absolutely zero anythings for them and just want them to stop so the story can get back on track.
But none of this matters because Glenn Close is giving a tour de force performance, a masterclass in acting, a role for the ages, and every other cliché you can think of. But it’s true. It was incredible to see her in such a defining role for the first time in so many years. All around, it’s just special. This production is staged more like a concert, extremely pared down with the sets just composed of dark industrial metal staircases going this way and that, a stray sofa or table brought in for various scenes, and an extravagant, almost ghastly Phantom-style chandelier coming down to represent the mansion. At first, I was upset not to get a garishly lavish set, but then I realized it was so much better this way, for two reasons: 1) No set could really live up to how extravagant the house is supposed to be; it would just be a underdeveloped attempt at showing it. This way, our imaginations more easily filled in the blanks. 2) The bare bones set let Glenn shine through even brighter. There were no distractions from her performance, and her performance is really all that matters here. Along with the rest of the audiences this month, I’m lucky to have seen her in this role.
AUDIENCE
Several phones lit up, especially from the big wigs in tuxes with buckets of champagne on ice in the private boxes. I mean, there is something about the entitlement of the upper class. Otherwise, the audience was extra attentive and extra vehement in its praise, with boisterous shouts of “Bravo!” from many members every time Glenn did something. It felt almost too much but she was great, so, there you go.
STAGE DOOR
It was a mess. The guards had no idea what they were doing and after 45 minutes realized that they had to move the enormous crowd to make room for Glenn’s car right up front. They need to set up much longer barricades and hire a guard that has any clue what to do. I waited an hour and then gave up; the crowd was too pushy to deal with. Other cast members came out but walked right away, assuming no one was waiting for them. An hour I would like back please.
As you probably know from the movie and if you don’t you should go watch it, Norma Desmond used to be the biggest star in Hollywood, the most important and greatest face in silent films, but then she stopped having a 1 in front of her age and everyone was like bye Felicia, you gross and old, like not just for this movie, like for the earth. So she did what most celebrities do when they lose their status but still have lots of money – she became a recluse in her enormous, gaudy mansh on Sunset Boulevard (get it, that’s the title, and it’s where she lives), with only her creepy AF manservant Max tending to her day and night. When young screenwriter Joe Gillis lands at the house trying to flee from old-timey gangstas (fedoras, suits, and all), Norma is ecstatic that this handsome man can a) help her with her behemoth script for her comeback film ‘Salome’ (though she spits on the word comeback, hates it!) and b) be her kept boy for all kinds of gross things. Let’s talk about Joe for a minute. Joe sucks. Joe wears terrible pants but thinks he’s hot shit. He’s apparently behind on bills, and that’s why the gangstas are after him and his car, but like, are they so wrong? Does he really owe them money? What kind of business did he get himself into? What kind of man flees from his responsibilities and shacks up with a strange (both meanings) lady just because it’s super comfortable and he likes fancy things and doesn’t care about dignity? Such a weak-willed diddadoof. You’re like, who’s supposed to care that he gets shot? Me? Oh you’re serious? No. Oh, not a spoiler p.s., even if you haven’t seen the movie it’s not, because before a word of the play is spoken there is a body floating (hanging from wires) in the pool (over the very coolly lit orchestra pit), dressed in the clothes Joe is wearing. So you’re like, oh cool at least it ends well.
Glenn is in such control that she actually makes you understand Norma. Instead of playing her at full-tilt psycho like she easily could be, she vacillates between batty and harmless to delusional to dangerous and psychotic and all things in between with expert restraint. You easily see the changes that Joe’s company brings to her and in turn the changes she undergoes when threatened with his departure, so that at the end, when she is lost in her delusions (with her famous “I’m ready for my close-up” line) you are there with her, accepting her lunacy completely and not in a detached way that a lesser actress might leave you. She effectively shows that some roles are meant to be played by an actress that sings and not a singer who acts. Fully the former, Glenn’s acting is indeed beyond wonderful, but her singing is pretty wrecked. And this is actually so powerful that it seems impossible that the character could be performed any other way. Several years ago, when “Next to Normal” came out, reviewers said Alice Ripley’s raw and ragged vocal performance was like a razor’s edge that cut you to the core. (Alice Ripley has a fantastic voice; the raggedness was a mixture of acting choice and the role tearing her apart emotionally and physically. And it was spectacular.) Glenn’s voice here is like that but 100x more pronounced. It’s frayed and uneven and reminded me of woven baskets for unidentifiable reasons, but at times it is that same blade cutting through everything else. Somehow, oddly, her quieter, seemingly easier parts were where she faltered most, and then on the big numbers with huge belted high notes, she delivered on those! The exact opposite of what you would expect from a normal person. In a role like this, all of this totally worked because she is supposed to be very damaged but strong in her delusions. And, it showed that she was acting the songs above all, which is most important. Given that her two big numbers, “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye” are also the most famous and most important songs of the show, it’s pretty wonderful that those are the ones she fully delivered on. No matter the reasons why they stood apart, as long as they did.
I am saying repeatedly that Glenn’s acting is what makes this show worth seeing (not that you can get tickets really; it’s sold out and ending in a month). That’s because it’s a crap show otherwise. This production is done exceedingly well, but it’s a crap show underneath. With music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics and book by people who aren’t peculiar billionaires, “Sunset” has 3 strong songs and then a WHOLE BUNCH of terrible, mind-numbing recitative repeated. You get the schmoozy “Let’s Have Lunch” at the beginning, which does establish the era and the schmooziness of makin’ pictures back then, but I don’t see how that demonstration is worth the sacrifice of art, enjoyment, pleasure, musicality, anything else. What about hooking the audience and building excitement? It’s just bleh. Who cares if it tells you what decade we’re in – costumes can do that better, and oh yeah, everyone seeing this already knows. This past week, my showtune rotation has been stuck on “Ragtime” and “In The Heights”, two great shows with impressive, blood-pumping, heart-racing openings. I love a good opening number. “Sunset” doesn’t have one, and so it becomes incredibly easy not to care about the story. And then immediately we go into “Every Movie’s A Circus”, which introduces us to Betty (a fine-voiced Siobhan Dillon) and the melody that will be repeated 1000000 times before the curtain falls. See, at first, you hear the melody of “Every (beat) movie’s a circus” and think, whatever, not exactly inspired music or lyrics but let’s move on to better things. But no, you never get to move on to better things because this melody is repeated for Every. Single. Book Scene. That and one other motif are repeated ad nauseam, and I mean nauseam. Someone decided that it would be a good idea if all the dialogue were sung to the same shitty melody over and over again, so much so that people (cough husband cough) were ready to cut off their ears if it meant being spared yet another tortuous go-round. Sometimes repeated recitative melody works, like for example in “Hamilton”, you get the melody from “Daddy said to be home by sundown” “Daddy doesn’t need to know” repeated several times throughout the show, as well as other core motifs. But they have purpose and meaning in their repetition, and they don’t beat you over the head with it so consistently that you want to beat your own head. It got physically painful to hear towards the end, when things are supposed to be dramatic and changing and you’re feeling the climax build and then like a sad clown coming back for a lame joke you get that same bullshit “every (beat) something’s a something” and it takes all your might not to F-ING SCREAM from the front of the dress circle to JUST STOP IT. 80% of this score is the stuff that gets played on the Sirius XM Broadway channel that makes my dad yell “Who do they think wants to listen to this schlock! Play the good stuff!” And sure, you could be arguing, ‘hey you even said there were 3 really strong songs and a few fine ones, so why complain about the recitative parts or say this isn’t a great show’ and I will answer because those repetitious sung book scenes were completely unnecessary, and unnecessary bullshit garbage makes me angry. There was no reason the book scenes couldn’t have been spoken instead of repeating the 2 motifs over and over beyond all semblance of purpose.
The opening of Act II, Joe’s big title number, is so much stronger than every other non-Glenn moment, thank goodness for that (although some of the lyrics are super cringe-worthy). Right before this number, to start the act, Joe emerges from the ‘pool’ in only a skimpy bathing suit, and someone in the balcony started applauding (he’s quite ripped) and then others joined in. It was hilarious. Joe is played by Michael Xavier, and he did a fine job with a terrible character. He really showed us Joe’s grappling with his own pitifulness and desperation and, by the end, self-loathing. Another very strong non-Glenn aspect was Fred Johanson as Max, Norma’s steadfast butler/servant/assistant and, we find out, former director and first husband. I feel like in the movie this latter revelation felt much more revelatory, but here it was stated and then completely glossed over, robbing it of all dramatic potential. Very odd. But great news, Johanson has a terrifically booming operatic voice and actually sang a non-annoying song very well. When we finally got to his solo number, husband actually sighed in relief and said at least someone up there can sing. No but seriously it was nice to hear. His voice in this cacophony of whatever was 100% in “Love Actually” when the little girls ask Hugh Grant to sing a carol and he starts singing “Old King Wenceslas” and then his driver joins in and has this enormous strong baritone and Hugh’s like whaaaat! That’s what Max is to this production. I mean, Glenn Close is still Hugh Grant and that’s why you’re watching, but it’s nice to hear a strong voice cut in.
Siobhan Dillon as Betty also has a beautiful voice, but by the time she gets to show off, it’s late in Act II and you’ve learned by now that Betty is a thankless character with no chemistry with Joe, and thank goodness for it, because as we established earlier, Joe sucks, and Betty has a good life ahead of her and is better off without him. So they have this big love-song duet that is supposed to be very emotional, but you feel absolutely zero anythings for them and just want them to stop so the story can get back on track.
But none of this matters because Glenn Close is giving a tour de force performance, a masterclass in acting, a role for the ages, and every other cliché you can think of. But it’s true. It was incredible to see her in such a defining role for the first time in so many years. All around, it’s just special. This production is staged more like a concert, extremely pared down with the sets just composed of dark industrial metal staircases going this way and that, a stray sofa or table brought in for various scenes, and an extravagant, almost ghastly Phantom-style chandelier coming down to represent the mansion. At first, I was upset not to get a garishly lavish set, but then I realized it was so much better this way, for two reasons: 1) No set could really live up to how extravagant the house is supposed to be; it would just be a underdeveloped attempt at showing it. This way, our imaginations more easily filled in the blanks. 2) The bare bones set let Glenn shine through even brighter. There were no distractions from her performance, and her performance is really all that matters here. Along with the rest of the audiences this month, I’m lucky to have seen her in this role.
AUDIENCE
Several phones lit up, especially from the big wigs in tuxes with buckets of champagne on ice in the private boxes. I mean, there is something about the entitlement of the upper class. Otherwise, the audience was extra attentive and extra vehement in its praise, with boisterous shouts of “Bravo!” from many members every time Glenn did something. It felt almost too much but she was great, so, there you go.
STAGE DOOR
It was a mess. The guards had no idea what they were doing and after 45 minutes realized that they had to move the enormous crowd to make room for Glenn’s car right up front. They need to set up much longer barricades and hire a guard that has any clue what to do. I waited an hour and then gave up; the crowd was too pushy to deal with. Other cast members came out but walked right away, assuming no one was waiting for them. An hour I would like back please.
