Anything ANYthing ANYTHING GOOOOES at the Barbican is Pure Silly Joyby Randi / October 19, 2021It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Tokyo Rose, a new musical that played the Southwark Playhouse until October 16.
A new musical about a true story out of World War II recently played the Southwark…and I’m not talking about Operation Mincemeat! Seriously, if this is the new direction that Southwark Playhouse is going in, I’m not complaining. What a fun niche to specialize in! Today’s actual show, Tokyo Rose, has been making the lower rounds in the past few years and after some edits and extensions, it has hit London. It has promise and potential, but it needs further work to capitalize on that.
Tokyo Rose tells the story of Iva Toguri, the Japanese-American who became a wartime radio personality in Japan and was accused, convicted, and later pardoned of treason for possibly sharing Axis propaganda. Above all, Iva was an American-born young girl whose parents send her to Japan IN THE MIDDLE OF A GOTTAM WAR because her aunt is dying and her mom wants someone to be there with her sister, even though auntie and Iva never met ever and did I say it’s the middle of a GOTTAM WAR? Iva’s mother couldn’t go ostensibly for documentation reasons and that’s very sad but like how unbelievably stupid do you have to be to send your Japanese daughter to Japan IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR? (Also, I did further research and apparently Iva didn’t have a US passport either when she left…um…oh gosh. Maybe the mother just thought since Iva was a citizen she wouldn’t have any trouble? JE. SUS.) True Japan wasn’t yet in the war against America (that would come mere months after Iva’s arrival overseas) but for crying out loud it was already at war with China and Manchuria and Inner Mongolia and French Indochina and MORE and had already signed up with Germany and Italy by this time! I MEAN WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?
This makes it hard for me to believe that this family could really be this ignorant of what her trip would mean. But the musical does not portray her story as though there is any grey area around Iva’s intentions, or her alleged traitorous behavior as something for us to determine for ourselves. Instead, this show is firmly and unshakeably putting forth that she was the victim of horrible injustice with endless bad luck. And it’s probably true, that it was just a series of unfortunate events and bad decisions that led her to being found guilty of treason against the USA, but man, those are some REALLY bad decisions.
The musical tells of how Iva was just an adorable little college student ready to study medicine and become just the cutest little doctor you’ve ever seen, but then the parents make their horrible decision and off she goes to begin a life of injustice and survival. The book is pretty well constructed: It begins with her treason trial and tells the story of her life through flashbacks, coming back and forth to the trial along the way. (We have enough to talk about so I am not going to rail against the creators for not being legal experts in the portrayal of the trial, but can I just mention that the trial occurred in San Francisco, so not everyone needs to have southern accents.) Although I have one huge recommendation re the trial: At one point late in Act II, the judge says ‘we will now take a 20 minute recess.’ MY GOD, how did the people involved not make that line the interval break! I MEAN COME ON YOU DON’T NEED TO BE A DRAMATURG FOR THAT ONE! Would be absolutely hysterical.
Also — the whole part of her being on the radio in Japan – you know, like the main thing she’s known for – is very confusingly done. It wasn’t clear what was happening and what if anything was going to come back to bite her, so if you didn’t know the facts coming in I imagine you’d be lost. Especially since her big ‘ooh I’m broadcasting to soldiers’ moments were loud club numbers that didn’t tell story.
And so where the show needs to focus its revisions is mainly on the score. This score makes this show effectively the shrieking Olympics. Maya Britto as Iva can sing her heart out, but wow, she shouldn’t have to destroy her voice. People complain about how badly Wicked ruins voices but all these new British scores trying to be like Six are way too heavily reliant on belting, and oftentimes it’s just shrieking. And this is very clearly trying to be like Six and & Juliet and too many more. Anyone training in classical musical theatre nowadays would not be able to do this stuff long-term. But even more frustrating, the existing score is a lost opportunity for an original original score. This shit is taking place in the 1940s, and instead of amazing Big Band numbers and a take on the Andrews Sisters, we get dance club and flashing lights. I get that the whole ‘historical tale with modern music’ is a genre now but at this point in this genre’s hopefully not-too-long shelf life, it just feels tired.
And unfortunately, the lyrics don’t do the same-sounding songs any justice. The lyrics are primarily generic platitudes, repeated over and over, like greeting card messages. It’s a bit cringey too often. I think it full out needs a new score, maybe minus 2 songs (like Iva’s big 11 o’clock number, that was fairly strong.)
One more thing I found a little eek-face is that, in the last section, they kept repeating how Iva could be the first person ever pardoned after a conviction for treason, and framing it like it was this huge moment for justice to finally be done. But, guys, her situation was very specific. Hers was a huge injustice, but they said it like everyone’s was, like it was always a criminal charge that shouldn’t exist? But everyone else convicted of treason deserved it. It was a weird thing to harp on as though treason were an unfair thing to be accused of, you know?
Honestly this show has a lot of potential because the story it tells is interesting. I hope it works on the telling and gets to do it again.
INFORMATION
Yes we are incredibly behind schedule, sorry that this already closed but hopefully my opinions can guide revisions (lol fat chance).
It was almost exactly 2 hours 30 minutes, beginning at 7:30 and ending at 10:06. It’s felt a little too long.
Southwark, like every other London theatre, does the whole ‘we recommend you wear masks but we can’t make you’ farce and so most people were not wearing masks. (Luckily the people behind us were.) Aside from that, the audience was…pretty bad! Lots of phones and talking and, our favorite part, during Iva’s big climactic moment, there was an important silence and this asshole near the front decided to OPEN A CAN OF SODA during that moment. I just. what are people. burn it all down.
PIZZA
SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE HAS A PIZZA OVEN NOW. And they have vegan options (not just one!). And it was really good! They said they use Sheese cheese, which no one has used in years since Violife etc came on the market and honestly I am really happy with that decision. It’s much better than I remember and no one else is using it so it’s a strong choice. We are seriously going to have pizza there before every show. Could not be more excited for a theatrical development (except for mask mandates).
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All About Eve: Fasten Your Seatbeats, It’s Going to be a Bumpy Night Because This Show is Terrible
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is All About Eve at London’s Noel Coward Theatre, playing until May 11. Watch the movie instead!
A few years ago, my family gathered together on Christmas morning to do one of our favorite things: watch a new Oscars screener. The movie was ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’, which would kickstart the career of the incredible Oscar Isaac. Because we are movie people – and because we are decent human beings who know how to behave – we watched in silence for about an hour. But at that point, my sister-in-law broke the silence and asked the room, to hilarious effect, “So, this is terrible, right?” It didn’t matter that some disagreed; for me that line was better than the movie and one of the funniest moments ever. If I were willing to talk in the theatre, I would have quoted her recently when I saw the new production of All About Eve at London’s Noel Coward Theatre. After the sheen of seeing its famous stars wore off, it was absolute torture to sit through, and it took all my might not to say to my husband, “So, this is terrible, right?
As you probably know, the movie “All About Eve” is a classic Best Picture winner about two headstrong actresses, one an established Broadway star and one yoot trying to take her place. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen the movie, but I remember that, although the two women were devious (one more than the other) and determined and like not great people, they weren’t fully out of their minds batshit crazy. ENTER: Ivo van Hove, London’s favorite theatre director who is known for his visually striking takes on reworking classics but who is arguably a misogynist. What a perfect show for Ivo to destroy so he can continue showing off his hatred of women while also displaying his love of stark staging and cold projections! Instead of the actresses being strong women, one of whom is determined to a fault and kind of scary, both are now outrageous lunatics who may as well be clawing at each other the entire time and screaming like babies and tearing each other’s hair out while Ivo sits in a chair offstage smoking a cigar and muttering ‘yes this is women.’
What makes it all worse is that it stars the great Gillian Anderson as Margo Channing, the big Broadway star, and the world’s new favorite blonde Lily James as Eve Harrington, the young upstart. These are two huge actresses right now and this classic work with the two of them? it should be EPIC in its greatness, not in its failure. To make matters worse, because this stars these two giant celebrities, tickets are astronomically expensive. So we paid more than we have paid for any other tickets in the past six or so months to see this steaming pile of dog shit, except worse than that because at least a pile of dog shit necessitates a doggo being nearby. There were no dogs!
So, let’s do a quick plot overview. Margo Channing (Anderson) is a Broadway star, currently in a play written by her friend Lloyd, who is married to her friend Karen, both of whom are cast so strangely that there is no forking way they would be married in real life. After the performance one evening, Karen brings a young woman, Eve (James), who was waiting for Margo at stage door into Margo’s dressing room. PROBLEM #1: Who in tarnation lets a random fan come backstage to meet the actress? As someone who stagedoored mm let’s just say a lot, I can tell you right now, that shit does not and SHOULD NOT happen. So, right off the bat we got some bullshit. To increase the crazy quotient, Margo hires Eve to work as her assistant, which also means living with her. Cool guys, yeah, this is a thing, I am also Lin-Manuel’s personal assistant and I live with Kelli O’Hara, this is the result of stagedooring.
So Eve ingratiates herself into Margo’s life but Margo starts to distrust her, which she should have done when she first met her, but she was too busy worrying about being old. Her main character trait is being insecure about her age because she is over 40 (gasp!) and her boyfriend, Bill, is younger, so to make her feel better, Bill says to Margo “You’re not old! You’re young! You’re six!” which is DISGUSTING ughhh men are gross. We see her birthday party happen pretty much in real time, and it’s a bad party, and everyone is in the kitchen, which is hidden from our view, so it’s worse than your average shitty party. I can’t believe this show. Eve weasels her way in more and more and somehow becomes Margo’s understudy in the current play, which is definitely what happens when you stage-door stalk celebrities, you get cast in the Broadway play mm hmm sure sure, I am a multi-Tony winner yes. And here is my biggest problem with this story: Everyone says that Eve is utterly fantastic at her first reading, so we know that she is actually a great actress. Meaning, she doesn’t have to scheme anymore. The most powerful people in the theatre now know that she is excellent and are ready to hire her…so…that’s that then, right guys? I don’t understand why there can’t be two great actresses in NYC in this universe. They know there are like, lots of them, right? WHY CAN’T THERE BE TWO? Everything after Eve gets hired has zero force because there’s literally zero reason for her to continue being a crazy beeyotch. Things are slow and boring for a while and then boom, out of nowhere the whole ending is so nonsensical it actually hurts. The playwright was going to leave his wife for Eve? Since when? Since they met like the day before and talked once? Eve was gonna just put up with Addison forever and let him blackmail her? She could have easily gotten her good review out of him and then told him to fork off. I don’t get her being submissive after all she has done. And the whole tidy wrap up with another girl in Eve’s room wanting to be like her to show that what, women operate in a cycle of trickery and dominance? Physical pain.
Is the writing or the direction worse? Ivo tried to be clever but everything looked messy and busy. It was like Ivo thought up a hundred new tricks and instead of picking one or two to focus on, he threw them all in and hoped for the best. There was creepy music vamping the entire time that became excessive and annoying. There were long pauses that were supposed to be dramatic but were mostly frustrating. If they cut half of those long pauses, it would have been a 90 minute show. Most of all, the whole movie-camera concept was ill-conceived. If we wanted to see this story presented more like a movie, we would have watched the damn movie, Ivo, and we would have loved it and we would have saved hundreds of dollars and we would not have gotten AGITA from all the ANGER. There were literally cameramen with working cameras following the actors around, and their filming was projected onto the back wall for us to watch live. Sometimes important action was happening out of our view, like in the kitchen (the birthday party scene) or the bathroom (literally the climax of the show) and the only way the audience saw this, this important action, was because the cameraman was filming and we watched the projection. WHO STAGES THE MOST CLIMACTIC SCENES OF A PLAY OFFSTAGE. I mean, I get that you are going for some sort of expose vibe but this isn’t a FORKING MOVIE, IVO. If you want to direct a movie I’m sure someone would hire you to do that, but don’t take a stage show and try to make it your next film. Ugh the cameras so often settled on empty glasses and dishes and projected those for us to stare at and it’s like, ‘ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY SOMETHING DEEP, BECAUSE WE ARE JUST LOOKING AT GLASSES.’
But then the writing was so cringeworthy that with literally every other line, my husband and I were kicking each other. They owe me new stockings because of how bad this writing was! Not one line of honest or realistic dialogue is in the whole thing. There was a line about how every ticket holder to a play would ask for refunds if an understudy was on – this in a city (London) where they famously DON’T GIVE REFUNDS IF AN UNDERSTUDY IS ON! Don’t get me started about how shitty a policy that bullshit is, especially for a show like this when there is a 1000% price increase for these big stars.
I wish I could say that if they had a different director take this in a different direction, it would have been good. But nothing happening on that stage was salvageable. Gillian, who is often superb onstage, is not superb here. She spoke in a low gravely monotone that seemed bored and kept us from connecting. At least she still has a strong stage presence and is usually great. Lily, on the other hand, should not be a stage actress. Her climactic screaming breakdown evoked no emotions other than fremdschamen. She is winning onscreen but is simply not meant for the stage.
There is one trick that Ivo employed that works: when Margo stares at herself in the mirror (projected to us, naturally) and slowly sees herself morph into an old lady. That was cool. You know what wasn’t cool? Having the cameraman film Margo throwing up in the bathroom after drinking too much. That was not cool. I am so tired of Ivo’s misogyny. He made these two women into painful caricatures where they were once interesting women, flawed but recognizable as humans. This is more like cartoon version of what MRA men like to joke about women being like.
To add insult to injury, it is two hours long – WITHOUT AN INTERVAL. Most normal shows do an hour for Act 1, 20 minute intermission, and an hour for Act 2, but this one just skips the interval. It could be to preserve this utterly silly movie vibe, but I would bet you a million dollars that they did it because they knew people would skip out on the second half. Halfway through, there is even a very clear change in vibe that screams out to be the act break, and would have been a good one, but they simply pause and then KEEP TORTURING YOU while you now also have to pee. FIE. FIE UPON HOVE (also the name of a town in England, I’m guessing).
INFORMATION
All About Eve is playing at the Noel Coward Theatre until May 11. Programmes were £4.50, 50p less than normal because I bet the programme sellers felt bad about all the money everyone’s spending to see this monstrosity. In contrast to my usual thinking, I recommend the dress circle in this theatre and not the stalls, because the stalls are below ground level and they don’t let you leave through the main doors at the end so you have to exit onto the street which is some bullshit.
I did not try to stage door – what was I gonna say, “hey you were really great in ‘Mamma Mia 2’ but not this”?? – so I can’t say if they come out or not but like do you care, don’t see this, it’s bad.
“Shakespeare in Love” on the West End: It’s A Mystery Why It’s Not A Musical But It’s Still Worth Seeing
I never thought I would miss or even appreciate Gwyneth Paltrow. Sure, she was never hocking $200 white t-shirts and fair-trade moccasin shavings in her movies, but her Gooping activity has infiltrated most people’s memories of her acting history. Her film career is clouded with the smoke emanating from her custom glass gilded barbecue for macrobiotic mushrooms and meat from animals she petted with Mario Batali. But she was a pretty good actress, remember? And her Viola de Lesseps in “Shakespeare in Love” was fantastic, Oscar-worthy and Oscar-winning stuff.
So why did I all of a sudden recall Gwynnie’s ‘90s-era acting ability with such fondness? It’s kind of mean, but it’s because I just saw the new play version of “Shakespeare in Love” on the West End. It’s a lovely, fun show that you’ll enjoy, especially if you liked the movie. But if, like me, you loved the movie, so much so that you confront the 90% of the populace that still likes to argue that it shouldn’t have won Best Picture over “Saving Private Ryan”, then you will also, like me, find various quibbles with this show’s lack of editing, its pushing of easy physical laughs, and…the crazy voice of its Viola. (I mean, you don’t have to have even seen the movie to agree with the latter.)
Now listen. The actress playing Viola, Lucy Briggs-Owen, is wonderful. Especially in the second act, she absolutely won me over and made me cry and stuff. But I still just cannot get over her voice. She has the raspy, gravelly voice of a 2-packs a day night-shift trucker who counts Marge Simpson and Harvey Fierstein as close relatives. During Act 1, I was wide-eyed with disbelief that a character whose entire purpose rests on the gloriousness of her speaking voice was cast so surprisingly. It’s actually hilarious. The story will hook you nonetheless, as the producers perhaps try to prove that one’s voice doesn’t matter as long as you are beautiful, or something? I doubt that was their aim.
Anyway, yes, so the story is indeed centered on Viola’s voice, or what she does with it: act. She is a noble lady promised to marry a truly awful man named Wessex, but she just wants to be an actor, especially in Shakespeare’s plays, because she has an enormous literary crush on him and yearns for her life to be filled with poetry, as all young girls do. Fortunately for her, she’s actually a superb actor. Viola calls up all her courage and auditions for a new play disguised as a man, meeting the bard himself during her ‘amazing’ audition. This is when I started to roll my eyes a little. At this point, Will Shakespeare is super down in the dumps, dirty-haired, shirt-unbuttoned, totally out of sorts and depressed that he’ll never be able to find a star for his new play “Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter”. We see awful no good actor after awful no good actor butcher auditions as Will sinks deeper. But then Viola, disguised as Thomas Kent, enters and begins her monologue from “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, and it’s supposed to rouse Will from the darkness, give him hope in his play, and make him fall in a sort of awe-inspired love. But…but…but…her voice! I didn’t believe that the anti-smoking ad that Viola seemed to make out of “What light be light if Sylvia be not seen” would have changed Will’s life so. Well, but it did, so I’ll stop mocking the poor girl’s voice. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a fantastic actress; I just didn’t get her for this part where the purity and beauty of the voice is so important! The best is in the famous canoe scene, when Will is describing to ‘Thomas’ his feelings for Viola, and she’s like “tell me about her beauty; what’s her hair like?” and Will’s like “long and blonde so nice” and Viola’s like “and her lips” and Will’s like “erma, such lips” and then Viola’s like “and her voice?” and I cackled.
Anywayyyyy, so Will’s like erma p. gerd, I found my Romeo, and at about the same time, he sees the undisguised Viola at a ball he crashed, and is like, erma p., I found my muse and my love because I loves me some long blonde hair and influenza-ridden smoker voice. I’m sorry now I’m done. So Will Shakespeare, this beyond brilliant best playwright of all time, OF ALL TIME, doesn’t realize that they’re the same person even though all his plays feature gender-bending disguises. I guess all those plot-twists come after this point in time, inspired by Viola. Cute.
Oh besides the voice, the craziest change from the movie is how stupid Will seems before he meets Viola/Thomas. The play starts with him trying to write Sonnet #18, “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day”, with the whole company watching. It’s kind of funny, how he can’t finish the first line, but then it gets tiresome when we hear the sonnet for the 9th time in one act. Also, Christopher Marlowe helps him write it, or really writes most of it for him. He also gives Will most of the groundwork for the main conflict of “Romeo & Juliet”, plus the name Juliet. In the play, it’s completely different from the not-so-good-natured playwright rivalry of the movie. Instead, the play shows them as pretty much BFFs, with Marlowe being the brains of the operation and Will being brilliant only when inspired by love. Marlowe’s death is that much sadder, and I loved their boyish friendship. But I didn’t like how the entire first act made Will sort of a buffoon. It is very easy and effective to show writer’s block as the movie did – somewhat subtly and realistically. It doesn’t need to be over the top. Who doesn’t know what writer’s block is! It’s unnecessary to show writer’s block by having the writer seem stupid. Now that’s just offensive to all writers. I did, however, really like the actor playing Marlowe, and I am glad they made the part so much bigger and meatier for the play for his sake, so let’s call it a draw.
The rest of Shakespeare’s acting troupe included a mustachioed yet winning pirate with long greasy hair playing the Ben Affleck role, a young pretty-faced boy who plays the girl parts while he can, and a tailor given the prologue whose stutter we’re supposed to laugh at?? In the film, the stutterer was someone you rooted for and cheered with when he conquered it with performing. But in the show, it felt more like the stutter was on display for the audience to ridicule. Not a good change. Please, if you see this or any other show ever, you’re probably a douche if you laugh at disability on display.
Queen Elizabeth, the role Judi Dench won an Oscar for despite only having like 4 lines and being onscreen for a shorter time than it takes me to tie my shoes, is played more humorous than regal here, which is somewhat off-putting. I don’t know Lizzie the I like I know Lizzie the II, but I’m pretty sure neither of them would be humorous in front of the general public. In front of family and friends, sure, but not in front of poor people. This Queen was written, directed, and acted just a little too familiarly. I want my queens bitchy, stern, and formal, thanks.
My favorite minor character I didn’t even realize was my favorite until the program verified it afterwards. Paul Chahidi, who was the glorious maid in Twelfth Night on Broadway last season (with Mark Rylance, originally at the Globe), played the Geoffrey Rush producer part of Henslowe. Paul Chahidi is superb and I want to see him as the humorous sidekick in pretty much every single play, even those without humorous sidekicks. Rush gave the movie its major memorable line, as he said at various points, to explain how things sort of work themselves out, “It’s a mystery!” and it was adorable, and we liked it, and we loved it. Chahidi’s Henslowe says it once early on and I smiled…but then in Act Two, he started saying it more and more. In the final 20 minutes, I think he said it 4 times. That is too many. That’s the writer’s fault, not Chahidi’s (Paul’s likeability is what saves us from groaning) but that’s something that should have been caught. That overuse and the 9 times we have to listen to Sonnet #18 should have been addressed by editors.
Regardless of these quibbles, the play is overall enjoyable and should make you laugh and cry and laugh and cry some more if you are not a robot. They really should have taken the opportunity to make this a musical and try to elevate it above and beyond the movie, rather than aiming to equal it, but I’ll leave that development to future artists. The story is strong enough without music, I guess. Will and Viola fall in love, Will is totally inspired and writes the genius “Romeo & Juliet” (it’s genius, even if you’re still sick of it from middle school), and Viola has to follow the queen’s and her father’s orders and marry Wessex. This oh this was also much worse than the movie. Wessex is a total shit in both, just a horrible awful man, but at least in the movie he looked like Colin Firth so you didn’t feel toooo badly for Viola. Here he’s just a normal so it’s real sad. Also, her father (whom I don’t think we see in the movie) is an even worse shit. So at least she gets away from him. The maid, the best part of the movie because it’s Imelda Stanton, is just okay here. She kind of milks her “It is a new day!” line to get laughs from the audience when really it should only be the set-up for Viola’s “It is a new world” reply, which is instead tossed aside.
Tom Bateman as Will works unbelievably hard, so hard that the sweat literally pours off of him throughout the show. His hair was soaking wet the entire time, even at stage door. I was like, “I don’t know how you are going to do a second show tonight” and he said “I don’t know either!” which is funny and self-deprecating but then he lit a cigarette and I was like, oh so you want to struggle to keep up, I get it.
So, anyway, no matter how you felt about the movie, this show is worth seeing. It’s not perfect, and like 99% of shows (/movies/television/books/anything), I wish I was able to edit it before it was considered set and finished, but alas, it has a few flaws. Luckily, these flaws won’t keep you from enjoying the show, and at least in the case of Viola’s uncharacteristically husky voice, some of them will help you enjoy it more. Okay now I’m done making fun.
Anyway, yes, so the story is indeed centered on Viola’s voice, or what she does with it: act. She is a noble lady promised to marry a truly awful man named Wessex, but she just wants to be an actor, especially in Shakespeare’s plays, because she has an enormous literary crush on him and yearns for her life to be filled with poetry, as all young girls do. Fortunately for her, she’s actually a superb actor. Viola calls up all her courage and auditions for a new play disguised as a man, meeting the bard himself during her ‘amazing’ audition. This is when I started to roll my eyes a little. At this point, Will Shakespeare is super down in the dumps, dirty-haired, shirt-unbuttoned, totally out of sorts and depressed that he’ll never be able to find a star for his new play “Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter”. We see awful no good actor after awful no good actor butcher auditions as Will sinks deeper. But then Viola, disguised as Thomas Kent, enters and begins her monologue from “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, and it’s supposed to rouse Will from the darkness, give him hope in his play, and make him fall in a sort of awe-inspired love. But…but…but…her voice! I didn’t believe that the anti-smoking ad that Viola seemed to make out of “What light be light if Sylvia be not seen” would have changed Will’s life so. Well, but it did, so I’ll stop mocking the poor girl’s voice. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a fantastic actress; I just didn’t get her for this part where the purity and beauty of the voice is so important! The best is in the famous canoe scene, when Will is describing to ‘Thomas’ his feelings for Viola, and she’s like “tell me about her beauty; what’s her hair like?” and Will’s like “long and blonde so nice” and Viola’s like “and her lips” and Will’s like “erma, such lips” and then Viola’s like “and her voice?” and I cackled.
Anywayyyyy, so Will’s like erma p. gerd, I found my Romeo, and at about the same time, he sees the undisguised Viola at a ball he crashed, and is like, erma p., I found my muse and my love because I loves me some long blonde hair and influenza-ridden smoker voice. I’m sorry now I’m done. So Will Shakespeare, this beyond brilliant best playwright of all time, OF ALL TIME, doesn’t realize that they’re the same person even though all his plays feature gender-bending disguises. I guess all those plot-twists come after this point in time, inspired by Viola. Cute.
Oh besides the voice, the craziest change from the movie is how stupid Will seems before he meets Viola/Thomas. The play starts with him trying to write Sonnet #18, “Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day”, with the whole company watching. It’s kind of funny, how he can’t finish the first line, but then it gets tiresome when we hear the sonnet for the 9th time in one act. Also, Christopher Marlowe helps him write it, or really writes most of it for him. He also gives Will most of the groundwork for the main conflict of “Romeo & Juliet”, plus the name Juliet. In the play, it’s completely different from the not-so-good-natured playwright rivalry of the movie. Instead, the play shows them as pretty much BFFs, with Marlowe being the brains of the operation and Will being brilliant only when inspired by love. Marlowe’s death is that much sadder, and I loved their boyish friendship. But I didn’t like how the entire first act made Will sort of a buffoon. It is very easy and effective to show writer’s block as the movie did – somewhat subtly and realistically. It doesn’t need to be over the top. Who doesn’t know what writer’s block is! It’s unnecessary to show writer’s block by having the writer seem stupid. Now that’s just offensive to all writers. I did, however, really like the actor playing Marlowe, and I am glad they made the part so much bigger and meatier for the play for his sake, so let’s call it a draw.
The rest of Shakespeare’s acting troupe included a mustachioed yet winning pirate with long greasy hair playing the Ben Affleck role, a young pretty-faced boy who plays the girl parts while he can, and a tailor given the prologue whose stutter we’re supposed to laugh at?? In the film, the stutterer was someone you rooted for and cheered with when he conquered it with performing. But in the show, it felt more like the stutter was on display for the audience to ridicule. Not a good change. Please, if you see this or any other show ever, you’re probably a douche if you laugh at disability on display.
Queen Elizabeth, the role Judi Dench won an Oscar for despite only having like 4 lines and being onscreen for a shorter time than it takes me to tie my shoes, is played more humorous than regal here, which is somewhat off-putting. I don’t know Lizzie the I like I know Lizzie the II, but I’m pretty sure neither of them would be humorous in front of the general public. In front of family and friends, sure, but not in front of poor people. This Queen was written, directed, and acted just a little too familiarly. I want my queens bitchy, stern, and formal, thanks.
My favorite minor character I didn’t even realize was my favorite until the program verified it afterwards. Paul Chahidi, who was the glorious maid in Twelfth Night on Broadway last season (with Mark Rylance, originally at the Globe), played the Geoffrey Rush producer part of Henslowe. Paul Chahidi is superb and I want to see him as the humorous sidekick in pretty much every single play, even those without humorous sidekicks. Rush gave the movie its major memorable line, as he said at various points, to explain how things sort of work themselves out, “It’s a mystery!” and it was adorable, and we liked it, and we loved it. Chahidi’s Henslowe says it once early on and I smiled…but then in Act Two, he started saying it more and more. In the final 20 minutes, I think he said it 4 times. That is too many. That’s the writer’s fault, not Chahidi’s (Paul’s likeability is what saves us from groaning) but that’s something that should have been caught. That overuse and the 9 times we have to listen to Sonnet #18 should have been addressed by editors.
Regardless of these quibbles, the play is overall enjoyable and should make you laugh and cry and laugh and cry some more if you are not a robot. They really should have taken the opportunity to make this a musical and try to elevate it above and beyond the movie, rather than aiming to equal it, but I’ll leave that development to future artists. The story is strong enough without music, I guess. Will and Viola fall in love, Will is totally inspired and writes the genius “Romeo & Juliet” (it’s genius, even if you’re still sick of it from middle school), and Viola has to follow the queen’s and her father’s orders and marry Wessex. This oh this was also much worse than the movie. Wessex is a total shit in both, just a horrible awful man, but at least in the movie he looked like Colin Firth so you didn’t feel toooo badly for Viola. Here he’s just a normal so it’s real sad. Also, her father (whom I don’t think we see in the movie) is an even worse shit. So at least she gets away from him. The maid, the best part of the movie because it’s Imelda Stanton, is just okay here. She kind of milks her “It is a new day!” line to get laughs from the audience when really it should only be the set-up for Viola’s “It is a new world” reply, which is instead tossed aside.
Tom Bateman as Will works unbelievably hard, so hard that the sweat literally pours off of him throughout the show. His hair was soaking wet the entire time, even at stage door. I was like, “I don’t know how you are going to do a second show tonight” and he said “I don’t know either!” which is funny and self-deprecating but then he lit a cigarette and I was like, oh so you want to struggle to keep up, I get it.
So, anyway, no matter how you felt about the movie, this show is worth seeing. It’s not perfect, and like 99% of shows (/movies/television/books/anything), I wish I was able to edit it before it was considered set and finished, but alas, it has a few flaws. Luckily, these flaws won’t keep you from enjoying the show, and at least in the case of Viola’s uncharacteristically husky voice, some of them will help you enjoy it more. Okay now I’m done making fun.
