'Night, Mother at the Hampstead A Strong Production of a Provocative Play, + TRIGGER WARNINGSby Randi / October 28, 2021Saoirse Ronan Loves Murder in Almeida’s Macbeth
Every time I see Macbeth all I can think is “wow these people love murder more than I remember.” I’m not new to the play or anything; in fact, I debated seeing this production at all because I’ve seen the Scottish play a few times too many in recent years so I’m sort of sick of it (sorry Billy). But that debate died off quickly (like everyone in this show!) because I had to see our generation’s cinema queen as Lady Macbeth. Yep, this production stars SAOIRSE RONAN. Her first name is VERY hard to type correctly in all caps but she is such a good lil actress. While I prefer her cavorting around colonial New England breaking Little Timmy Cham Cham’s heart than being full-out Arizona Murder Horny as she is here, she does a fine job proving to the UK that she can handle our stages.
And wow, does she love murder. Her Lady Macbeth struck me more than the character ever has before as eagerly jumping RIGHT QUICK in for murder. She goes from zero to murder real fast. That god really did replace her milk with gall, as she says, although it’s more pure evil than gall. She hears her husband say two words and then is hundo p ‘OK so we’re doing this!’ Her first monologue is sexual and violent. She is a scary scary sexy lady — they have Sershersh literally writhe around on a bed thinking of how much she loves the idea of murder and power and using murder to gain power and probably vice versa too, that’s how much she writhes. It’s a good thing she doesn’t have a durder because she would definitely murder that durder.
In a wonderful showing of accessibility, the Almeida had a long weekend of livestream-only performances of this production, which is a) amazing and b) what I saw. I thought the livestream would be of a regular performance, like with an in-person audience too, but it was only livestream. I was sad to not hear a live audience coughing so I could revel in my being home, but without them the creative team got to make a more cinematic version. They took advantage of the opportunity with cameras like right up in everyone’s business, getting all the filmic angles right on stage and lots of close-ups. It made it noticeably different from the in-theatre experience, which a stream should be if possible, as it’s a different medium.
Okay so you all know the story of Macbeth, right, like how this Scottish dude is like ‘I wanna be the rulerrrr’ and he asks his wife if she’s up for killing their way to the top because you should never begin a murderous spree for power without your wife’s consent and she breaks out the gold sequins and disco ball and dances around singing ‘livin’ it up on top-ah!’ or something like that (now that would be an interesting version). What really struck me this go-round is how stupid Macbeth is. Like, the witches tell him the prophecy right, that he will be in power? But then he goes and does stuff himself to make that true…which is NOT the point of prophecies. That’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy and that’s a logical FALLACY. If you went to a fortune teller and they were like ‘oh xyz is going to happen’, what kind of jackass then goes and MAKES xyz happen? Who would take it upon themselves to prove a podunk fortune teller to be right? Wouldn’t you test their predictions by just sitting back and being like well let’s see how good you are, make that shit happen universe! If you make it happen yourself you are cheating! It does not prove anything! YOU BLEW IT. I want to see the play where this jamoke has three witches tell him what’s going to happen in the future and he goes “oh yeah? PROVE IT” AND THEN DOES NOTHING.
It struck me this go-round that Lady Macbeth is a real Karen who hates reaping the consequences of what she sowed with her shirty behavior. Not since Atonement has Saoirse played a character so purely evil who only realizes her mistaken ways and feels regret when it’s too late. Luckily though her bastard character here dies, whereas in Atonement she got to be old after ruining lives. I’m still mad about that movie and that I don’t have that green dress. Anyway, Macbeth as always teaches us that you really shouldn’t kill your friends, even if you will get to be king. Who wants to be king? Not me. Hashtag abolish the M. (Am I allowed to say that? I’ll delete ‘-onarchy’.) Saoirse when everything goes to shit was very compelling, although I always want to shout “what did you think would happen, Karen?” Really shouldn’t have killed all your friends there! Speaking of, no matter how jaded I am with this play, the scene where Macduff finds out about his family always wrecks me for a good few days. No, a WEEK! A whole week. It’s just so f-ing sad, debilitating. This one was no exception. (Wish I could shout out to the actor but the Alm’s website doesn’t list the cast by character wtf.)
As for the rest of the cast, they’re all doing a fine job. James McArdle in the title role is solid. Everyone is solid. But for me it’s just another decent production of Macbeth. It’s hard to really set yourself apart from the endless number of strong productions that keep on coming day in day out for the past 400 years, to find something that makes it special. It seemed like another straightforward production, albeit with more modern attire. But according to the Almeida website, there was an attempt at revolutionizing the piece: the action is occurred “a little bit later than now” and “in the ruins of an old theatre”. What do you mean a little later than now, and why? And the ruins of an old theatre? That did not come across at all, nor could I determine the reason for that. And like, why? And like, don’t? The three witches were dressed in suits too, another little piece of the inevitable modernization and distinction process that I wish everyone realized was largely unnecessary and virtually always a downgrade. Also the witches should ALWAYS be played by little girls for maximum creepiness.
INFORMATION
Macbeth is at the Almeida until November 27.
The theatre said it would be 3 hours and 5 minutes but the livestream was 2 hours 50 minutes so that’s fun. Still, a few years ago at the official Billy theatre in Stratford upon Avon it was 2 hours 20 minutes and the ushers were like ‘we love this one because it’s the shortest!’ so where did that extra halfsies come from? Is this Billy’s unrated version?
It’s sold out now, but the livestream options are now over too so if you can’t get in off the waitlist at least you are saving yourself from the unmasked coughers. Go watch Lil Wims on your TV and a different production of Macbeth on a computer at the same time and just like see what happens.
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Helen Hunt is Great, Appropriately Infuriating in Old Vic’s Eureka Day
For a play that I went into fully expecting to give me terrible agita and have me tearing my hair out and grimacing like Jim Carrey when he’s kicking his own ass, do you mind?!, Eureka Day exceeded my expectations. All we knew going in was that it was about anti-vaxxers and ‘woke liberals’ &c so, yeah, AGITA COMES A CALLING. More importantly, that Helen Hunt was coming over to foggy London town to star in it, so we had to go. Helen Hunt baby! Did Mad About You even air here? Luckily, Eureka Day, by Jonathan Spector, was well done and well presented so I only had a little agita. We also unexpectedly cried laughing at certain parts, so overall I am as pro this play as I am pro vaccines.
Eureka Day is the name of a Berkeley private school (seemed elementary age, poss preschool, poss pre-to-teen even, gotta control them throughout the formative years!), so if you aren’t told anything else, you know this school’s gonna be heavily hawite, grossly wealthy, largely NIMBYers who act green (with their reusable totes and appropriately colored juices) but deep down are red (not just for tax breaks but also because they hate minorities (it’s true! they do!)). These are the kind of parents who think they are anti-racist but end up being super duper racist, who berate you for using plastic but vote for people who are destroying the planet. Or hey maybe they do vote properly, but they still hate all minorities! (it’s true! they do). We meet the board, made of 5-6 parents including the guy who seems kind of like the principal and definitely one who is like ‘remember the last three letters of that word spell P-A-L!’ Helen Hunt (I’m just gonna call her Helen okay), it becomes clear, has been part of this board since the beginning of this school, like for decades, possibly having kids just so she can keep being eligible. You have the father drinking his green juice out of a reusable bottle (the level of character detail! spot on), the mother with the sweet voice and the Thailand pants (you know the ones) (okay it might have just been ashram chic but I immediately thought Thailand pants), and then you have the newest member, a black woman (Susan Kelechi Watson), so you’re like OH. OH OKAY, let’s see how this goes.
We get dropped right into the messy topics these jamokes are gonna try to figure out: their first order of business is choosing the drop-down menu of ethnicities for future applicants. Coming in hot! Remember how I have said since I was a baby that every London show has an awkward Jewish moment? This one came right off the bat, so that was helpful. During the oh-so-well-meaning conversation, one of the parents reminds everyone of the time a Jewish parent said they weren’t comfortable choosing ‘white’ (valid! especially in Berkeley! they hate Jews and other them!), and another said “that’s not what this is about”. I loved the little subtle attention to detail that this crowd would indeed spend hours deciding whether ‘transracial adoptive family’ was something they needed to include but immediately dismiss the very complicated question of white-passing Jewish ethnicity (of course they didn’t entertain the idea of non-white Jews). I was just like, yep this is all very realistic, though I wonder how much of it was on purpose, and if anyone else understood the nuance or just laughed at the word “jew” as they always do in this city (they did! they always do!). Just like, what an introduction to what this group was gonna be like! That super white liberal kind of subtle racism, it’s so accurate.
The characterization continues to be strong throughout. It becomes clear that the juicing father and the sweet other woman are having an affair — but then in true Berkeley fashion, the tables turn on us, and it turns out they aren’t actually sneaking around because his wife knows and has consented to opening the relationship. My god it’s spot on. My other favorite little subtle detail is when Helen at one point says ‘When they go low, we go high, right?’ quoting Michelle Obama and makes the tiniest little ‘you get me!’ gesture to Kelechi Watson. IT IS SO ACCURATE. All the actors are so good, so attuned to their characters.
We get to the meat of the show after a mumps outbreak forces the school to close. I know what you are thinking if you are old enough to read: mumps? Didn’t we solve that with vaccines like when I was an infant? It’s back, baby! Just like in real life because people are insane and easily taken advantage of by monsters who just want money, power, and I guess to watch the world burn, only about half the kids in Eureka Day are vaxxed. As one of the few clear-headed parents says in the chat on the subsequent school-wide Zoom call, “WAIT HALF THE SCHOOL ARE ANTI-VAXXERS???”
Guys, this Zoom call, it is a thing of pure theatrical, comedic beauty. I cannot get over it. There’s no way I can spoil it either even if I share all the funniest parts, because it’s like a 20 minute long funniest part, all of it. While the board talks, the show projects the chat box onto the back wall, and honestly no one in that theatre could tell you anything the board was saying, because all you heard was laughter as the chat scrolled. (I’m pretty sure that’s the point and you aren’t supposed to be listening to the board.) It is SPOT ON. The kinds of commenters, the vibes, the one parent who sends the same emoji in response to everything; the people asking if anyone else can hear anything, the others trying to help them navigate the controls; the people asking questions that the board will clearly be answering if you give them a minute, the people responding ‘I think they’re getting to that’. The accuracy of this call falling to shit, it’s hilarious. We’ve all seen these comments before. But when we get to the specifics of this call, man oh man. The parents suggesting giving your child ginger and raisin instead of ibuprofen (f-ing Berkeley) because ‘we don’t want to poison our kids’, the response ‘oh but letting them die of preventable disease is okay!’ The suggestion to visit a chiropractor, followed by the smart person saying that chiros are largely quacks, followed by “actually chiropractors have more hours studying anatomy than doctors” followed by “well my dog has more hours smelling shit than doctors but that doesn’t make him a proctologist.” IT WAS AMAZING. On and on it went, anti-vaxxers vs. sane people, all-capsing in the comments as the board absolutely loses control. It was so cathartic, and poss one of my favorite theatre moments in a long time.
The discussion challenges the board, since they don’t do anything without consensus, which in itself is an interesting point because how is that every possible. Decisions like this are all about how the choices are framed – is it protecting kids or endangering them? Is it about giving families freedom to decide for themselves or taking their decision-making abilities away from them and controlling their parenting? As the board decides what to do, whether to change the flexible vax policy to protect the kids, or to protect FREEDOM, you learn more about why certain people, namely Helen’s character, would be anti-vax (oh yeah she’s one). In doing so, the show provides a good balance of compassion for both sides, without giving credence to the idea that facts and science have two sides. There’s just one side! That’s what makes it science! But giving some backstory, some really heartbreaking backstory, helps this play accomplish the difficult task of having this conversation in the first place without it just being that (gorgeous) Zoom call. And it is difficult, all of it, knowing whether we are supposed to believe Helen or realize that we can have empathy for her without necessarily taking her words at face value; grappling with having empathy for someone whose decisions could literally kill people…it’s all layered and hard.
I read the reviews and your British reviewers were very much ‘it didn’t work for me given the British schooling system’ (what even is that b.s.) and ‘it seemed to let liberals off the hook’ and ‘I keep spelling it *Berkley* even though I have I a whole range of editors and fact-checkers at this professional publication’ but I think this play does a great job showing how we’ve gotten to this point, how complicated it all is, how important not to let the complications and the difficulties blind you to the truths (something about the forest for the trees) and how we can try dealing with it without only using all-caps yelling. Though you know I love all-caps yelling. Especially at anti-vaxxers.
INFORMATION
Eureka Day runs at the Old Vic until Oct 31 (WE ARE NOT TAWKING ABOUT HALLOWEEN). The first act is like 40-45 minutes? (a dream) The second is just over an hour. All the way upstairs at the Old Vic continues to be the best value and have the emptiest bathrooms!
“Oppenheimer”: Decent But Unedited New London Play
The story of the American scientist who created the atomic bomb sounds like it could be either interesting or boring. The new London show achieves both. The first act is well done and pretty compelling, but the second act had seven end points and needs hella cutting. Still, it’s an interesting story that’s worth seeing – especially if they fix it before the next production.
We begin in Oppy’s (as his “friends” call him) house as his (repeatedly described non-monogamous) girlfriend hosts a drunken neurotic fundraiser for ‘the Spanish crisis’ in the early stages of World War II. Her agitated uneasy speeches show us 1) they’re all proud Communists and b) she, Jean, is quite mentally unstable. I wouldn’t want to be friends with these people. All pretentious in their highly educated status, showing how caring and cultured they are by getting drunk and dancing all night in the name of supporting the less fortunate who are being tortured, starved, and killed. It struck me as an ugly scene but extremely illustrative of this group of middle class people. I was told that Oppenheimer was famously hard to get along with, but instead of showing us that, we see that compared to his social circle he was the lovable puppy in the crowd, at least at the beginning. So that was a curious creative choice.
This whole show is pretty much questionable creative choices, actually. Considering how curious a choice of subject matter this wholly American story is for a small British production to begin with, every decision thereafter seemed rushed or at least ill-advised. The frequent little science lessons were the most effective and entertaining parts of the show, kind of like how the best part of “The Big Bang Theory” is any actual science you learn amid the drivel. As far as I could tell, the mini lectures and the discussion-based lessons Oppy’s protégés gave us were accurate. Then again I wouldn’t really know. I mean they were talking about the science behind the atom bomb. If you really understood it you would have been there. When they talked about science, the play was at its most natural and interesting. Then again I liked school. We learn about atom composition, atom splitting, all kinds of things. Through these lessons and science-focused conversations, we learn with them that Germans split the atom, letting loose a whole bunch of crap and energy. Our Murkan scientists freak the f out, as you do, and realized holy crap, this could lead to enormous explosions to end all explosions, possibly igniting the earth’s atmosphere, or destroying the earth, or at least countries! Then they realized, holy crap, we really need to get ahead of the Germans on this so we win the war. That was at least one of the accurate points, that they were always racing to get ahead of the Germans, whom we assumed were indeed ahead of us, when in fact they knew pretty much nothing the whole time.
Things pick up from here, as Oppy gathers the finest minds in science (or at least northern California), then the military takes over as it does, and the whole shebang becomes the super secret Manhattan Project.
The military’s involvement/control is obviously a mixed blessing. They get resources, power, land, and uranium, but also lots of bullshit and awfulness. Any red-leaning brains (everyone we met in the beginning) get shipped off to war or to Alaska because Murka was awful afear’d back then of people who may have thought differently. The interference with (or, often, hindrance of) science in the name of democracy is an extremely frustrating and terrifying thing that the military enjoyed doing. Good thing the government lets science be now!
As more progress is made on the bomb, Oppy becomes more and more of a righteous jackass, as the weight of what he’s doing weighs on him. Or doesn’t. We hear a lot of big speeches about how Oppy is lead and ytterbium and iron, stable at the core, and that he carries the responsibility without it breaking him. I guess it was supposed to be an ironic statement of stability? or disaffectedness? Because obviously it broke or at least injured him. But that wasn’t clear. It was more of a disconnect between words and actions than it was irony. Like unintentional disjunction. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Director.)
A lot is said about how Oppy was chosen to lead the project because the military could control or at least predict his behavior. As they wanted, he broke off contact with his commie brother for a long time, he turned friends in to the inquisitors, he shipped off some of his best students to war and refused to help them when they returned. He got real jerky like. I mean, if you were spending the prime of your life devoted to ending others’ lives, you’d prob go dark like Emma’s doing right now on “Once Upon A Time” (best show ever??). but the repeated thesis that he was unbreakable (they alive, dammit!) and resilient came across more incorrect than poignant.
At least Oppy was played by a decent actor, John Heffernan. I thought he was pretty good and then when I recognized him from the new BBC series “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” (which I was lucky enough to see a sneak preview of recently because I’m so important in the London entertainment scene) my thoughts were confirmed because only the best people are in that show. But there was a lot of not-so-decent acting on display here. I have issues with mainstem West End shows lately, so this (it’s like an off-West End production) had more. Everyone seemed a slight notch below where they should have been, especially with their American accents. Say your freaking r’s! And every time anyone said the word ‘sir’ but with another word coming after it, it became ‘suh’ and just ugh come on. Also no one could say ‘apparently’ without it getting super loose in the vowels when in American the vowels need to be constricted. I feel like dialect coaches are not valued anymore.
Everything just seemed a little jumbled, likely due to direction. Funnily enough, at the beginning, I despised Oppy’s girlfriend Jean and his friend’s wife Charlotte with the weird New England WASP country club/faux Katherine Hepburn accent. But by the end, these two actresses, Catherine Steadman and Sandy Foster, were my favorites. I don’t know if they got better with more meaty scenes, if I got nicer, or if it was just the power of comparison working in their favor.
One person I did not like was Oppy’s wife Kitty, played by Thomasin Rand. Maybe because that name is ludicrous, but I couldn’t get a handle on her. I don’t know if you’re supposed to hate her of if you’re supposed to feel bad for her because her husband is so preoccupied and she’s always (always) pregnant (and drinking to the point of alcoholism and smoking like a chimney throughout), but I didn’t. Or maybe her hatefulness comes from her husband’s stated lack of ability to connect or form real bonds and she’s like I left that foppish but super polite British guy for this? (And yes we see the very awkward courtship between Oppy and Kitty as they have an affair, get pregnant, and then ask said British guy for a divorce. He, by the way, had the funniest accent in the whole play, which was odd because he’s the only one who gets to be his real nationality. It was like an American doing an over-the-top British accent but the actor was really British, so I loved it. I hope it was on purpose.)
Or maybe it’s because her husband may have been in love with another woman the whole time. His earlier love, Jean, was clearly always special to him and their deep connection seemed to have persisted until her unfortunate suicide. She was unable to deal with her chemically unbalanced mind and the FBI agents tapping her phone and sitting outside her house all day and night because of her political views and ties to Oppy. It was all very upsetting and tragic. After her death, we get more reason to despise Oppy and Kitty as they agree that suicide is extremely self-centered and that Jean was super selfish for killing herself. At least they agreed on something? I wonder how accurate this portrayal was, because that’s a big black mark to paint on a person’s character. Do not like.
I wonder how accurate all of it was, actually. If all of Oppy’s contacts were under government surveillance for their political views, if the general in charge was really somehow everywhere all the time and in every important science discussion, if the captain on the project talked in an exaggerated American accent like he was just pulled from the set of “A Few Good Men”, if one of Oppy’s protégés apparently learned his American accent from the aforementioned “Big Bang Theory” (he sounded exactly like Sheldon and was my fave part). One of my favorite characters was Edward Teller, the Hungarian scientist who created the hydrogen bomb, or ‘super’. In the show, he was pushing Oppy to focus on the super during WW2, which seemed early but was apparently accurate, despite no real work being done on it until after the war. Ben Allen, the actor playing Teller, was pretty funny at times and made Teller one of the most sympathetic characters onstage, which I’m not sure was the intent given that Teller in real life was kind of a lunatic. So I’m told, I don’t know.
The first act had a lot of good learning and commies and New Mexico and more commies and excitement and stuff. The second act, hoo boy, it kind of fell apart in ways you could not imagine. First of all, at 1.5 hours each act, the play was way too long for what they did with the time. Do shows not have editors anymore? Act II could easily be 30-40 minutes shorter. Here’s what they should do: First, cut the kid. When we are supposed to assume they’ve dropped the first bomb, a child climbs out of the sunroof of the bomb, which is on stage, and he GIVES A MONOLOGUE. A kid that we have not met before, just this random punk kid with THE WORST American accent who has a few ridiculously pretentious paragraphs to recite about life and death and ephemerality maybe and who knows what and of course he messed up a line. He had literally one job. CUT THAT. It was nonsense and it brought the show to a screeching halt and not only added nothing but significantly detracted from the impact. I almost screamed for them to get the hook.
Next, cut the really freaky deaky and out of place bongo-drum circle and drug-induced drunken rave that followed the first test run of the bomb that occurred UNDER THE BOMB ACTING AS A DISCO BALL. I kid you not. I’m sure this wackadoo scene may have worked in some incarnation of this play, but it was not the one I saw. You can’t have a straight serious play and then throw in one super trippy conceptual scene for shits and giggles. It was completely weird with every character giving mini pretentious monologues about, well, life and death and ephemerality and who knows what while the rest of the cast was waving their arms in prayer to the gods of explosions in the fire and doing tribal chants like they were in a goddamn regional production of “Hair” while on acid. For like 10 minutes, sandwiched between serious science and black & white scenes, we uncomfortably watched this rave while the actors said lines like “The sun shone brightly like a diamond.” Well that might be Rhianna but you get my point. Omg.
Then, cut the next false ending of big grand speeches (yes there are more) that are terribly written and unnatural in Oppy and Bob’s classroom. I REALLY didn’t need to hear that bit about the horse Bob saw in Hiroshima after the bomb dropped. It was really graphic and disturbing but without the slightest need for it. I really didn’t appreciate that. So many sentences in this back half of Act II no one would ever say in real life, like overly wordy high school English essay kind of writing, when you think you sound smart but it actually makes you sound dumber.
I was thinking, such an important story should have been done better. But, then I thought, wait, is it such an important story? It is necessary to know the guy who built the atomic bomb and what not, but is this section of his life story necessary? Do we need to know he was kind of a jerk and had shitty friends and was a shitty friend and suffered a lot? And if so, why? His brilliant mind helped us do massacring of a newfangled variety, which the world is thankful for in a grotesque way, but was he necessary? Even his wife asks the general at some point why they didn’t pick Einstein or another great scientist who could have done it. The answer in this show is that the leader of this project needed this project to be his career highlight, and the other big name scientists already had other significant achievements in their careers. Cool. A more interesting story would have continued to the government’s turning on him after the war and their awful investigation into his political views, kind of like how the British government turned on Alan Turing after the war after he freaking saved their lives those ungrateful ignorant assholes. God knows in three hours would could have covered all of that. But we didn’t really get to it, probably because of all the unnecessary speechifying. So there were some really interesting choices made in this play. I’m not sure they worked, but despite all the weirdness it was still pretty good. I just wish they had hired an editor.
AUDIENCE: CONGRATULATIONS, Oppenheimer audience! This was the first time in many years that I did not see a cell phone being used during the show. I mean, that is pretty remarkable. However, there was this awful young couple behind me who talked the entire time. And I mean the entire time. I regret not saying something at intermission but I feared them cutting my hair during Act II or something. I did give them the good old death stare a few times though. I am proud of that.
Things pick up from here, as Oppy gathers the finest minds in science (or at least northern California), then the military takes over as it does, and the whole shebang becomes the super secret Manhattan Project.
The military’s involvement/control is obviously a mixed blessing. They get resources, power, land, and uranium, but also lots of bullshit and awfulness. Any red-leaning brains (everyone we met in the beginning) get shipped off to war or to Alaska because Murka was awful afear’d back then of people who may have thought differently. The interference with (or, often, hindrance of) science in the name of democracy is an extremely frustrating and terrifying thing that the military enjoyed doing. Good thing the government lets science be now!
As more progress is made on the bomb, Oppy becomes more and more of a righteous jackass, as the weight of what he’s doing weighs on him. Or doesn’t. We hear a lot of big speeches about how Oppy is lead and ytterbium and iron, stable at the core, and that he carries the responsibility without it breaking him. I guess it was supposed to be an ironic statement of stability? or disaffectedness? Because obviously it broke or at least injured him. But that wasn’t clear. It was more of a disconnect between words and actions than it was irony. Like unintentional disjunction. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Director.)
A lot is said about how Oppy was chosen to lead the project because the military could control or at least predict his behavior. As they wanted, he broke off contact with his commie brother for a long time, he turned friends in to the inquisitors, he shipped off some of his best students to war and refused to help them when they returned. He got real jerky like. I mean, if you were spending the prime of your life devoted to ending others’ lives, you’d prob go dark like Emma’s doing right now on “Once Upon A Time” (best show ever??). but the repeated thesis that he was unbreakable (they alive, dammit!) and resilient came across more incorrect than poignant.
At least Oppy was played by a decent actor, John Heffernan. I thought he was pretty good and then when I recognized him from the new BBC series “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” (which I was lucky enough to see a sneak preview of recently because I’m so important in the London entertainment scene) my thoughts were confirmed because only the best people are in that show. But there was a lot of not-so-decent acting on display here. I have issues with mainstem West End shows lately, so this (it’s like an off-West End production) had more. Everyone seemed a slight notch below where they should have been, especially with their American accents. Say your freaking r’s! And every time anyone said the word ‘sir’ but with another word coming after it, it became ‘suh’ and just ugh come on. Also no one could say ‘apparently’ without it getting super loose in the vowels when in American the vowels need to be constricted. I feel like dialect coaches are not valued anymore.
Everything just seemed a little jumbled, likely due to direction. Funnily enough, at the beginning, I despised Oppy’s girlfriend Jean and his friend’s wife Charlotte with the weird New England WASP country club/faux Katherine Hepburn accent. But by the end, these two actresses, Catherine Steadman and Sandy Foster, were my favorites. I don’t know if they got better with more meaty scenes, if I got nicer, or if it was just the power of comparison working in their favor.
One person I did not like was Oppy’s wife Kitty, played by Thomasin Rand. Maybe because that name is ludicrous, but I couldn’t get a handle on her. I don’t know if you’re supposed to hate her of if you’re supposed to feel bad for her because her husband is so preoccupied and she’s always (always) pregnant (and drinking to the point of alcoholism and smoking like a chimney throughout), but I didn’t. Or maybe her hatefulness comes from her husband’s stated lack of ability to connect or form real bonds and she’s like I left that foppish but super polite British guy for this? (And yes we see the very awkward courtship between Oppy and Kitty as they have an affair, get pregnant, and then ask said British guy for a divorce. He, by the way, had the funniest accent in the whole play, which was odd because he’s the only one who gets to be his real nationality. It was like an American doing an over-the-top British accent but the actor was really British, so I loved it. I hope it was on purpose.)
Or maybe it’s because her husband may have been in love with another woman the whole time. His earlier love, Jean, was clearly always special to him and their deep connection seemed to have persisted until her unfortunate suicide. She was unable to deal with her chemically unbalanced mind and the FBI agents tapping her phone and sitting outside her house all day and night because of her political views and ties to Oppy. It was all very upsetting and tragic. After her death, we get more reason to despise Oppy and Kitty as they agree that suicide is extremely self-centered and that Jean was super selfish for killing herself. At least they agreed on something? I wonder how accurate this portrayal was, because that’s a big black mark to paint on a person’s character. Do not like.
I wonder how accurate all of it was, actually. If all of Oppy’s contacts were under government surveillance for their political views, if the general in charge was really somehow everywhere all the time and in every important science discussion, if the captain on the project talked in an exaggerated American accent like he was just pulled from the set of “A Few Good Men”, if one of Oppy’s protégés apparently learned his American accent from the aforementioned “Big Bang Theory” (he sounded exactly like Sheldon and was my fave part). One of my favorite characters was Edward Teller, the Hungarian scientist who created the hydrogen bomb, or ‘super’. In the show, he was pushing Oppy to focus on the super during WW2, which seemed early but was apparently accurate, despite no real work being done on it until after the war. Ben Allen, the actor playing Teller, was pretty funny at times and made Teller one of the most sympathetic characters onstage, which I’m not sure was the intent given that Teller in real life was kind of a lunatic. So I’m told, I don’t know.
The first act had a lot of good learning and commies and New Mexico and more commies and excitement and stuff. The second act, hoo boy, it kind of fell apart in ways you could not imagine. First of all, at 1.5 hours each act, the play was way too long for what they did with the time. Do shows not have editors anymore? Act II could easily be 30-40 minutes shorter. Here’s what they should do: First, cut the kid. When we are supposed to assume they’ve dropped the first bomb, a child climbs out of the sunroof of the bomb, which is on stage, and he GIVES A MONOLOGUE. A kid that we have not met before, just this random punk kid with THE WORST American accent who has a few ridiculously pretentious paragraphs to recite about life and death and ephemerality maybe and who knows what and of course he messed up a line. He had literally one job. CUT THAT. It was nonsense and it brought the show to a screeching halt and not only added nothing but significantly detracted from the impact. I almost screamed for them to get the hook.
Next, cut the really freaky deaky and out of place bongo-drum circle and drug-induced drunken rave that followed the first test run of the bomb that occurred UNDER THE BOMB ACTING AS A DISCO BALL. I kid you not. I’m sure this wackadoo scene may have worked in some incarnation of this play, but it was not the one I saw. You can’t have a straight serious play and then throw in one super trippy conceptual scene for shits and giggles. It was completely weird with every character giving mini pretentious monologues about, well, life and death and ephemerality and who knows what while the rest of the cast was waving their arms in prayer to the gods of explosions in the fire and doing tribal chants like they were in a goddamn regional production of “Hair” while on acid. For like 10 minutes, sandwiched between serious science and black & white scenes, we uncomfortably watched this rave while the actors said lines like “The sun shone brightly like a diamond.” Well that might be Rhianna but you get my point. Omg.
Then, cut the next false ending of big grand speeches (yes there are more) that are terribly written and unnatural in Oppy and Bob’s classroom. I REALLY didn’t need to hear that bit about the horse Bob saw in Hiroshima after the bomb dropped. It was really graphic and disturbing but without the slightest need for it. I really didn’t appreciate that. So many sentences in this back half of Act II no one would ever say in real life, like overly wordy high school English essay kind of writing, when you think you sound smart but it actually makes you sound dumber.
I was thinking, such an important story should have been done better. But, then I thought, wait, is it such an important story? It is necessary to know the guy who built the atomic bomb and what not, but is this section of his life story necessary? Do we need to know he was kind of a jerk and had shitty friends and was a shitty friend and suffered a lot? And if so, why? His brilliant mind helped us do massacring of a newfangled variety, which the world is thankful for in a grotesque way, but was he necessary? Even his wife asks the general at some point why they didn’t pick Einstein or another great scientist who could have done it. The answer in this show is that the leader of this project needed this project to be his career highlight, and the other big name scientists already had other significant achievements in their careers. Cool. A more interesting story would have continued to the government’s turning on him after the war and their awful investigation into his political views, kind of like how the British government turned on Alan Turing after the war after he freaking saved their lives those ungrateful ignorant assholes. God knows in three hours would could have covered all of that. But we didn’t really get to it, probably because of all the unnecessary speechifying. So there were some really interesting choices made in this play. I’m not sure they worked, but despite all the weirdness it was still pretty good. I just wish they had hired an editor.
AUDIENCE: CONGRATULATIONS, Oppenheimer audience! This was the first time in many years that I did not see a cell phone being used during the show. I mean, that is pretty remarkable. However, there was this awful young couple behind me who talked the entire time. And I mean the entire time. I regret not saying something at intermission but I feared them cutting my hair during Act II or something. I did give them the good old death stare a few times though. I am proud of that.
1 Comment
Quoting “mare” !lol
Another wonderful written review❤️