James McAvoy is Fine, but Cyrano is Bloated & Exhausting

Reviewing this show is a little difficult, because while it is a revival of Terrence McNally’s 1982 play, it’s chock-full of ‘culturally relevant’ updates. So which part is more responsible for the crappiness, the old stuff or the new? I guess both! Also, while I’m sure the original work was seen as cutting and important for the theatre scene, this revival feels so tired and lame and ugh too often painful. 

Okay, so it’s about an opening night party after the premiere of a new play as all the integral players wait for the reviews to come out. This premise forces all the action to happen in one room, specifically the bedroom of the producer, played by Megan Mullally. Bottling everyone claustrophobically inside this room as so much goes to shit and people start fighting and turning on each other and ugh just talking too much, it will make you want to shout from your seat “JUST LEAVE! JUST WALK OUT THE DOOR AND LEAVE WTF!” As I’m sure all audience members do, I felt like Bunuel in “Midnight in Paris” when Owen Wilson explains his future film to him, and Bunuel is like “But why don’t they just leave? I don’t understand.” This show. 

Megan Mullally (I’m not going to use character names because these actors were not able to escape their public personae) is the sole producer of a show for the first time, so she is nervous about the reviews, and thus spends the entire opening night party (which she’s having at her HOME, which is LUDICROUS) upstairs in her bedroom. Pseudo-friends start popping in and never leaving, including: 

1. Nathan Lane, a television actor who gave up the lead in this play for his now-cancelled series even though the playwright is his ‘best friend’;
2. the playwright Matthew Broderick, who is the most boring milquetoast man you have ever seen and I shudder to think of poor SJP; 
3. the director Rupert Grint, who is saddled with the worst costume and the worst bit (infra) and will have to deal with everyone saying how his Broadway debut did not measure up to Daniel Radcliffe’s but that’s not really his fault because this show; 
4. the theatre critic F. Murray Abraham, who somehow works his way into the inner circle despite, um, being a critic, and is just super miscast;
5. the lead of the Play, Stockard Channing, who is trying to overcome her serious drug addictions (haha so funny?) by doing many drugs onstage while wearing her ankle monitor (which she couldn’t remove during the play within the play);
6. and the best part of this show, Micah Stock, stealing all his scenes as the hopeful actor working this party as the coat-check guy. 

I mean. That’s a great cast. It’s just too bad the play isn’t better. But I guess that doesn’t matter, because their collective star power is allowing this pile of whatnot to break box office records left and right. Good job, producers, proving that our current society values celebrity over quality. It’s just true. Even I went to see all these actors even though I had already heard how dumb it was. I judge me too.

I don’t want to be super mean; it’s not like this is the worst show ever or even right now. It’s just that it has so much freaking potential and that makes it even worse, (like “American Hustle”). As you know, it makes me angrier when something so easily could be better than when something just sucks. It reeks of laziness and negligence when a little more attention and effort could make something great. Hence why I’m so angry about this and I didn’t say anything about “Holler If Ya Hear Me”.  

Nathan Lane, bless his heart, tries so freaking hard in everything he does. You can almost see a cloud of smoke (not farts) following him around as his effort outweighs every single person ever inspired by any small engine that ever thought it could, combined. Even during my vote for #1 worst part of the show – when Nathan Lane’s character has to refer to ACTUAL PERSON NATHAN LANE/himself as a super-gay famous actor whom he would have understood being cast in something, without cursing out the entire production team for including this awful update and without throwing glass vases at all the laughing audience members who think this is somehow funny – Lane gives his all to deliver every line with all his acting prowess as though it’s the most important play ever. Bravo to him, seriously, because his giving 200% is surprisingly what lets him retain his dignity after this mess ends. 

So okay, plot. Oh wait, you got it. These characters wait for the reviews to come in. And not just any reviews, but most importantly the New York Times review from Ben Brantley. This is my vote for Worst Shit #1 (tied), because Ben Brantley is a real person who actually had to review this show. And despite it being terrible, he loved it and gave it a positive review – maybe…juuuuust maybe, because the show exalts him as the most important voice in all of theatre??? You think he liked that?

Breathe. So the characters assemble, and as they wait, they kind of fight, they bicker, they drop so many names. Nathan and Matthew have a big fight because Nathan admits that he didn’t take the part because the play sucks (real Nathan wishes he followed his character’s path?), and Broderick makes big lofty speeches about how commercialized the theatre has become. Listen, I saw this show in previews, so these speeches may have been mercifully cut by opening night (though as far as I can find, they haven’t been), but Broderick’s speeches stopped the show faster and more drastically than a ton of bricks falling from the ceiling could have. It was beyond boring. His delivery copied Ben Stein doing “Bueller…Bueller?”. The actual words mirrored Bob Balaban’s end monologue in “The Lady in the Water”, just replacing ‘movies’ with ‘theatre’. I wonder if M. Night has seen this yet and been alternately thrilled and pissed.  

F. Murray Abraham, that fantastic serious actor, plays a total jackwagon of a theatre critic who, despite being stuck in this room with these people, tells them how much they suck and how dumb they are. He also acts kind of like a clown, laughing maniacally and creepily, and you’re just like…how did they cast you, fearsome Dar Adal &c., in this role? I feel bad for him. 

Rupert Grint gets the shit end of the stick by far when he has to act out a confrontation with his father…in front of all his work colleagues (not to mention the audience)…with…wait for it…hand puppets. That he had in his pockets. I think it was supposed to be funny, but it was sad, and embarrassing.  

Stockard Channing is another Serious Actor whom I felt intense levels of fremdschamen for the entire time. Important note to producers if they find a time machine: Stockard and Mullally should have switched roles. Stockard mostly talks about drugs and drinking while doing drugs and drinking in front of us, and it’s supposed to be funny because haha addition, but it’s not funny because it’s freaking Stockard Channing and you’re like…hey…hey girl…what are ya doing? Meanwhile, Mullally found success and became super famous because of how good she is at making drugs and drinking somehow freaking hilarious. Why on earth was she playing the uber-wealthy producer instead of the crazy actress? Why? 

The saving grace of the entire shebang is Micah Stock, long-lost little brother of Billy Eichner. Micah’s coat-check guy comments on all the celebrities partying downstairs with absolutely no cynicism or really knowledge, just pure sincerity, and he’s hilarious and perfect. My favorite part of the show is when he comes up with coats and says a jumble of sounds that somehow you (if you are a theatre aficionado) know is supposed to be ‘Tovah Feldshuh’. Jokes about the Kardashians and Lady Gaga are less welcome, but he does his damnedest to make you laugh. His heavier presence in the beginning is what lets this show start off with a bang, but his diminished presence later on is what lets all the air out. 

Despite all this crap it’s kind of fun? I have a feeling people would compare this ‘it’s bad but you still want to watch it’ feeling to “Grease 2”, but G2 is amazing and that would be too high praise. It’s more like “Never Been Kissed”, I’d say. You cringe the entire time and you cover your eyes at most everything that comes out of Drew Barrymore’s mouth, but Michael Vartan is in it and you love him. So…see it? Maybe? 

WHAT is happening in London’s opera scene? A whole lot of shit, that’s what’s happening. Like there wasn’t enough misogyny in the world and in all forms of entertainment, now London’s opera bigwigs apparently decided that all the biggest summer productions at the city’s most respected opera houses would not only be anti-feminist but anti-female, pro-rape, pro-violence against women, and not good. Big steaming poop messes are at the English National Opera and the Royal Opera House and are unrelated to this week’s heat wave. 

First off, the one that has been in the news. Guillaume Tell at the Royal Opera. This Rossini opera is about William Tell, could you have guessed? You know what’s interesting about this show? It was the last opera Rossini wrote even though he lived for 40 more years after it. I think he was shamed by nighttime visions of this future production that kept him up at night and he was all, I’m never giving these futuristic f**kers any more fodder to be assholes with, or something. 

So, it starts with the Lone Ranger theme, and then villagers sing about weddings, archery contests occur, and Swiss people get upset that their country is oppressed (by Austria). After two acts of that comes a scene in which soldier baddies celebrate 100 years Austrian oppression in Switzerland. The baddies drink and sing and then notice that Tell and his son aren’t joining in, so they’re like, oh we gotta arrest you, even though we respect what a great archer you are, do you want to tell your son to run or is he gonna stick around?
So that’s the third act of Guillaume Tell. Do you know what happens in the current abomination at the Royal Opera House? When they celebrate Austrian rule, the soldiers drink and sing and sing and drink, and then they take the servant girl who is providing the alcohol, and they force themselves on her, and they pour all the wine on her so she’s soaked through, and then the men put her on the table and take off her clothes (the audience sees her naked), and all the many many men sexually assault her further at gunpoint before Tell rescues her.

That doesn’t sound like the opera as written, does it? It’s not. That is utter bullshit completely added in by the dirty f**kface director Damiano Michieletto, bag o’ dicks director of opera at Covent Garden Kasper Hotlen, and the producers at the ROH. None of that violence adds anything to the show, so there is no excuse for it. I’m sure they argue that they wanted to show how terrible those men were, but it was not necessary to do so, especially to such an extent. All it really accomplished was reminding everyone in the audience that people still consider violence against women to be totally okay and permitted. Luckily, the audience booed during this scene, so much so that news outlets actually did mention the booing, but how many people walked out? How many cancelled their subscriptions? What’s more important, and disturbing: how many people are now buying tickets to the rest of the performances to catch this ‘newsworthy’ production?

This production should have been vilified for this gratuitous brutality and I know I will not be giving the Royal Opera House any money until they apologize. Indeed, Holten said they will not apologize for the scene and they refuse to edit it even though it will be broadcast in movie theatres. He described it as “an honest attempt to talk about the reality of war” and said people maybe “felt we should have warned them better, as people may not want to be exposed to sexual violence”. That’s not it, you ignorant douchebag. People don’t want to see in their entertainment depictions of what at least 60% of your audience has to live with and fear every day of their lives if it is not necessary to convey the message you hope to. And this was not necessary. Did you know, Kasper, that that’s the definition of gratuitous? I’m sure it was really fun for all you men involved to be like, ‘oh hey we can do this shit because it makes people realize how bad war is.’ A) People know how bad war is. B) All it did was remind people how terrible modern society still is when it comes to understanding rape culture. You, sir, do not understand it.

***

Now to the one that has not received any media attention that I know of, probably because people with the power to make things known in the media don’t really realize how misogynistic this one is, especially since there’s only so much opera coverage allowed by the populace. “Carmen”, Bizet’s famous opera about the wiles of a Gypsy woman, is playing at the English National Opera. First things first, the ENO does all their productions in English. It sucks. I’ve been there a lot, and the productions are sometimes great, but it’s never my or most opera fans preference to see works translated from their original language. I saw “Rigoletto” once in Austria and it was in German instead of Italian. It was terrible. Oh but they did the famous aria “La donna e mobile” in Italian. Just that part.

Moving on, “Carmen” is a pretty misogynistic opera to begin with, but ENO succeeded in making it even more gratuitously so with this ‘modernized’ production. I don’t understand why directors feel the need to unnecessarily change aspects of great works just for the sake of changing it, when it doesn’t add any artistic value. There are some alterations or reimaginings or revivals that are worthy, like the recent “Spring Awakening” production in California that used many deaf and disabled cast members to highlight the rampant lack of understanding and capability in the show. That sounds brilliant. The half-assed modernization of “Carmen” was not: it kept most of the same ideas – lots of soldiers, being in Spain, smugglers – and added hysterically hideous ‘90s-era-Italy outfits and like 6 cars, doing the smuggling, onstage at one time. I don’t know what they were going for.

So “Carmen” tells the story of a seductive gypsy who seduces men and is a gypsy. She is a cigarette girl among hundreds of cigarette girls who apparently work in the same barracks as hundreds of soldiers. It was a big cast. The soldiers are all disgusting. They treat the women like toys and Carmen like a piece of meat. They grope everyone and repeatedly stick her face in their crotchular regions. But Carmen enjoys it, apparently, because she is seductive, so she is asking for it. Hence it being a super misogynistic show as written, differentiating it from the above monstrosity.

The soldiers beg for her to choose a lover and stop taunting them by existing, so she chooses Jose, who was ignoring her. Smart plan! She sings her super famous aria that goes ‘da dum dum dum!’ about how those who love her should beware. Then all the girls fight like really actually fight, because who doesn’t love women fighting and hitting and scratching each other with their claws? Carmen is accused of whipping out a knife in what should have been merely a skin fight, so the male official says she’s going to be arrested and tells Jose to tie her hands together while they figure out what to do because small man brain. That’s what happens normally.

Here, the men tie Carmen to a flagpole with the official’s workbelt, take off her shirtdress, and position her so she’s on her knees. People I talked to at intermission thought this was disgusting. One woman who knows the opera well felt that tying her up completely, as opposed to just her hands, unnecessarily made her subordinate and submissive and was just gross.

Carmen then beguiles Jose, tasked with guarding her, and he becomes pretty infatuated with her. He lets her escape, whereupon he is imprisoned for a month or two.

When he gets out, he and we find Carmen with her smuggler friends, who are driving regular-sized cars across the stage to show how modern the show is. Three women (and one little girl, sadly) compose the group with 3 or so indistinguishably disgusting men, who assault them and grope them all with no regard for which woman it is or what she’s doing or how drunk she is (very drunk). They meet Escamillo, the famous toreador, who sings the famous toreador song (and not very well, also sadly). Escamillo ‘falls in love’ with Carmen, who is instead in love with her Jose, whom she is now seeing for the second time ever. Jose has to go back to camp for nighttime, and Carmen, being an awful no good female who doesn’t understand that men have to work, gets really upset that he isn’t willing to sacrifice his job for her, because if he really loved her he would. This is apparently how Rossini thought women’s little brains worked. As written, Jose’s superior officer arrives looking for Carmen (every man thinks he is in love with her), and Jose fights him. Having done that, he can’t go back to soldiering, so he joins the smugglers.

Here, he punches Carmen instead, for mocking his need to go back to work. She falls to the ground in fetal position, where she remains while Jose sings not about how he’s sorry but about how much he loves her. Then he cuddles up next to her and declares his love more. And what choice does she have but to accept it? What other kind of love could she possibly know?

Then more cars appear and it’s really just nonsense.

Then, Carmen gets bored with Jose, because that’s how women are, those fickle people, and the toreador tells her he loves her. Hey guess what, she returns the favor now. That happens really with no build up, I thought she was lying, but that’s how women do, just transfer affection really easily when they’re bored. Then Carmen and her friends do tarot cards, and Carmen gets the one saying she’s going to die. No one else seems really worried, though Carmen tells them it’s probably Jose. 

Escamillo invites pretty much all of Spain to see him in his next bull-fight, and during that famous song we get to watch 100 or so actors in neon shorts and smartphones jumping up and down in unison for a good 2 minutes. It’s like they stopped trying. Anyway, outside the arena, Carmen and her two girlfriends are about to enter, before they leave her and are like, ‘Hey don’t get killed, we know that’s a possibility but we’re going to leave you alone now.’ Carmen keeps a watchful eye until she needs to do her makeup, and Jose sneaks in while she is looking in the compact, because oh girls with their makeup! So silly! So Jose is devastated that she no longer wants to be with him, even though he hit her, and even though now she loves someone else, so he kills her. At the end, after Jose kills her, he normally confesses to the murder. Here, instead, he grabs her by the lifeless foot and drags her offstage as the lights go out. Cute!

So ENO is not nearly as guilty as ROH for disgusting and gratuitous anti-female sentiment, because so much of it is in the text, but how they chose to augment what was already a plethora of misogyny reinforces how normal all the people involved considered it to be. This already has violence against women, but let’s make it worse! This one doesn’t have violence against women, so let’s add a lot, for art’s sake. It’s not art, guys. It’s violence, and it’s perpetuating the acceptance and sickening tolerance of rape culture.