January 19, 2023
Happy News Alert: 2nd Annual Vegan Family Reunion (San Antonio, TX)by Randi / March 1, 2022It’s Theatre Thursday! Opening night of this production is tonight! I saw it a few weeks ago so here we are! Have fun tonight to everyone who didn’t get into fights with people that rhyme with Belfont Crackintosh and get blacklisted from press lists!
What a treat for London! Aaron Sorkin’s very-Aaron-Sorkin adaptation of the classic Harper Lee novel To Kill A Mockingbird has successfully made the jump from Broadway to add some heavy heavy drama, depth, and intelligence to current West End offerings. With the familiar portrayal of the novel’s events, some great performances, and subtle improvements on the source material, this production is a must. And I’m not just saying that because I got to stand next to my fave male theatre director OF ALL TIME, Bartlett Sher, for a few minutes as he tweaked his work. (“T-W-E-A-K tweaking. It sounds like…he’s…married. Married 3 kids.”)
As an American, my DNA comprises the book To Kill A Mockingbird like it does peanut butter and apple pie (not together ew gross! wait, actually… (I truly just made the two faces of that girl in the gif, you know the one)). I assumed that British folk did not have to read the book in their version of middle school as commonly as we did (every single American schoolchild reads it) and according to some of my British friends that is correct, since they didn’t have to. The draw, then, to this show and the cultural importance of it might not be as compelling as it was in NYC. But hopefully it still makes its mark.
TKAM tells the story, as you know (unless you’re a British schoolchild), of nice-man lawyer Atticus Finch, his children Scout (tough girl!) and Jem (boy of middling toughness!), their new friend Dill (based on Truman Capote!), and the Alabama town they live in and all its eek-face-making goings-on. Atticus is tasked to represent a black man accused of raping a young white girl, Atticus being one of the few non-super-racist whites of the town and thus the accused’s only chance at justice. Even though everyone and their dog knows the man, Tom Robinson, is innocent, the politics of the town and time mean that getting justice for the man will be a longshot.
The courtroom drama scenes are so well done. So much time is devoted to Mayella’s and Bob Ewell’s testimony and you want to scream the whole time but it is mfing gripping drama. I haven’t been that nervous and breathless watching cross examinations since I was an intern in a real courtroom for a trial of this very nature, although the attorneys there could have really used some Sorkin writing on their side (and that IRL defense attorney was actually more offensive, racist, and bigoted than the prosecution here! hooray America!).
Rafe Spall’s Atticus carries the show fine, and is strong in the scenes with the children. He’s good in the court scenes too, although his surprisingly loud screaming at the end felt like a shocking misfire for a character always shown as level-headed. Yes, it’s to show he’s losing his famous patience with this miscarriage of justice, but even so, a little too much to be believable. Scout, our narrator, is playedth by Gwyneth Keyworth, who has some amazing moments (“go right for the eyes!” being literally the hardest I’ve laughed in the theatre in years) but needs to work on her uneven accent. My fave performance of the whole shibang comes from David Moorst as a spindly and sprightly Dill, who is gottam HILARIOUS 70% of the time and completely heartbreaking 40% of the time (that’s right) with no lag time. I could cry again thinking of him. HE’S NOT REAL, I have to keep telling myself otherwise it’s unbearable. (Moorst played Puck in that beyond perfection production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge so I guess he joins my list of favorite UK actors, cool cool cool.)
What I really loved about this production was how Atticus, long heralded in American culture as the faultless hero white man who helped solve racism, was called out for trying to be nice to everyone, even to bad racist people. His long-time black maid, Calpurnia (Pamela Nomvete), does the calling out over time and then all at once, in a satisfying and believable way, though the bigness of that moment’s portrayal feels a bit forced Atticus was rightly revealed as being neutral towards offenders, like a modern person still trying to be friends with Republicans who vote others’ rights away, and finally having that stated as unequivocally wrong-headed. This is what I meant as some of the “subtle improvements on the source material”, although it has been so long since I read the book that maybe it’s in there. But I very much appreciated Sorkin’s making it clear that trying to be nice to everyone means you are nice to people who aren’t nice to some, who are evil in fact, who don’t deserve it. Being Switzerland to everyone means you’re also Switzerland to the Jews. (Look it up!)
Despite the length of the show (see infra), it moved well (like so many musical theatre actors on their resumes). Well, for the most part — hopefully by tonight the final 20 minutes will have been tightened, because it was like a belt on its biggest beltloop when it needed to be on maybe its second-to-smallest. The whole part with the sheriff and the judge and Atticus being CONVINCED for no good reason that his skinny lil son killed a man?? (Brick killed a guy!) felt like I was being draggggeduh physically through molasses. It was not believable that Atticus wouldn’t get the picture for that f-ing long. I kept wanting to shout “he ran into my knife! he ran into my knife ten times!” Would’ve livened that scene up (although omg when Boo appears, my heart!! it’s so good!). BUT ANYWAY. TKAM is an always timely reminder that the justice system does not work for everyone, and that the same general issue — vital decisions made without the burden of facts — have opposite results for different people (i.e., it destroyed Tom’s life, and it saved Boo’s). It’s an important-feeling, high-quality production that benefits from Sorkin at his West Wing best and not at his Molly’s Game worst (it was just on TV, it is all voiceover narration? so annoying. Congrats to Chasty though, love her).
INFORMATION
My performance began at 19:35, Act I ended at 20:56 (WOOF that’s a lot to ask of my bladder, I am aware that’s not normal don’t worry), and the show ended at about 22:30. long! but great! It might have been (hopefully) tightened up by tonight but I can’t say because of the aforementioned yet-another shit list I’m on for being honest/not taking other people’s shit.
AUDIENCE
Masks on about 10% of people, 80% of unmasked coughing like it was their gottam job. COOOOOL.
TIP
If you sit in the stalls house left, there’s a little hidden ladies toilet that you can run to and beat the queue, what a treat.
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My Mixed Day at MTFest: The Assassination of Katie Hopkins & Soapdish
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are (finally) looking at two works in progress I saw at MTFest a week or so ago and hoping that creatives make the necessary fixes as needed.
Let me first state for the record that MTFestUK is a phenomenal project, a weeks-long showcase of new musical theatre works and works in progress. In a city where new musical theatre talent and ideas can easily take a backseat to big shiny commercial ventures at the expense of artistry, this platform gives a much-needed boost, hopefully towards a full-fledged production, to creativity and originality. London needs to nurture more original and innovative musical theatre and more undersung talent, so this festival rocks.
I had time to see two shows during this festival, The Assassination of Katie Hopkins (AKH) and Soapdish. I had low expectations for the former, as it’s a new-to-me creative team and it sounded either silly or too much and I just didn’t know about it. I had high expectations for the latter since it came from Stiles & Drewe and had a cast of super recognizable names. As they say about expectations or assumptions or what have you, the results were the exact opposite: AKH (I wish it abbreviated sensibly to ASS because that’s what she is) was incredibly impressive and has stuck with me, where Soapdish was almost offensive to me as a human person and is the latest entry in my How to Fix Your Show series. Let’s start with the good.
The Assassination of Katie Hopkins
Extremely relevant politically and socially, ASS AKH shows the aftermath of the imagined murder of Katie Hopkins, notorious far-right political commentator, English Trumpian, racist, bigot, stupidhead, and all around c-word. On the first consideration of this fictional event you’re like ‘eh all in a day’ but you know, it’s still a murder, and that’s bad. The show follows several threads of narrative post-event, with interweaving lyrics and melodies to show the connectedness of ‘different sides’ and all of our lives. There’s young intern Kayleigh (Bethzienna Williams), tasked with researching Hopkins for a human rights charity and finding herself somehow propelled to the spotlight as she sort of takes up Hopkins’ mantle. The path of this young lost person getting swept up in right-wing fanaticism in order to find her foothold in our society seemed so authentic, and it was cool (I mean not cool but you know cool) to see the radicalization of a girl for a change.
Other storytelling threads involve the increase in harassment for people of color who had nothing to do with the murder, as is the sad but super predictable result, like post 9/11 bullshit. One such target is Shayma (Maimuna Memon (who we LOVED in Ghost Quartet, put her in everything)), a paralegal at a big law firm who expects better from people but feels like she’s the only one recognizing so much of the tragedy happening constantly. Shayma has a history of being ‘problematic’ at her firm, because she was sexually harassed by a bigwig and got him fired, so she’s on thin ice because that’s how that works. (The firing is the only hard to believe part of this show, since big law firms love to just pay the victims hush money so they don’t have to discipline ‘important men’. Happens super frequently it’s astounding. FUN WORLD.) She serves as the voice of most conscience-having people, wondering if we are taking crazy pills as the rest of the world seems to move on from enormous tragic events after a single breath. The whole show gives a good voice to the idea of empathy exhaustion, an aspect I found quite moving.
I hope that in the full show, Kayleigh’s journey to the right-wing spotlight is shown as more of a progression rather than a jump, since that journey is really believable and important to discuss. I hope Shayma is given more to do (I mean just let her sing the whole time) to show the interplay of her story with the rest, because as it stands, her song about slaying dragons after a tube incident could be cut, as it didn’t flow with the rest of the show as I saw, but if it’s woven more fully into the narrative it would be great because that song was forking fire. A lot of the music (by Matt Winkworth and Chris Bush) is wonderful, actually, and a lot of it is haunting. There was one point when Shayma was singing the list of names from one horrific tragedy and she said ‘Victor’ at the same time someone was singing the word ‘victim’ and I almost gasped, it was gorgeous. I cannot wait to see this show as a full-fledged production; I think it has the potential to be incredible.
Soapdish
Boy oh boy, you big man, you boy. Based on the 1991 Sally Field movie, Soapdish is about soap opera darling Celeste Talbert who is America’s sweetheart onscreen and a real b word offscreen. Her younger costar schemes to knock her off her perch and become the star. And there’s a secret love child involved. So this all sounds super fun and should be ripe for the romcom musical treatment, but so far, this show felt way too amateur. I wouldn’t be so blunt about these sorts of progress report showcases but given the talent involved, I expected much more refined work. They need to chuck the score out the window and start over (but keep the two instances of good rhymes – future with suture and Brecht with expect; those were good). It was like rough draft of Mean Girls songs (and that’s saying something since the final version of Mean Girls has like one good song). No song passed the smell test.
Also, the lead character of Celeste (Louise Dearman) needs to be reconsidered. The whole thing is that she’s an awful monster in real life – at least that’s what the preshow introduction said – but she didn’t seem like a bitch at all; she just seemed sad and pathetic knowing that her days were numbered as she gets older. So after the score, my second big problem is that there is no consistency to the lead character. Why should we be interested in her younger costar’s attempt at a coup except to say that like, it’s kind of sad?
And that brings me to the biggest problem. This younger costar Montana (Laura Pitt-Pulford) uses the promise of sex to get the producer, David (Richard Dempsey), to go along with her shenanigans. I get that this was the movie plot, in 1991, but that is no excuse for having such a grossly sexist storyline. (See, e.g. Pretty Woman the Musical and how copying the movie is not an excuse to be shit.) Everything about this felt super icky and suuuper obvious that it was an all-male creative team. Look people, there’s a way to do old-fashioned storylines, and even sexist storylines, without actually having your show feel sexist. It was infuriating, this whole thing, even though LPP says the name ‘David’ hilariously – but like most good jokes they repeat it ad infinitum and thus run it into the ground, destroying the fun of it. Actually the ruining of a great bit of comedy might be the most upsetting part. And of course the fact that London audiences will eat this shit up, and did.
The only person who comes out on top is young Alice Croft, who has a voice like baby Laura Osnes and honestly I cannot wait to hear her sing full (improved) scores.
The Picture of Dorian Gray: Good Concept for Modernization, Shaky Execution
The first five or ten minutes of the new streaming theatrical production “The Picture of Dorian Gray” are great. Captivating, stylized, and intriguing, the beginning switches between Zoom-style interviews of Joanna Lumley’s and Alfred Enoch’s characters as they share what they know about this story to Stephen Fry, investigating. It makes you curious and you want them to say more about whatever this tragic situation was and you’re excited to piece it all together. It’s an excellent start.
And then you meet Dorian (Fionn Whitehead), and it falls flat. The direction (and overall treatment) of him plus overly long scenes, sloooow conversations between him and other characters, and disappointing lack of clarity about the whole selling your soul thing all squander the splashy positivity of the opening and turn a colorful opportunity into an unfortunately drab and sluggish production.
The intent for the modernization of this classic story is decent: Instead of young hot man-about-town-Dorian being young and hot, getting a nice portrait painted of himself, and wishing for the nice portrait to age instead of his physical being, this Dorian gets a social media filter that makes his online appearance always young and beautiful. His friend Basil (Russell Tovey) makes him a special device for his phone that makes him look glowy and stuff online. So far, okay, sounds good.
My main problem (okay one of my three main problems) is that it’s entirely unclear what Basil knows about the cost, what Dorian expects it to be, and, for the love of god, WHY. (And any argument that uses answers from the original text are invalid.) Basil gives it to Dorian on his birthday, and asks Dorian what he would do for this magical* device. He says there’s a cost but never says what it is, and actual physical deterioration is really something you should make clear to the buyer. Dorian says something like “I would sell my soul” but is he aware that that apparently means “I’ll be chill with looking like a decaying corpse in about a week”? It’s unclear whether Basil is aware of this too.
*First main problem subsection b: This device of magical filters…exists. It’s called filters. We can already download and use filters and apps that make you look amazing and shiny without our physical body decaying and bleeding out the ears. Yes, his YouTube channel becomes successful too, but a) it’s unclear whether that was part of the deal or Basil was just assuming that with glowing selfies his friend would become popular online, and b) honestly with the Q Anon-style videos he starts posting (out of literally nowhere, another issue), he’d amass a large following without the device. There’s too much that I don’t buy or don’t understand about this deal that even a few sharper bits of dialogue would fix.
My second main problem: the pacing is horrendous. The Facetimes between Dorian and Sibyl, between Dorian and Harry (especially the epilogue), the birthday scene between Dorian and Basil, they all gooo ooooon fooooreverrrrr without much reason for it. If the show was a good 20 minutes shorter from cutting all the unnecessary pauses and silent stares, it would work better. There are so many editing decisions that went unmade. Like the ‘Social Media Safety’ web series character that Basil invents to try to assuage his guilt: why are we seeing this at all, let alone ENTIRE INTERNET SAFETY LECTURES instead of a few brief clips? (Okay maybe 25 minutes, actually.) And the introduction of Sibyl (Emma McDonald) showing like a dozen of her Instagram videos – we’d get what you were trying to say with like, 3. (So that’s 30 minutes.)
The third issue: Fionn looks like a normal fine-looking person that you can believe exists in real life, not some kind of one-in-a-million movie-star gorgeous where you would drop your jaw and ruin your life if you had the chance. He’s a normal kid. We’re told that this Dorian is so incredibly handsome and so ungodly charming that everyone falls in love with him and yet Dorian gets exactly zero chances to show any of that supposed charm. I mean, literally every. other. character says that they are madly wildly hopelessly in love with him, in some cases so much that they destroy their families. but like, WHY. and like, DON’T. Dorian was never given a chance to display any sort of charm to explain…any of it. When the foundation of the whole show rests on him being super hot and charming and he’s neither, that’s hard to come back from.
Apart from these crucial aspects, there were some nice bits. Alfred and Joanna’s scenes were mostly always entertaining, possibly why they are the most famous ones. I loved how much I hated Alfred’s mustache and how fake his accent sounded even though he’s British. And Joanna is always fun to watch, especially in her travel shows. I really liked the Great Gatsby-esque design for the screen cuts too, and Alfred’s study was amazing (except the carpet didn’t go).
I’m just disappointed that the updated concept failed to capitalize on its promise. It’s a good idea to show how much young people value their online appearance, but – even in a year where you’re not seeing anyone in real life – would you still pay for a better online look with bleeding out the ears? Also, if the message was that ugly thoughts show up on the face (as the end seemed to want to say), why did his face start uglying before the whole conspiracy business, and why did he *start* having these ugly thoughts? So much of the action felt unsupported. Also, I’m heavily confused about the end: Text on the screen explains that authorities found him next to the smashed chip and “recognized what it was”. Wha…what?
One more thing: what the heck is Sphinx?
The Picture of Dorian Gray is available to stream from March 16 – 31, and is co-produced by the Barn Theatre, Lawrence Batley Theatre, New Wolsey Theatre, Oxford Playhouse and Theatr Clwyd.
