January 19, 2023
Strong London Transfer of Sorkin's To Kill A Mockingbirdby Randi / March 31, 2022Today’s show is Anyone Can Whistle, at the Southwark Playhouse in London until May 7, so hurry (or not)
It’s not often you get to see a new-to-you Sondheim show when you’re a Sondheim devotee! Or ever! But indeed the Southwark’s production of his insane musical Anyone Can Whistle, with book by noted goofball and apparent magic mushroom-lover Arthur Laurents (I’M JOKING) (am I), is my first full production of his lesser-known show. Sure I knew the score, especially those bangers “There Won’t Be Trumpets” (thanks to Mandy Patinkin) and “Everybody Says Don’t” (thanks to Sutton Foster). How could I have ever guessed that the fairly decent-to-great songs compose a show that would have us going ‘what’ ‘why’ ‘what’ ‘wait but why’ every few minutes?
Anyone Can Whistle tells the tale of a corrupt mayor (excuse me, ‘mayoress’) and her lackeys who need to get money into their very poor town, in which the only operating business of any sort seems to be the mental institution ridiculously named The Cookie Jar, with all patients (inmates) called cookies. (Is Paula’s nickname for Rebecca on “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” Rachel Bloom’s little nod to Sondheim? I say yes.) They…they decide to pump a rock full of water? and have it be a miracle when much needed water comes shooting out of a rock. Pilgrims mfing FLOCK to see the magical water miracle. They’re all like (Lewis Black voice) ‘we gotta SEE the big fucking thing!’ Money pours in as the mayoral team sells tickets to see this water rock. I’m not saying I wouldn’t pay money to see a nice water feature but that’s just me I’m weird. As a town-saving gimmick, this shit’s A LONG SHOT. INTO THIS STORY SO FAR! KEEP UP THE NONSENSE IN A FUN WAY.
The nurse at the Cookie Jar (imagine going to nursing or medical school and being a professional healthcare worker and having to tell people your facility is called The Cookie Jar), Nurse Apple, wants to bring all her cookies to the miracle, either to prove it’s fake or just in case it’s legitimate, it’s unclear. This is where things started to get dicey and not in a ‘oh we’re all having fun!’ way. Apple’s only characterization from the book is that she’s skeptical and straight-laced, and I needed more/any further character development from the actress to make her make sense. She says she wants a hero to deliver the town from corruption, to save her cookies? And so she disguises herself as a French miracle inspector. It makes no sense if all we get is that this nurse is a no-fun-having idealist whose big idea is to dress like a French prostitute who just woke up to try to shut the miracle down. Could’ve done that in oodles of other ways that weren’t so nothing, Arthur. GETTING LESS INTO THIS STORY.
Meanwhile, a man named Hapgood shows up and the town is like ‘oh are you the new doctor for The Cookie Jar’ and he’s like OKAY SURE! and no one asks Dr Timothee Chalamet for like ID or anything, so immediately a thinking person would guess that he’s def NOT the doctor but he’s charismatic like a bright bone-free human version of the inflatable things outside car dealerships, and they tell him ‘okay you’re in charge of figuring out who’s crazy and who isn’t, just like, go through the town and tell us who gets locked up in the jar.’ NOT THE BEST SYSTEM. Then he and the disguised Nurse Apple meet and immeds try to seduce each other for very unclear reasons. From here, the last 10-15 mins of Act I (and then all their scenes in II) become tedious because it’s hard to know how to be onboard with whatever’s happening, because what is happening? Are they actually into each other? Did they have any clue who the other was? Why is she dressed like this? Is the abrupt change from the silly French joke song (which did have some funny lines) to the heartfelt title song supposed to be sincere?? How are we supposed to make that jump? It doesn’t have a payoff. And though they are both clearly talented actors, I felt they were both unforch miscast, at least when taken together. We need their chemistry to build support for the weak story, but they have no chemistry, so much so that it’s like a negative amount and made it hard to accept love at first sight (if that’s what we were supposed to take from it?). Like in a college play my best friend’s now-husband and I were voted Third Most Awkward Couple in the show but if this couple were in it we would have gotten Fourth, or even like Tenth because that’s how many places they would claim with their abundance of no-chemistry.
From here it gets confusing about what’s happening and honestly the wikipedia plot summary doesn’t seem to match what I saw, so maybe they updated things but it wasn’t clear. The miracle gets shown to be a fraud, yada yada yada, Hapgood is revealed to be a new cookie/patient, yada yada yada, Apple and Hapgood decide to be together. OFFICIALLY NOT A FAN OF THIS STORY.
So yeah it’s weird af and not in a fun ‘let’s ride this crazy train all the way to Kansas’ way, since the lack of strong character development made it hard to jump on board since you’re like ‘but where is the train, does this train know it’s a train’. But this production is entirely worth seeing for one reason: Alex Young as Mayor(ess) Cara Hoover Hooper. Even in her first performance with a sprained ankle and on crutches, she has the audience eating out of her hand, especially me, this supes old lady in the front row who was LIVING for her, and the young man in the front row who became one of the main characters. She has the comic timing and fully inhabited presence of an actor that understands the character she’s playing, which is rare. Every utterance and glance is hysterical and entertaining. I was giggling like a cookie at everything she did. She’s giving a masterclass in using the audience, too; everything she did with/to the aforementioned man was genius-level improv (even though drinking from his glass gave me the covid shivers, but no one cares about that anymore!). And while I think those two main characters were miscast, they and the rest of the cast overall were game and energetic.
MASK COUNT: 7
SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE PIZZA STATUS: STILL GREAT
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Present Laughter at the Old Vic: Old Timey Fun, for the Most Part
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Present Laughter at the Old Vic, playing until August 10.
Noel Coward is such a goofball, am I right?! In one of his classic plays, Present Laughter, he basically goes autobiographical and has a jolly old time caricaturing his own outsized persona. Representing Coward is the lead character Garry Essendine, a famous actor who has several romantic exploits and several exaggerated breakdowns over the course of the few days we see. More than anything, Present Laughter is a vehicle for a star to have the time of his life as Garry. Recently, Kevin Kline won a Tony for his portrayal, because he was probably perfect as always. The draw of this current Old Vic production is Andrew Scott, hot off his stint as the hot priest on the universally acclaimed Fleabag. The show is worth seeing for his fantastic performance, but the changes to the source material are less than ideal.
While the show starts out strong, with an impeccable, uproariously funny first act, it quickly turns maddening, as all farce and farce-adjacent work tends to do. Andrew’s Garry wakes the show by trying to usher out a flaky one-night-stand named Daphne Stillington (a very funny Kitty Archer; they could have swapped the real and character names for perhaps an improvement) amid the judgmental eyes of his household staff (all three the steady highlights of the show). With this material, Andrew gets to play so much, it’s amazing. He shines so bright, so pitch perfect and hilarious in this first act that it’s almost distasteful. He looks to be having the time of his life, relishing some of Coward’s funniest lines and his ability to turn the regular ones into the funniest lines.
But then, it starts farcing all over the place and it took all my might to not shout at everyone to just communicate better. Okay so in this 1940s play, they were obsessed with marital affairs to get their minds off war. Garry is dealing with an issue in his close-knit ‘family’ of people who work for him: his secretary Monica, his ex-wife Liz who is still pretty much his wife, his manager Morris, his producer Henry. Henry is married to Joanna, who is rumored to be having an affair with Morris. Monica has a serious conversation with Garry about finding out whether this is true about Morris and Joanna, and instead of Garry trying to put a stop to this lest it destroy their little family, Garry goes and shtupps Joanna himself. Bad call Gar! As people find out, things get SHOUTY, like MAN ALIVE SHOUTY, and Garry gets apoplectic a lot, like a LOT a lot, and Morris is like BUT I LOVE JOANNA, and Henry is like BUT SHE’S MY WIFE (and John Mulaney is like THAT’S MY WIFE) and Daphne for some reason comes back to audition for a theatre school?, and Liz is like I’m fine and calm because monayyyyy, and for some reason Garry’s staff KEEPS LETTING some random stranger INTO HIS HOUSE who is very clearly going to murder everyone in the sequel (Luke Thallon was so funny as Roland but OMG) and everyone’s like WHEEEE THIS IS CRAZY and I’m like MY BLOOD PRESSURE.
But in this production, because, I’m guessing, people realized that the whole idea of three rich men fighting over a married woman like she’s property is…kinda gross, they took a note from the recent success of the Company revival and had some fun with gender switches! In theory, I love this idea, because it would have been too outdated and frustrating to watch Joanna get treated simultaneously like a piece of meat and an uncontrollable hoo-er. So, in theory, they made the right call making Joanna now ‘Joe’, a man, married to the producer ‘Helen’, a woman. This change does several things. First, it makes literally everyone in the cast bisexual, which, okay fine, I’ll go along with that (“it’s 2018! More people should be bi! It’s like, get over yourselves!”). But it throws off the dynamic like hella hard, because the casting is not done well. There’s no way the couplings in the show would happen and I just couldn’t buy it. But most of all, worst of all, the actor playing Joe is miscast. Whereas Joanna is a flighty and glamorous young woman who seduces all these men but like is fun, Joe is a too-serious, gloomy, severe mufucka who brings the action to a screeching halt. It makes no sense that Garry would say anything to him when he comes a’knocking other than like “gtfo my house you’re in the wrong show, this is a fun one not an Italian murder mystery where you’re clearly the butler and you clearly did it.” With the wrong actor playing Joe, you’re just like, why.
The changes continue in the same direction the quality of play goes in after that first act. Most of all, I was disappointed in the ending. Through all of Garry’s breakdowns, all his mid-life crises and all his issues he’s clearly dealing with, it’s clear most of all he wants someone to love the real him and cure his loneliness. (Oh another burning question I had several times: why doesn’t this famous actor have a bodyguard or someone who actually sleeps at his house to prevent 100 of the annoying things that happen.) It’s obvious throughout the play that his ex-wife Liz is still this person, and at the end they reconcile. In this version, after Liz announces that she’s coming back to him, and you expect Garry to be like YES PLEASE THANK GOD I NEED YOU, he literally is silent, and walks over to the window while he has a drink, and I truly thought he was going to jump out the window. It was a weird vibe and did not work for me, and definitely not as an ending. It made the original ending of Pippin look like a Mamma Mia!-style dance party.
Regardless, it’s still overall a fun time, and it’s worth seeing Andrew shine in a role that seems tailor-made for him.
INFORMATION
Get ready for big bunches of small purple fruit as said by an Australian because I have me some gripes. First of all, yes the Old Vic is still under hella construction, which you can’t hold against them. But I am so over theatres not giving paper tickets at will call and telling you to just use your phone, and it was an especially bad move here: Given all the construction, the staff have to check your tickets frequently because to get to the temporary toilet area or the bar you have to leave the building entirely (toilets are outside only on one side! Don’t sit upstairs you’ll never get there!). But hi, hello, this is the theatre, where people should be TURNING THEIR PHONES OFF! Everyone stop with the e-tickets please and thank you. Any decent people have shut their phones off.
Secondly, speaking of phones, London theatres in general need to forking quit it with those little white NO PHONES signs that two ushers in dark corners of the theatre hold up like any forking person in the audience notices them. Make a GOTTAM preshow announcement that everyone must shut their phones off and not use them during the show like a GROWN ASS ADULT.
Third, there was a super frustrating technical problem that I’m not even sure the stage managers or lighting people realized: During most of the show, an amber light was reflected out of the mirror by Garry’s bar table, and it was blinding us from looking at the stage. INFURIATING. That’s the kind of technical thing you’d think would have been caught and handled by now. It was the worst in the 20-minute scene right before the interval and for most of Act II (so, just Act I was fine (maybe that’s why it was my favorite, because I was able to watch it without corneal damage)).
Lastly (lol am I ever done), I am sick and tired of plays trying to establish characterization with smoking. Literally, I am sick and tired from it, because it gives me breathing issues. If you can’t establish something without having an actor harm their own health with cigarettes, then you aren’t doing a good job.
Oh I thought of another: I am tired of the Old Vic’s boring af programmes and show art. For the love of god add an image. I’m not going to pay $5 for block letters and weird color schemes.
STAGE DOOR
This is the saddest part for me to recount, because I love(d) Andrew Scott. Who doesn’t adore the Hot Priest? I was excited to see that the stage door (wisely) had a barricade up and a security guard at the ready, telling everyone to line up in single file and that you could either get an autograph from OR a photo with Andrew. So with things progressing like that, with a security guard already taking care of business, with maybe 80 people already lined up?? all of that suggests that Andrew was coming out. Now, I’m the first person to state that actors have no obligation to come to the stage door (hell, they have no business doing it; why on earth would anyone want to greet a crazy mob) and that they should absolutely not face any scrutiny for not doing it. BUT, that’s a different situation from lining up your crowd in single file, making sure they know all your rules, &c…and then making them wait a frankly offensive amount of time. I’d be saying absolutely nothing except ‘good on you’ if he had decided not to stage door. But to make sure his crowd was organized to his requirements and then just not come out for hours is plain rude, showing zero respect for anyone’s time. That security and staff waiting outside (but hidden from our view after a while so they didn’t have to answer any questions) didn’t relay any message was bullshit. We left after about 50 minutes of waiting, but I was told on the socials that Andrew came out at about 11:40 – an hour after we left. That sucks. Just don’t come out if you don’t want to! But to make people wait and wait and not say anything is a weird kind of torture, and it sucks.
We Return to Live Theatre! ‘Adventures with the Painted People’ at Pitlochry Festival Theatre
PEOPLE! Can you believe it? For the first time since March 14, 2020, when we saw Uncle Vanya in the West End and the guy behind me coughed a bunch and we realized ‘oh this is bad’ (the spectre of disease, not the play; the play was incredible) (and then I had covid – was it from him? we’ll never know (just kidding I know it was you asshole)), we were back at a LIVE FORKING SHOW in person in a theatre! Well not ‘in’ – our first show back wisely took place in an outdoor amphitheatre; we’re not crazy! Gimme that wind if I’m around other people! But wow, can you imagine how excited I am? I LOVE THE THEE UH TUHHH.
I wonder if the excitement of being back would have made me enjoy even a bad play, but we will never know because Official Return Show was quite an impressive little treat. ‘Adventures with the Painted People’, by David Greig, is a four-hander (you remember how I changed the terms to make them accurate?) that tells of a Roman officer named Lucius who gets kidnapped by Picts. It’s 2000 years ago and Romans have taken over, killed all the good Pictish men, ruined everything as invaders do for native peoples. When a group of Pictish boys find the stray Roman by the water, they knock him out and bring him to their tribe’s witch, Eithne, to be a sacrifice, naturally.
For someone being tied up in a witch’s ‘house of the dead’ which is really a cave of the dead which is much worse, Lucius never seems too angry or upset. Nicholas Karimi’s portrayal is really likeable, and you’re like aw I hope he doesn’t get sacrificed. He writes insubstantial poetry, but you can tell he feels more dreamy than the rigidity of a Roman officer’s life would normally allow. And that makes for a good pairing with Kirsty Stuart’s Eithne, the Pictish version of a manic pixie dream girl if ever there was one. (Manic pictish dream girl OH MY GOD.) She’s full of energy and conversations with spirits and flowery language, compared to the Roman’s straight lines. And yet, as she tells her captive, she wants his help to become Roman, so that she can implore the governor to work with her to implement peace instead of continued violence on her people. Maybe if he helps her, she won’t sacrifice him. Also if there’s a good pig she won’t need to.
In this early-AD Odd Couple, Eithne, witch of the salmon people who only tell stories by fire pit, learns how to read and write, learns about world history, learns about Roman life and laws. Lucius learns about the Pictish people, those that his mission has been to quash, and decides to write about this woman and her life. They both warm to each other. Over the weeks they study together in this cave, they become friends, and then they start to fall in love, obvs.
A love story between these two stark contrasts – one of straight lines, one of nature and spirits; one of the invaders vs. one of the oppressed natives – could easily have been as trite and schmaltzy (and annoying) as other attempts at heartfelt stories between colonizer and victim usually are. Although I feared that the final scene would be a bit like the U.S.-only ending of the 2005 Pride & Prejudice – which is superior, but too romantic for Brits apparently – this play managed to avoid all potential traps due to its strong writing delivering on a well-formed idea of what it wanted to accomplish. It did so with humor, great performances, and solid direction from Elizabeth Newman. I really enjoyed the set design and staging (I can’t find if Lizzie or someone else is responsible for the design), especially the circle of fire (erma erma) and the gorgeously done mosaic reveal (LOVED). The only thing I didn’t enjoy was that the little fire pit onstage blew all its smoke right in my face for a good hour as it died out, like no matter what the wind brought it right into my face, the face of the person in that audience who tolerates smoke the worst. My eyes are still burning two days later (they are like pumice, it’s not great). But that’s just me I’m weird. (See seating info below.)
Between the otherwise fresh air in Pitlochry and the lack of a stranger sitting right next to me (keep this up forever, maybe?), this returnship was about as nice as I could have hoped. Sure I got so nauseous on the winding Napoli-coastline-style drive that we had to stop so I could [redacted], but still, what a night. I highly recommend this show.
INFORMATION
The outdoor amphitheatre is up a windy hill, and although the main building and parking lot is a construction zone at present, the climb up and the amphi’s setting is beyond gorgeous. I need to talk to whoever is in charge of their gardening because um I need your help. Although the setting is lovely, the walk may be difficult for those who are less ambulatory.
Because the main building’s under construction and the shows are happening in this relatively small outdoor area at the top of a freaking hill, that means the toilets are unavailable. There is a portapotty up on the hill – one, for everyone. Luckily it never got too crowded (do Scottish people not pee??) but I was less than thrilled about having to use a porto three times (three is the bare minimum for me at the theatre, what fun I have). It was clean and whatever but I dreamt longingly of the endless immaculate newly refurbished stalls of Broadway’s Lyric Theatre, oh those were the days. Oh there are two bar setups up there as well. Nothing more UK than two spacious bar setups with like four staff members, but one toilet.
You have to wear masks everywhere except when you are seated, which seems a bit nonsensical since that’s when you are closest to other people and not walking around an incredibly spacious garden setting. That should really be rethought. Groups are sat so there’s a good few feet between them on each row, but it doesn’t stagger from row to row, meaning you have someone right behind and right in front of you. I guess that’s smarter than being surrounded on all diagonals? but because of it I wish they didn’t actively tell people they could take their masks off once seated.
The seating is open plan; an usher will seat you as you arrive. They sat us on the far aisle from where you enter, second row, so don’t sit there if you hate smoke. Although that was probably a unique occurrence from the universe just to fork with me so you’ll be fine.
‘Adventures of the Painted People’ plays at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre (in Perthshire, the most beautiful part of Scotland), until July 4, when I assume the closing performance will be marked with nonstop fireworks from your shitty neighbors. Just kidding, not in Scotland baby!
