HABIBI Take 2: The Band's Visit at the Donmarby Randi / October 20, 2022Yes I am aware summer is over, I’m cold.
This past summer we at Ldeezhy had the pleasure of seeing three shows at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, a lovely (and recently refurbished) venue that all tourists and residents of Perthshire, Scotland should visit when they visit the most beautiful part of the UK (hopefully not for long! Not that other places will take that crown, I mean because it won’t be part of the UK anymore, sink that ship yourselves Tories). We started with Noises Off, followed by Little Women, and ended with Private Lives. Some pretty classic shiz up in here! Getting through this backlog of posts y’all!
The PFT is a repertory theatre, with a resident company, so you see the same actors regularly. Rep theatres are so interesting, because someone will be amazing in one show and then completely miscast in another, but I guess it makes sense here because the pool is smaller? It kind of reminds me of high school drama club in that way. Well and also because they’re doing Noises Off, which we all did right! Okay my school is the only one that didn’t but I know yours did. My best friend was the stage manager! So let’s start with that beloved comedy classic!
Noises Off
Noises Off is one of the few shows that I don’t think I can get sick of. We recently saw the latest West End revival in…my god it was 2019, I guess not so recent, JFC. But that was sensational, because a) Matthew Morrison was sitting behind me (THAT’S EXCITING!) and b) it was directed by Jeremy Herrin, who directed the 2016 Broadway revival that cannot scientifically ever be topped, it was 104% perfection even before accounting for Megan Hilty’s performance in a role no one knew could actually be that funny. Having seen Herrin’s precise, flawless direction on the big stages TWICE, I was thus spoiled for civilian work. The PFT’s production was hilarious, tons of fun, but the direction proved a bit sloppy. In that third act, when there’s very little dialogue but tons of chaotic action and stuff falling and people arguing but with their body language only, it needs to be directed and executed precisely so that the audience has a clue what’s going on. It was a bit too messy. If I didn’t know what was going on, I would have been a little mad that it was so unclear. But not actually mad, because even with the wee messiness, it’s impossible not to keep smiling so hard it hurts your damn face through any production of this show. Also this ensem confirmed that possibly my favorite line in all of theatre is “If it wasn’t attached to my neck I’d forget what day it was.” I mean, I’ve heard that line a lot, but I COULD NOT STOP laughing this time. The best! I also adored that there were two little kids up front who could not possibly have understood all the jokes but they were having the time of their lives.
Little Women
I hate to give her even more power over me, but Greta Gerwig has spoiled me for all versions of Little Women that aren’t hers. Her framing of what Jo was probably forced to include in her book vs. what was probably/definitely true of its author is simply too brilliant to ever deviate from again. When Jo all of a sudden finds love that isn’t Laurie, you just KNOW it’s Louisa being like ‘ugh you bastards want her to find a man, here you go, half-assed plot!’ So to see it portrayed straightforwardly feels wrong, and always has, but especially after seeing Saoirse’s wee smirk at us for even thinking for a second that it could have been true for Jo, or Louisa, whatever/whoever/both. But aside from that, this play verzh was very pleasant, though the whole repertory theatre company thing means that some parts were muhmuhmuhmiscast. I’m okay saying that and not feeling mean because the worst cast person in this, so wooden and strange that we were literally like what what what is happening, was good in a different show, so it’s very much not a talent thing. Minor faults in an otherwise fun time. Also shout out for making us realize how f-ing hilarious (unintentionally) some lines are, like when Jo exclaims to fake-professor man about how much ‘boys just love to go around nutting!’ We nudge each other a lot in shows (no talking!) but this might have been the pinnacle.
Private Lives
This was my first time seeing this Noel Coward classic live! What fun what ho! Noel has a cheeky good time with a terrible couple who makes terrible decisions. At the start of the play, the couple isn’t a couple. They have gotten divorced, and they’re each on their honeymoon with new people – and they somehow ended up with hotel rooms next to each other (with balconies, apparently, that don’t have any barrier between them??? security risk security risk! I would have to move hundo p). Their new spouses are nice plot devices, but you know from the get-go that the two terriburs are meant to destroy these new marriages and end up together again, even though they can’t go five minutes without fighting. What a lark! The cast of four? no five! there’s a housekeeper! does a great job of painting terrible people you can’t stand in different ways. The central couple nails the whole shibang, but my favorite performance was that from Nalan Burgess as the terrible man’s new wife for a hot second (I am too tired to go look up names of characters) who does some of the best theatrical over-the-top wailing I’ve ever heard. I was HYSTERICAL, her crying was so good and so big and it kept getting bigger and funnier the longer it went on. Just excellent work. Overall, it was a strong production, possibly the tightest of the 3? I mean Noel Coward is always a good time, it’s not like it’s Pinter.
INFORMATION
The Pitlochry Festival Theatre is an enormous space that I don’t think could ever be filled even if everyone in town during the height of tourist season came, so there’s usually room to move around away from people, which is the greatest thing you could ever ask for when out in public. The theatre went through a recent refurb and it shows, except for the bathrooms which didn’t get the memo, which is a shame but there’s never really a line. The bar has vegan treats (but not ice cream) and little water fountain spouts. All in all a fantastic theatre. Stay tuned for another (actually recent) show coming later this week!
Related Posts
Fairview at the Young Vic: White People, Feel Bad!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Fairview, playing at London’s Young Vic until January 23.
I really hate when writers include spoilers in reviews, like they can’t write about the show without ruining it for everyone. I’ll do my best to avoid them here, but it’s kind of impossible to talk about the power of Fairview, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, without spoilers, so gird your loins/stop reading if you are going to see it. Now making its London debut, the play by Jackie Sibblies Drury ends in a way I can’t say any other theatrical work ever has. Even aside from that ending, it’s hard to talk about the play in general because it’s about that incredibly difficult thing to talk about as a white person: race and how terrible white people are. Okay that second part might not be the point, but if you are a white audience member who walks away from the show not feeling completely shitty then you maybe weren’t paying attention (like to the world either). I’ll try to not say anything ignorant, but I am a whitey, so, WE’LL SEE.
Fairview tells of a middle-class black family preparing for Grandma’s big birthday dinner: You have the mom trying to do everything perfectly, the feisty (and hilarious) aunt with the strong opinions, the husband who actually remembered to buy the root vegetables!, the daughter who is nervous about graduating high school. You have the set of a very large, plush home, very beigey-pinks and grays, very Miami in the 1980s that felt a little sitcommy at first and then, as the play progresses, a lot sitcommy. The first section of the play, as the family prepares dinner and argues and jokes with each other, is – like a sitcom – extremely pleasant, very funny, and opens a lot of doors to what kind of action could come next for the family.
And then, no further action comes. Instead of showing what happens with the big birthday dinner, or if the uncle’s plane will take off, or what the daughter will decide about college, instead the rug is pulled out from under you and the sitcommy feel is substantiated. The actors restart, and they go through the entirety of the first section blocking again, but silently. We see the movements and spills and gestures and little dances for the second time, but now the audio is the voiceover conversation of four white people watching this program, talking about the characters, talking about race. It’s a shock, and it’s awkward, interesting, and disturbing the whole time. The four viewers are the kind of people who will proclaim nicely “I’m definitely not racist!” but then in the same breath say a lot of racist things that aren’t obviously mean or cruel but are still wrong, the kind of people who, as we hear, casually converse about ‘what race you’d pick if you could change’. It is a bold gear change into a provocative flat-out conversation about race, except without a knowledgeable or culturally sensitive voice in the bunch.
And that’s the bit that’s slightly disappointing. It’s not the play’s fault but that of its marketing/other reviews, for saying that this is ‘the play that will make ‘woke’ white liberals realize their mistakes’ or whatever. As a white liberal, I was, as I am with all things purporting to show me how wrong I am, eager to learn what I’m doing wrong and try to improve. But these four white people are blatantly terrible people. They are not ‘woke’ and they are nothing like the people who would be described as or would describe themselves as being ‘woke’, at least if the people had any idea what that (annoying) word was supposed to mean. And liberal? I’m sure at least some of them would be Trump voters. They say clearly racist things and treat race like it’s a fashion choice. It’s worthwhile to show that the things they say and think and eventually do are problematic, but anyone who didn’t already know how problematic these ideas were already miiiiiiight be racist! Or living under a rock.
The third section dives even more into the surreal, with the two worlds mixing into eventual chaos, perhaps representing the kinds of conversations we try to have without better guidance, and perhaps representing the problems we face when white people ‘want to help’ but also don’t want to acknowledge, or give up, their privilege. That reluctance to give up your privilege comes to a head at the end, when the tables turn and the white audience members literally become the object of stage-lit scrutiny, and their (our) hesitance to listen to the cast’s urgings become the subject of this wider, provocative discussion on privilege, entitlement, and expectations. I can’t imagine any white person seeing this, experiencing this ending especially, and not feeling exposed, guilty, uncomfortable at the very least, so that’s good, I guess, for self-reflection. But who knows how many people who needed to feel that momentary guilt and shame took it into their actual lives? And it’s not up to me to say that that momentary guilt and shame was worth making the people of color in the audience feel even more like the objects of white gaze, under scrutiny as well.
So I was left afterwards with a kind of numbed sensation, embarrassed (in part because of stage fright). The play is the definition of provocative, leaving your mind a blur of jumbled thoughts and emotions, which can be the mark of a successful dramatic work. It’s confrontational, it’s fascinating, and you feel uncomfortable the whole time. Now, after trying to write something the least bit coherent (I failed didn’t I) I feel even more ignorant and needing to do and be better, which might after all be what Drury had in mind.
Indecent Proposal at the Southwark is a must-see I can’t stop yelling about
I know you won’t believe me because no one ever believes me (“should I use my invisibility to fight crime, or for evil?”) but the new musical adaptation of ‘Indecent Proposal’, now at the Southwark Playhouse, is one of the strongest original works London theatre has seen since ‘Six’ ended a decade-long drought. I know that is A QUITE THE STATEMENT, but I always have suggestions (demands?) and at least two full songs to cut after every show I see, because I want them to make it the best it can possibly be, but this time? I’m like Connie the hormone monster after Jessie first screams at her mother:
Michael Conley and Dylan Schlosberg, the writer and composer respectively, have clearly worked to edit this show into a tight and riveting work. Can I just say, it is a TREAT to see something that doesn’t feel like a first draft. ‘Indecent Proposal’ passed all the criteria on my checklist that few shows concern themselves with, including: Does it seem like more than one set of eyes edited the book, and did they care if it passed the smell test? (I would honestly volunteer to edit books for free, this is how much the usual obvious lack of editing kills me.) Is the humor a race to the bottom or does it respect its audience? And crucially: was any of the storytelling actually improved by it being a musical or would it have been the same as a play? (Shockingly few musicals actually bother to address the baseline test for being a musical.) Luckily, this one passed them all. The engaging music is used well, and Shakespeare would get a big old British boner for all this drama.
What we get is an intimate, well-constructed musical adaptation of the 1988 book by Jack Engelhard (who am I kidding, we’re all thinking only of the 1993 Demi Moore movie) telling the story of Rebecca and Jonny, a down-on-their-luck-but-up-on-their-love couple living in Atlantic City back when it was seedy and decaying and full of unglamorous people (so, anytime) (but no it’s clearly still set in the late ’80s, from the fashun). They seem like decent people who need, and deserve, a bit of luck in the financial department. When Famous Rich Man Larry offers them a million dollars if he can spend the night with Rebecca, everything goes to shit.
And the shit gets interesting. The drama is more than whether they will accept or not, whether they could survive it, whether they have the footing to decline — although that is all handled with care and attention. It’s not obvious that ‘of course they should just punch the guy and call it a day!’, as a lot of us would shout. People who brush off their dilemma are fortunate enough to have never been so desperate. But surely empathetic people can feel for those at the end of their rope. You start to understand why these poor poor people would even consider it, no matter how awful it is. The interesting and nuanced drama comes from how their interactions subtly but markedly change, especially in their now-stilted communication, what they’re not saying and what they’re waiting for the other to say. Charlotte Westenra’s direction of Lizzy Connolly and Norman Bowman in their unraveling relationship is so sharp, and I adored how it seemed we were catching them in emotional moments that we weren’t supposed to see, and how often they would be powerfully Acting with their expressions even though only a tiny portion of the audience could see. I mean at one point I saw Jonny whisper “I’m sorry” into Rebecca’s ear even though I don’t anyone else could or did notice that. That is COMMITMENT TO THE PART and we love to see it. Lizzy stood out to me in that incredible revival of Sweet Charity, and her talent and presence shine here. Norman Bowman is new to me (I know I’m sorry) and even though his forking forearm veins are their own separate character (jealous) I’m obsessed with his performance. He gives this great scrappy chaos energy, kind of like Billy Crudup in ‘The Morning Show’ (he is by far the best part of that show ps) but wiry and desperate, it’s so good. (He’d be perfect to star in ‘Memphis’ given what I remember of the original star who shant be named.) These actors are giving such deep and fine-tuned performances, so inhabiting the characters that it feels intrusive to be watching this couple instead of sending them to therapy stat. Instead of being about shock value of the main concept, they help make the show this intriguing portrait of a formerly annoyingly happy couple who are now doomed, no matter what.
More than ever before (i.e. more than when I saw the movie as a literal baby), I realized that that’s the interesting drama at play: not that this jackwagon has the AUDACITY, or what’s going to happen to the couple we root for, but that Famous Rich Man’s power goes beyond the money he offers. His power is in his shameless gall in offering it in the first place. Because as soon as he opens his mouth, the damage is done. It doesn’t matter what they do next. They will suffer for what he had the impunity to suggest, because it’s just another game to him, despite it having the power to ruin normal lives. He doesn’t care. Honeybadger don’t care.
As the rich man Larry, Ako Mitchell is a decent villain, but most importantly he sounds better than I’ve ever heard him. His first song has a humorous turnaround, as he’s performing in-universe and starts off nervous, but then he’s like ‘OH GUESS WHAT, I’M AWESOME.’ I really wanted to shout ‘oh shit Ako COME THROUGH’ when he belted those velvet notes but did not, which is good, because then I would have had to kick my own ass. I’m usually against the idea of relying on diegetic songs in musicals because it often feels like a half-assed way of giving characters something to do (see, e.g., all poor Lilli Cooper had to do in Tootsie), but that’s not the case here. It works given the setting, and even without that, the structure of the musical numbers feels thoughtfully done, since the diegesis of the songs pays off in Act II when they aren’t anymore. And that long climax scene in Act II as the couple fights, with it’s motherforking STAGING as they shared inner monologues? It’s genius.
The music is pretty good, never feeling out of place or out of character. And the writer has to be from the area because I have never witnessed such attention to detail. I literally almost gasped when they said something about how it’s almost 7pm so Jeopardy! would be starting soon! Who knows that but locals! And someone was wearing a Phillies shirt! And there was a Jets shirt because I guess they knew people in New Jersey are split between the two cities’ teams. If anyone had said ‘wooder’ I would have fainted.
A lot of the ‘professional’ critics who need to get a life and/or the stick out of their butts said they were aghast (clutch them pearls!) at the idea of offering money to sleep with someone’s wife, oh my lord farquaad. They were like, ‘oh this is a horrid, horrid show, pish posh, it’s simply positively indecent.’ IT’S IN THE TITLE, NUMBNUTS. Did they have no idea going in? Or did they actively choose to be offended and make a fuss even though I thought British people HATED making a fuss. They also said Larry was too bad a guy or too unlikeable for making this offer. Is…that…not…the….POINT? Honestly, in addition to the marital strife, what grabbed me by the shoulders and shook hard was how much of this show made me scream TAX THE RICH! internally. Did they not see the part where he doesn’t pay the poor dying woman for his beer? Where he gives a homeless person a measly $2 and probably feels that’s enough charity for the year? The constant thread of noticing how easily Larry could save people’s lives was fascinating. He instead chooses to fuck with these two. He chooses VIOLENCE. He has such power and he uses it to put a disaster in motion with his words, how is that not interesting drama? There are all these poor, decent people who just need some help, like Jonny and Rebecca, and poor Annie (Jacqeline Dankworth, lovely) who needs a gd hysterectomy, and this guy could help them all and chooses not to. This show was a motherfucking ONION with its layers.
This show has accomplished something really difficult in showing a very convincing and genuine-feeling intimate portrayal of this couple and what can happen when love is not enough to survive on. That a musical version of this kind of insane story told in this climate managed to provide such a compelling marital drama is what shocked me and why I’m so effusive in my praise for it. Noah Baumbach could never.
ALSO. The accents were good. I KNOW!
