Allegiance with George Takei Comes to Londonby Randi / January 26, 2023It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the premiere of A Mother’s Song: A New Folk Musical, which just played the Macrobert Arts Centre at University of Stirling last week.
I am realizing that I’m as close to a groupie as one can be for a relatively new Scottish musical theatre composer. Cool! After falling truly madly deeply in love with Finn Anderson’s Islander a few years ago, we had to go to Stirling to see the premiere of this New Folk Musical, A Mother’s Song. A Mother’s Song has promise and could be great. It’s a fully fleshed out full-length musical with some real moments of gloriousness that gave me chills. Anderson has collaborated with director Tania Azevedo to create this show about motherhood throughout many, many generations of one family line, from long-ago Scotland to present day Brooklyn via West Virginia (for once the American accents were Southern for a reason!). They tell the generation-weaving story with music that blends traditional folk songs with modern takes on them, plus some plain old modern songs.
Anderson has his own sound, that folksy sea-shanty-loving if-you-close-your-eyes-you-can-see-the-Highland-coos-in-the-foggy-fields sound with its tight, sometimes spellbinding multi-part harmonies. This score had several moments where I was like ‘yes! this is it! the Finn sound!’, and if he finds and adds some more of that, this would be a score you could compare more to Islander. That show’s amazing use of overlapping percussion to aid in storytelling is largely missing here, and would really serve this show well (also it’s just an awesome element to his sound that I missed). The great moments happen mainly in the first act, especially when the use of traditional Scottish folk songs blend seamlessly with his new songs. When our oldest ancestor Cait (Kirsty Findlay, also in Islander) sings the traditional The Four Marys and it goes right into An Unwelcome Visitor (the visitor in question being a bebe, damn), WHEW but that was pure fire! It helps that Findlay is one of the strongest performers I’ve seen in years, so keyed into nuance and able to harness the power of her voice in precise little acrobatics that serve as a masterclass in how to act through singing (none of that ‘I’m going to speak a few words for emphasis even though that’s never really effective’ stuff from her). She was so incredible in Islander and here she proves again she’s in a class of her own.
Cait’s storyline, of a minister’s wife who is unwillingly pregnant, weaves with her descendant Jean’s storyline, of a 16-year-old girl who gets pregnant, is not really fussed about it!, and runs away to have the bebe in the new world. Blythe Jandoo’s Jean is as likeable as her real name is baller, with maybe the most enjoyable story of the bunch since at least (compared to Cait’s) you know you aren’t going to have to think about the precursor to wire hangers. These two stories (and these two performers) rise above the more modern ones and are moving, powerful, compelling.
As for the modern story, we have Bethany Tennick (the performer and one of the writers of Land, from last year’s Fringe, and one of the two Islanders) as Sarah, a PhD candidate but also a professor (once again I am begging British playwrights to let me just have a once-over on an scripts that take place in America just to find inconsistencies like this) living in Brooklyn in an apartment she just bought with her newly qualified lawyer girlfriend (I repeat what I just parenthesized) (in the USA no one is described as newly qualified or fully qualified like in the UK, you’ve either passed the Bar or not yet) (also no way this new lawyer is a human rights lawyer in a firm, no). She is holding onto a box from her deceased Aunt Betty from West Virginia, full of cassette tapes of Betty’s research into the folk songs that shape their history. Which is a nice framing device, but in practice Betty’s scenes work kind of like a lecture and weren’t as enjoyable as the historical scenes. I did find the info she shares interesting, but I like school (we were in a university after all, I’ll give you that).
One thing I truly loved though was the use of Scots language! LOVES IT. I went home and immediately read some Rabbie Burns. Okay no I didn’t but I meant to. It was so well done, and yes there were two screens with captions (very helpful and only blocked my view a handful of times!) but I think it was clear what was being said without relying on reading. Kirsty in particular did such a good job expressing the musicality of the language I was like fully ready to add another language to my Duolingo to forget about in a week.
So as the stories weave and build, the show is intriguing and can be moving, but there are a few spots that need work. Specifically, the cut from one of the greatest songs, Cait singing about the rage inside of her, that goes right to the modern song about the modern couple’s karaoke nights?? It was a harsh juxtaposition, and it felt completely incongruous, able to be lifted right out of the show (and maybe should be). It also showed how much more compelling the historical stories are than the modern one.
Generally, I think the second act needs work. The show goes from 3-4 stories woven fairly nicely together in the first act, to being almost just one straightforward regular one-plot play in the second. Mainly, it’s a bit tedious, weaker than the first because it’s entirely about the modern storyline, and how their relationship ends because the aunt’s tapes made Sarah realize she wants kids? It’s all a little ‘wait what? listening to some tapes made you change your mind about a huge life decision?’ (It’s also peculiar that it’s been two years since aunt’s death. Maybe if it just happened (maybe even suddenly) then Bethany’s huge change of heart would be in part explained due to grief and guilt.)) But even if that was all substantiated, it’s just that no one cares as much about the modern storyline or this relationship as we do about the other two storylines. So having so little from the other two and instead having the whole act about this decoupling that we kind of are like ‘okay, whatever, you do you’ about, is a let down. And we lost the Finn sound. Needs more of those supertight multipart harmonies!
Also, the hardships compound so much that it feels a little like disaster porn, like everything that can go wrong or can be terrible will. At one point, the mood veers in a way that lets you see that a beloved character is deffo gonna die, and I said to myself, no, that’s too predictable, too overdone, too dire. And then of course she died like a second after I thought that. I understand the desire to show hardship – no one wants to see a story that pretends women had autonomy or all happy endings – but we’re getting a lotttt of sadness in this show. A spree of melancholy starts to feel a bit banal. You need to break up the tragedy with at least a drop of lightness.
However, I’m just sharing all these negative things because this show was overall really good and could be EXCELLENT with some of these changes, and obvs I want it to be EXCELLENT. You know I don’t go hoarse for a player with no potential! There’s a lot of brilliance already in it and sooo much more waiting to be revealed with just a little bit of digging.
Other thoughts: The old-timey costumes were well done. They seemed so elaborate and on point for such a short run. However, the modern clothes were wee headscratchers, namely the denim jumpsuit. I get how on paper that sounds right for a PhD candidate in Brooklyn but just take my word that Bethany deserves a cooler costume!
Lights: I remain convinced that lighting designers who enjoy adding in series of bright flashes of lights for ‘art’s sake’ have never sat in a seat to see how it actually plays. Luckily these artistic flashes were mainly at the start and finish, so it wasn’t too hard to cover my eyes, but it still was a rough go. I hope that this trend stops! Being temporarily blinded did not make me appreciate the dramaz any better!
INFORMATION
The show had a short run as its premiere last week, but given the people involved I’m sure we’ll be seeing future runs (hence why I’m writing all this).
Macrobert Arts Centre is REALLY HARD TO FIND AND TO FIND PARKING AT! It’s deep into the university campus and there are teeny little signs for finding it by walking and it was all very confusing and made me hearken back to trying to find an 8am lecture at college and not realizing it was a 70 minute walk to the top of campus! anxietyyyy!
The show ran about 2 1/2 hours with intermission (Act I ran 14:36 (at least that’s the last phone screen I saw) to 15:49, Act II ended at 17:06). The website said it ran 150 minutes so like, freaking bravo on that accuracy. The first act flewwww by, I guess because I loved it.
As I said there were two big screens on each side of the stage with captions, which are mostly helpful, although they kept saying its’ which is not a word. This was apparently one of only two special captioned performances, but if they shifted them a little so the screens don’t block the action for the first few rows, I don’t see why they can’t have these all the time (and like…for most shows! If someone needs them and they don’t hurt then…? yes I’ve started watching TV with subtitles what about it).
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“Electra” at the Old Vic Will Do Some Serious Messing With Your Head
Crazy Eyes Ghostface Killah
Through Dec. 20. If in London, you must see this. It’s f-ing nuts but Scott Thomas is a must-see.
When it comes to Greek tragedies, I always assume the main character is going to die at the end. But while some important people do indeed die, spoiler, Electra lives, and nothing unexpected happens at all. So this was almost like a feel-good Greek tragedy!
When it comes to Greek tragedies, I always assume the main character is going to die at the end. But while some important people do indeed die, spoiler, Electra lives, and nothing unexpected happens at all. So this was almost like a feel-good Greek tragedy!
Okay that’s not entirely true. “Electra”, the Sophocles version, not the Euripides, though I imagine they are pretty much identical because TRUE HISTORY, is currently playing at the Old Vic in London and starring the fabulous miraculous sort-of-French wonder Kristin Scott Thomas. “Electra” is a f-ing madhouse of a depressing story, and here, played by an unrecognizable, balls-to-the-wall crazy and fully committed KST, it will tear you apart emotionally and leave you not knowing how to think or feel about anything. (Or just this.) But it’s actually predictable and almost tame compared to other ancient works of its ilk, especially because everything Electra prays for and sets out to do actually happens.
In that regard, the show is kind of boring. Who wants straightforward Greek tragedies! I expected more plot twists. More shocking murderings. It’s actually the background story that’s dramatic, not anything we learn during the 100 minutes of drama. So, if you are familiar with this play, seeing it presents you with more of an emotional roller coaster just in the character of Electra.
Are you familiar with the story? It is indeed nuts. We begin our scene in ancient Mycenae, which the characters here pronounce “my-see-nee” and I have always said “my-sen-eye” so already up is down and black is white. Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae and/or Argos, both of which are said at times and ancient scholars think could have been the same region, but British people don’t care because they hear ‘Argos’ and titter amongst themselves thinking about their beloved discount home goods shoppe, anyway, Agamemnon was killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. I KNOW. This was actually years ago, and now Clytty and ThroatPhlegm are inhabiting Aggy’s home as King and Queen of Mycergos, with some of their children. Electra long refuses to act as a member of Aegisthus’s household, so she looks and acts more like a servant. Their son and Electra’s stars, moon, sky, and whole universe Orestes was exiled, from fear of his revenging his father, and has been missing for years. Electra has spent these years pretty much squatting in the dirt outside and praying for Orestes’s return.
In that regard, the show is kind of boring. Who wants straightforward Greek tragedies! I expected more plot twists. More shocking murderings. It’s actually the background story that’s dramatic, not anything we learn during the 100 minutes of drama. So, if you are familiar with this play, seeing it presents you with more of an emotional roller coaster just in the character of Electra.
Are you familiar with the story? It is indeed nuts. We begin our scene in ancient Mycenae, which the characters here pronounce “my-see-nee” and I have always said “my-sen-eye” so already up is down and black is white. Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae and/or Argos, both of which are said at times and ancient scholars think could have been the same region, but British people don’t care because they hear ‘Argos’ and titter amongst themselves thinking about their beloved discount home goods shoppe, anyway, Agamemnon was killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. I KNOW. This was actually years ago, and now Clytty and ThroatPhlegm are inhabiting Aggy’s home as King and Queen of Mycergos, with some of their children. Electra long refuses to act as a member of Aegisthus’s household, so she looks and acts more like a servant. Their son and Electra’s stars, moon, sky, and whole universe Orestes was exiled, from fear of his revenging his father, and has been missing for years. Electra has spent these years pretty much squatting in the dirt outside and praying for Orestes’s return.
Power squatting
KST’s inhabiting of Electra occurs not only in her youthful crazy dancing around, dragging her toes along the sand, but also in her squatting. It’s more of an African tribal dancer squat than a weight lifter squat, and on its own it is pretty compelling. She looks like a bug. And a child. It all just works somehow.
If you didn’t know the story before, you start out definitely on Electra’s side. You want her to get her shit together, sure; the physical manifestation of her deteriorating mental stability is pitiful (and astounding). When you learn why she hates her mother so much, you’re like, yeah, okay, I see your point. What do you do if the one parent you have left murdered the other one? That’s pretty much as dark as you can get, psychologically.
But then we meet Clytemnestra herself, who is like a not-as-cool Regina from “Once Upon A Time” (mostly the cleavage), and we learn more of the back story. Ready for the Greek Tragedy Quotient ® to go up a few thousand notches? Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon because Agamemnon killed their daughter. He sacrificed her to win the war or some total b.s. like that, and Clytemnestra believes he did it for his brother Menelaus’s sake, because Menny didn’t have enough children to spare, and Aggy was like “yo bruh I have at least 3 daughters, I can spare at least 1.” Girls be worthless! So now you’re thinking, hold the phone there, Electra – your dad killed your sister, to appease the gods of war and some such b.s., and you didn’t really care? Umm that’s not exactly the sign of a fully functioning mental state. Once we know this much, we feel a little more sympathy for Clytemnestra. Sure, more violence is never the answer to violence, as this cycle usually begets more violence AND causes you to say violence four times in one sentence, but dayum, at least now you kind of get why she wanted to kill her husband. As far as reasons go, it’s a pretty good one.
Of course, the whole cold-hearted first-degree-murdery plotting of the killing argues against her heat-of-passion defense, plus there was the whole adultery aspect and making her lover the new king. So she’s not completely excused by revenge. But it’s not as clear-cut as we once thought. It’s not as simple as Electra wants us to believe.
Okay, so now we know more, the audience is grappling with heavy moral questions, awful people and awful things abound, demanding our attention and demanding to know where our sympathies lie. Clytemnestra’s story pulls at certain sympathies at first, but then she acts like a total crazy power-hungry warlord. Her ‘World of Warcraft’ style gold-plated dress doesn’t help. She’s not all sunshine. Then we have Electra, who has completely lost her shit, who is dancing and power-squatting all over the sandy stage, and is devoted without hesitation to her hatred of her mother and Aegisthus. But the all-encompassing hatred seems oddly fresh, so many years after the tragedy, and we realize it’s out of necessity. Electra needs to hold fast to this hatred to give reason and purpose to her wasted life and wasted mind. She has to commit to the intensity of her mad hatred, or else any doubt that seeps in could make her realize that it was all in vain, her resolute refusal to act as a member of Aegisthus’s house, to care for her own health at all, to live any kind of life. If she let second thoughts in, the strangely strong structure of hatred and revenge would crumble and leave her even more debilitated. This characterization reminded me of “West Side Story”, when Anita tells Maria that Tony killed her brother. Maria can only say (sing) “I have a love and it’s all that I have, Right or wrong what else can I do”, because it was all she had, and if she let the fact that her love killed her brother enter her head, she’d lose her f-ing mind. She, like Electra, makes a survivalist decision to focus on a sort of half-truth rather than let the whole picture screw with their version of reality.
And Kristin Scott Thomas portrays all of this, somehow, almost even without her words. Her physicality alone tells you everything you need to know, how her experiences have rendered her nearly inoperable. You so feel for her that, when her brother Orestes actually returns home to enact the revenge they’ve all been waiting and praying for, you actually wish them well for a moment. Yay Electra and Orestes! Hug it out! Get well! Do your thang! Then you realize that their thang is double homicide and you close one eye as all the bloodshed happens. And then it ends. No seriously, they kill the king and queen and say “Yay revenge! High five!” and then it ends. Good show!
If you didn’t know the story before, you start out definitely on Electra’s side. You want her to get her shit together, sure; the physical manifestation of her deteriorating mental stability is pitiful (and astounding). When you learn why she hates her mother so much, you’re like, yeah, okay, I see your point. What do you do if the one parent you have left murdered the other one? That’s pretty much as dark as you can get, psychologically.
But then we meet Clytemnestra herself, who is like a not-as-cool Regina from “Once Upon A Time” (mostly the cleavage), and we learn more of the back story. Ready for the Greek Tragedy Quotient ® to go up a few thousand notches? Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon because Agamemnon killed their daughter. He sacrificed her to win the war or some total b.s. like that, and Clytemnestra believes he did it for his brother Menelaus’s sake, because Menny didn’t have enough children to spare, and Aggy was like “yo bruh I have at least 3 daughters, I can spare at least 1.” Girls be worthless! So now you’re thinking, hold the phone there, Electra – your dad killed your sister, to appease the gods of war and some such b.s., and you didn’t really care? Umm that’s not exactly the sign of a fully functioning mental state. Once we know this much, we feel a little more sympathy for Clytemnestra. Sure, more violence is never the answer to violence, as this cycle usually begets more violence AND causes you to say violence four times in one sentence, but dayum, at least now you kind of get why she wanted to kill her husband. As far as reasons go, it’s a pretty good one.
Of course, the whole cold-hearted first-degree-murdery plotting of the killing argues against her heat-of-passion defense, plus there was the whole adultery aspect and making her lover the new king. So she’s not completely excused by revenge. But it’s not as clear-cut as we once thought. It’s not as simple as Electra wants us to believe.
Okay, so now we know more, the audience is grappling with heavy moral questions, awful people and awful things abound, demanding our attention and demanding to know where our sympathies lie. Clytemnestra’s story pulls at certain sympathies at first, but then she acts like a total crazy power-hungry warlord. Her ‘World of Warcraft’ style gold-plated dress doesn’t help. She’s not all sunshine. Then we have Electra, who has completely lost her shit, who is dancing and power-squatting all over the sandy stage, and is devoted without hesitation to her hatred of her mother and Aegisthus. But the all-encompassing hatred seems oddly fresh, so many years after the tragedy, and we realize it’s out of necessity. Electra needs to hold fast to this hatred to give reason and purpose to her wasted life and wasted mind. She has to commit to the intensity of her mad hatred, or else any doubt that seeps in could make her realize that it was all in vain, her resolute refusal to act as a member of Aegisthus’s house, to care for her own health at all, to live any kind of life. If she let second thoughts in, the strangely strong structure of hatred and revenge would crumble and leave her even more debilitated. This characterization reminded me of “West Side Story”, when Anita tells Maria that Tony killed her brother. Maria can only say (sing) “I have a love and it’s all that I have, Right or wrong what else can I do”, because it was all she had, and if she let the fact that her love killed her brother enter her head, she’d lose her f-ing mind. She, like Electra, makes a survivalist decision to focus on a sort of half-truth rather than let the whole picture screw with their version of reality.
And Kristin Scott Thomas portrays all of this, somehow, almost even without her words. Her physicality alone tells you everything you need to know, how her experiences have rendered her nearly inoperable. You so feel for her that, when her brother Orestes actually returns home to enact the revenge they’ve all been waiting and praying for, you actually wish them well for a moment. Yay Electra and Orestes! Hug it out! Get well! Do your thang! Then you realize that their thang is double homicide and you close one eye as all the bloodshed happens. And then it ends. No seriously, they kill the king and queen and say “Yay revenge! High five!” and then it ends. Good show!
The Inheritance Part 1: A Provocative, Poignant Epic for Modern Times
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is The Inheritance, Part 1, which has transferred from the Young Vic to the West End’s Noel Coward Theatre, playing there until January 19.
I have put off seeing The Inheritance for actual years now. It’s not that I didn’t want to see it, but Matthew Lopez’s two-part, sweeping look at today’s culture of gay men, and how they grapple with their position in life compared to the generation that came before them and paved the way, is…long. It’s really long. And it’s in two parts, so you have to go back to the theatre another night to finish the story. And I got things to do! So I put it off. If I’m going to sit through two plays at nearly four hours each, I said to myself, about gay men and AIDs and stuff, I’m going to see Angels in America. (It might sound pretty narrow-minded to compare to the two works, like ‘oh they’re both about gay men so you’re going to compare them, you bigot’ but please, tell me of another eight-hour play in two parts, I’ll wait.) Also, the hype was ludicrous. I assumed there was no way this is ‘the best play of the year, and of next year too, probably’, to quote a mainstream critic (one of those). But I finally decided to bite the bullet and start this epic journey into hours and hours of theatre, and you know what? It’s probably the best play of the year, and of next year too.
I have put off seeing The Inheritance for actual years now. It’s not that I didn’t want to see it, but Matthew Lopez’s two-part, sweeping look at today’s culture of gay men, and how they grapple with their position in life compared to the generation that came before them and paved the way, is…long. It’s really long. And it’s in two parts, so you have to go back to the theatre another night to finish the story. And I got things to do! So I put it off. If I’m going to sit through two plays at nearly four hours each, I said to myself, about gay men and AIDs and stuff, I’m going to see Angels in America. (It might sound pretty narrow-minded to compare to the two works, like ‘oh they’re both about gay men so you’re going to compare them, you bigot’ but please, tell me of another eight-hour play in two parts, I’ll wait.) Also, the hype was ludicrous. I assumed there was no way this is ‘the best play of the year, and of next year too, probably’, to quote a mainstream critic (one of those). But I finally decided to bite the bullet and start this epic journey into hours and hours of theatre, and you know what? It’s probably the best play of the year, and of next year too.
Granted, I have only seen Part 1 so far. You can see both parts in one day if you want, but ain’t nobody got time for that. (Or energy. How do the actors do it? are they spidermen?) I’m really glad I scheduled this extra time in between so I can sit with and think about Part 1 and give it the due it deserves. As a standalone play, Part 1 was sensational, and I’m honestly wowed. I really can’t believe that I would be willing to see it again. For the first time in my life, I bought the script of the play instead of the programme. It’s that good. I made a sort-of joke about Angels in America above, but The Inheritance is truly the clear successor to Angels, not just because they are about the same demographic, but – and gird your loins, people who hate tautologies – because it is a successor to Angels. That’s what it’s about – what gay men living today have inherited from the generation before and what they have to do to honor their memory and their sacrifice. So REALLY, it’s like a four-part 16 hour play. Just kidding. But it’s important to know where gay men of the previous generation have been in order to understand what these gay men of our generation are thinking about when they think about honoring those who came before them. Both plays bear crucial witness to the gay culture of their time.
The idea of honoring the past without getting trapped by it runs through all the multiple layers and character arcs in this play. Not only are there so many vibrant layers to the story that all seem compelling in their own right, there’s also an homage to the novel Howards End woven into the frame of the show. It begins with a group of male writing students bouncing ideas off of each other, guided by their teacher Morgan, a representation of Howards End author E.M. Forster (the M was for Morgan), who hid his homosexuality from the public (his famous works about homosexual themes were published after his death). Morgan and the students brainstorm ways to start the story, eventually focusing on one student’s idea and snowballing. As an opening gimmick, this kind of annoyed me at first, but it really does pay off. We delve into the story and just when you forget that it’s anything but real, it returns to Morgan leading the writing process.
The story being written tells of Eric Glass (Kyle Soller, wonderful) and Toby Darling (Andrew Burnap, my choice for a supporting actor Olivier), a gay couple living in New York in Eric’s Holocaust-surviving grandparents’ great apartment. If you take that central idea and think of it like a small glass sphere, the play is like taking a hammer to that glass and watching all the thousands of shards shower away from it. There is so much happening and it all is part of the same whole, all kinds of side stories you think maybe should have been cut for time, until you realize they are all necessary to add to this realistic, vivid world they’re creating onstage. Eric is an actually decent guy, the kind you root for even without knowing him too well. He’s a better person than he believes himself to be, a sensitive, thoughtful soul. Toby is vivacious, hilarious, and altogether Too Much. He’s written a well-known book that is getting transformed into a Broadway play, because his head needs to get bigger. A chance meeting with a younger gay man, Adam (Samuel Levine, responsible for the ‘male nudity’ warning), throws a wrench into Eric and Toby’s happy life together, especially when Adam is cast in Toby’s play.
While Adam and Toby workshop the play out of town, Eric befriends Walter, an older gay man who was previously an acquaintance but becomes one of the most important people in Eric’s life. Walter lived through the ‘80s AIDs epidemic and tells Eric, in probably the longest (and most moving) monologue in theatre history, what it was like. And not just ‘what it was like’ like ‘oh, it was awful,’ but opening up and really showing the history to Eric like it’s a tangible thing you can hold and show someone. In a brilliant move, Walter is played by the same actor as Morgan (Paul Hilton), guiding the young men and helping them as much as he can. At the end of Act 1, Walter explains to Eric that his partner, the billionaire Henry Wilcox (John Benjamin Hickey, one of my faves), wanted to run away from the city during the epidemic and ignore it, along with their friends. But Walter in his kindness and empathy couldn’t, and so while Henry traveled, Walter opened up their country house to let their friends, and friends of friends and whoever needed to, have a serene place to die.
Walter’s friendship, guidance, and memories clearly make Eric even more thoughtful and considerate of (to quote another of this year’s ‘best of’(TV Edition)) what we owe to each other, and what we owe to the past and to the future. The inheritance of the title is that recognition of the importance of memory and respect in the culture. In a whole new layer to the story, it also refers to a Howards-End inspired deathbed bequeathment of important property that, like in its source material, gets infuriatingly disregarded. And as part of that property, it refers to the responsibility that these young gay men have inherited from the previous generation, the responsibility that every demographic or culture or race owes to their forebears: to recognize their struggles and understand what they went through so that you can live the life you’re living and make things better for the next group.
I know, it sounds like a lot of heavy material. And it is, and you’ll forking SOB, especially at the final scene of Part 1. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll save your hardest cries for what’s supposed to be a kind of funny moment – Eric’s friends’ 2016 Election Returns Watch Party (sigh (too real)). But you also laugh a whole lot, especially at Toby’s lines and his incredible physicality. It’s like he’s dancing through his character’s lines while fully becoming him and it is incredible. The ensemble is wonderful, and even though most have not much to say in Part 1, the cast remains onstage the entire time. Stephen Daldry’s direction has truly never been cleverer or sharper. It’s his best work yet. There is absolutely no set, other than a raised platform in the middle. No painted backdrops, no nothing. There are barely any props (save for the frequent wine glasses, the odd chair, the Hillary balloon). Yet the stage pulsates with life. The ensemble sits around the platform and watches the action, sometimes chiming in with suggestions to the author (reminding you of the framing device, which I still don’t know how I feel about). Most importantly, the ensemble moves with the story in a way I have never seen before. When you react internally to a line reading, the ensemble will react physically in a way that makes complete sense. They seem to be constantly moving but not in a distracting way, rather in a totally natural, necessary way that adds to the import of every scene. It’s like a reminder of something, maybe that your actions affect lives around you, or that you’re never alone.
Going into Part 2, I’m eager to see more of John Benjamin Hickey’s Wilcox, who was only in Part 1 for a portion of the time, and of course I’m excited for the ‘cameo’ by Vanessa Redgrave. But even more than seeing these stars, I can’t wait to get back into this world. I’m honestly still shook by the story and anxious about where things left off. This play felt like a long book that becomes important to you as you read along, the kind where you feel it in your soul and worry about the story and the characters for life, even though you know it’s not real. That the Inheritance Part 1 accomplished that is a testament to the genius of Matthew Lopez, as well as the pitch-perfect direction and the great acting that brought me fully into their world.
INFORMATION
The Inheritance ends its run at the Noel Coward Theatre on January 19 so hurry, or wait to see it on Broadway because it is definitely going.
Tickets are pretty easy to get, especially using TodayTix (which runs their rush ticket system). I got a £15 ticket (talk about value for money) in the Royal Circle, fifth row in and on the right side of center, and it was a perfect view. Too far to the extreme sides will be okay but a little restricted. The audience was pretty good, but actually the staff was awful. I could hear them talking in the lobby really loudly, proving my opinion that Delfont Mackintosh theatres and staff have to undergo a whole rehaul.
The idea of honoring the past without getting trapped by it runs through all the multiple layers and character arcs in this play. Not only are there so many vibrant layers to the story that all seem compelling in their own right, there’s also an homage to the novel Howards End woven into the frame of the show. It begins with a group of male writing students bouncing ideas off of each other, guided by their teacher Morgan, a representation of Howards End author E.M. Forster (the M was for Morgan), who hid his homosexuality from the public (his famous works about homosexual themes were published after his death). Morgan and the students brainstorm ways to start the story, eventually focusing on one student’s idea and snowballing. As an opening gimmick, this kind of annoyed me at first, but it really does pay off. We delve into the story and just when you forget that it’s anything but real, it returns to Morgan leading the writing process.
The story being written tells of Eric Glass (Kyle Soller, wonderful) and Toby Darling (Andrew Burnap, my choice for a supporting actor Olivier), a gay couple living in New York in Eric’s Holocaust-surviving grandparents’ great apartment. If you take that central idea and think of it like a small glass sphere, the play is like taking a hammer to that glass and watching all the thousands of shards shower away from it. There is so much happening and it all is part of the same whole, all kinds of side stories you think maybe should have been cut for time, until you realize they are all necessary to add to this realistic, vivid world they’re creating onstage. Eric is an actually decent guy, the kind you root for even without knowing him too well. He’s a better person than he believes himself to be, a sensitive, thoughtful soul. Toby is vivacious, hilarious, and altogether Too Much. He’s written a well-known book that is getting transformed into a Broadway play, because his head needs to get bigger. A chance meeting with a younger gay man, Adam (Samuel Levine, responsible for the ‘male nudity’ warning), throws a wrench into Eric and Toby’s happy life together, especially when Adam is cast in Toby’s play.
While Adam and Toby workshop the play out of town, Eric befriends Walter, an older gay man who was previously an acquaintance but becomes one of the most important people in Eric’s life. Walter lived through the ‘80s AIDs epidemic and tells Eric, in probably the longest (and most moving) monologue in theatre history, what it was like. And not just ‘what it was like’ like ‘oh, it was awful,’ but opening up and really showing the history to Eric like it’s a tangible thing you can hold and show someone. In a brilliant move, Walter is played by the same actor as Morgan (Paul Hilton), guiding the young men and helping them as much as he can. At the end of Act 1, Walter explains to Eric that his partner, the billionaire Henry Wilcox (John Benjamin Hickey, one of my faves), wanted to run away from the city during the epidemic and ignore it, along with their friends. But Walter in his kindness and empathy couldn’t, and so while Henry traveled, Walter opened up their country house to let their friends, and friends of friends and whoever needed to, have a serene place to die.
Walter’s friendship, guidance, and memories clearly make Eric even more thoughtful and considerate of (to quote another of this year’s ‘best of’(TV Edition)) what we owe to each other, and what we owe to the past and to the future. The inheritance of the title is that recognition of the importance of memory and respect in the culture. In a whole new layer to the story, it also refers to a Howards-End inspired deathbed bequeathment of important property that, like in its source material, gets infuriatingly disregarded. And as part of that property, it refers to the responsibility that these young gay men have inherited from the previous generation, the responsibility that every demographic or culture or race owes to their forebears: to recognize their struggles and understand what they went through so that you can live the life you’re living and make things better for the next group.
I know, it sounds like a lot of heavy material. And it is, and you’ll forking SOB, especially at the final scene of Part 1. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll save your hardest cries for what’s supposed to be a kind of funny moment – Eric’s friends’ 2016 Election Returns Watch Party (sigh (too real)). But you also laugh a whole lot, especially at Toby’s lines and his incredible physicality. It’s like he’s dancing through his character’s lines while fully becoming him and it is incredible. The ensemble is wonderful, and even though most have not much to say in Part 1, the cast remains onstage the entire time. Stephen Daldry’s direction has truly never been cleverer or sharper. It’s his best work yet. There is absolutely no set, other than a raised platform in the middle. No painted backdrops, no nothing. There are barely any props (save for the frequent wine glasses, the odd chair, the Hillary balloon). Yet the stage pulsates with life. The ensemble sits around the platform and watches the action, sometimes chiming in with suggestions to the author (reminding you of the framing device, which I still don’t know how I feel about). Most importantly, the ensemble moves with the story in a way I have never seen before. When you react internally to a line reading, the ensemble will react physically in a way that makes complete sense. They seem to be constantly moving but not in a distracting way, rather in a totally natural, necessary way that adds to the import of every scene. It’s like a reminder of something, maybe that your actions affect lives around you, or that you’re never alone.
Going into Part 2, I’m eager to see more of John Benjamin Hickey’s Wilcox, who was only in Part 1 for a portion of the time, and of course I’m excited for the ‘cameo’ by Vanessa Redgrave. But even more than seeing these stars, I can’t wait to get back into this world. I’m honestly still shook by the story and anxious about where things left off. This play felt like a long book that becomes important to you as you read along, the kind where you feel it in your soul and worry about the story and the characters for life, even though you know it’s not real. That the Inheritance Part 1 accomplished that is a testament to the genius of Matthew Lopez, as well as the pitch-perfect direction and the great acting that brought me fully into their world.
INFORMATION
The Inheritance ends its run at the Noel Coward Theatre on January 19 so hurry, or wait to see it on Broadway because it is definitely going.
Tickets are pretty easy to get, especially using TodayTix (which runs their rush ticket system). I got a £15 ticket (talk about value for money) in the Royal Circle, fifth row in and on the right side of center, and it was a perfect view. Too far to the extreme sides will be okay but a little restricted. The audience was pretty good, but actually the staff was awful. I could hear them talking in the lobby really loudly, proving my opinion that Delfont Mackintosh theatres and staff have to undergo a whole rehaul.
