Premiere of A Mother's Song, Finn Anderson's Latest Folksy Wonderby Randi / March 2, 2023It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is called Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and played at the Barbican until April 1.
I’m so excited to write about the show we have been referring to simply as ‘Ow My Bones!’ for literally months. I am not excited to admit that that was because we weren’t familiar with the title because we didn’t know it was a book, but apparently it was and made a splash that I missed. And I love water! Not only was I unfamiliar with the source mats, but I also didn’t realize that Ow My Bones was pretty much a drama about animal justice. HERE. FOR THIS. SHIT.
Also, it’s coming from Simon McBurney and Complicite, who are always complicite in providing challenging and unique theatre. Sometimes they’re a little dark for me but the troupe is always doing something interesting. Like here: it’s dark af but it’s about like vigilante justice for animal abuse so again, I could not BE any more here for it.
In Ow My Bones, a lady named Janina (an incredibly captivating when I saw the show in previews (so long ago sorry) Kathryn Hunter) living in a remote Polish mountain town of 14 people learns that her asshole neighbor has died. It seems he choked on bones (ow!) but Janina has a gut feeling that the deer she made eye contact with outside had something to do with it. It was honestly hard not to start fist pumping when assholes who were cruel to animals starting dying. As more bad men (members of the hunting club) show up dead, we learn more about their history of being absolute dickheads to animals, women, pretty much everyone who counts (i.e. not hunters), and we hear Janina’s theories of how the animals are behind it all, somehow taking revenge. Everyone thinks she’s crazy, because I guess ON PAPER it SOUNDS crazy, but I was like, ‘this chick gets it.’
One of the reasons it took me so long to write this is because Kathryn Hunter got sick before opening night, so they delayed it, (and then I forgot), and then it opened with another actress, which is a shame, because I’m sure she’s amazing too as everyone in Complicite is, but with Kathryn Hunter it felt like her blood flowed to be on that stage playing that character. Even when she flubbed some lines (understandable she’s reciting like hours of text up there and it was previews) she was still supes powerful. Considering that hers was the only performance I remember disliking in Andor, this b really is a talented chameleon.
Ow My Bones is a little long, and about 3/5 through the first act it dragged a bit, but otherwise it was incredibly engrossing and powerful which is impressive considering it’s mostly one tiny woman talking at us for hours; that’s really hard to make captivating! Kathryn reminded me in sound and physicality of Linda….the little one who I first saw in that movie with the teenager who becomes like a secret agent or something but all I really remember is a woman being bitten by a scorpion in a pinkish bedroom???? HUNT. ooh ironic. (Anyone know what movie I am thinking of?) And while she’s the main act, the ensemble and supporting players are all stellar. I particularly loved the physicality (wow I’ve literally never said this word so much) of the ensemble, when they did little precise movements that contained a whole universe of creativity.
Anyway I was the teensiest bit disappointed in the ending (not how it’s staged, just as written) because I wanted Janina to be right; I wanted the animals to be doing these murders all on their own so I could have hope that they would fight back against all the shits ruining their existence in our world too but I guess that is a lofty lofty dream. Man the first act as a standalone would have been pure fire. But even so, I really enjoyed this which is shocking for me given the aforementioned darkness, violence, length (about three hours), and big time use of astrology (but honestly this character was the closest anyone has ever come to making me give it the time of day). Man, honestly though, a whole play (and book) about the possibility of animals getting revenge on hunters and poachers and the people who let them get away with it?? did *I* win a contest??
INFORMATION (NOT THAT YOU CARE SINCE IT’S OVER BUT MAYBE IT’LL HAVE ANOTHER RUN SOMEDAY SOMEWHERE SOMEHOW)
Start: about 7:52
Act I ends: 9:15
Act II begins: 9:37
Act II ends: 10:41
Barbican is the one theatre where no matter what we are always going upstairs. The stalls are my nightmare — incredibly long rows with no aisle breaks except at the ends so you could get trapped and have to get past like 30 people if you have to pee, it’s just horrendous to even think about. Upstairs in the upper circle you can have your own entrance door and no one behind you and it’s cheaper too.
The bathroom situation at Barbican continues to be the worst though, you either run down to a small one house left below the stalls or you go all the way out the theatre to like the movie theatre area. Woof.
The show uses big flashes a bunch, flashes that are blinding and upsetting. They are not upsetting in a theatrical ooh this is working for me way; they are upsetting because they are blinding. CAN. THEATRES. PLEASE. STOP. DOING. THIS.
Restaurant recommendation for pre-theatre: Korean BBQ & Vegan has moved from East London to here! Like around the corner! And they’re so fast and great. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.
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Not a Fando of this Orlando at the Garrick Theatre
After just watching Emma Corrin in Netflix’s new adaptation of Naked Chattering with My Sturdy Lover or whatever it’s called, I was very excited to see what this likable performer can do onstage and maybe with more clothes on. (No I still haven’t watched The Crown, I’m bored thinking about it.) But despite all the glowing reviews from everyone else about Orlando at the West End’s Garrick Theatre, I found it quite the disappointment, especially compared to the book or to the superior movie with Tilda Swinton. The tone was hard to pin down, and more pressingly, it felt chaotic in its energy. More than anything, watching this show felt like reading a book by reading a few sentences every 50 pages.
This adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s beloved novel feels like the creatives were trying to erase the magic that theatre could have so ingeniously enhanced. Theatre’s unique potential to show the wonder and intrigue and joy of this story — of a young man in Elizabethan times who falls asleep for 100 years and then becomes an ambassador to Constantinople but then falls asleep again and wakes up a woman and then lives for centuries more but doesn’t really age and has a gay old time dressing as both men and women and having all kinds of lovers and then getting married for like a day and so on — felt kind of squandered in an attempt to pare the story down to bare bones. But this story doesn’t really have bones — its magical flowery surrealism is its essence! So paring it down — and at 90 minutes or less, it really is unnecessarily pared down — feels like the wrong move.
It felt like they were trying to ground (or really, ground down) the surrealist aspect of the story (and isn’t it all surreal??!!) instead of letting it fly and having the magic of theatre smooth the rough edges and augment the ambiguity in a great way. Instead, all the rough edges seemed to be highlighted. Like the fact that Orlando keeps falling asleep and waking up in new centuries even though his nursemaid is alive and the same age feels forking weird, instead of being another lovely thing to let color the mood and shape of the piece. Sure the nurse is the funniest part of the show but even that feels like a random insertion when compared to the rest of the cast and happenings.
The attempts at sincerity, especially at the end trying to show Orlando’s feelings for her new husband, feel incredibly unearned and false since nothing was given the chance to feel earned. Everything felt quick, random, chaotic. The pointed proclamations made about gender and living freely etc thus also feel unearned, even though they were disappointingly weak and bare to begin with. So overall it just felt like a missed opportunity, focusing too much on the meta-story of the 8 or so Virginias Woolf writing the story as it was shown to us (even that felt half-assed) and not enough on letting the story breathe fully in its gloriousness so it could have the strength to say something worthwhile.
INFORMATION
Run time: 90 minutes.
Orlando is playing at the Garrick until February 25. The Garrick is an old for the earth theatre and I keep forgetting that the circle is better than the stalls, but for this short show the stalls weren’t so bad. Just remember that the ladies toilies are upstairs. And old. For the earth.
The pillars that restrict views in the stalls aren’t really that bad, so it’s worth saving a few pounds.
Mask count: two, me and husbo. Everyone else was coughing freely. Humans are gross.
“My Name is Lucy Barton”: Laura Linney Makes a Stunning London Debut
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about “My Name is Lucy Barton” at the Bridge Theatre in London, playing until June 23.
The best one-man shows are those that make you forget that only one person is up on that stage. It takes an enormous talent to fill a theatre so completely that you feel the force of a whole company entertaining you with their stories. The last time (maybe only other time?) I felt like a stage was filled with several great entertainers instead of just one was in Michael Urie’s brilliant one-man show Buyer and Cellar. Now the wonderful Laura Linney manages to achieve a similar result in The Bridge Theatre’s “My Name is Lucy Barton”, in which she tells her story so vividly and describes other people so keenly that it feels as effective as a play with a big ensemble. She distracts you from how hard she’s working up there with how realistic her storytelling is. Directed by Richard Eyre, this moving tale of one woman’s struggles to come to terms with her past while recognizing her internal pain is at times funny, depressing, and surprisingly universal in its representation of the humanity of loneliness.
The best one-man shows are those that make you forget that only one person is up on that stage. It takes an enormous talent to fill a theatre so completely that you feel the force of a whole company entertaining you with their stories. The last time (maybe only other time?) I felt like a stage was filled with several great entertainers instead of just one was in Michael Urie’s brilliant one-man show Buyer and Cellar. Now the wonderful Laura Linney manages to achieve a similar result in The Bridge Theatre’s “My Name is Lucy Barton”, in which she tells her story so vividly and describes other people so keenly that it feels as effective as a play with a big ensemble. She distracts you from how hard she’s working up there with how realistic her storytelling is. Directed by Richard Eyre, this moving tale of one woman’s struggles to come to terms with her past while recognizing her internal pain is at times funny, depressing, and surprisingly universal in its representation of the humanity of loneliness.
In what’s pretty much a 90-minute monologue that at times will make you think holy hell how does anyone memorize a thing like this and also isn’t she so thirsty I’m almost done my water and I’m just sitting here, Linney plays Lucy Barton, the character from Elizabeth Strout’s 2016 (damn they worked fast) novel of the same name, adapted for this stage by Rona Munro. Although it’s a work of fiction, the character of Lucy is so fleshed out and so genuine that it seems like a true story. With the lights up, Lucy in her NYC-hospital-chic ensemble tells the audience that she was once in the hospital for nine weeks, away from her husband and her two daughters for all that time. During her hospital stay, her mother surprised her with a visit. The lights go down as she returns to that hospital room to tell us what happened during that reunion with her mother, and what informed their relationship from their difficult past.
At first, I’m watching Linney say interesting words about how sick she was (if I recall correctly, they never really say what the issue was) and how her relationship with her mother was rough to say the least, but after about 10 or so minutes, Linney became Lucy Barton, and although I was still staring at Linney’s amazing face dimples (definitely one of my top five favorite face dimples), I was watching Lucy tell her story. She told her story of her hospital stay while interweaving details from her past, her terribly rough childhood out in the sticks of Illinois with her father, who had PTSD from the war, her cold mother, her siblings who it seems she never bonded with, and all the abuse she suffered, even as a young child who couldn’t understand why she was being punished. Her storytelling is peppered with thoughts about how hard it was to be so lonely in that hospital room, and then her loneliness becomes the driving theme of her entire existence, developed in her pitiful childhood.
At first, I’m watching Linney say interesting words about how sick she was (if I recall correctly, they never really say what the issue was) and how her relationship with her mother was rough to say the least, but after about 10 or so minutes, Linney became Lucy Barton, and although I was still staring at Linney’s amazing face dimples (definitely one of my top five favorite face dimples), I was watching Lucy tell her story. She told her story of her hospital stay while interweaving details from her past, her terribly rough childhood out in the sticks of Illinois with her father, who had PTSD from the war, her cold mother, her siblings who it seems she never bonded with, and all the abuse she suffered, even as a young child who couldn’t understand why she was being punished. Her storytelling is peppered with thoughts about how hard it was to be so lonely in that hospital room, and then her loneliness becomes the driving theme of her entire existence, developed in her pitiful childhood.
Honestly, I just read Orphan Train this week and I’m getting the horrible childhood details from that book confused with Lucy’s, that’s how bad it was. We learn that as a young girl her parents would lock her in her dad’s truck sometimes at night, and she would scream for them to let her out. Even when a snake was in there with her, they wouldn’t listen to her screams. With that kind of detail, you can’t help but despise her mother and understand how big a deal it was that she visited her sick daughter, coming all the way to New York City when she is scared of traveling, and how anxious Lucy was about it even though a large part of her was happy to have the comfort of family. I mean it’s the least she could do. Linney’s, or Lucy’s, imitations of the mother were superb, with that thick Chicago-area accent and the too accurate recounting of how gossipy she is. I don’t remember the mother’s name but I remember her tales of her frenemy Cathy Neely, because of how often the mother talked about this woman, spitting out her name with pure venom and those exaggerated mid-West vowels. I LOVED how at one point in Lucy’s mother’s chitchat including a tidbit about a girl Mary who got married and the vowel she used for Mary and marry was the same, which is such a precise dialect detail that I almost stood up and shouted GIVE HER AND HER VOCAL COACH ALL THE AWARDS. I’m kind of obsessed with the Mary/merry/marry dialectical test because as a Philadelphian we are among the few, we happy few, who pronounce all three distinctly. Anyway.
Linney is pitch-perfect as she unfolds the truth behind why Lucy’s relationship with her mother is so strained, and why her loneliness feels like the main disease she’s suffering from, more debilitating and hopeless than whatever has been keeping her in the hospital for months. It’s such a full-bodied recounting that it feels like all the characters she mentions are up there with her, shoring up her tale. I was especially struck by the idea of her neighbor and friend Jeremy, and when Lucy spoke of a man dying from AIDS that she saw in the hospital, I immediately thought of him. When she carried on with her story, I brushed away the thought, but at the end her heartbreaking final thoughts circle back in what I thought was the most moving part of the story. She talks about what it was like to reconnect, or try to reconnect, with her estranged mother after all these years, and about her childhood and all the experiences that shaped her, but her story was mostly confiding in us about how lonely she was, no matter what she tried to do about it.
It’s really remarkable, and a testament to the skill of the writers as well as to Linney’s acting, how much the audience feels it knows Lucy and how much we learn about her life, simply by listening to her tell us about her hospital stay, something that seems so mundane and uninteresting. At the end, she again comes to the most downstage point and looks directly at us to share her most private thoughts and pains, pounding on her chest in one of the most powerful theatre moments. You’re so invested in Lucy’s emotional distress that you almost forget you’re watching Linney, as she makes a compelling London debut and receives a much-deserved standing ovation.
INFORMATION
The Bridge Theatre put in Linney’s programme bio that she was in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” but not that she was in “Dave”, the BEST MOVIE EVER and her character’s name was RANDI and she wasn’t a gross man so like FIX IT, BRIDGE.
Also fix your late seating policy. It was nonsense how many people were seated 20 minutes into the show. Just stop allowing late seating, all theatres. If someone is late and it’s not their fault let them exchange their tickets. I mean people who missed 20 minutes missed a LOT of information; it’s not even worth seeing it. And it was so distracting to everyone else.
STAGEDOOR
The stagedoor is around the side of the complex closest to Tower Bridge, past the Ivy restaurant and then next to the By Chloe that’s there. We only waited 10-15 minutes because it was disheartening to see how many Londoners were still supporting that restaurant’s shitty owners. Anyway, the people working inside said she isn’t consistent about which exit she uses, and I guess they couldn’t find out if she was planning to come out that way, and I was cold, so we left.
