January 19, 2023
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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New weekend theatre: An Elephant in the Garden
Today’s show is ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ presented by the Barn Theatre in association with Exeter Northcott Theatre. It streams from tonight until the 18th.
I found it kind of hilarious that I got the press night info for ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ on the same day as I discovered dozens upon dozens of Nazi apologists in a seemingly benign Reddit post. What a day for sympathizing with Germans during World War II! Of course regular German citizens were victims of their government and suffered terribly, but what fun timing. ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ is the stage version of Michael Mortugo’s book inspired by stories of zookeepers during the war, who tried to save animals destined for death in the event of bombings (they couldn’t have animals roaming the streets if their enclosures and caretakers were harmed – animals moving about freely, perish the thought). In this tale, teenage Lizzie and her mother flee on foot from Dresden after it’s destroyed, and they take Marlene, a baby elephant, with them.
Alison Reid in this two-hander (she has two hands) does a good job of keeping her energy up and keeping the story alive. Some cringey lines had us doing Chrissy Teigen’s Golden Globes face, but altogether it’s decent. The tone felt 60% for adults and 40% clearly for kids, so it’s a bit uneven. Reid’s handling of the handful of characters is nicely done. Yet the story as a whole felt a little unearned. Like the only thing I could say in response was “okay, and…” It feels like so much modern theatre and other art is focusing on Germans during the war in a purposeful attempt to not do more ‘obvious victim’ stories, but often without good reasons, trying to rely on the whole ‘we don’t think enough about these victims!’ idea but without sufficient justification for it being a play in the first place. Why am I supposed to care about this person, this family? I care about the elephant, for sure, but the reviews talking about how the elephant becomes the hero of the story, the main focus, are full of crap.
This play exists in a weird political limbo, alluding to bad German behavior but nothing tooo bad, never sharing any real political views and then all of a sudden calling Hitler an enemy towards the end just to make sure they made that clear in a CYA move that felt super obvious. There’s a bit with a horribly racist aunt and uncle, but their evilness is still kind of kid-friendly, as is the narrator’s happy obliviousness at the end, where she says ‘I like to believe my aunt and uncle changed for the good’ after the war. What, by staying silent about their bigotry? I do not like the implied message of this part. I feeeeel liiiiiike you should need to do more to prove goodness, especially if you wanted this war and loved ya boy Adolf. Do not like the message this sends to audiences, kids and the veryyyy problematic general British adult public alike. So, although this was fine, I’m a little peeved about its purpose in general.
Regardless of how much I would like a second, stronger draft that answers my questions, you have to hand it to the Barn Theatre for their content this year. They’ve been putting out so much theatre for home viewing, seemingly nonstop, and that is something to be commended. Also – they seem to acknowledge and respect that our attention spans are absolutely shot. The vast majority of their content has been around an hour – perfect for the home viewer who struggles to spend even thirty minutes watching something without simultaneously scrolling on their phone. I’m sure I could handle a longer thing – I have been watching serious movies and mostly concentrating, but it’s still a mental hurdle to even begin watching something when you know you have to concentrate for a long time. (It probably goes without saying that I am very very behind on work.) Anyway, thanks to the Barn, even though I didn’t love this one (but again, that could be in part because of all the Nazi sympathizers running rampant nowadays! Don’t let them get away with it!)
Photo credit: Farrows Creative
“You Can’t Take It With You” on Broadway: Crazy Fun Times That Will Remind You of Thanksgiving
The latest all-around excellent show to open on Broadway boasts a wonderful ensemble of super recognizable actors that magically mesh together, making it stand out so far this season. (See: “It’s Only A Play”. I mean don’t see it. Review forthcoming). That James Earl Jones plays the Grandpa (of an all-white family, which I love; see color-blind casting is FINE and GOOD and WORKS) is reason enough to see this show, and you’ll become fans of the wonderful theatre and H’wood actors composing the rest of the cast.
Despite how much this revival of “You Can’t Take It With You” has going for it, every single review begins the same way: The writer concedes that it’s an antiquated play, that everyone assumes it’s too old-fashioned to be relevant nowadays, but that this production’s team has done a bang-up job (which means good, contrary to how it sounds (from now on let’s agree it means bad, like banged up) (change approved)) to bring it into the 21st century. It’s actually extremely annoying. All these writers (getting paid, ffs) follow this same trite and tired formula, as if they have to apologize for the play being old. So ageist! It’s also silly. You don’t see people apologizing for Shakespeare. And you’re probably saying, but Shakespeare is still relevant today. Well so is this! No apologies!
JAMES EARL JONES IS WAVING TO ME!!! JUST TO ME!!!
“You Can’t Take It With You”, which I will refer to as YCTIWY from here on out, nevermind that is an awful acronym so I won’t, is a Kaufman & Hart work from freaking 1936, and we are still enjoying it today. Now that’s incredible. Also, if you can ever think of the great Kaufman & Hart without singing “Go ask the Gerrrrshwins or Kaufman & Hart” from “Annie” then you are stronger than I am. Hell I couldn’t even see the play “Act One” last year because I would have gone crazy singing that line over and over in my head. (It’s about Moss.)
ANYWAY. YCTWITHYOU tells the story of the jubilantly wacky Sycamore family, with its wacky playwright of a mother, its wacky firework maker of a father, its wacky wannabe prima ballerina of a daughter, her wacky husband, and the not-at-all-wacky-or-hey-maybe-she-actually-is-like-her-family other daughter who just wants to marry up, plus all the surrounding characters, including the grandfather played by James Earl Jones, who I think is written wacky but JEJ can never play wacky so he still kind of seemed regal and wise even though he was probably talking crazy. The story concerns the straight-laced office-secretary (working girl!) daughter Alice, who wants to marry her boss’s son Tony Kirby but is beyond fearful and anxious about their wildly different families – and as we see in all their insane glory, rightly so.
Obviously, the casting is vital in YTAYKAT, because the family’s wackiness can either work and make you fall in love with all of them, or it can annoy the piss out of you. Luckily, here, the producers got everything right. This hilarious band of fun crazies is led by Penny, the matriarch, played by the consistent and consistently hilarious Kristine Nielson (who was deservedly nominated for a 2013 Tony for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” in a super competitive year). Penny writes various sorts of plays that never are produced or really even read, and we learn later that she fell into this ‘profession’ when a typewriter was mistakenly delivered to her house. Penny’s husband Paul makes fireworks and crackers and smoke and all sorts of things that blow up in the basement at really inopportune times. Paul is played by Mark Linn-Baker, or the non-Balki lead from “Perfect Strangers”, one of my childhood mainstays. I didn’t know that Mark was in this show, and when I moved to an empty seat in the front row (from my last row of the top balcony seat, thank you very much) I kind of gasped when I realized who it was! So fun. Anyway, yeah so he sets stuff on fire in their house, with the help of his friend Mr. De Pinna, who models for a painting in Roman garb at one point and looks exactly like Christoph Waltz in it.
The best part of this production is the characterization of the daughter Essie, played by freaking thief Annaleigh Ashford, who steals every single thing she’s in. Essie yearns to be a top ballerina, and she studies with a Russian tutor very frequently, but she’s terrible, awful, no good very bad. How do we know how bad she is? Because regardless of what is happening in the play, she is dancing. When she walks to the kitchen to make her candies that she sells, she freaking leaps. Or jetes, I don’t know I only took ballet when I was 3. When she is listening to someone talking in the living room, she is practicing her (really difficult) jumps in one spot until someone stops her. When the fancy Kirby family comes to dinner, the elegant elonge’ position she takes on the floor by Mrs. Kirby will make you cry. Her ridiculousness, which extends to her facial expressions as well as her physicality, is the best part of the play, along with her husband Ed, played with matching ridiculousness by Will Brill, with his subtle but hysterical faces constantly diverting your attention from the main action to him.
Alice, the daughter embarrassed by all of her family’s shenanigans, is well cast with Rose Byrne in her Broadway debut. I saw YAKANUT in previews, and in the front row I could see a tiny bit of nervousness that seemed like hyper-awareness of what she was supposed to be doing, but overall she was fantastic. Alice really loves Tony Kirby but does not have faith in either of the families’ ability to accept and be accepted. Tony is well played by Fran Kranz, which sounds like one of the phrases Kim Jong-Il would say a lot in “Team America” but he’s really an actor who was in Joss Whedon’s magical “Much Ado About Nothing” in 2012.
Tony tries to convince Alice that they’ll be fine, that the families will get along. Of course we see things go to total shit because the Sycamores are crazy (but super fun) and the Kirbys are kind of awful and stodgy and seem like they would yell at you to sit up straighter. We are treated to seriously insane scenes when the two families do try to socialize. They actually end up in jail, naturally being arrested while the basement of fireworks is going off accidentally. It’s the kind of thing where you are sitting with your eyes bugging out not believing what is happening in front of you but also just totally loving the crap out of it.
Oh, why are they arrested? Well, Essie’s doofus of a husband fancies himself a typesetter or something, and he prints phrases that he likes on the wrappers of Essie’s candy that he delivers to customers. Turns out he likes phrases that sound like terrorist and communist propaganda so the FBI has been following the family. It doesn’t help that Grandpa Earl Jones hasn’t paid income tax in more than 20 years. Why not? Because he doesn’t trust that the government would use it well. I freaking love Grandpa. And agree. Grandpa is the voice of wisdom and gets some wonderful monologues about money and greed and of course says the title of the show in one of these so everyone in the audience drinks.
There is some surreal randomness even above the randomness of all the family members’ antics. Elizabeth Ashley appears only in Act 3 to play a former Russian royal who now works as a waitress and wants to cook the family dinner. I was like okay monster man. Very unnecessary but hey, you get to see Elizabeth Ashley onstage. Also Johanna Day plays an actress reading one of Penny’s scripts (I guess someone did read them) but she is a drunk and passes out. It’s also totally unnecessary but it’s worth it because she is still super drunk during the FBI raid, adding to that scene’s unbeatable amount of outrageousness.
YAKSCOK has a happy ending, of course, because it’s a comedy even though there are lots of snakes onstage. You kind of want to tell Alice to calm down as I’m pretty sure every single family has some Sycamore qualities, but you get why she’s anxious. Fortunately, she realizes she’s lucky to have such a loving family, despite its eccentricities. The pretty people get married and Essie keeps dancing and it’s all just a pile of smiles. The end.
ANYWAY. YCTWITHYOU tells the story of the jubilantly wacky Sycamore family, with its wacky playwright of a mother, its wacky firework maker of a father, its wacky wannabe prima ballerina of a daughter, her wacky husband, and the not-at-all-wacky-or-hey-maybe-she-actually-is-like-her-family other daughter who just wants to marry up, plus all the surrounding characters, including the grandfather played by James Earl Jones, who I think is written wacky but JEJ can never play wacky so he still kind of seemed regal and wise even though he was probably talking crazy. The story concerns the straight-laced office-secretary (working girl!) daughter Alice, who wants to marry her boss’s son Tony Kirby but is beyond fearful and anxious about their wildly different families – and as we see in all their insane glory, rightly so.
Obviously, the casting is vital in YTAYKAT, because the family’s wackiness can either work and make you fall in love with all of them, or it can annoy the piss out of you. Luckily, here, the producers got everything right. This hilarious band of fun crazies is led by Penny, the matriarch, played by the consistent and consistently hilarious Kristine Nielson (who was deservedly nominated for a 2013 Tony for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” in a super competitive year). Penny writes various sorts of plays that never are produced or really even read, and we learn later that she fell into this ‘profession’ when a typewriter was mistakenly delivered to her house. Penny’s husband Paul makes fireworks and crackers and smoke and all sorts of things that blow up in the basement at really inopportune times. Paul is played by Mark Linn-Baker, or the non-Balki lead from “Perfect Strangers”, one of my childhood mainstays. I didn’t know that Mark was in this show, and when I moved to an empty seat in the front row (from my last row of the top balcony seat, thank you very much) I kind of gasped when I realized who it was! So fun. Anyway, yeah so he sets stuff on fire in their house, with the help of his friend Mr. De Pinna, who models for a painting in Roman garb at one point and looks exactly like Christoph Waltz in it.
The best part of this production is the characterization of the daughter Essie, played by freaking thief Annaleigh Ashford, who steals every single thing she’s in. Essie yearns to be a top ballerina, and she studies with a Russian tutor very frequently, but she’s terrible, awful, no good very bad. How do we know how bad she is? Because regardless of what is happening in the play, she is dancing. When she walks to the kitchen to make her candies that she sells, she freaking leaps. Or jetes, I don’t know I only took ballet when I was 3. When she is listening to someone talking in the living room, she is practicing her (really difficult) jumps in one spot until someone stops her. When the fancy Kirby family comes to dinner, the elegant elonge’ position she takes on the floor by Mrs. Kirby will make you cry. Her ridiculousness, which extends to her facial expressions as well as her physicality, is the best part of the play, along with her husband Ed, played with matching ridiculousness by Will Brill, with his subtle but hysterical faces constantly diverting your attention from the main action to him.
Alice, the daughter embarrassed by all of her family’s shenanigans, is well cast with Rose Byrne in her Broadway debut. I saw YAKANUT in previews, and in the front row I could see a tiny bit of nervousness that seemed like hyper-awareness of what she was supposed to be doing, but overall she was fantastic. Alice really loves Tony Kirby but does not have faith in either of the families’ ability to accept and be accepted. Tony is well played by Fran Kranz, which sounds like one of the phrases Kim Jong-Il would say a lot in “Team America” but he’s really an actor who was in Joss Whedon’s magical “Much Ado About Nothing” in 2012.
Tony tries to convince Alice that they’ll be fine, that the families will get along. Of course we see things go to total shit because the Sycamores are crazy (but super fun) and the Kirbys are kind of awful and stodgy and seem like they would yell at you to sit up straighter. We are treated to seriously insane scenes when the two families do try to socialize. They actually end up in jail, naturally being arrested while the basement of fireworks is going off accidentally. It’s the kind of thing where you are sitting with your eyes bugging out not believing what is happening in front of you but also just totally loving the crap out of it.
Oh, why are they arrested? Well, Essie’s doofus of a husband fancies himself a typesetter or something, and he prints phrases that he likes on the wrappers of Essie’s candy that he delivers to customers. Turns out he likes phrases that sound like terrorist and communist propaganda so the FBI has been following the family. It doesn’t help that Grandpa Earl Jones hasn’t paid income tax in more than 20 years. Why not? Because he doesn’t trust that the government would use it well. I freaking love Grandpa. And agree. Grandpa is the voice of wisdom and gets some wonderful monologues about money and greed and of course says the title of the show in one of these so everyone in the audience drinks.
There is some surreal randomness even above the randomness of all the family members’ antics. Elizabeth Ashley appears only in Act 3 to play a former Russian royal who now works as a waitress and wants to cook the family dinner. I was like okay monster man. Very unnecessary but hey, you get to see Elizabeth Ashley onstage. Also Johanna Day plays an actress reading one of Penny’s scripts (I guess someone did read them) but she is a drunk and passes out. It’s also totally unnecessary but it’s worth it because she is still super drunk during the FBI raid, adding to that scene’s unbeatable amount of outrageousness.
YAKSCOK has a happy ending, of course, because it’s a comedy even though there are lots of snakes onstage. You kind of want to tell Alice to calm down as I’m pretty sure every single family has some Sycamore qualities, but you get why she’s anxious. Fortunately, she realizes she’s lucky to have such a loving family, despite its eccentricities. The pretty people get married and Essie keeps dancing and it’s all just a pile of smiles. The end.
