The View Upstairs at the Soho: Heartfelt Yet Uneven Tribute with Potential

It’s Theatre Tuesday! Today’s show is Equus, playing at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London until Saturday. 

​Equus, often referred to as the play about horse-blinding, is (obviously) not one that I ever actively wanted to see, not even when it starred Daniel Radcliffe in the role that famously gets nekkid (in fact, as much as I love Danny Rads I do not want to see baby boy HP naked). Not only is there the animal cruelty that kicks off the action, there’s also insinuation (at the very least) of bestiality and some bizarre af conversations about religion and worship. Not to mention gutting children as part of ritual sacrifice! Suffice it to say, I was ready to avoid another production of this intense show. But then I noticed all those dastardly other critics raving about how amazing this production is, and how it’s the best production of this enduring work that you will probably ever see in your lifetime. So I had to see the big forking thing! And you know what? It is disturbing, it is unsettling, it is alarming, and it is quite possibly the best production of Equus you will ever see in your lifetime.

I know, that’s some serious praise for a play that could be called by the (hilarious) nickname for the 2018 Best Picture winner if you replace ‘horse’ for ‘fish’ (and ‘play’ for ‘movie’ obviously). Despite the outrageousness of the topics raised, all the shocking, provocative bits fit together with all the deep psychological questions like puzzle pieces that together fascinate by asking what is normal and who gets to decide. Equus, written by Peter Shaffer, is such a weird, intense show, but with impeccable direction by Ned Bennett and stellar, incredibly physical performances, it feels significant and vital in its scrutiny of what causes psychological issues and whether they are indeed abnormal. Although it got a bit close for my taste at almost excusing the actions depicted, the play effectively forced a deeper look at what constitutes wrong vs. right, normal vs. abnormal, and evil vs. sickness.

Equus concerns the aftermath of a horrific event: when teenager Alan Strang blinds six horses at a stables in his English countryside town. I know, if you are not a maniac, you’re like what a forking asshole, send that kid into a hole and seal it shut! But instead of being imprisoned, he is sent to an inpatient psychiatric facility under the treatment of Dr. Martin Dysart, because some people think that sending every troubled person to prison to rot and waste resources and never have the chance to get needed treatment or other kinds of help might not be the smartest thing to do as an overused default! I know!

As the troubled teen Alan, the actor Ethan Kai is riveting. Kai possesses that magic presence, I don’t know if it’s his offset eyes or his wild curls (curlygirl method?), but he demands your attention regardless of whether he’s speaking. This is some perfect casting. He’s terrifying in his intensity and you hate him for his evil actions but you also want to figure out why and how he got so broken. I’m not gonna go so far as to say you root for him, but you start to kind of care. As does his doctor, played by Zubin Varla (who we last saw as the father in Fun Home), who so strongly feels a connection to this kid that he begins to question why he is the one considered normal while Alan is the troubled one. Why, Dysart asks us, is a guy who has wasted his life doing the same routine, never feeling anything but what comes from the mundane acts of everyday life, the one considered normal, correct, someone who has succeeded, when he himself feels like a failure for that very monotony. Although Kai has the more obviously difficult, dynamic role, Varla has an equally challenging task with Dysart, who is even-keeled but having revelations that threaten his natural state. Varla sometimes veered into comedic faces and voices to handle this character’s changing thoughts, which didn’t jive with me, but that’s a tiny quibble.

What brought this production to a higher level of theatre was the direction. Ned Bennett’s vision focused on an empty, stark stage, literally no set pieces to start except a mug for ashes (there was too much onstage cigarette smoking, btw; I’m over this as a way to develop a character). As the show unfolded, an entire effective world was built with lighting, physical movement, and creative set work. The expert use of lighting, the impressive backstage mechanics sending whatever was needed through the flowing curtains on each side, and the use of minimal but effective set pieces (like the sand castles that were shoved out, wow) all created an unbelievable sense of world cohesion and beyond creative stage magicians. More than anything, the magic on that stage came from the actors’ movement. Shelly Maxwell’s movement direction helped the actors behave scarily like horses, especially the standout Ira Mandela Siobhan as the most beloved horse Nugget. He begins the show slowly morphing and moving exactly like a horse, which is the moment when I thought ‘oh this shit’s gonna be SPELLBINDING.’ And it was, especially when he was onstage. He must be a dancer of some sort. Man those shoulder blades can TURN. When he and the other main horse dude (Keith Gilmore), as nurses, picked up Alan while he was curled in a ball like he was an immovable object, I almost gasped. That was some amazing shit! And the two of them, whenever it was their turn to be a horse (sometimes with the other as rider, I can’t even fathom how strong they are), were so convincing and committed, I would put them up against the War Horse puppet any day.

Even though this is exactly the sort of play that gives me endless agita, Equus is one of the rare masterworks that makes the agita worthwhile and essential and important, in no small part because of how it is directed here. I have never been so struck by how flawless, innovative, imaginative direction can so transform a show. Equus is a psychological thriller but not in the usual sense – instead of a murderer on the loose or something like a typical thriller, it’s literally a thriller about psychology, about how a person can get so forked up, whether it’s because of his parents, because of religion, because of nature, or a mixture of all these possibilities. Sure the more theoretical discussions about what can be worshipped and how (hint: probably not horses, probably not with bestiality) are off the forking rails if you take a step back, but when you are immersed in the world of the show, they can convince you that all of these thoughts and ideas can be profound and not just troubling.


INFORMATION
Equus is playing at the Theatre Royal Stratford East until Saturday, March 23.
Theatre Royal Stratford East is outside the Westfield mall area of Stratford in East London. You know, the region that is always hella crowded with yoots hanging at the mall. YOOTS. It’s also one of the worst section in London for homelessness, which boggles my mind because I don’t understand how a developed country can allow its citizens to be homeless and just not do shit about it. It’s like government officials were the ones brutally blinded by an unstable teenager! 

Musical theatre composers always say the test for what songs make the final score is rigorous and specific: They have to serve the story. The story comes first and the music needs to help tell it, whether by driving plot or developing characters. If the best song you’ve ever written doesn’t serve a purpose in the story, or just doesn’t fit the rest of the show, it needs to be cut. (That’s how we got the Hamilton Mixtape.) (Also how we got the incredible song “Come Down From That Tree” which we only know from Audra McDonald’s own recording of it because they wisely cut it from Once on this Island because it didn’t fit, even though it is a Best Song Ever.) I feel like most new musicals forget this test. Despite having so many productions in so many cities over the past four years, the London production of Amelie is full, packed, of songs that don’t pass the test. And the ones that do serve a purpose don’t fit the rest of the show, as the inconsistent tone only becomes more and more chaotic as the night goes on. It’s overall a poorly constructed show (funny since the actual physical construction/set design is the strongest part) with a confused purpose.

I don’t remember much about Amelie the movie, except that of course it was beyond whimsical and is probably responsible for the onslaught of manic-pixie-dreamgirls in the culture, or at least pale brunettes whose main personality trait is ‘quirky’. (PSA: Quirky/weird is not a personality.) A lot of my criticism of the ridiculous, messy story is likely taken straight from the movie. You might argue then that my problem is with the movie writers, not the creative team of the musical. And to that I’d say, what is this, Pretty Woman? Your job in adapting a film for the stage is not to copy and paste, failing to fix what needs to be fixed in order to work onstage. Whether this jumbled story worked in the film is completely irrelevant for stage purposes. They may have nailed the proper whimsical, eccentric tone in the movie, but trying the same things to achieve the same things in a different medium is bonkers and has resulted in an almost incoherent musical, with no discernible tone, objective, meaning, or intention.

With music by Daniel Messe (who wrote the music for the movie…and that score is excellent…so like…ah) and Nathan Tysen, and a book by Craig Lucas (who wrote one of my faves The Light in the Piazza which is also about a young girl who is, shall we say, not entirely there (so we were like…is that the only character he likes to write about because that’s problematic)), Amelie tells of a young French girl who lives through her imagination after a childhood of seclusion because her parents forking sucked. (Her mom gets killed by a man who jumps off Notre Dame, but he ALSO FIRST SHOOTS HIMSELF? Why? To make sure? What an asshole.) She decides to do a nice thing that makes someone else happy, so then she decides to do more nice things for other people and try to break out of her shell and maybe one day live in the real world. It sounds adorable! Except the things she does FORKING SUCK. Amelie the character is GODDAMN ASSHOLE. Is she supposed to be adorable? Is the whimsy supposed to make up for her assholiness? To quote Chidi-Janet: It does not. Makes it way worse.

The good deeds Amelie does include: finding a box under her floorboards and deciding to find its owner, which she does remarkably easily. To mark this occasion and her decision to do more good things, she…no, she doesn’t sing a song, her neighbor does, about being the old French man version of Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr Glass character.

Then, in the café where she works, there’s a really terrifying man stalking one of her coworkers because they went on a date a year ago. Instead of calling the police and filing for a restraining order, and maybe alerting the French version of the FBI that this is for sure a future incel/supremacist who is going to murder women, Amelie…sets him up with her other friend. For this there is no excuse.

Then there’s the mean old grocer who is mean to the boy who works for him because he…loves figs? This kid gets a little song about figs. Amelie doesn’t get a solo in the entirety of Act I. In Act II, she feeds the old man fig tart and it somehow makes him nice. I don’t know.

At some point, she bumps into a man named Nino, who spends his time going through public photo booths, like the kind where you get a strip of 4 photos in black and white. He collects the discarded ones; it’s his art. It’s love at first sight and Amelie sings about how striking this unexpected feeling is…no, Nino sings a song about the photo booth light. One day he loses his collection of photos, and Amelie finds it. Instead of returning it to him, she plays infuriating games with him and keeps his prized possession from him for literally weeks, but I guess he finds that adorable. I was fuming. Give people their shit back. One of the games she plays includes…going to the sex shop where he works, disguising herself as a nun, and then running away scared when she realizes he’s going to come out and see her?? WHAT DID SHE THINK WAS GOING TO HAPPEN? What is this white nonsense.

Amid all of this is a weird and tacky obsession with the death of Princess Diana. It’s in poor taste. I get that that’s a big thing in the movie but man alive it felt gross. Amelie imagines a big mega funeral for herself, with Elton John performing…and Act I ends with a HUGE rocking Elton John number that again, did not fit the show AT ALL.

I’m going to repeat that Elton John gets a big Act I number but in a musical named after her, Amelie does not have a solo in the entirety of the first act (except for a mini reprise). She doesn’t even seem like the main character at any point. The tone of the show is inconsistent and even contradictory, just all over the place, with big ridiculous silly numbers performed by giant garden gnomes and Elton Johns along with offbeat, artsy introspective songs. I guess with the contrast of styles they wanted to capture some whimsy? But it just feels like nonsense. There’s no magic. There’s one or two great songs in Act II, one with Amelie at the piano, that shows how good this show could have been with more work, and more editing. Or any editing.

Fortunately, along with the wonderful set design, the cast is doing a great job trying to keep this material afloat. Audrey Brisson’s Amelie looks exactly right and gives a great performance. The show takes a memo from the John Doyle playbook and has the actors doubling as the orchestra, which is impressive, and everyone is pretty uniformly good to great. With the solid cast and design, the production is definitely decent, but unlike the Guardian I can’t get past the material.

INFORMATION

Amelie is playing at The Other Palace in London until February 1.

This theatre has one of those horrible no-center-aisle situations so be sure to book seats on or near the aisles if you want to avoid being the last person out. Bathrooms are outside in the bar area but ALSO down in the secrets bowels of the building, accessed via a door directly at the bottom of the stage on the house left side. It took me several visits to learn about these secret and much better bathrooms down in the hallways between the main house and the studio that no one would usually get to explore. So now I like to sit on the house left/stage right aisle.

There is a lot of unnecessary smoking, and whatever herbal cigarettes they are using almost made me pass out. I get that ‘it’s Paris’, but you’ve shown that in myriad other ways. I dare anyone involved in theatre to defend well the use of cigarettes in a show. It’s never really necessary and instead is a health hazard to all and I don’t understand how it’s legal.

There’s also a super loud gunshot that shocked the shirt out of me. There was a small sign with all the trigger warnings on the door to the theatre but the ticket takers were blocking it when we entered, so, great work.

The first act ended at 20:43 and the show ended at 22:15. I felt every minute of it.