The Haystack at the Hampstead Theatre: What Modern Theatre Wants to Beby Randi / February 11, 2020How fun does it sound to see two of Puccini’s best operas performed in the same night? Okay it sounds long. But this new production of Opera Undone does just that – generally speaking. This new joint ticket of Tosca and La Boheme gives each classic work an hour max, sharing the gist and the highlights, and while that’s not the ideal way to enjoy classic opera, it is a whole lot of fun.
Perfect for short attention spans and newcomers to opera, this show was also hugely enjoyable for someone like me, who wrote a thesis on La Boheme and knows almost every word. Not that the words mattered here: both reimagined and reformed operas are performed in English, and especially in one case lots of liberties are taken with the ‘translation.’ Purists and those with sticks up their butts about opera might not appreciate it, but it’s a joy to see opera used in a flexible, fun way.
Tosca is performed first, so you know the warnings about loud gun shots are coming in this half, unless they seriously rewrote La Boheme (which they did but not in a murdery way). I’ve seen a traditional production of Tosca before but I don’t know it well enough to notice how much the story was changed here, if it was, aside from setting the scene during like a mob boss’s reign? I think? It was definitely not during Napoleon’s time, I know that much. Tosca is about an artist named Mario, who is keeping quiet the hiding place of his political prisoner friend Angelotti, and Mario’s girlfriend Tosca, a singer and a typical nagging annoying WOMAN that men in history have written thinking they’re being funny. Obviously, this means Tosca gets jealous easily too, because that’s how the women do. When she sees Mario’s latest painting, of a woman, she’s all WHO’S THAT WHY IS SHE SO PRETTY and you’re like girl, it’s a painting. I mean he’s an Italian man living in Rome you probably have realer problems to worry about. But the evil Scarpia, the chief of police, goads her to be jealous of the painting so you know he’s the bad guy straight away. He wants to bang Tosca and kill Mario, since he’s pretty sure the latter knows where Angelotti is hiding (it’s true though), so he has Mario arrested. Tosca goes to Scarpia to beg for Mario’s life and some shit goes down from there.
In this well-reduced version, the action begins with Mario painting, and oh my god, since there’s really no set (it’s in the tiny Studio 2 at Trafalgar Studios which is a tiny dark room) and this is in the round, he puts a painting’s frame around the neck of an AUDIENCE MEMBER. This chosen audience member is then pretty involved in the action for the next 20 minutes or so as Mario and Tosca and Scarpia examine and discuss the painting. IF YOU DO NOT WANT THIS TO BE YOU, do not sit in the front rows and be a woman. Our participant didn’t seem to mind but my god my face would have burnt off from mortification-induced redness.
My Tosca this evening (it’s a rotating cast like a proper opera does), Honey Rouhani, was superb, so it’s a shame she didn’t have as much as usual to do. It seemed like Scarpia had an aria too many, and while strong, his voice began to feel grating. Maybe because he’s the bad guy and I was itching for him to get all murdered. Okay so Mario gets arrested, and Tosca goes to Scarpia and he’s like ‘I’ll let him go if we do the no-pants dance’ and Tosca’s all ughhh really ugh I mean I guess okay I gotta save Mario. Scarpia shows her a gun that he says has blanks in it, so she will have to pretend to shoot Mario and he will have to pretend to die, and then the guards will let her escape (with the body?? mmkay). I mean OBVIOUSLY YOU SHOULD TEST THE GUN FIRST, TOSCA, like shoot someone in the foot or something. Or the hand so you can run if it’s real? Shit what’s the best thing to shoot to test a gun? I mean Scarpia clearly! But she doesn’t. Once Scarpia tells her his plan for saving Mario, he then is all ‘okay it’s party time’ and she pretends to be letting him enter the bone zone but then she STABS HIM IN THE HEAD and it’s the MOST SATISFYING murder maybe of all time.
After killing a guy nbd she then goes to save Mario and tells him the plan of ‘blanks in the gun’ and OBVIOUSLY that was a lie and she kills him and then realizes it and kills herself. Yeah so Tosca is a full on murder-sui sitch. I love a good murder-sui but I’ve never seen one happen literally at my feet before – Studio 2 is a tiny little living room of a theatre and it was eek I was like ‘call the cops!’ ‘no not the regular cops!’ Anyway I enjoyed this condensed version a whole lot. There’s a lot of filler in the standard version that gets boring so I’m all in for this one.
It helps that Tosca isn’t one of my most beloved things like La Boheme is. I was nervous that they’d cut my favorite parts, which was undeniable and unavoidable because the whole thing is my favorite part. Luckily, they decided to change the story so much that it was like a whole different work, making me feel much less precious about it but still enjoying all the familiar melodies. I loved being able to compare this version to the original and noticing what clever little changes they made to allude to the original (not surprising considering how much work I’ve done comparing it to Rent). So La Boheme is about two friends, Rodolfo and Marcello, who are both poor artists. Rodolfo falls in love with Mimi, a poor young lady who has TB and is dying. Marcello has a complicated relationship with his ex-girlfriend Musetta. Just think Rent and you get the story.
Here, it was rewritten to be present day London, and Rod hears the famous knock on his door not from a girl who needs a light for her candle but from a guy who is answering Rod’s GRINDR invitation! I mean, it’s forking hilarious. The lyrics had the audience in stitches. It’s not all funny because this guy, who calls himself Mimi to keep it simple, is a drug addict whose eventual demise is from that addiction, but man do they cram in the humor. My favorite little quirk was having Marcello and Musetta (now Melissa because nobody modern is named Musetta, which is a shame, it just means little baby muse) struggle with polyamory. That’s so good. Again, Rouhani’s Melissa was the standout (luckily they included Musetta’s Waltz in this short version). The rewrites made it a lot of fun, and it was a clever modernization. Rewritten for a tenor, Mimi’s music doesn’t scratch the full itch of familiarity you (I) expect from her parts, so I was looking forward to listening to my recordings to hear the Rodolfo-Mimi sections in all their soprano-having glory. But even so, it’s a fun, cheeky version that even the old men who didn’t know what they were getting into with this show seemed to fully enjoy. I definitely recommend Opera Undone both for newbies and opera aficionados.
INFORMATION
Each act/opera is one hour and there’s a 15-minute interval. With a 19:45 (NB!) curtain, Act 1 ended at 20:48. The show ended at 22:00 EXACTLY which deserves a medal. Studio 2 is tiny and on the same floor as the Trafalgar Studios bar, which means the ladies room is very convenient.
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An Incredible Oooooklahoma! Like You’ve Never Seen Before
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the 2019 Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, which saddest of the sads will close this Sunday, January 19, because of injustice/small theatres/probably Scott Rudin.
You don’t really get many musical theatre fans putting Oklahoma! in their lists of all-time favorite shows. Sure it’s Rodgers & Hammerstein and it’s a classic, but it’s also old-fashioned and kind of meh, a story about farmers loving their corn and their hoedowns and going a-flirtin’ and a-courtin’ and a-bakin’ and all. Or is it? People tend to forget that Oklahoma features legitimate darkness, maybe because it’s usually still treated with a shiny happy gloss while you sing about the surrey with the fringe on top and the good ol’ boys of America. But the current Broadway revival of Oklahoma from director Daniel Fish breaks down the show to its dark, disturbing core, in a truly soul-rattling production that feels more poignant and relevant to modern America than anything written this year.
With the minimalist set design and style (and a lot of guns) and nothing to distract you, this revival of Oklahoma lets everything hang out for you to see in its starkest, realest form. The lines and the lyrics are the same, but how Fish presents it and how the perfect cast performs it manages to turn the show from something cheery and cheesy into something incredibly complex and dark, and even knowing the story and the lyrics, I was concentrating too hard to remember to breathe at times.
The love story at the center is more complicated than ever. The cheerful and fun-loving Curly, as played by the superb Damon Daunno, has an air of unpredictability hidden in his good-natured cheeriness, reflected also in his wandering voice, which can easily go from folksy and relaxed to as strong and moving as anything you hear on Broadway. When he opens the show with “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”, my first thought was that I wanted to wake up every day to this rendition, of a song I usually skip! His Curly is still playful, but he’s so clearly the popular kid, a lad in every sense, fun-loving and ‘nice’ but hiding an edge, untrustworthy at a party. The object of his affection, Laurey, is the great Rebecca Naomi Jones, whose flirting and joking around with Curly seems to be based in legitimate confusion about what she actually wants. Her relationship with Jud, the villain who is obsessed with her, is also much more complicated: it doesn’t seem as fully unrequited as it usually is said to be. It’s unclear whether she’s actually attracted to Jud too or whether she’s just terrified into being nice to him, or both, but either way it’s now fascinating instead of casually explained by his wickedness.
Jud, played by Patrick Vaill, is the part of this revival that haunts me. His performance is the toned down yet even more convincing version of Joaquin’s Joker origin story. Everything that makes Jud Fry the villain is done in a way that makes you simultaneously pity him, understand him, and fear him, and he could easily be any mediocre white guy yelling at the internet from his basement while living smaller than he wants to. The part of the show that I usually hate, “Poor Jud is Dead”, was made riveting and tense, as a live video camera projects just Jud’s face in night-vision as he listens to Curly pleasantly torment him. This scene was the most incredible Ivo Van Hove directing I’ve ever seen, much better than when Ivo tries it. Vaill’s subtle emotional reactions – all in his eyes – during this scene were stunning, and made everything about his story so upsetting and so relevant. The original ending, with Jud threatening the lives of Curly and Laurie and ending up, um, “falling on his knife”, now leaves nothing to the imagination about the chain of events but everything up for discussion regarding what’s right and wrong about it.
Laurey’s Aunt Eller, usually somewhat comic, is in Mary Testa’s hands funny but formidable, and her performance after the much-changed climax was as menacing as anything. The real comic relief comes from Ali Stroker’s Ado Annie, James Davis’s Will Parker, and Will Brill’s Ali Hakim, all wonderful, but it’s Ali Stroker who steals the show every time she’s onstage and more than earns last year’s Tony Award. Comparing her version of “I Cain’t Say No” to the movie version, it’s like two completely different songs. She’s worth the Broadway prices alone to see her own that stage.
Every second of this production is exquisite, every beat, every choice felt essential – except the Dream Ballet. I really wanted to like it since I’ve heard so many people have the same review, but I didn’t think it worked at all. It’s a good idea to modernize it as a classic ballet would have felt out of place in this raw production, but I didn’t feel it accomplished anything. The original Dream Ballet is famous for showing that dance can actually further the plot in musical theatre and help tell the story rather than simply be accompaniment, but I didn’t find that to be the case here. Maybe because it didn’t seem like it was actually ‘dancing’, it was like ‘purposeful walking around’.
But aside from that, this revival is perfection. They’ve managed to make something so familiar into something so new, significant, and so chilling. Oklahoma! might not be on my list of favorite shows, but this particular production is one of the most genius things I’ve ever seen.
INFORMATION
Oklahoma! ends its run at the Circle in the Square in NYC on Sunday, January 19.
There’s not a bad seat in the house (it’s in the round, with the back wall closed off). The CITS toilet situation is annoying – downstairs for everyone. They need a new water filling system; the elementary school style water fountain would require you to Andy Dwyer it to actually get anything out of it.
VEGAN ALERT: they serve vegan chili at intermission!!! I do not think the cornbread is vegan but CHILI, MY LITTLE CHILI BABIES! YOU PUT THE PEEPS IN THE CHILI POT AND EAT THEM BOTH UP YOU PUT THE PEEPS IN THE CHILI POT AND ADD THE M&MS! COME ON! DIP YOU PAWS IN MY CHILI! SCOOP YOUR LITTLE MITTENS RIGHT IN THE STEW!
“Venus in Fur” on the West End: It’s Sexual and Violent (Like Game of Thrones!)
Wooot it’s Theatre Thursday y’all! Today’s review is of the new production of “Venus in Fur” in the West End, currently playing at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until December 9.
One of the Broadway shows I most regretted missing was the play “Venus in Fur”, for which the joyous and adorable Nina Arianda won a Tony in 2012 for being the literal opposite of joyous and adorable. David Ives’s play was generally referred to as a dark and twisted psychosexual…comedy? Drama? It is both, and it is neither. And that’s really all I knew about it until I finally saw it last weekend, in the form of the new West End production starring Natalie Dormer (Game of Thrones, Tudors, you all love her) and David Oakes (whom I last saw in Shakespeare in Love, the West End play, as Marlowe). It’s not the kind of show you enjoy while it’s happening, but the kind where you can’t stop trying to figure it out after the fact, which could be the more interesting option.
I love going in to shows (and movies) cold, which is harder and harder to do nowadays with every kind of spoiler and (illegal don’t do it) videos on the internet (and with my willpower to avoid such things being nonexistent). But going in to “Venus in Fur”, all I knew was the above – that it was sexual and violent. Husband and I joked about this literally every time we mentioned the play in the run up to it, because it’s one of the funniest parts of one of our favorite movies. Seriously every conversation: “What do we have next weekend?” “Venus in Fur. It’s sexual and violent.” Or “What time is the show tonight?” “7:30. It’s sexual and violent.”
I’m glad I didn’t know much more, because the twists and turns that the play takes you through are what it’s all about. They weren’t kidding about it being psychosexual – every word of it is carefully calculated to inform the psychology of dominance on display, with the roles of the powerful and weak, the dominant and the subordinate, the master and the slave, changing so often and so subtly and so swiftly that you could miss it if you aren’t fully attentive. The power dynamic between the two characters, the actress Vanda and the playwright Thomas Novachek, begins with the normal distance expected when an unaccomplished actress auditions for a role (the whole play is the one scene, Vanda’s arrival and audition). But that power differential shortens and shortens until the two have switched sides of the line, and lines of all sorts get crossed over and over as the audition gets going.
It begins in a New York loft on a stormy night, and there are claps of thunder and bolts of lightning. I thought that was a little unnecessary in the beginning but it totally works to accompany the f-ed up drama that gets going (and especially the twist ending). Thomas (Oakes), the playwright, is on the phone with his significant other, bemoaning (in a preeeetty okay American accent but you could tell it was forced and it made his voice tenor kind of annoying) that none of the actresses who auditioned for his new play were right. Enter Vanda (Dormer), carrying a broken wet umbrella and a HUGE duffel bag crammed full of who knows what and apologizing in a (very very terrible) New York accent for how late she is for her audition and that she was stuck on the subway and a guy was trying to harass her and she just talked and talked until Thomas was like, I don’t see your name, so she went on talking and talking complaining about her shitty agent and her shitty luck until he was like FINE audition just so you stop talking FFS! But the accent and the drawl and the nonstop talking continued as she offhandedly mentioned how she skimmed through the play on the subway and how it’s ‘totally S&M porn’. Thomas, the playwright, is aghast at such a statement, saying that the book it’s based on was high literature. Vanda points out that the book was written by the guy whose name is the root of ‘sado-masochism’ so it seems like she won that one. Between her horrendous accent and her sloppy attire and her nonstop unsophisticated talking, it’s clear that Thomas will never give her a chance to be in his play and that she probably is terrible anyway. She takes off her coat and under her clothes she is wearing a full leather and chain dominatrix outfit, which she explains because of the whole play-being-s&m-porn thing. He’s horrified and explains how the play takes place in like 18th century Germany or something like that between semi-aristocrats. Vanda excitedly rummages through her giant duffel and finds a cream-colored high-necked and full-skirted dress right out of the appropriate era and asks him to help her put it on.
Then she is finally about to read, and Thomas is obviously annoyed and eager to let her read a few lines then send her away. Vanda says she’ll try more of a continental accent, to which Thomas kind of scoffs, imagining it will be even worse than her regular voice. But then Dormer recites the lines in her regular perfect fancy English accent and it wouldn’t have been a surprise if Thomas dropped dead of shock. He, like the audience, was now riveted by this goddess who just a minute ago was this offensive slob. Throughout the whole first section, I was thinking ‘ohhh my god I can’t wait to complain about how they should have just had this based in London so these actors could speak in their regular accents and focus on the acting instead of these over-the-top New York fakings!’ Silly me, I had no idea how important the switching between the accents would be. And that kept repeating itself throughout this show – everything I questioned, every aspect I nitpicked, would prove to be a deliberate decision made to enhance the drama.
Throughout Vanda’s line reading, she would swiftly move in and out of her English to New York accents when she had commentary to make on the script. It was hysterical; she’d say something posh in her English voice and sit all poised and then without a beat say in the grating NYC voice ‘this is some bullshit right here Thomas’ or something like that. She kept breaking to mention how sexist this was and how a woman wouldn’t really act like that and whether this reflected Thomas’s own views and desires. As it progressed, it became clear that she had all of Vanda’s lines memorized. “I thought you said you skimmed through it once on the subway?” Thomas asked. Then Vanda’s commentary started to reference the original book the play was based on and parts of Greek & Roman mythology that inform the themes in that book. Thomas’s amazement and curiosity is echoed in the audience – how does she all of a sudden know everything about this topic and the literature behind it? Who is this person? And the answer to that question gets more and more unclear the more Vanda talks about herself and the more she develops her audition. Deeper into the play, Vanda seems to know an awful lot about Thomas and his personal life, and his significant other. But we have no idea whether any of the reasons she provides are true. And while we wonder along with Thomas about who this person is and how crazy or terrifying or dangerous she might prove to be, Vanda distracts everyone from that question by toying with Thomas with his own written words and then with her own, as they try improvising as the play’s characters way too successfully.
One of the most striking aspects of seeing this show at this present moment was how relevant it was to the stories in the news about Harvey Weinstein and other men in power taking advantage of women in subordinate roles. With all the discussion about the power dynamic between men running things and actresses especially, and all the awareness (and dumb jokes) about the ‘casting couch’, this play’s exploration of these issues felt extra timely. Thomas himself is in charge at first, displaying dominance over the uncouth (can anything be just couth) young actress who’s almost begging him for an audition. Then, Thomas’s characters in the play-within-the play, Keshemski and Vanda, display the same male-dominated relationship at times, especially at the end of their story. One of the questions is the extent to which Thomas’s characters reflect his own desires, and whether the resolution of his play is one that he approves, with a woman begging to be subordinated anew to the man she wants to call her master. It’s pretty misogynistic, and Vanda calls him out on that. Thomas refutes that it’s misogynistic since women do have power in the subordinate role, but despite his arguments seeming to have some truth as he tries to spin a psychological webs to defend himself, it’s pretty clear that he wrote what he knew, and he wrote what he wanted, and what he wanted looks an awful lot like misogyny.
The play is generally interesting and it holds your attention, but the last 15 or so minutes are really where it’s at. That’s when its drama and its revelations and the fear it instills are actually mesmerizing. The very end has a revelation that, like everything Vanda says, you don’t know if it’s true or not, but it sure seems like it could be despite the impossibility. It’s quite fascinating. And every success of this play relies on the actress playing Vanda, it was obvious. Natalie does a really impressive job, and while David kind of pales in comparison, his is a much less meaty role to work with. This is Vanda’s play. And though it’s a weird as ass play in general, the more I think about it the more I appreciate whatever the crap it was trying to do.
So do I regret still missing the Broadway production? I do, because while Dormer was great, the raves I heard about Arianda were unparalleled, calling it the best performance of that season and maybe beyond. I would have loved to have seen what she managed to accomplish with this crazy role in this crazy play. But I’m glad I saw this one, and while I still have no idea how to resolve the mysteries of the show in my head (not that I’m supposed to), I think it’s surely worth seeing. It’s awkward as ass watching it though so be warned and don’t go with…anyone. Well no don’t go alone that’s creeperish too (and I love going to the theatre alone but this would feel a little like you’re the man in a trench coat at an adult theatre). Go with someone you’d be comfortable watching “Eyes Wide Shut” with. Fun fact: an English teacher in high school made us watch parts of that. SUPER INAPPROPRIATE.
It begins in a New York loft on a stormy night, and there are claps of thunder and bolts of lightning. I thought that was a little unnecessary in the beginning but it totally works to accompany the f-ed up drama that gets going (and especially the twist ending). Thomas (Oakes), the playwright, is on the phone with his significant other, bemoaning (in a preeeetty okay American accent but you could tell it was forced and it made his voice tenor kind of annoying) that none of the actresses who auditioned for his new play were right. Enter Vanda (Dormer), carrying a broken wet umbrella and a HUGE duffel bag crammed full of who knows what and apologizing in a (very very terrible) New York accent for how late she is for her audition and that she was stuck on the subway and a guy was trying to harass her and she just talked and talked until Thomas was like, I don’t see your name, so she went on talking and talking complaining about her shitty agent and her shitty luck until he was like FINE audition just so you stop talking FFS! But the accent and the drawl and the nonstop talking continued as she offhandedly mentioned how she skimmed through the play on the subway and how it’s ‘totally S&M porn’. Thomas, the playwright, is aghast at such a statement, saying that the book it’s based on was high literature. Vanda points out that the book was written by the guy whose name is the root of ‘sado-masochism’ so it seems like she won that one. Between her horrendous accent and her sloppy attire and her nonstop unsophisticated talking, it’s clear that Thomas will never give her a chance to be in his play and that she probably is terrible anyway. She takes off her coat and under her clothes she is wearing a full leather and chain dominatrix outfit, which she explains because of the whole play-being-s&m-porn thing. He’s horrified and explains how the play takes place in like 18th century Germany or something like that between semi-aristocrats. Vanda excitedly rummages through her giant duffel and finds a cream-colored high-necked and full-skirted dress right out of the appropriate era and asks him to help her put it on.
Then she is finally about to read, and Thomas is obviously annoyed and eager to let her read a few lines then send her away. Vanda says she’ll try more of a continental accent, to which Thomas kind of scoffs, imagining it will be even worse than her regular voice. But then Dormer recites the lines in her regular perfect fancy English accent and it wouldn’t have been a surprise if Thomas dropped dead of shock. He, like the audience, was now riveted by this goddess who just a minute ago was this offensive slob. Throughout the whole first section, I was thinking ‘ohhh my god I can’t wait to complain about how they should have just had this based in London so these actors could speak in their regular accents and focus on the acting instead of these over-the-top New York fakings!’ Silly me, I had no idea how important the switching between the accents would be. And that kept repeating itself throughout this show – everything I questioned, every aspect I nitpicked, would prove to be a deliberate decision made to enhance the drama.
Throughout Vanda’s line reading, she would swiftly move in and out of her English to New York accents when she had commentary to make on the script. It was hysterical; she’d say something posh in her English voice and sit all poised and then without a beat say in the grating NYC voice ‘this is some bullshit right here Thomas’ or something like that. She kept breaking to mention how sexist this was and how a woman wouldn’t really act like that and whether this reflected Thomas’s own views and desires. As it progressed, it became clear that she had all of Vanda’s lines memorized. “I thought you said you skimmed through it once on the subway?” Thomas asked. Then Vanda’s commentary started to reference the original book the play was based on and parts of Greek & Roman mythology that inform the themes in that book. Thomas’s amazement and curiosity is echoed in the audience – how does she all of a sudden know everything about this topic and the literature behind it? Who is this person? And the answer to that question gets more and more unclear the more Vanda talks about herself and the more she develops her audition. Deeper into the play, Vanda seems to know an awful lot about Thomas and his personal life, and his significant other. But we have no idea whether any of the reasons she provides are true. And while we wonder along with Thomas about who this person is and how crazy or terrifying or dangerous she might prove to be, Vanda distracts everyone from that question by toying with Thomas with his own written words and then with her own, as they try improvising as the play’s characters way too successfully.
One of the most striking aspects of seeing this show at this present moment was how relevant it was to the stories in the news about Harvey Weinstein and other men in power taking advantage of women in subordinate roles. With all the discussion about the power dynamic between men running things and actresses especially, and all the awareness (and dumb jokes) about the ‘casting couch’, this play’s exploration of these issues felt extra timely. Thomas himself is in charge at first, displaying dominance over the uncouth (can anything be just couth) young actress who’s almost begging him for an audition. Then, Thomas’s characters in the play-within-the play, Keshemski and Vanda, display the same male-dominated relationship at times, especially at the end of their story. One of the questions is the extent to which Thomas’s characters reflect his own desires, and whether the resolution of his play is one that he approves, with a woman begging to be subordinated anew to the man she wants to call her master. It’s pretty misogynistic, and Vanda calls him out on that. Thomas refutes that it’s misogynistic since women do have power in the subordinate role, but despite his arguments seeming to have some truth as he tries to spin a psychological webs to defend himself, it’s pretty clear that he wrote what he knew, and he wrote what he wanted, and what he wanted looks an awful lot like misogyny.
The play is generally interesting and it holds your attention, but the last 15 or so minutes are really where it’s at. That’s when its drama and its revelations and the fear it instills are actually mesmerizing. The very end has a revelation that, like everything Vanda says, you don’t know if it’s true or not, but it sure seems like it could be despite the impossibility. It’s quite fascinating. And every success of this play relies on the actress playing Vanda, it was obvious. Natalie does a really impressive job, and while David kind of pales in comparison, his is a much less meaty role to work with. This is Vanda’s play. And though it’s a weird as ass play in general, the more I think about it the more I appreciate whatever the crap it was trying to do.
So do I regret still missing the Broadway production? I do, because while Dormer was great, the raves I heard about Arianda were unparalleled, calling it the best performance of that season and maybe beyond. I would have loved to have seen what she managed to accomplish with this crazy role in this crazy play. But I’m glad I saw this one, and while I still have no idea how to resolve the mysteries of the show in my head (not that I’m supposed to), I think it’s surely worth seeing. It’s awkward as ass watching it though so be warned and don’t go with…anyone. Well no don’t go alone that’s creeperish too (and I love going to the theatre alone but this would feel a little like you’re the man in a trench coat at an adult theatre). Go with someone you’d be comfortable watching “Eyes Wide Shut” with. Fun fact: an English teacher in high school made us watch parts of that. SUPER INAPPROPRIATE.
AUDIENCE
I didn’t see any phones! To continue the theme of sexism that this play presented, I’m going to say that’s because it’s usually men who I see on their phones during plays, but this one had Natalie Dormer half naked onstage the whole time, so they were preoccupied.
STAGE DOOR
Guys I tried! The Game of Thrones fandom is too much, I think! It was a huge line – seriously, a single file line down the sidewalk; they really need to figure out a better system because there’s no way the actors were going to walk down that line to sign programs. We waited about 20 minutes but then gave up. What do you say to actors after that kind of performance anyway??!! So awkward!
