Everywoman at London’s Bunker Theatre: You’re GD Right This is Universalby Randi / February 19, 2020It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are (finally) looking at two works in progress I saw at MTFest a week or so ago and hoping that creatives make the necessary fixes as needed.
Let me first state for the record that MTFestUK is a phenomenal project, a weeks-long showcase of new musical theatre works and works in progress. In a city where new musical theatre talent and ideas can easily take a backseat to big shiny commercial ventures at the expense of artistry, this platform gives a much-needed boost, hopefully towards a full-fledged production, to creativity and originality. London needs to nurture more original and innovative musical theatre and more undersung talent, so this festival rocks.
I had time to see two shows during this festival, The Assassination of Katie Hopkins (AKH) and Soapdish. I had low expectations for the former, as it’s a new-to-me creative team and it sounded either silly or too much and I just didn’t know about it. I had high expectations for the latter since it came from Stiles & Drewe and had a cast of super recognizable names. As they say about expectations or assumptions or what have you, the results were the exact opposite: AKH (I wish it abbreviated sensibly to ASS because that’s what she is) was incredibly impressive and has stuck with me, where Soapdish was almost offensive to me as a human person and is the latest entry in my How to Fix Your Show series. Let’s start with the good.
The Assassination of Katie Hopkins
Extremely relevant politically and socially, ASS AKH shows the aftermath of the imagined murder of Katie Hopkins, notorious far-right political commentator, English Trumpian, racist, bigot, stupidhead, and all around c-word. On the first consideration of this fictional event you’re like ‘eh all in a day’ but you know, it’s still a murder, and that’s bad. The show follows several threads of narrative post-event, with interweaving lyrics and melodies to show the connectedness of ‘different sides’ and all of our lives. There’s young intern Kayleigh (Bethzienna Williams), tasked with researching Hopkins for a human rights charity and finding herself somehow propelled to the spotlight as she sort of takes up Hopkins’ mantle. The path of this young lost person getting swept up in right-wing fanaticism in order to find her foothold in our society seemed so authentic, and it was cool (I mean not cool but you know cool) to see the radicalization of a girl for a change.
Other storytelling threads involve the increase in harassment for people of color who had nothing to do with the murder, as is the sad but super predictable result, like post 9/11 bullshit. One such target is Shayma (Maimuna Memon (who we LOVED in Ghost Quartet, put her in everything)), a paralegal at a big law firm who expects better from people but feels like she’s the only one recognizing so much of the tragedy happening constantly. Shayma has a history of being ‘problematic’ at her firm, because she was sexually harassed by a bigwig and got him fired, so she’s on thin ice because that’s how that works. (The firing is the only hard to believe part of this show, since big law firms love to just pay the victims hush money so they don’t have to discipline ‘important men’. Happens super frequently it’s astounding. FUN WORLD.) She serves as the voice of most conscience-having people, wondering if we are taking crazy pills as the rest of the world seems to move on from enormous tragic events after a single breath. The whole show gives a good voice to the idea of empathy exhaustion, an aspect I found quite moving.
I hope that in the full show, Kayleigh’s journey to the right-wing spotlight is shown as more of a progression rather than a jump, since that journey is really believable and important to discuss. I hope Shayma is given more to do (I mean just let her sing the whole time) to show the interplay of her story with the rest, because as it stands, her song about slaying dragons after a tube incident could be cut, as it didn’t flow with the rest of the show as I saw, but if it’s woven more fully into the narrative it would be great because that song was forking fire. A lot of the music (by Matt Winkworth and Chris Bush) is wonderful, actually, and a lot of it is haunting. There was one point when Shayma was singing the list of names from one horrific tragedy and she said ‘Victor’ at the same time someone was singing the word ‘victim’ and I almost gasped, it was gorgeous. I cannot wait to see this show as a full-fledged production; I think it has the potential to be incredible.
Soapdish
Boy oh boy, you big man, you boy. Based on the 1991 Sally Field movie, Soapdish is about soap opera darling Celeste Talbert who is America’s sweetheart onscreen and a real b word offscreen. Her younger costar schemes to knock her off her perch and become the star. And there’s a secret love child involved. So this all sounds super fun and should be ripe for the romcom musical treatment, but so far, this show felt way too amateur. I wouldn’t be so blunt about these sorts of progress report showcases but given the talent involved, I expected much more refined work. They need to chuck the score out the window and start over (but keep the two instances of good rhymes – future with suture and Brecht with expect; those were good). It was like rough draft of Mean Girls songs (and that’s saying something since the final version of Mean Girls has like one good song). No song passed the smell test.
Also, the lead character of Celeste (Louise Dearman) needs to be reconsidered. The whole thing is that she’s an awful monster in real life – at least that’s what the preshow introduction said – but she didn’t seem like a bitch at all; she just seemed sad and pathetic knowing that her days were numbered as she gets older. So after the score, my second big problem is that there is no consistency to the lead character. Why should we be interested in her younger costar’s attempt at a coup except to say that like, it’s kind of sad?
And that brings me to the biggest problem. This younger costar Montana (Laura Pitt-Pulford) uses the promise of sex to get the producer, David (Richard Dempsey), to go along with her shenanigans. I get that this was the movie plot, in 1991, but that is no excuse for having such a grossly sexist storyline. (See, e.g. Pretty Woman the Musical and how copying the movie is not an excuse to be shit.) Everything about this felt super icky and suuuper obvious that it was an all-male creative team. Look people, there’s a way to do old-fashioned storylines, and even sexist storylines, without actually having your show feel sexist. It was infuriating, this whole thing, even though LPP says the name ‘David’ hilariously – but like most good jokes they repeat it ad infinitum and thus run it into the ground, destroying the fun of it. Actually the ruining of a great bit of comedy might be the most upsetting part. And of course the fact that London audiences will eat this shit up, and did.
The only person who comes out on top is young Alice Croft, who has a voice like baby Laura Osnes and honestly I cannot wait to hear her sing full (improved) scores.
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City of Angels at the Garrick: Nearly Superb Production of a Nearly Great Show
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is City of Angels, playing at London’s Garrick Theatre after a transfer from the Donmar Warehouse.
The 1989 musical City of Angels may feel just like a 1940s noir film, but the intrigue and twists are all in cheeky good fun. And the new production in London’s West End is definitely good fun. While the great Cy Coleman’s score is less than great, this well directed, inventive production betters even the less exciting parts. The cast seems to delight in Larry Gelbart’s funny, clever book, and it’s all around a great time – if you have the right seat, in a theatre where at least half the seats are garbage.
City of Angels tells the story of a LA writer named Stine (a fantastic Hadley Fraser my goodness) who is working on the film adaptation of his acclaimed novel. As he writes in real life and deals with a wife he cheats on but it’s NBD and a girl he has affairs with but it’s NBD and a Hollywood producer who’s an ass and it’s a BD, we also see the pages he’s writing come to life, with his characters acting out the plot as Stine works on it (with hilarious effect when he deletes and redoes something). Despite being in his imagination, the characters in his story feel real, and the barrier between real life and fiction break down when Stine interacts with his leading man, Stone (a great Theo James, yes that one, such stage presence, very wow), in the most fun parts of this show.
With this super clever, original premise comes tons of humor and creativity, and this production is probably the best we’ll see of this show. The direction is almost flawless (see below) and everything feels purposeful. I never really call out the lighting in a show, but the lighting design here is everything. Stine’s real Los Angeles life is lit in color, whereas the scenes from his script are mainly in black and white, an effect that was impressive as hell when both worlds would share the stage simultaneously, and extraordinary as Stone and Stine toy with the barrier between them. Those clashes between the two S men play out to pretty much the only big song in the show, “You’re Nothing Without Me”, overused a bit as it closes both acts but when it’s the main theme as well as the only strong song for our leading men – and lets Fraser do his main job in this show, which is belting and holding big final notes to impress you and distract you and it works because man alive he is some shit – you can’t fault that use too much.
And yes, while the clever book mostly delights, the score somewhat pales in comparison. There are some strong songs in addition to the aforementioned, like Stine’s wife’s “It Needs Work”, a clever almost patter sort of song that Rosalie Craig does brilliantly. (Craig only plays characters named Bobbi I guess now, and this underwritten one is as satisfying as the previous. (That sounds like a huge compliment since everyone and their mother loved the famous gender-flipped Company but recall that I did not.)) It shows off her acting ability fantastically, but like a lot of the score (save for Hadley’s big belted notes) it doesn’t allow for showing off vocal ability. The only real chance for that comes from Rebecca Trehearn’s “You Can Always Count on Me”. Accustomed to stealing shows, Trehearn’s performance is a highlight.
But there are also some duds that fail the ‘does-this-need-to-be-a-song-and-if-not-is-it-at-least-worth-it’ test. I don’t even recall the underused Vanessa Williams (yes, that Vanessa Williams) singing, which is odd for someone who famously can sing well, but I know she did. (She also gets a cringeworthy line about ‘saving the best for last’. I cannot imagine that was in the original script, so the addition is so corny. But if it original, I will eat my words – but if it WAS is that why they cast her??? Honestly that would make me love everything about this production even more, that’s some baller move for one stupid joke, and I respect that.) For a character as vibrant as Stine’s producer, Jimmy Powers (a good Jonathan Slinger in a JK Simmons role) really should have stronger songs. And Bobbie’s cabaret sections just seem awkward.
Some of the performances left me cold as well. Nicola Roberts, from the pop group Girls Aloud, is not well suited to her one big song, which sounded like when our Kim McAfee in high school started rehearsal without warming up. And the Angel City 4, the ensemble that kind of narrates sometimes, and acts as a Greek chorus sometimes, and serves as the producer Jimmy Powers’ backup singers sometimes, sounded insanely off key all the times. I was literally making Chrissy-Tiegen-at-the-Globes gif face whenever they sang, which is super rude, but I couldn’t help it because holy wow those were some wrong ass notes! Fortunately, they don’t ruin another strong number, Munoz’s (Marc Elliott’s) fun “All Ya Have to Do is Wait”, although I don’t think there was any Hispanic representation in this show which is bad when there are some real yikesy slurs used.
All my endless raving about how well designed and directed this show is does actually have an end, though, and it’s now: This show is staged for 40% of the audience. The Garrick has notoriously horrible sightlines from too many seats, and pillars blocking the view for many of the rest. Add in a narrower-seeming stalls and stage than most, a mezzanine overhang that seems to start at the stage, and a chaotic wackiness to the seating plan, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. That knowledge should make the director and crew more careful with what they are doing, but instead, here, they seemed to go ‘you know what, fuck it, let’s stage everything in that one top stage right corner even when it’s completely unnecessary, just to be dicks about it.’ There is so much happening at that spot that literally no one around us could see, and we had good seats. Given the overhang and sightlines, I am sure no one behind row M could see a good portion of the action, which is bullshit. If you’re lucky enough to be in that 40%, you’re going to have a phenomenal time. Otherwise, your resentment is going to color your experience, which is unfair both to you and this great production.
INFORMATION
For a 7:30 curtain, Act I ended at 9pm and the show ended at 10:28, which is about 15 minutes longer than it should be; there were issues at front of house before starting. Yes I really had to pee.
The Garrick Theatre is another stalls-in-the-basement one, so if you want to be at street level, sit in the circle. Also, the ladies bathrooms for the house left side of the stalls are upstairs anyway.
It is one of the smokiest shows in London right now, which is saying something since creators really love to keep those with respiratory problems and asthma away. Even for a 1940s noir show, smoking added nothing to the ambience they created with lights, performances, costumes, and sets. I am still waiting for someone to defend the use of smoking in the theatre to me.
The show is running until September 5, but the cast is changing several times (names this starry don’t do long runs anymore I guess).
STAGEDOOR
Everyone but Trehearn ran or snuck out a different entrance (as is their right yes but darn). The setup is nonexistent, so expect a mosh pit on the busiest sidewalk in London and a guard who doesn’t receive any information.
Sondheim’s Memory Will Absolutely Be a Blessing
It’s so strange to think that Stephen Sondheim is no longer on this earth when the earth has so often felt like simply a platform for his work to exist. Everything that happens and everywhere I go and every word that every person says reminds me of some truth he shared with the world that we were lucky enough to hear and understand and connect with emotionally. No one was more honest about the complexities of human emotion and the depths of human frailty, and applying that honesty to musical theatre elevated it as an art form and reinforced that it’s deserving of respect. Look at what musical theatre can achieve, he said. Look at how we need musical theatre to truly express our humanity. That’s why we love him so much.
I’m not foolish enough to think that I can eulogize him better than others have (except the Guardian of course) or discuss the brilliance of his works in detail like theatre historians. I just wanted to take a few minutes to think about how important his creations are to me personally. Unfortunately I’m not able to do what everyone loves doing (and you can’t really fault them for doing it), which is to share a photo of me and the deceased, because I never had the opportunity to meet him. While part of me is of course sorry that that will never happen, part of me is glad because I can go on imagining him as more than an ordinary man. For me and for most of us who love theatre, he was this sort of holy figure, whose genius necessitated that he must be more than human, despite understanding and expressing humanity on such unparalleled levels.
This past weekend, I was without power and cell service for a few days due to the storm, and while that experience was one of the worst, it let me have a few extra days of believing I actually shared a planet with him, this great figure. That we existed in the same era and in the same universe is a miracle to me, and not just because it’s Chanukah and he was Jewish and I’m primed to be thinking all miracley anyway. He would be the last person to think of himself in such laudatory terms as we all do, as he was just a man (a NJB really), but his genius made him seem superhuman, despite that very genius being grounded in humanity.
On a personal level, his works form important touchstones for so many parts of my life. One of my earliest memories is watching the PBS airing of ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ over and over with my mom. She had taped it (VHS baby) so she would put it on frequently for years after. I remember it was even on when she was drying her hair one morning, and I was just staring at the small screen. Mandy Patinkin quickly became my mom’s favorite non-family (maybe even including family who knows) person in the world, and I loved everything about it, this woman in the dress with the poofy butt (who know one day I would work with her) and the colors and all these characters and above all the sound of this perfect music that I was too young to understand but knew was beautiful and important. As a teenager, I was obsessed with the dark twists of ‘Into the Woods’ and the lessons it taught about consequences and the ramifications of wishes, especially as someone raised on Disney princesses. But, I was also raised on ‘West Side Story’ and with it my dad’s favorite story of his single line: ‘COPS!’ And I’m not saying I married a man because he appreciates and loves how insanely ingenious ‘Assassins’ is but it’s not not why. I can’t imagine what life looks like without his shows helping us understand it.
It doesn’t matter that he was 91 or that we’ve been fearing this moment since his big 80th celebration. Genius of that sort is rare and now we are without his. But we have his work, his brilliant creations, each of them special and so many of them continually surprising in their truth and beauty. We are so lucky that his works keep getting produced and we can keep experiencing them, and in new ways, even if we will never get that fabled next show from him.
His genius was in peeling away layers to reveal raw human truths that seem so simple and clear but are so complicated, and doing that to incredible music. He seemed to so often be drawn to extremely niche situations for his settings — not e.g. a basic family drama that everyone could relate to but instead a group of aging former performers confronting their pasts in a closing dilapidated theatre, or a beloved painting brought to life through the backstory of its creator and muse, or a group of historical assassins detailing their exploits and commenting on the current state of politics (current at any time, another aspect of his brilliance). Even the situations that don’t seem too rare or extreme, like the single man deliberating his singledom, were novel and innovative at the time. Instead of writing characters as every day people we would immediately relate to, he made it so we related to people we didn’t automatically see ourselves in. We weren’t always reflected outwardly but we would soon feel emotionally connected and reflected due to the honesty and depth of his words and how the music enhanced their meaning. He found emotional truths in this nuance and showed them so clearly that the shadows seemed like daybreak. His legacy for me is how he let audiences easily see themselves in characters that aren’t clearly similar to them, or see truth in situations that don’t look like their normal lives, which more easily lets people connect with those different from them in real life. I believe he did this, and since being able to connect in those ways increases empathy, with his art he thus made the world a better place.
When loved ones die, Jewish people say may their memory be a blessing. To remember Stephen Sondheim is to remember his genius and how that genius manifested in the creation of these lasting works of emotional truth and humanity. His memory is a blessing, and will always be a blessing, as his life was, as his art was.
