The Dumb Waiter at the Old Vic: I Try Pinter Again!

​In my long, extensive history of theatre obsession, I’ve never been as surprised by a show as I was by “Bandstand”.  Well at least in the upward direction; I’ve been downward surprised many a time. Considering how few Tony nominations (THEY MEAN NOTHING) it got, how little chatter there was on my online Broadway forums, and how easily I picked up a few rush tickets one afternoon, I didn’t expect much from the new musical. I wanted to see it because I like Laura Osnes, the star, and because I wanted a solid musical to take my sister-in-law to that I hadn’t already seen. Well. Color me thrilled (and badd) because I was sitting there slack-jawed buggy-eyed and wanting SO bad to shout down to the stage “Ohh my god oh my god you guys, this is REALLY GOOD did you know??” I didn’t obviously because I am of sound mind but guys it really was.

“Bandstand”, which has nothing to do with the old Philly-based show “American Bandstand” no matter how badly my parents want it to, tells the story of World War II veterans who return home to Cleveland and form a rocking swing band in order to win a radio competition. That’s the short version I knew going in. What the ads aren’t selling, and what they should be selling, is that the story deals heavily, primarily really, with the PTSD and severe depression the vets are suffering with upon return. And the guilt. So much guilt. It’s so heavy and difficult, watching them struggle to get through each day, singing about how things will be just like they were before but knowing that nothing could ever be like it was before. This group of veterans forms the band not only to win a competition but because it’s the only thing that helps them wake up and get through the day, and playing music is the only time they aren’t completely incapacitated by their demons. The show deals so directly with these serious issues facing veterans, issues that need to be addressed directly in real life but still aren’t, and the show really should be commended for not sugar-coating it at all. In lots of other art it’s like ‘Oh Johnny drinks every night so he can fall asleep without thinking of all he saw over there’ and that’s all that’s said. In this, it’s that plus stories for every character plus visuals like a platoon of dead soldiers crawling over the piano as our lead tries to play, showing how every moment of his new life is weighed down by his experience.Okay so that sounds like a really sad and unenjoyable show, but it’s not. The severity of what they’re dealing with helps connect the audience to the characters really quickly, and from there we are totally with them on the journey as they find something worth living for. And the music is rollicking and fun and really helps lift everyone’s spirits and provide a sense of joy and hope for the characters. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the swing music considering the last time I listened to it was begrudgingly at school dances in the ‘90s when it was somehow popular at that sort of thing. I mean it’s not wise to compare Broadway musicians to that f-ing horrendous “Zoot Suit Riot” song but still. I’m super impressed by composers Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor considering I don’t know their previous work.

Right at the start of the show, we are somewhere in the Pacific Ocean with Corey Cott and a group of soldiers in trenches, just when some really bad things are about to happen (we know from lights flashing and then darkness). In another section of the stage, Laura Osnes is at home being a homemaker (we know because she’s wearing an apron) when a man in uniform rings her doorbell to bring her some awful news, and we deduce that her husband was just killed in that attack when she opens the door, sees who it is, and crumples to the ground sobbing. So all of this is happening with just the orchestra playing, no words or anything, and despite the fact that you haven’t met anyone yet and despite being maybe 30 seconds long it’s so well done that you will 100% cry. Osnes is a TRAYSURE, as Emily Gilmore would say.

Then the war is over and Corey Cott’s Donny Novitski made it back home to Cleveland. As the ensemble sings about getting back to normal, we see that Donny clearly is too haunted by his experience to know what normal is. He hears about a radio competition looking for the next big swing band, and he thinks it would sure be swell if the winners were a group of just-returned veterans. He sets about finding amazing musicians who have suitably served enough so that they are all broken (maybe not intentional). Meeting the 6 band members is so much fun. Despite not having tons of lines each, they are all given enough time and room to develop individual characters and really make you understand who they are and what they’re going through. Brandon J. Ellis, as big fun Irishman Davy on bass, is the funniest one, making ridiculous jokes and providing some much needed comic relief, although he’s clearly using humor to mask his pain like he does with alcohol. Most of his jokes were new to me, but I loved when the audience roared at one I knew: “A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel on his pants. The bartender says ‘hey, you’ve got a steering wheel on your pants.’ ‘Arghh’, the pirate says, ‘and it’s driving me nuts.’” Oh my god it’s so dumb I love it. Davy is full of jokes like this throughout the show, which is much appreciated. At one point, Davy tells the others guys, “I’ve survived mustard gas and pepper spray. I’m really a seasoned vet.” Grooooaaaan/love it.

Another standout of the band was Joe Carroll as Johnny on drums. His short-term memory and ability to socialize normally is shot because he suffered serious brain damage, as he tells you over and over, when his jeep flipped three times during an attack. His story is heartbreaking, but he uses humor well to get through it, and seems so good-hearted that you just want to give him a hug. At one particularly moving moment, he admits that despite his brain damage, he’s the lucky one of the group because he has fewer memories disturbing his mind all day. And the man providing most of my agita was Geoff Packard as Wayne on trombone, who had the most trouble reacclimating and pretending that normal life was normal at all. Part of his morning ritual was cleaning his gun in the bathroom, and I was 100% sure that meant he was going to kill himself by the time the show was over, especially since he seemed to be the most unable to return to everyday life. Thank god it was the one time when Chekhov’s gun was wrong, because his struggle to get to a point where life was bearable, thanks to this group, was one of the most emotional. Alex Bender as Nick on trumpet and a wonderful James Nathan Hopkins as Jimmy on sax round out the really impressive group of musicians, and although we get a lot of expected conflict between the troubled men, watching them struggle through their issues and try to create great music together was wonderful. And in case you think it’s a total feel good story where music solves all their troubles and they end the show super happy and smiley, that’s not the case at all. It just helps them get out of bed, one day at a time. The fight is shown as constant, not one that you can win in one battle but one that you fight on a continuous basis.

By now you’re probably like um where is Laura Osnes in all this besides reigning over everyone like the queen she is? Laura plays Julia Trojan, a name choice I haven’t yet decided how I feel about because it offers a few funny bits but like is it too forced? not sure. Actually it does lead to a stellar display of Laura’s acting in one conversation about it so maybe I’m for it, although the same conversation could have happened with any odd name. Anyway. Donny, as we saw in the opening, was with Julia’s husband when he died. It turns out they had become best friends, and her husband made Donny promise to look after Julia if he died. Later in the show, more comes out about her husband and his death that I could not have seen coming, and through my horror I was more and more impressed at how much this show kept surprising me without sacrificing substance or form. Donny sees Julia sing in church and is blown away like we all are because she can sang, and he asks Julia to sing with him in the band. I’ve seen Corey and Laura before, but their vocals in this show are astounding. You’ve never heard Laura, usually very angelic and sweet-voiced, belt as insanely as she does here, and Corey’s vocal strength constantly wows too. And he’s playing the piano the entire show, which is so impressive. (Or at the very least he’s really convincingly pretending to play the piano.) He needs to be Broadway’s next sure-thang leading man because hot damn, Corey Cott. Hot damn.

In the first act, the show blends the more serious moments with the band’s performances around town as it tries to build up its repertoire and name. These gigs are upbeat and tons of fun, in large part due to the eye-popping choreography. This is when Andy Blankenbuehler, director and choreographer who won the Tony for choreographing “Hamilton” (and “In the Heights”), gets to shine with his crazy (and I mean CAH RAZY) lifts and throws and super frenetic and energetic dancing in the ensemble. Morgan Marcell (who was also in “Hamilton”) fully distracted me from the band’s performing and Laura’s singing during these scenes as she was like doing figure skating spins and throws but like not on ice. I am in awe. Remember the amazing spin Aaron Tveit and Julianne Hough did on “Grease: Live!” during the Hand Jive (should play that exact moment)? The dancing in these gig scenes was like that but more intense and for the entire time. dammmmn. I don’t like spoiling but here is one little sneak peak.

Another thing that helps lift the spirits from super depression is the performance of Beth Leavel as Julia’s mother, who now lives with her widowed daughter. Beth Leavel is pretty big deal in musical theatre, so at first I was kind of like “ughhh we’re at the point where Beth Leavel is getting jobs as the ingénue’s mother onstage for like five minutes?” But, as I should have expected, Beth turns her small-ish role into a hilarious at times, lovely at other times portrayal and really makes her time onstage meaningful. She gets a touching, beautiful song called “Everything Happens”, about how not everything happens for a reason, but it just happens and we have to get through it somehow, and it’s wonderful. A rare occurrence of that sort of honest sentiment. And she gets to be hilarious as promised during a dinner scene, entering silently with a plate of deviled eggs so red that I was struck and distracted by the color from my balcony seat. I just thought oh that’s a weird move by the prop department. But then Julia and Donny stop talking, look to the eggs and then to Beth and she says, “The lid came off the paprika.” Her delivery was so deadpan and amazing that the audience actually broke into applause. So funny.

Despite being a relatively long show (the first act alone is an hour and a half), it felt shorter than most because of how engaging everything was. We’re there every step of the way as the band tries to make it, and more importantly as the guys try to stay in control of their mental states enough to get through a performance. It’s brilliant to see them decide to stop pretending like everything is fine, and that if they are going to sell themselves as a band of vets then they should be singing about real issues vets face. The band’s big song in the radio competition, “Love Will Come and Find Me Again”, is flipping amazing and I cannot wait to get the cast album oh my god they better make a cast album. The melody and the lyrics aren’t revolutionary, but the character’s sharing is, and the song is perfectly catchy and solid and the performance is so exhilarating and gorgeous that you can’t believe any other competitors came close. And their big climactic performance of their very risky song “Welcome Home” is like if anxiety were set to music, kind of hard to listen to but completely on purpose, and so riveting that you’re scared to blink or breathe lest it affect the magic being created. And also you can’t breathe because if you do the breath will catch in your throat and you will sob.

So the music is so much fun and often incredibly moving, the dancing is awesome, the book is more sophisticated and smarter than most, and the performances are wonderful across the board. At first I thought maybe the direction was overdone, because Andy loves him some busy choreo to the point where it’s sometimes distracting (like in Hamilton) but there are so many moments of brilliance. Andy is a stronger choreographer than director, given his background, and at times there probably should have been another voice tempering the movement. What works with his choreography in ensemble numbers is that it’s busy and frenzied and always interesting to watch. In non-dancing moments, that kind of thinking could be too busy, but here it often works, especially with the ghosts of their service haunting the men constantly. It’s a lot, sometimes too much to know what to focus on, but for this particular show it’s effective. Once, during Donny’s big first song, Andy’s signature kinds of movement were obvious (standing with his legs tightly pressed together with bent knees swinging left and right, a little hunched in the back. I feel like that’s how Andy himself is always moving). It was a little distracting because I remember thinking “Oh that looks like Andy!” not exactly the character. There were little moments like that peppered throughout where the movement didn’t match the action or characters. But for the most part, it was nearly flawless staging.

I really can’t get over how impressed I was with it. Even expected tropes like the inevitable budding romance between our two leads as they help each other work through their shared grief is done in a way that keeps it from being predictable. First of all, Laura and Corey’s chemistry is off the charts. It really was remarkable, so strong that when I remembered Laura is married in real life I was like aw. Second of all, it’s not a clear-cut romance in the least. Their big song together, once they’ve grown closer and everyone else knows they have feelings for each other, is not a love song. Instead it’s them admitting that because of who they are and what they’ve gone through, nothing can happen between them. It was so well done and made their story more realistic and emotional.

This is a pretty stellar Broadway season and, even with a lot of good work happening, this ranks up there as one of my top shows of the year. I know, I can’t believe it either. But aside from Act II getting a little loose in the cage, it’s an endlessly enjoyable, thought-provoking, moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting show that hits all the marks necessary to make you cry, laugh, and smile a lot. A lot a lot. Now that “Dear Evan Hansen” is sold out for probably as long as the earth has left, this is the show I’m most hoping succeeds. Go buy tickets, everyone, so it doesn’t close because I kind of want to see it again and I can’t go back to NYC until the fall!

THEATRE INFO
Toilets are in the basement, and only in the basement! Luckily there is only one mezzanine level, but still, that means at intermish you are running down two flights of stairs. It moves okay though.

Rush tickets ($30) are generally easy to get. No one is camping out at 4am like for other shows. After those sell out, the box office offers ‘secondary rush’ at $49. These seats actually have a better view than the first wave of rush, so it’s worth the extra money to wait.

    This may be totally over as a conversation by now but a) I am not in America and b) I couldn’t get through this in one sitting.

    Big takeaway: Peter Pan is a weird ass show. If people came into the NBC musical broadcast without having a background in the story, they would deem it the stuff of nightmares. Mostly the nightmares of people who are against problematic gender norms, pedophilia, kidnapping, and weird sexual relationships. Considering that these live musicals are chosen to appeal to families – i.e. children – I’m sure that this production was indeed the first exposure to Pan for a big portion of the audience. This realization isn’t so much sad as f-ing nuts. Can you imagine seeing this broadcast without having a foundation in the story to protect your soul? Nightmares. 

Peter Pan, based on this travesty from NBC, is about a rebellious girl who can fly between worlds. You know she is rebellious because she has short hair, ugly clothing, and a lack of emotion despite a constant smile. This rebel kidnaps two little boys and their inappropriately dressed older aunt and takes them to a modern version of the tunnel scene in Willy Wonka. Although the little boys have a lovely mother with the most beautiful voice ever (and I guess the aunt has such a sister?), their dad is a jackwagon so you’re okay with them getting some air for a while.

One of the boys wears a top hat. All the time. Even at bedtime. Even while flying. The other boy, no doubt scarred by his emotionally unavailable father, can’t think of any happy thoughts except for candy, setting him up for serious dental problems later in life, if not the ‘betus itself.

These three Darling people are tended to by Nana, a big fluffy dog who is smart enough to sense danger and protect her human siblings. Whyyy is the musical not about Nana? One of life’s unanswered questions. That dog is wicked smaht.

Peter Pan and his twinkling ball of light, which we are supposed to accept as a fairy even though we’ve seen full-bodied fairies like Stanley Tucci in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and all over New York, teach dear old aunt Wendy and the two boys how to fly, or really how to jerk around panicked and gracelessly when hoisted by very visible wires. Seeing the wires doesn’t bother me as much as everyone’s inability to fly without appearing to have constipation-induced seizures. Why are they so awkward? Did anyone teach them how to do the flying bits? Did they even have a chance to practice flying around before the live show? It doesn’t seem like it. They should have just done all CGI flying if it was going to be this bad.

In very little time at all, thanks to dear old Aunt Wendy’s breathlessness and fluttery eyes, we realize that this is actually a love story between Peter and Wendy, making J. M. Barrie’s tale perhaps the first lesbian fairy tale. But why does Peter, ostensibly a 25-year-old girl, need a 28-year-old girl to tuck her and her male followers in at night? It’s very creepy. But the story is quite progressive: Not only are Peter and Wendy lesbian lovers, but they are in an interspecies love triangle with a jealous ball of light. Wow. Much progress.

So the littlest boy, Michael, starts out as adorable before gradually getting more and more annoying. During the adorable phase, he grabs his teddy bear before flying off to Neverland. That is cute. What’s not cute is what would actually happen to the humans if they flew unprotected by spacesuits between freaking realms. Skin melting and stuff. That might be more entertaining though. This shit be dull. Peter/Allison Williams seems too embarrassed to fully commit to the role as lead lesbian lover. Gotta get over that before the second show.

Commercial break: Cool, a Wal-mart commercial with Melissa Joan Hart and I’m guessing her actual family of husband and three boy children who are playing with a toy fairy. It’s cute until the husband person says “I’m pretending it’s a helicopter.” That’s a cool message to send to all young boys, Wal-Mart, that to be male you can’t play with pretty colored toys or fairies unless you pretend it’s something MACHINE and MANLY. Cool. Outdated gender roles are the coolest. This is a good place to share one of my favorite infographics:

Back to the show: This narrator sounds like that English tart Lorraine Finster!!!

Once Peter, his new lover, and the boys get to Neverland – an impressively technicolored set – we get to meet our Captain Hook. No, not Christian Borle (Smee and Mr. Darling), who actually won a TONY for playing Captain Hook (at least a variation), but Christopher Walken, that singular adjuster of all rhythms of language that we thought were okay to accept as unchanging. Christopher Walken is on many drugs here but none of the ones that give energy, so that doesn’t bode well for the next too many hours.

Side note, when did Christian Borle DOUBLE his arm size? 

As we watch Christopher Walken stare at the cue cards next to the camera, we learn that pirates are these long-haired hot people who dance well. Why are people scared of pirates? They seem awesome. They probably have good tips for detangling hair after swimming in the ocean.

Although the story keeps telling us that we are supposed to be scared of Hook, a notorious pirate ship captain, it seems he’s really a Lower East Side drag queen with general malaise and a too-light shade of pancake makeup.  

So distracted by Smee’s arms! I guess the camera does add 10 pounds, and it all goes to Christian Borle’s arms? Maybe he’s wearing fake arms?

The pirates’ carrying Hook on a sedan chair as his face betrays zero emotion is a metaphor for this show.

Christian Borle deserves a freaking Emmy for trying to breathe life into Walken. Seriously, he just blew into Walken’s arse. He literally tried to breathe life into him. He is not holding anything back. Gotta try everything.

Now we meet the Lost Boys. Given their costumes and homoerotic physicality, the Lost Boys are just Chilton drop-outs? Duke lacrosse players? Ah! Aside from giving us the progressive lesbian relationship, “Peter Pan” also tells important lessons about white male privilege. The whole Lost Boys aspect, it seems, is a precautionary tale about the current state of our society and its persistent, ignorant condoning of bad male behavior, continually excused as ‘just boys being boys’ or rewritten as a slam on irrelevant female behavior. These preppy prepschool boys in their striped rugby shirts and popped collars and colorful caps represent the Duke lacrosse players, the Steubenville football players, and all the other masses of men who are ‘lost’ because they don’t face necessary punishment and therefore never learn responsibility or proper ways to behave as respectable members of our society. So that’s what Peter Pan is about? Interesting. Is that why he’s played by a woman always? For feminism? Is that why they are singing this awful song about how Wendy will be their mother? “We have a mother at last we have a mother”, because their mothers are the only women they are able to recognize as deserving respect and the only ones who probably believe that they are decent at heart? I find the basic premise of rooting for the Lost Boys to defeat the Pirates as flawed. I want the pirates to win. These boys are trouble, if my hypothesis is correct. They will just inflict lots of pain and torture throughout their lives and get away with it. At least the pirates are honest about their intentions. Wow, Barrie was pretty prescient.

Moving on from sexism and misogyny to racism, within these enormous wedding bouquet trees, the Lost Boys are surrounded by the natives but they don’t know it. The natives (at least they are no longer calling them the Indians? I think?) literally have their feet on the Lost Boys’s asses but the Boys have no idea what’s going on. Is this a metaphor for American history, that the white Lost Boys can’t see the Indians right next to them? Or that they are blinded by their disregard of them?

Commercial break: F-ing A but “Into the Woods” looks AMAZING. I am so eager to see this movie instead of finish watching “Peter Pan” that I don’t think I can form full paragraphs for a while.

The Lost Boys KILL Wendy? What in the actual hell is this show? See, preppy prepschool white boys are TROUBLE TO WOMEN. And Tinkerbell is legit evil! Why is that ball of light not being extinguished? Why do people care if people don’t believe in her? She is EVIL.

Peter is actually singing about ‘Oh the pleasure she’ll bring to us’ about Wendy. This is so lesbians love story!

Omg MASS GROUP SHOWER SCENE this is vulgar. Why are all the Newsies in one small bathtub together? Do I have to rewatch Newsies to understand all the homoerotic subtext is that as well? Are all musicals this batshit? No.

“I Won’t Grow Up” really drives home my newly realized theory about this show being a scathing indictment of masculinity in modern society. These boys refuse to learn how to be better citizens! Refuse to mature and take responsibility! This show is deep. Neverland represents their mental state of everlasting “youth and joy and liberty”, their escape from being better members of actual society and living in a fantasy world of privilege and ignorance instead. Whoa.

Back to Peter and Wendy. They are going on a moonlight canoe ride on the lagoon. It’s pretty much the same setting as “Kiss The Girl” but without that amazing song. Or any song at all! Why can’t these two lovebirds have a beautiful duet on the water at this point? Nonetheless, this is pretty special. We don’t really get a lot of legit lesbian romance on television. There’s a lot of gay male relationships on TV, and thanks primarily to “How To Get Away With Murder” a lot of gay sex, but TV doesn’t give equal airtime to gay women. So this is nice.

Yet the story is making the common ignorant assumption that all women are jealous of each other over the menfolk or some shit like that. Why does every single female character need to be jealous of the others because they all love Peter? That look Wendy gave to Tiger Lily was a ‘bitch stay away’ if I ever saw one. And Even Older Aunt Wendy (who is ACTUALLY that English tart Lorraine Finster) lets her daughter run away with Peter? And they all wish that ALL the female descendants of Wendy will forever be taken away by Peter when they come of age? What is THAT creepy shit about! That’s a level of disgusting not even seen in Greek tragedies.

I’m focusing on the gay lovers and the Lost Boys’ metaphor because the rest of this is too dull to bother with. In the big climax sword fight between Hook and Pan, the pirates either fell asleep or sacrificed themselves to the sea witch to avoid having to watch any more. It was the slowest, most painfully uneventful sword fight OF ALL TIME. Who choreographed this? Kids do a better job playfighting with swords cut out of construction paper.

And as much as I love the Newsies, they are too old to be Lost Boys if the little Darling boys are meant to be their peers. They are actually old enough to be their fathers, and so the whole ‘Wendy be our mother!’ thing is just gross. That’s just gross.

I don’t have the energy to think any more about how dull this production was. I’m too disappointed in such a wasted opportunity. All I can say is thank god for Kelli O’Hara. And next year they better do “Hair”. Something worth watching.