Chichester's Current Production of 'South Pacific' is a Decent Timeby Randi / August 12, 2021It’s a special Theatre Tuesday! because last week’s Theatre Thursday was actually Yom Kippur so we were offline because as this show teaches you Judaism is important and deserves respect!
I’ve been complaining about how Jewishness is treated on London stages for as long as I can remember, and I know some of you are sick of it. Thankfully for you clowns, this week’s show, the new UK production of Paula Vogel’s Indecent at the Menier Chocolate Factory, tells its heart-breaking, full-bodied Jewish tale with respect for its subject matter and the people represented. Not that one show solves an endemic problem, but I cried through the whole thing and not just at the sad parts. At the fact that a Jewish story was being treated lovingly, and with actual Jewish people involved, onstage and offstage, (Joey Tribbiani voice:) IN LONDON! This beautiful production of the Tony-winning Broadway hit is nearly two hours long with no intermission — which as you know means I had to pee horribly for half the show (and true to form I got a UTI in post) — and I still loved it. That’s as much love I can send a show, truly.
Indecent treats a narrowly defined and unassuming subject — the lifespan of a Yiddish play from inception through celebration and on to suppression — on an epic scale. Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance is the (real) work, and we see a troupe of actors (well, various troupes, in various plays-within-plays, don’t think about it too hard too too hard) tell the story of Asch’s writing of the play, the first reading of it, the first production, and onto worldwide fame…and then censorship of it on Broadway, of all places. Asch’s play tells of a young Jewish girl whose father runs a brothel, and the girl falls in love with one of the prostitutes, and the girls’ father gets like, so mad. Likewise, people in the real world were equally displeased, Jews and goys alike. Two women in love! Jewish people treated as complicated living breathing beings and not paragons of perfection! The horror!
God of Vengeance was ahead of its time, but luckily a few people believed in it, recognizing its art and beauty and how tenderly it treated the central love story, and they helped make it happen. (Believing in art is necessary!) People like my man Lemmel (Finbar Lynch), a man who was at the very first reading of the play in someone’s living room, and was with it all the way through its Euro tour, to NYC, and back to Europe just in time to perform it in a ghetto attic in hushed tones. Yeah, this play gets to the Holocaust, and you might be like ‘ugh we get it the Holocaust’ but the Holocaust was a really big deal (“remember that we suffered!”)! Going in, I was most excited to see American queen Alexandra Silber and Molly Osbourne (double Tzeitels!) playing various actresses playing the lovers, and they were as great as I expected, but Lemmel was the one who really grabbed our hearts and broke them. His love for God of Vengeance and for the love story in that play is the real heart of this play. Like I thought the love story in GOV might be the central emotional core of Indecent but it’s really Lemmel’s love for the GOV love story that was the real one all along. The real good place was the friends we made along the way. Finbar was so good, and not just because you know how I feel about small old Jewish men (I don’t think he is Jewish but he is now on the official list of goyim who are allowed to play Jews) who make me sad, like Eli Wallach in The Holiday, oh man. So good. Right at those heartstrings.
Several times during the show, I thought hmm maybe this bit isn’t totally necessary, maybe like 10-15 minutes could be cut, like the Berlin cabaret scene that makes you feel like when you watch R-rated movies with your parents. But this is hundo p one of those shows that upon reflection you realize were masterfully set. Rebecca Taichman’s compassionate and thoughtful direction treats the piece so kindly and with such care that that’s its own piece of art. (And I’m not just saying that because I especially enjoyed all the Yiddish projected on the backdrop, proving you can learn from using Duolingo (I was so proud of how much I could read and understand.)) All the moving parts, all the various characters the actors portray prove to be necessary to show GOV’s trajectory as a parallel to the history of Jews during this time period. They’re all the puzzle pieces necessary to put the story of this underlying play together, and you know like not all puzzle pieces are the dogs’ faces but you still need the ones that make the grass and trees and stuff to make it all complete. Yes I have done one puzzle in the past 20 years and it was of a dog. No I don’t enjoy puzzles.
From the Lodz section onwards, my crying was real bad. The audience was so quiet, and I was so nervous that I would do my choking-hiccupping crying loud enough to disrupt the theatre so I had to do the Joey-thinking-about-Chandler thing and distract myself a little bit and the only thing that I could think of (because it was still relevant subject matter, at least) was the Crazy Ex Girlfriend song I quoted above, ‘Remember that we Suffered”, so while I was crying outwardly at Lemmel my dude, in my head I was going “The sweet and the bitter/Remember that we suffered/Streisand and Hitler/Remember that we suffered/Spielberg and Hitler/Remember that we suffered/Have we mentioned Hitler? I’m just saying that we suffered!” It’s the best song. Anyway. The impact of seeing the words ‘an impossibly long line’ projected again towards the end broke me, absolutely broke me. It was brilliant and powerful writing and also so mean, because I was wearing two masks and it’s really hard to cry with two masks.
I knew from friends who had seen it on Bway that ‘the rain scene’, when you finally get to see what everyone had been talking about the whole time, was the most beautiful and emotional part, but I didn’t even imagine what the context would be. That aspect — who is imagining that scene and why — is something that I will both treasure and be haunted by.
Above all, it was glorious to see (during the high holidays no less) a play about Jewish people and Jewish subject matter actually performed and created by Jewish people. And in London! It’s a 5782 miracle! I hope it’s a sign of permanent change, although the fact that the Guardian review of this play felt it at all appropriate to say ‘hey you know who else is a Jew, Philip Roth!” as a way to shoehorn in yet another message about their view of the Israel conversation (that’s def what they were doing, btw) shows how much work this place still has to do.
But I digress, like the Guardian writer. This play will stick with me, and I’m sure many other audience members, as a paradigm of caring, protected, heartfelt, authentic theatre-making. I’m so grateful that this was well done, so grateful to the people involved for giving Jews one little corner of respite in a year filled with disrespect and other shit.
INFORMATION
Indecent plays at the Menier Chocolate Factory (not a chocolate factory) until November 27. I recommend you get tickets and if you’d like to get me one too I would go again (the NHS loves giving me antibx).
The Menier asks audience members to wear masks, but like every other theatre, it doesn’t have a mandate. So other people don’t have wear one and many won’t, although this crowd was better about it than at any other theatre we’ve been to recently.
Toilets are down the stairs in the restaurant part of the cafe, so if you will have to run at the end, you want to sit near the aisles, because the rows are suuuuper long, all the way across the theatre jawns.
I don’t know if any of the cast are stage-dooring because I didn’t try, because we are in a pandemic.
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Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: Real Title!!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is called Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and played at the Barbican until April 1.
I’m so excited to write about the show we have been referring to simply as ‘Ow My Bones!’ for literally months. I am not excited to admit that that was because we weren’t familiar with the title because we didn’t know it was a book, but apparently it was and made a splash that I missed. And I love water! Not only was I unfamiliar with the source mats, but I also didn’t realize that Ow My Bones was pretty much a drama about animal justice. HERE. FOR THIS. SHIT.
Also, it’s coming from Simon McBurney and Complicite, who are always complicite in providing challenging and unique theatre. Sometimes they’re a little dark for me but the troupe is always doing something interesting. Like here: it’s dark af but it’s about like vigilante justice for animal abuse so again, I could not BE any more here for it.
In Ow My Bones, a lady named Janina (an incredibly captivating when I saw the show in previews (so long ago sorry) Kathryn Hunter) living in a remote Polish mountain town of 14 people learns that her asshole neighbor has died. It seems he choked on bones (ow!) but Janina has a gut feeling that the deer she made eye contact with outside had something to do with it. It was honestly hard not to start fist pumping when assholes who were cruel to animals starting dying. As more bad men (members of the hunting club) show up dead, we learn more about their history of being absolute dickheads to animals, women, pretty much everyone who counts (i.e. not hunters), and we hear Janina’s theories of how the animals are behind it all, somehow taking revenge. Everyone thinks she’s crazy, because I guess ON PAPER it SOUNDS crazy, but I was like, ‘this chick gets it.’
One of the reasons it took me so long to write this is because Kathryn Hunter got sick before opening night, so they delayed it, (and then I forgot), and then it opened with another actress, which is a shame, because I’m sure she’s amazing too as everyone in Complicite is, but with Kathryn Hunter it felt like her blood flowed to be on that stage playing that character. Even when she flubbed some lines (understandable she’s reciting like hours of text up there and it was previews) she was still supes powerful. Considering that hers was the only performance I remember disliking in Andor, this b really is a talented chameleon.
Ow My Bones is a little long, and about 3/5 through the first act it dragged a bit, but otherwise it was incredibly engrossing and powerful which is impressive considering it’s mostly one tiny woman talking at us for hours; that’s really hard to make captivating! Kathryn reminded me in sound and physicality of Linda….the little one who I first saw in that movie with the teenager who becomes like a secret agent or something but all I really remember is a woman being bitten by a scorpion in a pinkish bedroom???? HUNT. ooh ironic. (Anyone know what movie I am thinking of?) And while she’s the main act, the ensemble and supporting players are all stellar. I particularly loved the physicality (wow I’ve literally never said this word so much) of the ensemble, when they did little precise movements that contained a whole universe of creativity.
Anyway I was the teensiest bit disappointed in the ending (not how it’s staged, just as written) because I wanted Janina to be right; I wanted the animals to be doing these murders all on their own so I could have hope that they would fight back against all the shits ruining their existence in our world too but I guess that is a lofty lofty dream. Man the first act as a standalone would have been pure fire. But even so, I really enjoyed this which is shocking for me given the aforementioned darkness, violence, length (about three hours), and big time use of astrology (but honestly this character was the closest anyone has ever come to making me give it the time of day). Man, honestly though, a whole play (and book) about the possibility of animals getting revenge on hunters and poachers and the people who let them get away with it?? did *I* win a contest??
INFORMATION (NOT THAT YOU CARE SINCE IT’S OVER BUT MAYBE IT’LL HAVE ANOTHER RUN SOMEDAY SOMEWHERE SOMEHOW)
Start: about 7:52
Act I ends: 9:15
Act II begins: 9:37
Act II ends: 10:41
Barbican is the one theatre where no matter what we are always going upstairs. The stalls are my nightmare — incredibly long rows with no aisle breaks except at the ends so you could get trapped and have to get past like 30 people if you have to pee, it’s just horrendous to even think about. Upstairs in the upper circle you can have your own entrance door and no one behind you and it’s cheaper too.
The bathroom situation at Barbican continues to be the worst though, you either run down to a small one house left below the stalls or you go all the way out the theatre to like the movie theatre area. Woof.
The show uses big flashes a bunch, flashes that are blinding and upsetting. They are not upsetting in a theatrical ooh this is working for me way; they are upsetting because they are blinding. CAN. THEATRES. PLEASE. STOP. DOING. THIS.
Restaurant recommendation for pre-theatre: Korean BBQ & Vegan has moved from East London to here! Like around the corner! And they’re so fast and great. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.
New weekend theatre: An Elephant in the Garden
Today’s show is ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ presented by the Barn Theatre in association with Exeter Northcott Theatre. It streams from tonight until the 18th.
I found it kind of hilarious that I got the press night info for ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ on the same day as I discovered dozens upon dozens of Nazi apologists in a seemingly benign Reddit post. What a day for sympathizing with Germans during World War II! Of course regular German citizens were victims of their government and suffered terribly, but what fun timing. ‘An Elephant in the Garden’ is the stage version of Michael Mortugo’s book inspired by stories of zookeepers during the war, who tried to save animals destined for death in the event of bombings (they couldn’t have animals roaming the streets if their enclosures and caretakers were harmed – animals moving about freely, perish the thought). In this tale, teenage Lizzie and her mother flee on foot from Dresden after it’s destroyed, and they take Marlene, a baby elephant, with them.
Alison Reid in this two-hander (she has two hands) does a good job of keeping her energy up and keeping the story alive. Some cringey lines had us doing Chrissy Teigen’s Golden Globes face, but altogether it’s decent. The tone felt 60% for adults and 40% clearly for kids, so it’s a bit uneven. Reid’s handling of the handful of characters is nicely done. Yet the story as a whole felt a little unearned. Like the only thing I could say in response was “okay, and…” It feels like so much modern theatre and other art is focusing on Germans during the war in a purposeful attempt to not do more ‘obvious victim’ stories, but often without good reasons, trying to rely on the whole ‘we don’t think enough about these victims!’ idea but without sufficient justification for it being a play in the first place. Why am I supposed to care about this person, this family? I care about the elephant, for sure, but the reviews talking about how the elephant becomes the hero of the story, the main focus, are full of crap.
This play exists in a weird political limbo, alluding to bad German behavior but nothing tooo bad, never sharing any real political views and then all of a sudden calling Hitler an enemy towards the end just to make sure they made that clear in a CYA move that felt super obvious. There’s a bit with a horribly racist aunt and uncle, but their evilness is still kind of kid-friendly, as is the narrator’s happy obliviousness at the end, where she says ‘I like to believe my aunt and uncle changed for the good’ after the war. What, by staying silent about their bigotry? I do not like the implied message of this part. I feeeeel liiiiiike you should need to do more to prove goodness, especially if you wanted this war and loved ya boy Adolf. Do not like the message this sends to audiences, kids and the veryyyy problematic general British adult public alike. So, although this was fine, I’m a little peeved about its purpose in general.
Regardless of how much I would like a second, stronger draft that answers my questions, you have to hand it to the Barn Theatre for their content this year. They’ve been putting out so much theatre for home viewing, seemingly nonstop, and that is something to be commended. Also – they seem to acknowledge and respect that our attention spans are absolutely shot. The vast majority of their content has been around an hour – perfect for the home viewer who struggles to spend even thirty minutes watching something without simultaneously scrolling on their phone. I’m sure I could handle a longer thing – I have been watching serious movies and mostly concentrating, but it’s still a mental hurdle to even begin watching something when you know you have to concentrate for a long time. (It probably goes without saying that I am very very behind on work.) Anyway, thanks to the Barn, even though I didn’t love this one (but again, that could be in part because of all the Nazi sympathizers running rampant nowadays! Don’t let them get away with it!)
Photo credit: Farrows Creative
