Jerusalem with Mark Rylance: Biggest of Star Turns in Pertinent AF Playby Randi / June 23, 2022It’s Theatre Thursday! We’re still doing those when we remember!
Okay yes The Minutes, Tracy Letts’ latest Broadway play, has recently closed, and I was just too busy to write about it in time for you to read the review and still be able to go ‘oh I want to see this, I will go to Telecharge.com right now and be able to magically use that shithole of a website from 1991 and actually successfully checkout before the show closes and/or I die from frustration.’ Sorry, but hey, what a weird show! If it was still open, I would have recommended checking it out but not paying too much.
The Minutes is a real-time-plus-flashback-also-in-real-time local council meeting (omg I’m forgetting what they are called in USA, what’s happened to me…borough meeting? it’s a small baby government of people who think they have a lot of power and honestly have more than they should) where the new guy is trying to play catch-up with WTAF is going on with this group. Noah Reid – Patrick from Schitt’s Creek – is beyond perfectly cast as the earnest newbie who you can tell makes dad jokes and is friendly, committed to doing his job well, and eager to correct people’s grammar (‘sometimes it’s who!!’).
Right from the start, you get a bad feeling about the council head Tracy Letts, who is just as incredible an actor as he is a writer. Even without the ominous thunderstorm, you’d know from his first scene where he’s kibbutzing politely over the refreshments with the new guy not to trust him, and when he asks the new guy what his baby daughter’s name is, you get the urge to yell “don’t tell him!!” It’s so subtle but he conveys that sinister sense that things aren’t what they seem.
Noah’s commitment to doing his job means not letting Tracy (we are screwing character names) and the rest of the council skirt past the whole ‘incident’ that happened the week before, the one that drove a fellow member to not show up tonight. Someone mentions it in passing, and Noah’s like ‘well what happened last week, remember, this is my first meeting?’ and everyone’s like ‘FORGET IT LA LA LA WE DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING’. So Noah has Jessie Mueller (NOT SINGING AT ALL) read the minutes (drink!) of the meeting from the week before, which is his right. She reads them and when it gets to the key part, apparently there’s a transcript she made that’s attached as an appendix. Guys, there’s a whole lot of talk about the technicalities of minutes and appendices and transcripts that the Tony-winner likes to do just for completeness sake, and it sounds like it would be a long sigh of a boring mess, but it’s actually gripping. You’re like YES READ THE F-ING TRANSCRIPT, THE APPENDIX IS PART OF THE MINUTES, OF COURSE IT’S PART OF IT!
What comes to light about the conflict the week before focuses on the man who isn’t at the present meeting, the council member with the conscience. Turns out he wanted the council to officially recognize the town’s terrible racist history, the truth that everyone ignores, that’s the opposite of what’s in the popular founding mythology and the town song. The real story is, as we guessed, full of slaughter of the Native population. All of this sounds very believable and without a doubt is the same story for many American towns. But taking this play’s treatment of this subject beyond the recognizable and into the symbolic is the strength of the connection this town, and this council, has to their fake history. Their unwillingness to give up their fake history is treated more like a necessity, a powerful all-encompassing metaphorical spirit that goes beyond what you’d expect in real life, but reflects the strength these false histories have over us. People like this cling to them when letting go would mean also losing a sense of balance in the world, the world they/we created where we benefit from the lies.
So they WILL NOT let them go! The play ends super weird, like war paint and hooting weird, and it’s a little unbelievable that Noah would fold so easily, but maybe I’m projecting. And sure it’s not (hopefully) representative of what happens at your average council meeting, but the sentiment at play is pretty much what’s going on in every town in America. We love a Tracy Letts joint to make us feel bad about the world!
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Uncle Vanya at the Harold Pinter: Boy those Russians Know From Debilitating Depression
It’s Theatre Thursday during a pandemic, which means I’m going to rave about a show that you can no longer see because THIS! WORLD! IS ON FIIIIIIIRE.
Man alive, Chekhov needed a friend, am I right? Christopher Durang could have easily made a less-funny Chekhovian play called Vanya & Sonya & Depression & Sadness and we’d all get it. Actually, it should still be funny, because Chekhov, the master, infused his gloomy, depressing (if you drink every time I use this word in this piece you will get through quarantine like a champ) classic Uncle Vanya with just as much humor as sadness, and just as much heart as melancholy, just as much humanity and sad beauty as grief. The current London production of Uncle Vanya is a fantastic, nearly flawless revival, one of the many heartbreaking casualties of this strange time of isolation. Toby Jones in the titular role redefines how fully felt this unforgettable character can be, and he leads a pretty great cast in this magnificent production.
If you don’t know Chekhov’s classic of countryside despair, Uncle Vanya tells about a man named Vanya who lives with his niece Sonya in a crumbling country estate where every day looks the same and their future looks bleak but they just go through each day doing their paperwork and drinking their vodka and, like, sighing, I guess. But excitement enters with the unwelcome arrival of Vanya’s brother/Sonya’s father Aleksandr (played by the wonderful Ciaran Hinds), a famous professor who is lauded as a genius but is really just an annoying and ignorant blowhard and my favorite part was when Vanya tried to shoot him and my least favorite part was when he missed. Aleksandr has a hot new young wife Yelena (played by understudy Afia Abusham when I saw it, who was decent but didn’t seem to quite get her footing enough to make an impression among this stellar cast) and Vanya is like OH DIP A HOT WOMAN AND ONE I’M NOT RELATED TO I HAVEN’T SEEN ONE IN YEARS! And he falls in love with her but Yelena is like mmm pass and falls instead for the hot town doctor who pays ever increasing visits since her arrival. Sadly, Sonya, who is good (and Natasha’s young and Andrei isn’t heeere) but plain is like SUPES in love with hot doctor (Richard Armitage, magnetic) but he is not attracted to her in the least even though he is as lonely as everyone else and it would be nice if he and Sonya saved each other from a life of dreary solitude but hey he just doesn’t love her you can’t force it so instead he ALSO falls for Yelena (who is MARRIED, my dudes) (okay to an old buffoon but STILL). So everyone is super unhappy and lonely and depressed because they know this is their lot in life and it will never change. Russians, man.
Toby Jones’s Vanya is, well, everything. He so completely and perfectly inhabits Vanya’s despair with every joke and gesture and gaze, a despair that informs everything Vanya says or does though he tries to keep it bubbling under the surface, at least part of the time. It’s heartbreaking that he has lived a life so barren and knows that there’s nothing he can do to change it (I mean, I’m optimistic that if he really wanted to, he could change his life, but Russians man). Jones also infuses his Vanya with a sad but incredible humor, because I admit nothing is funnier than self-hate, it’s true. His seemingly nonstop movement, even at rest, and elastic facial expressions added to the creation of a dynamic Vanya for the ages.
In a cast this starry, it’s surprising and impressive that despite Toby’s complete encompassing of his character, the standout is young Aimee Lou Wood as Sonya. I can’t think of a more efficient performance in recent times, with so much done with comparatively little. With only a few lines at the end of the first act, she broke my heart, and continued breaking it throughout the rest of the show. Her sad monologue that ends the show had me riveted. Husbo thought the delivery was painfully labored and it took him out, but for me, I needed all that time to breathe in between words because I was still so shaken by her final interaction with the doctor, an interaction so subtle and so exquisitely performed that I wanted to gasp but instead cried. She’s an incredible young actor that I can’t wait to see more of. Her performance is a huge part of what makes this production so beautiful, so heartbreaking, and so – one more for the road – depressing.
INFORMATION
After a 7:30pm start (probably 7:33 or so, happily not as late as most shows), Act I ended at 8:44pm and Act II at 10:12, so note that it is 12 minutes longer than it says on the official show website which might not seem like a lot to you but it’s enough to be wrong.
Vanya’s annoying mother is extra annoying because they have her smoke a lot. She has like 4 lines but it was important to establish that her character smokes?? MISS ME WITH THIS UNNECESSARY LUNG DAMAGE PLEASE.
This was supposed to run until May 2 but the world is on a break from life so I suggest reading the play and perhaps acting out all the parts with the people you are locked down with. If you are locked down alone, do all the parts yourself like when I sing “Moscow” from The Great Comet it doesn’t make you look or feel crazy no sirree I promise totally a normal thing to do.
It’s a Mad Mad Mad “Mad House” with Bill Pullman and David Harbour
One of the most infuriating shows I’ve ever seen ends this weekend, so be sure to catch it but take your anti-anxiety pills first! Or just walk open-mouthed first through Goodman Fields; it’s basically a fishbowl!
Theresa Rebeck REALLY knows how to get my blood pressure up! With those annoying English major vibes in ‘Seminar’, those darn stamps in ‘Mauritius’, that insane idea that Katharine McPhee would ever be a serious contender to play Marilyn Monroe in ‘Smash’, boy oh boy is she the master of making me feel like Larry David! In ‘Mad House’, it’s her biggest success yet, at least according to my vitals. And, amazingly, the anxiety I suffered was not just because leading-man-in-movies-I-grew-up-on Bill Pullman is now playing the FATHER of men who are OLDER THAN ME. Time, what is it!
Bill Pullman plays the piece of shite father of David Harbour, a man who I always assumed was about the same age as Bill but I guess ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ was longer ago than I thought. Bill as this father is a really really bad man, so you aren’t too sad that the action is about how he’s dying. He’s ungrateful to his son who is only trying to care for him as he dies, his son who feels things too strongly and has suffered with mental illness and forced treatments in the past for, ostensibly, seeing the world as it really is. Literally David’s entire life is caring for his father, as he has nothing else going on, but his father and siblings just brush him aside for being crazy and worthless and it’s INFURIATING.
As we meet David and Bill (character names here would just confuse you, right), a new home nurse for Bill is arriving. Her name is Lillian, and she is Black, so you know your anxiety is probably going to rise even more because it’s obvious that most of this Pennsylvania family is the reason the commonwealth isn’t safely blue. Lillian is so good, played by Akiya Henry, a necessary relief of a calming presence without getting too close to the (very popular lately especially for therapist characters!) trope of the Black woman magically there to solve the lead white characters’ problems. Her too tragic backstory made her easy to connect with and care for, which this show needed since everyone else makes you want to scream.
That ‘everyone else’ being David’s rich prick of a brother Nedward and his beyond monstrous sister Pam. They show up to determine who gets the big house when Bill dies, and like, they are very obvious about it. Bill knows that’s why they’re there, David knows, everyone knows and these two bellends are just fighting about how to make sure David doesn’t get anything, because he’s crazy (he’s not) (really) and they are so unbelievably greedy and unfeeling that it’s often hard to reconcile them with any semblance of real human beings. They talk openly about how to finagle things so they can get David committed again, like they did before, and my god, the impotent frustration of having other people able to do such things and decide you’re insane to the point that you don’t have agency over your own life or ability to show emotions is SO UNFAIR, the system is really so broken.
David’s deceased mother’s assessment of him – that he’s full of anger because he sees how the world really is – REALLY RESONATED with me, especially as we see more and more that his siblings, mainly his sister, have zero zero zeroooo redeeming qualities. Pam, in particular, has no arc, she is just a straight line that falls off a cliff at the end (in terms of visualizing the line being graphed; she doesn’t actually fall off a cliff, though I would happily eagerly excitedly push her off one). She is honestly the worst human I’ve ever seen depicted onstage. I feel like even Mitch McConnell has more redeeming qualities, which is saying a lot since he is the devil’s stomach cancer. Like he might poke his little turtle head out of his little shit-stained turtle shell and watch this play and be like, ‘fuck this bitch SUCKS’. She really does.
Nedward, the brother, is potentially? maybe? is this true? even worse because he’s a coward who seems to sometimes know the difference between right and wrong and care about that difference (unlike his sister), but he won’t stand up and do anything about it. And isn’t KNOWING BETTER but not ACTING BETTER even though you are ABLE TO the worst of all? Ned is Switzerland (and no, Switzerland wasn’t ‘neutral’ and if you still believe those lies you probably need to take a grown-up history class).
Bill, in the end, thankfully shows tiny little hamster-ball-sized (I just rewatched ‘The Heat’) signs of redemption at the end, unlike his POS daughter, which you’re like ‘thank f-ing GOD’ about because it’s hard to just hate and hate and hate so many people, it’s EXHAUSTING, please VOTE IN NOVEMBER. He was very convincing, and good I guess, but I just cannot accept that we are at the stage in this timeline where BILL PULLMAN is playing the father of a man older than I am. I mean, Bill Pullman. our romcom lovable doof! Sleepless! While You Were Sleeping! His being allergic to everything aged him (no they made him act and look suuuupes older than he actually is (I think/hope) so at least we have that to relieve our anxiety).
I’ve never identified more with a character than with David Harbour’s VERY angry, screamy, frustrated beyond belief with the state of humanity Michael (oh I guess I do remember his character’s name! a miracle), who he portrayed very well mainly by being David Harbour, who is just magnetic on the stage. Everyone thinks he’s insane because he gets loud and angry but he’s usually completely justified! Everyone around him is a piece of shit! His two siblings just want to lock him up so they can sell the house and split the profits in half instead of in thirds. They are literally garbage MONSTER people, so greedy and evil that they will commit someone to a (from the sounds of it, not fun uh TALL!) mental institution where he will continue to be gaslit. Sure he’s not perfect and he could use anger management classes but that’s not the same as needing to be involuntarily COMMITTED because he sees how f-ing horrible his family is! This f-ing sister kept his dying mother from seeing her favorite son one last time just because she was jealous that he was the favorite! OF COURSE SHE LOVED HIM MORE THAN YOU YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT YOU BLOOD-SUCKING MONSTER.
The evilness of the sister was so outrageous – and eventually so without any comeuppance or reprisal or remorse or any consequences or reckoning – that ultimately it was unsatisfying. Just too much frustration. I really actually thought/hoped that Michael might end up killing her. (There’s mention in the beginning of guns; Daniel says he suspects Michael has guns (it IS rural PA after all (also Ned at one point says Pennsylvan-eee-ya which is when I realized the actor wasn’t actually American (also dropped a ‘the’ before saying hospital) so otherwise he did a bang-up job (I think that is British for good), otherwise great accent work))) and Michael denies it, and I thought that that would come back in the end to show he actually DOES have guns, but he doesn’t and it didn’t, because as husband sadly said to me after, ‘the Chekhov play was LAST night.’
INFORMATION
As with most West End theatres, the facilities are a joke, with 3 ladies toilets for the upstairs (unsure of the downstairs sitch, wouldn’t be surprised if this was the only toilet for the whole theatre) and nooo room to stand anywhere on any level. L6, in the last row in house (the only circle) is IN THE AISLE so no one is in front of you and you have a clear runway to the bathroom, it’s just a splendid seat (although the people in the 5 person row with us had clearly only been to the panto before because they acted like this was the muhfucking children’s section – singing along when David sang Danny Boy???? saying “MMM HMMM” when the only black actor on the stage made a good point? total yikes, white boy.)
Also 6 pounds for programs. Y’all need Playbill over here yesterday.
