“Hamilton” on the West End, Revisitedby Randi / April 12, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re talking about “The Autumn of My Springtime”, at Tbilisi, Georgia’s famed Marionette Theatre.
Well, this is a first! Puppets scare me so I haven’t really sought out puppet shows – or as the fancy people call the fancier kind, ‘marionette theatre’. But a visit to the Rezo Gabriadze Theatre in Tbilisi, Georgia (not that Georgia) (unless you thought of the former-Soviet country (then you’d be right)) is one of the must-dos when visiting that city. I don’t know about you, but when I think marionette show, I think of John Cusack creepy AF in “Being John Malkovich”, a performance that still gives me nightmares because he made Malkovich’s entire life about creepy puppets?? Malko was in the og sunken place! So sad. Or I think of the ‘I got no strings to hold me down’ bit from Pinocchio and that’s equally terrifying so yeah, I’d usually say nah thanks to marionettes with their creepy faces and their creepy small but emotive hands. But now I will first think of Rezo Gabriadze’s surprisingly poignant show “The Autumn of My Springtime” and how wonderful it is. I’m not rushing out to see more scary puppets, but I fully insist that all Tbilisi visitors do.
The Gabriadze theatre performs their marionette shows in repertory, with current offerings including 4 well received plays written and directed by Rezo himself. Everyone (niche theatre reviewers) had been talking about one play in particular called “Stalingrad” which you can imagine is important in these parts so we were initially disappointed that a showing of that play didn’t line up with our free night in Tbilisi. But now I’m so glad that that show wasn’t on because the one we saw was fantastic. “The Autumn of My Springtime”, performed in Georgian with English supertitles, tells the story of an old Soviet couple, Valram and Domna, and their…pet? friend? confidante? bird named Boris. When the show begins with Boris the orange bird saying “Two things amaze me, morality and the stars”, you know shit’s gonna be interesting.
The show begins with old man Valram, a very old man indeed, talking to his bird-friend Boris about how tired his poor heart is. The puppeteers, five adults dressed in black, soon vanish into the background and you focus only on the intricate, perfectly tuned movements of the ancient doll. Anyone who has seen “Avenue Q” knows how easy it is to go from “How am I going to focus on the puppets and not stare at the human actors the entire time?” to “Omg I forgot these were puppets”. Valram’s hands lifting to gesture despite it taking all his energy was so realistic and moving that when he soon died (like five minutes in, so not a spoiler) (actually we’re going to be giving all the spoilers but odds are you aren’t seeing this so whatevs), it was quite sad.
So Boris takes it upon himself to look after Domna, the ancient wife of Valram, now that her husband is gone and she needs to pay the bills. Boris is often referred to endearingly (or maybe grammatically; it might just be a sentence structure thing but that’s less adorable) as Boria, and little Boria is all that Domna has now (though the relationship is still unclear) (as it is a bird). Domna’s mannerisms were like Valram’s, that precise articulation that makes you forget that they’re puppets. The work was so impressive. Boris the Bird’s puppeteer had a much less precise job, since the little orange shock of feathers really just had to keep fluttering the whole time, but he was onstage for most of the show and I assume that gets exhausting.
Boria sells all of Domna’s belongings to a moneylender friend to get her going, and I’m prettayyyyy sure the moneylender friend’s name was – I shit you not – SHALOM. At first I thought the dude riding the bicycle maniacally and singing about his life and money and biking was just repeatedly shouting Shalom so the audience knew he was a jew but I realized/husband told me that he was just shouting his name over and over, because that’s less weird, and that his name happened to be Shalom. Of course it was. And of course the moneylender was Jewish. Oh mild racism.
After the super random moneylender-on-a-giant-bicycle scene where I thought hmm this is kind of nutty, it went super off the rails nutty, to places I never could have imagined, yet remained, somehow, grounded in relatable humanity. The next scene featured little Boria going to the bank and talking to his friend…the statue on the door of the bank. The statue was named Dionidas, and he was in love with a girl who danced around nearby. Like a human girl, I think. He referred to her as his flora, his fauna, and Boris saw an opportunity in his friend’s love. Boris helps Dionidas the talking statue and the human lady reconcile, so the statue is supes happy and opens the doors (his torso?) and lets his birdfriend take some money from the bank. No big deal, easy as pie. The harder part is for Boria to find a way to give the money to Domna without her knowing that he robbed a bank. (Does it count as robbing if the guarding statue lets you take the money?) So he repeatedly just ‘happens’ to find oh a 25 ruble note here, a 25 ruble note there, for Domna’s benefit. When he tells her how he found each one, he begins by saying “Oh I laughed so hard, you wouldn’t believe how hard I laughed – I found this 25 ruble note in a tree/in a bucket/falling from an airplane/pinned to an accordionist’s face” (these are all real examples). Finally Domna is like “Stop lying to me ya damn bird! I know you didn’t just find this money!” but she does get all her possessions back from Shylock so she kind of doesn’t care?
There’s no time for figuring out Domna’s position on the matter though, because Boris is ready to parrrrtayyyyy. The bird (remember, this is a bird) goes to what looks like a British Christmas party with lots of drunk worker-looking men and lots of drunk women dressed like secretaries in a place that looks like a bowling alley. They forgo puppets for this scene and have mostly giant cardboard people bopping up and down. There’s a big toast Boris and the men give and this is literally what it was: “God bless Georgian heavy industry and its women with light morals!” Then Boris may have raped a woman but it was all very unclear considering that he is a bird and the woman was a gigantic cardboard cutout and before you can say ‘wait what the hell’ the cardboard cutouts of all the women lift up their skirts to show their underwear and I was like whaaaat isssss happpppening. This was by far the most random scene I’ve seen in pretty much anything ever. Also it was unnecessary; I don’t get why it was in this show, but I guess that toast was pretty good.
But things aren’t all fun and games for little Boria, because the cops may be on to him. He did rob a bank, remember? The cops – and one giant officer on a giant horse – barge into Domna’s house since she is his main known associate looking for the little ‘sky tramp’ as they amazingly call Boris. But Domna’s like ‘I haven’t seen him in a while but also I’m not his master or anything he is a wild bird who just happens to talk and do human stuff like rob banks and drink alcohol’ and the cops are like ‘well if you see him tell him he’s in big trouble mister because he robbed a bank and also he flew into a movie theatre and tried to kiss the projection of Vivian Leigh and ended up poking holes in the screen (this is a real thing they said) and also he is causing all kinds of problems and ruckus and the people are outraged because they hate sky tramps and we need to arrest him’ and despite Boris being the only friend she has in the world, Domna doesn’t really seem too broken up about it, but I guess that’s that Soviet external show of strength that babushkas pride themselves on.
Meanwhile, Boris is out flying by the window of a woman named Ninel, yes a human woman whom he is in love with. And she’s in love with him. We learn from their conversation that they fell in love in middle school (???) when she was trying to learn and he was flapping outside the window distracting her and now they can’t be together and they bemoan the fact by talking shit about Charles Darwin. I’m not kidding. Boria yells “Damn you Charles Darwin and your ape ancestors!” and Ninel cries “What did Charles Darwin ever know about love” and we were kicking each other so hard.
But unfortunately, the cops find Boris and trap him in a bucket (“anything but the bucket!” Boris screams) and he goes to jail, the awful kind where he has to wear black and white striped clothes on his tiny bird body and it’s kind of hilarious. Domna makes the arduous climb to visit him and despite her stern demeanor she shows how much she cares in their conversation about how he’s holding up. And in this exchange comes my favorite line in the whole thing that made me laugh so hard in a quiet theatre where no one else thought this was a particularly funny line but I was there CACKLING. Domna inquires about the conditions and, wanting to protect his health from the outside chill, she tells Boris: “Ask the other prisoners if you can change beds, farther from the window – tell them that you’re sick, say you’re a bird…” SAY YOU’RE A BIRD! HAHAHAHAH I was struggling not to scream-laugh. Like I’m p sure they’d know he was a bird from the start but I loveeee using that as an excuse.
Domna’s little peasant life is rocked quite a bit from the scandal, and she tries to avoid the prying eyes and unwelcome comments from nosy neighbors. But she can’t get away from one such neighbor, a very bad man who corners her and comments on Boris: “If he had raped someone, say a sparrow, or a pigeon, or a nightingale, I would have defended him, saying it was a crime of passion. But stealing money from the communal funds is unforgivable.” Man aliiive this is some commie bullshit! It reminded me of a North Korean movie I once saw that repeated lines like “all praise our great leader for allowing this” and “we are all important parts of the machine that makes our great country turn” or whatever crap like that from dictatorships. Yeesh.
Anyway, the day of Boris’s trial arrives, and since he’s hundo p guilty the big decision is whether Domna should be punished as an accomplice. Boria is adamant that his friend is innocent, even though she benefited from his crime, because she didn’t know and she’s just a poor old lady who will die soon anyway. The prosecutor is really mean and scary but luckily the judge – a GIGANTIC cardboard cutout of an old man in a double-breasted cardigan, because that’s what judges wear while sitting on the bench in any country – lets Domna go. Boris is sentenced to a life spent in a window display in a hunter’s shop, which is RULL disturbing but I guess better than the gulag? Boris asks for permission to give a speech before beginning his sentence and the judge allows it, and the speech he wanted to give was just to scream his lungs out at the mean prosecutor and it was SPELL-BINDING. The best part by far was when Boris A BIRD yells at him “I’LL SHIT ON YOUR FATHER’S GRAVE 23 TIMES YOU CROSS-EYED SCUM!” true story!
Okay I know I’ve shared all absolutely ridiculous or hilarious bits of this play and you’re probably thinking ‘um didn’t you say that this was moving and poignant” and it really was despite well everything I’ve been talking about. Through all the jokes and things I found to be funny even if they weren’t jokes, they were telling the story of a woman who had no hope in the world except this friend, who risked and gave up everything to help her survive. And to top that all off, he wasn’t human, yet he was the only one to show some humanity. And then he got kind of out of control and broke tons of laws but isn’t that the most human part of all? The ending packed a punch, with Boria in his shop window, passing his time, when the officer comes to visit and tells him to go mourn for Domna because no one else is. Yes, Domna has died, and Boris needs to pay his respects at her grave, which is next to Valram’s, where we began. Boris, however, is shot when he approaches – whether randomly, or by the hunter whose shop he sits in, or by the cops who may have set him up, it’s unclear (I’m going with the cops though) – and he struggles with all his might to make it atop his friends’ graves before his body gives out. It’s pretty dire, heartbreaking, as he makes it to his resting place with the people he cared about most. Boris says some deep stuff about humanity in his final moments as well as throughout the show, and despite being a bird, he nails the injustice and the sadness and the need for someone to care about you. And it’s quite lovely. AND he gives us incredible quotes that we’ve been shouting all week like SAY YOU’RE A BIRD! and “I’LL SHIT ON YOUR FATHER’S GRAVE 23 TIMES YOU CROSS-EYED SCUM!” Anyway, go see puppet shows if you are ever in Tbilisi. Amazing work, Rezo.
AUDIENCE
All Russian tourists who were pretty okay, although we prepped for it to be the worst audience ever since it was a tourist thing so anything better than that was a nice surprise.
THEATRE
The theatre is a semi-small single room upstairs from the nice wooden lobby. There are only two bathroom stalls but that wasn’t a problem for me because I had THE BEST SEAT and you need to get it if you go – B1. The second row, but the first seat on that aisle for some reason sticks much further out that all the other rows so I was closest to the door! Heyoooo! They also had this amazing No Cell Phone symbol in the corner of the ceiling, which I believe every single theatre should have.
Lobby
best seat ever
best sign ever
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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!
Broadway’s New Revival of “Carousel”: Mediocrity is Busting Out All Over
It’s Theatre Thursday! We’re talking about “Carousel” at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre.
When the current revival of “Carousel” was announced last year, everyone was beside themselves with excitement. With a cast including Jessie Mueller as Julie Jordan, Joshua Henry as Billy Bigelow, and opera diva Renee Fleming as Nettie Fowler, it ranked among the most incredible Broadway news in recent memory. Finally a phenomenal leading role for Josh Henry! Jessie Mueller never disappoints! Renee f-ing Fleming! This cast singing that wonderful, much-loved score? Hopes were insanely high all across the Broadway community, and of course such expectations could not go unfulfilled, right? I mean, this is “Carousel”, one of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most beloved works and the musical that many (including Time Magazine in 1999) consider the best of the 20th century. Bring this shit on!, we all thought expectantly. Well, a word in that previous sentence applies to this production more than I ever could have guessed.
Despite having some pretty tough-to-fork-up material, director Jack O’Brien does just that, by presenting a lackluster, perplexing version of the musical that is somehow completely devoid of emotion. Is boredom an emotion? Devoid of most emotions. I heard a lot of the complaints on the boards that this production cut a few songs and scenes for no good reason and made some changes that die-hard fans of the musical objected to, but since I had actually never seen a full-fledged production of “Carousel” before, I figured that I wouldn’t know enough to be upset about any changes. So I went in assuming that I would adore this production. I did not. Turns out there is plenty wrong that doesn’t require intense fandom or deep knowledge of the original to recognize.
From the start, I knew someone had some ‘splaining to do. It’s forking called “Carousel” because a lot of the important action centers around one at a carnival (and life is like a merry-go-round too I guess such symbolism) and so when a Broadway production doesn’t actually have a carousel on stage – or virtually anysets at all – you’re asking for disappointment. True, the contraption that came down from the rafters – a sort of cardboard origami light fixture that expanded into a very pretty circle that acted as the suggestion of a carousel (or at least the top section of it) – was an impressive moment of stagecraft and it is a pretty lil bit of paper funtimes that would be excellent decoration in a backyard barbecue, but as the main set piece in a Broadway production it made my stomach hurt like Chidi when making a small decision. It doesn’t help that the show I saw before this was “My Fair Lady”, which has some of the most impressive and imposing set design I’ve ever seen, but seeing the barest of stages here at the Imperial was beyond dissatisfying.
The show begins with the Carousel Waltz, sort of an overture and an introduction to the setting and the story. We’re in coastal Maine in the late 1800s (the show was written in 1945), and we see Billy Bigelow exaggeratedly miming his duties as carnival barker (the “step right up!” job) as the ensemble dances for more than 10 minutes. Choreographer Justin Peck of the New York City Ballet is one of the most famous and esteemed, so in this production it’s clear that O’Brien just let him run wild with SO MUCH BALLET. If you’ve read my past reviews of musicals and ballets, you know that I always want more and more ballet in anything. Even full-on ballets sometimes haven’t had enough dancing for me. This production has too much. It’s not that it isn’t impressive; the problem is that it rarely is doing the job that dance should be doing in musicals: helping to tell the story. Instead, all the excessive ballet seems to be there just for its own sake instead of to further the story.
The first singing comes from Carrie Pipperidge, a role I know well because Audra McDonald won her first Tony for it. The Tony-nominated performer (who is likely to win it this Sunday) playing the role now, Lindsay Mendez, was out, so she must have been pretty darn sick or exhausted considering I was there two weeks before the awards, when voters are coming out in droves. Her understudy, Scarlett Walker, was very impressive, but I am disappointed to have missed probably this production’s best shot at an acting Tony. Anyway, Carrie sings to her best good friend Julie (Mueller) “You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan” and you’re like this is how the show starts, mmkay. Julie was just yelled at by Mrs. Mullins, the mean old widow (Margaret Colin (Eleanor Waldorf from ‘Gossip Girl’ lolz)) who runs the carousel, because Julie let Billy put his arm around her when she rode the carousel. Mullins is bitter that no one’s putting his arm around her and also it’s the 1800s so I guess it was improper but it all seems a bit silly. After Carrie tells Julie how queer she is, Carrie sings about her new engagement in one of my favorite songs, “Mister Snow”, which is her fiancé’s name. At this point Julie hasn’t really sung and you’re like…is Carrie really the main female character? In this production, she really seems it. Even with an understudy on, Carrie shone much brighter than Julie and seemed to have MUCH more to do. Somehow O’Brien made Julie Jordan seem like the supporting character. That takes effort to make the leading lady seem so unimportant and inconsequential, especially when you have the usually divine Jessie Mueller playing her. But Jessie seems incredibly miscast here. The thought she always puts into her characters seems to be misleading her here (along with her director) and the performance is simply awkward.
Mueller’s unsuitability for this role is amplified like someone was shouting about it with a bullhorn when Billy comes to join the girls. Joshua Henry is a great performer and I’ve loved many of his performances. This is not one of them. Individually, Mueller and Henry are miscast, but thrown together, with all their lack of chemistry and tension and really anything, they’re a disaster. They just don’t work as a couple. I’m sure it must be an extremely big ask to turn down even one of these esteemed performers when you could have both, but that kind of decision making is required for the good of a show.
Even aside from the poor casting and zero chemistry, this production suffers from…the story of “Carousel”. It’s outdated and problematic, and it really doesn’t hold up in modern times, and instead of refocusing the story or using different direction techniques to reframe it, this production presents the old story straight. After the girls sing, Billy comes to join them and he tells off Mrs. Mullins and subsequently gets fired. He doesn’t seem to care. Carrie tells Julie that they better get home before curfew at their mill-workers quarters or whatever, but Julie wants Billy to think she’s cool, I guess, so she gets fired too. So these two miscast fools who just lost their jobs so they could stay out a little later and ‘flirt’ (talk to each other with zero emotion) tiptoe around awkwardly and sing one of the best musical theatre songs, “If I Loved You”, beautiful but with zero emotion. It’s a real shame that this song is done such a disservice by being given to this pair. Not the miscast Mueller and Henry – they sound lovely and would even if singing the phone book – but the pair of Julie and Billy. They’re revered as one of the important love stories in musical theatre, but really, they and the story of “Carousel” are a mess. A timid, clumsy girl meets an aggressive, cold man at a carnival and gives up everything because she wants him to love her. After they get fired, they…get married?! And Julie gets pregnant. Billy may claim he does eventually but he never, ever shows any sign of it, instead abusing Julie verbally and physically after they marry because he’s so sad he can’t find a job. Julie always defends his actions, understanding that it’s so hard for him to deal with the pressure of being a provider for his family. The biggest problem of all with this revival is that it doesn’t do anything to reframe their relationship in the modern day and age, and presents all these sentiments as not the products of their time, which they are, but as good enough to stand on their own with no new way of looking at it. It’s presented as fine for Julie to excuse her abuser’s actions because he can’t find a job. It’s not. In the second act, when Billy hits another female member of his family and she defends it as feeling like a kiss instead of a slap, it just lies there again. It’s weird.
If you don’t know the rest of the story, I’ll tell you real quick. After they get married and Billy yells at Julie a lot and hits her and everyone is DEPRESSED ALL THE TIME, Billy’s friend Jigger cooks up a hare-brained scheme for the two of them to rob a rich man. Oh and kill him. Billy at first says nah thanks but after he finds out he’s going to be a father and has nothing to give his kid, he decides to do it. Kids are expensive. And Jigger is super persuasive – Amar Ramasar was one of my favorite parts of this production, mostly because he is given the enormous dance solo that actually feels intentional. Amar is absolutely electric in his dancing and it was the most exhilarating scene of the entire production. Well, tied with Billy’s “Soliloquy”, when he thinks about what having a son, or a daughter, will be like. You know this song; it’s the big “My boy Bill” moment. This is where Henry absolutely shines – it’s helped by the fact that he’s alone on stage and just singing, which is what he does best. His version of this 7-minute epic song, one of the best and most challenging for men in musical theatre, is nearly flawless. He’s great here. It’s a shame that the rest of the performance doesn’t get the chance to live up to it (and given how great he is here, I do blame the director and other aspects and not Henry). His final decision, as he sings “I never knew how to make money but I’ll try! I’ll try! I’ll try! I’ll go out and make it or steal it or take it! Or die!” is riveting and you know one of those things is going to come true. Spoilers (for a 1945 show?? really?): it’s the last one. Jigger’s plan goes awry and the mark fights back long enough for cops to arrive, and instead of getting arrested or killed by cops, Billy kills himself. Julie is distraught, and Billy goes into the afterlife. He’s met by the Starkeeper, one of heaven’s administrative assistants or what not. The Starkeeper tells Billy that he has a chance to go back to earth for one day, to try to redeem himself since he has not earned enough points to get into heaven yet. Listen, Billy is an asshole. I don’t know what a mean abusive jackwagon can do in a day to redeem himself enough for entry into heaven, but I do know that what he does – give a pep talk to his now-grown daughter (time moves suuuuper fast on earth when one is off of it) – does not seem like it should be enough, especially since the tiny pep talk comes after he hits her. Yes Dream Ghost Billy goes back down to earth, watches his daughter do the famous Louise Ballet to introduce her character and her troubles, he meets his daughter, doesn’t tell her who he is obviously because she’s be like um what, but he still F-ING HITS HER, and then at her high school graduation he tells her to believe the words of “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, and that’s enough for him to get into heaven? PUH. LEASE. Also, not to beat the dead horse that is my review of this production, but the Louise Ballet was so upsetting for me. It was actually ugly. I was so disappointed. I get having the dance convey the character’s awkwardness as an outcast teenager, but there are ways to do that without having the dancing be so hideous and disjointed and just unenjoyable. At least it was overly long too.
So yeah, while the score is gorgeous and well sung, the book of “Carousel” is not something that such weak directing and producing can help with when revived today. Fortunately, there are enough highlights in this production to make watching the show bearable and often enjoyable, even through my exasperation. As I said, Ramasar’s Jigger is a highlight, as is Henry’s outstanding “Soliloquy”, even if the rest of his performance left me freezing cold. Carrie Pipperidge and Enoch Snow (our understudy Scarlett Walker and the always great Alexander Gemignani) seem like the main characters because they are the only energetic, charming people on that stage (well, at least until Snow achieves his desired level of success and lets it go straight to his head). And our Nettie Fowler is a consistent bright spot on this bare stage, as Renee Fleming is doing a bangup job in her first Broadway musical role, and seems to be carrying the entire show and company in her warm, loving arms. Her “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is as gorgeous as you’d expect, and although she didn’t say anything about the hucka the bejeepers, her “June is Busting Out All Over” was a joyous romp. She even made the weird song “That was a Real Nice Clambake” (real song title) enjoyable. So yeah, there is a lot wrong with this production, and it’s disappointing that we weren’t given a revival for the ages like we are with the current “My Fair Lady”, especially since it will be a while now before we’ll get another one. But there are some good things about this production (thank god), so it’s not a total loss.
INFORMATION
The front row of the rear mezzanine has a big barricade tight
at your knees with a heavy curtain hanging down it, so you can’t just jump up
and go like I thought you could when I bought the seat. If you are limber, you
are able to slither through the bars and through the curtain’s onto the floor
below like I did instead of waiting for my row to get up because IDGAF what
anyone else thinks (they thought I was bananas though for sure).
Run time is about 2 hours and 40 minutes.
STAGE DOOR
The ensemble comes out pretty quickly and everyone is very
friendly (except Eleanor Waldorf, actually, who was kind of a b word to me).
Renee Fleming actually took selfies which was amazing and she was absolutely
lovely. I called it after an hour waiting for Henry and Mueller, the longest
I’ve ever waited, but I could not defend wasting any more time waiting for
them. I mean I was going to lie to them anyway, so it’s for the best.
