‘Bayside! The Musical’ in London: Did They Even Have ‘Saved By The Bell’ Here?by Randi / March 13, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about ‘The Birthday Party’, Harold Pinter’s play currently playing at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre (I know) until April 14.
I’ve said in the past that I am not a huge fan of Harold Pinter plays, but I keep seeing them because Elaine Stritch tells me to. I just don’t understand them. They never make any sense and I always leave the theatre going, ‘…what?’ And it’s not just me being stupid; apparently, that’s his thing. Pinter got his jollies by giving audiences vague hints at plot and truth and then letting them decide what’s what. Which I guess is a valid thing for you to do if you have a purpose, but I never know what that purpose is. It’s not like I’m having deep epiphany-like thoughts when trying to figure out wtf was happening. But, anyway, it turns out that FINALLY, you can enjoy a Pinter play even though you don’t know what’s going on, as I learned from London’s new production of “The Birthday Party”. There’s a lot of crazy going on and there’s no real sense of what’s true or even who is real, but it’s a really enjoyable, provocative time.
I’m not saying I like Pinter now or anything, merely that his work doesn’t have to be synonymous with agony. And maybe I was just won over by how cute it is for a Pinter play to be showing at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It’s so cute. If the situation were a doggo I’d pat its head. I wondered for a minute if from now on they could only produce Pinter plays in that house because otherwise it would feel like backpedaling but I just looked it up and the next thing coming in after ‘The Birthday Party’ leaves is ‘Cirque Berserk!’ so, no. Anyway, TBP was the first Pinter show I didn’t need a drink after (I don’t drink but you get what I mean) (well I did require ice cream and so we got soft serve and I liked it and I loved it) and it’s for a few reasons: 1. The direction by Ian Rickson felt well considered and correct for conveying the bits of the story. The cast was phenomenal, but the casts have been great in all the Pinter plays I’ve seen, so I think it comes down to the direction here. 2. This play is actually interesting. Unlike past shows, I didn’t despise all the characters and I actually cared about some. The only Pinter play I’ve seen twice (Broadway and West End) was ‘No Man’s Land’ and I wanted all of those characters to die, or at least suffer torture, maybe like having to watch their play. But here, I cared about poor wobbly-brained Meg and her nice, benign husband, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to poor sad-sack Stanley. Well at least at first. If he’s real. Let’s get down to it.
TBP (not The Bad Place (well maybe The Bad Place)) tells the story of Meg and Petey, an old couple living in a quiet English seaside town, running a boarding house. Petey works by the shore, setting up deck chairs for the tourists and Meg makes him bowls of cornflakes and inquires incessantly as to whether they’re ‘nice’, as that’s how British English describes food and I think no matter how long I live here I will never stand for it. As a long-married couple, they seem boring but inoffensive, and Meg’s unremitting questions about the weather and whether it’s ‘nice’ like the cornflakes and whether the fried bread she made Petey is ‘nice’ are annoying but in a ‘oh you old biddy’ type way and not in a rage-inducing way. They’re harmless, bland, so they seem at first. Petey is played by Peter Wright, and I just love when actors play characters with the same name. It makes me laugh to imagine costars saying ‘Oh hey Pete – oops, I mean Pete’ it’s nonsense don’t worry about it. Meg is played by the great Zoe Wanamaker and she is all kinds of unstable genius. Her state of mind, at first easily brushed aside as that of an old biddy, is really the centerpiece of the play, and the question of whether she’s a trustworthy commentator on her surroundings and the people around her shockingly morphs into whether everything we saw was just in her head. And Zoe conveys that with restraint and precision.
The boarding house has one lodger, a man named Stanley who is as peculiar as he is disheveled. Played by the outstanding Toby Jones, Stanley raises more questions than he or anyone in any Pinter play will ever answer. He’s been staying at Meg & Petey’s house for a year now, after working as a concert pianist all over the world…or maybe just all over England…or maybe he just played once. Meg treats him like a son, forcing him to wake up before too late, making him all his food, &c. At first I thought it was her son, and so you wonder about their relationship and then you wonder about Meg’s ‘offhand’ comment about how she always wanted a son. Does that explain why she treats him like this? or does that hint that he’s a figment of her imagination? Every little comment in this play is there for a reason. We will never be able to say for sure what they all add up to, but they definitely suggest that you can’t trust anything people say.
Everything changes when two men in business suits arrive, two mysterious men whose work and purpose for being in town are unknown and yet sinister. There’s the clear boss of the operation, Goldberg, played by Stephen Mangan who is usually hilarious but is here is terrifying. And sometimes hilarious but mostly terrifying. He’s Jewish and they mention that a lot. His colleague is an Irish man named McCann (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), who is an unfrocked priest (from the village of Kamenka?), maybe, and seems nice but can be equally frightening when he gets riled up, which seems right for a priest. The two men take up a room at the house – which Petey is surprised that Meg has available for guests, which is surprising to us because we’re like aren’t you a boarding house? Stanley asks the men why on earth they would choose to stay here. Well, it’s a boarding house, right? Meg says repeatedly that it’s ‘on the list’ for seaside accommodations. Stanley scoffs and says that it isn’t a boarding house, but no one really makes anything of that.
The first act flies by and is really flawless. Well, it’s only 45 minutes so it better fly by, but still every bit felt necessary and enjoyable. The second act is a lot longer, an hour and a half maybe, and it’s a lot darker. Meg decides to throw Stanley a birthday party now that they have the men to be guests, along with neighbor Lulu (Pearl Mackie). Stanley resists and quite often tells Meg and the others that it’s not his birthday, that it’s actually next month, but no one seems to hear him or if they do they don’t mind. Meanwhile, Goldberg and McCann’s business is ever more clouded and yet more menacing, and they seem to know Stanley. And sometimes Stanley seems to know them. They have similar memories from their pasts and yet they deny them. Goldberg and McCann’s first names change at every mention. And while you first consider Stanley to be the unwitting victim in whatever game the men are playing, he morphs at times into the predator, albeit in an unknown fight. Everything feels up in the air and uncertain and nothing will stick as truth.
The actual birthday party is even stranger, with Meg too drunk to notice that the two men are psychologically torturing Stanley, who at one point freaks out and then tries to strangle Meg. It’s unclear who turns the lights out or why, but when they come back on it 100% looks like Stanley has killed Lulu. It’s undeniable and so I think it’s purposeful, for you to be so convinced of something only to find out later that that’s false, to further the entire theme of this play. (Pearl herself said at stagedoor that everyone always says to her ‘I thought you were dead!’ so we are clearly supposed to think that.) Every few minutes you think you figured out what’s happening, who’s good, who’s bad, but then that would all get turned on its head and you’d be back to square one.
It’s the kind of drama that makes you hold your breath a lot of the time, because there’s no predicting what is going to happen next and how bad it’s going to get for someone. And because so much is unknown and unclear, it’s overall very chilling. We don’t know what’s happening, the characters don’t know who each other are or what they want, and everything can very quickly turn even darker. While there’s a good deal of humor, that often makes everything scarier. Nothing like watching the terrifying Stephen Mangan laugh at something and then instantaneously become more threatening than before. Although my favorite part of the show is a very non-threatening joke, when McCann tells his boss, “You’ve always been a true Christian”, and Goldberg replies “…in a way.” But the best moment of perfect directing and acting and menace all around comes when Stanley erupts at Goldberg and yells at him for being a ‘dirty joke’, but Toby Jones holds the ‘j’ on joke in a way where it’s clear Stanley was about to say ‘dirty Jew’. It’s brilliantly done.
In the last scene, things sort of fell apart for me, simply because we don’t know what’s happening or why or where the men are taking Stanley. And all the unknown elements started to annoy me instead of inspire me to think more creatively or whatever Pinter wants us to do. It just got to be a bit much. But Zoe as Meg brings it home, as she reminisces about the party the night before, the utter shitshow of a party that led to attempted murders and other illegal activity, including the abduction of Stanley to who knows where. But she doesn’t know or care, she just knows she was the belle of the ball. And it’s framed exactly the same as the opening scene, just her talking to her placating husband, and you wonder if any of the intervening scenes actually happened or if reality, whatever that is, has been just this the whole time, just the two of them living their humdrum lives, talking over cornflakes with no one else around.
If I were watching this at home I would have been screaming the entire time. What are you doing! Who are you! Why wouldn’t you comment on what JUST HAPPENED? But as a whole, the play is really remarkably well done, and the acting is stellar. There are a few moments where you question why on earth an actor chose to deliver a line that way, not the way you would have expected it (often with Mangan’s character), but it makes a certain odd sense that everything even down to the delivery would be uncomfortable and often off-putting. A part of me wants to shake the ghost of Pinter and be like what the ffffffff happened but you know what, I think I’m okay just wondering about it. Or maybe I’ve reached that point in my Pinter experiences where I just don’t care anymore.
INFORMATION
This production is playing at the Harold Pinter theatre until April 14. The theatre is a mess and is the one most in need of a refurbishment. The lobby and entrance area is so small that not many people can actually fit there, which is for sure a fire hazard. If you are sitting in the stalls, sit in the area at stage right (house left) because that’s closer to the good toilets (they are like right there if you are in rows E-H, which we were yayyyyy) and the exit.
AUDIENCE
No phones, thank god, but somehow a LOT of talkers who didn’t understand that they shouldn’t be talking to their companions the entire time and like, NOT in a whisper??? Wtf is wrong with people.
STAGE DOOR
Everyone but Zoe came out and signed and took pictures! They were very nice. Actually Zoe may have come out but I bounced after a little because I needed the aforementioned ice cream. It’s not a bad walk to the vegan ice cream shoppe Yorica! so I strongly recommend going there afterwards. I love their soft serve. I love all soft serve but theirs is particularly good because it has that bland lightness I enjoy. What were we talking about? Oh theatre. Go see theatre.
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3 Great Productions You Probably Missed: HMS Pinafore, Once on this Island, Dogfight
It’s Theatre Thursday! We’re celebrating a FANTASTIC week of theatre-going by looking at not one, not two, but THREE great-to-fantastic shows…that all sadly closed on Saturday. However, they’re all established shows that we should see future productions of fairly soon.
H.M.S. Pinafore at Wilton’s Music Hall
Whenever a Gilbert & Sullivan classic comes to Wilton’s Music Hall, we’re there. Well, whenever anything comes to Wilton’s we’re there, because they’re our neighbors. Hey neighbors! But their G&S productions are without fail hysterical, in a way that really lets the comic masterpieces shine. Thanks to the Opera Della Luna company, the recent H.M.S. Pinafore continued the trend, with their game cast showing off their perfect comedic timing.
With an ensemble of just 8 players, many changing in and out of several roles, Opera Della Luna energetically tells the tale of the poor sailor in love with the captain’s daughter, the captain’s daughter who loves him back but is promised to an admiral, the absurdly funny captain who never (well, hardly ever) uses bad language, and all the confusion and hilarity that abounds aboard the ship.
For those of you unfamiliar with the 1878 comic opera, it takes place on a docked British warship. An older woman named Buttercup comes on board to sell some ‘wares’ which no matter what the context or show or painting always looks like a basket full of ribbon, which is like, not what I’d expect sailors to need on board. Ralph Rackstraw, a sailor in the fleet, comes on deck and pretends to buy from Buttercup and then doesn’t, which as someone who ran a vegan bakery stall on Brick Lane for six months I can tell you is really shitty behavior. Nothing more frustrating. Anyway Ralph is like ‘no I don’t need ribbon but I LOVEEEE JOSEPHINEEEE’ who is the captain’s lovely daughter (with the best voice in the cast). The other sailors are like ‘avast ye matey, she’s the captain’s daughter so she can’t be with you.’ And then the captain, Captain Corcoran, comes on deck and sings his famous song about how he ‘hardly ever’ does a bunch of stuff and is HILARIOUS and I wish that I could find the name of the actor from the ODL website but it’s incredibly confusing and I think only has the 2000-era cast lists for this show up because I googled the names and they don’t look like who I need the name of, guys, so please tell whoever plays Corcoran how great he is.
The captain talks to the old lady Buttercup and they def have some history or future or something going on, but there’s no time for that because the Admiral that Josephine’s set to marry comes aboard (never seen so much coming and going on a ship) with his sister, his cousin, and his aunt and he sings a forking hilarious song introducing himself and his sister, his cousin, and his aunt. The Admiral is a bumbling fool who despite being in a very high position in the Queen’s Navee knows nothing about the sea or sailing, like most men in power. He also thinks the Captain should say ‘if you please’ to his sailors whenever giving orders. The Admiral and the Captain are comedic gold and definitely the standouts here, although they do have the two best roles.
After the Admiral, Sir Joseph, sings about how British sailors are any man’s equal – except, of course, his own – Ralph is buoyed by the thought and confesses his love to Josephine. She loves him back, but knows her duty is to marry the goofy old man so JUST LIKE NIKKI K HIGH-KICKING IT DOWN AT THE MOULIN ROUGE, she pretends not to love Ralph back which is like RULE #1 of farcey romcoms and lies IN ORDER TO SAVE HIM. HURT HIM, TO SAVE HIM, as the wise and scary Jim Broadbent told Nikki K before she didn’t win the Oscar she should have won.
Ralph threatens to kill himself due to his broken heart and his shipmates are like ‘eh them’s the breaks matey’, surprisingly cool with the very bad plan, but the luckily Josephine enters again and sees him and is like NO DON’T I LOVE YOU, and while I’m sure there are examples of this very shitty plot device in older works, for now I’m going to blame Pinafore for giving weak misogynists this ploy in their arsenal, that if a pretty woman doesn’t love them they should threaten to kill themselves so they know it’s ‘their fault if they die’ which is SOME REAL MISOGYNIST GASLIGHTY BULLSHIT.
My only real complaint with the story though; the rest is so fun and ridiculous.
In Act II, Sir Joseph complains to the captain that Josephine hasn’t officially accepted his proposal yet and he’s like wahhhh just make your teenage daughter marry my old ass alreadyyyyy, and the Captain suggests that maybe she’s overwhelmed by his lofty rank and feels he’s too far above her. Sir Joseph says pish posh and sings a song arguing that love ‘levels all ranks’, which he doesn’t realize, of course, is arguing that Josephine and Ralph should be able to marry despite their different ranks. DRAMATIC IRONY.
Josephine and Ralph plan to leave the ship and elope but the Captain catches them and is unmoved by their protestations of love, saying – historically noteworthy because omg he said like the worst word ever uttered on stage at that time – “why damn, it’s too bad!” I KNOW! bad. Sir Joseph is horrified by the bad language and confines the Captain to his quarters. Sir Joseph asks the crew what happened to make the Captain CURSE SO BAD, Ralph spills the beans about him and Josephine, which Sir Joseph does NOT like, and so he orders Ralph to be loaded with chains and taken to the brig, which is shipcute for jail! We definitely need a completely random deus ex machina to save Ralph from this fate right about now guys! Oh good, here comes one in the form of a revelation from random lady Buttercup: She steps forward and reveals to the crew that many years ago, she practiced BABY FARMING, and she cared for two babies, one of low birth, one upper-class, and she mixed the babies up. OKAY IT SOUNDS LIKE A WAR CRIME, this baby farming, but what of this now? Well the two babies – are you ready – were RALPH AND THE CAPTAIN. So CLEARLY the big revelation is supposed to be ‘oh wow, Ralph is actually of noble birth and the Captain is the lowly one, so their troubles with the whole marriage issue are over if Ralph chooses!’ but the real revelation is HOT FUCK RALPH IS THE SAME AGE AS THE *FATHER* OF THE WOMAN HE LOVES OMG THAT IS GROSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. So Ralph is like 20 years older give or take the era-appropriate standard deviation than the girl he loves?? Blech. Josephine RUN/swim.
So instead of like taking a beat and realizing how stupid the whole idea of noble blood is and how they’ve lived in the ‘wrong’ lives long enough to prove that, instead RALPH AND THE CAPTAIN SWITCH POSITIONS. Ralph literally puts on Corcoran’s uniform, says “I’M THE CAPTAIN NOW”, and Corcoran becomes a lowly sailor. WAT. Didn’t the captain earn his captaincy? Like wtf. Obviously, Josephine, the daughter of a sailor, is now too low for the Admiral to marry, so she and Ralph are cleared for takeoff despite their truly gross age difference. And now, since Corcoran is a lowly sailor, he can up and marry…Buttercup! LIKE WTF. SHE JUST RUINED YOUR LIFE. And why did it take her so long to share? What an asshole!
Anyway it was amazing.
Dogfight and Once on this Island at the Southwark Playhouse
If anyone, for whatever bad reason, was worrying about the future talent pool in Britain, there’s no need to worry. The British Theatre Academy’s two fantastic youth productions that played the Southwark Theatre in August were both brimming with impressive young talent, up to the task of handling two challenging – and two of my all-time favorite – shows. We all know how overprotective I can be of things that are my faves, and how attached I am to past great productions. My review of the recent Broadway revivial of Once on this Island is pretty much me saying OMG OMG OMG THIS IS AMAZING OMG OMG OMG OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW MAGICAL IT’S AMAZING MAGIC for like 4 pages.
But despite my high standards for my (not mine) truly beloved show, the BTA yoots blew me away. Despite the smaller space, budget, experience level, everything, the yoots put on a show that was just as magical and moving and TRIUMPHANT as I could have hoped. Lee Proud’s clever direction captured all the thrills that elevate the story, from the Ti Moune switch (which never fails to make me sob, even when I’m just listening to the cast recording and know it’s that part) to the charming representation of the chirping birds. His equally fantastic choreography brought to mind the greatest parts of Camille A. Brown’s work on Broadway (which should have won the Tony), with powerful and vigorous ensemble dance numbers the most compelling and exciting.
What was done with this small space and barely any props or set truly begs for another longer run, or a transfer. Since I saw the Broadway revival, I’ve read the infamous words of Brandon Victor Dixon condemning this show, and I was prepared to see what he meant regarding the issues in the story, now that I was enlightened. But such a lovely, blissful production made it hard to agree with him. And sure, as a white person I’m not the person to comment on whether the show’s attempt to comment on issues of race fail and it becomes itself racist. But the audience, filled with people of all backgrounds, all jumped to their feet at the end faster than I’ve ever seen, weeping and cheering. It’s hard to find fault with a show that does that.
And that ensemble, man alive, the talent on display was so uplifting. Everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives (especially my favorite boy ensemblist who was just SO young and SO happy, and I was just so happy for him) and that kind of joy was infectious. The standout performer for me, who as a casting agent I’d be keeping an eye on, was Aviva Tulley, who played the goddess of love Erzulie. Her natural ease and grace suggested a performer of much more experience. Others in the cast, like Ti Moune (the very talented Chrissie Bhime) and Euralie, will need to work on melting into their characters more and not obviously Acting, but for a youth ensemble they’re all ahead of where you’d expect.
We found it really interesting that both our Ti Moune and our Rose, in Dogfight, both frequently tended to speak the ends of sung lyrics for emphasis instead of acting through their singing, which is definitely one key technique to work on. But like our Ti Moune, our Rose (the roles are double cast and nowhere in the programme or theatre was our show’s cast listed, which is a shame, because I’d like to give her her due) was otherwise very impressive. She gave an added nerdy awkwardness to Rose’s self-consciousness that was different from any other production of Dogfight I’ve seen, and it worked. (It reminded both of us of Ben Platt’s Evan Hansen tics.) I was also greatly impressed by our Eddie. With Dogfight, no set is required (and as this one was in the Southwark’s “Little”, the black box room, there was none), but the story needs shrewd and careful direction to sing as it’s meant to. Dean Johnson’s direction definitely let the story land properly, as did the talent. It could be because we were all so close in that tiny room, but I was struck more than ever at how the soldiers’ reprise of their anthem was being sung out of heartbreaking desperation, a need to convince themselves that they were special and that what they were doing was guaranteed to garner them a homecoming parade, because if they stop thinking that for one second, they’ll realize they’re probably going to die. This was so well done, making you feel for the soldiers even though they’ve already established that they’re mostly bad people. And that’s the beauty of Dogfight, telling so effectively a character-driven story that lets you recognize the humanity in people that you might hate, and maybe their ability to change, which felt incredibly relevant in today’s culture.
Hopefully another production, or another run of these productions, will be coming to London again soon, because it was quite wonderful to see such strong work.
The Haystack at the Hampstead Theatre: What Modern Theatre Wants to Be
If you still take your iPhone into the bathroom with you, then this is the show for you! Man alive you won’t be doing that shit anymore. The Haystack is the fantastic new play that all modern theatre wants to be. It’s fascinating, provocative, gripping, and best of all completely original. Nearly every minute of this show felt warranted and every plot twist had me simultaneously gasping (quietly) in surprise and smiling at how well done it was. I have been waiting for a new play (or a revival, I mean see my last theatre review) that was this close to being flawless.
The Haystack is not, as I originally guessed just when I heard the title, a farm show that’s sort of like Oklahoma! but without music. Instead, it’s a thrilling look at modern society and how our government watches all of us, for ‘good reason’, so they say. Told in flashback after what seems like it’s going to be for sure a tragedy, the story centers on the work of Neil (Oliver Johnstone, I mean, so good) and Zef (Enyi Okoronkwo, airtight performance) at the GCHQ, which is like the UK version of the NSA. It’s the government agency where they spy on you, pretty much, with technology that is mind-boggling. Neil and Zef are best friends, video game aficionados, and incredible spygame wizards (hackers? Are they hackers? I mean probably also?). When the two get assigned a particularly important case that falls under the terrorism unit’s purview, everything changes, and not in the fun ‘last song of Waitress’ kind of way. The subject of their surveillance, a young journalist named Cora (excellent Rona Morison), captures Neil’s attention, and then he starts to Adam-Sandler-in-Uncut-Gems it up real hard (i.e. make bad decisions).
The play depicts a huge issue – government’s alarming incursions into civilians’ privacy – while telling an interpersonal story about how the larger actions of the government agencies controlling our society play out on the small scale. As someone who remembers when the USA passed the Patriot Act (super typical America to call something so insidious such a delightful name), I appreciated how they used this fictional tale to remind us that we should be horrified at what rights to privacy we have given up without a fight, in a way that worked without being overbearing.
What’s great about this show is that, with Neil’s central performance, you know he’s doing bad things but you understand why, and I can’t really fault his reasoning for first going down this path (for continuing it, sure, lots of bad moves, but the initial part, I probably would have done the same). By establishing that empathy with him, you feel the anguish of his conflict, and his stress, my god the stress. Johnstone’s Neil is a guy we all know and like and root for, and he handles the weight of this role wonderfully, as does Morison’s Cora, fully fleshed out like an actual real person, with flaws and heart and vulnerability. The rest of the small cast is equally strong and believable.
I was impressed with how thrilling the first act was that I even said “even if the second half of this is the second act of Oslo it’ll still be overall a good evening.” But that second act, and its two twists in particular (I seriously would never have guessed), is brilliant and harrowingly formed. That line about how if we turned off our devices, the agencies tracking us would be blind made me want to go build a cabin in the middle of nowhere and just live off the land, which if you know me is a huge feat (and probably a mistake). This show will stick with me for a while. Also, it’s all well researched. My date has a masters in computer security and worked at similar agencies I shall not name, AND knows all the gaming references they make in the show, to things like godcodes and other things that I don’t know about because I went outside as a teen. Aside from a few things that he found out were simply UK vs. USA differences, the content was pretty much unassailable.
The look of this show holds its own with this text. With impeccable direction by Roxana Silbert (female directors do exist, hallelujer!) and captivating movement from Wayne Parsons (the shrewd blocking was one of my favorite aspects), the show visually impresses despite a minimal set. The projections, of all the various tracking and video captures, are also well done, and Ivo could learn a few things in When Projections are a Good Idea.
The only thing that makes me mad (besides government corruption and control) is that the playwright, Al Blyth, is making his professional full-length debut with this. His first full play and it’s this good. What an asshole.
Okay now that you’re finished reading it, let’s all go destroy our smartphones (you first).
INFORMATION
With about a 19:33 start, the first act finished at 20:47 (I was so captivated I didn’t even notice I went past my bladder time limit so that’s really quite something). After a 20 minute interval, Act II finished at 22:19.
THE HAMPSTEAD THEATRE BAR SELLS VEGAN SAUSAGE ROLLS AND THEY ARE REALLY GOOD! They also have vegan focaccia. WIN.
My seat J1 was absolutely perfect – you want to be house left/stage right to be nearest Door 1 which is right next to the bathrooms, and rows around G-K are closest to the door. Also this particular seat doesn’t have one behind it so you don’t get anyone kicking your chair.
This audience was faaaairly okay. Someone only set their phone to vibrate and they didn’t hear when it rang but we did, of course. VIBRATE IS NOT SUFFICIENT.
