Hamilton in London: I Have Criticisms But They Don’t Matter, It’s Hamilton and It’s Amazingby Randi / January 4, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday y’all! Today we are talking about “The Twilight Zone” at London’s Almeida Theatre, which is playing until January 27.
I cannot do scary stuff. I don’t mean horror movies; that’s a whole other level of scary that isn’t even on my radar. I mean like, anything dark or kind of about death. The Good Place is an exception because it’s the best show ever and you kind of forget they’re dead because they do such normal things and have such normal lives, kind of. Normal not-lives, I guess. But I hate Halloween, mostly because there are skeletons around. That’s the kind of thing I mean. I’m currently writing this from Paris and I don’t know what to do tomorrow because I think I’ve gone to every tourist attraction in the city – except the Catacombs, because no way jose! It’s Halloweeny down there. So what I’m saying is, I wouldn’t necessarily be the first person to go to a theatrical adaptation of The Twilight Zone, because scary and dark and not full of rainbows. But the operative word in there is theatrical, and so I had to. And guess what – while it wasn’t great, parts of it were very good and I enjoyed it a lot despite the skirr.
I cannot do scary stuff. I don’t mean horror movies; that’s a whole other level of scary that isn’t even on my radar. I mean like, anything dark or kind of about death. The Good Place is an exception because it’s the best show ever and you kind of forget they’re dead because they do such normal things and have such normal lives, kind of. Normal not-lives, I guess. But I hate Halloween, mostly because there are skeletons around. That’s the kind of thing I mean. I’m currently writing this from Paris and I don’t know what to do tomorrow because I think I’ve gone to every tourist attraction in the city – except the Catacombs, because no way jose! It’s Halloweeny down there. So what I’m saying is, I wouldn’t necessarily be the first person to go to a theatrical adaptation of The Twilight Zone, because scary and dark and not full of rainbows. But the operative word in there is theatrical, and so I had to. And guess what – while it wasn’t great, parts of it were very good and I enjoyed it a lot despite the skirr.
The Twilight Zone currently at the Almeida Theatre (right across from an Ottolenghi! Have a pure happy veggie meal before questioning the universe) was adapted from the Rod Serling (I keep wanting to say Sterling) television series by playwright Anne Washburn, who did a very interesting take on an apocalyptic future Mr Burns story a few years ago that my husband loved. I didn’t get to see that, so i was excited to see what she did here. I think her hands were a little tied creatively because, due to using famous specific episodes, there was only so much she could add or change. What we get is pretty straightforward episode play, and even though I don’t remember ever watching the TV show, I guess I did because I remembered some storylines.
Because Anne didn’t have much to do or add, I imagine that her creative juices were stymied and she wanted to let them flow or at least put some sort of stamp on the show. And unfortunately, that led to the worst part of the show: There are too many long, unnecessary monologues that ruin the pace and honestly caused me to roll my eyes a lot, which I hate doing because i have dry eyes. These vignettes, no matter how brief, stand on their own and often resonate with the human condition; that’s why they’ve persisted in the culture. You don’t need to present the story and then have someone drone on for five minutes about how that did indeed reflect the human condition and the universe is so unknown and peculiar and wow isn’t this all interesting. Kind of ruins it.
But really that’s the only purely negative thing I can point to. This adaptation is a very decent time in the theatre, and very funny at times as well. In fact, in the beginning, I thought it was going to be a kind of tongue-in-cheek sarcastic presentation of the Twilight Zone, maybe poking fun at it, because there was so much of that kind of humour. It starts with the sketch (is TTZ a sketch show?), one of the few I remembered, where a bus stops in a diner where there are rumours of an alien being among the small crowd, and they can’t find out which one it is and they’re scared they’re all in danger. I really enjoyed this opener mostly because at one point, they all hide under the bar, and then when they got back up, I could have sworn that there was an actor among them who was not there before, like that the alien wasn’t even one of the original crowd but just now snuck his way in and I was like dammmmn they aren’t even calling attention to that that was just so subtle and brilliant! But, my husband didn’t notice any of that, so maybe i just miscounted. i like to think that the direction was that subtly detailed though so I’m gonna stick with my account. Anyway, one of the actresses, Adrianna Bertola, is very short, like shorter than my mom and Kristin Chenoweth um opposite of combined, and so she played all children characters and it was kind of hilarious! And everyone EVERYONE kept unwittingly pulling cigarettes out of their pockets or sleeves, and then once noticing, saying ‘I don’t smoke…’ So I thought it was going to be that kind of show, and I think it would have been a little better if it was indeed all hilarious mockery of the form.
But it wasn’t, and most of the rest of it was quite serious. Sure there was the very brief ballet-of-subjectivity when a society of disgusting faced monsters unwraps a surgery patient’s head to find that she is HORRIFICALLY DISFIGURED i.e. without one of those masks and just her plain human-faced self. So that was funny. But that came sandwiched in between much more troubling and dire skits (is it a skit show) like the one about a woman, played very effectively by Amy Griffiths, who meets a strange young child (again the short adult) who warns her about a strange man that she sort of remembers, only for the woman to realise a bit too late that the man is a murderer from her past and the child was her young self. SO CREEPY. And the one where a couple hears their daughter yelling for them but she isn’t in her bed, she’s been sucked into some kind of Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar time void in another dimension and it’s really sad because the dog gets into the warp zone too (but they make it out thank dog). There were so many creepy ones like that, including one that i didn’t like because it made me so uncomfortable: It featured John Marquez (related to Mimi?) as a man who was terrified of going to sleep because he was tortured in his sleep in a circus-like setting (i mean that’s torture anytime) and a tantalising woman (Lizzy Connelly) who lures him, I don’t know, further into sleep? trying to kill him? and she has scary gray and white hair and leads the ensemble in this INCREDIBLY weird masked dance (I hate masks so scary) which was straight out of that weird play Bette Midler’s character was in in Beaches, her show-within-the-show that wasn’t about Otto Titsling. So yeah, a creepy masked dance is bad enough for me but to make it a story about how sleep is a bad thing you need to avoid or else you die??? Literally the meanest story you could tell me. My husband, on the other hand, thought this was great, and especially enjoyed the weird ass dance so take that for what it’s worth.
A great creepy ass ‘episode’ featured here – and told quite effectively in a broken up manner, as many of the stories were interspersed among each other, weaving in and out – told of three military heroes who keep disappearing, not only from space but from collective memory, one by one. As one would leave, the remaining would ask a third party what happened to x, and the third party would be like x, who’s that? And the remaining would be like ‘you know the guy in this front-page newspaper story with the picture of the three of us’ and throughout the telling the newspaper photo would change from three people to two people to one. It was so well done; i didn’t even notice them grabbing different papers, but it was incredibly effective. And kind of funny too, at times, if you think of it as a comedy instead of focusing on how the idea of it is horrifying.
The stories that stuck with me the most, however, were the ones that seemed most human and most realistic, with no aliens and little sci-fi as you’d stereotypically think of it. Whereas before seeing this show I would have guessed that TTZ was most in its element with those kinds of alien-y or weird-metaphysical-phenomena stories, after seeing this i understand that the genius of it comes in these more realistic, normal-human stories that ask very unnerving questions about the plain human condition that we all experience. For example, one that I keep thinking about is a take on a theme that we’ve seen repeatedly in many different art forms, but it doesn’t make it any less upsetting. In this one, an astronaut is going to be sent on a mission that will take at least 50 years, but he will spend most of it on his ship in a cryo-chamber so he won’t age. Unforch, he falls in love right before his mission, with a woman (a great Franc Ashman) who would be left on earth to age naturally, and so when he leaves, they are saying goodbye to their relationship for good. Then 50 years pass and the astronaut has returned to earth. yippee! But oh no: Of course, humans being terrible at communicating but wanting to make nice gestures, the woman decided to cryo-freeze herself the entire time so that when her man returned, they would be the same age. But of course, humans and so on, the man decided NOT to take his cold nap in his ship and instead spent the 50 years ageing as normal. Ughhhh you guysss! It’s so sad right! Kind of like a Magi twist kind of thing but sooooo much worse i mean homegirl’s hair would grow back but you can’t un-age! FFS i’m still kind of really mad about this one and it’s not real. Just so sad to think about! Remind me that it’s not real!
The other one that made the biggest impact and I thought was impeccably done was a sketch about racism in America. In this story, it was the height of nuclear-war fears (now?) and, so sad, a bomb was coming right to the heart of America. A neighbourhood of families dealt with the news and their decisions in a tense situation that made all kinds of brutal thoughts come out among them. Only one of the families has a bomb shelter, and the rest fight about who should get to join them in their tiny hole. They start understandably enough, a young white couple arguing that they should get to go because they have a baby, things like that. But as time to fight for survival runs out, they lose all restraint and the gloves come off and they resort to all kinds of race-based arguments. “My people were here first” vs. “Well my people literally built everything you see around you.” “You can’t love this country like I do because you weren’t born here” vs. “Well I actually had to take a test to become a citizen, you were just an accident of birth.” Things like that. I was riveted, honestly, and so impressed by how much it really reflected the innerbelly of racist America. I particularly loved when the white woman so perfectly yelled about how the minorities in the room, especially the black couple, didn’t deserve to be the ones to survive because they hadn’t been there as long and they don’t love America like the whites do and yada yada bullshit like that, which she immediately followed with “Now I don’t have a racist bone in my body…” and I GUFFAWED because it was just too too perfect. Oh white American women we have SO MUCH work to do. This scene was just too accurate with the things that come out when you think you have nothing and everything left to lose, and too spot-on with how the various groups in America think and talk. And on top of all that, it portrayed really realistic survival instincts and things that people would very believably resort to if this kind of event arose, which I really really hope it never does.
So The Twilight Zone, made theatrical, had some very poignant and provocative moments. Some of them worked very well in the theatre, but some I couldn’t help but think probably gained nothing from the transfer off the small screen. The racism scene worked well because it was so theatrical, but others clearly would have been equally or more effective on TV. I wonder what the selection process for the adaptation involved. It’s always hard to compare adaptations of the same work across different platforms, and for something so famous and well-known, this translation, while not great, is solid and pretty entertaining, even if it has too many scary masks (and those cringey monologues) for my taste.
INFORMATION
The Almeida is a cool spot in Islington, so far from the normal theatre district, which is nice. However, it is a very cramped lobby, and they don’t open the auditorium up for way too long so everyone is kind of squeezed in vying for standing space, which is ludicrous. They need to just open the doors earlier. Also, tickets are a little expensive for it being essentially an experimental hip downtown-style theatre joint (except uptown, but I’m using NYC speak).
Because Anne didn’t have much to do or add, I imagine that her creative juices were stymied and she wanted to let them flow or at least put some sort of stamp on the show. And unfortunately, that led to the worst part of the show: There are too many long, unnecessary monologues that ruin the pace and honestly caused me to roll my eyes a lot, which I hate doing because i have dry eyes. These vignettes, no matter how brief, stand on their own and often resonate with the human condition; that’s why they’ve persisted in the culture. You don’t need to present the story and then have someone drone on for five minutes about how that did indeed reflect the human condition and the universe is so unknown and peculiar and wow isn’t this all interesting. Kind of ruins it.
But really that’s the only purely negative thing I can point to. This adaptation is a very decent time in the theatre, and very funny at times as well. In fact, in the beginning, I thought it was going to be a kind of tongue-in-cheek sarcastic presentation of the Twilight Zone, maybe poking fun at it, because there was so much of that kind of humour. It starts with the sketch (is TTZ a sketch show?), one of the few I remembered, where a bus stops in a diner where there are rumours of an alien being among the small crowd, and they can’t find out which one it is and they’re scared they’re all in danger. I really enjoyed this opener mostly because at one point, they all hide under the bar, and then when they got back up, I could have sworn that there was an actor among them who was not there before, like that the alien wasn’t even one of the original crowd but just now snuck his way in and I was like dammmmn they aren’t even calling attention to that that was just so subtle and brilliant! But, my husband didn’t notice any of that, so maybe i just miscounted. i like to think that the direction was that subtly detailed though so I’m gonna stick with my account. Anyway, one of the actresses, Adrianna Bertola, is very short, like shorter than my mom and Kristin Chenoweth um opposite of combined, and so she played all children characters and it was kind of hilarious! And everyone EVERYONE kept unwittingly pulling cigarettes out of their pockets or sleeves, and then once noticing, saying ‘I don’t smoke…’ So I thought it was going to be that kind of show, and I think it would have been a little better if it was indeed all hilarious mockery of the form.
But it wasn’t, and most of the rest of it was quite serious. Sure there was the very brief ballet-of-subjectivity when a society of disgusting faced monsters unwraps a surgery patient’s head to find that she is HORRIFICALLY DISFIGURED i.e. without one of those masks and just her plain human-faced self. So that was funny. But that came sandwiched in between much more troubling and dire skits (is it a skit show) like the one about a woman, played very effectively by Amy Griffiths, who meets a strange young child (again the short adult) who warns her about a strange man that she sort of remembers, only for the woman to realise a bit too late that the man is a murderer from her past and the child was her young self. SO CREEPY. And the one where a couple hears their daughter yelling for them but she isn’t in her bed, she’s been sucked into some kind of Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar time void in another dimension and it’s really sad because the dog gets into the warp zone too (but they make it out thank dog). There were so many creepy ones like that, including one that i didn’t like because it made me so uncomfortable: It featured John Marquez (related to Mimi?) as a man who was terrified of going to sleep because he was tortured in his sleep in a circus-like setting (i mean that’s torture anytime) and a tantalising woman (Lizzy Connelly) who lures him, I don’t know, further into sleep? trying to kill him? and she has scary gray and white hair and leads the ensemble in this INCREDIBLY weird masked dance (I hate masks so scary) which was straight out of that weird play Bette Midler’s character was in in Beaches, her show-within-the-show that wasn’t about Otto Titsling. So yeah, a creepy masked dance is bad enough for me but to make it a story about how sleep is a bad thing you need to avoid or else you die??? Literally the meanest story you could tell me. My husband, on the other hand, thought this was great, and especially enjoyed the weird ass dance so take that for what it’s worth.
A great creepy ass ‘episode’ featured here – and told quite effectively in a broken up manner, as many of the stories were interspersed among each other, weaving in and out – told of three military heroes who keep disappearing, not only from space but from collective memory, one by one. As one would leave, the remaining would ask a third party what happened to x, and the third party would be like x, who’s that? And the remaining would be like ‘you know the guy in this front-page newspaper story with the picture of the three of us’ and throughout the telling the newspaper photo would change from three people to two people to one. It was so well done; i didn’t even notice them grabbing different papers, but it was incredibly effective. And kind of funny too, at times, if you think of it as a comedy instead of focusing on how the idea of it is horrifying.
The stories that stuck with me the most, however, were the ones that seemed most human and most realistic, with no aliens and little sci-fi as you’d stereotypically think of it. Whereas before seeing this show I would have guessed that TTZ was most in its element with those kinds of alien-y or weird-metaphysical-phenomena stories, after seeing this i understand that the genius of it comes in these more realistic, normal-human stories that ask very unnerving questions about the plain human condition that we all experience. For example, one that I keep thinking about is a take on a theme that we’ve seen repeatedly in many different art forms, but it doesn’t make it any less upsetting. In this one, an astronaut is going to be sent on a mission that will take at least 50 years, but he will spend most of it on his ship in a cryo-chamber so he won’t age. Unforch, he falls in love right before his mission, with a woman (a great Franc Ashman) who would be left on earth to age naturally, and so when he leaves, they are saying goodbye to their relationship for good. Then 50 years pass and the astronaut has returned to earth. yippee! But oh no: Of course, humans being terrible at communicating but wanting to make nice gestures, the woman decided to cryo-freeze herself the entire time so that when her man returned, they would be the same age. But of course, humans and so on, the man decided NOT to take his cold nap in his ship and instead spent the 50 years ageing as normal. Ughhhh you guysss! It’s so sad right! Kind of like a Magi twist kind of thing but sooooo much worse i mean homegirl’s hair would grow back but you can’t un-age! FFS i’m still kind of really mad about this one and it’s not real. Just so sad to think about! Remind me that it’s not real!
The other one that made the biggest impact and I thought was impeccably done was a sketch about racism in America. In this story, it was the height of nuclear-war fears (now?) and, so sad, a bomb was coming right to the heart of America. A neighbourhood of families dealt with the news and their decisions in a tense situation that made all kinds of brutal thoughts come out among them. Only one of the families has a bomb shelter, and the rest fight about who should get to join them in their tiny hole. They start understandably enough, a young white couple arguing that they should get to go because they have a baby, things like that. But as time to fight for survival runs out, they lose all restraint and the gloves come off and they resort to all kinds of race-based arguments. “My people were here first” vs. “Well my people literally built everything you see around you.” “You can’t love this country like I do because you weren’t born here” vs. “Well I actually had to take a test to become a citizen, you were just an accident of birth.” Things like that. I was riveted, honestly, and so impressed by how much it really reflected the innerbelly of racist America. I particularly loved when the white woman so perfectly yelled about how the minorities in the room, especially the black couple, didn’t deserve to be the ones to survive because they hadn’t been there as long and they don’t love America like the whites do and yada yada bullshit like that, which she immediately followed with “Now I don’t have a racist bone in my body…” and I GUFFAWED because it was just too too perfect. Oh white American women we have SO MUCH work to do. This scene was just too accurate with the things that come out when you think you have nothing and everything left to lose, and too spot-on with how the various groups in America think and talk. And on top of all that, it portrayed really realistic survival instincts and things that people would very believably resort to if this kind of event arose, which I really really hope it never does.
So The Twilight Zone, made theatrical, had some very poignant and provocative moments. Some of them worked very well in the theatre, but some I couldn’t help but think probably gained nothing from the transfer off the small screen. The racism scene worked well because it was so theatrical, but others clearly would have been equally or more effective on TV. I wonder what the selection process for the adaptation involved. It’s always hard to compare adaptations of the same work across different platforms, and for something so famous and well-known, this translation, while not great, is solid and pretty entertaining, even if it has too many scary masks (and those cringey monologues) for my taste.
INFORMATION
The Almeida is a cool spot in Islington, so far from the normal theatre district, which is nice. However, it is a very cramped lobby, and they don’t open the auditorium up for way too long so everyone is kind of squeezed in vying for standing space, which is ludicrous. They need to just open the doors earlier. Also, tickets are a little expensive for it being essentially an experimental hip downtown-style theatre joint (except uptown, but I’m using NYC speak).
OH OH this will have nothing to do with your experience, but I must share: The man sitting two seats away from me (I was next to his wife) PEELED AND ATE AN ORANGE DURING THE SHOW. WHO DOES THAT. WHOOOO DOES THAT. It was the strongest smelling orange ever and even though I like oranges I got nauseous. WHO DOES THAT OMG CAN PEOPLE PLEASE TRY TO BEHAVE BETTER IN THE THEATRE FFS?
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Doctor Faustus at Shakespeare’s Globe: Marlowe’s Old Classic Fails to Move Me
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Doctor Faustus, playing at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse until February 2.
I find it quite amusing that the current production of Christopher Marlowe’s classic Doctor Faustus is playing at Shakespeare’s Globe, because I like to imagine the misters M and S (not to be confused with M&S) as terrible rivals who spat whenever they heard the other one’s name, reviled at the very thought of him. So Marlowe would be like WTF give me my own theatre for my plays; they’re just as important! Spoiler: they aren’t. I’m sorry and I really feel for Rupert Everett in Saving Private Shakespeare but Chris’s works do not have the everlasting genius or impact that Billy’s have. His Doctor Faustus was written in the late 1500s right before he died, and it seems more like a last-ditch effort to show the gods that he agrees that hell is bad oh please don’t send me there, instead of it being interesting dramatically. There’s no emotional journey or impact or sense of consequences – even though it’s about being doomed to hell. It’s pretty surprising that literally the biggest stakes imaginable appear so humdrum. This production has attempted to liven things up by employing the hottest production ploy of the season – switching the gender of the lead role – but it adds nothing.
I find it quite amusing that the current production of Christopher Marlowe’s classic Doctor Faustus is playing at Shakespeare’s Globe, because I like to imagine the misters M and S (not to be confused with M&S) as terrible rivals who spat whenever they heard the other one’s name, reviled at the very thought of him. So Marlowe would be like WTF give me my own theatre for my plays; they’re just as important! Spoiler: they aren’t. I’m sorry and I really feel for Rupert Everett in Saving Private Shakespeare but Chris’s works do not have the everlasting genius or impact that Billy’s have. His Doctor Faustus was written in the late 1500s right before he died, and it seems more like a last-ditch effort to show the gods that he agrees that hell is bad oh please don’t send me there, instead of it being interesting dramatically. There’s no emotional journey or impact or sense of consequences – even though it’s about being doomed to hell. It’s pretty surprising that literally the biggest stakes imaginable appear so humdrum. This production has attempted to liven things up by employing the hottest production ploy of the season – switching the gender of the lead role – but it adds nothing.
The theatre space (the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (the indoor theatre at the Globe)) is very cool – uncomfortable as all get-out, but cool – with its intimate seating and old-fashioned candlelight and lack of any set, making the experience as close as possible to how it would have been 500 years ago. Unfortunately, the play feels like it belongs in that time as well, not relevant today. Nothing clicked for me emotionally, so I felt a bit checked out the entire time. It could be because it was meant to affect audiences 500 years ago not emotionally but spiritually, for a group of religious followers to have their own beliefs reaffirmed. It could be because the gender-switch of the main role was undernourished. It could be because the whole concept, the whole cause of the dramatic problem, is bullshirt. Or it could be because as soon as the name Mephistopheles was spoken, I started singing in my head “Ohh well never was there everrr a cat so clever as magical demon Mephistopheles.” (Was Mister Mistoffelees supposed to evoke this infamous demon?? Because it does. (I mean who doesn’t just think about hell-related things all during Cats anyway, am I right.))
My biggest problem is with the plot and how it plays out. (So that’s a big forking problem.) I always knew of Dr. Faustus generally and had an idea about the old German legend of Faust that it’s based on. I assumed that it was about a man who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for riches and glories and knowledge and stuff while on earth. More importantly, I assumed that the devil made the man an offer he couldn’t refuse and the poor man was suckered into agreeing to eternal damnation, too weak or desperate to realize it wasn’t worth it. I DID NOT KNOW that Faustus ACTIVELY sought out this deal himself. Not only did he seek it out, he forking CONJURED THE DEMON TO HIS HOME HIMSELF. I mean, am I supposed to feel bad for a guy who ACTIVELY forking CONJURES THE DEVIL IN ORDER to sell his soul?? No one has ever asked for what they got MORE than this muhfuhker. HE LITERALLY ASKED FOR IT. It opens with Faustus talking about how interested she (she’s a she in this) is in books on magic and conjuring and she wishes she could be better at it like she is at I don’t know REAL SCIENCE/things you can be a doctor in so she like gets a more advanced conjuring book from a friend who is great at conjuring?? it was unclear the wooden benches are tres uncomfortables (I know you said it like I wanted you to say it) so it took me a minute to settle. Anyway so Faustus, a woman who EARNED A DOCTORATE IN SOMETHING REAL, takes the magic book and says the spell for conjuring the forking demon Mephistopheles to her study. Mephistopheles is a woman here too, a red-head who is actually the spawn of Tori Amos and the woman from Newsradio (Vicki Lewis!). And Meph (I can’t keep typing the whole name) is like youuuu raaaaang? And Faustus is like ‘oh hear me Devil, I wish to sell my soul for powers of magic and knowledge of the universe and stuff like that there while I’m on earth!’ and Meph is like ‘um, okay cool, that was easy’ and Faustus is like ‘I’ll give the devil my soul if you give me these powers for 24 years more on earth’ and Meph is like ‘great, deal’ and to her demon friends she’s like ‘hahaha that was so easy just 24 years what a goddamn (literally) sucker, we would have let her have 50 I bet upp upp it’s too late girl, 24 it is.’ AND THAT’S THAT.
Honestly it sucks that Faustus is going to be tortured for eternity but Mephistopheles gets dealt a pretty terrible hand too – she has to stay by Faustus’s side for those 24 years and do whatever magics she wants done. That would be hell too. Faustus is annoying. I mean obviously she sucks for wanting to sell her soul with no qualms about it but she’s really a pain in the ass. Jocelyn Jee Esien is a fine actress I’m sure but this role did nothing for her, because the production simply made the gender switch and that’s all – they did nothing to support the decision. At least in Company, the show with the most acclaimed gender switch of the London theatre season, they reworked aspects of the story to make it make sense that it’s about a woman now. They did a lot more than simply change the pronouns. And yeah you might remember that I wasn’t the biggest fan of that production (I even saw it twice to try to fix my opinion) but I commend that they really worked through the gender change and tried to support the decision across all aspects of the show. Here, the decision is unformed, unassisted by any directorial maneuvers (except having people grab her boobs, so, yeah, no) and so it feels like a lark. They had the opportunity to delve into what the Faustian myth could mean specifically for women, but it’s left unanswered. Kind of disappointing, considering there are no rights holders to worry about arguing with! Making Mephistopheles (Pauline McLynn (but really Vicki Lewis)) a woman is less of a problem because she’s just playing a scary demon and she’s really pretty scary.
My favorite part was when at the initial deal-making phase, Mephistopheles is like ‘Faustus, happy to do this deal, but aren’t you worried at all about spending eternity in hell tortured by demons’ and Faustus actually says ‘nah not really fam, I don’t believe in any of it.’ I MEAN. YOU HAVE LITERALLY JUST CONJURED A DEMON INTO YOUR HOME AND YOU ARE TELLING HER YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN HER??? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TALKING TO?? I can’t. I mean maybe the contract should have been considered void since she was clearly not of sound mind.
The most frustrating part about the show was that there was no real journey for the main character, no growth. I can accept that it wasn’t written for dramatic worth but for religious worth, to confirm to religious people of the time that they were right for renouncing satan, but it doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating to watch. It’s a bit of a chore to see Faustus ruin her life and everyone’s around her when you can never have any sympathy for the character. Without the sympathy or even understanding of why tf she did this knowing full well what would happen, you can’t really care about her demise or her 11th hour plea (the latter of which is supposed to be completely heartbreaking but I was like, ‘so? I got nothing for you.’) And it’s maddening that Faustus doesn’t even really do anything noteworthy with her powers. She could do anything, but all she does for 24 years is what amounts to practical jokes, scaring people by blowing their candles out or moving their possessions and dumb crap that a teenager wouldn’t even settle for. What a waste.
So yeah, this is not my favorite play. I did forget that this was the one with the famous monologue “Is this the face that launched 1000 ships”, so I enjoyed hearing that when it started, but it just made me want to watch “Shakespeare in Love” again. Before seeing this, I assumed I would be saying that the moral of this story is to stay strong and remember that all is not lost and it’s never worth selling your soul to the devil. But now it’s like ‘bitches be loco!’
INFORMATION
The Wanamaker playhouse is the steepest, most uncomfortable theatre yet. It’s small – only four rows or so in level – and lit only with candles, which is cool. The ‘stalls’ is a pit of loose benches with no backs. Then there is the lower level, which seems about stage height and is probably your best bet, especially if you get the fourth row (the last row) so you can lean against the wall. We were in the upper level, which felt like the top of a mountain, especially since the small stage is directly below you. If you’re up there, you have to lean forward on or over the railing pretty much the whole time. The bathrooms are the same ones as for the outdoor Globe theatre space, the ones that smell like public bathroom and have separate entrance/exit doors that no one ever uses properly.
My biggest problem is with the plot and how it plays out. (So that’s a big forking problem.) I always knew of Dr. Faustus generally and had an idea about the old German legend of Faust that it’s based on. I assumed that it was about a man who sold his soul to the devil in exchange for riches and glories and knowledge and stuff while on earth. More importantly, I assumed that the devil made the man an offer he couldn’t refuse and the poor man was suckered into agreeing to eternal damnation, too weak or desperate to realize it wasn’t worth it. I DID NOT KNOW that Faustus ACTIVELY sought out this deal himself. Not only did he seek it out, he forking CONJURED THE DEMON TO HIS HOME HIMSELF. I mean, am I supposed to feel bad for a guy who ACTIVELY forking CONJURES THE DEVIL IN ORDER to sell his soul?? No one has ever asked for what they got MORE than this muhfuhker. HE LITERALLY ASKED FOR IT. It opens with Faustus talking about how interested she (she’s a she in this) is in books on magic and conjuring and she wishes she could be better at it like she is at I don’t know REAL SCIENCE/things you can be a doctor in so she like gets a more advanced conjuring book from a friend who is great at conjuring?? it was unclear the wooden benches are tres uncomfortables (I know you said it like I wanted you to say it) so it took me a minute to settle. Anyway so Faustus, a woman who EARNED A DOCTORATE IN SOMETHING REAL, takes the magic book and says the spell for conjuring the forking demon Mephistopheles to her study. Mephistopheles is a woman here too, a red-head who is actually the spawn of Tori Amos and the woman from Newsradio (Vicki Lewis!). And Meph (I can’t keep typing the whole name) is like youuuu raaaaang? And Faustus is like ‘oh hear me Devil, I wish to sell my soul for powers of magic and knowledge of the universe and stuff like that there while I’m on earth!’ and Meph is like ‘um, okay cool, that was easy’ and Faustus is like ‘I’ll give the devil my soul if you give me these powers for 24 years more on earth’ and Meph is like ‘great, deal’ and to her demon friends she’s like ‘hahaha that was so easy just 24 years what a goddamn (literally) sucker, we would have let her have 50 I bet upp upp it’s too late girl, 24 it is.’ AND THAT’S THAT.
Honestly it sucks that Faustus is going to be tortured for eternity but Mephistopheles gets dealt a pretty terrible hand too – she has to stay by Faustus’s side for those 24 years and do whatever magics she wants done. That would be hell too. Faustus is annoying. I mean obviously she sucks for wanting to sell her soul with no qualms about it but she’s really a pain in the ass. Jocelyn Jee Esien is a fine actress I’m sure but this role did nothing for her, because the production simply made the gender switch and that’s all – they did nothing to support the decision. At least in Company, the show with the most acclaimed gender switch of the London theatre season, they reworked aspects of the story to make it make sense that it’s about a woman now. They did a lot more than simply change the pronouns. And yeah you might remember that I wasn’t the biggest fan of that production (I even saw it twice to try to fix my opinion) but I commend that they really worked through the gender change and tried to support the decision across all aspects of the show. Here, the decision is unformed, unassisted by any directorial maneuvers (except having people grab her boobs, so, yeah, no) and so it feels like a lark. They had the opportunity to delve into what the Faustian myth could mean specifically for women, but it’s left unanswered. Kind of disappointing, considering there are no rights holders to worry about arguing with! Making Mephistopheles (Pauline McLynn (but really Vicki Lewis)) a woman is less of a problem because she’s just playing a scary demon and she’s really pretty scary.
My favorite part was when at the initial deal-making phase, Mephistopheles is like ‘Faustus, happy to do this deal, but aren’t you worried at all about spending eternity in hell tortured by demons’ and Faustus actually says ‘nah not really fam, I don’t believe in any of it.’ I MEAN. YOU HAVE LITERALLY JUST CONJURED A DEMON INTO YOUR HOME AND YOU ARE TELLING HER YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN HER??? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE TALKING TO?? I can’t. I mean maybe the contract should have been considered void since she was clearly not of sound mind.
The most frustrating part about the show was that there was no real journey for the main character, no growth. I can accept that it wasn’t written for dramatic worth but for religious worth, to confirm to religious people of the time that they were right for renouncing satan, but it doesn’t mean it’s not frustrating to watch. It’s a bit of a chore to see Faustus ruin her life and everyone’s around her when you can never have any sympathy for the character. Without the sympathy or even understanding of why tf she did this knowing full well what would happen, you can’t really care about her demise or her 11th hour plea (the latter of which is supposed to be completely heartbreaking but I was like, ‘so? I got nothing for you.’) And it’s maddening that Faustus doesn’t even really do anything noteworthy with her powers. She could do anything, but all she does for 24 years is what amounts to practical jokes, scaring people by blowing their candles out or moving their possessions and dumb crap that a teenager wouldn’t even settle for. What a waste.
So yeah, this is not my favorite play. I did forget that this was the one with the famous monologue “Is this the face that launched 1000 ships”, so I enjoyed hearing that when it started, but it just made me want to watch “Shakespeare in Love” again. Before seeing this, I assumed I would be saying that the moral of this story is to stay strong and remember that all is not lost and it’s never worth selling your soul to the devil. But now it’s like ‘bitches be loco!’
INFORMATION
The Wanamaker playhouse is the steepest, most uncomfortable theatre yet. It’s small – only four rows or so in level – and lit only with candles, which is cool. The ‘stalls’ is a pit of loose benches with no backs. Then there is the lower level, which seems about stage height and is probably your best bet, especially if you get the fourth row (the last row) so you can lean against the wall. We were in the upper level, which felt like the top of a mountain, especially since the small stage is directly below you. If you’re up there, you have to lean forward on or over the railing pretty much the whole time. The bathrooms are the same ones as for the outdoor Globe theatre space, the ones that smell like public bathroom and have separate entrance/exit doors that no one ever uses properly.
“The King and I” Transfers to London: More like The Queen and I
It’s Theatre Thursday! We’re talking about “The King and I”, which is now playing in the West End after transferring from Broadway!
Seeing “The King and I” at Lincoln Center Theatre three years ago (I remember because it was my birthday) was a magical theatrical experience, one that felt majestic and classic, as well as classy. From the opening scene with that enormous boat gliding into the orchestra, to the last moving moments, I was enraptured with its perfect direction and flawless performances. With that Broadway production’s transfer to London, complete with its top two stars, Kelli O’Hara finally gets to show the West End what incredible talent looks/sounds like and Ken Watanabe keeps getting to make audiences laugh. But the production feels like the final moments of “Pippin” when compared to the Broadway incarnation – like when everything is stripped away to show what the stage would be like without magic. Sure the lights and costumes and music are all there, but it feels like the magic is missing. The lackluster feel is partly due to the theatre it’s in (the Palladium), partly due to a West End cast that just isn’t as top notch, and partly due to the wackiness of the source material being exposed in this new light.
Don’t get me (too) wrong: it’s still one of the better productions currently on the West End, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the Broadway version. Something feels off, and the audience reaction (weird audience, btw) made me realize what it was: England is treating this show as if it were a pantomime. If you aren’t familiar, a panto is a beast native to England, a musical comedy extravaganza that is for families (i.e. little kids). Different from a musical that happens to be a comedy, a panto is more like commedia dell’arte (another thing I can’t stand) – silly and slapstick, with sight gags and over the top performances. And a big part of it is audience reaction – they cheer, they boo the bad guys, they hiss, they oooh at romance, they shout “he’s behind you!”. I avoid pantos because they are super annoying and I don’t want to explode at children. God just thinking about pantos is giving me a skin rash all of a sudden. My blood boils at the thought that someone might make me go to one. So you can see it’s a big problem with interpretation that London audiences are treating “The King and I”, this golden age classic, even a little bit like they treat pantos.
And you can’t really blame the audiences for reacting like they’re at one (well you can, and I will, but it’s a little understandable) because the show itself is kind of weird. I never noticed it before, and I’m not sure why it was so glaring now, especially since the director (Barlett Sher) is the same as on Broadway. Maybe it takes a familiarity with the source material to finally get to that point where you can focus on just how strange it is. But the starkness with how this is presented – with none of the glitz or grandeur or sumptuousness of the previous production – exposes the problems of the book.
“The King and I” tells the story of Anna Leonowens, real life English lady who traveled to Siam to serve as a schoolteacher to the children of King Mongkut in the 1860s. One of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most beloved works, the show includes familiar song after familiar song, and is so well known for a reason. The score is gorgeous and for the most part sounds great here. But the book falls flat. Okay so Anna and her son (will he ever not be annoying?) arrive in Siam and ask the King’s men where her house is. They tell her she is to stay at the palace. But the King had promised her her own house! She needs privacy! No one argues with the King (not YET), so she stays in the palace while she waits to talk to him about his promise. Um then in the next line we learn that more than a YEAR has gone by, and she’s still waiting but she loves the kids and loves teaching them and so you’re like well fun I guess I don’t mind too much that we made a huge time jump and wow we’re going to keep on making them. Discussion about her house seems to be like most of the first act. I get that it’s one aspect chosen to be representative of the communication barriers and the fact that independent women were foreign to this culture, but it seems like a lame thing to focus on. The King is always frustrated with this woman who keeps combating him at every turn, and Ken wins the audience over with his song “Puzzlement” even though you can’t really understand what he’s saying when it’s sooo fast. It’s honestly more difficult to understand than it was before but eh he’s such a good actor and he’s so winning in most of his book scenes.
Then we watch the two lovers, Lun Tha (Dean-John Wilson, in freaking everything it seems) and Tuptim (Na-Young Jeon) sing about how much they love each other but how they can only meet in the shadows because, well, Lun Tha brought Tuptim over from Burma as a gift to the King, so she is like one of his slave-wives now. Why they didn’t just flee before he presented her as a gift to the king is beyond me. Also what is he still doing in town years after delivering her? They both sing the roles decently, although both cracked a few times. Their voices might not be 100% fitted to these parts. I think Jeon’s upper register is still a little too weak for 8 shows a week and not to be mean but I missed Ashley Park’s incredible voice.
Anna’s relationship with the King stresses you out most of the time, because she isn’t afraid to speak her mind but he’s the King and is like no one fights with me! Et cetera! Et cetera! Oh so in the beginning Anna uses the phrase ‘et cetera’ and the King is like WHAT IS THIS YOU SAY and she explains what it means and so then EVERY SINGLE FUCKING LINE from then on the King uses it and for the first few times it’s funny but then at the 10th time it is infuriating and by the 90th time he says it you are literally breathing fire. It is so annoying Hammerstein! Literally my least favorite decision Hams has ever made.
Anna also has a very tense relationship with his Wife #1, Lady Thiang (Naoko Mori) and strives to win her over even though Lady Thiang is intermittently jealous and encouraging Anna and the King to become closer. It’s never comprehensible why she would want that. Mori is fine as Thiang, but she doesn’t bring anything more to the role than how it is written. Which is fine – no one ever really can bring more to what’s written simply by using their acting and singing skills. No one except Ruthie Ann Miles, that is, the Lady Thiang from Broadway who won the Tony for her performance. She was supposed to be in this production – and the production itself refuses to say that she isn’t in it even though, well, she’s not (she’s still in the programme and the website and everything but she isn’t in it) – but she had to take time to herself due to her personal tragedy. It was an honor to see her performance on Broadway, and seeing this show again made me realize just how astonishing she is, turning what is usually just a whatever role into a fully fleshed out character whose motivations were clear and understandable for the first time.
So the big drama of Act II is that an English diplomat is going to visit from Singapore and bring other hoity Englishmen, and the Siamese have to use this visit to convince them how great they are SO THE ENGLISH DON’T TAKE THEM OVER. Yeah so England was threatening to take over Siam as a protectorate, and everyone, literally everyone, just accepts that the burden is on the Siamese to prove that they aren’t barbarians and so the British, um, shouldn’t take them over. It’s so f-ing weird, and no one even mentions the thought that decent people first have, which is, why is it on them to convince the whites that they are decent people so the whites don’t steal their land? If you were unfamiliar with the show, you would surely expect that Anna’s whole purpose as an intermediary between the two parties would be to take the opportunity to say ‘hey wait a minute old British friends. These people shouldn’t have to prove to you that they are worthy of KEEPING THEIR COUNTRY AND FREEDOM! And isn’t it patently obvious that the people threatening to takeover another land and their inhabitants would be the real barbarians?’ No, no one says any of this. They have to prove that they are western-friendly, and that’s that. I get that it’s old-fashioned but surely people have always been able to see that taking over other lands is wrong? no?
So they prepare for this important visit by dressing everyone in Western garb and singing the moooost racist song. But it works out because Tuptim reads her play based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, called ‘Small House of Uncle Thomas’, and they do a TWENTY MINUTE BALLET ABOUT IT and honestly it’s the best most amazing thing to have in a big musical because WHAAAT. It’s so f-ing random and amazing and we’ve been singing “Tricky little Topsy!” all day err day. SO RANDOM. Well it’s not too random, the story at least, because Tuptim is a slave and she’s narrating a play directly at the King about how bad slavery is and how evil King Simon of Legree (the best) was to poor Eliza (run Eliza run! run Eliza run! erma it’s amazing). But having this crazy 20 minute ballet about it is pretty damn ballsy to put in the middle of a musical and it’s so good. I’m obsessed. I love the choreography of this ballet, with Eliza running away by hopping on one foot. Anyway Buddha saves Eliza and then the lovers meet again and discuss how Anna always helped them meet by going out in the courtyard or whatever with them and you’re like huh we never saw that, that’s weird to just mention like that instead of ever showing I mean we’ve had three hours to do so. They decide to run away. And then Anna and the King have a beautiful dance (“Shall We Dance”) and seem to be friends and there’s also a weird spark there and you’re like holy crap that’s powerful but that’s kind of not the show I want to see and then the guards bring in Tuptim who escaped and they’re like we’re gonna kill her now and Anna is like no you’re a barbarian and everyone cries and Anna decides to leave Siam for good (but the veg fest…) but then the King has heart sadness and is dying from Anna calling him a barbarian so Anna decides to stay. What. Et cetera.
The book is kind of frustrating, as you could tell from my repeated stabbing of the capslock key, and the pacing feels off. At least a good twenty minutes could have and should have been cut (but not my Uncle Tom ballet! Never!). I don’t remember this show ever feeling as long, and unnecessarily so. It is a satisfactory production, but it isn’t the magical splendor I remember. Well, except for the performance of our Anna Leonowens. As Miss Anna, O’Hara’s performance seems like it has been marinating for the past three years because it’s even more nuanced, touching, and gorgeous than it was before – and she deservedly won a Tony for it before. I am not surprised, because she is the best working soprano in musical theatre today, but I didn’t even realize how much more realized her performance could be. It’s a marvel and it’s worth sitting through the three hours of sometimes-nonsense to witness her thrilling performance. Her “Hello Young Lovers” is the best sung moment I’ve ever heard in this city. Yep I said it and I will fight you on that. Truly, as much as I’m complaining about this production, and as horrible as the audience was, I will absolutely be returning to watch Kelli perform. She’s a triumph.
INFORMATION
The Palladium Theatre is a real POS. The toilets are near the entrance, on the other side of the huge lobby and bar area. And even though there are so many hallways and rooms and corners, everything feels squashed together. It’s a real claustrophobic place, outside the actual auditorium. The auditorium is at least airier, but it’s the wrong theatre from this show. I think it benefits from a thrust stage and this kind of shirty proscenium stage does nothing for this production.
AUDIENCE
Just expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed. Well you will be disappointed, in humanity, but you won’t be surprised. Aside from the panto reactions (oh I forgot, they also enjoyed clapping along to the music), we also had parents and children just flat-out talking, loudly, to each other the whole time. One 10-year-old ish girl in our row was having the worst time, and she kept asking her mother if they could leave. Instead of taking her out, which she should have done, the mother kept fishing around her bags to give her kid more and more food – all wrapped in the noisiest plastic you could imagine. Literally without even a moment’s pause, this happened for three straight hours. Aside from that kid, this was a different situation in that most of the trouble came from older people, when usually people our age are the worst. There was one older lady who was playing with paper the whole time, like balling it up, and it was actually so loud and she had no idea because she couldn’t really hear anyway. Omg there’s that skin rash.
STAGE DOOR
Speaking of how much of a POS this theatre is, the security staff at stage door had NOOO idea what was happening. After everyone had lined up, the guards then brought out barriers and made everyone re-line up behind them. Why weren’t they out at the start of things, she asks not expecting anyone to ever have a good enough answer. Right away Ken came out, skipped the beginning of the line of course, where I was, signed a few programs, and left. Then the guards announced that that was it. They went through all that trouble just for Ken? Ughh I was so upset that no one else was coming out. The guards broke down the barriers and told everyone to go home. I waited a minute just to be sure, and literally one minute later the entire cast came out. What the actual fuck. These guards were SO DUMB. But I got to freak out Kelli again as I always do so that was fun/humiliating. Et cetera.
And you can’t really blame the audiences for reacting like they’re at one (well you can, and I will, but it’s a little understandable) because the show itself is kind of weird. I never noticed it before, and I’m not sure why it was so glaring now, especially since the director (Barlett Sher) is the same as on Broadway. Maybe it takes a familiarity with the source material to finally get to that point where you can focus on just how strange it is. But the starkness with how this is presented – with none of the glitz or grandeur or sumptuousness of the previous production – exposes the problems of the book.
“The King and I” tells the story of Anna Leonowens, real life English lady who traveled to Siam to serve as a schoolteacher to the children of King Mongkut in the 1860s. One of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s most beloved works, the show includes familiar song after familiar song, and is so well known for a reason. The score is gorgeous and for the most part sounds great here. But the book falls flat. Okay so Anna and her son (will he ever not be annoying?) arrive in Siam and ask the King’s men where her house is. They tell her she is to stay at the palace. But the King had promised her her own house! She needs privacy! No one argues with the King (not YET), so she stays in the palace while she waits to talk to him about his promise. Um then in the next line we learn that more than a YEAR has gone by, and she’s still waiting but she loves the kids and loves teaching them and so you’re like well fun I guess I don’t mind too much that we made a huge time jump and wow we’re going to keep on making them. Discussion about her house seems to be like most of the first act. I get that it’s one aspect chosen to be representative of the communication barriers and the fact that independent women were foreign to this culture, but it seems like a lame thing to focus on. The King is always frustrated with this woman who keeps combating him at every turn, and Ken wins the audience over with his song “Puzzlement” even though you can’t really understand what he’s saying when it’s sooo fast. It’s honestly more difficult to understand than it was before but eh he’s such a good actor and he’s so winning in most of his book scenes.
Then we watch the two lovers, Lun Tha (Dean-John Wilson, in freaking everything it seems) and Tuptim (Na-Young Jeon) sing about how much they love each other but how they can only meet in the shadows because, well, Lun Tha brought Tuptim over from Burma as a gift to the King, so she is like one of his slave-wives now. Why they didn’t just flee before he presented her as a gift to the king is beyond me. Also what is he still doing in town years after delivering her? They both sing the roles decently, although both cracked a few times. Their voices might not be 100% fitted to these parts. I think Jeon’s upper register is still a little too weak for 8 shows a week and not to be mean but I missed Ashley Park’s incredible voice.
Anna’s relationship with the King stresses you out most of the time, because she isn’t afraid to speak her mind but he’s the King and is like no one fights with me! Et cetera! Et cetera! Oh so in the beginning Anna uses the phrase ‘et cetera’ and the King is like WHAT IS THIS YOU SAY and she explains what it means and so then EVERY SINGLE FUCKING LINE from then on the King uses it and for the first few times it’s funny but then at the 10th time it is infuriating and by the 90th time he says it you are literally breathing fire. It is so annoying Hammerstein! Literally my least favorite decision Hams has ever made.
Anna also has a very tense relationship with his Wife #1, Lady Thiang (Naoko Mori) and strives to win her over even though Lady Thiang is intermittently jealous and encouraging Anna and the King to become closer. It’s never comprehensible why she would want that. Mori is fine as Thiang, but she doesn’t bring anything more to the role than how it is written. Which is fine – no one ever really can bring more to what’s written simply by using their acting and singing skills. No one except Ruthie Ann Miles, that is, the Lady Thiang from Broadway who won the Tony for her performance. She was supposed to be in this production – and the production itself refuses to say that she isn’t in it even though, well, she’s not (she’s still in the programme and the website and everything but she isn’t in it) – but she had to take time to herself due to her personal tragedy. It was an honor to see her performance on Broadway, and seeing this show again made me realize just how astonishing she is, turning what is usually just a whatever role into a fully fleshed out character whose motivations were clear and understandable for the first time.
So the big drama of Act II is that an English diplomat is going to visit from Singapore and bring other hoity Englishmen, and the Siamese have to use this visit to convince them how great they are SO THE ENGLISH DON’T TAKE THEM OVER. Yeah so England was threatening to take over Siam as a protectorate, and everyone, literally everyone, just accepts that the burden is on the Siamese to prove that they aren’t barbarians and so the British, um, shouldn’t take them over. It’s so f-ing weird, and no one even mentions the thought that decent people first have, which is, why is it on them to convince the whites that they are decent people so the whites don’t steal their land? If you were unfamiliar with the show, you would surely expect that Anna’s whole purpose as an intermediary between the two parties would be to take the opportunity to say ‘hey wait a minute old British friends. These people shouldn’t have to prove to you that they are worthy of KEEPING THEIR COUNTRY AND FREEDOM! And isn’t it patently obvious that the people threatening to takeover another land and their inhabitants would be the real barbarians?’ No, no one says any of this. They have to prove that they are western-friendly, and that’s that. I get that it’s old-fashioned but surely people have always been able to see that taking over other lands is wrong? no?
So they prepare for this important visit by dressing everyone in Western garb and singing the moooost racist song. But it works out because Tuptim reads her play based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, called ‘Small House of Uncle Thomas’, and they do a TWENTY MINUTE BALLET ABOUT IT and honestly it’s the best most amazing thing to have in a big musical because WHAAAT. It’s so f-ing random and amazing and we’ve been singing “Tricky little Topsy!” all day err day. SO RANDOM. Well it’s not too random, the story at least, because Tuptim is a slave and she’s narrating a play directly at the King about how bad slavery is and how evil King Simon of Legree (the best) was to poor Eliza (run Eliza run! run Eliza run! erma it’s amazing). But having this crazy 20 minute ballet about it is pretty damn ballsy to put in the middle of a musical and it’s so good. I’m obsessed. I love the choreography of this ballet, with Eliza running away by hopping on one foot. Anyway Buddha saves Eliza and then the lovers meet again and discuss how Anna always helped them meet by going out in the courtyard or whatever with them and you’re like huh we never saw that, that’s weird to just mention like that instead of ever showing I mean we’ve had three hours to do so. They decide to run away. And then Anna and the King have a beautiful dance (“Shall We Dance”) and seem to be friends and there’s also a weird spark there and you’re like holy crap that’s powerful but that’s kind of not the show I want to see and then the guards bring in Tuptim who escaped and they’re like we’re gonna kill her now and Anna is like no you’re a barbarian and everyone cries and Anna decides to leave Siam for good (but the veg fest…) but then the King has heart sadness and is dying from Anna calling him a barbarian so Anna decides to stay. What. Et cetera.
The book is kind of frustrating, as you could tell from my repeated stabbing of the capslock key, and the pacing feels off. At least a good twenty minutes could have and should have been cut (but not my Uncle Tom ballet! Never!). I don’t remember this show ever feeling as long, and unnecessarily so. It is a satisfactory production, but it isn’t the magical splendor I remember. Well, except for the performance of our Anna Leonowens. As Miss Anna, O’Hara’s performance seems like it has been marinating for the past three years because it’s even more nuanced, touching, and gorgeous than it was before – and she deservedly won a Tony for it before. I am not surprised, because she is the best working soprano in musical theatre today, but I didn’t even realize how much more realized her performance could be. It’s a marvel and it’s worth sitting through the three hours of sometimes-nonsense to witness her thrilling performance. Her “Hello Young Lovers” is the best sung moment I’ve ever heard in this city. Yep I said it and I will fight you on that. Truly, as much as I’m complaining about this production, and as horrible as the audience was, I will absolutely be returning to watch Kelli perform. She’s a triumph.
INFORMATION
The Palladium Theatre is a real POS. The toilets are near the entrance, on the other side of the huge lobby and bar area. And even though there are so many hallways and rooms and corners, everything feels squashed together. It’s a real claustrophobic place, outside the actual auditorium. The auditorium is at least airier, but it’s the wrong theatre from this show. I think it benefits from a thrust stage and this kind of shirty proscenium stage does nothing for this production.
AUDIENCE
Just expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed. Well you will be disappointed, in humanity, but you won’t be surprised. Aside from the panto reactions (oh I forgot, they also enjoyed clapping along to the music), we also had parents and children just flat-out talking, loudly, to each other the whole time. One 10-year-old ish girl in our row was having the worst time, and she kept asking her mother if they could leave. Instead of taking her out, which she should have done, the mother kept fishing around her bags to give her kid more and more food – all wrapped in the noisiest plastic you could imagine. Literally without even a moment’s pause, this happened for three straight hours. Aside from that kid, this was a different situation in that most of the trouble came from older people, when usually people our age are the worst. There was one older lady who was playing with paper the whole time, like balling it up, and it was actually so loud and she had no idea because she couldn’t really hear anyway. Omg there’s that skin rash.
STAGE DOOR
Speaking of how much of a POS this theatre is, the security staff at stage door had NOOO idea what was happening. After everyone had lined up, the guards then brought out barriers and made everyone re-line up behind them. Why weren’t they out at the start of things, she asks not expecting anyone to ever have a good enough answer. Right away Ken came out, skipped the beginning of the line of course, where I was, signed a few programs, and left. Then the guards announced that that was it. They went through all that trouble just for Ken? Ughh I was so upset that no one else was coming out. The guards broke down the barriers and told everyone to go home. I waited a minute just to be sure, and literally one minute later the entire cast came out. What the actual fuck. These guards were SO DUMB. But I got to freak out Kelli again as I always do so that was fun/humiliating. Et cetera.
