Broadway's "Dear Evan Hansen": Why Dehydration from Crying is Possible but Worth Itby Randi / May 9, 2017
In my long, extensive history of theatre obsession, I’ve never been as surprised by a show as I was by “Bandstand”. Well at least in the upward direction; I’ve been downward surprised many a time. Considering how few Tony nominations (THEY MEAN NOTHING) it got, how little chatter there was on my online Broadway forums, and how easily I picked up a few rush tickets one afternoon, I didn’t expect much from the new musical. I wanted to see it because I like Laura Osnes, the star, and because I wanted a solid musical to take my sister-in-law to that I hadn’t already seen. Well. Color me thrilled (and badd) because I was sitting there slack-jawed buggy-eyed and wanting SO bad to shout down to the stage “Ohh my god oh my god you guys, this is REALLY GOOD did you know??” I didn’t obviously because I am of sound mind but guys it really was.
“Bandstand”, which has nothing to do with the old Philly-based show “American Bandstand” no matter how badly my parents want it to, tells the story of World War II veterans who return home to Cleveland and form a rocking swing band in order to win a radio competition. That’s the short version I knew going in. What the ads aren’t selling, and what they should be selling, is that the story deals heavily, primarily really, with the PTSD and severe depression the vets are suffering with upon return. And the guilt. So much guilt. It’s so heavy and difficult, watching them struggle to get through each day, singing about how things will be just like they were before but knowing that nothing could ever be like it was before. This group of veterans forms the band not only to win a competition but because it’s the only thing that helps them wake up and get through the day, and playing music is the only time they aren’t completely incapacitated by their demons. The show deals so directly with these serious issues facing veterans, issues that need to be addressed directly in real life but still aren’t, and the show really should be commended for not sugar-coating it at all. In lots of other art it’s like ‘Oh Johnny drinks every night so he can fall asleep without thinking of all he saw over there’ and that’s all that’s said. In this, it’s that plus stories for every character plus visuals like a platoon of dead soldiers crawling over the piano as our lead tries to play, showing how every moment of his new life is weighed down by his experience.Okay so that sounds like a really sad and unenjoyable show, but it’s not. The severity of what they’re dealing with helps connect the audience to the characters really quickly, and from there we are totally with them on the journey as they find something worth living for. And the music is rollicking and fun and really helps lift everyone’s spirits and provide a sense of joy and hope for the characters. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the swing music considering the last time I listened to it was begrudgingly at school dances in the ‘90s when it was somehow popular at that sort of thing. I mean it’s not wise to compare Broadway musicians to that f-ing horrendous “Zoot Suit Riot” song but still. I’m super impressed by composers Richard Oberacker and Robert Taylor considering I don’t know their previous work.
Right at the start of the show, we are somewhere in the Pacific Ocean with Corey Cott and a group of soldiers in trenches, just when some really bad things are about to happen (we know from lights flashing and then darkness). In another section of the stage, Laura Osnes is at home being a homemaker (we know because she’s wearing an apron) when a man in uniform rings her doorbell to bring her some awful news, and we deduce that her husband was just killed in that attack when she opens the door, sees who it is, and crumples to the ground sobbing. So all of this is happening with just the orchestra playing, no words or anything, and despite the fact that you haven’t met anyone yet and despite being maybe 30 seconds long it’s so well done that you will 100% cry. Osnes is a TRAYSURE, as Emily Gilmore would say.
Then the war is over and Corey Cott’s Donny Novitski made it back home to Cleveland. As the ensemble sings about getting back to normal, we see that Donny clearly is too haunted by his experience to know what normal is. He hears about a radio competition looking for the next big swing band, and he thinks it would sure be swell if the winners were a group of just-returned veterans. He sets about finding amazing musicians who have suitably served enough so that they are all broken (maybe not intentional). Meeting the 6 band members is so much fun. Despite not having tons of lines each, they are all given enough time and room to develop individual characters and really make you understand who they are and what they’re going through. Brandon J. Ellis, as big fun Irishman Davy on bass, is the funniest one, making ridiculous jokes and providing some much needed comic relief, although he’s clearly using humor to mask his pain like he does with alcohol. Most of his jokes were new to me, but I loved when the audience roared at one I knew: “A pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel on his pants. The bartender says ‘hey, you’ve got a steering wheel on your pants.’ ‘Arghh’, the pirate says, ‘and it’s driving me nuts.’” Oh my god it’s so dumb I love it. Davy is full of jokes like this throughout the show, which is much appreciated. At one point, Davy tells the others guys, “I’ve survived mustard gas and pepper spray. I’m really a seasoned vet.” Grooooaaaan/love it.
Another standout of the band was Joe Carroll as Johnny on drums. His short-term memory and ability to socialize normally is shot because he suffered serious brain damage, as he tells you over and over, when his jeep flipped three times during an attack. His story is heartbreaking, but he uses humor well to get through it, and seems so good-hearted that you just want to give him a hug. At one particularly moving moment, he admits that despite his brain damage, he’s the lucky one of the group because he has fewer memories disturbing his mind all day. And the man providing most of my agita was Geoff Packard as Wayne on trombone, who had the most trouble reacclimating and pretending that normal life was normal at all. Part of his morning ritual was cleaning his gun in the bathroom, and I was 100% sure that meant he was going to kill himself by the time the show was over, especially since he seemed to be the most unable to return to everyday life. Thank god it was the one time when Chekhov’s gun was wrong, because his struggle to get to a point where life was bearable, thanks to this group, was one of the most emotional. Alex Bender as Nick on trumpet and a wonderful James Nathan Hopkins as Jimmy on sax round out the really impressive group of musicians, and although we get a lot of expected conflict between the troubled men, watching them struggle through their issues and try to create great music together was wonderful. And in case you think it’s a total feel good story where music solves all their troubles and they end the show super happy and smiley, that’s not the case at all. It just helps them get out of bed, one day at a time. The fight is shown as constant, not one that you can win in one battle but one that you fight on a continuous basis.
By now you’re probably like um where is Laura Osnes in all this besides reigning over everyone like the queen she is? Laura plays Julia Trojan, a name choice I haven’t yet decided how I feel about because it offers a few funny bits but like is it too forced? not sure. Actually it does lead to a stellar display of Laura’s acting in one conversation about it so maybe I’m for it, although the same conversation could have happened with any odd name. Anyway. Donny, as we saw in the opening, was with Julia’s husband when he died. It turns out they had become best friends, and her husband made Donny promise to look after Julia if he died. Later in the show, more comes out about her husband and his death that I could not have seen coming, and through my horror I was more and more impressed at how much this show kept surprising me without sacrificing substance or form. Donny sees Julia sing in church and is blown away like we all are because she can sang, and he asks Julia to sing with him in the band. I’ve seen Corey and Laura before, but their vocals in this show are astounding. You’ve never heard Laura, usually very angelic and sweet-voiced, belt as insanely as she does here, and Corey’s vocal strength constantly wows too. And he’s playing the piano the entire show, which is so impressive. (Or at the very least he’s really convincingly pretending to play the piano.) He needs to be Broadway’s next sure-thang leading man because hot damn, Corey Cott. Hot damn.
In the first act, the show blends the more serious moments with the band’s performances around town as it tries to build up its repertoire and name. These gigs are upbeat and tons of fun, in large part due to the eye-popping choreography. This is when Andy Blankenbuehler, director and choreographer who won the Tony for choreographing “Hamilton” (and “In the Heights”), gets to shine with his crazy (and I mean CAH RAZY) lifts and throws and super frenetic and energetic dancing in the ensemble. Morgan Marcell (who was also in “Hamilton”) fully distracted me from the band’s performing and Laura’s singing during these scenes as she was like doing figure skating spins and throws but like not on ice. I am in awe. Remember the amazing spin Aaron Tveit and Julianne Hough did on “Grease: Live!” during the Hand Jive (should play that exact moment)? The dancing in these gig scenes was like that but more intense and for the entire time. dammmmn. I don’t like spoiling but here is one little sneak peak.
Another thing that helps lift the spirits from super depression is the performance of Beth Leavel as Julia’s mother, who now lives with her widowed daughter. Beth Leavel is pretty big deal in musical theatre, so at first I was kind of like “ughhh we’re at the point where Beth Leavel is getting jobs as the ingénue’s mother onstage for like five minutes?” But, as I should have expected, Beth turns her small-ish role into a hilarious at times, lovely at other times portrayal and really makes her time onstage meaningful. She gets a touching, beautiful song called “Everything Happens”, about how not everything happens for a reason, but it just happens and we have to get through it somehow, and it’s wonderful. A rare occurrence of that sort of honest sentiment. And she gets to be hilarious as promised during a dinner scene, entering silently with a plate of deviled eggs so red that I was struck and distracted by the color from my balcony seat. I just thought oh that’s a weird move by the prop department. But then Julia and Donny stop talking, look to the eggs and then to Beth and she says, “The lid came off the paprika.” Her delivery was so deadpan and amazing that the audience actually broke into applause. So funny.
Despite being a relatively long show (the first act alone is an hour and a half), it felt shorter than most because of how engaging everything was. We’re there every step of the way as the band tries to make it, and more importantly as the guys try to stay in control of their mental states enough to get through a performance. It’s brilliant to see them decide to stop pretending like everything is fine, and that if they are going to sell themselves as a band of vets then they should be singing about real issues vets face. The band’s big song in the radio competition, “Love Will Come and Find Me Again”, is flipping amazing and I cannot wait to get the cast album oh my god they better make a cast album. The melody and the lyrics aren’t revolutionary, but the character’s sharing is, and the song is perfectly catchy and solid and the performance is so exhilarating and gorgeous that you can’t believe any other competitors came close. And their big climactic performance of their very risky song “Welcome Home” is like if anxiety were set to music, kind of hard to listen to but completely on purpose, and so riveting that you’re scared to blink or breathe lest it affect the magic being created. And also you can’t breathe because if you do the breath will catch in your throat and you will sob.
So the music is so much fun and often incredibly moving, the dancing is awesome, the book is more sophisticated and smarter than most, and the performances are wonderful across the board. At first I thought maybe the direction was overdone, because Andy loves him some busy choreo to the point where it’s sometimes distracting (like in Hamilton) but there are so many moments of brilliance. Andy is a stronger choreographer than director, given his background, and at times there probably should have been another voice tempering the movement. What works with his choreography in ensemble numbers is that it’s busy and frenzied and always interesting to watch. In non-dancing moments, that kind of thinking could be too busy, but here it often works, especially with the ghosts of their service haunting the men constantly. It’s a lot, sometimes too much to know what to focus on, but for this particular show it’s effective. Once, during Donny’s big first song, Andy’s signature kinds of movement were obvious (standing with his legs tightly pressed together with bent knees swinging left and right, a little hunched in the back. I feel like that’s how Andy himself is always moving). It was a little distracting because I remember thinking “Oh that looks like Andy!” not exactly the character. There were little moments like that peppered throughout where the movement didn’t match the action or characters. But for the most part, it was nearly flawless staging.
I really can’t get over how impressed I was with it. Even expected tropes like the inevitable budding romance between our two leads as they help each other work through their shared grief is done in a way that keeps it from being predictable. First of all, Laura and Corey’s chemistry is off the charts. It really was remarkable, so strong that when I remembered Laura is married in real life I was like aw. Second of all, it’s not a clear-cut romance in the least. Their big song together, once they’ve grown closer and everyone else knows they have feelings for each other, is not a love song. Instead it’s them admitting that because of who they are and what they’ve gone through, nothing can happen between them. It was so well done and made their story more realistic and emotional.
This is a pretty stellar Broadway season and, even with a lot of good work happening, this ranks up there as one of my top shows of the year. I know, I can’t believe it either. But aside from Act II getting a little loose in the cage, it’s an endlessly enjoyable, thought-provoking, moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting show that hits all the marks necessary to make you cry, laugh, and smile a lot. A lot a lot. Now that “Dear Evan Hansen” is sold out for probably as long as the earth has left, this is the show I’m most hoping succeeds. Go buy tickets, everyone, so it doesn’t close because I kind of want to see it again and I can’t go back to NYC until the fall!
THEATRE INFO
Toilets are in the basement, and only in the basement! Luckily there is only one mezzanine level, but still, that means at intermish you are running down two flights of stairs. It moves okay though.
Rush tickets ($30) are generally easy to get. No one is camping out at 4am like for other shows. After those sell out, the box office offers ‘secondary rush’ at $49. These seats actually have a better view than the first wave of rush, so it’s worth the extra money to wait.
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The Secret Society of Leading Ladies: A Fun Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Concert
Today’s show is a video stream presented by the Barn Theatre, available from today until March 7.
The Secret Society of Leading Ladies tries to make the pre-recorded multi-performer concert experience a little more engaging and a little more cohesive, by letting viewers decide which leading lady characters and songs will be part of their unique concert combo. Conceived of by Barn Theatre’s Ryan Carter, the show aims to create a world where our beloved (for the most part) characters somehow exist together, know each other, and take turns at the mike. With each viewer deciding their own setlist, the concept lets us make the experience as enjoyable as possible, while also catering to our lockdown-worsened attention spans.
The show definitely succeeds on the engaging front: Choosing what song you get to hear next is almost giddy fun, and exerting that kind of control in a show is pretty rare. (It’s also kind of a gift from the creative team to give us control over anything at this time, like they are doing more than therapists can. Anyway…) The production quality of the choose-your-next-player interactive menu was quite impressive, and you have plenty of time to weigh your options and decide if you’re more in the mood for a song from Ghost or Fame. I also liked that they showed pictures of each performer along with the song title in the choosing menu, so you can also decide based on performers you know and like and want to hear.
As for the cohesiveness, however, that was a disappointment. The idea that all these famed musical theatre characters were somehow at this venue together, aware of who the others were, and part of some secret society didn’t really gel, since – because of lockdown restrictions – they couldn’t really film conversations among the performers. (They tried a little bit to show them chatting (filmed and shown one at a time), but the pacing was as awkward as the commentary.) It would honestly be such a fun show to delve into how these famous characters from all sorts of shows would interact with each other, kind of like the higher-brow version of that Disney picture of all the cartoon princesses having a sleepover that lives rent-free in my head (I want to go to there/be a cartoon princess). But that idea didn’t really gel.
As a plain-old concert, though, it’s a lot of fun. I enjoyed seeing all these familiar faces, some new-to-me faces, and hearing some songs I haven’t listened to in a while in a combination I definitely didn’t hear before.
Because it was essentially a concert, the featured moments favored belting over building characters or telling stories. The sound was a little wonky too, so any pitch problems came through way more noticeably than seemed right. I loved that even where a performance had some issues, the singer always brought it home with a huge belted note at the end, like they knew it almost didn’t matter what came before because most people will just remember a fantastic final note.
Yet as expected in a concert showcase performed by mainly yoots, the show often felt like the belting Olympics in more ways than just big endings, with vocal acrobatics given more consideration than inhabiting a character and telling that character’s story. Of course, it’s difficult to do the latter in just one song, but without much of it, the conceit that these were the characters and not the actors fell flat. “Dyin’ Ain’t So Bad”, performed by Emma Kingston was far and away the highlight, surprising because it’s from a score I’m very familiar with but not toooo fond of (Bonnie & Clyde) and originally sung by one of my favorite clear-voiced performers (Laura Osnes). This was the rare performance that told a story and used belting as a tool to do so, rather than just focusing on belting for belting’s sake. How many times can I say belting in one sentence, wow.
Note that it is quite short – only 5 choose-your-next-performer menus compose the show before the finale; we didn’t even finish eating dinner before it was over. Definitely choose a multi-stream ticket so that you can go back and watch the other performances as well; otherwise, it’s a little too short. Also, since each performer is presented as an option only once per show (regardless if you skipped them in round 1 – they don’t come back in round 4 as an option), the multi-stream ticket would let you watch e.g. two ladies from the same round.
Once On This Island on Broadway: There is an Island…And It’s Pure Magic
It’s Theatre Thursday y’all!!! Today we are talking about an insanely magical new show, the revival of “Once On This Island” at Broadway’s Circle in the Square Theatre, opening on December 3.
I like a lot of the shows I see, and sometimes I love them. Every once in a while (/every few weeks) I love love a show. But rarely am I struck with a realization that I’m getting to witness pure magic. I can remember a few times when I had such a moment, sort of an out-of-body momentary recognition that I am lucky to be in this audience, like I’m stepping back from watching the show itself and thinking oh man, am I here? It has nothing to do with whether I love love the show itself; I could just like the show but have this kind of detached awareness where I recognize that parts of it are flawless or beautiful or magical. In the past decade, I can remember this happening a few times. Once was during the big title number tap break in Sutton Foster’s “Anything Goes”. That’s like a ten-minute tap dance extravaganza and halfway through I was like oh my god this is still going on and it keeps getting better I can’t believe it. (It’s easy to understand why Jonanthan Groff was so equally obsessed that he learned all of Kathleen Marshall’s choreography (and imitated every one of Sutton’s vocal inflections.)) Next was when I saw “Hamilton” and Daveed Diggs rapped his “Guns & Ships”. This was before the album was recorded (OG right here) so no one had heard this before and I was like whaaaaat this is really happening in musical theatre erma erma! There were probably one or two other moments like that in the past few years, and the most recent, and most surprising, was during the new Broadway revival of “Once on this Island”. Surprising, because I had literally zero information about this show, and because the magic feeling lasted for pretty much the entire show. Not one song or one dance, but for the entire damn thing.
The musical, which debuted on Broadway in 1990, is written by Ahrens & Flaherty (of “Anastasia” fame and “Ragtime” acclaim) and is based on a slightly older novel called “My Love, My Love” by Rosa Guy. I would have bet money that the source material was hundreds of years older, actually. It’s very folk-tale-handed-down-through-generations, and that’s how the story is presented. It tells the story of a black peasant girl on a segregated island who falls in love with a light-skinned boy from the other, more prosperous side of the island, who is one of the rich descendants of the original French conquerors. She in turn conquers her fears, the elements, and the gods that her fellow islanders pray to so fervently in order to be with him, despite their class differences and despite fate and the gods foretelling that it won’t end well. The power of love and its ability to conquer everything – well not everything, not death, but it does live on after death, we learn, in some form – is the main theme here, and not just romantic love but every incarnation and facet of love you can think of, and I forking loved every second. It’s not a perfect show – the tragic ending and kind of too-Little-Mermaidy plot is problematic if you look directly at it (like the sun) – but it’s a perfect production full of joy and life and MAGIC.
Going in, I didn’t know any of that. A few weeks ago, I went to the very first preview of the new revival on Broadway, which officially opens this Sunday. (I am not waiting to post my review until Sunday because a) I’m not a professional (that’s the hard and fast rule for professionals), b) it’s theatre Thursday y’all, and c) I’ve been made aware of the changes made in the past few weeks so I feel like the fact that I’ll share them when we talk about the relevant parts is enough. Also this is a rave. If I were blasting the thing maybe I’d wait to see a nonpreview. If you still have issues please buy me a ticket to see it again after Sunday and I’ll re-review it. you also need to buy airfare p.s.) All I knew going in was that Lea Salonga was in this production, and that Audra McDonald sang one song from it, “Come Down From The Tree”, on one of her early albums. That’s literally all I knew. I adore “Come Down From The Tree” and listened to it probably fifty billion times. Guess what, it’s not in the show; it was cut from the original production. That’s another thing I didn’t know. So I kept waiting for someone to start singing it, and that was disappointing (I’m still waitingggg), but that was the only disappointing thing about this production so we’re good. Also, the bright, gorgeous motif used in that song appears frequently throughout the show, like a gentle reassuring hug, and that made up for it.
As soon as we took our seats, there was an air of joy and excitement, the kind that doesn’t happen in most other theatre experiences. It’s mostly due to the fact that it was the first preview and a lot of loved ones were there, but it was also because this show, at Circle in the Square Theatre, is performed in the round, so you can see everyone in the small audience (it’s like 6 rows all around, so small). It’s super intimate to share the experience like that and see the faces of the people you are going on this adventure with. Also, the lights were up and the cast was already in the middle, on the ‘stage’ – which was all sand, made over like a beach, with a little lagoon flowing out on one end. I was sitting above that lagoon, where Quentin Earle Darrington, dressed like King Triton, sat next to me during the entire preshow hubbub. On ‘stage’, the rest of the cast cleaned up debris and made comments about how we have to take care of the earth. Lea Salonga was dressed in khakis as a member of a Greenpeace crew or something, and she took a cell phone call and said something like ‘no phones!’ and threw the phone away. It was pretty cute to do before the show starts, as all the annoying latecomers filter in. Finally the cast started to get into place to begin the real show, and from the first few moments I was riveted. This score, how did I not know the score before? This was a huge blind spot in my knowledge of musical theatre, and while that’s shameful, it did let me experience this show in a special way that doesn’t happen often. Everything was new and exciting. Right away, the gorgeous music struck me with its joyfulness. It is lively and exuberant and you can feel the rhythm in your heart and soul. It’s magic.
The show starts with a little girl in the Antilles who is scared of a storm. The villagers tell her a story about another little girl in a storm, one of their stories that gets passed down generations. The storytellers describe how villagers like them on an island like theirs once suffered a terrible storm, in which only a little peasant girl survived. And as they tell the story, that framing device gives way to the story they’re telling, our main story. On this island, the people zealously prayed to the four gods: Agwe, god of water (Quentin Earle Darrington, and why he looked like a hot black King Triton), Asaka, mother of the earth (blindingly good Alex Newell, who played the trans character Unique on ‘Glee’), Erzulie, goddess of love (Lea Salonga in full loving and warm mode), and Papa Ge, demon of death (Merle Dandridge in a role usually played by men but didn’t you hear, men are over and she is incredibly frightening and powerful and amazing). The storm rages – here the lights flashed and the sound of winds filled the room and I fully believed this storm. But apparently now they have actual rain and wind happening – like soaking everything and so you can feel the wind – so it’s even more powerful. Sad to have missed that but I’m glad I didn’t get wet. So this super wet and windy storm kills everyone else in the village, but the little girl is saved by the gods and found in a tree by two villagers, Mama Euralie (lovely Kenita R. Miller) and Tonton Julian (Phillip Boykin, one of my faves), who adopt her (hence why their names are mom and dad). They know that if Agwe wanted to kill her too, she would be dead, so they know that the gods saved her for a reason. The new parents name her Ti Moune, which they tell her means someone special saved by the gods for a reason, pretty on the nose. Ti Moune asks what the reason is, and her mother says the best line, “If we knew why the gods did the things they do, we would be gods ourselves.” I loved this because it recognizes how cray gods are if they are doing any of this shit. The music had already started reverberating in my heart but when the little girl started growing up and playing and she ran into the lagoon and Haley Kilgore (the actress playing the teenage Ti Moune) ran out, I was ALL IN. This was such a little bit of perfect simple direction that created this magical effect, kind of like everything in the show.
We meet our teenage Ti Moune with her big song “Waiting For Life”, and you could feel everyone in that audience wishing Haley well. This was this kid’s Broadway debut, carrying a show, and this was her moment to prove herself. And she did. I’m pretty sure everyone in the audience, including RuPaul (yes RuPaul was there erma), cried tears of happiness for her when she finished the song triumphantly. This is the kind of community that I love in the theatre. Aside from the two people across the aisle from me who wouldn’t stop talking and doing commentary like they were watching a movie in North Philly, we were all in this together and it felt like that good will and energy buoyed the actors even more.
This sense of theatrical joyousness remains throughout, but the upbeat story gets darker as we remember why the gods are watching Ti Moune – as part of a bet to see which is stronger, love or death. To find out whether Erzulie (love) or Papa Ge (death) has the stronger power, Agwe (water) raises the tide so that a young pretty-much-white boy crashes his car so that Ti Moune finds him and nurses him back to health. The fast-driving car and the crash formed another bit of simple direction, using just light and the actors, that had a magical effect, so much so that the audience applauded. There are no expensive special effects used in these amazing moments, just brilliant coordination of the actors. I love it. Daniel is from the rich side of the island, part of the people that keep the black peasants down, so Ti Moune’s family and villagers just want to let him die, as that was clearly the gods’ wish, they argue. (It wasn’t, guys.) But Ti Moune falls in love with him because he so shiny, despite his being unconscious still. Papa Ge, terrifying with a costume literally made of knives, comes to her to take Daniel’s life, and Ti Moune begs the demon to spare him and to take her own life instead. Girl he’s not even AWAKE yet. A life is a life, so Papa Ge agrees to the exchange, leaving the two younguns and promising Ti Moune that she’ll be back later, as Ti Moune’s life now belongs to her. So like, it’s not a happy show really. Shit’s dark. But it’s so much fun to watch. And Merle is so badass I can’t get over it. Like I fully believed she had godlike powers the whole time and still do now. I’m so in awe and so terrified.
While Daniel recovers, Tonton Julian goes to the other side of the island to find Daniel’s family and tell them he’s okay, I mean I imagine, and to find out more about them. Julian comes back and tells his village what he learned about Daniel’s ancestors – in like a shadow puppet performance. It’s so cool; the ensemble stands being a white sheet and tells the story using their changing shadows. More amazing work, and so precise. The French aristocrat who colonized their island during Napoleon’s time had an affair with a black peasant girl, and they had a son named Beauxhomme (again so on the nose). Once grown, Beauxhomme helped the peasants win the war with the French colonizers, so his father cursed him and the island and all Beauxhomme’s descendants, now including the young Daniel, with their hearts yearning to return to France but never being able to, so they despise the peasants for reminding them of this or something racism is stupid. Regardless, Ti Moune won’t be stopped, and she leaves her family to go find Daniel in his hotel, where he lives, like Eloise. Ti Moune’s parents reluctantly let her go and that scene is so g-d moving it’s like Boykin my GOD what CAN’T you do.
On the long, hard journey, Ti Moune’s like, oh crap, how am I gonna eat and stuff while I walk for days or weeks or however long it takes to walk across an island? And Asaka, mother of the earth, appears with his banana and feather headdress and is like ‘girl I gotcha’. And then he blows the g-d roof off the theatre as he sings “Mama Will Provide”, as he like throws bananas and stuff at Ti Moune, I don’t know, I don’t remember the details I was just like WHO IS THIS MOTHER AND WHY IS SHE OTHERWORLDLY AMAZING. So it’s Alex Newell, and he is having a BALL out there with this song and it’s THE BEST. Hot damn he is talented. I can’t wait for the cast recording (please tell me there will be a cast recording) so I can set Alex’s “Mama” to play as my alarm clock so it gives me the strength and power to GREET THE GODDAMN DAY ERRR DAY WITH JOY AND GLEE GET IT BECAUSE HE WAS ON GLEE OH MY GOD HE IS AMAZING. I mean, what a Broadway debut for one thing, but I would for sure vote for him for a Tony for this performance. How cool would that be, to be nominated for this kind of sickmazing debut.
Anyway then the fun ends and Ti Moune finds Daniel in his room at the Plaza or whatever and they have lots of weird teenage sex and that couple across the aisle from me shouted things the entire time like GIRLL UH UHHH DON’T YOU DARE, girl noooo he’s not worth it, and I was like oh my god will you please be quiet, I’m trying to watch, which sounded pedo so I just let them keep talking. Lea Salonga sings her one big song, “Human Heart”, during all this, and Lea is the perfect embodiment of love and warmth and her voice is like a big fuzzy blanket. So so beautiful, you wish it wasn’t about teenagers doing what they’re doing but anyway. Of course, things are not that easy and that joy and love can’t last because CLASS and RACE and SHIT like that stands in the way. And also Daniel has a fiancée! Of course he does; everyone in his culture has arranged marriages based on status and money and they’re set up in order for families to acquire more status and money, didn’t you know that Ti Moune?? His fiancée is the gorgeous Alysha Deslorieux, the original Schuyler sister standby from “Hamilton”, who is kind of an evil mean girl but not really because she’s just trying to get through her life too guys, like everyone, and when she’s not wearing a Belle gown she’s in the ensemble showing everyone else how to wear jean shorts and you’re like damnnn that’s how you wear jean shorts when you have human thighs and it was the most inspiring part of this very inspirational show so much so that I actually bought jean shorts that weekend. Um anyway….Her existence just sucks for Ti Moune, who is heartbroken of course over the idiot Daniel who didn’t even know he was doing anything wrong because white guys, right. Daniel is a supremely unlikable character, as you can tell I’m sure, made somehow understandable and likable by Isaac Powell’s subtle, flawless performance. I mean you hate Daniel, you do, but you also can’t hate him for being born into this situation and being too privileged to realize what it means for others. PS THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO REAL LIFE, WHITE MEN; PRIVILEGE BLINDING YOU TO REALITY DOES NOT EXCUSE YOUR BULLSHIT.
Anyway then you’re like okay Ti Moune is heartbroken and OH YEAH, she promised her life to Papa Ge, I almost forgot, tell me that that demon doesn’t follow through on that? This theme of a girl’s sacrifice to let a boy be happy, and a black girl doing it for a white boy at that, doesn’t exactly hold up in our society, but it’s not meant to. No one involved in this production is presenting this idea literally as something to reflect outside the theatre, bozos. But it does portray the power of love and how much it can accomplish. Ti Moune’s transformation by the gods and her (its (spoiler)) power to build a path between the two classes of people and maybe to end the separation between them is a pretty good legacy to have. Ariel didn’t do any of that shit, she just turned into sea foam. Yeah that’s right, Disney lied, she didn’t go live in the castle with Eric and legs, she just turned into sea foam. Ti Moune, on the other hand, stood as a symbol of love and helped bridge the divide between peoples. And she didn’t have to wear a shell bra to accomplish that.
Going in, I didn’t know any of that. A few weeks ago, I went to the very first preview of the new revival on Broadway, which officially opens this Sunday. (I am not waiting to post my review until Sunday because a) I’m not a professional (that’s the hard and fast rule for professionals), b) it’s theatre Thursday y’all, and c) I’ve been made aware of the changes made in the past few weeks so I feel like the fact that I’ll share them when we talk about the relevant parts is enough. Also this is a rave. If I were blasting the thing maybe I’d wait to see a nonpreview. If you still have issues please buy me a ticket to see it again after Sunday and I’ll re-review it. you also need to buy airfare p.s.) All I knew going in was that Lea Salonga was in this production, and that Audra McDonald sang one song from it, “Come Down From The Tree”, on one of her early albums. That’s literally all I knew. I adore “Come Down From The Tree” and listened to it probably fifty billion times. Guess what, it’s not in the show; it was cut from the original production. That’s another thing I didn’t know. So I kept waiting for someone to start singing it, and that was disappointing (I’m still waitingggg), but that was the only disappointing thing about this production so we’re good. Also, the bright, gorgeous motif used in that song appears frequently throughout the show, like a gentle reassuring hug, and that made up for it.
As soon as we took our seats, there was an air of joy and excitement, the kind that doesn’t happen in most other theatre experiences. It’s mostly due to the fact that it was the first preview and a lot of loved ones were there, but it was also because this show, at Circle in the Square Theatre, is performed in the round, so you can see everyone in the small audience (it’s like 6 rows all around, so small). It’s super intimate to share the experience like that and see the faces of the people you are going on this adventure with. Also, the lights were up and the cast was already in the middle, on the ‘stage’ – which was all sand, made over like a beach, with a little lagoon flowing out on one end. I was sitting above that lagoon, where Quentin Earle Darrington, dressed like King Triton, sat next to me during the entire preshow hubbub. On ‘stage’, the rest of the cast cleaned up debris and made comments about how we have to take care of the earth. Lea Salonga was dressed in khakis as a member of a Greenpeace crew or something, and she took a cell phone call and said something like ‘no phones!’ and threw the phone away. It was pretty cute to do before the show starts, as all the annoying latecomers filter in. Finally the cast started to get into place to begin the real show, and from the first few moments I was riveted. This score, how did I not know the score before? This was a huge blind spot in my knowledge of musical theatre, and while that’s shameful, it did let me experience this show in a special way that doesn’t happen often. Everything was new and exciting. Right away, the gorgeous music struck me with its joyfulness. It is lively and exuberant and you can feel the rhythm in your heart and soul. It’s magic.
The show starts with a little girl in the Antilles who is scared of a storm. The villagers tell her a story about another little girl in a storm, one of their stories that gets passed down generations. The storytellers describe how villagers like them on an island like theirs once suffered a terrible storm, in which only a little peasant girl survived. And as they tell the story, that framing device gives way to the story they’re telling, our main story. On this island, the people zealously prayed to the four gods: Agwe, god of water (Quentin Earle Darrington, and why he looked like a hot black King Triton), Asaka, mother of the earth (blindingly good Alex Newell, who played the trans character Unique on ‘Glee’), Erzulie, goddess of love (Lea Salonga in full loving and warm mode), and Papa Ge, demon of death (Merle Dandridge in a role usually played by men but didn’t you hear, men are over and she is incredibly frightening and powerful and amazing). The storm rages – here the lights flashed and the sound of winds filled the room and I fully believed this storm. But apparently now they have actual rain and wind happening – like soaking everything and so you can feel the wind – so it’s even more powerful. Sad to have missed that but I’m glad I didn’t get wet. So this super wet and windy storm kills everyone else in the village, but the little girl is saved by the gods and found in a tree by two villagers, Mama Euralie (lovely Kenita R. Miller) and Tonton Julian (Phillip Boykin, one of my faves), who adopt her (hence why their names are mom and dad). They know that if Agwe wanted to kill her too, she would be dead, so they know that the gods saved her for a reason. The new parents name her Ti Moune, which they tell her means someone special saved by the gods for a reason, pretty on the nose. Ti Moune asks what the reason is, and her mother says the best line, “If we knew why the gods did the things they do, we would be gods ourselves.” I loved this because it recognizes how cray gods are if they are doing any of this shit. The music had already started reverberating in my heart but when the little girl started growing up and playing and she ran into the lagoon and Haley Kilgore (the actress playing the teenage Ti Moune) ran out, I was ALL IN. This was such a little bit of perfect simple direction that created this magical effect, kind of like everything in the show.
We meet our teenage Ti Moune with her big song “Waiting For Life”, and you could feel everyone in that audience wishing Haley well. This was this kid’s Broadway debut, carrying a show, and this was her moment to prove herself. And she did. I’m pretty sure everyone in the audience, including RuPaul (yes RuPaul was there erma), cried tears of happiness for her when she finished the song triumphantly. This is the kind of community that I love in the theatre. Aside from the two people across the aisle from me who wouldn’t stop talking and doing commentary like they were watching a movie in North Philly, we were all in this together and it felt like that good will and energy buoyed the actors even more.
This sense of theatrical joyousness remains throughout, but the upbeat story gets darker as we remember why the gods are watching Ti Moune – as part of a bet to see which is stronger, love or death. To find out whether Erzulie (love) or Papa Ge (death) has the stronger power, Agwe (water) raises the tide so that a young pretty-much-white boy crashes his car so that Ti Moune finds him and nurses him back to health. The fast-driving car and the crash formed another bit of simple direction, using just light and the actors, that had a magical effect, so much so that the audience applauded. There are no expensive special effects used in these amazing moments, just brilliant coordination of the actors. I love it. Daniel is from the rich side of the island, part of the people that keep the black peasants down, so Ti Moune’s family and villagers just want to let him die, as that was clearly the gods’ wish, they argue. (It wasn’t, guys.) But Ti Moune falls in love with him because he so shiny, despite his being unconscious still. Papa Ge, terrifying with a costume literally made of knives, comes to her to take Daniel’s life, and Ti Moune begs the demon to spare him and to take her own life instead. Girl he’s not even AWAKE yet. A life is a life, so Papa Ge agrees to the exchange, leaving the two younguns and promising Ti Moune that she’ll be back later, as Ti Moune’s life now belongs to her. So like, it’s not a happy show really. Shit’s dark. But it’s so much fun to watch. And Merle is so badass I can’t get over it. Like I fully believed she had godlike powers the whole time and still do now. I’m so in awe and so terrified.
While Daniel recovers, Tonton Julian goes to the other side of the island to find Daniel’s family and tell them he’s okay, I mean I imagine, and to find out more about them. Julian comes back and tells his village what he learned about Daniel’s ancestors – in like a shadow puppet performance. It’s so cool; the ensemble stands being a white sheet and tells the story using their changing shadows. More amazing work, and so precise. The French aristocrat who colonized their island during Napoleon’s time had an affair with a black peasant girl, and they had a son named Beauxhomme (again so on the nose). Once grown, Beauxhomme helped the peasants win the war with the French colonizers, so his father cursed him and the island and all Beauxhomme’s descendants, now including the young Daniel, with their hearts yearning to return to France but never being able to, so they despise the peasants for reminding them of this or something racism is stupid. Regardless, Ti Moune won’t be stopped, and she leaves her family to go find Daniel in his hotel, where he lives, like Eloise. Ti Moune’s parents reluctantly let her go and that scene is so g-d moving it’s like Boykin my GOD what CAN’T you do.
On the long, hard journey, Ti Moune’s like, oh crap, how am I gonna eat and stuff while I walk for days or weeks or however long it takes to walk across an island? And Asaka, mother of the earth, appears with his banana and feather headdress and is like ‘girl I gotcha’. And then he blows the g-d roof off the theatre as he sings “Mama Will Provide”, as he like throws bananas and stuff at Ti Moune, I don’t know, I don’t remember the details I was just like WHO IS THIS MOTHER AND WHY IS SHE OTHERWORLDLY AMAZING. So it’s Alex Newell, and he is having a BALL out there with this song and it’s THE BEST. Hot damn he is talented. I can’t wait for the cast recording (please tell me there will be a cast recording) so I can set Alex’s “Mama” to play as my alarm clock so it gives me the strength and power to GREET THE GODDAMN DAY ERRR DAY WITH JOY AND GLEE GET IT BECAUSE HE WAS ON GLEE OH MY GOD HE IS AMAZING. I mean, what a Broadway debut for one thing, but I would for sure vote for him for a Tony for this performance. How cool would that be, to be nominated for this kind of sickmazing debut.
Anyway then the fun ends and Ti Moune finds Daniel in his room at the Plaza or whatever and they have lots of weird teenage sex and that couple across the aisle from me shouted things the entire time like GIRLL UH UHHH DON’T YOU DARE, girl noooo he’s not worth it, and I was like oh my god will you please be quiet, I’m trying to watch, which sounded pedo so I just let them keep talking. Lea Salonga sings her one big song, “Human Heart”, during all this, and Lea is the perfect embodiment of love and warmth and her voice is like a big fuzzy blanket. So so beautiful, you wish it wasn’t about teenagers doing what they’re doing but anyway. Of course, things are not that easy and that joy and love can’t last because CLASS and RACE and SHIT like that stands in the way. And also Daniel has a fiancée! Of course he does; everyone in his culture has arranged marriages based on status and money and they’re set up in order for families to acquire more status and money, didn’t you know that Ti Moune?? His fiancée is the gorgeous Alysha Deslorieux, the original Schuyler sister standby from “Hamilton”, who is kind of an evil mean girl but not really because she’s just trying to get through her life too guys, like everyone, and when she’s not wearing a Belle gown she’s in the ensemble showing everyone else how to wear jean shorts and you’re like damnnn that’s how you wear jean shorts when you have human thighs and it was the most inspiring part of this very inspirational show so much so that I actually bought jean shorts that weekend. Um anyway….Her existence just sucks for Ti Moune, who is heartbroken of course over the idiot Daniel who didn’t even know he was doing anything wrong because white guys, right. Daniel is a supremely unlikable character, as you can tell I’m sure, made somehow understandable and likable by Isaac Powell’s subtle, flawless performance. I mean you hate Daniel, you do, but you also can’t hate him for being born into this situation and being too privileged to realize what it means for others. PS THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO REAL LIFE, WHITE MEN; PRIVILEGE BLINDING YOU TO REALITY DOES NOT EXCUSE YOUR BULLSHIT.
Anyway then you’re like okay Ti Moune is heartbroken and OH YEAH, she promised her life to Papa Ge, I almost forgot, tell me that that demon doesn’t follow through on that? This theme of a girl’s sacrifice to let a boy be happy, and a black girl doing it for a white boy at that, doesn’t exactly hold up in our society, but it’s not meant to. No one involved in this production is presenting this idea literally as something to reflect outside the theatre, bozos. But it does portray the power of love and how much it can accomplish. Ti Moune’s transformation by the gods and her (its (spoiler)) power to build a path between the two classes of people and maybe to end the separation between them is a pretty good legacy to have. Ariel didn’t do any of that shit, she just turned into sea foam. Yeah that’s right, Disney lied, she didn’t go live in the castle with Eric and legs, she just turned into sea foam. Ti Moune, on the other hand, stood as a symbol of love and helped bridge the divide between peoples. And she didn’t have to wear a shell bra to accomplish that.
As her story ends, the framing device of the storytellers telling the story (that’s what they do that’s what they do) to the little girl returns, except now it’s in a village’s school and a BILLION little kids in navy school uniforms ran down all the aisles down to the stage as part of the classroom that just learned the story of Ti Moune. This was the one part of the entire show that threw me for a loop, in a not great way. I was too busy thinking ‘ahhh an army of children save yourselves save yourselves’ to really relish how this show came together. The kids were distracting and unnecessary, and having the one original little girl from the beginning learning how the folk tale ends would have accomplished the same goal, of showing how the stories are passed down so that new generations learn the tales and the lessons. Apparently, the creative team thought the same thing, because it turns out that all those kids have been axed now. Sorry poor little unemployed 7 year olds, go get a new job. No so it’s a smart move, but even with them and the confusion they caused I still was a mess at that ending because the storytellers showed the little girl little Ti Moune and Daniel dolls and I was just a basketcase when I noticed that because that’s just like how we all were with toys from our culture’s stories and then I cried even harder as the whole company sang about why they tell the story LOVE IS WHYYYY WE TELL THE STORY and so on ohmygod I need the recording now stat also I need to see this again and so do you the end goodbye.
INFORMATION
The show is one act, about 90 minutes (of pure freaking theatre magic) so pee beforehand. The Circle in the Square has the WORST little tiny lobby so just expect to be rammed in like sardines when you go to the box office at street level. And then get down the escalators to the basement/main area as fast as you can.
The producers have implemented a ‘best price guarantee’ for this show, which is groundbreaking. It means that they’re guaranteeing that you can get the cheapest tickets from the box office directly. So cool.
STAGEDOOR
The joy of the first performance remained at 110% after the show, as most of the audience waited outside the main doors for the entire cast, every single one, to come out to raucous cheers. It was so beautiful. They seemed to be having a blast too, making fun of each other for taking too long to sign and stuff like that. Everyone signed and most seemed happy to take selfies (not Lea, but she never seems happy to stage door, which is kind of understandable when every single time I’ve seen her there have been like a dozen people at stage door screaming at her for being their idol and how they came from the Philippines to see her and how they are owed a picture for that and she’s like ‘please don’t kill me’ so I get why she seems reluctant). It was so much fun, EXCEPT, except, the show has the MOST ANNOYING social media team. They were taking pictures and videos of us, the crowd waiting at stagedoor, and of course I was right up front so I tried my best to hide my face with a playbill but still that shit is just so annoying and rude come on guys if I wanted people to be taking my picture I’d be the one coming out of that door, know what I’m saying?
