Golden Globes 2017: The Good and the Ugly and the Crazyby Randi / January 10, 2017
For a show that begins with four Jews in a room bitching, in a song called “Four Jews in a Room Bitching”, you would think I’d love “Falsettos”. But when I saw the current Broadway revival of this show, I was somehow left cold, which is pretty hard when the focus is on family dynamics and, suddenly, AIDS. I was having trouble with the choppy direction and erratic pacing throughout the show, but I believe the suddenness of the AIDS story is what fully shut down all my feelings aside from ‘disbelief’ and ‘like you’re being punked’. I’ve been told that I would have enjoyed this particular production more if I was at all familiar with it beforehand (I wasn’t), and I could see how this cast would be a treat if you were a fan of the show. But you shouldn’t need to know a piece beforehand to enjoy it. And honestly, it’s a weird show. There are moments of brilliance (possibly due to the actors involved here), but oof, it was difficult to get through. I’ve never been so impatient for a show to end. And I barely remember ¾ of what I saw.
“Falsettos” is the story of a ‘tight-knit family’ of Trina (Stephanie J. Block), her ex-husband Marvin (Christian Borle), their son Jason (a child), Marvin’s new male lover Whizzer (Andrew Rannells), and their therapist Mendel (Brandon Uranowitz). Marvin has just left Trina for Whizzer but still wants to keep his family close and have them accept Whizzer as a new member, which is supes awks for everyone. But even more awkward is the opening number, which I enjoyed tremendously before thinking, wait, WTF, what’s happening. The four male characters are dressed like Israelites straight from the desert as they ‘bitch’ and Trina does some community-theatre-style assistant directing, flying flags and banners and adding some props to the mix. So, going into this cold, my actual first thought was, is this show about an acting troupe? Not joking. It made more sense than the truth, which is that this opening had nothing to do with their reality because no, they weren’t putting on a show, so it was just breaking the fourth wall I guess for a few laughs. Yet it was one of the most enjoyable parts of the show, so I can’t knock it too much.
Weirder was when that vaguely odd number ends and the real story begins, and you realize that despite this being an expensive Broadway production, there is no set aside from some giant gray cubes. And the actors throughout the entire show are constantly rearranging the blocks into different shapes to represent tables, chairs, therapy couches, beds, exteriors of houses, &c. This set design was really distracting and had very little payoff, the only interesting uses being as a house that could be easily knocked down, a decent metaphor for the family strife, and when all the cubes rearranged into a grave at the end. But despite how strong that ending visual was, I don’t think it was worth two hours and 45 minutes of wasted set design and extra jobs for the actors. It looked very ill-fitting for such an enormous stage, and I thought how much more appropriate this production and show in general would be in a small black box theatre. I think I could have appreciated it more in that setting.
Early on, as the cast forms the gray blocks into living room and bedroom furniture, we learn that Jason, the child, is scared that he’ll be gay because his ‘father is a homo’, as he sings. The funniest part was that Anthony Rosenthal, playing Jason, seemed to have a bad cold, and he kept sneezing and coughing in Christian Borle’s face and they tried not to laugh. Not as funny was that, in the wake of Sydney Lucas in “Fun Home” putting all other child actors and child roles to shame, this role (and sadly the actor) was indeed put to shame. We also learn that Marvin sees a therapist to figure out his tumultuous relationship with Whizzer – based more on lust at first than love, though they do admit that they truly love each other. Christian and Andrew’s chemistry was stronger than that of most couples, onstage or onscreen, and these two Broadway superstars made the thin story of the first act more compelling because of it. Nonetheless, their characters were kind of thankless until the very end, which is unfortunate for such incredible actors. They both do extremely well with what they’re given, but aside from a few money notes and their killer chemistry, they aren’t given much.
Then we learn that Trina needs a therapist because of this very difficult time for her family, which is understandable. But what isn’t understandable – except for purposes of the fake story – is that she goes to Marvin’s therapist Mendel. And then they all decide that Jason, who is having an understandably rough time with this transitional period, needs a therapist too…so they also enlist Mendel to therapize Jason. One really important lesson that I wish the characters learned before the show started is that there are lots of psychiatrists in New York City. Like I bet there’s at least one on every block of Manhattan and more when you get to the Upper East Side. So, there’s no good reason for a father, mother, and the son to all see the same psychiatrist. That’s the kind of crazy talk that would merit a visit to a psychiatrist. A different one.
Mendel quickly falls in love with Trina, which is against lots of rules and makes Marvin feel even more alienated from his family. He also needs a new therapist now. We’re supposed to feel bad for Marvin when these things start biting him in the ass but he did leave his family for a hot young thang so I mean what did he expect would happen. Mendel seems great at first, if severely in breach of ethics rules, but he really is the same immature sort that Marvin is, and Trina knows it, but having a husband turn out to be gay has apparently destroyed her confidence so she tells herself she could do worse and convinces herself that its in her best interest to marry Mendel. And I can see how one could arrive at that conclusion because Brandon Uranowitz is flipping hilarious. His subtle gesticulations really made the character and I was loving it for a while. But his character didn’t live up to the early potential. At one point amid all the constant familial drama, Marvin slaps Trina, and I was sooo ready for Trina to stand up and fight back (physically or verbally) but Mendel physically holds her back to prevent any escalation. I think that’s when I lost it. I was pretty close to the stage so it was really hard for me to remember that this wasn’t real and it took all my might to stop myself from climbing up on that stage, punching Marvin for hitting a woman/his ex-wife and then beating the crap out of Mendel for failing to stand up for his new wife. Like what is that shit about. It doesn’t matter that there are two lesbians in the second act (conveniently referred to continuously as ‘the two lesbians who live next door’); this is really a show by, about, and for (gay) men.
Even so, I really tried to love it. I wanted to love it. And one scene got me closer to that point than any other. In fact, as incongruous as it sounds for a show I didn’t really enjoy that much, this one scene – Trina’s “I’m Breaking Down” – might be one of the best performances of a song I’ve ever seen live. I know! Stephanie J. Block is that talented, and this song is directed that perfectly and performed that impeccably. In it, Trina is chopping up food for dinner or a pie or something while she sings a hilarious song about how all this tumult and disorder in her family and in her life is making her lose her mind and all her control, which isn’t that funny on its face, I guess, but Stephanie nails every nanosecond of this scene with perfect comic timing and hysterical frenzied humor, and this one song was worth the ticket price alone. She gets so wild in her crazy that by the end she’s singing through a mouthful of banana and is just a complete mess and it’s amazing. I never thought of Stephanie as a comedian or saw her do anything funny, but this shot her up to the top of the musical comedy list. So, everyone else in the theatre community thought this production was fantastic, to the point where it’s a frontrunner for the Best Revival Tony award. As much as I disagree with that, I would condone such a win just because of Stephanie and this one song. She was that great. As much as I kind of wished I chose a different show to see that night, I am so happy I got to witness this expert performance. I really can’t get over it.
After that scene, I tried even harder to get a bit more into it, as the dynamic was more understandable, with a growing family trying to get through all these changes. But I could not get past how unfortunately terrible a lot of the music was. Not all; there are some bright spots. But too much of the score was terrible. I remember literally gagging when Mendel sings a line about going ‘to jaw’ – as in TO EAT, just so it would rhyme with ‘my paw’ – as in A HANDSHAKE. I can’t stop having nightmares about how terrible that lyric is. There’s no reason for a rhyme that forced when both sides of it are horrendous. Just change both lines!!
And then two insane surprises happen. The first is the most unforgivable because I still don’t understand what it was going for – “The March of the Falsettos”. The four male characters come out in the dark and march over the cubes which are set up as a city skyline or some such. They are wearing bodysuits with patches that reflect the blacklight in the dark, so it’s very 1970s college dorm vibe. And they are singing in falsetto voices. This is legit the one reference to the title of the show. And they march and they sing in those high voices “march of the falsettos, march of the falsettos” and it’s WEIRD. Like, look-around-at-all-the-patrons-around-you-to-see-if-it’s-just-you weird. It was like the opening number in that it was divorced from the reality of the characters’ story and was just for fun or something, I don’t know, but I know my eyes were open rull wide.
The next unforgivable thing is unforgivable for an entirely different reason. See, this is the 1980s, and it’s about some gay men. So maybe I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t because so far it was a comedy, and a silly one at that, at least at times. And its first act didn’t let on that anything of the sort was coming. So when Whizzer starts getting sick, I didn’t get sad; I got ANGRY. Really angry. You can’t have a kind of absurd tone and then all of a sudden start talking about AIDS and expect everyone to quickly get on board with the requisite depth of emotion necessary to discuss the AIDS crisis. It made me angry that they broached this topic in such a poor manner as to prevent me from getting emotionally invested, because we all should always be emotionally invested when this disease comes up. I was pissed that I wasn’t able to connect with this more serious material because it came out of nowhere. And I guess the argument is that well the disease came out of nowhere, to unsuspecting people, and that’s totally true. But so far, this show wasn’t about reflecting pure reality, as the march of the falsettos showed. So I don’t buy that, instead of continuing to tell the story in an artistic way that allowed for maximum empathizing and connection, they suddenly switched to a cold blank reflection of reality. And the whole section of the story about Whizzer dying was incredibly emotional and well done, but because there was no bridge from the former section of the story (the whole first act and change) to this intense drama, I never found a way to catch up to that drama. We were never given another route to it, so it felt very far away and detached from any emotional connection with the audience. Well, some people did manage to find another bridge because there was some SERIOUS sobbing at the end, and I wanted to be there with them, but I wasn’t.
I learned after the fact that my feelings of disjointedness and choppiness were warranted, because the original show was a series of three separate one-acts presented Off Broadway in 1990, like sequels. The Broadway incarnation of “Falsettos” is composed of the second and third one-acts in that series, so, although they are related and follow the same characters and story, the first and second acts are really two completely separate shows. That explains a lot for me. Well, except for the “March of the Falsettos” number. And why they didn’t work more on combining the two more cohesively. And why they kept the second act longer than the first, which should be rule #1 of theatre – never have a longer second act omg especially when people’s attention spans are getting shorter. The show was so long. My hair is so now.
A few days after I saw it, I heard that they are going to air it this season on PBS, as is usually done with one Broadway production per season or so. Despite my frequent exhortation that musical theatre has to be enjoyed live to be appreciated, and despite how lucky I feel having seen these amazing actors live, I kind of wish I’d skipped this one and waited to see it on TV. For free. Still, I’m ecstatic about a few things: one, that I did indeed get to see these actors live, and especially that I saw Stephanie J Block perform this role so wonderfully, and two, that I get to see her perform that role again. For free.
Weirder was when that vaguely odd number ends and the real story begins, and you realize that despite this being an expensive Broadway production, there is no set aside from some giant gray cubes. And the actors throughout the entire show are constantly rearranging the blocks into different shapes to represent tables, chairs, therapy couches, beds, exteriors of houses, &c. This set design was really distracting and had very little payoff, the only interesting uses being as a house that could be easily knocked down, a decent metaphor for the family strife, and when all the cubes rearranged into a grave at the end. But despite how strong that ending visual was, I don’t think it was worth two hours and 45 minutes of wasted set design and extra jobs for the actors. It looked very ill-fitting for such an enormous stage, and I thought how much more appropriate this production and show in general would be in a small black box theatre. I think I could have appreciated it more in that setting.
Early on, as the cast forms the gray blocks into living room and bedroom furniture, we learn that Jason, the child, is scared that he’ll be gay because his ‘father is a homo’, as he sings. The funniest part was that Anthony Rosenthal, playing Jason, seemed to have a bad cold, and he kept sneezing and coughing in Christian Borle’s face and they tried not to laugh. Not as funny was that, in the wake of Sydney Lucas in “Fun Home” putting all other child actors and child roles to shame, this role (and sadly the actor) was indeed put to shame. We also learn that Marvin sees a therapist to figure out his tumultuous relationship with Whizzer – based more on lust at first than love, though they do admit that they truly love each other. Christian and Andrew’s chemistry was stronger than that of most couples, onstage or onscreen, and these two Broadway superstars made the thin story of the first act more compelling because of it. Nonetheless, their characters were kind of thankless until the very end, which is unfortunate for such incredible actors. They both do extremely well with what they’re given, but aside from a few money notes and their killer chemistry, they aren’t given much.
Then we learn that Trina needs a therapist because of this very difficult time for her family, which is understandable. But what isn’t understandable – except for purposes of the fake story – is that she goes to Marvin’s therapist Mendel. And then they all decide that Jason, who is having an understandably rough time with this transitional period, needs a therapist too…so they also enlist Mendel to therapize Jason. One really important lesson that I wish the characters learned before the show started is that there are lots of psychiatrists in New York City. Like I bet there’s at least one on every block of Manhattan and more when you get to the Upper East Side. So, there’s no good reason for a father, mother, and the son to all see the same psychiatrist. That’s the kind of crazy talk that would merit a visit to a psychiatrist. A different one.
Mendel quickly falls in love with Trina, which is against lots of rules and makes Marvin feel even more alienated from his family. He also needs a new therapist now. We’re supposed to feel bad for Marvin when these things start biting him in the ass but he did leave his family for a hot young thang so I mean what did he expect would happen. Mendel seems great at first, if severely in breach of ethics rules, but he really is the same immature sort that Marvin is, and Trina knows it, but having a husband turn out to be gay has apparently destroyed her confidence so she tells herself she could do worse and convinces herself that its in her best interest to marry Mendel. And I can see how one could arrive at that conclusion because Brandon Uranowitz is flipping hilarious. His subtle gesticulations really made the character and I was loving it for a while. But his character didn’t live up to the early potential. At one point amid all the constant familial drama, Marvin slaps Trina, and I was sooo ready for Trina to stand up and fight back (physically or verbally) but Mendel physically holds her back to prevent any escalation. I think that’s when I lost it. I was pretty close to the stage so it was really hard for me to remember that this wasn’t real and it took all my might to stop myself from climbing up on that stage, punching Marvin for hitting a woman/his ex-wife and then beating the crap out of Mendel for failing to stand up for his new wife. Like what is that shit about. It doesn’t matter that there are two lesbians in the second act (conveniently referred to continuously as ‘the two lesbians who live next door’); this is really a show by, about, and for (gay) men.
Even so, I really tried to love it. I wanted to love it. And one scene got me closer to that point than any other. In fact, as incongruous as it sounds for a show I didn’t really enjoy that much, this one scene – Trina’s “I’m Breaking Down” – might be one of the best performances of a song I’ve ever seen live. I know! Stephanie J. Block is that talented, and this song is directed that perfectly and performed that impeccably. In it, Trina is chopping up food for dinner or a pie or something while she sings a hilarious song about how all this tumult and disorder in her family and in her life is making her lose her mind and all her control, which isn’t that funny on its face, I guess, but Stephanie nails every nanosecond of this scene with perfect comic timing and hysterical frenzied humor, and this one song was worth the ticket price alone. She gets so wild in her crazy that by the end she’s singing through a mouthful of banana and is just a complete mess and it’s amazing. I never thought of Stephanie as a comedian or saw her do anything funny, but this shot her up to the top of the musical comedy list. So, everyone else in the theatre community thought this production was fantastic, to the point where it’s a frontrunner for the Best Revival Tony award. As much as I disagree with that, I would condone such a win just because of Stephanie and this one song. She was that great. As much as I kind of wished I chose a different show to see that night, I am so happy I got to witness this expert performance. I really can’t get over it.
After that scene, I tried even harder to get a bit more into it, as the dynamic was more understandable, with a growing family trying to get through all these changes. But I could not get past how unfortunately terrible a lot of the music was. Not all; there are some bright spots. But too much of the score was terrible. I remember literally gagging when Mendel sings a line about going ‘to jaw’ – as in TO EAT, just so it would rhyme with ‘my paw’ – as in A HANDSHAKE. I can’t stop having nightmares about how terrible that lyric is. There’s no reason for a rhyme that forced when both sides of it are horrendous. Just change both lines!!
And then two insane surprises happen. The first is the most unforgivable because I still don’t understand what it was going for – “The March of the Falsettos”. The four male characters come out in the dark and march over the cubes which are set up as a city skyline or some such. They are wearing bodysuits with patches that reflect the blacklight in the dark, so it’s very 1970s college dorm vibe. And they are singing in falsetto voices. This is legit the one reference to the title of the show. And they march and they sing in those high voices “march of the falsettos, march of the falsettos” and it’s WEIRD. Like, look-around-at-all-the-patrons-around-you-to-see-if-it’s-just-you weird. It was like the opening number in that it was divorced from the reality of the characters’ story and was just for fun or something, I don’t know, but I know my eyes were open rull wide.
The next unforgivable thing is unforgivable for an entirely different reason. See, this is the 1980s, and it’s about some gay men. So maybe I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t because so far it was a comedy, and a silly one at that, at least at times. And its first act didn’t let on that anything of the sort was coming. So when Whizzer starts getting sick, I didn’t get sad; I got ANGRY. Really angry. You can’t have a kind of absurd tone and then all of a sudden start talking about AIDS and expect everyone to quickly get on board with the requisite depth of emotion necessary to discuss the AIDS crisis. It made me angry that they broached this topic in such a poor manner as to prevent me from getting emotionally invested, because we all should always be emotionally invested when this disease comes up. I was pissed that I wasn’t able to connect with this more serious material because it came out of nowhere. And I guess the argument is that well the disease came out of nowhere, to unsuspecting people, and that’s totally true. But so far, this show wasn’t about reflecting pure reality, as the march of the falsettos showed. So I don’t buy that, instead of continuing to tell the story in an artistic way that allowed for maximum empathizing and connection, they suddenly switched to a cold blank reflection of reality. And the whole section of the story about Whizzer dying was incredibly emotional and well done, but because there was no bridge from the former section of the story (the whole first act and change) to this intense drama, I never found a way to catch up to that drama. We were never given another route to it, so it felt very far away and detached from any emotional connection with the audience. Well, some people did manage to find another bridge because there was some SERIOUS sobbing at the end, and I wanted to be there with them, but I wasn’t.
I learned after the fact that my feelings of disjointedness and choppiness were warranted, because the original show was a series of three separate one-acts presented Off Broadway in 1990, like sequels. The Broadway incarnation of “Falsettos” is composed of the second and third one-acts in that series, so, although they are related and follow the same characters and story, the first and second acts are really two completely separate shows. That explains a lot for me. Well, except for the “March of the Falsettos” number. And why they didn’t work more on combining the two more cohesively. And why they kept the second act longer than the first, which should be rule #1 of theatre – never have a longer second act omg especially when people’s attention spans are getting shorter. The show was so long. My hair is so now.
A few days after I saw it, I heard that they are going to air it this season on PBS, as is usually done with one Broadway production per season or so. Despite my frequent exhortation that musical theatre has to be enjoyed live to be appreciated, and despite how lucky I feel having seen these amazing actors live, I kind of wish I’d skipped this one and waited to see it on TV. For free. Still, I’m ecstatic about a few things: one, that I did indeed get to see these actors live, and especially that I saw Stephanie J Block perform this role so wonderfully, and two, that I get to see her perform that role again. For free.
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“Chess” on the West End: Great Music in a Weird AF Production
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about “Chess” at London’s English National Opera, playing until June 2.
You know how Broadway keeps trying to make shows about basketball and they never really take off? Well at least basketball has some action to it. Imagine a show about the most boring game ever. “Chess”, the 1980s musical from ABBA menfolk Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus with lyrics from Tim Rice, really truly did that. The music still stands as some of the most famous and mainstream to come out of musical theatre (‘One Night in Bangkok’, anyone?), yet the book veers on ridonk. It’s one of the few shows I prefer to be done in a concert version. Still, I had high expectations for London’s new big production at the English National Opera’s Coliseum, but these expectations were not met. The score was well sung, but the production – both in terms of visuals, sound, and more – did more to hurt the show than help it.
“Chess” is a musical that went full-80s by centering on a chess championship between two stars of the game that happen to be from the major Cold War players – America and the Soviet Union. We have Soviet grandmaster Anatoly Sergievsky, and we have American grandmaster Freddie Trumper. I know – I was groaning too when I realized that was his name, because I assumed they stupidly made it special for this newest production. But that’s actually the original name. I wonder if Trump was a famous enough buffoon at the original time of writing to make the connection legit and I’m sure he was; it’s just extra weird to have it be in a show now. (A change wouldn’t be so bad.) But like his namesake before he acquired the power to destroy so many lives, Freddie is a loud, obnoxious, mean-spirited but fairly harmless jerk who is so cocky of his chess ability (I mean I can’t really accept in the first place that this guy would be playing chess or acting like this about chess) that it makes audiences root for the imposing Russian instead. Our Freddie is played by Tim Howar, who really did a great job being obnoxious and jerky and added to it being very yelly, so it made it really simple for me to root for Anatoly in every possible way. And that’s a huge accomplishment because Anatoly was played by London legend Michael Ball who, although he sings the role beautifully, is way too old and just wrong in every way for the part. Honestly, this mistake in the most principal casting is a huge reason why the show doesn’t work.
“Chess” is a musical that went full-80s by centering on a chess championship between two stars of the game that happen to be from the major Cold War players – America and the Soviet Union. We have Soviet grandmaster Anatoly Sergievsky, and we have American grandmaster Freddie Trumper. I know – I was groaning too when I realized that was his name, because I assumed they stupidly made it special for this newest production. But that’s actually the original name. I wonder if Trump was a famous enough buffoon at the original time of writing to make the connection legit and I’m sure he was; it’s just extra weird to have it be in a show now. (A change wouldn’t be so bad.) But like his namesake before he acquired the power to destroy so many lives, Freddie is a loud, obnoxious, mean-spirited but fairly harmless jerk who is so cocky of his chess ability (I mean I can’t really accept in the first place that this guy would be playing chess or acting like this about chess) that it makes audiences root for the imposing Russian instead. Our Freddie is played by Tim Howar, who really did a great job being obnoxious and jerky and added to it being very yelly, so it made it really simple for me to root for Anatoly in every possible way. And that’s a huge accomplishment because Anatoly was played by London legend Michael Ball who, although he sings the role beautifully, is way too old and just wrong in every way for the part. Honestly, this mistake in the most principal casting is a huge reason why the show doesn’t work.
The story begins with men singing about the history of chess, and projections of like Egyptian hieroglyphs line the walls and you’re like wat. Oh yes, so this production’s biggest faux pas is relying on digital projections instead of sets or ya know taste. Weird images that suggest that someone was having a bit too much fun with a new computer program make up most of the artwork projected onto the various block-shaped screens. The set up of the square screens is copied from the original concept album artwork, which is…a nice throwback, I guess, but not enough of a reason to design the entire staging that way. You can see the same idea of the squares in the picture at the top of the page – the set up is such that images projected onto the square screens were chopped up in places where the squares don’t meet, so there was a lot of distortion. I’m sure the set designers and production team will justify the distortion with some lofty statement about how reality is distorted when projected from screens too but that is also not enough of a reason to excuse such horrible visuals for nearly 3 hours.
After the unclear history lesson, things go haywire if you are familiar with the American stage version. The American and British books for ‘Chess’ are COMPLETELY different. Anatoly wins in one, Freddie the other. In one, the first match takes place in Italy, the second in Bangkok, but in the other, the whole show is just one match in Bangkok! The song orders are completely scrambled too. I don’t know HOW that happened. So the British version is what we are talking about here, obvs. Anatoly and Freddie arrive in Merano, Italy for their big world championship chess tournament, and the mayor and townspeople rejoice by singing the lamest song “Merano” that just does not fit the show. It’s a huge white chorus in laderhosen and braids because they are close to Switzerland I guess and they do dorky folk dances and it’s super awkward considering the modern pop taste of the rest of the score. After this seemingly photoshopped insert, Freddie and Anatoly are met with an enormous crowd of TV cameras and lots of shouting. Freddie responds with a song that I think was also about shouting (“Commie Newspapers”) as he fights with his assistant and yells at all the reporters. I would too though; most of them are awful. Here, the projections changed to be close-ups of the actors’ faces. I noticed two cameramen onstage who I believe were capturing the footage of the actors that was projected live, which like that’s cool that you figured that out to do it live but it is not attractive. Most of the projections – and remember, that is the entirety of the set and set design here – for the rest of the show were Tom Hooper-style close-ups of the actors’ faces. It was horrendous. Now this is the first full-fledged production of ‘Chess’ that I’ve seen, so this could be how the show is always supposed to be staged. It doesn’t mean it’s good. If the show was supposed to be on screen it would be on screen, and not in a live theatre. TV requires a completely different set of skills and tools, not just on the part of the actors, so to kind of force these performances to be both theatre and television at the same time made both a big mess. Remember during the Tony performance of ‘The Book of Mormon’ the camera focused on one ensemble member who was doing all his funny-face reaction shots for his track? You weren’t supposed to just be looking at him. Also, I did not want to stare at the giant projected faces of the characters the entire time; I wanted to watch the actual actors and maybe their interaction instead of counting their pores. That’s what theatre is for.
Using all my might to focus on the actors and not the atrocious projections, I followed the ridiculous story. Freddie yells at everyone, Anatoly kind of simmers with unpredictability – it could be either rage or boredom – and the world…watches? Their meeting in competition, broadcast all over the world, represents the larger conflict between the two countries they represent, so the entire world is on the edge of their seats watching. Not really though, because it’s chess. The first round of the match is about to begin and lights focus aaaaaand…then we have just two men sitting at a table playing chess quietly. It doesn’t exactly make for good theatre. Their playing sessions should have had them singing. Instead they just sat there and played and it was super boring. Then of course Freddie yells that Anatoly is cheating (because Freddie is losing) and he storms off like the brat he is and you’re like maybe the ‘action’ isn’t better than the boring chess match.
Freddie’s assistant and presumed lover, Florence Vassy (Cassidy Janson, who is pretty great), begs Freddie to have dinner with Anatoly to reconcile after the storming off, but Freddie gets sidetracked by Bangkok’s nightlife (“One Night in Bangkok”, which is more talk-sung that I remember and when you don’t have Adam Pascal’s incredible talk/scream-singing ability to make it pop it’s really just awkward) so Florence and Anatoly end up alone and they…fall in love? Dudes. Florence is a young attractive lady and Anatoly is MICHAEL BALL. Nothing against Mr. Ball (hehe ball) but he is like 60? And he’s not exactly a hot young guy of the sort that help Anatoly make any kind of narrative sense. Florence’s love for him comes out of nowhere and then is the emotional underpinning of the entire show and the trying-so-hard-to-be-dramatic-ending so if you aren’t invested in their love, or if you don’t believe even a bit of it, the whole piece fails and feels forced and empty.
Anatoly is married, by the way, and has a young son. We see him say goodbye to them in the weird Egyptian prologue. His wife Svetlana is played by Alexandra Burke, the one who won a season of The X Factor. She is NOT EVEN 30 YEARS OLD. She’s like a super hot young recording artist. She’s not married to Michael Ball ffs! And Cassidy is like 37 and beautiful and hot in Ireland (a ginger) and she is not falling in love at first sight with Michael Ball! This is NONSENSE. If you don’t buy right off the bat that all the young gorgeous women love them some Anatoly, then the show doesn’t work. After Anatoly affairs up with Florence, most of the drama has nothing to do with chess. It’s all about the two women dealing with their love for this troubled man. AIN’T BUYING IT.
Lots of nonsense happens after this, like Anatoly defects from the Soviet Union (in Soviet Union, they defect you) and seeks asylum with Florence in Britain; Svetlana teams up with a TV station to confront her husband Jerry Springer-style on live TV (??? AIN’T BUYING IT); and there’s more quiet games of chess in a freaking musical. The book is so strange, the set design is as I said the devil’s work, and yet the score is overall so great. You have Svetlana’s big soul-searching “Someone Else’s Story”, a lovely song that deserves to be about more than this hot woman’s old cheating Rusky husband. Alexandra does a nice job as Svetlana considering she isn’t an actress but a recording artist. Her acting leaves something to be desired but in this production it’s fine. You have Florence’s big angry “Nobody’s Side” which absolutely rocks out as a song but deserves to be about more than a fight she had with her asshole boss. (Florence’s songs seem tailor-made for Idina Menzel, who played the role in a concert version years back. They’re written in a way that lets Cassidy kind of sound like Idina sometimes too, which is cool but just makes you wish you were seeing Idina. (Josh Groban played Anatoly in that version, with Idina. Don’t get me started on how badly I wish I could have seen that version. That’s the goddamn great version.)) Then you have the big duet between the two women, “I Know Him So Well”, the highlight of the show but again, it deserves to be about something better than two women being sad about an inadequate man. I wish these songs had a better book to hold them up in the pantheon of musical theatre but alas.
I know I’m being quite mean to the men in this show, but it’s not their fault. Everyone behind the scenes is responsible for what doesn’t work here, not the actors. Michael Ball is like the greatest British musical theatre actor but he is not right for this part. He sings his songs beautifully but (sadly) this isn’t a concert version. Casting matters! I’ve railed enough about the set design but the sound design was bad too! And this is the freaking English National Opera building. It takes effort to destroy the acoustics. But often, with the fast-paced songs (a lot of them in this poppy score), the lyrics would come through the speakers just as sort of an indecipherable hum or growl. I honestly can’t believe they let that kind of issue stand.
Luckily, the music is so good and generally so well sung that “Chess” is still a decent time at the theatre. This production really should have been a concert version though. Or they should have cast men who better matched with the women they cast, or vice versa. Or they really should have just gotten Josh Groban to reprise his role. I wouldn’t even be writing this complainy complainerson review if that were the case; I’d still be there watching every single performance. Big mistake, men*. Big. Huge!
INFORMATION
Never, and I mean NEVER, sit anywhere at the ENO except for the stalls/orchestra. There’s only one staircase to the upper levels and the crowd is uniformly old so it takes literal hours to get out from upstairs. It’s an infuriating fire hazard for one thing and a real pain in my ass for another.
They do have water pitchers at the bar though.
STAGE DOOR
I saw it on my birthday so I didn’t stage door. I had cake to eat.
*I looked at the production and the creative team and except for the costume designer all the people are men.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: Real Title!!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is called Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and played at the Barbican until April 1.
I’m so excited to write about the show we have been referring to simply as ‘Ow My Bones!’ for literally months. I am not excited to admit that that was because we weren’t familiar with the title because we didn’t know it was a book, but apparently it was and made a splash that I missed. And I love water! Not only was I unfamiliar with the source mats, but I also didn’t realize that Ow My Bones was pretty much a drama about animal justice. HERE. FOR THIS. SHIT.
Also, it’s coming from Simon McBurney and Complicite, who are always complicite in providing challenging and unique theatre. Sometimes they’re a little dark for me but the troupe is always doing something interesting. Like here: it’s dark af but it’s about like vigilante justice for animal abuse so again, I could not BE any more here for it.
In Ow My Bones, a lady named Janina (an incredibly captivating when I saw the show in previews (so long ago sorry) Kathryn Hunter) living in a remote Polish mountain town of 14 people learns that her asshole neighbor has died. It seems he choked on bones (ow!) but Janina has a gut feeling that the deer she made eye contact with outside had something to do with it. It was honestly hard not to start fist pumping when assholes who were cruel to animals starting dying. As more bad men (members of the hunting club) show up dead, we learn more about their history of being absolute dickheads to animals, women, pretty much everyone who counts (i.e. not hunters), and we hear Janina’s theories of how the animals are behind it all, somehow taking revenge. Everyone thinks she’s crazy, because I guess ON PAPER it SOUNDS crazy, but I was like, ‘this chick gets it.’
One of the reasons it took me so long to write this is because Kathryn Hunter got sick before opening night, so they delayed it, (and then I forgot), and then it opened with another actress, which is a shame, because I’m sure she’s amazing too as everyone in Complicite is, but with Kathryn Hunter it felt like her blood flowed to be on that stage playing that character. Even when she flubbed some lines (understandable she’s reciting like hours of text up there and it was previews) she was still supes powerful. Considering that hers was the only performance I remember disliking in Andor, this b really is a talented chameleon.
Ow My Bones is a little long, and about 3/5 through the first act it dragged a bit, but otherwise it was incredibly engrossing and powerful which is impressive considering it’s mostly one tiny woman talking at us for hours; that’s really hard to make captivating! Kathryn reminded me in sound and physicality of Linda….the little one who I first saw in that movie with the teenager who becomes like a secret agent or something but all I really remember is a woman being bitten by a scorpion in a pinkish bedroom???? HUNT. ooh ironic. (Anyone know what movie I am thinking of?) And while she’s the main act, the ensemble and supporting players are all stellar. I particularly loved the physicality (wow I’ve literally never said this word so much) of the ensemble, when they did little precise movements that contained a whole universe of creativity.
Anyway I was the teensiest bit disappointed in the ending (not how it’s staged, just as written) because I wanted Janina to be right; I wanted the animals to be doing these murders all on their own so I could have hope that they would fight back against all the shits ruining their existence in our world too but I guess that is a lofty lofty dream. Man the first act as a standalone would have been pure fire. But even so, I really enjoyed this which is shocking for me given the aforementioned darkness, violence, length (about three hours), and big time use of astrology (but honestly this character was the closest anyone has ever come to making me give it the time of day). Man, honestly though, a whole play (and book) about the possibility of animals getting revenge on hunters and poachers and the people who let them get away with it?? did *I* win a contest??
INFORMATION (NOT THAT YOU CARE SINCE IT’S OVER BUT MAYBE IT’LL HAVE ANOTHER RUN SOMEDAY SOMEWHERE SOMEHOW)
Start: about 7:52
Act I ends: 9:15
Act II begins: 9:37
Act II ends: 10:41
Barbican is the one theatre where no matter what we are always going upstairs. The stalls are my nightmare — incredibly long rows with no aisle breaks except at the ends so you could get trapped and have to get past like 30 people if you have to pee, it’s just horrendous to even think about. Upstairs in the upper circle you can have your own entrance door and no one behind you and it’s cheaper too.
The bathroom situation at Barbican continues to be the worst though, you either run down to a small one house left below the stalls or you go all the way out the theatre to like the movie theatre area. Woof.
The show uses big flashes a bunch, flashes that are blinding and upsetting. They are not upsetting in a theatrical ooh this is working for me way; they are upsetting because they are blinding. CAN. THEATRES. PLEASE. STOP. DOING. THIS.
Restaurant recommendation for pre-theatre: Korean BBQ & Vegan has moved from East London to here! Like around the corner! And they’re so fast and great. Two enthusiastic thumbs up.
