Everything's Coming Up Imelda! "Gypsy" is Finally Back in Londonby Randi / April 17, 2015
The story of the American scientist who created the atomic bomb sounds like it could be either interesting or boring. The new London show achieves both. The first act is well done and pretty compelling, but the second act had seven end points and needs hella cutting. Still, it’s an interesting story that’s worth seeing – especially if they fix it before the next production.
We begin in Oppy’s (as his “friends” call him) house as his (repeatedly described non-monogamous) girlfriend hosts a drunken neurotic fundraiser for ‘the Spanish crisis’ in the early stages of World War II. Her agitated uneasy speeches show us 1) they’re all proud Communists and b) she, Jean, is quite mentally unstable. I wouldn’t want to be friends with these people. All pretentious in their highly educated status, showing how caring and cultured they are by getting drunk and dancing all night in the name of supporting the less fortunate who are being tortured, starved, and killed. It struck me as an ugly scene but extremely illustrative of this group of middle class people. I was told that Oppenheimer was famously hard to get along with, but instead of showing us that, we see that compared to his social circle he was the lovable puppy in the crowd, at least at the beginning. So that was a curious creative choice.
This whole show is pretty much questionable creative choices, actually. Considering how curious a choice of subject matter this wholly American story is for a small British production to begin with, every decision thereafter seemed rushed or at least ill-advised. The frequent little science lessons were the most effective and entertaining parts of the show, kind of like how the best part of “The Big Bang Theory” is any actual science you learn amid the drivel. As far as I could tell, the mini lectures and the discussion-based lessons Oppy’s protégés gave us were accurate. Then again I wouldn’t really know. I mean they were talking about the science behind the atom bomb. If you really understood it you would have been there. When they talked about science, the play was at its most natural and interesting. Then again I liked school. We learn about atom composition, atom splitting, all kinds of things. Through these lessons and science-focused conversations, we learn with them that Germans split the atom, letting loose a whole bunch of crap and energy. Our Murkan scientists freak the f out, as you do, and realized holy crap, this could lead to enormous explosions to end all explosions, possibly igniting the earth’s atmosphere, or destroying the earth, or at least countries! Then they realized, holy crap, we really need to get ahead of the Germans on this so we win the war. That was at least one of the accurate points, that they were always racing to get ahead of the Germans, whom we assumed were indeed ahead of us, when in fact they knew pretty much nothing the whole time.
Things pick up from here, as Oppy gathers the finest minds in science (or at least northern California), then the military takes over as it does, and the whole shebang becomes the super secret Manhattan Project.
The military’s involvement/control is obviously a mixed blessing. They get resources, power, land, and uranium, but also lots of bullshit and awfulness. Any red-leaning brains (everyone we met in the beginning) get shipped off to war or to Alaska because Murka was awful afear’d back then of people who may have thought differently. The interference with (or, often, hindrance of) science in the name of democracy is an extremely frustrating and terrifying thing that the military enjoyed doing. Good thing the government lets science be now!
As more progress is made on the bomb, Oppy becomes more and more of a righteous jackass, as the weight of what he’s doing weighs on him. Or doesn’t. We hear a lot of big speeches about how Oppy is lead and ytterbium and iron, stable at the core, and that he carries the responsibility without it breaking him. I guess it was supposed to be an ironic statement of stability? or disaffectedness? Because obviously it broke or at least injured him. But that wasn’t clear. It was more of a disconnect between words and actions than it was irony. Like unintentional disjunction. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Director.)
A lot is said about how Oppy was chosen to lead the project because the military could control or at least predict his behavior. As they wanted, he broke off contact with his commie brother for a long time, he turned friends in to the inquisitors, he shipped off some of his best students to war and refused to help them when they returned. He got real jerky like. I mean, if you were spending the prime of your life devoted to ending others’ lives, you’d prob go dark like Emma’s doing right now on “Once Upon A Time” (best show ever??). but the repeated thesis that he was unbreakable (they alive, dammit!) and resilient came across more incorrect than poignant.
At least Oppy was played by a decent actor, John Heffernan. I thought he was pretty good and then when I recognized him from the new BBC series “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” (which I was lucky enough to see a sneak preview of recently because I’m so important in the London entertainment scene) my thoughts were confirmed because only the best people are in that show. But there was a lot of not-so-decent acting on display here. I have issues with mainstem West End shows lately, so this (it’s like an off-West End production) had more. Everyone seemed a slight notch below where they should have been, especially with their American accents. Say your freaking r’s! And every time anyone said the word ‘sir’ but with another word coming after it, it became ‘suh’ and just ugh come on. Also no one could say ‘apparently’ without it getting super loose in the vowels when in American the vowels need to be constricted. I feel like dialect coaches are not valued anymore.
Everything just seemed a little jumbled, likely due to direction. Funnily enough, at the beginning, I despised Oppy’s girlfriend Jean and his friend’s wife Charlotte with the weird New England WASP country club/faux Katherine Hepburn accent. But by the end, these two actresses, Catherine Steadman and Sandy Foster, were my favorites. I don’t know if they got better with more meaty scenes, if I got nicer, or if it was just the power of comparison working in their favor.
One person I did not like was Oppy’s wife Kitty, played by Thomasin Rand. Maybe because that name is ludicrous, but I couldn’t get a handle on her. I don’t know if you’re supposed to hate her of if you’re supposed to feel bad for her because her husband is so preoccupied and she’s always (always) pregnant (and drinking to the point of alcoholism and smoking like a chimney throughout), but I didn’t. Or maybe her hatefulness comes from her husband’s stated lack of ability to connect or form real bonds and she’s like I left that foppish but super polite British guy for this? (And yes we see the very awkward courtship between Oppy and Kitty as they have an affair, get pregnant, and then ask said British guy for a divorce. He, by the way, had the funniest accent in the whole play, which was odd because he’s the only one who gets to be his real nationality. It was like an American doing an over-the-top British accent but the actor was really British, so I loved it. I hope it was on purpose.)
Or maybe it’s because her husband may have been in love with another woman the whole time. His earlier love, Jean, was clearly always special to him and their deep connection seemed to have persisted until her unfortunate suicide. She was unable to deal with her chemically unbalanced mind and the FBI agents tapping her phone and sitting outside her house all day and night because of her political views and ties to Oppy. It was all very upsetting and tragic. After her death, we get more reason to despise Oppy and Kitty as they agree that suicide is extremely self-centered and that Jean was super selfish for killing herself. At least they agreed on something? I wonder how accurate this portrayal was, because that’s a big black mark to paint on a person’s character. Do not like.
I wonder how accurate all of it was, actually. If all of Oppy’s contacts were under government surveillance for their political views, if the general in charge was really somehow everywhere all the time and in every important science discussion, if the captain on the project talked in an exaggerated American accent like he was just pulled from the set of “A Few Good Men”, if one of Oppy’s protégés apparently learned his American accent from the aforementioned “Big Bang Theory” (he sounded exactly like Sheldon and was my fave part). One of my favorite characters was Edward Teller, the Hungarian scientist who created the hydrogen bomb, or ‘super’. In the show, he was pushing Oppy to focus on the super during WW2, which seemed early but was apparently accurate, despite no real work being done on it until after the war. Ben Allen, the actor playing Teller, was pretty funny at times and made Teller one of the most sympathetic characters onstage, which I’m not sure was the intent given that Teller in real life was kind of a lunatic. So I’m told, I don’t know.
The first act had a lot of good learning and commies and New Mexico and more commies and excitement and stuff. The second act, hoo boy, it kind of fell apart in ways you could not imagine. First of all, at 1.5 hours each act, the play was way too long for what they did with the time. Do shows not have editors anymore? Act II could easily be 30-40 minutes shorter. Here’s what they should do: First, cut the kid. When we are supposed to assume they’ve dropped the first bomb, a child climbs out of the sunroof of the bomb, which is on stage, and he GIVES A MONOLOGUE. A kid that we have not met before, just this random punk kid with THE WORST American accent who has a few ridiculously pretentious paragraphs to recite about life and death and ephemerality maybe and who knows what and of course he messed up a line. He had literally one job. CUT THAT. It was nonsense and it brought the show to a screeching halt and not only added nothing but significantly detracted from the impact. I almost screamed for them to get the hook.
Next, cut the really freaky deaky and out of place bongo-drum circle and drug-induced drunken rave that followed the first test run of the bomb that occurred UNDER THE BOMB ACTING AS A DISCO BALL. I kid you not. I’m sure this wackadoo scene may have worked in some incarnation of this play, but it was not the one I saw. You can’t have a straight serious play and then throw in one super trippy conceptual scene for shits and giggles. It was completely weird with every character giving mini pretentious monologues about, well, life and death and ephemerality and who knows what while the rest of the cast was waving their arms in prayer to the gods of explosions in the fire and doing tribal chants like they were in a goddamn regional production of “Hair” while on acid. For like 10 minutes, sandwiched between serious science and black & white scenes, we uncomfortably watched this rave while the actors said lines like “The sun shone brightly like a diamond.” Well that might be Rhianna but you get my point. Omg.
Then, cut the next false ending of big grand speeches (yes there are more) that are terribly written and unnatural in Oppy and Bob’s classroom. I REALLY didn’t need to hear that bit about the horse Bob saw in Hiroshima after the bomb dropped. It was really graphic and disturbing but without the slightest need for it. I really didn’t appreciate that. So many sentences in this back half of Act II no one would ever say in real life, like overly wordy high school English essay kind of writing, when you think you sound smart but it actually makes you sound dumber.
I was thinking, such an important story should have been done better. But, then I thought, wait, is it such an important story? It is necessary to know the guy who built the atomic bomb and what not, but is this section of his life story necessary? Do we need to know he was kind of a jerk and had shitty friends and was a shitty friend and suffered a lot? And if so, why? His brilliant mind helped us do massacring of a newfangled variety, which the world is thankful for in a grotesque way, but was he necessary? Even his wife asks the general at some point why they didn’t pick Einstein or another great scientist who could have done it. The answer in this show is that the leader of this project needed this project to be his career highlight, and the other big name scientists already had other significant achievements in their careers. Cool. A more interesting story would have continued to the government’s turning on him after the war and their awful investigation into his political views, kind of like how the British government turned on Alan Turing after the war after he freaking saved their lives those ungrateful ignorant assholes. God knows in three hours would could have covered all of that. But we didn’t really get to it, probably because of all the unnecessary speechifying. So there were some really interesting choices made in this play. I’m not sure they worked, but despite all the weirdness it was still pretty good. I just wish they had hired an editor.
AUDIENCE: CONGRATULATIONS, Oppenheimer audience! This was the first time in many years that I did not see a cell phone being used during the show. I mean, that is pretty remarkable. However, there was this awful young couple behind me who talked the entire time. And I mean the entire time. I regret not saying something at intermission but I feared them cutting my hair during Act II or something. I did give them the good old death stare a few times though. I am proud of that.
Things pick up from here, as Oppy gathers the finest minds in science (or at least northern California), then the military takes over as it does, and the whole shebang becomes the super secret Manhattan Project.
The military’s involvement/control is obviously a mixed blessing. They get resources, power, land, and uranium, but also lots of bullshit and awfulness. Any red-leaning brains (everyone we met in the beginning) get shipped off to war or to Alaska because Murka was awful afear’d back then of people who may have thought differently. The interference with (or, often, hindrance of) science in the name of democracy is an extremely frustrating and terrifying thing that the military enjoyed doing. Good thing the government lets science be now!
As more progress is made on the bomb, Oppy becomes more and more of a righteous jackass, as the weight of what he’s doing weighs on him. Or doesn’t. We hear a lot of big speeches about how Oppy is lead and ytterbium and iron, stable at the core, and that he carries the responsibility without it breaking him. I guess it was supposed to be an ironic statement of stability? or disaffectedness? Because obviously it broke or at least injured him. But that wasn’t clear. It was more of a disconnect between words and actions than it was irony. Like unintentional disjunction. (I’m looking at you, Mr. Director.)
A lot is said about how Oppy was chosen to lead the project because the military could control or at least predict his behavior. As they wanted, he broke off contact with his commie brother for a long time, he turned friends in to the inquisitors, he shipped off some of his best students to war and refused to help them when they returned. He got real jerky like. I mean, if you were spending the prime of your life devoted to ending others’ lives, you’d prob go dark like Emma’s doing right now on “Once Upon A Time” (best show ever??). but the repeated thesis that he was unbreakable (they alive, dammit!) and resilient came across more incorrect than poignant.
At least Oppy was played by a decent actor, John Heffernan. I thought he was pretty good and then when I recognized him from the new BBC series “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” (which I was lucky enough to see a sneak preview of recently because I’m so important in the London entertainment scene) my thoughts were confirmed because only the best people are in that show. But there was a lot of not-so-decent acting on display here. I have issues with mainstem West End shows lately, so this (it’s like an off-West End production) had more. Everyone seemed a slight notch below where they should have been, especially with their American accents. Say your freaking r’s! And every time anyone said the word ‘sir’ but with another word coming after it, it became ‘suh’ and just ugh come on. Also no one could say ‘apparently’ without it getting super loose in the vowels when in American the vowels need to be constricted. I feel like dialect coaches are not valued anymore.
Everything just seemed a little jumbled, likely due to direction. Funnily enough, at the beginning, I despised Oppy’s girlfriend Jean and his friend’s wife Charlotte with the weird New England WASP country club/faux Katherine Hepburn accent. But by the end, these two actresses, Catherine Steadman and Sandy Foster, were my favorites. I don’t know if they got better with more meaty scenes, if I got nicer, or if it was just the power of comparison working in their favor.
One person I did not like was Oppy’s wife Kitty, played by Thomasin Rand. Maybe because that name is ludicrous, but I couldn’t get a handle on her. I don’t know if you’re supposed to hate her of if you’re supposed to feel bad for her because her husband is so preoccupied and she’s always (always) pregnant (and drinking to the point of alcoholism and smoking like a chimney throughout), but I didn’t. Or maybe her hatefulness comes from her husband’s stated lack of ability to connect or form real bonds and she’s like I left that foppish but super polite British guy for this? (And yes we see the very awkward courtship between Oppy and Kitty as they have an affair, get pregnant, and then ask said British guy for a divorce. He, by the way, had the funniest accent in the whole play, which was odd because he’s the only one who gets to be his real nationality. It was like an American doing an over-the-top British accent but the actor was really British, so I loved it. I hope it was on purpose.)
Or maybe it’s because her husband may have been in love with another woman the whole time. His earlier love, Jean, was clearly always special to him and their deep connection seemed to have persisted until her unfortunate suicide. She was unable to deal with her chemically unbalanced mind and the FBI agents tapping her phone and sitting outside her house all day and night because of her political views and ties to Oppy. It was all very upsetting and tragic. After her death, we get more reason to despise Oppy and Kitty as they agree that suicide is extremely self-centered and that Jean was super selfish for killing herself. At least they agreed on something? I wonder how accurate this portrayal was, because that’s a big black mark to paint on a person’s character. Do not like.
I wonder how accurate all of it was, actually. If all of Oppy’s contacts were under government surveillance for their political views, if the general in charge was really somehow everywhere all the time and in every important science discussion, if the captain on the project talked in an exaggerated American accent like he was just pulled from the set of “A Few Good Men”, if one of Oppy’s protégés apparently learned his American accent from the aforementioned “Big Bang Theory” (he sounded exactly like Sheldon and was my fave part). One of my favorite characters was Edward Teller, the Hungarian scientist who created the hydrogen bomb, or ‘super’. In the show, he was pushing Oppy to focus on the super during WW2, which seemed early but was apparently accurate, despite no real work being done on it until after the war. Ben Allen, the actor playing Teller, was pretty funny at times and made Teller one of the most sympathetic characters onstage, which I’m not sure was the intent given that Teller in real life was kind of a lunatic. So I’m told, I don’t know.
The first act had a lot of good learning and commies and New Mexico and more commies and excitement and stuff. The second act, hoo boy, it kind of fell apart in ways you could not imagine. First of all, at 1.5 hours each act, the play was way too long for what they did with the time. Do shows not have editors anymore? Act II could easily be 30-40 minutes shorter. Here’s what they should do: First, cut the kid. When we are supposed to assume they’ve dropped the first bomb, a child climbs out of the sunroof of the bomb, which is on stage, and he GIVES A MONOLOGUE. A kid that we have not met before, just this random punk kid with THE WORST American accent who has a few ridiculously pretentious paragraphs to recite about life and death and ephemerality maybe and who knows what and of course he messed up a line. He had literally one job. CUT THAT. It was nonsense and it brought the show to a screeching halt and not only added nothing but significantly detracted from the impact. I almost screamed for them to get the hook.
Next, cut the really freaky deaky and out of place bongo-drum circle and drug-induced drunken rave that followed the first test run of the bomb that occurred UNDER THE BOMB ACTING AS A DISCO BALL. I kid you not. I’m sure this wackadoo scene may have worked in some incarnation of this play, but it was not the one I saw. You can’t have a straight serious play and then throw in one super trippy conceptual scene for shits and giggles. It was completely weird with every character giving mini pretentious monologues about, well, life and death and ephemerality and who knows what while the rest of the cast was waving their arms in prayer to the gods of explosions in the fire and doing tribal chants like they were in a goddamn regional production of “Hair” while on acid. For like 10 minutes, sandwiched between serious science and black & white scenes, we uncomfortably watched this rave while the actors said lines like “The sun shone brightly like a diamond.” Well that might be Rhianna but you get my point. Omg.
Then, cut the next false ending of big grand speeches (yes there are more) that are terribly written and unnatural in Oppy and Bob’s classroom. I REALLY didn’t need to hear that bit about the horse Bob saw in Hiroshima after the bomb dropped. It was really graphic and disturbing but without the slightest need for it. I really didn’t appreciate that. So many sentences in this back half of Act II no one would ever say in real life, like overly wordy high school English essay kind of writing, when you think you sound smart but it actually makes you sound dumber.
I was thinking, such an important story should have been done better. But, then I thought, wait, is it such an important story? It is necessary to know the guy who built the atomic bomb and what not, but is this section of his life story necessary? Do we need to know he was kind of a jerk and had shitty friends and was a shitty friend and suffered a lot? And if so, why? His brilliant mind helped us do massacring of a newfangled variety, which the world is thankful for in a grotesque way, but was he necessary? Even his wife asks the general at some point why they didn’t pick Einstein or another great scientist who could have done it. The answer in this show is that the leader of this project needed this project to be his career highlight, and the other big name scientists already had other significant achievements in their careers. Cool. A more interesting story would have continued to the government’s turning on him after the war and their awful investigation into his political views, kind of like how the British government turned on Alan Turing after the war after he freaking saved their lives those ungrateful ignorant assholes. God knows in three hours would could have covered all of that. But we didn’t really get to it, probably because of all the unnecessary speechifying. So there were some really interesting choices made in this play. I’m not sure they worked, but despite all the weirdness it was still pretty good. I just wish they had hired an editor.
AUDIENCE: CONGRATULATIONS, Oppenheimer audience! This was the first time in many years that I did not see a cell phone being used during the show. I mean, that is pretty remarkable. However, there was this awful young couple behind me who talked the entire time. And I mean the entire time. I regret not saying something at intermission but I feared them cutting my hair during Act II or something. I did give them the good old death stare a few times though. I am proud of that.
Related Posts
How is London’s “School of Rock” Holding Up Two Years Later?
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are looking at London’s production of “School of Rock”, now playing at the Gillian Lynne Theatre on Drury Lane.
With the recent news that Broadway’s production of “School of Rock: The Musical” will close in January, I wanted to see how the West End production is doing almost two years since it opened. It’s easy for a long run to get sloppy (and by easy I mean expected), but with a show like this I knew it would still be a fun time. On this (sweltering hot) summer weekday matinee, I went in fully expecting crowds of kids on their summer break, loud and raucous and annoying, but they were actually fine and as usual it was their parents who didn’t know how to behave. But I put on my blinders and focused on the stage, and I enjoyed myself immensely. The performers are giving it their all, and although they do indeed need a refresher from the director on a few points, it was overall a solid production.
With the recent news that Broadway’s production of “School of Rock: The Musical” will close in January, I wanted to see how the West End production is doing almost two years since it opened. It’s easy for a long run to get sloppy (and by easy I mean expected), but with a show like this I knew it would still be a fun time. On this (sweltering hot) summer weekday matinee, I went in fully expecting crowds of kids on their summer break, loud and raucous and annoying, but they were actually fine and as usual it was their parents who didn’t know how to behave. But I put on my blinders and focused on the stage, and I enjoyed myself immensely. The performers are giving it their all, and although they do indeed need a refresher from the director on a few points, it was overall a solid production.
When you have a great movie like “School of Rock”, with Jack Black’s hilarious, unmatchable star turn, it’s hard to argue that a musical version is necessary. This is true for most movie-to-musical adaptations, like “Frozen”, “Big Fish”, “Mean Girls”, the recent “Pretty Woman”, man I could go on forever with shows where the movie is simply a better version of the story. And early word about the new “Moulin Rouge!” tryout in Boston is also that, while it’s fun, it’s not nearly as affecting and spellbinding and special as the movie. (Can you tell I love that movie?). Triumphs like “The Band’s Visit” show that a stage version’s improving upon a film is definitely the exception to the rule. To win me over, you really have to show that a stage version is worthwhile and not just a money-grab on a familiar property (although of course everything is a money-grab).
Luckily, although I wouldn’t go as far as saying that the musical of “School of Rock” is better than the film, I think that it’s equally enjoyable, although in different ways. Where the movie is tight and well edited (my favorite attribute of anything, which is ironic and fun for you because this site is First Drafts Only haha), the show is a little loose in the cage at times and needed some more cleaning up (and cutting of boring songs). But seeing this story get the stage magic treatment, and especially seeing these kids performing these instruments live, is so special and it makes the musical a winner in my book. And yes, the kids are really performing live, which Andrew Lloyd Webber himself tells you in the opening (recorded) audience greeting.
Why AL Dubs, you ask? Well one of my favorite things about “School of Rock: The Musical” – and the thing that most people don’t realize – is that ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER wrote the music. I don’t think I will ever get over how funny that is. And while it seems like a mismatched composer-to-property pairing, Dubs can ROCK OUT WITH HIS well I’m not going to finish that because he’s a Sir but damn, the man has got some killer rocker vibes. Of course his distinguished works include tons of rocking anthems; I guess I doubted that he still had it in him which was wrong. With ALDubs on the music, we have Glenn Slater on the lyrics, of “The Little Mermaid” (Broadway version, yelch), “Sister Act: The Musical” (decent but unmemorable), and “Leap of Faith” (blahhhh whaaaat) fame, and as you can tell by my parentheticals, I had low expectations for him given his track record. However, most of his lyrics were pretty darn clever, and crammed in so tight that they deserve a re-listen so I can catch all the humor. Well done (finally). The mostly clever lyrics were matched by a mostly clever, often very funny book by – you will never guess this one – Julian Fellowes, as in the creator and sole writer of Downton Abbey. I KNOW. If you had me watch this show without knowing the creative team, and then gave me a list of every single writer in the world and had me put them in order of ‘Who I Think Wrote This’, the guy who wrote Downton Abbey would be all the way at the bottom and the only entry below him would be ‘me but I forgot.’
Speaking of that ‘unmatchable’ performance by Jack Black, the musical Dewey has to be different enough to avoid comparisons. With more immaturity but also maybe more of an obvious heart, this Dewey is a lovable clown. Played now by Stephen Leask, he easily won over the audience even though he shows his sweaty belly a whole lot. Or maybe because he shows his sweaty belly a whole lot, I don’t know, but the man is constantly onstage, constantly jumping on desks and doing backflips???, and constantly belting his lungs out while playing impressive guitar. It’s quite a role. His song “When I Climb to the Top of Mount Rock” was so energetic and baller that I was totally won over by the performer, and I immediately thought ‘oh THIS is why Dewey has a regular alternate’. It took the Broadway production way too long to give the original Dewey, Alex Brightman, an alternate, and instead they pretty much exhausted him for months beyond what should ever be expected of someone (like with Ethan Slater and “Spongebob” this year. JUST GIVE THESE GUYS REGULAR ALTERNATES (AND TELL THE AUDIENCE WHEN THEY WILL BE ON)). Leask is really giving every ounce of everything he has and it’s amazing to see, especially when too many actors in many shows seem to be phoning it in.
The best parts of the show are of course when the incredible kids perform with Leask’s maniacal ball of energy, posing as their substitute teacher but he’s really a bum pretending to be his teacher-best friend. (I’m going to assume you know the story because if you haven’t seen the movie, ya basic. That’s the worst insult. You’re devastated right now.) Three kids rotate in each of the child roles, including Summer, the high-strung perfectionist; Zack, the amazing guitarist whose father is an asshole; Lawrence, the geeky keyboard player who is so sweet; and Sophie, the bassist who literally does duck-face the entire time. My favorite was Freddy, the drummer, a role that is actually shared by two boys and one girl, so I guess the production happily realized that most roles are universal. Luckily, I saw the girl drummer, Annabel Gracey, and she was a badass standout of the whole show. Her command of the stage stood out compared to the other kids, and she tore those drum solos apart. Amazing. Finding kids who can play instruments at this level was a challenge, I’m sure, and finding ones who can also sing and decently act too? They’re not the best singers, and they’re not the best actors, but these kids are impressive, especially when they just get to play. The show really comes alive with such magical energy when they do their big performance numbers. The kids’ straight dramatic line readings need some pace work (too long pauses) and they need to stop looking directly at the conductor for cues, but their talent is undeniable and it’s exciting to watch them perform.
The big performance songs from the movie were kept for the show (including the one that goes “Well you’re not hardcore” I can’t tell from the program what it’s called, and “School of Rock”, their big Battle number), which was a smart decision considering new songs for those big moments would have probably been disappointing to the audience. And they are total bangers so why not keep them?! They’re matched by exciting new songs like the aforementioned “Mount Rock”, “You’re in the Band”, and “Stick It to the Man”, bangers all. There’s a nice “When I Grow Up”- inspired number where the kids feel sad about how shitty their parents are, which is even better in its slightly changed reprise directed to Dewey.
But the adult scenes are hella boring, and sometimes infuriating. The former includes the introduction to the prep school by the principal Ms. Mullins (Rosanna Hyland), which seems to be reprised 100x. Honestly we just don’t need that much time devoted to the other teachers; it adds nothing. The latter includes the scene where Dewey first sees the kids playing (classical) music. Ms. Mullins is running the class, and as they play, she sings the Queen of the Night aria from “The Magic Flute” (you know the aria). I was sitting there just like…is this shit for real? Hyland is a fantastic vocalist but it is so inappropriate and unnecessary for this show. It’s so infuriating because it seemed clearly shoved in there for Sierra Boggess (Broadway’s original Ms. Mullins), an incredible singer (though often very dull), to have something more to do in this thankless role. I guess the creators were thinking, ‘how will we get Boggess to do this non-lead role with just one decent (though again too long and unnecessary) Act II song, oh I know, we will give her a Mozart aria…? OH AND THEN LET’S HAVE HER SING IT AGAIN AT CURTAIN CALL. GIVE US TONYS PLEASE.’ I mean this is really the dumbest part of the whole show and I can’t believe it’s still happening. Her Mullins is kind of directed poorly I think too, all strict and boring with no nuance, so her transformation at the end comes out of nowhere, whereas Joan Cusack in the movie was mature but you could tell she was kind of adorable and very curious about Dewey. The only role more thankless than this one is that of Patti, played by Sarah Silverman in the movie. This Patti is a total shrew and all she does is yell, so much so that when Ned finally tells her off at the end, the audience cheers. I really hate everything about the character, because I really don’t want a packed room to cheer when a man berates his girlfriend and tells her to shut up, but I also wanted her to shut up.
I was also weirded out by the gay jokes. As you know from the movie, there is a little boy who is gay, and his personality is a flamboyant stereotype. Even though the movie was from another era when it comes to representations of gay characters, and so you’d expect the representation today to be more normalized and less played for laughs, the musical dials it up 500%. I was shocked. It doesn’t help that British people are still apparently not comfortable with homosexuality (in a tiny move that I loved, one kids’ parents are two men. When the teacher greets them as “Mr. & Mr. Stephens” or whatever, just simply greeting them, the audience treated that like it was a laugh line. Horrifying), but using this boy to get big laughs just because he says “Barbra Streisand” or likes glitter felt way outdated and offensive. His character can be fun and super funny without being insulting.
So how is “School of Rock” doing? They do need to clean up a few things – the pacing at many points was off, especially on the kids’ deliveries but also with the adults, who also need to work on their accents. I wish they could still make edits (like cutting most of the grown-ups’ songs and scenes), but alas this show has been frozen for years now. Even so, it’s overall a wonderful time at the theatre and you can’t help but enjoy yourself. Watching the band perform live is exciting and the vibe is so happy and exuberant. And while the movie may better, this is a worthwhile adaptation and a guaranteed good time.
Luckily, although I wouldn’t go as far as saying that the musical of “School of Rock” is better than the film, I think that it’s equally enjoyable, although in different ways. Where the movie is tight and well edited (my favorite attribute of anything, which is ironic and fun for you because this site is First Drafts Only haha), the show is a little loose in the cage at times and needed some more cleaning up (and cutting of boring songs). But seeing this story get the stage magic treatment, and especially seeing these kids performing these instruments live, is so special and it makes the musical a winner in my book. And yes, the kids are really performing live, which Andrew Lloyd Webber himself tells you in the opening (recorded) audience greeting.
Why AL Dubs, you ask? Well one of my favorite things about “School of Rock: The Musical” – and the thing that most people don’t realize – is that ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER wrote the music. I don’t think I will ever get over how funny that is. And while it seems like a mismatched composer-to-property pairing, Dubs can ROCK OUT WITH HIS well I’m not going to finish that because he’s a Sir but damn, the man has got some killer rocker vibes. Of course his distinguished works include tons of rocking anthems; I guess I doubted that he still had it in him which was wrong. With ALDubs on the music, we have Glenn Slater on the lyrics, of “The Little Mermaid” (Broadway version, yelch), “Sister Act: The Musical” (decent but unmemorable), and “Leap of Faith” (blahhhh whaaaat) fame, and as you can tell by my parentheticals, I had low expectations for him given his track record. However, most of his lyrics were pretty darn clever, and crammed in so tight that they deserve a re-listen so I can catch all the humor. Well done (finally). The mostly clever lyrics were matched by a mostly clever, often very funny book by – you will never guess this one – Julian Fellowes, as in the creator and sole writer of Downton Abbey. I KNOW. If you had me watch this show without knowing the creative team, and then gave me a list of every single writer in the world and had me put them in order of ‘Who I Think Wrote This’, the guy who wrote Downton Abbey would be all the way at the bottom and the only entry below him would be ‘me but I forgot.’
Speaking of that ‘unmatchable’ performance by Jack Black, the musical Dewey has to be different enough to avoid comparisons. With more immaturity but also maybe more of an obvious heart, this Dewey is a lovable clown. Played now by Stephen Leask, he easily won over the audience even though he shows his sweaty belly a whole lot. Or maybe because he shows his sweaty belly a whole lot, I don’t know, but the man is constantly onstage, constantly jumping on desks and doing backflips???, and constantly belting his lungs out while playing impressive guitar. It’s quite a role. His song “When I Climb to the Top of Mount Rock” was so energetic and baller that I was totally won over by the performer, and I immediately thought ‘oh THIS is why Dewey has a regular alternate’. It took the Broadway production way too long to give the original Dewey, Alex Brightman, an alternate, and instead they pretty much exhausted him for months beyond what should ever be expected of someone (like with Ethan Slater and “Spongebob” this year. JUST GIVE THESE GUYS REGULAR ALTERNATES (AND TELL THE AUDIENCE WHEN THEY WILL BE ON)). Leask is really giving every ounce of everything he has and it’s amazing to see, especially when too many actors in many shows seem to be phoning it in.
The best parts of the show are of course when the incredible kids perform with Leask’s maniacal ball of energy, posing as their substitute teacher but he’s really a bum pretending to be his teacher-best friend. (I’m going to assume you know the story because if you haven’t seen the movie, ya basic. That’s the worst insult. You’re devastated right now.) Three kids rotate in each of the child roles, including Summer, the high-strung perfectionist; Zack, the amazing guitarist whose father is an asshole; Lawrence, the geeky keyboard player who is so sweet; and Sophie, the bassist who literally does duck-face the entire time. My favorite was Freddy, the drummer, a role that is actually shared by two boys and one girl, so I guess the production happily realized that most roles are universal. Luckily, I saw the girl drummer, Annabel Gracey, and she was a badass standout of the whole show. Her command of the stage stood out compared to the other kids, and she tore those drum solos apart. Amazing. Finding kids who can play instruments at this level was a challenge, I’m sure, and finding ones who can also sing and decently act too? They’re not the best singers, and they’re not the best actors, but these kids are impressive, especially when they just get to play. The show really comes alive with such magical energy when they do their big performance numbers. The kids’ straight dramatic line readings need some pace work (too long pauses) and they need to stop looking directly at the conductor for cues, but their talent is undeniable and it’s exciting to watch them perform.
The big performance songs from the movie were kept for the show (including the one that goes “Well you’re not hardcore” I can’t tell from the program what it’s called, and “School of Rock”, their big Battle number), which was a smart decision considering new songs for those big moments would have probably been disappointing to the audience. And they are total bangers so why not keep them?! They’re matched by exciting new songs like the aforementioned “Mount Rock”, “You’re in the Band”, and “Stick It to the Man”, bangers all. There’s a nice “When I Grow Up”- inspired number where the kids feel sad about how shitty their parents are, which is even better in its slightly changed reprise directed to Dewey.
But the adult scenes are hella boring, and sometimes infuriating. The former includes the introduction to the prep school by the principal Ms. Mullins (Rosanna Hyland), which seems to be reprised 100x. Honestly we just don’t need that much time devoted to the other teachers; it adds nothing. The latter includes the scene where Dewey first sees the kids playing (classical) music. Ms. Mullins is running the class, and as they play, she sings the Queen of the Night aria from “The Magic Flute” (you know the aria). I was sitting there just like…is this shit for real? Hyland is a fantastic vocalist but it is so inappropriate and unnecessary for this show. It’s so infuriating because it seemed clearly shoved in there for Sierra Boggess (Broadway’s original Ms. Mullins), an incredible singer (though often very dull), to have something more to do in this thankless role. I guess the creators were thinking, ‘how will we get Boggess to do this non-lead role with just one decent (though again too long and unnecessary) Act II song, oh I know, we will give her a Mozart aria…? OH AND THEN LET’S HAVE HER SING IT AGAIN AT CURTAIN CALL. GIVE US TONYS PLEASE.’ I mean this is really the dumbest part of the whole show and I can’t believe it’s still happening. Her Mullins is kind of directed poorly I think too, all strict and boring with no nuance, so her transformation at the end comes out of nowhere, whereas Joan Cusack in the movie was mature but you could tell she was kind of adorable and very curious about Dewey. The only role more thankless than this one is that of Patti, played by Sarah Silverman in the movie. This Patti is a total shrew and all she does is yell, so much so that when Ned finally tells her off at the end, the audience cheers. I really hate everything about the character, because I really don’t want a packed room to cheer when a man berates his girlfriend and tells her to shut up, but I also wanted her to shut up.
I was also weirded out by the gay jokes. As you know from the movie, there is a little boy who is gay, and his personality is a flamboyant stereotype. Even though the movie was from another era when it comes to representations of gay characters, and so you’d expect the representation today to be more normalized and less played for laughs, the musical dials it up 500%. I was shocked. It doesn’t help that British people are still apparently not comfortable with homosexuality (in a tiny move that I loved, one kids’ parents are two men. When the teacher greets them as “Mr. & Mr. Stephens” or whatever, just simply greeting them, the audience treated that like it was a laugh line. Horrifying), but using this boy to get big laughs just because he says “Barbra Streisand” or likes glitter felt way outdated and offensive. His character can be fun and super funny without being insulting.
So how is “School of Rock” doing? They do need to clean up a few things – the pacing at many points was off, especially on the kids’ deliveries but also with the adults, who also need to work on their accents. I wish they could still make edits (like cutting most of the grown-ups’ songs and scenes), but alas this show has been frozen for years now. Even so, it’s overall a wonderful time at the theatre and you can’t help but enjoy yourself. Watching the band perform live is exciting and the vibe is so happy and exuberant. And while the movie may better, this is a worthwhile adaptation and a guaranteed good time.
INFORMATION
If you are going alone, may I suggest/demand that you get seat G30 in the stalls. For only $35 (that’s pounddollars), I had a ROW TO MYSELF. It was the best. The side stalls sections are roughly triangle shaped, with the widest part/longest rows at the stage and tapering backwards until you get to the one-seat row, and it was the best treat ever! No noisy neighbors! No elbow jabs! Honestly it was the best seat ever. You can see here what it looks like: Seating Chart http://www.theatremonkey.com/GILLIANLYNNEstalls.htm
ALW renamed this theatre after famed choreographer (of “Cats” and “Phantom” to name two of her endless achievements) earlier this summer, and then like right after Lynne passed away. She was 92 but I think the moral ‘don’t let ALW name theatres after you’ still stands.
“Pippin” at London’s Southwark Playhouse: Solid Production of a True Favorite
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re talking “Pippin”, at the Southwark Playhouse in London until Saturday.
“Pippin” is one of my best known, and best loved, shows. It lends itself so well to grandiose ridiculous spectacle, like in the most recent Broadway production, while still having a beating heart, an eternally provocative book, and one of the best all-around scores in musical theatre. So I was intrigued to see what a little almost-black-box of a theatre like Southwark Playhouse could do with the material. It’s been a long time since I saw a production of Pips that wasn’t full-out Cirque du Soleil treats – in fact, the last time was in high school, when I was indeed in a non-circus non-world-class-acrobat version. I couldn’t help but wonder (just a little call out to Miranda running for governor treats!), how strong are the bones of the show? Will it still produce the thrills and astonishment I remember even without all the flying through the air with the greatest of ease? And the answer is, those bones must have read The China Study and learned about how milk really isn’t the answer to osteoporosis and instead they’re eating vegetables and doing resistance training because hell yes, they are strong.
Not that I’m surprised, because it’s such a great show. But it really does lend itself so well to spectacle, so it’s nice to remember that even without mind-blowing choreography and amazement, it’s still solid and enjoyable. Losing the circus tent of Broadway and all the splendor and magic that came inside of it was a bit of a let-down, I’ll be honest, because that production featured some of the most insane stuff I’ve ever seen humans do, and that augmented the show rather than overwhelm it, so naturally I’m gonna prefer that version all other things being equal. But seeing the bare bones of ‘Pippin’ was a great opportunity to revisit what makes it so special, and to remember that it is so special as is. And that even with an average cast, the music shines and the story resonates.
That story is the really not historical tale of Pippin, the son of King Charlemagne, and his coming of age as he tries to figure out what to do with his life in order to find fulfillment. He’s your typical young white male character, having literally all the resources and opportunities in the world open to him but feeling discontented and unsatisfied with this or that. He tries this or that, to continued exasperating dissatisfaction, because he believes himself to be destined for something extraordinary. I mean wow did they nail today’s white male youth or what. So Pippin’s story is told by a traveling troupe of performers, led by the Leading Player, and this performance that we are seeing is the very first with this particular actor playing Pippin. So every now and then we’ll get him doing something different from usual or a different ensemblist messing up, requiring the Leading Player to say something to remind us of that show-within-a-show frame. This is important, because the actor playing Pippin is having the same existential crisis as his character, and he’s subject to the same delusions of grandeur that Pippin is.
That story is the really not historical tale of Pippin, the son of King Charlemagne, and his coming of age as he tries to figure out what to do with his life in order to find fulfillment. He’s your typical young white male character, having literally all the resources and opportunities in the world open to him but feeling discontented and unsatisfied with this or that. He tries this or that, to continued exasperating dissatisfaction, because he believes himself to be destined for something extraordinary. I mean wow did they nail today’s white male youth or what. So Pippin’s story is told by a traveling troupe of performers, led by the Leading Player, and this performance that we are seeing is the very first with this particular actor playing Pippin. So every now and then we’ll get him doing something different from usual or a different ensemblist messing up, requiring the Leading Player to say something to remind us of that show-within-a-show frame. This is important, because the actor playing Pippin is having the same existential crisis as his character, and he’s subject to the same delusions of grandeur that Pippin is.
The Southwark Playhouse always does stellar work, in such a tiny space with pretty much nothing in terms of resources or special effects, or sets, really, so it’s entirely up to the cast and creatives to make magic. I was prepared to be blown away as I usually am here, with this theatre, effectively Off West-End, doing work that often is stronger than the proper West End shows (especially right now, when the favorite British musical winning over unsound audiences is, well, you know I don’t want to talk about that anymore). And while this was the most enjoyable musical I’ve seen in London in 2018 so far, it was heavily due to the material and not really this production in particular. The production was solid, don’t get me wrong, but not as great as I expected. And a few things rubbed me the wrong way. Like, the cast is entirely white, except maybe one ensemblist who might not be. I’m sorry to be making generalizations about her race but I’m trying to give them the benefit of the doubt that this show isn’t 100% white despite being performed in one of the most diverse cities in the entire freaking world, and even so it’s still a real let-down in terms of diversity. It’s weird, it’s obvious, and it’s just not right.
That whiteness means that the Leading Player, the lead role, is played by a white lady, which is JUST WEIRD. Now that was okay to do in my high school because my little suburb barely had Asian kids in drama club let alone black kids, but (Joey’s voice) in LONDON? The Leading Player is historically black, originated by the legendary Ben Vereen and then in the revival by the great Patina Miller, and a white lady just made it I don’t know, it made it like school. She was kind of a school marm. Genevive Nicole, talented as she is, was simply completely miscast, and only in part due to her race. She didn’t have the terrifying, exciting, mysterious, sexual, electrifying qualities that the Leading Player needs. And because her casting fell way short, for the first time, it really seemed like Pippin’s show. Despite being the title role, Pippin has always played second fiddle to the spell-binding Leading Player, whose actors have started illustrious careers on the magic they made in this incredibly meaty role. No matter how great Matthew James Thomas was in the 2013 revival – and he was REALLY great – it was still Patina’s show. I wasn’t lucky enough to see Ben Vereen in the original production, but come on, it’s freaking Ben Vereen. I think we can agree that he made the show. And that’s how it always is – the Leading Player lives up to the name, and Pippin is right up there with her but a little less extraordinarily, which is ironic because of the song he sings. But here, because the LP was weak and the actor playing Pippin (Jonathan Carlton) was actually the strongest one in the cast, the usual dynamic was flipped on its head and it became truly Pippin’s show. I was riveted more than usual in his plight and his growth as a character. The beauty of his songs stood out more. Meanwhile, the Leading Player became like a side character to me, just another of the ensemble except with more lines. She vanished completely into the shadows for me, and not in the good way that you expect the LP to be living in the shadows. It was incredibly interesting to witness this change, unintentional as I’m sure it was.
I was also surprised at the decision to have one actress (Mairi Barclary) play both Berthe and Fastrada. Pippin’s hilarious grandmother Berthe usually steals the show with her comedic bit, while Pippin’s conniving step-mother usually has a thankless song unless performed and directed perfectly. It makes some sense to double up on the roles, when you have a small cast, since they each have one big number and that’s pretty much it. But focusing on such different characters meant that a little was sacrificed from both. While a talented performer, Mairi made weird choices that didn’t work for me. Her Berthe got off easy, because the audience will eat up everything that character throws at you and be sublimely happy doing so, so that’s a hard one to mess up. Kind of like Charles/Charlemagne, it’s written to be adored and hysterical. It was just a little too goofy for me; when all the humor you need is written into the part there’s little need for bared teeth gags. But Fastrada was a mess. Her “Spread a Little Sunshine” is really hard to get anything out of, and it’s thankless unless she makes it obvious that she’s lying about spreading happiness and joy because her main goal is shrewd manipulation. None of that came across here, mainly because the actress was doing a heavy Scottish accent. And I mean heavy. Like worse than Mike Myers in “So I Married an Axe Murderer” when he plays his own grandfather and shouts “HEEEAD. MOVE. NOW!” It made no sense for the woman who is supposed to be gorgeous and sexy, so much so that the king is blinded to her scheming, to instead be kind of vulgar, calling herself a ‘hoosewife’ and letting the heavy accent get in the way of her subtle lines. I mean the whole “I’m just an ordinary housewife and mother, just like all your ordinary housewives and mothers out there” line is only funny because Fastrada clearly isn’t ordinary, and for damn sure isn’t a housewife. But here, yeah for sure she was just a dowdy housewife…so…. It didn’t work at all.
I did enjoy our Charles/Charlemagne, Rhidian Marc, who did a fine job. Like Berthe, that part is written to win over audiences with almost no effort, so any effort the actor puts in just makes it all the better. I particularly enjoyed his famous line, given in a little confidential bit to the audience after his wife asks for more money, when he says “You know, sometimes I wonder if all the fornicating I’m getting is worth all the fornicating I’m getting.” The audience dies every time, for good reason, but this time I was also crying laughing because I remember – someone from high school correct me if I’m wrong but I remember – that our HS production did NOT cut that line. Is that possible?!
Faring pretty well was Tessa Kadler as Catherine, more commonly the thankless role in “Pippin” unless you have someone who knows what they’re doing, and then it can be absolutely sublime. I never knew that Catherine could be the funniest and fullest role in the show until I saw Rachel Bay Jones in the Broadway revival, when she completely reinvented the role and all future interpretations were challenged to keep up. Unfortunately, few can really keep up with her, and even fewer have the comedic brilliance that’s required to make Catherine more than a well-meaning, pretty love interest. I could honestly talk about RBJ’s genius in that truly virtuosic performance for days on end. Needless to say, she ruined me for future performances that fail to mine the lines for all the brilliance they could possess. Tessa’s Catherine fared better than most, and she has a beautiful voice, but none of the nuance was there to make Catherine special. More importantly, it was not clear at all that the actors playing Catherine and Pippin in the show-within-the-show were falling in love, not at all. My husband, seeing “Pippin” for the first time, asked afterwards “wait why would she have left with him?” There was no reason for her to have joined Pippin at the end, at least as far as we saw.
And that ending is always so tricky to get right, because it is so unbelievably dark and sinister. The chorus sounded great on the Finale number, and it was creepy as hell as they tried to get Pippin to take part in the one final act that will make him extraordinary. It’s always fascinating to see how this comes across. Sometimes, the ending tells you that despite the grandest of dreams, a person will only be truly happy living an ordinary life that has real meaning instead of larger-scale meaning. Sometimes, it’s that you can’t expect too much of yourself or your life, and that doing so will probably have the opposite consequences than you intend, and sometimes it’s that you can’t give in to the basest desires that flood your subconscious. And sometimes you think um this is coming across as extra-pro suicide. Here, it definitely felt more along the lines of Pippin having to quiet the visions, the fantasies he always had that told him he was so special and so needed to do something obviously special. He needed to learn to ignore the dark places in his imagination and be content with a normal life, and only then, when he stopped expecting so much of himself, could he be happy. Overall, it worked, although again there was no foundation for having Catherine help ground him. It still was moving as ever, and because of the black box situation, I REALLY hoped we would get the original ending – when Pippin and Catherine just stand there in the dark in their underwear talking to each other, and it ends so abruptly and the audience is like, wait whatttttt? That can’t be the end?? That’s the ending we did in high school and it still makes me laugh so hard to imagine what on earth those poor audiences were thinking. But more recent shows have added a truly remarkable ending, in which the little boy playing Theo starts singing “Corner of the Sky”, and the Leading Player and the troupe come back in to encircle him, having found a new potential Pippin to finish their finale for them. It’s FREAKING DARK, and it works so well because it ends on music but still has the incredibly disturbing troubling mood. BUT, I think it really only works well when it’s a child playing Theo. Here it was just one of the regular ensemble members, adult-sized, playing Theo, so it didn’t pack the normal punch that that ending is good for. Also, when the players remove all the ‘theatre magic’ in a black box theatre, well there’s not much to differentiate it when they come back. There are no sets to begin with, so they kind of just made the lights dimmer. It didn’t work as well. It is the better ending though, so whatever it’s fine, but I just wanted to be able to witness an audience deal with the dissatisfaction of the original ending.
Overall, it was a well done production and definitely worth seeing, if it left me wanting to see a full mounted production again soon. And mostly, it reminded me of how great “Pippin” is, when even down to its bare bones, as here, it’s still enjoyable and poignant.
AUDIENCE
The audience was fine! Huzzah! It helps to be almost in the round in a small room, so everyone knows I’m watching them.
