Sondheim's "Assassins" at the Menier: Creepy, Provocative, & Flawlessby Randi / January 7, 2015
It’s a sad state on Broadway when small, lovely shows can’t succeed. Granted, if you are a tourist with time for only one show in NYC, you’re going to try for “The Lion King” or “The Book of Mormon” (unless you are Mormon) or “Beautiful” (because middle-aged ladies freaking love to sing along in that show, the horror). Tourists, the people that new shows need to attract, are understandably reluctant to risk limited time and money for unproven ventures like “Big Fish”, or the BSE® “The Bridges of Madison County”, or, this season, “The Last Ship”.
“The Last Ship” is the latest artistic casualty on Broadway, closing this past weekend after a short run of just under four months. It wasn’t great, but damn it was moving, lovely, and unique. It sounded like nothing else on Broadway now or in recent memory. Sting, yes that Sting, wrote the musical inspired by his childhood and the shipbuilding yards of the northern UK. His music for “The Last Ship” sounds like quintessential Sting: haunting, dark, but beautiful.
The crazy thing is, I hated the music when I first heard it last year. I attended the Tony Awards dress rehearsal, and along with my bff and my mom I was like, ‘ughhh Sting get off the STAGE this is TERRIBLE’! And then!! And then they had Sting rehearse his song a second time! They could have made Neil Patrick Harris do “Sugar Daddy” again or repeated the amazing “Gentleman’s Guide” number but nooo we had to listen to old Irish wailings twice? I was literally groaning and almost yelling at the people in charge. That’s how crazy I was. And it’s possibly the problem the show had in getting off the ground – the style of music isn’t easy to accept; it is not a recognizable Broadway style. You might not like it at first. But the second or third time, you fall madly in love and can’t stop listening to it or singing it. Maybe that’s what it takes to wrap your mind around something so new and so moving. Listen for yourself:
The crazy thing is, I hated the music when I first heard it last year. I attended the Tony Awards dress rehearsal, and along with my bff and my mom I was like, ‘ughhh Sting get off the STAGE this is TERRIBLE’! And then!! And then they had Sting rehearse his song a second time! They could have made Neil Patrick Harris do “Sugar Daddy” again or repeated the amazing “Gentleman’s Guide” number but nooo we had to listen to old Irish wailings twice? I was literally groaning and almost yelling at the people in charge. That’s how crazy I was. And it’s possibly the problem the show had in getting off the ground – the style of music isn’t easy to accept; it is not a recognizable Broadway style. You might not like it at first. But the second or third time, you fall madly in love and can’t stop listening to it or singing it. Maybe that’s what it takes to wrap your mind around something so new and so moving. Listen for yourself:
Sadly, most shows need to garner an immediate and large fanbase, and it is just getting more and more difficult for new non-jukebox and non-movie-based shows to do this. Sting himself joined the cast in the middle of the run to try to boost ticket sales, proving how devoted and proud he was of this work. I saw the show once Sting had joined, and it was completely magical. That was in large part due to Sting’s presence and incredible voice, but considering he took on only a minor role, it was also due to the rest of the wonderful cast and that haunting music.
The show concerns the people living in a small northern England town, in which the main source of work is in the shipyard. Corporate goons (not really) declare that they are closing the poorly performing shipyard as times achange because new ventures would bring in more income. Instead of accepting the offer to find new jobs working for the villainous (not really) company, the townspeople decide to work together to build one last ship as a symbol of the lives they’ve known and because it would be nice and fun and I guess they had nothing else to do either because it’s freaking way north England and it’s cold and boring there and there is no theatre. Anyway they make this really lovely commitment, yet you can also see why some people had trouble with the book – they were like, soooo this is about people building a ship in protest sort of okay that’s boring. It’s far from the type of fare one would consider worthy of a musical, but the wonderful performances and the poignant music made it more than worthy.
Immediately, the musical sets a certain tone with just the first few bars of the opening song, “Island of Souls”. It sounds like Sting but transposed for theatre, and it’s a bit eerie, a bit sad, and totally lovely as the voices of the ensemble mesh to almost resemble the winds of the ocean. A young teenager leaves his girlfriend behind as he sets off to find his fortune on the seas; the boy’s harsh father confirms his disappointment in him; the men of the town continue building their ships. This first look at the story to come effectively sets the stage.
The show concerns the people living in a small northern England town, in which the main source of work is in the shipyard. Corporate goons (not really) declare that they are closing the poorly performing shipyard as times achange because new ventures would bring in more income. Instead of accepting the offer to find new jobs working for the villainous (not really) company, the townspeople decide to work together to build one last ship as a symbol of the lives they’ve known and because it would be nice and fun and I guess they had nothing else to do either because it’s freaking way north England and it’s cold and boring there and there is no theatre. Anyway they make this really lovely commitment, yet you can also see why some people had trouble with the book – they were like, soooo this is about people building a ship in protest sort of okay that’s boring. It’s far from the type of fare one would consider worthy of a musical, but the wonderful performances and the poignant music made it more than worthy.
Immediately, the musical sets a certain tone with just the first few bars of the opening song, “Island of Souls”. It sounds like Sting but transposed for theatre, and it’s a bit eerie, a bit sad, and totally lovely as the voices of the ensemble mesh to almost resemble the winds of the ocean. A young teenager leaves his girlfriend behind as he sets off to find his fortune on the seas; the boy’s harsh father confirms his disappointment in him; the men of the town continue building their ships. This first look at the story to come effectively sets the stage.
We jump 15 or so years to find that teenage boy, Gideon, returning to the town now an aimless man (Michael Esper), having failed in his pursuits and looking for his old love. That girl, Meg, is now a tough ass broad played by the superb Rachel Tucker, whose belt seemingly has no limits. Of course Meg has a son about 15 years old, and of course Gideon turns out to be the father. Kind of cliché there. Meg’s long-time partner, Arthur (Aaron Lazar), has raised the boy as his own as he waits for Meg to finally marry him. The chemistry of the reunited lovers is palpable, as is the shaky position of pretty decent guy Arthur as he realizes Meg still has feelings for Gideon. One of my absolute favorite parts of the show is that, despite the evident remnants of love between Meg and Gideon, she chooses to remain with Arthur, who is the right man for her now. Expecting Meg and Gideon to end up together, I had already written Arthur off as another ill-treated musical character who never really did anything wrong but whom the audience for some reason roots against – like Benny in “Rent”. (Seriously – what did he do wrong?) So I was pleasantly surprised when the plot took the much more mature path of recognizing that a person’s needs change with time just as much as the person does. It was a beautiful aspect of the book.
Then we have the great Fred Applegate as the town’s priest who is also bad ass as well as big-hearted. They give poor Fred cancer and kill him off in Act 2. Another unnecessary clichéd development. But Fred himself never does wrong, and he was so lovable here as the outspoken, can’t-be-arsed with manners and tradition man of the cloth.
Anyway, the company announces the closing of the shipyard, and the town mourns the forthcoming loss of its defining feature. Priest Fred Applegate convinces the foreman and the builders that they need to build one last glorious ship in order to achieve closure as well as feel proud of themselves for their fine work all these years. Newly arrived Gideon causes quite a stir and decides to help the men even though he left originally to avoid working in the shipyard, effectively. It’s all camaraderie and emotional growth through the symbolic work from here on out.
While the first act was nearly flawless, the second act was kind of a mess. I can’t deny that there were serious problems there. It slowed down in large part due to its breaking of my NUMBER 1 RULE OF MUSICALS: Do not start Act II with a crappy slow song, especially if it is sung by a minor and/or old man character. Seroiusly. To bring people back in from intermission – a truly marvelous segment of time in which you can eat ice cream and freaking pee – you need to start with a rollicking good number. They technically tried to satisfy my rule by having some ensemble girls belt a fun ranty song about the men, but it was still an intermission song, like “Telly” in “Matilda”, and not officially part of the show. So the real first song of Act II was Priest Fred Applegate, who is old and dying, and just ugh. Not the best way to start out, and kind of unnecessary overall. It was absolutely akin to last season’s “Rocky”, in which Dakin Matthews (Headmaster Charleston) as Rocky’s coach starts Act II with a shit song about his old days in the ring. Oh my god, no. Both of these songs dragged the shows’ momentum to a halt and set the stage for mostly lackluster second acts. Hey Broadway, stop this nonsense of having the lovable old men sing shit songs to bring us back in. ahhhh.
It didn’t help that the next song was my least favorite. Gideon and his son get arrested when all the shipbuilders try to protest the yard’s closing. In their jail cell for some forced father-son time, Gideon sort of teaches his son to fight but also to dance??? The song is literally called “The Night The Pugilist Learned How to Dance”. I just no I can’t deal with it.
Luckily, after that, the book picked up and the music got back to being awesomely entertaining. Brian Yorkey (of “Next to Normal”) and John Logan (from film) wrote the book, and despite its slow bits, I thought it was a nice job done on such a small, personal story. Again, killing the priest seemed like unnecessary additional drama in a freaking drama, but it did give rise to one of the best scenes: his wake. To honor such an awesome man, the town throws a crazy Irish-jig dancing kind of wake, and it’s an incredibly fun ensemble number that I would have loved to have seen on the Tonys if the show lasted longer.
Another fantastic ensemble number was the exuberant Act I drinking song “We’ve Got Now’t Else”, which my friend and I spent all of intermission trying to decipher. (“What the hell were they saying? We’ve got what else? Huh?” Still don’t really know what it means but whatevs.)
Seeing Sting in the role of Jackie, the ship yard foreman, was a treat I am so lucky to have experienced. But Jackie is only a supporting part; the rest of the cast was wonderful and made the show as enjoyable as it was overall. I wish the show could have gotten the better run that it deserved. Hopefully the show will find new life, maybe in the West End (where it should have started). But this is the kind of small, touching show that stays with you, so for all the people who did get a chance to enjoy it, at least it’ll remain a part of us. At least the good songs will.
Then we have the great Fred Applegate as the town’s priest who is also bad ass as well as big-hearted. They give poor Fred cancer and kill him off in Act 2. Another unnecessary clichéd development. But Fred himself never does wrong, and he was so lovable here as the outspoken, can’t-be-arsed with manners and tradition man of the cloth.
Anyway, the company announces the closing of the shipyard, and the town mourns the forthcoming loss of its defining feature. Priest Fred Applegate convinces the foreman and the builders that they need to build one last glorious ship in order to achieve closure as well as feel proud of themselves for their fine work all these years. Newly arrived Gideon causes quite a stir and decides to help the men even though he left originally to avoid working in the shipyard, effectively. It’s all camaraderie and emotional growth through the symbolic work from here on out.
While the first act was nearly flawless, the second act was kind of a mess. I can’t deny that there were serious problems there. It slowed down in large part due to its breaking of my NUMBER 1 RULE OF MUSICALS: Do not start Act II with a crappy slow song, especially if it is sung by a minor and/or old man character. Seroiusly. To bring people back in from intermission – a truly marvelous segment of time in which you can eat ice cream and freaking pee – you need to start with a rollicking good number. They technically tried to satisfy my rule by having some ensemble girls belt a fun ranty song about the men, but it was still an intermission song, like “Telly” in “Matilda”, and not officially part of the show. So the real first song of Act II was Priest Fred Applegate, who is old and dying, and just ugh. Not the best way to start out, and kind of unnecessary overall. It was absolutely akin to last season’s “Rocky”, in which Dakin Matthews (Headmaster Charleston) as Rocky’s coach starts Act II with a shit song about his old days in the ring. Oh my god, no. Both of these songs dragged the shows’ momentum to a halt and set the stage for mostly lackluster second acts. Hey Broadway, stop this nonsense of having the lovable old men sing shit songs to bring us back in. ahhhh.
It didn’t help that the next song was my least favorite. Gideon and his son get arrested when all the shipbuilders try to protest the yard’s closing. In their jail cell for some forced father-son time, Gideon sort of teaches his son to fight but also to dance??? The song is literally called “The Night The Pugilist Learned How to Dance”. I just no I can’t deal with it.
Luckily, after that, the book picked up and the music got back to being awesomely entertaining. Brian Yorkey (of “Next to Normal”) and John Logan (from film) wrote the book, and despite its slow bits, I thought it was a nice job done on such a small, personal story. Again, killing the priest seemed like unnecessary additional drama in a freaking drama, but it did give rise to one of the best scenes: his wake. To honor such an awesome man, the town throws a crazy Irish-jig dancing kind of wake, and it’s an incredibly fun ensemble number that I would have loved to have seen on the Tonys if the show lasted longer.
Another fantastic ensemble number was the exuberant Act I drinking song “We’ve Got Now’t Else”, which my friend and I spent all of intermission trying to decipher. (“What the hell were they saying? We’ve got what else? Huh?” Still don’t really know what it means but whatevs.)
Seeing Sting in the role of Jackie, the ship yard foreman, was a treat I am so lucky to have experienced. But Jackie is only a supporting part; the rest of the cast was wonderful and made the show as enjoyable as it was overall. I wish the show could have gotten the better run that it deserved. Hopefully the show will find new life, maybe in the West End (where it should have started). But this is the kind of small, touching show that stays with you, so for all the people who did get a chance to enjoy it, at least it’ll remain a part of us. At least the good songs will.
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Mites at the Tristan Bates Theatre: Don’t Trust Men (or Cats…or Men that are Cats)
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Mites, running at the Tristan Bates Theatre at The Actors Centre
If I want my blood pressure to skyrocket, I imagine what it’s like when someone doesn’t believe me. You know that uncontrollable anxiety and frustration when you can’t convince someone that you’re telling the truth, or don’t know if they are? Man alive, the agita. (This is especially a big thing for me because when I feel that someone isn’t listening to or believing me, I start laughing uncontrollably which does…not help my case.) Women are taken advantage of all the time, dismissed as hysterical or crazy, have their experiences denied, gaslighted. This can, sadly, happen in intimate relationships, and women with mental health conditions are particularly at risk. The new play Mites by James Mannion explores this vulnerability, and the fact that I recommend Londoners check it out despite what it did for my agita speaks volumes about how provocative and interesting this show is.
Also, there are dust mites.
Set in a very convincingly dirty and musty house that makes you feel itchy and also made me feverishly promise to clean my flat ASAP, Mites tells of Ruth (Claire Marie Hall), a lonely woman living on her country estate with her cat, Bartholomew (honestly a missed opportunity to pull a little Spaceballs and call him ‘Bartholomeow’) along with an infestation of the titular dust mites for company. Ruth’s loneliness doesn’t manifest as stereotypical depressive symptoms, but more manic and prone to flights of imagination (in a bad way). When Ken (George Howard), the pest controller, comes to help Ruth’s dust mite problem, Ken realizes this opportunity to swindle a weak lady and is all ‘hey it’s me ur husband.’ Ruth believes that he’s Kenneth, the husband who left her long ago (yet somehow is…decades younger than he should be by now), even though he’s clearly taking advantage of a susceptible (and rich) woman.
Ruth’s anthropomorphic cat Barthy (Richard Henderson) is a highlight, hilarious as the voice of reason trying to convince Ruth that Ken is a con man while enjoying his books. Yes, he’s an intellectual who’s well-read and speaks 9 languages, a source of some of the funniest parts. He had me laughing out loud at his remarks, like when he tells a newly invigorated Ruth that it’s a waste of time to clean the house and it’ll never be clean, and she says “well, you can’t fault me for trying!” To which Barthy replies, “yes I can, that’s literally what I’m doing.” LOVES IT. Of course, in a play like this, even Barthy the intellectual cat is not who he seems, which of course he isn’t I mean a cat doesn’t show up at your door and ask, ASK, if you want him to be your cat, but still, it was fun to pretend, evil bastard.
The first hour is packed with humor, but the darkness takes over as the vagueness of what’s actually real and what’s not, and who is really who, takes center stage. There’s an absurd interlude with a look at the lives of actual mites, which is so nuts that it’s amazing, but when we return to the humans it’s hard to know what’s really happening. Jarring voiceovers seem to start coming from nowhere, along with location changes that are compelling but hard to track. Confusion and vagueness like this can be powerful, especially in a play dealing with mental health issues, but it needs to be honed a bit more to harness that power. One character says the phrase “lost the plot” a few times and I remember thinking “well don’t point it out!”
In a play that deals with women being deceived, mental illness being manipulated, and hospitalization being threatened, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and super agitated when you realize how it can reflect some people’s reality. So I appreciate the bits of agency given to Ruth as she attempts to take back her control, although I am still in a whirl trying to determine what was actually real. I’ll be thinking about this for days, I’m sure. And despite some wonkiness in the back half, that’s the sign of strong, interesting theatre.
INFORMATION
Mites is playing until October 26. Seating is unassigned, with about a dozen rows of about 10 seats across. These are approximations as I did not count seats; I am not weird.
Evening shows start at 7:45pm, and they said it was an hour and a half (one act). When I turned my phone back on afterwards, it was 9:15pm. BraVO!
Sondheim’s Memory Will Absolutely Be a Blessing
It’s so strange to think that Stephen Sondheim is no longer on this earth when the earth has so often felt like simply a platform for his work to exist. Everything that happens and everywhere I go and every word that every person says reminds me of some truth he shared with the world that we were lucky enough to hear and understand and connect with emotionally. No one was more honest about the complexities of human emotion and the depths of human frailty, and applying that honesty to musical theatre elevated it as an art form and reinforced that it’s deserving of respect. Look at what musical theatre can achieve, he said. Look at how we need musical theatre to truly express our humanity. That’s why we love him so much.
I’m not foolish enough to think that I can eulogize him better than others have (except the Guardian of course) or discuss the brilliance of his works in detail like theatre historians. I just wanted to take a few minutes to think about how important his creations are to me personally. Unfortunately I’m not able to do what everyone loves doing (and you can’t really fault them for doing it), which is to share a photo of me and the deceased, because I never had the opportunity to meet him. While part of me is of course sorry that that will never happen, part of me is glad because I can go on imagining him as more than an ordinary man. For me and for most of us who love theatre, he was this sort of holy figure, whose genius necessitated that he must be more than human, despite understanding and expressing humanity on such unparalleled levels.
This past weekend, I was without power and cell service for a few days due to the storm, and while that experience was one of the worst, it let me have a few extra days of believing I actually shared a planet with him, this great figure. That we existed in the same era and in the same universe is a miracle to me, and not just because it’s Chanukah and he was Jewish and I’m primed to be thinking all miracley anyway. He would be the last person to think of himself in such laudatory terms as we all do, as he was just a man (a NJB really), but his genius made him seem superhuman, despite that very genius being grounded in humanity.
On a personal level, his works form important touchstones for so many parts of my life. One of my earliest memories is watching the PBS airing of ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ over and over with my mom. She had taped it (VHS baby) so she would put it on frequently for years after. I remember it was even on when she was drying her hair one morning, and I was just staring at the small screen. Mandy Patinkin quickly became my mom’s favorite non-family (maybe even including family who knows) person in the world, and I loved everything about it, this woman in the dress with the poofy butt (who know one day I would work with her) and the colors and all these characters and above all the sound of this perfect music that I was too young to understand but knew was beautiful and important. As a teenager, I was obsessed with the dark twists of ‘Into the Woods’ and the lessons it taught about consequences and the ramifications of wishes, especially as someone raised on Disney princesses. But, I was also raised on ‘West Side Story’ and with it my dad’s favorite story of his single line: ‘COPS!’ And I’m not saying I married a man because he appreciates and loves how insanely ingenious ‘Assassins’ is but it’s not not why. I can’t imagine what life looks like without his shows helping us understand it.
It doesn’t matter that he was 91 or that we’ve been fearing this moment since his big 80th celebration. Genius of that sort is rare and now we are without his. But we have his work, his brilliant creations, each of them special and so many of them continually surprising in their truth and beauty. We are so lucky that his works keep getting produced and we can keep experiencing them, and in new ways, even if we will never get that fabled next show from him.
His genius was in peeling away layers to reveal raw human truths that seem so simple and clear but are so complicated, and doing that to incredible music. He seemed to so often be drawn to extremely niche situations for his settings — not e.g. a basic family drama that everyone could relate to but instead a group of aging former performers confronting their pasts in a closing dilapidated theatre, or a beloved painting brought to life through the backstory of its creator and muse, or a group of historical assassins detailing their exploits and commenting on the current state of politics (current at any time, another aspect of his brilliance). Even the situations that don’t seem too rare or extreme, like the single man deliberating his singledom, were novel and innovative at the time. Instead of writing characters as every day people we would immediately relate to, he made it so we related to people we didn’t automatically see ourselves in. We weren’t always reflected outwardly but we would soon feel emotionally connected and reflected due to the honesty and depth of his words and how the music enhanced their meaning. He found emotional truths in this nuance and showed them so clearly that the shadows seemed like daybreak. His legacy for me is how he let audiences easily see themselves in characters that aren’t clearly similar to them, or see truth in situations that don’t look like their normal lives, which more easily lets people connect with those different from them in real life. I believe he did this, and since being able to connect in those ways increases empathy, with his art he thus made the world a better place.
When loved ones die, Jewish people say may their memory be a blessing. To remember Stephen Sondheim is to remember his genius and how that genius manifested in the creation of these lasting works of emotional truth and humanity. His memory is a blessing, and will always be a blessing, as his life was, as his art was.
