It's Still Chanukah! Fried Maccabees/Mac & Cheeseby Randi / December 19, 2014
This is my nightmare, honestly. No exaggeration, do you know how much I pee? In the dystopian society of “Urinetown”, it is indeed ‘a privilege to pee’: You have to pay at a public utility each and every time you have to use the bathroom. Because of a 20-year drought, there are no more private bathrooms, and because it’s a dystopia, if you pee in the woods or in a bush or relieve yourself in any way (even accidents) without paying your fee, you get “sent to Urinetown”. It’s in quotes because it is indeed a euphemism for something horrible.
Who does all of that money go to? Why, obviously a private corporation! “Urinetown” was written by Mark Hollman and Greg Kotis before its first production in 2001, so these guys were Nostradamus levels of prescient. Okay maybe not Nostradamus because corporate takeover was happening then too but now it’s like crazy so this show seems even more appropriate and smart than it did back then. The superbly named Urine Good Company, run by evil mastermind Caldwell B. Cladwell (played wonderfully by British comedian Phill Jupitus), implements utility price hikes at its will, pays off all the weasely politicians to push terrible legislation through, and sends poor people who can’t pay for their morning pee off to Urinetown. He bad.
Or is he? One of the most interesting aspects of this show is how they blur all the lines distinguishing between the good guys and the bad guys. Cladwell may be a mean man responsible for lots of deaths, but his public bathroom system exists for a reason: There is extremely little water in the ground, and it has to be regulated. If toilet usage went up too much, the fragile water supply would be destroyed, hence his price hikes and strict rules for using the utilities. Now sure, people should still be able to pee in bushes without causing serious damage, but I didn’t see any shrubbery. Also, it would smell. Cladwell prides himself on keeping water in the ground and pee off the street.
Adding to the horror of this society is that no one actually knows what Urinetown is, except for apparently two policemen, who take victims there, and Cladwell, who invented it. The public assumes it’s a terrible sort of exile, a place even worse than the town we see, but it’s more than that. I feel I shouldn’t say.
One of the cops is also the narrator. He’s pretty funny and scary at the same time, but I got distracted by how strangely he pronounced some words in his attempt to turn his British accent into an American accent and then into a New York accent. People, there is no reason for this show to be American. The whole world is suffering and drying up in this show, so if they wanted it to be British they could have and then I wouldn’t have been distracted by accent issues. Of course, then it wouldn’t make sense when Cladwell talks about how much money he spent on his daughter’s college education; that’s an American thing.
His daughter is Hope Cladwell, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young girl who wants everyone to be happy!!! and who expects to take over her father’s company before her eyes are opened to the world of poverty and anguish that he is extorting. She falls in love with a young man, Bobby Strong, who works in one of the poorest public utilities, and Bobby shows her the real world and how awful it is. Together, along with a rag tag group of povers who look like zombies, they resolve to bring down Urine Good Company and let everybody pee for free! Yay! Peeing for free is the dream. I guess that’s another reason they didn’t set it in Britain – there are so many ‘public’ bathrooms that you actually have to pay for here*. Already. It’s starting.
*In fact, Greg Kotis got the idea for “Urinetown” when he was traveling through Europe and encountered all the pay toilets. How scary is that! It really is real.
Bobby is played by Matthew Seadon-Young, and he’s fantastic. He looks kind of like Superman but wearing his Clark Kent glasses. He sings really well and dances so furiously that an extended applause break was pretty much just to let him catch his breath. That extended applause came during the best number, “Run Freedom Run”, which kind of sounds like peeing yourself. It’s the most fun song in the show, done in a spiritual fashion, when the whole chorus gets to shine.
All the songs in this score, which won a Tony, have a clear purpose. I don’t remember thinking ‘they should have cut this’ at any point, meaning I wasn’t bored. The score is fun because all the songs are so different. You have the aforementioned high-pace spiritual. You have the lovely love song ‘Follow Your Heart’, with Bobby and Hope (a clear-voiced Rosanna Hyland) professing their love for each other, which made me think of the Love Theme from “The Hurt Locker: The Musical” (look it up). You have the dark and scary poor-chorus numbers ‘It’s a Privilege to Pee’ and ‘What is Urinetown’, the comic and ridiculous ‘Don’t be the Bunny’ by Cladwell, and more. None sounds like the other, or like anything else, and that is huge. The songs are much simpler than Sondheim, but it reminded me of his style because you don’t leave humming any easy melodies. There are no easy melodies here.
The book is structured as a look back on these sad times, with Officer Lockstock (not to be confused by his partner in fighting crime and committing crimes, Officer Barrel — GET IT?!) also acting as the narrator of this sad story. Little Sally, the most likable character in the show, is a poor spunky Annie-type girl who keeps asking Officer Lockstock why everything is so depressing and sad when this is a musical! And he responds that it’s not a happy musical. And Little Sally will say “But it’s still a musical!!” Karis Jack is fantastic here, in her West End debut. Lockstock is pretty good too but needs to work on the accent.
Obviously you root for the poor ‘good’ people against the evil corporation, and you are glad when the fighting is over and they come out on top. (Except for some of our main characters, who shockingly get sent to Urinetown. Not expected!) But more of this show’s twisted brilliance comes through in the epilogue. You had to pay for a reason, remember? There’s barely any water left. And without regulation, Hope’s new system of do what makes you happy!!! dries up everything pretty fast, resulting in a world that is, if possible, worse than what it was under corporate control. At least there was control there. That’s when they all realize that Urinetown, the horrible tortuous place they thought criminals (unpaying pee-ers) were exiled to, was actually where they lived now. They brought it upon themselves. (Also, Urinetown wasn’t that kind of exile, you learn in Act II. The truth is pretty grim.) It’s pretty freaking dark, right! Yet it’s so funny and enjoyable. This show is like a comedic “Sweeney Todd”. So much death, so much tragedy, and you laugh way too much. Definitely a must-see before it prematurely closes in a month. Anyway I have to go pee now. FOR FREE.
Adding to the horror of this society is that no one actually knows what Urinetown is, except for apparently two policemen, who take victims there, and Cladwell, who invented it. The public assumes it’s a terrible sort of exile, a place even worse than the town we see, but it’s more than that. I feel I shouldn’t say.
One of the cops is also the narrator. He’s pretty funny and scary at the same time, but I got distracted by how strangely he pronounced some words in his attempt to turn his British accent into an American accent and then into a New York accent. People, there is no reason for this show to be American. The whole world is suffering and drying up in this show, so if they wanted it to be British they could have and then I wouldn’t have been distracted by accent issues. Of course, then it wouldn’t make sense when Cladwell talks about how much money he spent on his daughter’s college education; that’s an American thing.
His daughter is Hope Cladwell, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young girl who wants everyone to be happy!!! and who expects to take over her father’s company before her eyes are opened to the world of poverty and anguish that he is extorting. She falls in love with a young man, Bobby Strong, who works in one of the poorest public utilities, and Bobby shows her the real world and how awful it is. Together, along with a rag tag group of povers who look like zombies, they resolve to bring down Urine Good Company and let everybody pee for free! Yay! Peeing for free is the dream. I guess that’s another reason they didn’t set it in Britain – there are so many ‘public’ bathrooms that you actually have to pay for here*. Already. It’s starting.
*In fact, Greg Kotis got the idea for “Urinetown” when he was traveling through Europe and encountered all the pay toilets. How scary is that! It really is real.
Bobby is played by Matthew Seadon-Young, and he’s fantastic. He looks kind of like Superman but wearing his Clark Kent glasses. He sings really well and dances so furiously that an extended applause break was pretty much just to let him catch his breath. That extended applause came during the best number, “Run Freedom Run”, which kind of sounds like peeing yourself. It’s the most fun song in the show, done in a spiritual fashion, when the whole chorus gets to shine.
All the songs in this score, which won a Tony, have a clear purpose. I don’t remember thinking ‘they should have cut this’ at any point, meaning I wasn’t bored. The score is fun because all the songs are so different. You have the aforementioned high-pace spiritual. You have the lovely love song ‘Follow Your Heart’, with Bobby and Hope (a clear-voiced Rosanna Hyland) professing their love for each other, which made me think of the Love Theme from “The Hurt Locker: The Musical” (look it up). You have the dark and scary poor-chorus numbers ‘It’s a Privilege to Pee’ and ‘What is Urinetown’, the comic and ridiculous ‘Don’t be the Bunny’ by Cladwell, and more. None sounds like the other, or like anything else, and that is huge. The songs are much simpler than Sondheim, but it reminded me of his style because you don’t leave humming any easy melodies. There are no easy melodies here.
The book is structured as a look back on these sad times, with Officer Lockstock (not to be confused by his partner in fighting crime and committing crimes, Officer Barrel — GET IT?!) also acting as the narrator of this sad story. Little Sally, the most likable character in the show, is a poor spunky Annie-type girl who keeps asking Officer Lockstock why everything is so depressing and sad when this is a musical! And he responds that it’s not a happy musical. And Little Sally will say “But it’s still a musical!!” Karis Jack is fantastic here, in her West End debut. Lockstock is pretty good too but needs to work on the accent.
Obviously you root for the poor ‘good’ people against the evil corporation, and you are glad when the fighting is over and they come out on top. (Except for some of our main characters, who shockingly get sent to Urinetown. Not expected!) But more of this show’s twisted brilliance comes through in the epilogue. You had to pay for a reason, remember? There’s barely any water left. And without regulation, Hope’s new system of do what makes you happy!!! dries up everything pretty fast, resulting in a world that is, if possible, worse than what it was under corporate control. At least there was control there. That’s when they all realize that Urinetown, the horrible tortuous place they thought criminals (unpaying pee-ers) were exiled to, was actually where they lived now. They brought it upon themselves. (Also, Urinetown wasn’t that kind of exile, you learn in Act II. The truth is pretty grim.) It’s pretty freaking dark, right! Yet it’s so funny and enjoyable. This show is like a comedic “Sweeney Todd”. So much death, so much tragedy, and you laugh way too much. Definitely a must-see before it prematurely closes in a month. Anyway I have to go pee now. FOR FREE.
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“My Name is Lucy Barton”: Laura Linney Makes a Stunning London Debut
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about “My Name is Lucy Barton” at the Bridge Theatre in London, playing until June 23.
The best one-man shows are those that make you forget that only one person is up on that stage. It takes an enormous talent to fill a theatre so completely that you feel the force of a whole company entertaining you with their stories. The last time (maybe only other time?) I felt like a stage was filled with several great entertainers instead of just one was in Michael Urie’s brilliant one-man show Buyer and Cellar. Now the wonderful Laura Linney manages to achieve a similar result in The Bridge Theatre’s “My Name is Lucy Barton”, in which she tells her story so vividly and describes other people so keenly that it feels as effective as a play with a big ensemble. She distracts you from how hard she’s working up there with how realistic her storytelling is. Directed by Richard Eyre, this moving tale of one woman’s struggles to come to terms with her past while recognizing her internal pain is at times funny, depressing, and surprisingly universal in its representation of the humanity of loneliness.
The best one-man shows are those that make you forget that only one person is up on that stage. It takes an enormous talent to fill a theatre so completely that you feel the force of a whole company entertaining you with their stories. The last time (maybe only other time?) I felt like a stage was filled with several great entertainers instead of just one was in Michael Urie’s brilliant one-man show Buyer and Cellar. Now the wonderful Laura Linney manages to achieve a similar result in The Bridge Theatre’s “My Name is Lucy Barton”, in which she tells her story so vividly and describes other people so keenly that it feels as effective as a play with a big ensemble. She distracts you from how hard she’s working up there with how realistic her storytelling is. Directed by Richard Eyre, this moving tale of one woman’s struggles to come to terms with her past while recognizing her internal pain is at times funny, depressing, and surprisingly universal in its representation of the humanity of loneliness.
In what’s pretty much a 90-minute monologue that at times will make you think holy hell how does anyone memorize a thing like this and also isn’t she so thirsty I’m almost done my water and I’m just sitting here, Linney plays Lucy Barton, the character from Elizabeth Strout’s 2016 (damn they worked fast) novel of the same name, adapted for this stage by Rona Munro. Although it’s a work of fiction, the character of Lucy is so fleshed out and so genuine that it seems like a true story. With the lights up, Lucy in her NYC-hospital-chic ensemble tells the audience that she was once in the hospital for nine weeks, away from her husband and her two daughters for all that time. During her hospital stay, her mother surprised her with a visit. The lights go down as she returns to that hospital room to tell us what happened during that reunion with her mother, and what informed their relationship from their difficult past.
At first, I’m watching Linney say interesting words about how sick she was (if I recall correctly, they never really say what the issue was) and how her relationship with her mother was rough to say the least, but after about 10 or so minutes, Linney became Lucy Barton, and although I was still staring at Linney’s amazing face dimples (definitely one of my top five favorite face dimples), I was watching Lucy tell her story. She told her story of her hospital stay while interweaving details from her past, her terribly rough childhood out in the sticks of Illinois with her father, who had PTSD from the war, her cold mother, her siblings who it seems she never bonded with, and all the abuse she suffered, even as a young child who couldn’t understand why she was being punished. Her storytelling is peppered with thoughts about how hard it was to be so lonely in that hospital room, and then her loneliness becomes the driving theme of her entire existence, developed in her pitiful childhood.
At first, I’m watching Linney say interesting words about how sick she was (if I recall correctly, they never really say what the issue was) and how her relationship with her mother was rough to say the least, but after about 10 or so minutes, Linney became Lucy Barton, and although I was still staring at Linney’s amazing face dimples (definitely one of my top five favorite face dimples), I was watching Lucy tell her story. She told her story of her hospital stay while interweaving details from her past, her terribly rough childhood out in the sticks of Illinois with her father, who had PTSD from the war, her cold mother, her siblings who it seems she never bonded with, and all the abuse she suffered, even as a young child who couldn’t understand why she was being punished. Her storytelling is peppered with thoughts about how hard it was to be so lonely in that hospital room, and then her loneliness becomes the driving theme of her entire existence, developed in her pitiful childhood.
Honestly, I just read Orphan Train this week and I’m getting the horrible childhood details from that book confused with Lucy’s, that’s how bad it was. We learn that as a young girl her parents would lock her in her dad’s truck sometimes at night, and she would scream for them to let her out. Even when a snake was in there with her, they wouldn’t listen to her screams. With that kind of detail, you can’t help but despise her mother and understand how big a deal it was that she visited her sick daughter, coming all the way to New York City when she is scared of traveling, and how anxious Lucy was about it even though a large part of her was happy to have the comfort of family. I mean it’s the least she could do. Linney’s, or Lucy’s, imitations of the mother were superb, with that thick Chicago-area accent and the too accurate recounting of how gossipy she is. I don’t remember the mother’s name but I remember her tales of her frenemy Cathy Neely, because of how often the mother talked about this woman, spitting out her name with pure venom and those exaggerated mid-West vowels. I LOVED how at one point in Lucy’s mother’s chitchat including a tidbit about a girl Mary who got married and the vowel she used for Mary and marry was the same, which is such a precise dialect detail that I almost stood up and shouted GIVE HER AND HER VOCAL COACH ALL THE AWARDS. I’m kind of obsessed with the Mary/merry/marry dialectical test because as a Philadelphian we are among the few, we happy few, who pronounce all three distinctly. Anyway.
Linney is pitch-perfect as she unfolds the truth behind why Lucy’s relationship with her mother is so strained, and why her loneliness feels like the main disease she’s suffering from, more debilitating and hopeless than whatever has been keeping her in the hospital for months. It’s such a full-bodied recounting that it feels like all the characters she mentions are up there with her, shoring up her tale. I was especially struck by the idea of her neighbor and friend Jeremy, and when Lucy spoke of a man dying from AIDS that she saw in the hospital, I immediately thought of him. When she carried on with her story, I brushed away the thought, but at the end her heartbreaking final thoughts circle back in what I thought was the most moving part of the story. She talks about what it was like to reconnect, or try to reconnect, with her estranged mother after all these years, and about her childhood and all the experiences that shaped her, but her story was mostly confiding in us about how lonely she was, no matter what she tried to do about it.
It’s really remarkable, and a testament to the skill of the writers as well as to Linney’s acting, how much the audience feels it knows Lucy and how much we learn about her life, simply by listening to her tell us about her hospital stay, something that seems so mundane and uninteresting. At the end, she again comes to the most downstage point and looks directly at us to share her most private thoughts and pains, pounding on her chest in one of the most powerful theatre moments. You’re so invested in Lucy’s emotional distress that you almost forget you’re watching Linney, as she makes a compelling London debut and receives a much-deserved standing ovation.
INFORMATION
The Bridge Theatre put in Linney’s programme bio that she was in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” but not that she was in “Dave”, the BEST MOVIE EVER and her character’s name was RANDI and she wasn’t a gross man so like FIX IT, BRIDGE.
Also fix your late seating policy. It was nonsense how many people were seated 20 minutes into the show. Just stop allowing late seating, all theatres. If someone is late and it’s not their fault let them exchange their tickets. I mean people who missed 20 minutes missed a LOT of information; it’s not even worth seeing it. And it was so distracting to everyone else.
STAGEDOOR
The stagedoor is around the side of the complex closest to Tower Bridge, past the Ivy restaurant and then next to the By Chloe that’s there. We only waited 10-15 minutes because it was disheartening to see how many Londoners were still supporting that restaurant’s shitty owners. Anyway, the people working inside said she isn’t consistent about which exit she uses, and I guess they couldn’t find out if she was planning to come out that way, and I was cold, so we left.
Come From Away Comes to London: Continuing its Global Takeover Even Though it’s Just Okay
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Come From Away, which officially opened in London this week.
You know how Oslo won the Tony for Best Play? And we were like…how? It’s because people loved the story it told, about the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the PLO. It is riveting subject matter that reminds you of an important time in history. You’re moved by the memories and by realizing that all of this actually happened, and so you feel a connection with the humanity of the history. And so audiences leapt to their feet quicker than you can say ‘she’s from Haifa’, even though the play itself was actually mediocre. People couldn’t separate the true story from how the play told it. Well I never thought I’d say this, truly never, but, same for Come From Away. Well, not exactly same – Come From Away is much better. The true story it tells about Canadian kindness during 9/11 is incredible and moving. But the actual show, the actual portrayal of it, is just okay. The magic comes entirely from knowing it’s a true story.
And yes, there is magic. When telling this story, about how the sleepy town of Gander, Newfoundland, welcomed thousands of stranded passengers on 9/11 when U.S. airspace closed, it would be impossible not to provide moments of real emotion. But those emotions come as a result of simply telling this story, even if someone were standing onstage simply reading news bulletins. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good show. It’s an entirely enjoyable theatrical experience. Yet from all the raves, you’d think it was great. But a great show takes a good story and then also presents it well, in an interesting, artistic way. This show has found such success because it took such a good story, but there’s no interesting or artistic creativity that lifts the material, at least not in any other aspect than the precise, impressive direction of a hard-working ensemble. Since it’s telling an excellent story, it doesn’t seem to matter how it’s presented, just that it is being presented. There’s not enough art being made.
One big problem for me is the score. Most of the music fails to fulfill the main requirements of a musical score: to move the story and/or the character development forward in a way that couldn’t be achieved in the same way without music. It all feels very perfunctory. Music has the ability to add emotional depth to words and story, but this score fails to augment the action most of the time. And almost none of it is used to delve into characters. Since the versatile ensemble constantly shifts so everyone plays multiple characters, it ends up feeling like a nondescript mass of people instead of individuals we’re supposed to care about. The one song in the whole show that is entirely intended for character depth – the best song in the show, “Me & The Sky” – consequently feels out of place. When the singer, Captain Beverly Bass (the fantastic Rachel Tucker), begins by sharing her childhood memories, it feels like it was lifted from a different show. This song, superb as it is, has the same problem as the best song from the musical Catch Me If You Can, “Fly Fly Away”: it’s the strongest melody overall, so clearly that’s why it couldn’t have been cut, but it is out of place. It doesn’t go with the rest of the score. No other character gets a solo that shares their entire life story or reveals profoundly what they’re thinking and feeling at this moment, other than the fear they directly tell us they’re feeling.
That’s my other issue, that the story is primarily told directly to the audience, with the characters telling us what happened, what they did, what they thought and felt. Unlike most shows, where we are watching other people live the story, and learning about them through action and dialogue with each other, their dialogue is with us. That’s a valid structure, sure, but subverting the usual mantra of ‘show, don’t tell’ lowers the ability to achieve real character development and relationships between the characters if we don’t get to really see them interact with each other. And what is Come From Away if not a show about the relationships and connections that form between these real people? It loses the chance to show us this most important and compelling part of the story and instead merely tells us that they connected. The best characters, Nick and Diane, who meet and fall in love in Gander, come off the best but that’s mainly because I knew that they ended up together (which like, give them an entire show, you know? Incredible story). It would have been lovely if not breathtaking to see them fall in love by talking to each other more instead of narrating it to us.
Audiences were going to adore this story no matter what was done with it, and they continue to do so. But it’s a shame that such a story will never get the stronger bones it deserves in terms of book and score. And even though they had a slam dunk on their hands, the creators still added cheap laughs. Too often, when creators don’t trust their material to stand on its own, or just to hedge their bets, they insert unnecessary ‘jokes’ or sight gags to get a random guaranteed laugh from the audience. It’s clearly appealing to the lowest common denominator and betting on an unsophisticated audience for cheap laughs. Come From Away does this, for one example, with the Spanish teacher who flamencos into the scene in full costume and says some naughty things in a bad accent. Why? It’s like a race to the bottom but for musical theatre.
Obviously Come From Away is not a bad show, it’s very decent. But for a musical that is guaranteed to sweep the Oliviers this season, it should be better. The story is amazing, and it’s hard not to focus on that in order to see that the bones of the show aren’t as strong as its subject matter. You have to recognize that a play is more than just the story it tells. The art form is the telling of that story. And while the story here is astonishing, the telling is merely good.
INFORMATION
Come From Away is at London’s Phoenix Theatre, probably forever.
It runs 100 minutes with no interval.
The Phoenix Theatre needs a refurb.
Programmes are £5 and are enormous.
