I Can’t Even Deal With: “Garage Sale Mystery” on TV
No no don’t touch that…dollhouse furniture?
Hallmark Channel’s new movie, “Garage Sale Mystery”, is already poised to be the network’s greatest achievement this century. It’s about a woman (Lori Loughlin/Rebecca Donaldson/Aunt Becky Katsopolis) who is really good at antiquing and buying other people’s crap when they throw this crap on the front lawns of their houses and expect passersby to pay them money in exchange for said crap, which the passersby then pick up with their hands and carry into their own houses. Or, what we Americans call ‘garage sales’.
“As she gets closer to the truth, Jennifer learns that crime solving can be far more dangerous than any garage sale.”
HAHAH. I mean, it doesn’t really get any better than that. Because we all know garage sales are extreeeemely dangerous. That’s what town curfews are really for – to stop people from the danger of meeting their neighbors and effectively digging through their trash. Gotta protect people’s secrets, you know! I wonder if that’s the message Hallmark has been going for all these years, with their impressive litany of made-for-mockery titles. Maybe all Hallmark movies form one sophisticated case for strengthened privacy laws.
“As she gets closer to the truth, Jennifer learns that crime solving can be far more dangerous than any garage sale.”
Anyway, I cannot wait to see this movie, and I’m sure you feel the same way. I hope it’s good, for Aunt Becky’s sake. Just look at how happy and optimistic she looks at left! But she doesn’t even realize it’s all gonna come crashing down. I have a feeling this film is going to epic. Stay tuned; we are totally going to live-blog this. Oh crap, it’s airing on Yom Kippur. Ok, someone remind me to DVR this anti-Semitic piece of wonderment.
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It’s Tony Awards Weekend! Thoughts and Hopes and Prayers and Stuff
Fortunately, the musical revivals were a whole lot better than the newbies, for the most part. All three of them. One wasn’t so good, as you saw yesterday, but the other two were SO good that it almost makes up not only for the musical revivals as a whole but for the entire musical theatre season. That’s pretty f-ing incredible, and they really are. The race is a toss-up right now between the two (I really truly hope just between the two, but you never know what kind of insane shit voters can pull) and honestly I don’t know where I would send my vote if I had one (and I should have one; have you seen how many Tony voters abstain from categories because they haven’t seen them all yet? YOU HAVE ONE JOB).
At least we’re still getting the gift of great performances, as the best of the best of Broadway and beyond (I told you the best of the UK always ends up in NYC) are (mostly) giving their all 8 (mostly) times a week. Consequently, the acting races are hard to call and pretty darn stacked, so despite the lackluster season, the actual Tony Awards promise to be more exciting than in recent years, when gigantic hits were guaranteed certain awards. Let’s talk it through, team! MY choices are bold; my predictions are in the text (I want the impossible sometimes so the two don’t match up.)
- The Band’s Visit
- Frozen
- Mean Girls
- Spongebob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical
Sure I haven’t published reviews for all of them yet but the only one you really need to read is “The Band’s Visit”. Even in a better year, it stands out as a very special show, a show that’s definitively for adults and doesn’t try to pad its story, instead believing that purity of emotion, honest experiences, and connections between regular people are enough. And the score is gorgeous, funny, moving, all the things you want in a musical, yet it also sounds new and different from anything we’ve heard before. It’s a master work and deserves to win big on Sunday.
The worst part about this awards season, though, is that everything is a matter of timing. Last season was absolutely overflowing with quality productions, and it was so full that great shows barely garnered any award nominations because there was simply no room, and then they barely won any awards against the “Dear Evan Hansen” behemoth. This year, with “The Band’s Visit” really the only great show in the mix, so many of last year’s incredible shows could have gotten the acclaim they deserve. I’m thinking of “Bandstand”, which in a less crowded year would have racked up deserved nominations in most categories; I’m thinking of “Groundhog Day” which could have finally won Andy Karl a Tony; and even my beloved “Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812”, which had so many nominations, could have won more in this weak season. Nevertheless, “The Band’s Visit” is winning Best Musical this year, and deservedly so. If anything else happens on Sunday, the entire audience should walk out in protest. Not that anyone should care about silly awards, but come on everyone does.
BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL
- Carousel
- My Fair Lady
- Once on This Island
This is the hardest category for me to choose just one. As we’ve discussed, “Carousel” was disappointing, but the other two revivals this season were extraordinary. “My Fair Lady” and “Once on This Island” were both exquisite, magical productions that I feel lucky to have seen. Honestly they were two of the best productions I’ve seen, ever, in any season, and so it’s just too bad that only one can win the Tony. MFL was as great a production of the familiar, beloved property that anyone could wish for, with every inch of it lush and gorgeous and riveting. OOTI is a less well known show but this production makes it seem like one of the classics, with incredible music and a heart that thumps so loudly and vividly that you can almost see it. When two shows are this perfect (104% perfect, as is the limit), it’s hard to choose between them, but when forced I will choose the one that is perfect but also reinvents the show to such an extent as to make it seem new and more exciting than ever, and that is “Once on This Island“.
- Angels in America
- The Band’s Visit
- Frozen
- Mean Girls
- Spongebob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical
You always know something is wrong when a play sneaks into this category. Not to knock the ‘Angels’ score, but no matter how great a play’s music is, it’s still not part of the story like a musical’s is, so if there were good enough musicals this year, they would be in here for their score. It shows how weak this season’s musicals are. And in any other season (see above about last season), “Mean Girls” would not be in there, as its trite, stale score is universally considered its weakest aspect, and “Frozen” would barely be squeaking by since it has to be considered on the merits of its new material, and not just “Let it Go”. “Spongebob” does have some clever, fun songs, but overall it feels disjointed, more like single units instead of a whole, which makes complete sense considering different artists wrote each song – there’s no cohesion. (The incredibly long list of artists involved in the score and thus nominated for a Tony just feels wrong, too, but it will be fun to hear whoever’s presenting this category. They’ll need a glass of water to get through it.) Regardless, “The Band’s Visit” must win this one for its elegant, inventive, beautiful music, which plays with different cultural elements to create a score that will historically be considered one of the greats. If there was a Best Song category, it would be winning for the stunning “Omar Sharif”, but even without that epic number this score is still sensational.
- The Band’s Visit
- Frozen
- Mean Girls
- Spongebob Squarepants: The Broadway Musical
This category is giving me agita like I never had before. That’s not even a little bit true; I get it all the time because I feel so many things *shakes fist* but this is the most culpable Tony category. It’s a race between “Mean Girls” and “The Band’s Visit”, but it’s not even a race because there is no surer thing that Tina Fey’s imminent Tony win. People REALLY don’t understand what a musical’s book is. It’s everything – the words that aren’t sung, sure, but it’s the story, it’s the structure, it’s how the story is formed with the songs. That’s why “Hamilton” deservedly won best book even though the whole shebang is sung-through. Yet since “Mean Girls” delivers Fey’s undeniably amazing jokes, people think ‘oh I’m laughing I’m having fun this book must be amazing.’ But it’s not. Every critic complained about how bloated the show was – an hour too long at least, stretched beyond what it should have been and thus padded with too much unnecessary crap. That’s by definition a problem with the book (for one). On the other hand, “The Band’s Visit” is clean, concise, and graceful, with every moment supporting the central theme. Itamar Moses should win, but won’t. Tina Fey is going to be a Tony winner. I mean I love her, but come on.
- Lauren Ambrose, “My Fair Lady”
- Hailey Kilgore, “Once on This Island”
- LaChanze, “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical”
- Katrina Lenk, “The Band’s Visit”
- Taylor Louderman, “Mean Girls”
- Jessie Mueller, “Carousel”
Look at this utter shitshow of a category. SIX NOMINEES?? In this season? Nnnnno. It’s the result of a near-tie occurring in the nominating process, but still, this is a joke, especially since the men have only four. The ones that matter (to me) are Ambrose, Kilgore, and Lenk. Kilgore gives a fantastic Broadway debut, but for me it’s between Ambrose and Lenk, giving two stunning, wildly different performances that are each so phenomenal, so worthy that honestly I don’t know who I would vote for. This is the one time where I really want a tie, and considering there was a tie in the nominating, maybe there will be a tie in the winning! Just kidding; there won’t be – this is Lenk’s, and I’m thrilled for her, but I wish Ambrose was being discussed as clearly the runner-up and none of this other nonsense. But I mean, Julie Andrews didn’t even win for Eliza, so I guess it’s not the saddest thing ever that Ambrose won’t have a Tony for her portrayal either. And there’s really no reason to be sad as long as the goddess Katrina Lenk does indeed become a Tony winner. She is magical in this role, mesmerizing, graceful, magical, and her performance in my view is the story of the season.
- Harry Hadden-Paton, “My Fair Lady”
- Joshua Henry, “Carousel”
- Ethan Slater, “Spongebob Squarepants”
- Tony Shalhoub, “The Band’s Visit”
This category is also ridiculous because of math – there are four nominees because there weren’t enough eligible performers to make it five. But even so, this category is the hardest to call because all four are deserving. Honestly I won’t be surprised nor unhappy with any of these men winning. I would be voting for Harry Hadden-Paton and I would make sure all my Tony voter friends did the smart thing and voted for him too. His Henry Higgins established a new benchmark for that celebrated role, just beyond anyone’s dreams of what this Broadway newbie would do. But I also loved Shalhoub, and even though he barely sings in the show, his acting is part of what elevates the story to such heights. He deserves it too. Although I wasn’t a fan of “Carousel” (to put it mildly) and I thought Henry was miscast as Billy Bigelow, his Soliloquy was irrefutably profound and fantastically sung, and it’s not hard to predict that many voters will be thinking of that scene when voting. Also, he’s a beloved long-time performer in the community who many believe is due for a Tony. And then there’s Spongebob himself, who is actually considered the frontrunner. Slater works incredibly hard for 2 ½ hours, belting his face off, jumping all around the sets, dancing, laughing, man it’s exhausting to watch how hard he works. It’s also his Broadway debut and people love to reward debuts like this. Anyone can win and it won’t be surprising, but I think it’s beyond Spongebob and Monk, and so I’ll be over here doing rain dances for HHP.
BEST FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL
- Ariana DeBose, “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical”
- Renee Fleming, “Carousel”
- Lindsay Mendez, “Carousel”
- Ashley Park, “Mean Girls”
- Diana Rigg, “My Fair Lady”
This is another headscratcher of a category, considering nooooo one thought “Summer” was going to get any nominations, “Mean Girls” is brimming with worthy featured actress performances and Park’s was the one least predicted to get nominated, and Diana Rigg has like 5 lines in “My Fair Lady”. It’s a weird category. And the front-runner seems to be for the role and not the performer – that of Carrie Pipperidge in “Carousel”. The person in that part, Lindsay Mendez (who was out when I saw the show I’m not mad or anything), will probably win on Sunday. Even though I’m sure she’s amazing, her role was also predicted to win a Tony for the woman first cast in the role, Betsy Wolfe, as soon as she was announced (she had to leave the production for scheduling conflicts and so Mendez came in). I think Carrie is such a meaty, incredible role, especially compared to the smaller-than-you-recall ‘leading’ role of Julie, that it doesn’t matter who plays her, they will win a Tony. Betsy would have won, Audra won in the last revival, and Lindsay will win. As long as the actress does a good job, the role will seal a Tony deal. Of course, her competition is freaking Renee Fleming, who is fantastic in the role and performed in the performance I saw, so I’d vote for her. Loves me some Fleming! However, Ashley Park is having a banner year with her acclaimed role in off-Broadway’s K-POP, and she could ride that wave of good will to a win. My real choice here is the very much snubbed Kenita R. Miller from “Once on This Island”, who took a small, usually forgotten role and made it the beating heart and moving soul of a celebrated production.
- Norbert Leo Butz, “My Fair Lady”
- Alexander Gemignani, “Carousel”
- Grey Henson, “Mean Girls”
- Gavin Lee, “Spongebob SquarePants”
- Ari’el Stachel, “The Band’s Visit”
This is another big toss-up category, as three of these nominees could win and it would be deserved and unsurprising – Norbs, Gavin, and Ari’el. Norbert is always wonderful, and his work in “My Fair Lady” is fantastic. He would be deserving of a third Tony win for his exuberant, pitch-perfect turn as Alfred Doolittle even though he is not much older than his stage daughter, Lauren Ambrose. But voters do like to spread the wealth, and Gavin Lee is the clear showstopper in “Spongebob”. Not only does he perform the whole show with four legs, but he is given the best scene in the entire show with his extravagant 4-legged tap dance number. (You don’t have Gavin in a show without an extravagant tap dance number.) But Ari’el is the one to beat for his charismatic, captivating debut as Haled in “The Band’s Visit”, where he loves Chet Baker and, well, love in general. I’d be thrilled for him to win.
As for the other two, the nomination is the honor for Grey, who gets to say the best line in “Mean Girls” (“Danny DeVito I love your work!”), and the super surprise honor for Gemignani, who was not predicted to be nominated for his small (but charming and well done) role in “Carousel”. But honestly, this category is the most messed up for how many deserving actors were squeezed out of this final list, especially Alex Newell, a showstopper in “Once on This Island” who was predicted to not only be nominated but to have a strong shot at a win. I also wanted his castmate Phillip Boykin to be nominated for his extraordinary work. Alas. After seeing “My Fair Lady”, I’m disappointed that Jordan Donica didn’t get a nomination for his beautiful, lovable turn as Freddy Eynsford-Hill, aka the man who sings “On the Street Where You Live” and gives one of the best versions I’ve heard. But the most upsetting exclusion from this list is the likely winner’s cast mate and the man who would have been my choice to win: John Cariani from “The Band’s Visit”, whose Itzik comes across as fun and silly at first but it hides a broken heart that will break yours by the end of the show. He’s fantastic in the show and his exclusion is the worst snub here.
- Michael Arden, “Once on This Island”
- David Cromer, “The Band’s Visit”
- Tina Landau, “Spongebob SquarePants”
- Casey Nicholaw, “Mean Girls”
- Barlett Sher, “My Fair Lady”
This is another category where anyone (except Casey, sorries) would be a deserving winner. Bartlett Sher’s production is pitch perfect, like truly and absolutely flawless. Tina Landau does incredible things to make “Spongebob” pop to life and is a viable contender for the clever staging she produced. David Cromer would be a deserving winner for the faultless, tight-as-a-drum “The Band’s Visit”, where every moment is meaningful, no matter how small. But my vote would go to Michael Arden, who has transformed a show we thought we knew into something new and magical and unexpected. His revival is as perfect as Sher’s, but with the added element of reinvention of the known property, which should secure a win for him. However, I think voters may actually wish to reward “Spongebob” here.
So, to quote Forrest, that’s all I gotta say about that. Haha that’s the biggest lie I ever told; I could talk about this for WEEKS ON END but I think you’ve read enough. Make sure to watch the Tony Awards this Sunday on CBS! How can you not be counting down the minutes until MY BOY JOSHY G (Josh Groban of course) begins his host duties?! I’m so excited for him and Sara Bareilles and I hope they do well. Remember, we are all winners as long as no one does a medley. MEDLEYS NEVER WORK.
London’s “Girl from the North Country”: A Fine Time Despite the Nonsense
As I’ve said hundreds of times, I love going into shows cold, not knowing any spoilers, not knowing the words to all the music yet, just a blank slate ready to be won over. But I may have gone overboard this week because not only did I know nothing about London’s new play “The Girl from North Country”, I knew wrong information. I thought this was about farming life in Ireland. Cue all the laughing-crying emojis because it’s about MINNESOTA. Duluth, specifically. I guess that is easily confused with Dublin? Regardless of my hysterical laughing when the show started and I heard them say ‘Duluth, Minnesota’ (internalized laughing, of course), and despite the awkwardness of this disjointed, rickety show, it’s a nice piece of theatre, enjoyable in spite of itself.
There are two patent examples of large, bad decisions that aren’t compelling. One is the completely annoyingly unnecessary framing device of the narrator. One actor, who plays the town doctor, also narrates the story and gives a lot of details to the audience that we don’t need. Using this needless device shows a lack of faith in the story to present what the author is aiming for. And never once did the narrator’s monologues share anything worthwhile to the story or anything that would not have been better left to the imagination. The play is pretty decent as is, but this device, borne out of a lack of confidence, distracts from the parts of quality.
The second example is the reason why I haven’t used the word ‘musical’ yet, even though everyone else (and the Oliviers) calls this production a musical. To me, it is the very epitome of a play with music, not a musical, because the music does not drive the story-telling. Instead of having the characters sing to each other to further the plot, a play with music uses the songs for their own sake unrelated to the plot, like in “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” when Billie Holiday was simply performing at a concert. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing to choose, not at all, but the use of the chosen music seems haphazard. The music should still be well considered and there for a reason, and if the characters in the show are singing, the songs chosen should somewhat reflect on them enough to make sense. Here, the songs sometimes make sense, but often don’t. The one thing I knew going in was that this show uses the music of Bob Dylan. So every so often, the characters will sing a Bob Dylan song, and it will have nothing to do with the plot, but the problem was they often didn’t make sense for the characters or for what the show was ostensibly trying to achieve. I’ll point to specific examples later.
Aside from these missteps (huge as they are), the show is decent, inoffensive and overall pleasant. It tells the story of the Laine family in Duluth, headed by the stern, imposing Nick (Ciaran Hinds (I know)), whose wife Elizabeth (Shirley Henderson) is suffering from a form of dementia that keeps her alternating between having no idea what is going on to having zero filter on her speech and actions. Their son, Gene (Sam Reid), has amounted to nothing and is a piece of a nothing shithead, we see because of how he treats a black man, but I honestly think the writer wants us to feel bad for him for some reason, which um no. Their daughter, Marianne, is a black woman (Sheila Atim) that was left in their inn as a baby, so they decided to raise her as their own. There’s a whole other show to be made just about this relationship and how their town reacted to it, but we strangely don’t get much in the way of racial unease, which is odd because it for sure would have created some. I wonder if the writer wanted us to think highly of all the characters for not calling attention to this, but it just seems unrealistic. I mean come on it’s Minnesota in the 1930s. Or, it’s America at any time. People would have torches.
Marianne is pregnant, and single – she won’t tell anyone who the father is. At one point, she tells someone that she was impregnated by the ghost of the wind of Jesus or something weird like that and I have no idea what they were going for with that. It seemed meant to add a mystical element, but such an element had no business in a straightforward show like this. An old man in town, Mr. Perry (Karl Johnson), has offered to marry Marianne and raise the baby, which seems like a nice offer but he’s super ancient and Marianne is like nah thanks. Unfortunately, her father has no patience for her idealistic decision-making, wanting to marry someone she actually loves and all. Elizabeth, in one of her unfiltered episodes, shares that Mr. Perry once assaulted her when she was young (he’s hella old so he was an older man even when she was young) and no one seems to care, which is the most realistic part of this show. I love that Elizabeth, in all her raw, crude honesty, is often the only voice of reason in the community.
Soon two men arrive to spend the night, a man presenting himself as a reverend but he is really a slimy Bible salesman (Finbar Lynch (I mean can we talk about that name? that’s the real name of the actor. Man alive)), and a former boxer named Joe Scott. Joe for my performance was played by the understudy Emmanuel Kojo, and I couldn’t have been more thrilled because Kojo is one of the West End names I actually remember from several past productions, so lucky me. The men join existing guests Mrs. Neilsen (Debbie Kurup), a hot widow who is sleeping with Nick and maybe loves him even though he’s old and wrinkly and mean; and the Burke family, an older married couple with a grown but developmentally disabled son, Elias (Jack Shalloo). The Burkes have an interesting but ultimately unfulfilled storyline about how the grown son may have killed a woman unintentionally, and how they may be fleeing from the authorities. It sounds a lot worse than it is. Not the crime, the crime is bad, but how this fit into the show. It was random and nuts but it kind of all worked, because we’re learning about all the sad stories of those involved.
And then we have the town doctor (Adam James) who should have remained a doctor instead of moonlighting as a narrator.
The first act is actually quite well done. The chosen Bob Dylan songs, although they don’t really inform the story or characters, seem at least a little bit relevant. And if not, at least the choices are mediocre and not aggressively bad. The twangy Dylan sound of the less famous songs worked with this setting. It helps that I didn’t know 90% of the songs, so for a while everything seemed suitable and interesting. The second act, however, falls apart. They perform songs back to back (to back, I think) apropos of nothing, and you can feel the thing falling off the rails and see that the songs are the desperate attempt to keep it moving. Then, the character of Joe Scott, a really interesting, well performed and mysteriously drawn character, is done a huge disservice by having to sing “Hurricane”. This is not a song that jives well with the small, rural action of the play, a huge contrast to the other songs used, so it is seriously shoehorned in to make it fit, and it was a bad idea. Like I said, Joe is a former boxer, which seemed acceptable in the first act, but having him sing “Hurricane” made me think, wait, did they make up his backstory in order to fit this song? It’s hard to believe otherwise when the writing reveals him to have committed a robbery and be on the run from authorities. This is where they really lost me. Forcing this song into the show and molding the story around it felt so amateur and for all the damage it does to the story, the payoff is exactly nil.
After that, the action seems to happen without compelling reason shoring it up. Truly dramatic things occur, and rarely do they feel earned or warranted. Marianne’s character is poorly drawn, for such a central character, and her decision to leave town without saying goodbye to her family feels unjustified. It’s hinted at (more than hinted at) that Nick might resort to a little murder-suicide and just, like, what? And don’t get me started on the ambiguity of what actually happens to Elias (who has the second best musical performance of the night, but it is very ill-suited to the story).
What keeps the show largely afloat are the performances. Not all – most of the ensemble was obviously focusing on their American accents to the detriment of their acting. This was especially clear in the case of the poor sad Mrs. Neilsen, whose ‘I just came from my elocution class’-style of speaking was inappropriate for this setting. “Oh I will MEETUH you OUTUH-SIDUH,” she said once. She was the female equivalent of Gary Oldman when he guested on “Friends”, spitting all his t’s and popping all his p’s. Then we had other ladies giving full-on Fargo-style accents, dontcha know, because North Dakota is pretty much Minnesota, yah fer sure, so the clash was blatant and upsetting. Why don’t West End shows all have dialect coaches?? But the leading performances by Ciaran Hinds and Shirley Henderson are the compelling parts of this show and what makes it worth seeing. Ciaran, whose name I literally just found out yesterday is not pronounced as written (I’m sorry), as the gruff, well-meaning but wrong-headed patriarch Nick Laine, is so natural and believable. The tinge of his Irish accent works really well actually to convey mid-West America, and even though his character is wrong so often, he’s such an incredible actor that he makes you want to understand why.
The real star turn here is that of Shirley Henderson as Elizabeth Laine. At first, she just kind of sits in her chair and makes faces at the goings-on, and I was thinking ‘she got an Olivier nomination for this?’ However, slowly but surely her performance grows and builds so much that I would honestly think about voting for her over the “Follies” ladies. (Don’t get me started on the fourth nom.) I didn’t know at first that Shirley was that Shirley, the one I know best as Bridget Jones’s brunette friend and as Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter. Yeah, her. She’s fantastic. Her portrayal of a woman with dementia is so honest and uncomfortable and you have fremdschamen watching the whole time and you want to look away because it’s so painful, funny at times but painful, but you can’t because what she is doing is extraordinary. It’s mostly a physical role, peppered by line deliveries that could not be more perfect. She takes these words and chews them up and spits them out at such perfect moments with timing and venom that could be deadly. And then when she breaks into song, my goodness, I had no idea this lady could sing. She has the strongest voice in the whole production (and gets to do most of “Like a Rolling Stone”) and why hasn’t she been in more musical theatre? She could have single-handedly been saving British musical theatre! (Okay they still need someone besides Tim Minchin who can write scores but still.) Her performance is remarkable, how she does so much with so little and makes you invested in this story for her sake.
So clearly there are a lot of things wrong with this show, but in spite of all of that, it’s still enjoyable and a little bit moving, which I think is a testament to the performances, and also the writing. If this play could have been just a play, forgetting the weird Bob Dylan constraints, and if Conor had someone reigning him in and editing this draft, it could have been excellent. As it stands, it’s just fine, but entertaining.
AUDIENCE
Oh the joy – this was one of the best audiences I’ve witnessed in London. I didn’t see ANY phones during the show – and I was sitting in the way way back of the stalls, which usually means all you see is phones. There was a super old lady singing along sometimes and slapping her knees to the music and I shot her death stares but she was so old that that was probably dangerous. The girl next to me was coughing literally the entire first act so I moved for the second so that was fine. Honestly, most of the bad behavior came from the ushers I heard talking in the back and the back of house staff I could hear through the doors! Nonsense! Cameron Mackintosh better get his people under control.
STAGE DOOR
There were only like one or two weirdos there so I didn’t want to stay too long and also be a weirdo. The cast seemed super uninterested in talking to anyone anyway so best to skip this one.
Update: The show, with a new cast, will return to the West End from December 10, 2019 for 8 weeks.