The Jungle: London’s Best New Play Will and Should Break Your Heartby Randi / October 4, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is ‘Company’ in the West End, playing at the Gielgud Theatre until (at least) December 22.
Not to sound too much like Stefan, but London’s hottest show right now is ‘Company’. It’s got everything: gorgeous sets, impeccable lighting, that IKEA chair everyone has that looks expensive, Patti LuPone, red dresses, untz-untz-untz music, a guy sitting next to you (me) burping up cheese (I almost vomited in front of Patti LuPone), and, most notably, a gender-switched lead character. In this modern revival of Stephen Sondheim’s classic 1970 musical, Bobby, the 35-year-old bachelor who enjoys juggling women and being the envy of his married friends, is now Bobbie, a 35-year-old bachelorette who dates and has lots of married friends and is thinking a bit about what she wants out of life. The buzz around this revival is off the charts, and yet the show itself lacks any sense of life driving it forward.
While ‘Company’ wants us to believe that Bobbie’s having some sort of existential crisis about being single at this age, Bobbie doesn’t seem to be in much need to change her life, because this is now 2018 and it’s not a big deal that a 35-year-old woman, especially in NYC, is single. She seems fine. She dates cute guys, she wears cute dresses, she has a bunch of friends who care enough about her to always invite her over and call her and throw her birthday parties. Who has friends that throw birthday parties anymore?! Her life rocks. So while a female lead is interesting and buzzworthy, the show’s whole main concept now fails as a piece of modern theatre, because the whole ‘erma gerd a 35-year-old person in 2018 is unmarried alert the church elders’ subject matter is so outdated and irrelevant to our lives that despite the truly gorgeous visuals of this production, and the mostly great performances, you’re left thinking, ‘wait but why though?’
Maybe it’s because I am in Bobbie’s demographic, so I have lots of Bobbie-friends in my life who are Living Their Best Life, but I think I found the female characterization of Bobbie less compelling than the male. Stereotypically, women think about marriage and getting to spinster age more than men do, right? Older single men are more socially acceptable than older single women, because yay misogyny. So if this is true, a female Bobbie isn’t anything of note. It’s merely a woman who still has her entire life ahead of her thinking, hmm maybe do want to get married someday. COOL. That’s not exactly the most compelling dramaz. Whereas, with a male Bobby, especially when he’s played with a little coldness towards his romantic conquests, it feels a little more moving to watch him realize that maybe he wants to settle down one day, because it wasn’t expected, and he’s not expected to really care about that. Bobby having an emotional journey is more compelling than Bobbie, well, just staying the same.
And maybe I found the female Bobbie less compelling because it wasn’t acted well. Unfortunately, I saw this show on the night when the lead, Rosalie Craig, was sick, and Jennifer Saayeng, who usually plays Jenny, was on as Bobbie. Saayeng should be commended for getting through the show without any mistakes, but this is a West End professional production, and her performance was sadly not up to standards. She seemed unable to control her breath, which resulted in weak voice, unable to be sustained. It was a shame that Bobbie’s big musical moments – “Marry Me A Little”, “Someone is Waiting”, and of course “Being Alive” – were laborious, tedious, awkward moments that you yearned to be over instead of relishing. It was a big disappointment, and I’m shocked that a production of this caliber doesn’t have a better suited standby for Bobbie. Her acting portrayal left me cold as well, so perhaps Craig does show Bobbie as going on an emotional journey, but Saayeng did not. It’s the fault of the director, Marianne Elliot, for not ensuring that that necessary journey always remains a part of the show no matter who is playing the role, and it’s the fault of the producers for not having a standby or understudy ready to portray it. When I last saw ‘Company’ live, it was the 2006 Broadway revival with Raul Esparza, and his Bobby was one of the most incredible performances I’ve ever seen in my entire life. People say that Bobby/Bobbie doesn’t require a powerhouse vocalist, but hell if hearing Raul blow the roof off the theatre with his definitive ‘Being Alive’ didn’t transform the entire emotional message of that song and subsequently the play as a whole. He actually felt the pressure from his married friends and was grappling with his own desires, whereas in this production, I didn’t notice anyone making Bobbie feel uncomfortable with her status at all. And for good reason – like I said, she seemed to be doing fine. But the whole point of a musical is to show emotion through song, which Bobbie did not do.
Aside from Bobbie, the rest of the characters were mostly great. ‘Company’ is told through a series of vignettes in no apparent chronological order, with returns to Bobbie’s surprise 35th birthday party scattered in here and there and as bookends. The first of Bobbie’s married friends were wonderful – Mel Giedroyc and Gavin Spokes as Sarah and Harry, who are trying to give up their vices and end up fully fighting each other while ‘demonstrating’ jujitsu, which Giedroyc hilariously pronounces like Ross Gellar says ‘karate’. Some of my favorite comic timing in ‘Company’ comes when Joanne enters the fray and sings to the audience “The Little Things You Do Together”, and Patti did exactly what was needed here, hysterically. The scene, which ends with the lovely-sad “Sorry-Grateful”, was as pitch-perfect as the set design was. Jenny and David, the couple who smokes weed with Bobbie and has some truly provocative dialogue, were also great. Jamie Pruden was on as Jenny with Saayeng swung up to Bobbie, and I honestly couldn’t believe that she wasn’t the regular Jenny. She and her husband, played by an affable Richard Henders, seemed perfectly suited to their parts. Lastly, Daisy Maywood and Ashley Campbell as Susan and Peter were great as well, with their interesting portrayal of a couple that is finally happy with each other once they get divorced.
But no one and nothing in the shows beats Bobbie’s gay friends Jamie and Paul. Jonathan Bailey stops the show and steals it with his incredible “Getting Married Today”, which is honestly the best reason to see this show. This is the one gender switch in the production that makes much more sense now. When a woman sings this song, it’s funny but just normal cold feet. With a man singing it, his jab of “Just because we can get married doesn’t mean we should” takes on a much more potent meaning, and his joke about being pregnant is actually funny. The staging is just as good as his performance, down to his leap onto the kitchen counter and the choirgirl disappearing into the fridge. It’s a tour de force and I will bet right now that Bailey wins an Olivier this year for it.
While Richard Fleeshman’s Andy, the idiot flight attendant formerly known as Amy, is fantastic, the other two boyfriends don’t fare as well. Theo (formerly Kathy) barely makes a dent, while PJ (formerly Marta) is so poorly redone as to be kind of maddening. Before, Marta was this cool liberal girl who revels in the city’s diverse wonders, but PJ seems to be just like some skanky Brit who spends all his time doing drugs in clubs. What this production does to “Another Hundred People” is a crime.
And Patti, while always great, didn’t really connect to the character. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t have to – the audience, screaming and cheering for her every single word, no matter what it was, would apparently scream and cheer for her if she said eat my farts instead of her lines. Joanne’s big song “Ladies who Lunch” is set in a modern club with house music thumping, which as you know is my nightmare, and there’s just no way this old lady would be at this club with all these young people dancing. The new book scenes given to Joanne before and after her big song are honestly weird. Whatever they were trying to accomplish by shocking Bobbie with Joanne’s untoward suggestions about sleeping with her husband &c. was not achieved. Instead, you’re left just kind of giving the stage the side-stink-eye like that gif of the little blonde toddler. If I am forced to give it some weight, I guess Joanne was trying to scandalize Bobbie into feeling something at all, and betting that her reaction would be the realization that she wants to settle down, but it felt unnatural and actually bizarre.
Sondheim has said that he hates hearing theories that Bobby was a gay man, because that’s an entirely different issue that the character would be dealing with. Bobby’s story is that of the quintessential straight white man with no real problems, and this is the one case I can think of where the story is best suited to that kind of man. Making him a woman diminishes the potency of his story the same way Sondheim feared making him gay would. And Bobbie doesn’t seem to have a problem here at all. Her friends don’t seem to be pressuring her to settle down as they seem to have in past productions. And you’d think that the gender-switch would bring along a new kind of pressure from the friends and from Bobbie’s own acknowledgement of her aging – the time she has left to have babies. I assumed this production would be all over that with a female Bobbie. But this obvious issue is left strangely unmentioned, the one thing that actually would make a compelling argument for a female lead. So, instead of the story of a cold, insular, lonely man who realizes how badly he wants someone to love him, we see the story of a middle class, mid-30s woman who has lots of friends, a great apartment, an active romantic life, and a birthday cake all to herself. I don’t see a problem.
INFORMATION
‘Company’ is playing at the Gielgud Theatre until December 22, but I am positive that either an extension or a Broadway transfer is coming, given the hugely positive reception it’s getting. Rush tickets are available on TodayTix.
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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: World Premiere of Exciting New Musical
Full disclosure, before seeing the new musical version of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button I assumed it was going to be hilarious. Really, you’re taking the decent-but-not-loved Brad Pitt movie and turning it into a musical? Good luck with that. I assumed it would go the route of recent screen-to-stage West End musical disasters like Made in Dagenham and Bend It Like Beckham. But I could not have been more wrong. No, as the lot of us sitting in the ‘Little’ black box studio of the Southwark Playhouse pathetically blowing our noses and sobbing during Act II can attest, I could not have been more wrong. Rather than lazily taking a known property and shoving in songs here and there as everyone else seems to do and calling it a ‘new musical’ instead of a ‘garbage fire’, the Button team did what so few can do and made something meaningful and worthwhile. They’ve taken the original F. Scott Fitzgerald story and reset it as a Cornish coastal folk tale, with an underpinning of mysticism and with inventive folk music that successfully builds an entire world, and gives poignant, impressive new life to this story.
Having its world premiere at London’s Southwark Playhouse these past few weeks, Button continued this very exciting and very inspiring new trend of original British scores being on the up and up after about a decade of swimming in the shallow end. Although folk music isn’t the kind I’d be listening to at home, this score from Jethro Compton and Darren Clark served the show well and helped convey the necessary mythology and emotion in a way that classic showtunes, for one, couldn’t have. Making Button a Celtic-inspired legend was a smart creative decision, bringing the tale from its jazz-age Americana roots and establishing it instead on the Cornwall coast, with its UK traits of the stiff upper lip, the hardworking fishermen, the omnipresent pubs.
For those of you not up on your F. Scott short stories or who somehow didn’t see the 2008 Brad Pitt – Cate Blanchett – Taraji P. Henson absolute ROMP of a movie (it’s not it’s sad) (but really good) (I know I said above it wasn’t beloved but like it was really solid and honestly thinking about the ending makes me quite emotional like old lady Cate holding the baby version of her former love as it dies???? whaaat??) (Oh ps SPOILERS just there before), Benjamin Button is this cursed child (not related to Harry Potter) born as an old man who then spends his life aging in reverse. I have to admit I’m not up on my Effe Scott Fitzy but in the movie, he’s just a creepy old-man-looking baby-sized 80-year-old or what have you, but in the stage version, he pops out of his OBVIOUSLY DISTRAUGHT mother a full-size, full-talking, full-thinking 70-year-old man. (Which yeah you understand why his mother would jump off the cliffs but I think her song “Davey Jones’ Locker” should be cut or trimmed, like yes you just had a full-grown-gramps instead of a baby and I’m sorry but we don’t feel enough sympathy for you right off the bat to connect fully with your downward spiral.)You’re probably thinking, um how did they do this on stage? And the answer is with puppetry, with puppets made out of, well, garbage, pretty much (wicker baskets and lots of plastic bottles, hooray for reusing (recycling isn’t as good as we were all told, please try to actually reduce your plastic use and as here, reuse! PSA)) and impressive maneuvering by the hard-working five-person ensemble. It was really impressive stuff, and funny when it was plastic-bottle children later on.
Speaking of the hard-working ensemble, these five actors and musicians, all onstage mostly the whole show, weave in and out of various characters and play multiple instruments as they tell this tale in a most impressive manner. Well one actor, James Marlowe, does very little weaving since he plays Benjamin for the majority of his life (they need a few more visual aids to show the passing decades, like maybe losing the mustache when he talks about not needing to shave anymore, adding a few youthful accessories or playing with wigs, things like that). And one weave was my biggest pet peeve of the show since it was completely unnecessary: Benjamin’s love interest is named Elowen, and she’s played winningly in Act I by Philippa Hogg. In Act II, as Elowen grows older and Benjamin grows younger, Rosalind Ford takes over as Elowen. The passing of the character between the two actresses is actually done in quite a lovely way – but it’s not only unnecessary, it takes away from the character development. For one, Philippa created the bond with the audience, especially in the wonderful, moving “The Moon and the Sea”, and so it’s jarring to switch halfway through. For another, more important reason, um, Philippa and Rosalind both look about the same age, so making one play only the old lady version is suuuuuuper weird and it feels wrong. It’s a shame because Rosalind’s big Act II song as Elowen is truly stunningly delivered, but for the good of the overall show, Phillippa should play Elowen the whole time (Rosalind has enough to do otherwise whereas Philippa in Act II felt underused). We’re supposed to be focusing on how Benjamin is changing in odd ways, not having the ‘normal’ people do that.
Aside from that quibble, Compton’s clever direction was a feat, and despite the tiny stage and the tiny black room, you could sense the wind and waves crashing against the shores of Cornwall. Despite a slow start that would be much helped in the next production by trimming one of Benjamin’s parents’ songs (the weakest material is over with right at the start at least), they built this world pretty quickly, drawing the audience in fully and keeping us there, on board for all the twists and heartbreaks of the story. I loved the a cappella Celtic theme song of the show and how well it captured the right mood (although I think it had one too many reprises?). Even all the references to space travel paid off in a lovely, surprising, poignant way. A lesser quality show would have drawn eyerolls at, e.g., the reprise of the super-fun-every-action-is-connected song “A Matter of Time” when it tries to pull that sad as hell shit at the end, but instead we were all gutted along with the characters. It really worked. And then as the heartbreak keeps building in a really beautiful way, the audience, like I said, was sobbing. I can’t believe what this little show managed to pull off, but it was an extraordinary first effort at mounting this new musical.
INFORMATION
I have to give a shout-out to whoever designed the programmes, which for some reason only cost £1. They were the best programmes ever. Actually interesting notes from the creatives? A FULL BREAKDOWN of what it cost to mount this production and how they raised the money?? Show everyone how it’s done, son.
While this initial run is now over, hopefully it will come back in a slightly revised but no less fantastic form soon.
“The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk”: Love, War, and Marc Chagall
IT’S THEATRE THURSDAY Y’ALL! Today we are talking about “The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk”, currently at Wilton’s Music Hall as it begins its tour.
A relatively new, fairly abstract play called “The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk” is currently playing at Wilton’s Music Hall in London, and you should see it. I had no idea what it was about, but I live nearby and it’s theatre so I was game. This charming little play, amusing and moving, surprised me with how much it accomplished with so little. It tells the love story of Marc Chagall and his wife Bella, and how they created art and love during world wars. Light acrobatics and mesmerizing movements augment their narrative, to create a touching, energetic story about a painter’s personal life. The play it seemed to be in the beginning was not the play we were left with in the end, but even so, it’s a worthwhile endeavor to tell this story.
Honestly the only thing I knew about Marc Chagall going in was that Julia Roberts owned the famous painting of his, the one with the goat playing a violin flying around in space, and gave it, the real one, to Hugh Grant in “Notting Hill”, as you do to shy lil bookkeepers who may or may not ever want to see you again. Luckily he did (spoilers!) so she didn’t like give away a priceless authentic Chagall painting that would be so stupid. Anyway it’s a great painting so I figured the creator of it might be interesting. Like all artists, his character seemed to have a not-great set of priorities, as they put creating their art ahead of things like oh I don’t know the birth of their child, but still seemed to be a man capable of great feeling and understanding of the more abstract things than common sense, like love. From writer Daniel Jamieson and director Emma Rice, this play – seemingly, from the director’s note, produced out of their actual love story – is small but often powerful.
At the start, we see young Marc and Bella meet in the town of Vitebsk, now in Belarus. More than half the population was Jewish and so it had a staggering number of synagogues at the time (early 1900s), and so it was completely decimated in the war, they tell us in the beginning. The 90-minute play, though it uses the two onstage musicians in the action sometimes, is essentially just Marc and Bella, what people in the theatre would call a ‘two-hander’ because there are only two actors but I will fight my whole life against that phrase unless the two actors each only have one hand. (It should be called a four-hander, am I right?) Anyway, it’s nice to see a play about two Jews in a room bitching. Especially in London, where many people think Jews are alien. So Marc and Bella instantly fall in love and their initial courtship is kind of adorable. They talk to the audience a lot, and Bella confides in us that she knew he liked her and yet he waited so long to kiss her. One day on a picnic she thought he was coming in for one but instead he asks for his jacket, which she is sitting on. Super awkward and so funnily adorable! It’s crazy to hindsight to think back on how lighthearted a romp it felt in these hilarious moments compared to the heartbreaking weight of the end. The best scene is when Bella celebrates Marc’s birthday – his first birthday, he says, because he never celebrated it before. This play, in its first iteration 25 years ago, was actually called ‘Birthday’, I assume to highlight this event which surely solidified Marc’s love for Bella.
As Bella and Marc’s relationship grows, they portray this by doing aforementioned acrobatics, just a little bit, enough to completely captivate and convey their story and make you want more. It was so effective to see how they were falling for each other when they were literally falling through the air and being caught by the other and stuff, to see a representation of all of Marc’s famous paintings of them flying through the air together, buoyed by their love. LOVES IT. I loves it so much that the fact that they used this incredible movement only sparingly and only in the first half made me very upset. The selling point for this show, in my view, is that it’s telling this biographical tale in this fascinating new way. I mean it’s literally called “the FLYING lovers”, you know? I wanted much more flying. To take away the part that’s different, the part that sets it apart from other straight biographical plays, makes it just like any other straight drama and it’s not strong enough without its special quirks to stand out. Still good, still moving, but not as special as it would be if the movement were incorporated throughout. And I get that the directing choice may have been to decrease the brightness of such movement as the subject matter darkened, but I am sure that they still could have integrated some sort of choreography to tell the more serious parts of the story. And some of the movement we did see was valuable in conveying melancholy. I think it could have worked throughout the darker parts. I mean Cirque du Soleil is terrifying as shit.
It also uses music to tell the story, and also moreso in the beginning. I am not sure if I would call it a musical as opposed to a play with music, since it doesn’t actually tell the story but add to it, and of course because the music, like the fun movement, is front-loaded. The two onstage musicians, James Gow and Ian Ross, jump into the action a lot to lend their voices to some songs and to say a few lines as Soviet police officers here and there, and they do a fine job supporting the two stars. Marc Antolin as Marc (I know his name is with a ‘c’ too it was fate) and Daisy Maywood as Bella are lovely actors who really make you believe that they are feeling all the things. Their trust for each other is remarkable, and since it’s there I mean why not put it to more use with more of the acrobatic partner work? I know I can just repeat myself over and over but I just so want to see what this play could be with more of what made it special since that unique aspect was so effective.
We see Marc and Bella move to Paris and to St. Petersburg, then back to Vitebsk, and hither and thither during the war time as their safety and the lives of all Jews were threatened. As the second half loses the acrobatics and a lot of the music, a little magic was lost as well, but it may also be due to the story getting serious. It felt like it was dragging a bit as we learned about how terrible the war was, but that may be because war sucks. Also, as we learned more about the characters, the initial sheen fell away. Marc, it turns out, had anger issues like many artists have when their work isn’t seen as the end all be all of everybody’s lives. At one point, Bella gives birth to their daughter while they are living in a tiny apartment amid horrible atrocities occurring, and Marc is nowhere to be found. Days later, days after his child is born, he comes home and Bella’s like ‘duuude what the hell, I’m still in so much pain and I need your help taking care of a NEWBORN’ and Marc replies “Do you think what I do happens painlessly?” Artists are not in touch with reality, I guess, is a lesson of this play.
But this artist is in touch with his emotions, and his love for Bella helped him create some of his best work. The two characters talk about how they see new colors together, through and in each others’ eyes, and it’s true that Marc was considered one of the best when it came to understanding color, probably thanks to their love, which seemed significant. As I said, the second half did drag and lose some of its distinctiveness, because as a straight play without its special assets it has to measure up to other regular straight plays, better ones. But the end kind of tied everything together in a heartbreaking bow. A song that the characters sing to open the show seemed meaningless, just a fun period-appropriate song to get the party started, but when they reprise it at the end, it seems to envelop and explain the whole story in a superb, poignant way, and in turn to fortify whatever weaknesses in the play came before it.
INFORMATION
This Kneehigh company production of “The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk” is playing at Wilton’s Music Hall in London until February 10. After that, this production will tour England as well as the USA, making tour stops in Los Angeles and South Carolina. So if you are in those places, you should see it.
At the start, we see young Marc and Bella meet in the town of Vitebsk, now in Belarus. More than half the population was Jewish and so it had a staggering number of synagogues at the time (early 1900s), and so it was completely decimated in the war, they tell us in the beginning. The 90-minute play, though it uses the two onstage musicians in the action sometimes, is essentially just Marc and Bella, what people in the theatre would call a ‘two-hander’ because there are only two actors but I will fight my whole life against that phrase unless the two actors each only have one hand. (It should be called a four-hander, am I right?) Anyway, it’s nice to see a play about two Jews in a room bitching. Especially in London, where many people think Jews are alien. So Marc and Bella instantly fall in love and their initial courtship is kind of adorable. They talk to the audience a lot, and Bella confides in us that she knew he liked her and yet he waited so long to kiss her. One day on a picnic she thought he was coming in for one but instead he asks for his jacket, which she is sitting on. Super awkward and so funnily adorable! It’s crazy to hindsight to think back on how lighthearted a romp it felt in these hilarious moments compared to the heartbreaking weight of the end. The best scene is when Bella celebrates Marc’s birthday – his first birthday, he says, because he never celebrated it before. This play, in its first iteration 25 years ago, was actually called ‘Birthday’, I assume to highlight this event which surely solidified Marc’s love for Bella.
As Bella and Marc’s relationship grows, they portray this by doing aforementioned acrobatics, just a little bit, enough to completely captivate and convey their story and make you want more. It was so effective to see how they were falling for each other when they were literally falling through the air and being caught by the other and stuff, to see a representation of all of Marc’s famous paintings of them flying through the air together, buoyed by their love. LOVES IT. I loves it so much that the fact that they used this incredible movement only sparingly and only in the first half made me very upset. The selling point for this show, in my view, is that it’s telling this biographical tale in this fascinating new way. I mean it’s literally called “the FLYING lovers”, you know? I wanted much more flying. To take away the part that’s different, the part that sets it apart from other straight biographical plays, makes it just like any other straight drama and it’s not strong enough without its special quirks to stand out. Still good, still moving, but not as special as it would be if the movement were incorporated throughout. And I get that the directing choice may have been to decrease the brightness of such movement as the subject matter darkened, but I am sure that they still could have integrated some sort of choreography to tell the more serious parts of the story. And some of the movement we did see was valuable in conveying melancholy. I think it could have worked throughout the darker parts. I mean Cirque du Soleil is terrifying as shit.
It also uses music to tell the story, and also moreso in the beginning. I am not sure if I would call it a musical as opposed to a play with music, since it doesn’t actually tell the story but add to it, and of course because the music, like the fun movement, is front-loaded. The two onstage musicians, James Gow and Ian Ross, jump into the action a lot to lend their voices to some songs and to say a few lines as Soviet police officers here and there, and they do a fine job supporting the two stars. Marc Antolin as Marc (I know his name is with a ‘c’ too it was fate) and Daisy Maywood as Bella are lovely actors who really make you believe that they are feeling all the things. Their trust for each other is remarkable, and since it’s there I mean why not put it to more use with more of the acrobatic partner work? I know I can just repeat myself over and over but I just so want to see what this play could be with more of what made it special since that unique aspect was so effective.
We see Marc and Bella move to Paris and to St. Petersburg, then back to Vitebsk, and hither and thither during the war time as their safety and the lives of all Jews were threatened. As the second half loses the acrobatics and a lot of the music, a little magic was lost as well, but it may also be due to the story getting serious. It felt like it was dragging a bit as we learned about how terrible the war was, but that may be because war sucks. Also, as we learned more about the characters, the initial sheen fell away. Marc, it turns out, had anger issues like many artists have when their work isn’t seen as the end all be all of everybody’s lives. At one point, Bella gives birth to their daughter while they are living in a tiny apartment amid horrible atrocities occurring, and Marc is nowhere to be found. Days later, days after his child is born, he comes home and Bella’s like ‘duuude what the hell, I’m still in so much pain and I need your help taking care of a NEWBORN’ and Marc replies “Do you think what I do happens painlessly?” Artists are not in touch with reality, I guess, is a lesson of this play.
But this artist is in touch with his emotions, and his love for Bella helped him create some of his best work. The two characters talk about how they see new colors together, through and in each others’ eyes, and it’s true that Marc was considered one of the best when it came to understanding color, probably thanks to their love, which seemed significant. As I said, the second half did drag and lose some of its distinctiveness, because as a straight play without its special assets it has to measure up to other regular straight plays, better ones. But the end kind of tied everything together in a heartbreaking bow. A song that the characters sing to open the show seemed meaningless, just a fun period-appropriate song to get the party started, but when they reprise it at the end, it seems to envelop and explain the whole story in a superb, poignant way, and in turn to fortify whatever weaknesses in the play came before it.
INFORMATION
This Kneehigh company production of “The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk” is playing at Wilton’s Music Hall in London until February 10. After that, this production will tour England as well as the USA, making tour stops in Los Angeles and South Carolina. So if you are in those places, you should see it.
