24 Hours in Liverpool: A Quick Tour of Beatlemania, Museums, and Other Sightsby Randi / August 15, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about the musical Fun Home, which is playing at London’s Young Vic until September 1.
I haven’t been this nervous about a show in a long time. Experiencing the original Broadway production of Fun Home in 2015 was one of the most magical theatrical moments I’ve had. Everything about it was absolute perfection, including the first truly great use of the Circle in the Square Theatre’s setup in the round. I worried that the show would lose some of its power and emotional depth without that original cast that I so adored, without the circular theatre, without the extra tinge of greatness that Broadway musicals tend to have. Fortunately, Fun Home is in good hands at London’s Young Vic theatre, such good hands that I was dehydrated for days from all the crying.
I haven’t been this nervous about a show in a long time. Experiencing the original Broadway production of Fun Home in 2015 was one of the most magical theatrical moments I’ve had. Everything about it was absolute perfection, including the first truly great use of the Circle in the Square Theatre’s setup in the round. I worried that the show would lose some of its power and emotional depth without that original cast that I so adored, without the circular theatre, without the extra tinge of greatness that Broadway musicals tend to have. Fortunately, Fun Home is in good hands at London’s Young Vic theatre, such good hands that I was dehydrated for days from all the crying.
Fun Home is the musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s 2006 autobiographical graphic (autobiographical maybe?) of the same name, in which she delves into her childhood and her relationship with her father, who she learned was gay soon after she herself came out, and shortly before his suicide. The musical features Alison at three ages – as an adult, a new college student (Medium Alison), and as a 10-year-old kid (Small Alison). Now age 43, Alison, the ‘lesbian cartoonist’, as she calls herself, is sorting through her father’s old belongings and other mementos from her old house and her family’s funeral home in order to form her graphic novel. The adult Alison, played by a solid Kaisa Hammarlund, is prodded into memories as she looks at these belongings, and the moments from the two earlier stages of her life play out on the stage before her as she remembers them and starts to document them in her cartoons.
Hammarlund’s Big Alison carried the structure of the play well, with the memories eliciting reactions from her ranging from angry to embarrassed to remorseful. Her anger came when we saw her father stopping Small Alison (Harriet Turnbull) from expressing herself as she wanted to, or from her father’s quick temper and, sometimes, rage. Her embarrassment often came from truly hilarious moments of seeing her college-aged self try to sound smart but end up completely mortified. The great thing about getting different and unique incarnations of this show now is that different characters will shine the brightest depending on the cast and the interpretation. On Broadway, the discovery of the extraordinary Sydney Lucas, a one-in-a-million phenom of a child actor, stole the show with her natural, moving Small Alison and her showstopper ‘Ring of Keys’, where she first sees the kind of butch lesbian that feels so right to her. While that doesn’t mean regularly talented child actors like Turnbull do any less of a moving portrait of Small Alison – she was very good and had the audience completely taken – it means that the balance changes. Here, Medium Alison (Eleanor Kane) stood out as the showstopper, especially with her exceptional performance of “Changing My Major”, where her first sexual experience (with Cherrelle Skeete’s wonderful Joan) forces her to be completely vulnerable, uproariously funny (her little jumps!), and so touching all at once. Hers was a stunning performance and the standout of the night.
Well, one of the standouts; it’s a show full of magical moments. Big Alison’s remorse turned into another such moment in an emotionally resonant and brilliant part (of a show that is entirely brilliant and emotional): during the song “Telephone Wire”, when her memory of her last moments with her father shift his focus from Medium Alison to Big Alison herself, implanting herself into the past to try to futilely change it yet again. Bruce’s gaze moving to the daughter he never got to see as an adult is the kind of moment in a play where, if you are human, you’ll start making little yelpy puppy sounds as you try to suppress your overwhelming sobs. The impact of this moment felt real, and a scene that is heartbreaking simply as written takes on new tragic life.
But even though the story is ostensibly about Alison, it’s her father, Bruce (Zubin Varla), who becomes the focus. Varla takes the complex character of Bruce in a different direction from Michael Cerveris, the original Bruce. Cerveris played him much more natural and reserved, so his anger was shocking, his truly cruel comments to his family seeming unforgivable but infrequent. Varla, on the other hand, had crazy eyes most of the time, so his unstable emotional state was evident and it let his rage fly off the handle more. It was clearer, and for longer, how troubled this Bruce was, and even though I think I prefer the more grounded take – the one that sees the ache in an everyman rather than someone who is more obviously troubled – his interpretation was valid and equally moving. His brilliant introduction – letting the audience see how much he values the beauty he sees in the world – before we see how fast he can descend into rage, is so well done, as are his interactions with all the young men in his life (played by a talented Ashley Samuels) especially when contrasted with how he treats his family in similar situations.
As Alison’s mother Helen, Jenna Russell masterfully harnesses her coldness and uses it as a weapon against her family and her own vulnerability. As usual, Helen’s big song “Days and Days” is set up and performed flawlessly, in a truly remarkable bit of songwriting that lets you understand all of her character’s motivations but completely disagree with her. The big change from the show being presented in the round paid off in this scene, when the set of the house changes into a surprisingly larger, lavish one. I was surprised that it didn’t stay in the round, especially since I’ve seen productions in the round at the Young Vic, and since the original director, Sam Gold, apparently directed this production too. But the changes worked, especially in this scene, and it was interesting to see the show presented from a regular proscenium, although Bruce’s final scenes felt a little static.
The brilliant songwriting is really the star of this show, the reason why it resonates and why every inch of it feels necessary and special. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s score and book stand with the best of musical theatre. When I first heard some of it, I thought it was a little too simple. But its lack of big belted numbers or traditional musical theatre moments in favor of personal connection and delicate motifs makes it such a singular achievement in telling such an intimate story. Moments that I thought at first were to lift the somber mood, like when Small Alison imagines her family as a happy singing and dancing one like she watches on TV in “Raincoat of Love”, actually had me crying: It’s not a goofy break from the drama; it’s a heartbreaking look at the kind of happiness this poor child wishes she had. It’s forking sad. Okay so “Come to the Fun Home” is still a very silly moment that lets the kids have fun, but it’s followed by a scene that I don’t remember being so harrowing – when Bruce calls Small Alison in and she sees her first dead body. This small moment was riveting, especially with Big Alison’s anger at remembering this moment and her frustration that she’ll never understand her father’s reasons for doing it.
Such precise, flawless writing feels wrong to change, so the few lyric changes I noticed I don’t really understand. In the beginning, Small Alison originally orders her father to play airplane with her and sings “I wanna play airplane/I wanna put my arms out and fly/Like the Red Baron in the Sopwith Camel”. Apparently that’s a reference to Peanuts, when Snoopy pretends to fly on his doghouse. I don’t know anything about the Sopwith Camel or Snoopy pretending to fly in Peanuts but I know the Red Baron, so the line made overall sense to me – she wants to fly like a plane. To quote my girl Tahani, you can get some of these from context. But in this production, it’s changed to “I wanna put my arms out and fly/like Snoopy and the Red Baron”. Is that really a change that helps people get the reference? I feel like you either know that reference or you don’t, so it’s an odd change for me, dog.
But it’s a tiny non-issue with an overall great production of this incredible show. It’s by far the best musical playing in London right now. I love that such a small show about such specific characters feels so universal, and that it’s getting the chance to be loved by a new audience.
AUDIENCE
Since this is the first (only?) show with a lesbian protagonist and it’s heavily about characters’ sexuality, it’s drawing a more diverse crowd that you see in the theatre usually, which is awesome. But it means some possibly new theatergoers are not used to theatre etiquette. When Medium Alison writes home, “Dear mom and dad, I’m a lesbian”, one or two audience members whooped and shouted YASS. Audiences, I get that it’s amazing when you feel represented in art, but if you want to be a part of the action, become an actor. It is not a YAS moment. In fact, there are no YAS moments in this show. And just for everyone’s edification, don’t talk or sing along or bullshit like that in the theatre unless everyone onstage makes it clear that they want you to do so (e.g. during “No Time At All” in Pippin, and during the curtain call of “Mamma Mia!”. Pretty sure that’s it).
Shout out to the one usher at the Young Vic who was READY to snatch cell phones. We could be friends.
Hammarlund’s Big Alison carried the structure of the play well, with the memories eliciting reactions from her ranging from angry to embarrassed to remorseful. Her anger came when we saw her father stopping Small Alison (Harriet Turnbull) from expressing herself as she wanted to, or from her father’s quick temper and, sometimes, rage. Her embarrassment often came from truly hilarious moments of seeing her college-aged self try to sound smart but end up completely mortified. The great thing about getting different and unique incarnations of this show now is that different characters will shine the brightest depending on the cast and the interpretation. On Broadway, the discovery of the extraordinary Sydney Lucas, a one-in-a-million phenom of a child actor, stole the show with her natural, moving Small Alison and her showstopper ‘Ring of Keys’, where she first sees the kind of butch lesbian that feels so right to her. While that doesn’t mean regularly talented child actors like Turnbull do any less of a moving portrait of Small Alison – she was very good and had the audience completely taken – it means that the balance changes. Here, Medium Alison (Eleanor Kane) stood out as the showstopper, especially with her exceptional performance of “Changing My Major”, where her first sexual experience (with Cherrelle Skeete’s wonderful Joan) forces her to be completely vulnerable, uproariously funny (her little jumps!), and so touching all at once. Hers was a stunning performance and the standout of the night.
Well, one of the standouts; it’s a show full of magical moments. Big Alison’s remorse turned into another such moment in an emotionally resonant and brilliant part (of a show that is entirely brilliant and emotional): during the song “Telephone Wire”, when her memory of her last moments with her father shift his focus from Medium Alison to Big Alison herself, implanting herself into the past to try to futilely change it yet again. Bruce’s gaze moving to the daughter he never got to see as an adult is the kind of moment in a play where, if you are human, you’ll start making little yelpy puppy sounds as you try to suppress your overwhelming sobs. The impact of this moment felt real, and a scene that is heartbreaking simply as written takes on new tragic life.
But even though the story is ostensibly about Alison, it’s her father, Bruce (Zubin Varla), who becomes the focus. Varla takes the complex character of Bruce in a different direction from Michael Cerveris, the original Bruce. Cerveris played him much more natural and reserved, so his anger was shocking, his truly cruel comments to his family seeming unforgivable but infrequent. Varla, on the other hand, had crazy eyes most of the time, so his unstable emotional state was evident and it let his rage fly off the handle more. It was clearer, and for longer, how troubled this Bruce was, and even though I think I prefer the more grounded take – the one that sees the ache in an everyman rather than someone who is more obviously troubled – his interpretation was valid and equally moving. His brilliant introduction – letting the audience see how much he values the beauty he sees in the world – before we see how fast he can descend into rage, is so well done, as are his interactions with all the young men in his life (played by a talented Ashley Samuels) especially when contrasted with how he treats his family in similar situations.
As Alison’s mother Helen, Jenna Russell masterfully harnesses her coldness and uses it as a weapon against her family and her own vulnerability. As usual, Helen’s big song “Days and Days” is set up and performed flawlessly, in a truly remarkable bit of songwriting that lets you understand all of her character’s motivations but completely disagree with her. The big change from the show being presented in the round paid off in this scene, when the set of the house changes into a surprisingly larger, lavish one. I was surprised that it didn’t stay in the round, especially since I’ve seen productions in the round at the Young Vic, and since the original director, Sam Gold, apparently directed this production too. But the changes worked, especially in this scene, and it was interesting to see the show presented from a regular proscenium, although Bruce’s final scenes felt a little static.
The brilliant songwriting is really the star of this show, the reason why it resonates and why every inch of it feels necessary and special. Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s score and book stand with the best of musical theatre. When I first heard some of it, I thought it was a little too simple. But its lack of big belted numbers or traditional musical theatre moments in favor of personal connection and delicate motifs makes it such a singular achievement in telling such an intimate story. Moments that I thought at first were to lift the somber mood, like when Small Alison imagines her family as a happy singing and dancing one like she watches on TV in “Raincoat of Love”, actually had me crying: It’s not a goofy break from the drama; it’s a heartbreaking look at the kind of happiness this poor child wishes she had. It’s forking sad. Okay so “Come to the Fun Home” is still a very silly moment that lets the kids have fun, but it’s followed by a scene that I don’t remember being so harrowing – when Bruce calls Small Alison in and she sees her first dead body. This small moment was riveting, especially with Big Alison’s anger at remembering this moment and her frustration that she’ll never understand her father’s reasons for doing it.
Such precise, flawless writing feels wrong to change, so the few lyric changes I noticed I don’t really understand. In the beginning, Small Alison originally orders her father to play airplane with her and sings “I wanna play airplane/I wanna put my arms out and fly/Like the Red Baron in the Sopwith Camel”. Apparently that’s a reference to Peanuts, when Snoopy pretends to fly on his doghouse. I don’t know anything about the Sopwith Camel or Snoopy pretending to fly in Peanuts but I know the Red Baron, so the line made overall sense to me – she wants to fly like a plane. To quote my girl Tahani, you can get some of these from context. But in this production, it’s changed to “I wanna put my arms out and fly/like Snoopy and the Red Baron”. Is that really a change that helps people get the reference? I feel like you either know that reference or you don’t, so it’s an odd change for me, dog.
But it’s a tiny non-issue with an overall great production of this incredible show. It’s by far the best musical playing in London right now. I love that such a small show about such specific characters feels so universal, and that it’s getting the chance to be loved by a new audience.
AUDIENCE
Since this is the first (only?) show with a lesbian protagonist and it’s heavily about characters’ sexuality, it’s drawing a more diverse crowd that you see in the theatre usually, which is awesome. But it means some possibly new theatergoers are not used to theatre etiquette. When Medium Alison writes home, “Dear mom and dad, I’m a lesbian”, one or two audience members whooped and shouted YASS. Audiences, I get that it’s amazing when you feel represented in art, but if you want to be a part of the action, become an actor. It is not a YAS moment. In fact, there are no YAS moments in this show. And just for everyone’s edification, don’t talk or sing along or bullshit like that in the theatre unless everyone onstage makes it clear that they want you to do so (e.g. during “No Time At All” in Pippin, and during the curtain call of “Mamma Mia!”. Pretty sure that’s it).
Shout out to the one usher at the Young Vic who was READY to snatch cell phones. We could be friends.
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Chichester’s Current Production of ‘South Pacific’ is a Decent Time
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the Chichester Festival Theatre’s production of South Pacific, which we watched via livestream.
The current Chichester production of one of the best classic Golden Age musicals is overall enjoyable, thanks to its solid cast and, you know, the show itself being nearly foolproof. But there were a few ideas that didn’t pan out.
South Pacific is one of my all-time faves. A fave Rodgers & Hammerstein joint, a fave score, a fave Polynesian beach treat. I’ve see an exorbitant number of productions in my time, and it’s best done traditionally with the team fully invested in its potential for exuberance as well as emotional depth. People like to complain that it’s problematic because of its racist plot points. Guys, those plot points were meant to be racist. You know that right? Like Nellie and Cable fretting over being in love with people of color is supposed to show that they are racist. It’s not supposed to be, like, excused, not at all. That’s the point. The song “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” is not a lesson plan for parents — it is speaking with disdain about how racism is passed onto children. DISDAIN. NOT APPROVAL.
But modern productions like to make a few tweaks here and there to even the racial imbalance — and apart from the above thoughts, I won’t argue that the representation of Polynesian people isn’t stereotypical and thin (and entirely encompassed by really one character, Bloody Mary). Here, I think they were trying to address the imbalance by framing the show with Liat. At the start, I got worried because they cut the gorgeous overture. Instead, Liat did a little dance to the “Younger than Springtime” instrumentals. I like the idea of trying to give Liat more to do, to show how the troops’ presence affected her maybe, but this didn’t do that. Liat is the quintessential empty character, sadly, and having her dance a little bit more doesn’t solve that, and it doesn’t start a show very well.
The first real song in the show is my favorite (everything’s my favorite! smiling’s my favorite!), when Nellie Forbush sings “Cockeyed Optimist”. Nellie here is Gina Beck, who I have LOVED in past West End performances. She’s so talented. She’s also supes pregs, which was funny to see in our beloved Ensign, and so she shares the role with another actress. Gina is wonderful, but she is overdoing the Arkansas accent. It’s distracting. The director should have realized that it’s better to focus on the character and the whole singing well thing instead of overdoing a southern accent. Unfortunately, that persisted throughout the show (along with unflattering wigs), and instead of reveling every time Nellie opens her mouth, which I usually do, I just kind of cringed at the overexaggerated accent and how awful it made the songs sound. And I have a Mare of Easttown accent! I know from horrible accents!
Luckily, Julian Ovenden’s French accent is not as bad, and his…omg I’m drawing a blank…Rene Charle? Paolo Szot??? EMILE DE BECQUE JESUS FORKING CHRIST WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY BRAIN…anyway, his Emile is wonderful. For Luther Billis, I feel like that’s one of those roles like Ogie in Waitress where no matter what, it’s gonna be great. I liked Keir Charles’s performance, although he was rougher around the edges and little cruder than my boy Danny Burstein’s more ‘aw shucks’ version, which I find winning. Rob Houchen’s Lootellen Cable was fine; he always sings well, but he was a little stiff, especially in the beginning. I was like ‘hey that guy who is the bad Terminator in Terminator 2 just came out.’ But the only person I felt was kind of miscast was Bloody Mary, a shame because when done well she can be incredibly heartbreaking, taking all the claims of superficial writing and destroying them to become the most affecting part of the show. I think the problem was, Joanna Ampil, super talented though she is, is just too young for the part. Bloodies Mary I’ve seen have always been older than the seabees, but Joanna is like, relatively young and attractive so the seabees’ attention wasn’t believable as joking around verging on mockery. It was more like, yeah she’s your age, why wouldn’t she be the girl you love? Just kind of off. Also, in my opinion, the drama works best when parts like “Happy Talk” turn out to be devastating in contradiction of its lyrics. Here, it was a little too slow and dark but without showing the desperation underneath.
But maybe I’m just mad because this production didn’t use “My Girl Back Home” (the original didn’t either, but it was reinstated in prods of the last few decades), which always makes me giddy. In this song, Nellie and Cable talk about the homes and the loves they left behind in America, Nellie in Little Rock, and Cable in muhfuking PHILADELPHIA. He even repeatedly sings Ardmore, PA!!! I mean I never even care that he can’t decide whether he’s from Princeton or Philly or Ardmore but a bitch don’t care!
With Nellie’s accent keeping me from fully melting into the love story, I was able to look at it with a more discerning eye. It is HELLA forked up that Emile has two kids, but doesn’t give a shit about them. When Nellie momentarily forsakes him, Cable and the officers are like, well shit Emile, now that you have nothing to live for you should go with Cable on this super dangerous mission. Nothing to live for because his girlfriend is mad at him??? HE HAS TWO F-ING KIDS! Seriously so insane. What a weird show that I love with my whole being.
I admit that I could easily be overly harsh on every little aspect of every production of this show, because I was spoiled for life by the 2008 Broadway revival. (It was so perfect, 104% perfect, that it could in itself be what heaven is.) (Also, not to belabor the point, but Kelli O’Hara is literally FROM Oklahoma (same as ARK) and her southern accent was barely noticeable.) But overall, this one was a fun time, as it’s hard to tarnish this classic.
Yes You’ll ‘Sweat’ from All the Anxiety You’ll Feel While Viewing this Distressing Play
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is the play Sweat by Lynn Nottage, currently playing at London’s Gielgud Theatre until July 20.
You know how society as we know it is falling apart and there’s nothing we can really do about it, so decent (and not so decent, but no one deserves the crumbling of the world) people are suffering in poverty and drug addiction and racism and sexism and classism and overall misery, and we need governments to work together for the people in order to solve any of these societal problems but the people running things are too busy thinking about their own comforts instead of caring about anyone else, let alone all of society, so things are just falling apart for the regular person and it’s all incredibly depressing? Yeah, well, so, Sweat.
Lynn Notage’s highly distressing, highly moving play about Reading, Pennsylvania and the devastation caused by joblessness (as well as the aforementioned –isms) is a hell of a depressing show. Nottage interviewed real citizens of Reading (not including Michael Scott) to research this show, since Reading has notably experienced a horrible decline in employment and 40% of the population now lives in poverty. I don’t know how many times I can say ‘depressing’ in one review but we will probably break that record today. Sweat shows us the lives of a small group of friends and acquaintances in Reading before and after all their lives changed for the worse.
This group consists of people who work at the big factory in town, people who used to work at the big factory in town, and their kids who have little choice but to also work at the big factory in town: Martha Plimpton’s volatile Tracy and her equally hot-tempered son Jason (stereotypical and scarily accurate central-PA white people who probably voted for the cheeto toilet); management-material Cynthia and her son Chris (black people who have to work harder to prove themselves), plus their estranged husband/father who is now an addict; their floaty old-hippie now-drunk friend Jessie; the bartender friend Stan; the bar’s Mexican busboy Oscar; and the good-intentioned parole officer. Yes, parole officer: the show begins with the kids, Jason and Chris, just released from prison. The rest of the show – before returning depressingly (there’s another!) to present day – shows us what led up to their arrest.
If this sounds compelling to you, well good, because we are all living in this world, and Sweat felt like a genuine reflection of the hardships of the working class, from the fear of how quickly joblessness can destroy your life, to America’s opioid epidemic, to how this fear to have someone real to blame for your lot in life can so easily lead to blaming those who are different from you. As someone who tries to focus on making her social justice efforts intersectional, I found a lot of this show a gut-punch of a reminder that some other people who we write off as not caring about people different from them simply don’t have the ability, the time, the luxury of caring about anything except working enough to make enough money to feed themselves to stay alive and then repeat the next day, and all their next days. It doesn’t make them good or bad people (well, some of them are bad people); it just makes for a world where caring for each other isn’t seen as a priority, and so we’re stuck in this vicious cycle of shit.
Nottage’s nuanced playwriting shines best as she develops these characters, along with a pretty remarkable cast. Plimpton was of course incredible, but she scared the absolute shit out of me. She was 100% exactly like some people I’ve met. She even looked exactly like a woman I used to work with: same exact fake blonde hair and gruff demeanor and ease of saying suuuper racist things. She was like half the women in Upper Darby who say “Wha, you think ya better than me?? YA THINK YA BETTER THAN ME?” and then knock over the bar table. That was Tracy, and her white supremacist son never had a chance with her antagonistic tendencies. (NB: Never get face tattoos, just don’t, you’ll never get a job et al., and ESPECIALLY don’t get white supremacist face tattoos. Or, ya know, do, so we know to stay away from you.) I found the whole cast moving and convincing in their individual ways. My favorite was honestly Leanne Best, who had little to do as Jessie but managed to turn her one big scene into the most heartbreaking part of a show that’s all hardship. When she reminisces about how she was supposed to see the world as a young adult but she started working at the factory and never could stop, she keeps repeating the list of destinations she and her boyfriend had memorized as a sort of mantra: “Istanbul, Tehran, Kandahar, Kabul” and so on. Her melancholy and regret at never having left Reading was palpable and tragic, and it was a tiny but wonderful performance.
But the plot teeters a bit, and it’s hard to provide a strong enough answer as to what we were actually supposed to take away from how depressing it all is. I wish, I honestly really wish, that the play had ended a scene early. Once we see all the pre-prison scenes (most of the action is the flashback), we meet again with the parole officer with Jason and Chris. He’s trying to inspire them and get them to really try with their new leases on life, and his scene ends with him talking to both men but speaking to the audience, and saying something super inspiring like “so what are you going to do to make it better? what are you going to do?” and then the theatre blacks out and I was like ‘HOLY SHIT I WANNA DO ALL THE GOOD THINGS! LET ME GO DO THEM!’ and I found it incredibly powerful. But then there was another scene! And, this final scene was clearly supposed to be super moving, but it actually wasn’t, and considering the content, it’s a shame that it just doesn’t work.
Overall, however, it’s a decent, poignant look at modern tragedy. There’s so much nuance about how ingrained racism, for one example, can be. I was blown away realizing how Tracy blames everything on her friend Cynthia’s inability as a low-level manager to stop some huge things from happening in the company, yet completely accepts her (white) bartender friend Stan’s reporting that his boss changed a rule at the bar. This kind of subtle creation of each realistic character makes Sweat a play to see, even if you won’t really learn anything except ‘fork, this is a ball of shit.’
INFORMATION
Sweat ends its short run (intentionally limited; only 50 performances at this theatre) on July 20, but it’s the kind of show that I am sure will be popping up all over the place with regional theatres, tours, everyone trying it on for size given how relevant it is.
If you can get there before July 20, the best seats (I’m SO happy I remembered for my own good!) at the Gielgud, if you pee in the ladies room and pee often, are front stalls, about Row D-K, because the door to the kind-of-hidden ladies (WHY DO THEY WANT TO KEEP THESE BATHROOMS A SECRET) is literally RIGHT THERE, if you are sitting on the aisle stage right (that’s HOUSE LEFT). I was sitting three feet from the door to the bathroom door! It was the best ever! I was so happy! (And then so quickly unhappy, obviously (did you READ the review??)) It was also really well air-conditioned on the hottest day in London so far this summer, so it was nice not to literally sweat.
