The Best Vegan Restaurant in London: Club Mexicana at Spread Eagle Pubby Randi / December 17, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is The Inheritance, Part 1, which has transferred from the Young Vic to the West End’s Noel Coward Theatre, playing there until January 19.
I have put off seeing The Inheritance for actual years now. It’s not that I didn’t want to see it, but Matthew Lopez’s two-part, sweeping look at today’s culture of gay men, and how they grapple with their position in life compared to the generation that came before them and paved the way, is…long. It’s really long. And it’s in two parts, so you have to go back to the theatre another night to finish the story. And I got things to do! So I put it off. If I’m going to sit through two plays at nearly four hours each, I said to myself, about gay men and AIDs and stuff, I’m going to see Angels in America. (It might sound pretty narrow-minded to compare to the two works, like ‘oh they’re both about gay men so you’re going to compare them, you bigot’ but please, tell me of another eight-hour play in two parts, I’ll wait.) Also, the hype was ludicrous. I assumed there was no way this is ‘the best play of the year, and of next year too, probably’, to quote a mainstream critic (one of those). But I finally decided to bite the bullet and start this epic journey into hours and hours of theatre, and you know what? It’s probably the best play of the year, and of next year too.
I have put off seeing The Inheritance for actual years now. It’s not that I didn’t want to see it, but Matthew Lopez’s two-part, sweeping look at today’s culture of gay men, and how they grapple with their position in life compared to the generation that came before them and paved the way, is…long. It’s really long. And it’s in two parts, so you have to go back to the theatre another night to finish the story. And I got things to do! So I put it off. If I’m going to sit through two plays at nearly four hours each, I said to myself, about gay men and AIDs and stuff, I’m going to see Angels in America. (It might sound pretty narrow-minded to compare to the two works, like ‘oh they’re both about gay men so you’re going to compare them, you bigot’ but please, tell me of another eight-hour play in two parts, I’ll wait.) Also, the hype was ludicrous. I assumed there was no way this is ‘the best play of the year, and of next year too, probably’, to quote a mainstream critic (one of those). But I finally decided to bite the bullet and start this epic journey into hours and hours of theatre, and you know what? It’s probably the best play of the year, and of next year too.
Granted, I have only seen Part 1 so far. You can see both parts in one day if you want, but ain’t nobody got time for that. (Or energy. How do the actors do it? are they spidermen?) I’m really glad I scheduled this extra time in between so I can sit with and think about Part 1 and give it the due it deserves. As a standalone play, Part 1 was sensational, and I’m honestly wowed. I really can’t believe that I would be willing to see it again. For the first time in my life, I bought the script of the play instead of the programme. It’s that good. I made a sort-of joke about Angels in America above, but The Inheritance is truly the clear successor to Angels, not just because they are about the same demographic, but – and gird your loins, people who hate tautologies – because it is a successor to Angels. That’s what it’s about – what gay men living today have inherited from the generation before and what they have to do to honor their memory and their sacrifice. So REALLY, it’s like a four-part 16 hour play. Just kidding. But it’s important to know where gay men of the previous generation have been in order to understand what these gay men of our generation are thinking about when they think about honoring those who came before them. Both plays bear crucial witness to the gay culture of their time.
The idea of honoring the past without getting trapped by it runs through all the multiple layers and character arcs in this play. Not only are there so many vibrant layers to the story that all seem compelling in their own right, there’s also an homage to the novel Howards End woven into the frame of the show. It begins with a group of male writing students bouncing ideas off of each other, guided by their teacher Morgan, a representation of Howards End author E.M. Forster (the M was for Morgan), who hid his homosexuality from the public (his famous works about homosexual themes were published after his death). Morgan and the students brainstorm ways to start the story, eventually focusing on one student’s idea and snowballing. As an opening gimmick, this kind of annoyed me at first, but it really does pay off. We delve into the story and just when you forget that it’s anything but real, it returns to Morgan leading the writing process.
The story being written tells of Eric Glass (Kyle Soller, wonderful) and Toby Darling (Andrew Burnap, my choice for a supporting actor Olivier), a gay couple living in New York in Eric’s Holocaust-surviving grandparents’ great apartment. If you take that central idea and think of it like a small glass sphere, the play is like taking a hammer to that glass and watching all the thousands of shards shower away from it. There is so much happening and it all is part of the same whole, all kinds of side stories you think maybe should have been cut for time, until you realize they are all necessary to add to this realistic, vivid world they’re creating onstage. Eric is an actually decent guy, the kind you root for even without knowing him too well. He’s a better person than he believes himself to be, a sensitive, thoughtful soul. Toby is vivacious, hilarious, and altogether Too Much. He’s written a well-known book that is getting transformed into a Broadway play, because his head needs to get bigger. A chance meeting with a younger gay man, Adam (Samuel Levine, responsible for the ‘male nudity’ warning), throws a wrench into Eric and Toby’s happy life together, especially when Adam is cast in Toby’s play.
While Adam and Toby workshop the play out of town, Eric befriends Walter, an older gay man who was previously an acquaintance but becomes one of the most important people in Eric’s life. Walter lived through the ‘80s AIDs epidemic and tells Eric, in probably the longest (and most moving) monologue in theatre history, what it was like. And not just ‘what it was like’ like ‘oh, it was awful,’ but opening up and really showing the history to Eric like it’s a tangible thing you can hold and show someone. In a brilliant move, Walter is played by the same actor as Morgan (Paul Hilton), guiding the young men and helping them as much as he can. At the end of Act 1, Walter explains to Eric that his partner, the billionaire Henry Wilcox (John Benjamin Hickey, one of my faves), wanted to run away from the city during the epidemic and ignore it, along with their friends. But Walter in his kindness and empathy couldn’t, and so while Henry traveled, Walter opened up their country house to let their friends, and friends of friends and whoever needed to, have a serene place to die.
Walter’s friendship, guidance, and memories clearly make Eric even more thoughtful and considerate of (to quote another of this year’s ‘best of’(TV Edition)) what we owe to each other, and what we owe to the past and to the future. The inheritance of the title is that recognition of the importance of memory and respect in the culture. In a whole new layer to the story, it also refers to a Howards-End inspired deathbed bequeathment of important property that, like in its source material, gets infuriatingly disregarded. And as part of that property, it refers to the responsibility that these young gay men have inherited from the previous generation, the responsibility that every demographic or culture or race owes to their forebears: to recognize their struggles and understand what they went through so that you can live the life you’re living and make things better for the next group.
I know, it sounds like a lot of heavy material. And it is, and you’ll forking SOB, especially at the final scene of Part 1. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll save your hardest cries for what’s supposed to be a kind of funny moment – Eric’s friends’ 2016 Election Returns Watch Party (sigh (too real)). But you also laugh a whole lot, especially at Toby’s lines and his incredible physicality. It’s like he’s dancing through his character’s lines while fully becoming him and it is incredible. The ensemble is wonderful, and even though most have not much to say in Part 1, the cast remains onstage the entire time. Stephen Daldry’s direction has truly never been cleverer or sharper. It’s his best work yet. There is absolutely no set, other than a raised platform in the middle. No painted backdrops, no nothing. There are barely any props (save for the frequent wine glasses, the odd chair, the Hillary balloon). Yet the stage pulsates with life. The ensemble sits around the platform and watches the action, sometimes chiming in with suggestions to the author (reminding you of the framing device, which I still don’t know how I feel about). Most importantly, the ensemble moves with the story in a way I have never seen before. When you react internally to a line reading, the ensemble will react physically in a way that makes complete sense. They seem to be constantly moving but not in a distracting way, rather in a totally natural, necessary way that adds to the import of every scene. It’s like a reminder of something, maybe that your actions affect lives around you, or that you’re never alone.
Going into Part 2, I’m eager to see more of John Benjamin Hickey’s Wilcox, who was only in Part 1 for a portion of the time, and of course I’m excited for the ‘cameo’ by Vanessa Redgrave. But even more than seeing these stars, I can’t wait to get back into this world. I’m honestly still shook by the story and anxious about where things left off. This play felt like a long book that becomes important to you as you read along, the kind where you feel it in your soul and worry about the story and the characters for life, even though you know it’s not real. That the Inheritance Part 1 accomplished that is a testament to the genius of Matthew Lopez, as well as the pitch-perfect direction and the great acting that brought me fully into their world.
INFORMATION
The Inheritance ends its run at the Noel Coward Theatre on January 19 so hurry, or wait to see it on Broadway because it is definitely going.
Tickets are pretty easy to get, especially using TodayTix (which runs their rush ticket system). I got a £15 ticket (talk about value for money) in the Royal Circle, fifth row in and on the right side of center, and it was a perfect view. Too far to the extreme sides will be okay but a little restricted. The audience was pretty good, but actually the staff was awful. I could hear them talking in the lobby really loudly, proving my opinion that Delfont Mackintosh theatres and staff have to undergo a whole rehaul.
The idea of honoring the past without getting trapped by it runs through all the multiple layers and character arcs in this play. Not only are there so many vibrant layers to the story that all seem compelling in their own right, there’s also an homage to the novel Howards End woven into the frame of the show. It begins with a group of male writing students bouncing ideas off of each other, guided by their teacher Morgan, a representation of Howards End author E.M. Forster (the M was for Morgan), who hid his homosexuality from the public (his famous works about homosexual themes were published after his death). Morgan and the students brainstorm ways to start the story, eventually focusing on one student’s idea and snowballing. As an opening gimmick, this kind of annoyed me at first, but it really does pay off. We delve into the story and just when you forget that it’s anything but real, it returns to Morgan leading the writing process.
The story being written tells of Eric Glass (Kyle Soller, wonderful) and Toby Darling (Andrew Burnap, my choice for a supporting actor Olivier), a gay couple living in New York in Eric’s Holocaust-surviving grandparents’ great apartment. If you take that central idea and think of it like a small glass sphere, the play is like taking a hammer to that glass and watching all the thousands of shards shower away from it. There is so much happening and it all is part of the same whole, all kinds of side stories you think maybe should have been cut for time, until you realize they are all necessary to add to this realistic, vivid world they’re creating onstage. Eric is an actually decent guy, the kind you root for even without knowing him too well. He’s a better person than he believes himself to be, a sensitive, thoughtful soul. Toby is vivacious, hilarious, and altogether Too Much. He’s written a well-known book that is getting transformed into a Broadway play, because his head needs to get bigger. A chance meeting with a younger gay man, Adam (Samuel Levine, responsible for the ‘male nudity’ warning), throws a wrench into Eric and Toby’s happy life together, especially when Adam is cast in Toby’s play.
While Adam and Toby workshop the play out of town, Eric befriends Walter, an older gay man who was previously an acquaintance but becomes one of the most important people in Eric’s life. Walter lived through the ‘80s AIDs epidemic and tells Eric, in probably the longest (and most moving) monologue in theatre history, what it was like. And not just ‘what it was like’ like ‘oh, it was awful,’ but opening up and really showing the history to Eric like it’s a tangible thing you can hold and show someone. In a brilliant move, Walter is played by the same actor as Morgan (Paul Hilton), guiding the young men and helping them as much as he can. At the end of Act 1, Walter explains to Eric that his partner, the billionaire Henry Wilcox (John Benjamin Hickey, one of my faves), wanted to run away from the city during the epidemic and ignore it, along with their friends. But Walter in his kindness and empathy couldn’t, and so while Henry traveled, Walter opened up their country house to let their friends, and friends of friends and whoever needed to, have a serene place to die.
Walter’s friendship, guidance, and memories clearly make Eric even more thoughtful and considerate of (to quote another of this year’s ‘best of’(TV Edition)) what we owe to each other, and what we owe to the past and to the future. The inheritance of the title is that recognition of the importance of memory and respect in the culture. In a whole new layer to the story, it also refers to a Howards-End inspired deathbed bequeathment of important property that, like in its source material, gets infuriatingly disregarded. And as part of that property, it refers to the responsibility that these young gay men have inherited from the previous generation, the responsibility that every demographic or culture or race owes to their forebears: to recognize their struggles and understand what they went through so that you can live the life you’re living and make things better for the next group.
I know, it sounds like a lot of heavy material. And it is, and you’ll forking SOB, especially at the final scene of Part 1. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll save your hardest cries for what’s supposed to be a kind of funny moment – Eric’s friends’ 2016 Election Returns Watch Party (sigh (too real)). But you also laugh a whole lot, especially at Toby’s lines and his incredible physicality. It’s like he’s dancing through his character’s lines while fully becoming him and it is incredible. The ensemble is wonderful, and even though most have not much to say in Part 1, the cast remains onstage the entire time. Stephen Daldry’s direction has truly never been cleverer or sharper. It’s his best work yet. There is absolutely no set, other than a raised platform in the middle. No painted backdrops, no nothing. There are barely any props (save for the frequent wine glasses, the odd chair, the Hillary balloon). Yet the stage pulsates with life. The ensemble sits around the platform and watches the action, sometimes chiming in with suggestions to the author (reminding you of the framing device, which I still don’t know how I feel about). Most importantly, the ensemble moves with the story in a way I have never seen before. When you react internally to a line reading, the ensemble will react physically in a way that makes complete sense. They seem to be constantly moving but not in a distracting way, rather in a totally natural, necessary way that adds to the import of every scene. It’s like a reminder of something, maybe that your actions affect lives around you, or that you’re never alone.
Going into Part 2, I’m eager to see more of John Benjamin Hickey’s Wilcox, who was only in Part 1 for a portion of the time, and of course I’m excited for the ‘cameo’ by Vanessa Redgrave. But even more than seeing these stars, I can’t wait to get back into this world. I’m honestly still shook by the story and anxious about where things left off. This play felt like a long book that becomes important to you as you read along, the kind where you feel it in your soul and worry about the story and the characters for life, even though you know it’s not real. That the Inheritance Part 1 accomplished that is a testament to the genius of Matthew Lopez, as well as the pitch-perfect direction and the great acting that brought me fully into their world.
INFORMATION
The Inheritance ends its run at the Noel Coward Theatre on January 19 so hurry, or wait to see it on Broadway because it is definitely going.
Tickets are pretty easy to get, especially using TodayTix (which runs their rush ticket system). I got a £15 ticket (talk about value for money) in the Royal Circle, fifth row in and on the right side of center, and it was a perfect view. Too far to the extreme sides will be okay but a little restricted. The audience was pretty good, but actually the staff was awful. I could hear them talking in the lobby really loudly, proving my opinion that Delfont Mackintosh theatres and staff have to undergo a whole rehaul.
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NBC’s “The Wiz Live!”: Finally, a Great (and Powerful) One
Okay, gonna say this right off the bat: this review won’t be as enjoyable as last year’s, because this production was infinitely more enjoyable than last year’s (it’s an inverse correlation thing)! Heck, “The Wiz” in any form is usually more enjoyable than “Peter Pan” in any form, except maybe in the “Once Upon A Time” version of Peter Pan because evil baby Peter as Rumplestiltskin’s father (what the HELL) was hilariously awesome and I’m getting sick sick sick of Zelena. Anyway.
Queen Latifah’s preshow pretaped message was a good move, because since she is Queen of all Queens, I was already hooked and in Theatre Mode. Phone off, shut your face or I’ll punch you, put that candy away, &c. Hot damn I love me some Latifs.
The show itself started with the 3 wise men/Dorothy’s Oz friends/Dorothy’s farmhands in their regular lives before they become the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man. Not ‘before they are dreamt of as those 3’ but before they become them, because one of my biggest problems with “The Wizard of Oz” is that we’re supposed to believe everything was a dream, which is bullshit. BULL. SHIT. I was very happy to see one of my favorite performers, Elijah Kelley, here as the Scarecrow, because even though we’ve only ever seen him in the newest “Hairspray” movie, that’s enough because a) that movie is perfect (if I were on an iPhone I’d use that red 100 emoji) and b) the year it came out the whole cast premiered songs from it live at ShoWest and I was fangirling at the front of the stage because I was the only non-old-white-old-man in the room so it was like ALL FOR ME and I was like ‘Angelica, ELIJAH!’ that whole time.
Dorothy, played by total newcomer Shanice Williams, begins by being such a teenager all huffy about how this farm isn’t her home and she wants to go home and are you too good for your home, but then Auntie Em, played by Stephanie Mills – as in, Stephanie Mills the original Dorothy in the original “The Wiz” Broadway production! – sings the first song about how like, your parents died in that accident and I hope soon you are back to your normal self because I don’t know how to make you feel better about being an orphan, no one does because that’s f-ing terrible. Starting a show with a ballad instead of a rousing company-wide upbeat number is my Theatre No-no #1, well aside from Not Sucking, because such songs immediately bring energy levels down – so when you are just starting, you’re at level 0 energy, and then it brings you into negatives, and most of America doesn’t get how negatives even work because public education is in shambles, so it’s just not the best way to begin. However, Mills is pretty great considering it’s a super-cold open and she’s a ledge. But then things get going with the COOLEST FREAKING TORNADO I’ve ever seen. Damn! I think my only point of reference might be ‘Twister’, and the news, but this used some wonderful special effects both in the form of projections and, much cooler, in the form of lots of chorus boys spinning around all crazy like. I very much enjoyed this tornado and hope I am never in a real one.
The camera starts to go fuzzayyyy and then it focuses on Dorothy, her broke ass house, and shiny towers of Oz!! Wheee! Munchkins come out and they are wearing adorable costumes and are NOT midgets being exploited! Huzzah! They’re acting all serious and adorable and mad about how the house killed someone wearing silver heels hella difficult to walk in (maybe that’s what killed her), but then they’re like NO WE’RE SO HAPPY YOU KILLED A STRANGER LET’S HAVE A PARTY INSTEAD OF EXPLAINING IT ADEQUATELY TO YOU SO YOU AREN’T SCARRED FOR LIFE! and then freaking Amber Riley, wasted for years on “Glee” until we almost forgot what a talent she really is, comes out and shouts “Hey girl, I’m Glinda, oh wait just kidding, I’m ‘Addaperle, the feel-good girl’; there’s another good witch in this version named Glinda, she’s really cool too.” I CAN’T WAIT!
We hear some dumb lines in this updated book by Harvey Fierstein, whom I absolutely adoooore, but he wasn’t the right choice for this show. I mean. Old Jewish white boy, traditionally black and urban hip hop musical….There’s a bleh line about having sushi for lunch and something else I immediately put out of mind, and then Amber lets loose on “He’s the Wiz” and it’s pretty amazing, stupid Ryan Murphy kept her on lockdown for so many years. She does a sort of “And I Am Telling You” ending to a whatever song, with Shanice getting her first sung lines, well a few ‘ahh’s. Sounded great! Why has Dorothy still not had a song??!!
Yay here she goes! For Shanice’s first song, “Soon as I Get Home”, she needed a minute or two to shake out the nerves, but she proved how impressive she is. Great job! It’s still a super R&B slow-jam song though. And yes, this show is famously R&B, but so far it’s all the same kind of sound. We need something more energetic to cut all these power ballads!
We cut to that unfairly incredible commercial with Taraji, Kerry, and Mary J., and I’m like, damn, why am I not cooking and dancing with those ladies rn? What do I have to do to be in that commercial with them but in real life?
We come back to the show and see, on the scarecrow’s pole, that weird and scary guy Cillian Murphy played in “Batman Begins” with that burlap sack mask. Or it’s Elijah Kelley wearing that same weird and scary mask, covering up his pretty little face. He’s surrounded by really scary mean crow-men, who he says have been filling his head with all manner of nonsense. I think the crows represent the republican presidential candidates and OMG, I’m right, they just began the ‘Crow Commandments’, really called “You Can’t Win”, but I like my title better. It’s such a fun, upbeat (yay finally!) song considering how dire the message is – you can’t win, you can’t get out of the game, you are screwed forever, just give up. It must be hard to sing in your best voice when there is a pole stuck up your butt and you’re just hanging there with no breath support, but he does a decent job. I know there’s better from him to come though. His spoken lines are hilarious with his fast timing: “Do you know what?” “I know nothing!”
HERE WE GO! Next comes the most famous song of the whole ‘70s, “Ease on Down the Road”. I dare you, no, I double dog triple cat dare you, not to sing along whenever you hear this song. This is one powerful instant mood lifter, oh man. The pace seems to be picking up, along with the energy, and we quickly meet the Tin-Man, played by Ne-Yo, yes, that Ne-Yo. He sounds incredible, singing his big song “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, oh I’m sorry, that’s “Slide Some Oil To Me”. Same same. It has a super chill not-at-all-awkward chorus that goes “so slide some oil to me, girl, and we can lubricate my miiiind”. Totally normal. Anyway, Ne-Yo is some great casting. I really like this version of the Tin Man compared to the Wizard of Oz. It’s much closer to his backstory in “Wicked”, having the bad witch turn him into a Tin Man and leaving him heartless, saying if she couldn’t have his heart, no one could. And also, Ne-Yo is legit fabulous in this role.
We get a quick “Ease on Down” reprise before Mr. David Alan Grier pops out roaring as the Cowardly Lion, looking to sell some happy dust to Audra McDonald if only Dr. Jesus will help him out while singing “I’m a Mean Ole Lion”. He’s pretty great, complaining about failed therapy and what not. I love it. And he looks wonderful. It’s hard to get a lion costume down, but the costumes for this show are so far wonderful. Except Dorothy’s. And now another “Ease on Down” reprise!
Then ‘The Wiz’ gets hella dark and kind of close to a line that shouldn’t be crossed – the wicked witch’s monkeys, or other evil spirits, or some terrible dark force, conjure up the image of Dorothy’s deceased mother, to have her/it lure Dorothy into almost giving up the silver slippers, because how can this young kid realize that it’s not the mother she wishes more than anything to see again and that it’s just the most evil thing possible? Damn. Luckily the Tin Man stops her from giving the slipper and then they fight some red-eyed cyclops flying monkeys who can dance and fall so gracefully. Then Dorothy sings a song to the Lion just like Em sang to her at the beginning. “Be A Lion” sounds like a really difficult song to sing, and it doesn’t really have a worthwhile pay off until DAG joins in at the end.
AND THEN COME THE POPPIES! It’s like remembrance day in England all over again! The poppy set was super beautiful; I love how they produced this scene. Another red 100 emoji for you guys. I started to get super nervous about the Lion being all pervy to the flowers but then he showed he was impervious (WORDPLAY) to the poppies and tied them up.
And then all of a sudden they were in the Emerald City! Common as the Bouncer to Emerald City, which is apparently just a cool night club, was kind of painful, and I love Common. Like more than Serena did. Luckily, Dot mentioned how she killed one of the wicked witches and has her slippers, so Common lets them into the Capital for a dance party before the reaping, so it seems. After they do some weird new version of the robot, we meet the Wiz! It’s Latifah! She sings a song that is way too low for her. Why wouldn’t they have changed the key? In every big production, a man played the Wiz, but it actually sounds like they didn’t transpose the song for Latifs. Why on earth would that be the case? SO FING DUMB.
Harvey gives Ne-Yo some amazing lines in this interaction with the Wiz: “Whatchu looking for, a can opener?” Ne-Yo: “Ohh you clever! You scary as hell, but you clever!” I love it! It’s followed by a really lame Spice Girls reference. Oh Harvey.
But then Ne-Yo sings “What Would I Do if I Could Feel” and saves the moment by bringing the house down. How amazing would he be as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton”??? Make it so! In the London production! It could happen.
Latifah made some more awkward acting things, Dorothy said a forced line about her squad (#ohharvey), and then the star foursome of Dorothy and her three wise men sang a showstopping rendition of “We Got It’, which with just a little more choreography on their part would be ready for the Broadway revival. Speaking of, I really hope these four are in it.
The high energy and production value continued as we finally meet Evillene, the Wicked Witch we knew as green but is now freaking R&B royalty, dressed from the closet of Regina on Once Upon A Time, with those huge skirts over interesting pants. Did people in the fairy tale times really wear such things? If you are going to wear a skirt, it’s so you don’t have to wear pants, right? So why if you are going to wear a cool skirt would you ALSO wear pants? What’s the damn point? It’s like if you get up early for school but then find out it’s a snow day and you DON’T go back to sleep! What’s wrong with you! We don’t get snow in London.
Mary J. Blige’s Evillene is amazing, oh my goodness. Can she do anything wrong? She gets one bum line accusing her funnyman henchman of being ‘an Eddie Murphy or something’? because he’s funny? #ohharvey. But then she gets some great lines proving that Dorothy kind of sucks, in the “Wicked” perspective at least. Like, she stole Evillene’s sister’s shoes…after she KILLED her. Wicked witch allowed to be mad about that, and those facts do make Dorothy seem like the wicked one. But apparently Evillene’s talk about throwing shade made Dorothy upset that she missed the latest podcast while in Oz so she picked up her mopping bucket and threw the dirty water on the witch to melt her, because water can kill. (We learned that in fifth grade. It was a riddle my teacher gave us: What is necessary for life but can also kill you. Fifth grade. Riddle. In school. Not weird.) So Dorothy laments ‘Oh no, I did it again”, which is weird because that’s WHY she went to Evillene’s lair in the first place, under the Wiz’s orders, to kill Evillene. Did she forget her mission? Never forget the mission Dot! An even stranger reaction is that Evillene’s indentured servants slowly start stripping as soon as they realize their master is gone. Like, no verbal reaction, just slow stripping. We see that underneath their super-cool goth-punk dark pink and black robes are yellow booty shorts, happier clothes that they weren’t allowed to wear, and only when they are free of the dark clothes can their moods match the joy of the yellow clothes. Or something. “Everybody Rejoice/Brand New Day” is joyous and fun, and the foursome sound wonderful, like they know they made it through the brunt of the show and can relax. Ensemble members get a few solo sung lines, which is nice. Hi Capathia!
Big running question: Why do they have Dorothy in a too short miniskirt this whole time? She’s like 13 in the show, right? Every number that requires her to dance shows her underwear, which is weird for a 13 year old.
Another awkward as ass Common scene! And then another awkward Latifah scene when they pull back the curtain and find that she’s a fraud and a WOMAN! I didn’t think that was a secret? They did call her ‘sir’ a lot when they first met her but I didn’t think anything of it. But there are some dumb lines when Ne-Yo’s like “oh she’s a woman!” and Dorothy’s like “and WHAT’S wrong with that? nothing. You have no manners” which is just like unnecessary here. Also it reminds me of what Sarah Silverman said about little girls: don’t tell little girls they can be whatever they want because that is what puts the idea in their head that someone says they can’t.
Anyway, they convince the Wiz to go back home to Omaha, which didn’t take a lot of effort considering they were like, ‘you can eat at Modern Love’, so she’s like yeah aight let’s bounce. Queenie lets down her hair and looks f-ing amazing in her final number “Y’all Got It”, and she also sounds a lot better. She gets in the hot air balloon and calls for Dorothy to join her, and in the original Wizard of Oz, Dot is too busy hugging her friends and tripping on her own feet and stuff and misses the flight in an oh shoot oh no manner. I love that here, Dorothy decides that going to Omaha is not right for her. Granted, she could have GONE to Omaha with the Wiz and then caught the freaking bus back to Auntie Em…because Omaha is closer to Kansas than a freaking OTHER REALM is, but she is only 13 and so her brain is only halfway developed. Her heart was in the right place, I guess. Kids are dumb.
But luckily Glinda arrives! We haven’t met Glinda yet and it’s almost over. Luckily Uzo Aduba is worth waiting for, because her Glinda has a touch of Crazy Eyes in her and it’s a great combination. Her song “Believe In Yourself” has some strong moments, a few rough patches, but overall I enjoyed it. Mostly because I was watching Crazy Eyes all dressed up and I never got to see her in “Godspell”. Uzoooo!
Finally/finale, we realize that Shanice Williams was saving everything she had for her big number, which so unfairly (to the star) is the finale of “The Wiz”. Aside from “Ease on Down the Road”, “Home” is the most recognizable song from the show, if not more so, considering Stephanie Mills released it as a single and Diana Ross sang it on the movie soundtrack. It’s kind of a big deal. I can’t express how proud I am of this little stranger Shanice for how perfectly she performed her big song. I mean. Watching this show back, she must be completely and totally thrilled with how faultless it was. I hope she’s as proud as everyone in the world is of her. My favorite thing, besides watching a newcomer shining in her big moment, was how everyone in the Broadway community erupted on Twitter proclaiming that the country just witnessed a star being born. I love the camaraderie! Everyone seemed so proud of her! I love it!
Overall, this was such a strong show and definitely the best of the televised live shows thus far. I am going to make an advance bet that it’s also better than Fox’s upcoming “Grease!” live because “Grease” sucks and they should have chosen “Grease 2: Back in the Habit” to do instead. For “The Wiz”, NBC and Neil Meron & Craig Zadan seemed to hear all the criticism of the previous two shows – iron out that camerawork in tech more, and hire actors who can actually do the job, not just Be Famous – and actually worked on fixing those issues. The cast here was hella famous, but they were actually incredible, obviously, because instead of like “oh let’s get Christopher Walken to do impressions of a stick being tossed by a light wind”, they got people famous for being great singers. That is smart. They also went for strong famous actors who have already been tested in musical theatre – Uzo Aduba was on Broadway before “OITNB” came out; David Alan Grier got a Tony nom early in his career, and he was in “Dreamgirls” on Broadway, and he was in freaking “Porgy & Bess” with Audra McDonald, FFS; Stephanie Mills, &c. I hope a lot of this cast continues with the upcoming Broadway production, especially Shanice (she deserves it), Elijah Kelley (he needs to break into Broadway and stay there), and DAG. And Mary J. Blige and Ne-Yo, though they’d probably never do it. And Stephanie Mills, because that would be almost as cool as when Kelli O’Hara someday plays Margaret in “The Light in the Piazza”. Suffice it to say, I am really excited to see who I’m going to see in the stage production. Almost as excited as I am to watch this again right now.
The show itself started with the 3 wise men/Dorothy’s Oz friends/Dorothy’s farmhands in their regular lives before they become the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man. Not ‘before they are dreamt of as those 3’ but before they become them, because one of my biggest problems with “The Wizard of Oz” is that we’re supposed to believe everything was a dream, which is bullshit. BULL. SHIT. I was very happy to see one of my favorite performers, Elijah Kelley, here as the Scarecrow, because even though we’ve only ever seen him in the newest “Hairspray” movie, that’s enough because a) that movie is perfect (if I were on an iPhone I’d use that red 100 emoji) and b) the year it came out the whole cast premiered songs from it live at ShoWest and I was fangirling at the front of the stage because I was the only non-old-white-old-man in the room so it was like ALL FOR ME and I was like ‘Angelica, ELIJAH!’ that whole time.
Dorothy, played by total newcomer Shanice Williams, begins by being such a teenager all huffy about how this farm isn’t her home and she wants to go home and are you too good for your home, but then Auntie Em, played by Stephanie Mills – as in, Stephanie Mills the original Dorothy in the original “The Wiz” Broadway production! – sings the first song about how like, your parents died in that accident and I hope soon you are back to your normal self because I don’t know how to make you feel better about being an orphan, no one does because that’s f-ing terrible. Starting a show with a ballad instead of a rousing company-wide upbeat number is my Theatre No-no #1, well aside from Not Sucking, because such songs immediately bring energy levels down – so when you are just starting, you’re at level 0 energy, and then it brings you into negatives, and most of America doesn’t get how negatives even work because public education is in shambles, so it’s just not the best way to begin. However, Mills is pretty great considering it’s a super-cold open and she’s a ledge. But then things get going with the COOLEST FREAKING TORNADO I’ve ever seen. Damn! I think my only point of reference might be ‘Twister’, and the news, but this used some wonderful special effects both in the form of projections and, much cooler, in the form of lots of chorus boys spinning around all crazy like. I very much enjoyed this tornado and hope I am never in a real one.
The camera starts to go fuzzayyyy and then it focuses on Dorothy, her broke ass house, and shiny towers of Oz!! Wheee! Munchkins come out and they are wearing adorable costumes and are NOT midgets being exploited! Huzzah! They’re acting all serious and adorable and mad about how the house killed someone wearing silver heels hella difficult to walk in (maybe that’s what killed her), but then they’re like NO WE’RE SO HAPPY YOU KILLED A STRANGER LET’S HAVE A PARTY INSTEAD OF EXPLAINING IT ADEQUATELY TO YOU SO YOU AREN’T SCARRED FOR LIFE! and then freaking Amber Riley, wasted for years on “Glee” until we almost forgot what a talent she really is, comes out and shouts “Hey girl, I’m Glinda, oh wait just kidding, I’m ‘Addaperle, the feel-good girl’; there’s another good witch in this version named Glinda, she’s really cool too.” I CAN’T WAIT!
We hear some dumb lines in this updated book by Harvey Fierstein, whom I absolutely adoooore, but he wasn’t the right choice for this show. I mean. Old Jewish white boy, traditionally black and urban hip hop musical….There’s a bleh line about having sushi for lunch and something else I immediately put out of mind, and then Amber lets loose on “He’s the Wiz” and it’s pretty amazing, stupid Ryan Murphy kept her on lockdown for so many years. She does a sort of “And I Am Telling You” ending to a whatever song, with Shanice getting her first sung lines, well a few ‘ahh’s. Sounded great! Why has Dorothy still not had a song??!!
Yay here she goes! For Shanice’s first song, “Soon as I Get Home”, she needed a minute or two to shake out the nerves, but she proved how impressive she is. Great job! It’s still a super R&B slow-jam song though. And yes, this show is famously R&B, but so far it’s all the same kind of sound. We need something more energetic to cut all these power ballads!
We cut to that unfairly incredible commercial with Taraji, Kerry, and Mary J., and I’m like, damn, why am I not cooking and dancing with those ladies rn? What do I have to do to be in that commercial with them but in real life?
We come back to the show and see, on the scarecrow’s pole, that weird and scary guy Cillian Murphy played in “Batman Begins” with that burlap sack mask. Or it’s Elijah Kelley wearing that same weird and scary mask, covering up his pretty little face. He’s surrounded by really scary mean crow-men, who he says have been filling his head with all manner of nonsense. I think the crows represent the republican presidential candidates and OMG, I’m right, they just began the ‘Crow Commandments’, really called “You Can’t Win”, but I like my title better. It’s such a fun, upbeat (yay finally!) song considering how dire the message is – you can’t win, you can’t get out of the game, you are screwed forever, just give up. It must be hard to sing in your best voice when there is a pole stuck up your butt and you’re just hanging there with no breath support, but he does a decent job. I know there’s better from him to come though. His spoken lines are hilarious with his fast timing: “Do you know what?” “I know nothing!”
HERE WE GO! Next comes the most famous song of the whole ‘70s, “Ease on Down the Road”. I dare you, no, I double dog triple cat dare you, not to sing along whenever you hear this song. This is one powerful instant mood lifter, oh man. The pace seems to be picking up, along with the energy, and we quickly meet the Tin-Man, played by Ne-Yo, yes, that Ne-Yo. He sounds incredible, singing his big song “Pour Some Sugar On Me”, oh I’m sorry, that’s “Slide Some Oil To Me”. Same same. It has a super chill not-at-all-awkward chorus that goes “so slide some oil to me, girl, and we can lubricate my miiiind”. Totally normal. Anyway, Ne-Yo is some great casting. I really like this version of the Tin Man compared to the Wizard of Oz. It’s much closer to his backstory in “Wicked”, having the bad witch turn him into a Tin Man and leaving him heartless, saying if she couldn’t have his heart, no one could. And also, Ne-Yo is legit fabulous in this role.
We get a quick “Ease on Down” reprise before Mr. David Alan Grier pops out roaring as the Cowardly Lion, looking to sell some happy dust to Audra McDonald if only Dr. Jesus will help him out while singing “I’m a Mean Ole Lion”. He’s pretty great, complaining about failed therapy and what not. I love it. And he looks wonderful. It’s hard to get a lion costume down, but the costumes for this show are so far wonderful. Except Dorothy’s. And now another “Ease on Down” reprise!
Then ‘The Wiz’ gets hella dark and kind of close to a line that shouldn’t be crossed – the wicked witch’s monkeys, or other evil spirits, or some terrible dark force, conjure up the image of Dorothy’s deceased mother, to have her/it lure Dorothy into almost giving up the silver slippers, because how can this young kid realize that it’s not the mother she wishes more than anything to see again and that it’s just the most evil thing possible? Damn. Luckily the Tin Man stops her from giving the slipper and then they fight some red-eyed cyclops flying monkeys who can dance and fall so gracefully. Then Dorothy sings a song to the Lion just like Em sang to her at the beginning. “Be A Lion” sounds like a really difficult song to sing, and it doesn’t really have a worthwhile pay off until DAG joins in at the end.
AND THEN COME THE POPPIES! It’s like remembrance day in England all over again! The poppy set was super beautiful; I love how they produced this scene. Another red 100 emoji for you guys. I started to get super nervous about the Lion being all pervy to the flowers but then he showed he was impervious (WORDPLAY) to the poppies and tied them up.
And then all of a sudden they were in the Emerald City! Common as the Bouncer to Emerald City, which is apparently just a cool night club, was kind of painful, and I love Common. Like more than Serena did. Luckily, Dot mentioned how she killed one of the wicked witches and has her slippers, so Common lets them into the Capital for a dance party before the reaping, so it seems. After they do some weird new version of the robot, we meet the Wiz! It’s Latifah! She sings a song that is way too low for her. Why wouldn’t they have changed the key? In every big production, a man played the Wiz, but it actually sounds like they didn’t transpose the song for Latifs. Why on earth would that be the case? SO FING DUMB.
Harvey gives Ne-Yo some amazing lines in this interaction with the Wiz: “Whatchu looking for, a can opener?” Ne-Yo: “Ohh you clever! You scary as hell, but you clever!” I love it! It’s followed by a really lame Spice Girls reference. Oh Harvey.
But then Ne-Yo sings “What Would I Do if I Could Feel” and saves the moment by bringing the house down. How amazing would he be as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton”??? Make it so! In the London production! It could happen.
Latifah made some more awkward acting things, Dorothy said a forced line about her squad (#ohharvey), and then the star foursome of Dorothy and her three wise men sang a showstopping rendition of “We Got It’, which with just a little more choreography on their part would be ready for the Broadway revival. Speaking of, I really hope these four are in it.
The high energy and production value continued as we finally meet Evillene, the Wicked Witch we knew as green but is now freaking R&B royalty, dressed from the closet of Regina on Once Upon A Time, with those huge skirts over interesting pants. Did people in the fairy tale times really wear such things? If you are going to wear a skirt, it’s so you don’t have to wear pants, right? So why if you are going to wear a cool skirt would you ALSO wear pants? What’s the damn point? It’s like if you get up early for school but then find out it’s a snow day and you DON’T go back to sleep! What’s wrong with you! We don’t get snow in London.
Mary J. Blige’s Evillene is amazing, oh my goodness. Can she do anything wrong? She gets one bum line accusing her funnyman henchman of being ‘an Eddie Murphy or something’? because he’s funny? #ohharvey. But then she gets some great lines proving that Dorothy kind of sucks, in the “Wicked” perspective at least. Like, she stole Evillene’s sister’s shoes…after she KILLED her. Wicked witch allowed to be mad about that, and those facts do make Dorothy seem like the wicked one. But apparently Evillene’s talk about throwing shade made Dorothy upset that she missed the latest podcast while in Oz so she picked up her mopping bucket and threw the dirty water on the witch to melt her, because water can kill. (We learned that in fifth grade. It was a riddle my teacher gave us: What is necessary for life but can also kill you. Fifth grade. Riddle. In school. Not weird.) So Dorothy laments ‘Oh no, I did it again”, which is weird because that’s WHY she went to Evillene’s lair in the first place, under the Wiz’s orders, to kill Evillene. Did she forget her mission? Never forget the mission Dot! An even stranger reaction is that Evillene’s indentured servants slowly start stripping as soon as they realize their master is gone. Like, no verbal reaction, just slow stripping. We see that underneath their super-cool goth-punk dark pink and black robes are yellow booty shorts, happier clothes that they weren’t allowed to wear, and only when they are free of the dark clothes can their moods match the joy of the yellow clothes. Or something. “Everybody Rejoice/Brand New Day” is joyous and fun, and the foursome sound wonderful, like they know they made it through the brunt of the show and can relax. Ensemble members get a few solo sung lines, which is nice. Hi Capathia!
Big running question: Why do they have Dorothy in a too short miniskirt this whole time? She’s like 13 in the show, right? Every number that requires her to dance shows her underwear, which is weird for a 13 year old.
Another awkward as ass Common scene! And then another awkward Latifah scene when they pull back the curtain and find that she’s a fraud and a WOMAN! I didn’t think that was a secret? They did call her ‘sir’ a lot when they first met her but I didn’t think anything of it. But there are some dumb lines when Ne-Yo’s like “oh she’s a woman!” and Dorothy’s like “and WHAT’S wrong with that? nothing. You have no manners” which is just like unnecessary here. Also it reminds me of what Sarah Silverman said about little girls: don’t tell little girls they can be whatever they want because that is what puts the idea in their head that someone says they can’t.
Anyway, they convince the Wiz to go back home to Omaha, which didn’t take a lot of effort considering they were like, ‘you can eat at Modern Love’, so she’s like yeah aight let’s bounce. Queenie lets down her hair and looks f-ing amazing in her final number “Y’all Got It”, and she also sounds a lot better. She gets in the hot air balloon and calls for Dorothy to join her, and in the original Wizard of Oz, Dot is too busy hugging her friends and tripping on her own feet and stuff and misses the flight in an oh shoot oh no manner. I love that here, Dorothy decides that going to Omaha is not right for her. Granted, she could have GONE to Omaha with the Wiz and then caught the freaking bus back to Auntie Em…because Omaha is closer to Kansas than a freaking OTHER REALM is, but she is only 13 and so her brain is only halfway developed. Her heart was in the right place, I guess. Kids are dumb.
But luckily Glinda arrives! We haven’t met Glinda yet and it’s almost over. Luckily Uzo Aduba is worth waiting for, because her Glinda has a touch of Crazy Eyes in her and it’s a great combination. Her song “Believe In Yourself” has some strong moments, a few rough patches, but overall I enjoyed it. Mostly because I was watching Crazy Eyes all dressed up and I never got to see her in “Godspell”. Uzoooo!
Finally/finale, we realize that Shanice Williams was saving everything she had for her big number, which so unfairly (to the star) is the finale of “The Wiz”. Aside from “Ease on Down the Road”, “Home” is the most recognizable song from the show, if not more so, considering Stephanie Mills released it as a single and Diana Ross sang it on the movie soundtrack. It’s kind of a big deal. I can’t express how proud I am of this little stranger Shanice for how perfectly she performed her big song. I mean. Watching this show back, she must be completely and totally thrilled with how faultless it was. I hope she’s as proud as everyone in the world is of her. My favorite thing, besides watching a newcomer shining in her big moment, was how everyone in the Broadway community erupted on Twitter proclaiming that the country just witnessed a star being born. I love the camaraderie! Everyone seemed so proud of her! I love it!
Overall, this was such a strong show and definitely the best of the televised live shows thus far. I am going to make an advance bet that it’s also better than Fox’s upcoming “Grease!” live because “Grease” sucks and they should have chosen “Grease 2: Back in the Habit” to do instead. For “The Wiz”, NBC and Neil Meron & Craig Zadan seemed to hear all the criticism of the previous two shows – iron out that camerawork in tech more, and hire actors who can actually do the job, not just Be Famous – and actually worked on fixing those issues. The cast here was hella famous, but they were actually incredible, obviously, because instead of like “oh let’s get Christopher Walken to do impressions of a stick being tossed by a light wind”, they got people famous for being great singers. That is smart. They also went for strong famous actors who have already been tested in musical theatre – Uzo Aduba was on Broadway before “OITNB” came out; David Alan Grier got a Tony nom early in his career, and he was in “Dreamgirls” on Broadway, and he was in freaking “Porgy & Bess” with Audra McDonald, FFS; Stephanie Mills, &c. I hope a lot of this cast continues with the upcoming Broadway production, especially Shanice (she deserves it), Elijah Kelley (he needs to break into Broadway and stay there), and DAG. And Mary J. Blige and Ne-Yo, though they’d probably never do it. And Stephanie Mills, because that would be almost as cool as when Kelli O’Hara someday plays Margaret in “The Light in the Piazza”. Suffice it to say, I am really excited to see who I’m going to see in the stage production. Almost as excited as I am to watch this again right now.
Fairview at the Young Vic: White People, Feel Bad!
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s show is Fairview, playing at London’s Young Vic until January 23.
I really hate when writers include spoilers in reviews, like they can’t write about the show without ruining it for everyone. I’ll do my best to avoid them here, but it’s kind of impossible to talk about the power of Fairview, the 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, without spoilers, so gird your loins/stop reading if you are going to see it. Now making its London debut, the play by Jackie Sibblies Drury ends in a way I can’t say any other theatrical work ever has. Even aside from that ending, it’s hard to talk about the play in general because it’s about that incredibly difficult thing to talk about as a white person: race and how terrible white people are. Okay that second part might not be the point, but if you are a white audience member who walks away from the show not feeling completely shitty then you maybe weren’t paying attention (like to the world either). I’ll try to not say anything ignorant, but I am a whitey, so, WE’LL SEE.
Fairview tells of a middle-class black family preparing for Grandma’s big birthday dinner: You have the mom trying to do everything perfectly, the feisty (and hilarious) aunt with the strong opinions, the husband who actually remembered to buy the root vegetables!, the daughter who is nervous about graduating high school. You have the set of a very large, plush home, very beigey-pinks and grays, very Miami in the 1980s that felt a little sitcommy at first and then, as the play progresses, a lot sitcommy. The first section of the play, as the family prepares dinner and argues and jokes with each other, is – like a sitcom – extremely pleasant, very funny, and opens a lot of doors to what kind of action could come next for the family.
And then, no further action comes. Instead of showing what happens with the big birthday dinner, or if the uncle’s plane will take off, or what the daughter will decide about college, instead the rug is pulled out from under you and the sitcommy feel is substantiated. The actors restart, and they go through the entirety of the first section blocking again, but silently. We see the movements and spills and gestures and little dances for the second time, but now the audio is the voiceover conversation of four white people watching this program, talking about the characters, talking about race. It’s a shock, and it’s awkward, interesting, and disturbing the whole time. The four viewers are the kind of people who will proclaim nicely “I’m definitely not racist!” but then in the same breath say a lot of racist things that aren’t obviously mean or cruel but are still wrong, the kind of people who, as we hear, casually converse about ‘what race you’d pick if you could change’. It is a bold gear change into a provocative flat-out conversation about race, except without a knowledgeable or culturally sensitive voice in the bunch.
And that’s the bit that’s slightly disappointing. It’s not the play’s fault but that of its marketing/other reviews, for saying that this is ‘the play that will make ‘woke’ white liberals realize their mistakes’ or whatever. As a white liberal, I was, as I am with all things purporting to show me how wrong I am, eager to learn what I’m doing wrong and try to improve. But these four white people are blatantly terrible people. They are not ‘woke’ and they are nothing like the people who would be described as or would describe themselves as being ‘woke’, at least if the people had any idea what that (annoying) word was supposed to mean. And liberal? I’m sure at least some of them would be Trump voters. They say clearly racist things and treat race like it’s a fashion choice. It’s worthwhile to show that the things they say and think and eventually do are problematic, but anyone who didn’t already know how problematic these ideas were already miiiiiiight be racist! Or living under a rock.
The third section dives even more into the surreal, with the two worlds mixing into eventual chaos, perhaps representing the kinds of conversations we try to have without better guidance, and perhaps representing the problems we face when white people ‘want to help’ but also don’t want to acknowledge, or give up, their privilege. That reluctance to give up your privilege comes to a head at the end, when the tables turn and the white audience members literally become the object of stage-lit scrutiny, and their (our) hesitance to listen to the cast’s urgings become the subject of this wider, provocative discussion on privilege, entitlement, and expectations. I can’t imagine any white person seeing this, experiencing this ending especially, and not feeling exposed, guilty, uncomfortable at the very least, so that’s good, I guess, for self-reflection. But who knows how many people who needed to feel that momentary guilt and shame took it into their actual lives? And it’s not up to me to say that that momentary guilt and shame was worth making the people of color in the audience feel even more like the objects of white gaze, under scrutiny as well.
So I was left afterwards with a kind of numbed sensation, embarrassed (in part because of stage fright). The play is the definition of provocative, leaving your mind a blur of jumbled thoughts and emotions, which can be the mark of a successful dramatic work. It’s confrontational, it’s fascinating, and you feel uncomfortable the whole time. Now, after trying to write something the least bit coherent (I failed didn’t I) I feel even more ignorant and needing to do and be better, which might after all be what Drury had in mind.
