"War Paint" on Broadway: The Good, The Bad, and The Not Ugly Can't Be Ugly With So Much Makeup Involvedby Randi / November 2, 2017
Woot it’s Theatre Thursday! Today’s review is of the Sondheim classic “Follies”, playing at London’s National Theatre until January 3.
Every musical is supposed to teach you something or share some important life truth with you. At least that’s how I think about them. The lesson of “Follies” is that after you stop being a showgirl, life suuuuuucks and people suuuuuuck and you’ll never be happy again and you’ll just trudge through life counting time units in a deep dark depression. But with sequins! The new production of “Follies” at the National Theatre in London did what few productions of “Follies” are able to do: make me feel something besides boredom. Sure I felt a LOT of that – it’s not my favorite musical – but I also got EMOTIONAL. At SEVERAL points. Okay those of you who know me are probably saying to their screens ‘um you cry at car commercials tho’ and yes that’s true and valid but I don’t mean I cried, I mean like, I felt for these supremely unlikable characters instead of hoping that they all go to the bad place.
Right off the bat, let me share the very worst thing about this production. I saw the 2011 Broadway Revival of Follies (which I’m going to reference a lot because THAT CAST), and I don’t remember getting a kidney infection afterwards, so I’m going to guess that it was two acts with a 15 minute intermission LIKE NORMAL HUMANS DO. I have a great memory (with lists of the names of all who’ve wronged me) (just kidding) (am I?) so if I don’t remember being tortured, I assume an experience was nontorturous and that Broadway gave an intermission (New Yorkers drink their water). But this West End production apparently wants to render Brexit insignificant and stop anyone from wanting to enter the UK ever again because it HAS NO INTERMISSION BUT IT’S OVER TWO HOURS LONG I MEAN I CAN’T HOW YOU CAN POSSIBLY THINK THAT’S A GOOD IDEA.
You think I’m done yelling but my neighbors can tell you that’s simply not true.
So you may have gathered by now that there’s no intermission, despite other productions of the show being two acts, and though they say the run time is 2 hours 15 minutes, it was closer to 2 hours 25 minutes till I got to go to the bathroom again. But even so, two hours without intermission is usually unheard of! The average act is an hour anyway so like stick in an intermission ya jackwagons! If I could punch a show in the face, I would. I guess I could punch whoever’s idea this was (it would not have messed up the narrative at all) but I don’t like violence. Unless whoever’s idea this was also happened to vote for Brexit, then we can talk. with fists.
Okay, let’s get back to the show itself. “Follies” is the beloved tragic musical by Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman from 1971, about a bunch of old people who reunite at the NYC ‘Ziegfeld Follies’-type theatre where they once danced in the skimpiest yet sparkliest costumes with lots and lots of feathers on their heads, to say goodbye before it’s torn down. It’s thus a lot of reminiscing and the interpersonal drama that comes from a lifetime of memories, whether they’re accurately remembered or fabricated by time. Sounds like it’s for the “Best Little Old Foreign Marigold Hotel” crowd or whatever it’s called minus whoever Dev Patel brings in, right? Right. Story: When we were about to leave for the theatre, it was suddenly wintry and I had to pull my winter coat out of storage – where it had been vacuum-packed with BOY coats which means it smelled like boys’ college dorm floors. I know, horrid. I worried that it would smell so bad for whoever I’d be sitting next to, and Husband said “don’t worry they’ll probably smell worse from overdosing perfume [get it we’re making fun of old biddies]; it’s that kind of show, right?” “Actually,” I said, “it might be from the people onstage too.” Get it because it’s not only a show that attracts older audiences, it’s also a show about and starring old ladies and they wear too much perfume. At least the very waspy ones do. We’re mean I know but you know what’s even worse? Wearing perfume.
Unclear why the show art features David Bowie
Now, going in, I knew that I don’t loooove this show, but it’s SONDHEIM. So I do love some of the music and what it achieves dramatically. “Too Many Mornings” is one of my all-times, probably because my mom always played the Mandy Patinkin version in the car when I was little and it was beyond. Actually it’s so good I want you to listen to it here while you read the rest of this (it starts with the song “Pleasant Little Kingdom” which was cut from the original production; “Too Many Mornings” as it’s used in the show now starts at about the 2:00 mark but you know what just listen to the whole thing it’s RG). And with a cast this stellar, I had to see what they did with it. That’s why we bought tickets – Sally in this production is played by Imelda Staunton, my favorite Shakespearean maid from the ‘90s and now all of a sudden Britain’s foremost musical theatre actress. Another London theatre ledge, Janie Dee, stars as the acerbic Phyllis, and another, Tracie Bennett (last seen on Broadway as Judy Garland) would have the supporting but often scene-stealing role of Carlotta, who sings the musical theatre standard “I’m Still Here”. Though there are plenty (too many) of other supporting characters who get their chance to shine (too many shines), it’s mainly about a quartet of people – Sally, frumpy, depressed, and heartsick over a former love; Phyllis, cold and hardened to the world by what her life became; Ben, all-important, famous, unfulfilled and self-hating; and Buddy, the kind of guy who tells really dumb jokes to strangers and then shakes their hand while saying ‘Buddy Plummer, glad to meet ya!’ or some shit like that. Like I said, I saw it on Broadway about six years ago, and that cast was stellar too – Ron Raines, Jan Maxwell, Danny Burstein (my fave), Jayne Houdyshell, Mary Beth Peil, and the biggest draw for most people, Bernadette Peters as Sally. The cast was superb, but despite the parts working well, I didn’t connect with the show as a whole back then. It left me cold, like something important was missing but is present now. Maybe it’s the direction (pretty flawless here), maybe it’s that the grasp of the intent of the material was undeniable, maybe it’s the fact that I had to pee the whole time so I was on high alert, but I connected this time. I still don’t love the show – it has some shitbits (not to be confused with Fitbits, which can also be shit) – but it worked so much better for me here.
But not for the first 20 minutes or so. The opening is still mind-numbingly slow, as all the former Weisman girls arrive and marvel at how the theatre has changed and aged along with them. The National Theatre’s enormous size helps here, because the old theatre set rotates so you’re like ooh ahh and all the gorgeous showgirls of yesteryear prance about in their feathers and jewels. So “Follies” famously has the young versions of its core quartet onstage with their modern-day counterparts, showing what their history encompassed and what their relationships were really like back in the day. It enhances what we know about these connections and makes it all even sadder when you see how happy they once were. The rest of the ensemble comprises the young ghosts for all the other ladies too, but less conspicuously. In fact, I don’t even remember that the other women had ghosts follow them around in past productions, but here they undeniably were, decked out in their former glittery costumes and headdresses and heels while observing what they’ve become. But it was hard to miss here because it works so well. Some of the tiniest moments, not even front and center, that arose from this were the most moving in the show. Like as each lady arrives, her younger-self-ghost (I mean it’s not a ghost it’s a memory…ghost) finds her and shadows her and stuff. The oldest lady sings her old operatic number from the show with the help of her younger self (whose voice is stronger and can hit the high notes still), which was a very nice touch although it was part of the really boring section that gives too much time to unnecessary characters. My favorite ensembleghost moment was right at the beginning when one heard her name realizing that her current self has arrived and she moves up through the crowd to start ghostin on her and sees that she is now dowdy and stout and her face FALLS. You weren’t even supposed to be looking at that actress playing the younger self of this minor character and it was everything, so I hope whoever is in that ensemble track gets a cookie or something. So good.
And then the characters we’ve been waiting for arrive and at an applause break (the only time it’s okay to make short whispers in a theatre) Husband said to me “is that Imelda?!” I thought he just couldn’t figure out which one she was because she’s sporting a superfrump makeover for this role but he later clarified that he didn’t know she was in the show at all. Dude that’s why we bought tickets! Anyway we meet Imelda’s Sally, who is so damaged that she made me super uncomfortable, in an appropriate way. She talks too fast and talks over herself somehow and is clearly not in a good state of mind and you just want to shake her and be like take a breeeeath. She married Buddy, her sweetheart (actually they call the boys who wait for the girls after the show their ‘stage door Jonny’ I am crying) from during her time in the theatre, who became some sort of overly friendly but kind of oily salesman while she raised their kids, kept house as they moved from place to place, and wasted lots of time thinking about her former love from the same time gasp Ben, who at the time was dating Sally’s bff Phyllis and now those two are married. I knowww. So Sally married Buddy but is still in love with Ben, Buddy has a long-time affair with a woman who loves him but he still loves his wife even though he doesn’t want to, Ben has affairs allatime and doesn’t know what he wants or who he loves because he hates himself (‘you cannot share real love until you love yourself’ –Rent), and Phyllis has lost all sense of joy because she hates Ben and hates what they have become and pretty much hates everything except super chic clothes and killer putdowns. Phyllis is the type of person that sharp-edged girls would be like ‘she’s my hero’ but she’s supes broken so like pick a different hero.
The whole first half hour or so is like a less fun version of the “Beautiful Girls” scene from “Singin’ in the Rain” which is the most useless thing ever, so you get that I was eager for it to end. Finally it gave way to some good music and some intrigue, as we learn the intricacies of their relationships, both in the past and present. And then Carlotta (Tracie Bennett) gives the best performance of the big song “I’m Still Here”, in which she shares how despite all the shit she’s endured throughout her long career she still clawed her way through and is, in fact, still here and still doing her thang and until I see something top her in the next few months I’m going to say that Tracie is going to win an Olivier for this. She was FLAAAAMES. I was so there with her. I LOVED how they changed up the usual staging of this number, from the usual plant-and-shout spotlight solo to having her begin seated, lounging, surrounded by seated ensemble members like she was a celebrity sharing stories with a group of adoring fans, and then having the ensemble disappear while she stood up and began to, well, plant and shout but it was amazeballs.
Carlotta’s fierce drive and determination to overcome whatever challenges she has faced in life contrasts with our main characters, who kind of flail about in misery and self-hatred. Especially Sally, who is really an extra sad sack in this one. She has a lot of lines about how she’s going to kill herself and how she’s going to die but for the first time I actually thought she might. Imelda is great as usual and made me feel sadder than ever for Sally – not because she can’t be with the man she loves (or thinks she loves or fondly remembers loving) but because she can’t snap out of it. Her duet of “Too Many Mornings” with Ben was not as enjoyable as I like it to be because her anxiety and discomfort made me uncomfortable, but that’s a valid choice. I didn’t like how she made some of the lines a little more comical than usual (her “I should have worn green” was like played for laughs but it’s sad!) but still she conveyed the necessary lovelorn damage. Ben shocked me, because I’m still not completely in on British theatre, so I didn’t know that the actor, Philip Quast, was kind of a big deal. Guys, he won the Olivier for best actor in a musical three times. How did I not know about him? And not only three times, but for the three BEST male roles in classic musical theatre – George Seurat, Javert, and Emil de Becque. I know. If I were a cop I would be asked to turn in my gun and badge right now. But yeah he was wonderful, in strong booming voice, as all Bens should be, that hides that he’s falling apart inside.
Peter Forbes’s Buddy was very good, but I am partial to Danny Burstein in all ways and I think his Buddy just can’t be beat – it made you feel for him in more complex ways than just ‘oh he’s funny and cheerful but also an ass but we still want him to be happy.” He made Buddy so real and damaged and lovable too, and while I didn’t wish Peter’s Buddy harm, I didn’t really care about him. Husband thought he was great so I think I’m just biased. Janie Dee’s Phyllis was perfection, dropping one liners like Obama drops mics. Even though she didn’t seem to be in good voice (a lot of breaking at times when it wouldn’t be an acting choice), her “Could I Leave You” was, again, flames. It’s a difficult song, as she’s pretty much sarcastically shouting to Ben, making it seem like she couldn’t leave him and their wonderful life but it’s sarcastic and it’s hard to sing sarcasm! But it was incredible.
Even harder to do is Phyllis’s “The Story of Lucy and Jessie”, but that’s because it’s kind of annoying and the lyrics are amateur for Sondheim. It’s a thinly veiled tale of how Phyllis and Sally always wanted what the other had and were jealous of each other but it has lyrics like ‘Lucy is juicy and Jessie is dressy’ erma gerd I feel like he wrote these lyrics on a dare and was like ‘watch they’ll still say it’s all genius!’ This song comes in the “Loveland” section of the show, which is always tricky. In Loveland, each of the four mains are forced to deal with what’s plaguing them in a follies (like vaudeville) performance. Phyllis’s, as above, is usually my least favorite and once you get the general concept of her song, they try to distract you with a big dance number. Janie did a great job dancing her ass off but I still feel blah about it. Buddy’s folly was better, in which he explains in a super cheerful clownish manner how he has “those god-why-don’t-you-love-me-oh-you-do-I’ll-see-you-later blues”. The lyrics in this one are so clever and they present Buddy’s issues clearly, but after the first so-clever verse you’re like okay I get it, he wants what he can’t have and when he gets it he doesn’t want it. Ben’s and Sally’s follies won the show for me, though. Sally sings the famous “Losing My Mind” and Imelda put to bed all those haters who say that she’s not really so much of a singer. Her beautiful, heartbreaking rendition was what made me think to myself okay this is overall a great production. And Ben continued to surprise me with his “Live, Laugh, Love”, which was so perfectly done that his spiral and forgetting of the lyrics seemed real. The first break, I think a lot of the audience just thought he forgot the words and got frustrated (Husband did). That’s incredible! Ugh so good. I hate the whole Loveland conceit in theory but it’s always good once it gets started, especially if the actors follow through like these did.
Will you leave the theatre joyous and uplifted after seeing this production (any production) of “Follies”? Fuck no. It’s pretty much saying ‘you’ll never be as happy as you were in your youth and everything is terrible and then you’re old and you missed your chance.’ So not exactly a feel-good show. But this pretty flawless production will make you consider all the existential troubles of life that any good drama should leave you frantically worrying about. Plus sooo many feathers.
INFO
The Olivier Theatre at the National is a freaking barn so there’s really no bad seat. It’s so big that you can see no matter what. There are toilets in the hallways after your ticket is checked so that’s better than some of the theatres in this complex. There were several signs that any bags bigger than like a sheet of computer paper would have to be checked so I took my coat off and held it over my bag so no one would see and I wouldn’t have to comply with that noise. I like rules and regulations but not when they exist for no good reason.
STAGE DOOR
Didn’t for several reasons – this complex is super confusing and it’s never worth it, and after seeing how mean these old ledges can be to each other I didn’t want them to yell at me for taking up their time ah so scary.
Related Posts
Sondheim’s Memory Will Absolutely Be a Blessing
It’s so strange to think that Stephen Sondheim is no longer on this earth when the earth has so often felt like simply a platform for his work to exist. Everything that happens and everywhere I go and every word that every person says reminds me of some truth he shared with the world that we were lucky enough to hear and understand and connect with emotionally. No one was more honest about the complexities of human emotion and the depths of human frailty, and applying that honesty to musical theatre elevated it as an art form and reinforced that it’s deserving of respect. Look at what musical theatre can achieve, he said. Look at how we need musical theatre to truly express our humanity. That’s why we love him so much.
I’m not foolish enough to think that I can eulogize him better than others have (except the Guardian of course) or discuss the brilliance of his works in detail like theatre historians. I just wanted to take a few minutes to think about how important his creations are to me personally. Unfortunately I’m not able to do what everyone loves doing (and you can’t really fault them for doing it), which is to share a photo of me and the deceased, because I never had the opportunity to meet him. While part of me is of course sorry that that will never happen, part of me is glad because I can go on imagining him as more than an ordinary man. For me and for most of us who love theatre, he was this sort of holy figure, whose genius necessitated that he must be more than human, despite understanding and expressing humanity on such unparalleled levels.
This past weekend, I was without power and cell service for a few days due to the storm, and while that experience was one of the worst, it let me have a few extra days of believing I actually shared a planet with him, this great figure. That we existed in the same era and in the same universe is a miracle to me, and not just because it’s Chanukah and he was Jewish and I’m primed to be thinking all miracley anyway. He would be the last person to think of himself in such laudatory terms as we all do, as he was just a man (a NJB really), but his genius made him seem superhuman, despite that very genius being grounded in humanity.
On a personal level, his works form important touchstones for so many parts of my life. One of my earliest memories is watching the PBS airing of ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ over and over with my mom. She had taped it (VHS baby) so she would put it on frequently for years after. I remember it was even on when she was drying her hair one morning, and I was just staring at the small screen. Mandy Patinkin quickly became my mom’s favorite non-family (maybe even including family who knows) person in the world, and I loved everything about it, this woman in the dress with the poofy butt (who know one day I would work with her) and the colors and all these characters and above all the sound of this perfect music that I was too young to understand but knew was beautiful and important. As a teenager, I was obsessed with the dark twists of ‘Into the Woods’ and the lessons it taught about consequences and the ramifications of wishes, especially as someone raised on Disney princesses. But, I was also raised on ‘West Side Story’ and with it my dad’s favorite story of his single line: ‘COPS!’ And I’m not saying I married a man because he appreciates and loves how insanely ingenious ‘Assassins’ is but it’s not not why. I can’t imagine what life looks like without his shows helping us understand it.
It doesn’t matter that he was 91 or that we’ve been fearing this moment since his big 80th celebration. Genius of that sort is rare and now we are without his. But we have his work, his brilliant creations, each of them special and so many of them continually surprising in their truth and beauty. We are so lucky that his works keep getting produced and we can keep experiencing them, and in new ways, even if we will never get that fabled next show from him.
His genius was in peeling away layers to reveal raw human truths that seem so simple and clear but are so complicated, and doing that to incredible music. He seemed to so often be drawn to extremely niche situations for his settings — not e.g. a basic family drama that everyone could relate to but instead a group of aging former performers confronting their pasts in a closing dilapidated theatre, or a beloved painting brought to life through the backstory of its creator and muse, or a group of historical assassins detailing their exploits and commenting on the current state of politics (current at any time, another aspect of his brilliance). Even the situations that don’t seem too rare or extreme, like the single man deliberating his singledom, were novel and innovative at the time. Instead of writing characters as every day people we would immediately relate to, he made it so we related to people we didn’t automatically see ourselves in. We weren’t always reflected outwardly but we would soon feel emotionally connected and reflected due to the honesty and depth of his words and how the music enhanced their meaning. He found emotional truths in this nuance and showed them so clearly that the shadows seemed like daybreak. His legacy for me is how he let audiences easily see themselves in characters that aren’t clearly similar to them, or see truth in situations that don’t look like their normal lives, which more easily lets people connect with those different from them in real life. I believe he did this, and since being able to connect in those ways increases empathy, with his art he thus made the world a better place.
When loved ones die, Jewish people say may their memory be a blessing. To remember Stephen Sondheim is to remember his genius and how that genius manifested in the creation of these lasting works of emotional truth and humanity. His memory is a blessing, and will always be a blessing, as his life was, as his art was.
“You Can’t Take It With You” on Broadway: Crazy Fun Times That Will Remind You of Thanksgiving
The latest all-around excellent show to open on Broadway boasts a wonderful ensemble of super recognizable actors that magically mesh together, making it stand out so far this season. (See: “It’s Only A Play”. I mean don’t see it. Review forthcoming). That James Earl Jones plays the Grandpa (of an all-white family, which I love; see color-blind casting is FINE and GOOD and WORKS) is reason enough to see this show, and you’ll become fans of the wonderful theatre and H’wood actors composing the rest of the cast.
Despite how much this revival of “You Can’t Take It With You” has going for it, every single review begins the same way: The writer concedes that it’s an antiquated play, that everyone assumes it’s too old-fashioned to be relevant nowadays, but that this production’s team has done a bang-up job (which means good, contrary to how it sounds (from now on let’s agree it means bad, like banged up) (change approved)) to bring it into the 21st century. It’s actually extremely annoying. All these writers (getting paid, ffs) follow this same trite and tired formula, as if they have to apologize for the play being old. So ageist! It’s also silly. You don’t see people apologizing for Shakespeare. And you’re probably saying, but Shakespeare is still relevant today. Well so is this! No apologies!
JAMES EARL JONES IS WAVING TO ME!!! JUST TO ME!!!
“You Can’t Take It With You”, which I will refer to as YCTIWY from here on out, nevermind that is an awful acronym so I won’t, is a Kaufman & Hart work from freaking 1936, and we are still enjoying it today. Now that’s incredible. Also, if you can ever think of the great Kaufman & Hart without singing “Go ask the Gerrrrshwins or Kaufman & Hart” from “Annie” then you are stronger than I am. Hell I couldn’t even see the play “Act One” last year because I would have gone crazy singing that line over and over in my head. (It’s about Moss.)
ANYWAY. YCTWITHYOU tells the story of the jubilantly wacky Sycamore family, with its wacky playwright of a mother, its wacky firework maker of a father, its wacky wannabe prima ballerina of a daughter, her wacky husband, and the not-at-all-wacky-or-hey-maybe-she-actually-is-like-her-family other daughter who just wants to marry up, plus all the surrounding characters, including the grandfather played by James Earl Jones, who I think is written wacky but JEJ can never play wacky so he still kind of seemed regal and wise even though he was probably talking crazy. The story concerns the straight-laced office-secretary (working girl!) daughter Alice, who wants to marry her boss’s son Tony Kirby but is beyond fearful and anxious about their wildly different families – and as we see in all their insane glory, rightly so.
Obviously, the casting is vital in YTAYKAT, because the family’s wackiness can either work and make you fall in love with all of them, or it can annoy the piss out of you. Luckily, here, the producers got everything right. This hilarious band of fun crazies is led by Penny, the matriarch, played by the consistent and consistently hilarious Kristine Nielson (who was deservedly nominated for a 2013 Tony for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” in a super competitive year). Penny writes various sorts of plays that never are produced or really even read, and we learn later that she fell into this ‘profession’ when a typewriter was mistakenly delivered to her house. Penny’s husband Paul makes fireworks and crackers and smoke and all sorts of things that blow up in the basement at really inopportune times. Paul is played by Mark Linn-Baker, or the non-Balki lead from “Perfect Strangers”, one of my childhood mainstays. I didn’t know that Mark was in this show, and when I moved to an empty seat in the front row (from my last row of the top balcony seat, thank you very much) I kind of gasped when I realized who it was! So fun. Anyway, yeah so he sets stuff on fire in their house, with the help of his friend Mr. De Pinna, who models for a painting in Roman garb at one point and looks exactly like Christoph Waltz in it.
The best part of this production is the characterization of the daughter Essie, played by freaking thief Annaleigh Ashford, who steals every single thing she’s in. Essie yearns to be a top ballerina, and she studies with a Russian tutor very frequently, but she’s terrible, awful, no good very bad. How do we know how bad she is? Because regardless of what is happening in the play, she is dancing. When she walks to the kitchen to make her candies that she sells, she freaking leaps. Or jetes, I don’t know I only took ballet when I was 3. When she is listening to someone talking in the living room, she is practicing her (really difficult) jumps in one spot until someone stops her. When the fancy Kirby family comes to dinner, the elegant elonge’ position she takes on the floor by Mrs. Kirby will make you cry. Her ridiculousness, which extends to her facial expressions as well as her physicality, is the best part of the play, along with her husband Ed, played with matching ridiculousness by Will Brill, with his subtle but hysterical faces constantly diverting your attention from the main action to him.
Alice, the daughter embarrassed by all of her family’s shenanigans, is well cast with Rose Byrne in her Broadway debut. I saw YAKANUT in previews, and in the front row I could see a tiny bit of nervousness that seemed like hyper-awareness of what she was supposed to be doing, but overall she was fantastic. Alice really loves Tony Kirby but does not have faith in either of the families’ ability to accept and be accepted. Tony is well played by Fran Kranz, which sounds like one of the phrases Kim Jong-Il would say a lot in “Team America” but he’s really an actor who was in Joss Whedon’s magical “Much Ado About Nothing” in 2012.
Tony tries to convince Alice that they’ll be fine, that the families will get along. Of course we see things go to total shit because the Sycamores are crazy (but super fun) and the Kirbys are kind of awful and stodgy and seem like they would yell at you to sit up straighter. We are treated to seriously insane scenes when the two families do try to socialize. They actually end up in jail, naturally being arrested while the basement of fireworks is going off accidentally. It’s the kind of thing where you are sitting with your eyes bugging out not believing what is happening in front of you but also just totally loving the crap out of it.
Oh, why are they arrested? Well, Essie’s doofus of a husband fancies himself a typesetter or something, and he prints phrases that he likes on the wrappers of Essie’s candy that he delivers to customers. Turns out he likes phrases that sound like terrorist and communist propaganda so the FBI has been following the family. It doesn’t help that Grandpa Earl Jones hasn’t paid income tax in more than 20 years. Why not? Because he doesn’t trust that the government would use it well. I freaking love Grandpa. And agree. Grandpa is the voice of wisdom and gets some wonderful monologues about money and greed and of course says the title of the show in one of these so everyone in the audience drinks.
There is some surreal randomness even above the randomness of all the family members’ antics. Elizabeth Ashley appears only in Act 3 to play a former Russian royal who now works as a waitress and wants to cook the family dinner. I was like okay monster man. Very unnecessary but hey, you get to see Elizabeth Ashley onstage. Also Johanna Day plays an actress reading one of Penny’s scripts (I guess someone did read them) but she is a drunk and passes out. It’s also totally unnecessary but it’s worth it because she is still super drunk during the FBI raid, adding to that scene’s unbeatable amount of outrageousness.
YAKSCOK has a happy ending, of course, because it’s a comedy even though there are lots of snakes onstage. You kind of want to tell Alice to calm down as I’m pretty sure every single family has some Sycamore qualities, but you get why she’s anxious. Fortunately, she realizes she’s lucky to have such a loving family, despite its eccentricities. The pretty people get married and Essie keeps dancing and it’s all just a pile of smiles. The end.
ANYWAY. YCTWITHYOU tells the story of the jubilantly wacky Sycamore family, with its wacky playwright of a mother, its wacky firework maker of a father, its wacky wannabe prima ballerina of a daughter, her wacky husband, and the not-at-all-wacky-or-hey-maybe-she-actually-is-like-her-family other daughter who just wants to marry up, plus all the surrounding characters, including the grandfather played by James Earl Jones, who I think is written wacky but JEJ can never play wacky so he still kind of seemed regal and wise even though he was probably talking crazy. The story concerns the straight-laced office-secretary (working girl!) daughter Alice, who wants to marry her boss’s son Tony Kirby but is beyond fearful and anxious about their wildly different families – and as we see in all their insane glory, rightly so.
Obviously, the casting is vital in YTAYKAT, because the family’s wackiness can either work and make you fall in love with all of them, or it can annoy the piss out of you. Luckily, here, the producers got everything right. This hilarious band of fun crazies is led by Penny, the matriarch, played by the consistent and consistently hilarious Kristine Nielson (who was deservedly nominated for a 2013 Tony for “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” in a super competitive year). Penny writes various sorts of plays that never are produced or really even read, and we learn later that she fell into this ‘profession’ when a typewriter was mistakenly delivered to her house. Penny’s husband Paul makes fireworks and crackers and smoke and all sorts of things that blow up in the basement at really inopportune times. Paul is played by Mark Linn-Baker, or the non-Balki lead from “Perfect Strangers”, one of my childhood mainstays. I didn’t know that Mark was in this show, and when I moved to an empty seat in the front row (from my last row of the top balcony seat, thank you very much) I kind of gasped when I realized who it was! So fun. Anyway, yeah so he sets stuff on fire in their house, with the help of his friend Mr. De Pinna, who models for a painting in Roman garb at one point and looks exactly like Christoph Waltz in it.
The best part of this production is the characterization of the daughter Essie, played by freaking thief Annaleigh Ashford, who steals every single thing she’s in. Essie yearns to be a top ballerina, and she studies with a Russian tutor very frequently, but she’s terrible, awful, no good very bad. How do we know how bad she is? Because regardless of what is happening in the play, she is dancing. When she walks to the kitchen to make her candies that she sells, she freaking leaps. Or jetes, I don’t know I only took ballet when I was 3. When she is listening to someone talking in the living room, she is practicing her (really difficult) jumps in one spot until someone stops her. When the fancy Kirby family comes to dinner, the elegant elonge’ position she takes on the floor by Mrs. Kirby will make you cry. Her ridiculousness, which extends to her facial expressions as well as her physicality, is the best part of the play, along with her husband Ed, played with matching ridiculousness by Will Brill, with his subtle but hysterical faces constantly diverting your attention from the main action to him.
Alice, the daughter embarrassed by all of her family’s shenanigans, is well cast with Rose Byrne in her Broadway debut. I saw YAKANUT in previews, and in the front row I could see a tiny bit of nervousness that seemed like hyper-awareness of what she was supposed to be doing, but overall she was fantastic. Alice really loves Tony Kirby but does not have faith in either of the families’ ability to accept and be accepted. Tony is well played by Fran Kranz, which sounds like one of the phrases Kim Jong-Il would say a lot in “Team America” but he’s really an actor who was in Joss Whedon’s magical “Much Ado About Nothing” in 2012.
Tony tries to convince Alice that they’ll be fine, that the families will get along. Of course we see things go to total shit because the Sycamores are crazy (but super fun) and the Kirbys are kind of awful and stodgy and seem like they would yell at you to sit up straighter. We are treated to seriously insane scenes when the two families do try to socialize. They actually end up in jail, naturally being arrested while the basement of fireworks is going off accidentally. It’s the kind of thing where you are sitting with your eyes bugging out not believing what is happening in front of you but also just totally loving the crap out of it.
Oh, why are they arrested? Well, Essie’s doofus of a husband fancies himself a typesetter or something, and he prints phrases that he likes on the wrappers of Essie’s candy that he delivers to customers. Turns out he likes phrases that sound like terrorist and communist propaganda so the FBI has been following the family. It doesn’t help that Grandpa Earl Jones hasn’t paid income tax in more than 20 years. Why not? Because he doesn’t trust that the government would use it well. I freaking love Grandpa. And agree. Grandpa is the voice of wisdom and gets some wonderful monologues about money and greed and of course says the title of the show in one of these so everyone in the audience drinks.
There is some surreal randomness even above the randomness of all the family members’ antics. Elizabeth Ashley appears only in Act 3 to play a former Russian royal who now works as a waitress and wants to cook the family dinner. I was like okay monster man. Very unnecessary but hey, you get to see Elizabeth Ashley onstage. Also Johanna Day plays an actress reading one of Penny’s scripts (I guess someone did read them) but she is a drunk and passes out. It’s also totally unnecessary but it’s worth it because she is still super drunk during the FBI raid, adding to that scene’s unbeatable amount of outrageousness.
YAKSCOK has a happy ending, of course, because it’s a comedy even though there are lots of snakes onstage. You kind of want to tell Alice to calm down as I’m pretty sure every single family has some Sycamore qualities, but you get why she’s anxious. Fortunately, she realizes she’s lucky to have such a loving family, despite its eccentricities. The pretty people get married and Essie keeps dancing and it’s all just a pile of smiles. The end.
