"Falsettos" Revival on Broadway: March Me to Another Theatreby Randi / January 11, 2017
Last night, a show that defied all odds closed on Broadway, or really we should pronounce it “Br’dway”, as I and others lucky enough to see this show will forever do. “Oh, Hello”, a ‘play’ that makes you laugh even if you just repeat the title like an old kvetcher and fry that last syllable, should never had gone to Br’dway, should never have been the recommended pick of the most esteemed critics, and should never have been one of the funniest things its audiences ever saw. But it was! I still don’t know how to explain this show to people who didn’t see it, because it’s impossible. So I guess it’s kind of stupid that that’s exactly what I’m going to do now. Mostly I just want to document the jokes I remember for posterity, while bidding farewell to some of the most glorious hours I’ve experienced in the theatre, and in 2016 in general. It was a bright spot on an otherwise dark and gloomy year. Or, as we say now, “brit spot”.
My uncontrollable laughter started from outside the theatre, because the jovial and game man checking tickets at the door greeted everyone by saying – you guessed it – “Oh, hello!” Adorable! The actual show begins (long interjection: it did close yesterday and so I should be talking about it in the past tense, but there is news that a recent performance was taped and will be br’dcast for a televisorial viewing!! Unlike with “Falsettos”, I’m beyond thrilled that I can see it again and don’t mind that I paid a godforsaken amount of money for our Christmas-week tickets when I can see it again for free) with Gil and George introducing themselves in front of the drawn red curtain, looking like a regular stand-up special except with two old geezers instead of the typically young white male comedians who dominate standup. (Of course, they are two youngish white male comedians underneath all that makeup and old-man hair and costumes of the insane, but they are so immersed in these beloved characters of theirs that I quickly forgot). Immediately we learn their schtick. Gil and George are goofy, they clip the first syllable of most of their words and stress the second one (“Br’dway”), which doesn’t seem like anything but it keeps getting funnier and funnier somehow, and they walk funny like old men. There’s not much more to it than that. Like Luke though, I was all in from the start. I’m obsessed with John Mulaney’s flawless standup (two on Netflix you must watch) and if Amy Poehler can love Nick Kroll, so can and do I, so I was primed to enjoy myself. But it was so much better than I thought it would be.
First, the two men introduce themselves to the audience in front of the closed curtain in a prologue of sorts. Nick Kroll plays Gil Faizon, “charmed I’m sure”, a down on his luck actor who didn’t book an important gig as the CBS mascot, and John Mulaney is George St. Geegland, a writer of tenuous ability who wrote the play within a play that the two will perform later in the show – about two old men who live together on the Upper West side, named George and Gil. The ‘real’ George and Gil are, of course, also Upper West Siders – “the coffee breath of neighborhoods.” George introduces himself by saying “for someone who is so frequently mistaken for a Jew and a woman, I am neither.” George and Gil traipse about the front of the stage just as you would imagine two elderly men with shoddy hips would. They proclaim their love for the theatre and their intentions to pay “homepage” to the great theatrical traditions. George mentions that it will be a treat “for anyone familiar with our oeuvre, which means ‘egg.’” They go on to boast about their Br’dway home, the Lyceum theatre, which has housed works by such greats as Tennessee Williams and his sister, Serena.
As they move about the stage, you notice more detail about their costumes. George goes for a musty professor look, with corduroys, a turtleneck, an old man sweater vest, and a heavy tweed jacket from which you can almost smell the mothballs and b.o. no doubt emanating. Gil is more casual in dark green pants of unknown origin, a brown leather jacket that looks older than he is, a pink shirt that screams Miami circa 1982 coming through the zipper of his pants, and sandals with white socks. I would have been hysterical even if they were silent. Every single movement Nick Kroll made was perfection. Just the way his resting face would subtly resemble a main drooler in a nursing home was fantastic. Mulaney was less developed in all the depth of detail that Kroll had, but still great. If this wasn’t a ridiculous comedy spoof Kroll’s character preparation would be award-worthy. So unnecessary.
Then the curtain rises to reveal an intricate set, with an exterior of an apartment building on one side of the stage and the detailed interior of an apartment on the other, plus a salon in the back. Gil notes to the audibly surprised audience, not expecting such a set for such a show, “This is the first time an audience’s expectations were exceeded by having a set.” They explain that they retrieved all the various set pieces from past shows that had been on Br’dway. Some came from an August Wilson play that they can’t remember the name of; that’s why the picture of ‘their family’ hanging on the wall is of a black family. The salon was courtesy of Steel Magnolias, of course, with its chairs with the hair dryer helmets attached and the wall of products. The trapdoor, from the Diary of Anne Frank. (There’s a lot of humor that is awful like that so you have to be along for the ride.) The geezers get the audience used to the serious theatre they’re about to throw at us (not) by going over some of their favorite theatrical traditions. George talks about how obvious it is when someone is going to die by the end of a play because they’ll cough in their handkerchief and then open it very conspicuously and it’ll have red blood on it. True! He of course demonstrates how this plays out, and as the dying cougher he holds up a blood-stained handkerchief for all to see. Gil demonstrates another way overused theatre trick, and one of my favorite parts of the show, the ‘one-sided phone call’, or as he says it, “the win-sided phin call.” Asking their (unseen/not real) Indian lighting intern Ravi, “one of those new kinds of Indians”, for melodramatic lighting, Gil performs this theatrical ploy of repeating information from an offstage source so the audience knows what you’re learning. First, you get a phone that no one would ever have; Gil produces an old-fashioned rotary phone. Then, you fiddle with it way too much ‘to show the audience that you’ve been working with it all week’. Then the conversation occurs as such:
*Ring ring*
Gil: Oh, hello.
*Pause*
Gil: Charmed I’m sure.
*Pause*
Gil: The police?
*Pause*
Gil: Oh, you’re the police.
I’m still laughing at that. It’s so stupid! Yet it was hilarious! That’s what most of the show is like, really. They share a lot of their backstory as friends and roommates and all their misfortunes and misadventures, and then they perform George’s play for us. It’s hard to tell where the play ends and the play-within-the-play begins, because nothing really changes. It’s still the two of them being preposterous. They talk about past successes and failures, and they give us a rundown of their goings-on from various decades, all of which seemed to involve Steely Dan music and, their favorite thing in the world, “c’caine.” They talk about c’caine a lot, and against all odds their repeated pronunciation of that word gets funnier and funnier.
The play versions of George and Gil resurrect a radio show they once had called “Too Much Tuna”, where they chat with celebrities at a dirty local diner where even the coffee is gray, and feed them freaking enormous tunafish sandwiches. At least I think that was in the play; like I said, it’s hard to discern what was written by George and what was the main show, especially because the gimmick of that radio show – on station WOLO (say it out loud) – is exactly what they performed for real every day. George and Gil sit down at their diner table and start their radio show, and glory over the greatness of tunafish. “It really is the queen of the sandwich meats,” they say. SANDWICH MEATS. Then they bring out their special guest for the show, to the audience’s delight. So every performance, a random person from the audience or, more commonly, the biggest celebrity in the audience would be brought up on stage to try to make sense of what was going on and what George and Gil are saying and try not to just sit there laughing hysterically while they ask if you do cuhcaine. At my show, our celebrity guest was Hank Azaria, which was a fantastic surprise. He talked about how he part-owns a horse, a ridiculous fact that George and Gil brought up later in the show. Hank also talked about how his brother was once asked to join the Ramones, when they were first starting. Gil responded, “I was asked to join Simon and Garfunkel, because I was equal parts Simon and Garfunkel.” The improv throughout the show but particularly at this segment is beyond impressive.
In the play-within-the play, or maybe in real life, Gil had a problem with raccoons. (Rickoons.) He somehow always found himself having relationships with them, and was currently embroiled in a tumultuous affair with a r’ccoon named Lisa (who runs the Twitter for the show’s surprise guests, for real). Somehow this led to them talking about Shakespeare in the Park – maybe that’s where they met, I can’t remember the logic of this show, I was crying the entire time. “Did you ever go to Sh’kspeare in the Park?”, they ask. They discuss “Sh’kspeare” and how overrated he is. “Sh’kspeare is such a hack. Romeo sees the girl and just does a quick take – ‘Oh, ya dead? I’m not gonna check if you’re just sleeping I’ll just kill myself.’ Hack.”
Who on earth knows or remembers how, but the performance of George’s play leads into another unexpected yet familiar theatre trope – the nightmare ballet. As crazy as it sounds, it looked even crazier. There was all kinds of crap happening with the lights and ghosts and set pieces and all of it was like an LSD-trip — which they touched on at one point, referring to an “LSD cult now known as SoulCycle”. They wake up from this insanity laying down on the floor, unable to move after what they’ve just been through given their advanced age. Prostrate (a word I imagine they would love saying and confusing with something close to it), they take turns yelling up to Ravi, the lighting intern, for help. It’s one of those jokes that is funny but somehow gets funnier the longer it goes on, once it reaches and then passes the point at which you go, annoyed, ‘oh it has to stop now, right?’ noooope. “RAVI! IT’S GEORGE. FROM THE FLOOR.” “RAVI! It’s Gil. Charmed I’m sure.”
I have a vague memory of “Too Much Tuna” getting picked up for more episodes and so they celebrate their success with new outfits. Mulaney comes out in a very slimly tailored beige belted expedition ensemble which he perfectly terms “Pussy Safari”. Gil shares that all he aspires to own one day is a ‘thundercoat.’ “A what?”, George asks. “A thundercoat,” Gil responds. “For a dog. When there’s a thunderstorm, and they get scared…it helps them not be scared….Well they still get scared.”
This show had no right being as hysterical as it was. I’ll remember things every so often, like how Gil found himself out in the audience at one point and saw a young boy sitting on the aisle, and asked him in his normal voice, “Are you enjoying ANY of this?” Or how Gil once worked as a stand-in for mashed potatoes ‘so they could get the lighting right for photo shoots’. How do they think of this stuff?! I can’t wait to see the taped performance (details for the airing have not yet been announced) and I hope all of you watch it too, but really there was nothing like seeing this absurdity live onstage. Whatever’s in the Lyceum next has, somehow, astonishingly, inexplicably, big shoes to fill.
Theatre:
The Lyceum Theatre gets my vote for Br’dway theatre most in need of a serious refurbishment. The only bathroom is down a staircase only reached from inside the orchestra, which is insane to begin with. But there are maybe 4 really old stalls in a bathroom lingering from the 1970s. Because of this, the theatre boasts the longest bathroom lines of any theatre. Be warned. You’d think the Shuberts could afford a little upgrade. Eye roll emoji.
Related Posts
Indecent Proposal at the Southwark is a must-see I can’t stop yelling about
I know you won’t believe me because no one ever believes me (“should I use my invisibility to fight crime, or for evil?”) but the new musical adaptation of ‘Indecent Proposal’, now at the Southwark Playhouse, is one of the strongest original works London theatre has seen since ‘Six’ ended a decade-long drought. I know that is A QUITE THE STATEMENT, but I always have suggestions (demands?) and at least two full songs to cut after every show I see, because I want them to make it the best it can possibly be, but this time? I’m like Connie the hormone monster after Jessie first screams at her mother:
Michael Conley and Dylan Schlosberg, the writer and composer respectively, have clearly worked to edit this show into a tight and riveting work. Can I just say, it is a TREAT to see something that doesn’t feel like a first draft. ‘Indecent Proposal’ passed all the criteria on my checklist that few shows concern themselves with, including: Does it seem like more than one set of eyes edited the book, and did they care if it passed the smell test? (I would honestly volunteer to edit books for free, this is how much the usual obvious lack of editing kills me.) Is the humor a race to the bottom or does it respect its audience? And crucially: was any of the storytelling actually improved by it being a musical or would it have been the same as a play? (Shockingly few musicals actually bother to address the baseline test for being a musical.) Luckily, this one passed them all. The engaging music is used well, and Shakespeare would get a big old British boner for all this drama.
What we get is an intimate, well-constructed musical adaptation of the 1988 book by Jack Engelhard (who am I kidding, we’re all thinking only of the 1993 Demi Moore movie) telling the story of Rebecca and Jonny, a down-on-their-luck-but-up-on-their-love couple living in Atlantic City back when it was seedy and decaying and full of unglamorous people (so, anytime) (but no it’s clearly still set in the late ’80s, from the fashun). They seem like decent people who need, and deserve, a bit of luck in the financial department. When Famous Rich Man Larry offers them a million dollars if he can spend the night with Rebecca, everything goes to shit.
And the shit gets interesting. The drama is more than whether they will accept or not, whether they could survive it, whether they have the footing to decline — although that is all handled with care and attention. It’s not obvious that ‘of course they should just punch the guy and call it a day!’, as a lot of us would shout. People who brush off their dilemma are fortunate enough to have never been so desperate. But surely empathetic people can feel for those at the end of their rope. You start to understand why these poor poor people would even consider it, no matter how awful it is. The interesting and nuanced drama comes from how their interactions subtly but markedly change, especially in their now-stilted communication, what they’re not saying and what they’re waiting for the other to say. Charlotte Westenra’s direction of Lizzy Connolly and Norman Bowman in their unraveling relationship is so sharp, and I adored how it seemed we were catching them in emotional moments that we weren’t supposed to see, and how often they would be powerfully Acting with their expressions even though only a tiny portion of the audience could see. I mean at one point I saw Jonny whisper “I’m sorry” into Rebecca’s ear even though I don’t anyone else could or did notice that. That is COMMITMENT TO THE PART and we love to see it. Lizzy stood out to me in that incredible revival of Sweet Charity, and her talent and presence shine here. Norman Bowman is new to me (I know I’m sorry) and even though his forking forearm veins are their own separate character (jealous) I’m obsessed with his performance. He gives this great scrappy chaos energy, kind of like Billy Crudup in ‘The Morning Show’ (he is by far the best part of that show ps) but wiry and desperate, it’s so good. (He’d be perfect to star in ‘Memphis’ given what I remember of the original star who shant be named.) These actors are giving such deep and fine-tuned performances, so inhabiting the characters that it feels intrusive to be watching this couple instead of sending them to therapy stat. Instead of being about shock value of the main concept, they help make the show this intriguing portrait of a formerly annoyingly happy couple who are now doomed, no matter what.
More than ever before (i.e. more than when I saw the movie as a literal baby), I realized that that’s the interesting drama at play: not that this jackwagon has the AUDACITY, or what’s going to happen to the couple we root for, but that Famous Rich Man’s power goes beyond the money he offers. His power is in his shameless gall in offering it in the first place. Because as soon as he opens his mouth, the damage is done. It doesn’t matter what they do next. They will suffer for what he had the impunity to suggest, because it’s just another game to him, despite it having the power to ruin normal lives. He doesn’t care. Honeybadger don’t care.
As the rich man Larry, Ako Mitchell is a decent villain, but most importantly he sounds better than I’ve ever heard him. His first song has a humorous turnaround, as he’s performing in-universe and starts off nervous, but then he’s like ‘OH GUESS WHAT, I’M AWESOME.’ I really wanted to shout ‘oh shit Ako COME THROUGH’ when he belted those velvet notes but did not, which is good, because then I would have had to kick my own ass. I’m usually against the idea of relying on diegetic songs in musicals because it often feels like a half-assed way of giving characters something to do (see, e.g., all poor Lilli Cooper had to do in Tootsie), but that’s not the case here. It works given the setting, and even without that, the structure of the musical numbers feels thoughtfully done, since the diegesis of the songs pays off in Act II when they aren’t anymore. And that long climax scene in Act II as the couple fights, with it’s motherforking STAGING as they shared inner monologues? It’s genius.
The music is pretty good, never feeling out of place or out of character. And the writer has to be from the area because I have never witnessed such attention to detail. I literally almost gasped when they said something about how it’s almost 7pm so Jeopardy! would be starting soon! Who knows that but locals! And someone was wearing a Phillies shirt! And there was a Jets shirt because I guess they knew people in New Jersey are split between the two cities’ teams. If anyone had said ‘wooder’ I would have fainted.
A lot of the ‘professional’ critics who need to get a life and/or the stick out of their butts said they were aghast (clutch them pearls!) at the idea of offering money to sleep with someone’s wife, oh my lord farquaad. They were like, ‘oh this is a horrid, horrid show, pish posh, it’s simply positively indecent.’ IT’S IN THE TITLE, NUMBNUTS. Did they have no idea going in? Or did they actively choose to be offended and make a fuss even though I thought British people HATED making a fuss. They also said Larry was too bad a guy or too unlikeable for making this offer. Is…that…not…the….POINT? Honestly, in addition to the marital strife, what grabbed me by the shoulders and shook hard was how much of this show made me scream TAX THE RICH! internally. Did they not see the part where he doesn’t pay the poor dying woman for his beer? Where he gives a homeless person a measly $2 and probably feels that’s enough charity for the year? The constant thread of noticing how easily Larry could save people’s lives was fascinating. He instead chooses to fuck with these two. He chooses VIOLENCE. He has such power and he uses it to put a disaster in motion with his words, how is that not interesting drama? There are all these poor, decent people who just need some help, like Jonny and Rebecca, and poor Annie (Jacqeline Dankworth, lovely) who needs a gd hysterectomy, and this guy could help them all and chooses not to. This show was a motherfucking ONION with its layers.
This show has accomplished something really difficult in showing a very convincing and genuine-feeling intimate portrayal of this couple and what can happen when love is not enough to survive on. That a musical version of this kind of insane story told in this climate managed to provide such a compelling marital drama is what shocked me and why I’m so effusive in my praise for it. Noah Baumbach could never.
ALSO. The accents were good. I KNOW!
West End’s Cabaret Revival Pretty Wonderful, Though Not As Life-Changing As They Say
It’s Theatre Thursday! I lost track of days again! What is time! Today’s show is the new production of Cabaret at London’s Playhouse Theatre, which marketing and publicity says has been renamed The Kit Kat Club, but unless that name lasts beyond this production it doesn’t really count. You know the Playhouse, it’s the one just past the Enbankment arches where there’s a Subway I actually ate at once.
London’s latest version of Cabaret is the hottest ticket in town, and with dern good reason. With Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee and Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles, the star power is out the wazoo and ticket prices have reflected that. It’s the most expensive show the West End has seen in a while, with little way around it. And while it is indeed a wonderful production with some great performances, it is not as life-changing or once-in-a-generation or sell-your-soul-to-see-this as some critics have fallen over themselves to proclaim. If you’ve seen a strong production of Cabaret in your life (which is likely, considering how prolific productions have been for so many decades and how strong the bones of the show are to lend itself to strong productions even without this star power), this one won’t be much different, so do not sell your soul. If you do have a ticket though, well, splendid.
Cabaret, as you know, tells the story of Sally Bowles, an unsteady but effervescent English cabaret performer in a seedy Berlin nightclub just as the Nazis rise to power. Threaded through the story of Sally and her new American writer beau and the world they’re in are scenes from the cabaret, led by an unsettling-sexy-scary-phantasm type jawn whose scenes when well-directed (which they are here) can Mean More than They Seem.
Although no one is talking about it, I was extra curious/anxious to see this show again after the recent controversy over Rare Earth Mettle, Jewish casting, and general treatment of Jewishness in London theatre. Cabaret was written by Jews and is literally about Nazis taking over and German Jews getting a glimpse of what’s to come, but some productions feel like they are taking that into account more than others in a certain ineffable way. The last Broadway revival had a vibe running through it like it acknowledged it was by and somewhat about Jews, even though it’s About an English gentile girl. This one does not, although the performance of Schultz (Elliot Levey) is very good. I think this comes back down to the difference between theatre in New York vs. London which I’ve written about a lot and don’t feel like doing today.
There are three big selling points of this production: First, the theatre itself. Yes, it has been transformed from the minute you walk in the door, which is about 20 minutes later than you thought you would because it takes motherforking forever to be let in. This is because, fortunately, staff is checking for negative LFTs (and haven’t even half the swiftness of Broadway staffers in checking patron by patron) and also, unfortunately, they are clearly slowing down the inflow of people because it’s super crowded inside, and also, fortunately, everyone who enters gets a free drink from one single bartender per route of entry (just like who designed this system guys) (oh you get either a beer, a tiny thimble of Schnapps, or a bottle of water. pretty cool). The frustration of waiting out in the cold for so long despite your ticketed ‘entry time’ being 39 minutes ago quickly fades when you enter the completely reimagined space, which has shadowy figures hither and yon playing instruments, ‘dancing’, and generally creating the vibe of a seedy old German club, I mean, I’m guessing. While it’s fun to look around and become immersed in the experience before the show begins, I’m not a huuuge fan of seedy underground clubs, or clubs in general, and I’m really not a fan of milling about with hundos of unmasked jackwagons. So, while it was cool, this whole shibang wasn’t as mind-blowingly amaaaz as everyone says. That’s just me that’s just me; everyone else was totally oohing and ahhing at the scantily clad writhers scattered about.
More importantly: the second and third selling points of this show, the two stars. Eddie Redmayne is as good as they say. He’s doing this weird hunchback-of-Notre-Dame meets sickly-Victorian-boy meets haunted-marionette thing that really works for the Emcee. His approach was different enough from the legendary Alan Cumming performance I feel like I just saw on Broadway, so there weren’t many reasons to compare the two, I think fortunately. Cumming does have that unabashed unhindered and almost uncomfortably high awareness of sexuality though, like oozing out his pores, and Eddie does not, so that makes the sessual bits (like “Two Ladies”) feel a bit awks, a bit mismatched. But he sounds great and he’s so fully committed to this pretty insane role.
The real star for me is Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles. At first I was left a little wanting when her opening number, “Don’t Tell Mama”, was more spoken than sung, which is a peeve of mine, but with every minute she keeps leveling up. Her first scene with Cliff, with all the Britishisms about what ‘one does’ and all was pitch perfect and reached new levels of hilarity that I never really got before. Her instability and her sense of self are clear without being annoying. She keeps building this character and its anxieties and fears throughout the show so that her final swansong of “Cabaret” was shockingly strong and completely untethered. Husbo thought it was a little too unhinged, but I loved it. Buckley wholly nails that vibe of Sally being a manic pixie girl but in a nightmare instead of a dream. She is wonderful.
The supporting cast is strong too, with the side plot between Fraulein Schneider (Liza Sadovy) and Herr Schultz carrying the day, in large part due to the power of Sadovy’s numbers. I like Omari Douglas but felt he was miscast as Cliff here, perhaps because he was the one onstage I could tell was capital-A Acting. But my criticisms are small, really. This production is so well directed that there are still parts that are creeping up on me, like how Eddie is dressed up as a Halloween-ish depiction of death conducting the cast during the Act I closer ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, get it, because it did? you get it. It’s always interesting to see how they can make yet another production of this oft-performed classic feel warranted, and this one was. More than anything though, it cemented that these two stars are motherforking Stars that I hope continue in theatre for a long time.
INFORMATION
Strongly recommend sitting up the dress circle. It’s cheaper (somewhat) and easier to get to the bathrooms. The first act is LONG, like an hour 40? The second is an hour.
No one wears masks because they are drinking the whole time. The assholes next to us had bottles of wine and whenever they would refill their glasses, they would cheers and clink their glasses. We were close to screaming but they always chose their moments to prevent this, like doing it at the emotional climax of ‘Maybe This Time’. I FORKING HATE YOU. A lot of people in the cabaret tables up front were obviously there to be seen, in a pathetic but unavoidable in the social media age way. There was this girl sitting right in front in like a silver and white Sexy Baby costume who was gasping and clutching her throat the whole time in wonderment so fake and performative, it was plainly a 2 1/2 hour audition for her. I hope she gets the attention she so badly craves. Anyway what I’m saying is it was a bad audience but WHATEVER.
