{"id":3943,"date":"2018-09-13T19:06:25","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T19:06:25","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2019-04-16T17:11:02","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T17:11:02","slug":"the-humans-broadway-transfer-retains-its-splendor-in-london-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laughfrodisiac.com\/2018\/09\/13\/the-humans-broadway-transfer-retains-its-splendor-in-london-html\/","title":{"rendered":"The Humans: Broadway Transfer Retains its Splendor in London"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/span>\"Picture\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about “The Humans”, which is at London’s Hampstead Theatre until October 13.<\/em>
\nAs summer plays close and the new season slowly gets into gear, London\u2019s drama scene got a much needed infusion of American greatness with the Broadway transfer of \u201cThe Humans\u201d. Stephen Karam\u2019s 2015 work about an ordinary American family and the hardships they face individually and together comes to London\u2019s Hampstead Theatre with its Broadway cast intact, along with my favorite Broadway director-that-I-once-saw-give-one-of-the-best-acting-performances-ever-in-The-Normal-Heart-but-that\u2019s-neither-here-nor-there, Joe Mantello, still at the helm. Winner of the 2016 Tony Award for Best Play, \u201cThe Humans\u201d seems like the basic story of a typical family at first, but its brilliance lies in nuance and individual interpretation that will have you contemplating it endlessly.\u200b<\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\u200bIf you are in London and might be seeing it before it closes next month, bookmark this page and read it post-show because there\u2019s gonna be hella spoilers coming. <\/p>\n

The play tells the story of the Blake family, from Scranton, Pa., coming together to celebrate Thanksgiving amid a snowstorm at their daughter Brigid\u2019s new Chinatown NYC hovel. You have the father Erik (Reed Birney, who we had just seen days before in his episodes of \u2018The Americans\u2019, which we\u2019ve now finished and can\u2019t stop talking about so hit me up if you want in on our support group), the mother Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell, always a goddamn pleasure), the grandmother Momo (Lauren Klein, who does so much with so little), the adult daughters Aimee (Cassie Beck, so perfectly capturing every nice but kind of depressed girl I know) and Brigid (Sarah Steele, so perfectly capturing every self-involved and jappy as hell non-jew I\u2019ve ever known), and Brigid\u2019s boyfriend Richard (Arian Moayad, trying to keep the peace between a family he\u2019s just meeting and sooo nailing that awkward ass-kissing that you have to do while trying to keep conversation smooth). <\/p>\n

Brigid and Richard have just moved into this dumpy basement apartment which yes has two levels which is great in a city like New York, but it also has no windows except the one with bars over it that opens onto the smoky alleyway so already it is my nightmare apartment. To make me even more anxious about their living situation, their upstairs neighbor is straight out of those \u201cfunny\u201d Upstairs Neighbors videos that imagine them as actively trying to make as much noise as possible, doing things like rolling bowling balls around and moving furniture in the middle of the night. IT\u2019S TRUE WHY ARE THEY ALL SO FORKING LOUD. And they all stomp. Anyway, every once in a while Brigid and Richard\u2019s new neighbor will create some crazy loud BANG. They\u2019re okay with it, trying to make the best of the situation, but Erik is shaken to his core with every sporadic bang or crash from upstairs. <\/p>\n

As we meet the family, we quickly learn all their shortcomings and issues through effective and efficient dialogue. Brigid, self-involved as she is, has forgotten to tell her parents about the two-story situation, which, given that Momo is in a wheelchair (and suffering from late-stage dementia), is quite the oversight. God she was S0 many people I know. Aimee, meanwhile, is falling apart at the seams, having just gotten dumped by her long-term partner and dealing with really horrible ulcerative colitis. Her \u2018win-sided phin call\u2019, as Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland would call it, to her ex-girlfriend is heart-breaking, as is the reaction of her father, secretly within earshot, who couldn\u2019t do anything to help his daughter. Letting intimate moments like this breathe is what makes this play\u2019s version of this family so special.<\/p>\n

Although Jayne Houdyshell is the epitome of warmth, the girls tend to be harder on their mother than they are on their father, who they dote on. They love everything about Erik, but they constantly make fun of Deirdre, from her ridiculous emails to her charity work to her dedication to religion. It seems a little harmless and a little unfair at the same time, although it provides for a lot of great comedy that rings so true to everyone\u2019s family. Like how Deirdre sends Aimee every single tragic LGBT news story simply because she is a lesbian, and so Brigid tells her mom, \u201cYou don\u2019t have to text her every time a lesbian kills herself!\u201d They also make fun of her forwarded emails, the kind with 12 different kinds of font used, which we all know so well. Deirdre gives it back though, like telling off the depressed Aimee, when she brings up her interest in superfoods, \u201cIf you\u2019re so miserable why are you trying to live forever?\u201d Loves it. The way they paint these characters with such an accurate, familiar brush is genius, letting us immediately identify with so many aspects so that we are invested in their problems. <\/p>\n

And the problems become apparent. There are the obvious sort like Brigid\u2019s subpar home, Aimee\u2019s mental and physical health, Momo\u2019s dementia. Then there\u2019s the fact that both daughters are failing professionally, through no real fault of their own, in a harsh specific economy and a hard general world. Like every struggling middle class family, the parents are having trouble at work too, with Deirdre getting passed over for promotions simply due to her age (and probably gender), while Erik\u2019s failings are the only ones attached to actual responsibility. When the demons haunting him come out to the family, it\u2019s shocking, since we\u2019ve seen him as the stalwart, upstanding member of this clan that the girls idolize. That he alone is responsible for hurting his family and their future the way he has changes the easygoing dynamic and leaves everyone unsure of how to proceed in their usual way. <\/p>\n

And, as the night progresses, Erik\u2019s reaction to the noise gets more extreme, as does his seeming skittishness about everything, from lights going out to pans falling off tables. This is where the play is not just a family drama but is also kind of a thriller. Erik\u2019s terror at things  going bump in the night, and the unexplained reasons for them, make it seem like at any moment an alien predator will pop out and attack, and often had me holding my breath. And it\u2019s why a lot of people think that he dies at the end, when he goes through the hallway that resembles a tunnel of the only visible light. But while I\u2019m not going to tell anyone their interpretation of plays is wrong, I didn\u2019t think he died. I think that his terror and his reactions to the supernatural-seeming elements were there to show that none of that is as scary as facing your own problems, the messes you\u2019ve created in reality. The scary neighbor who freaked him out was just doing laundry, proving that the things that can terrify you in the dark are nothing compared to dealing with your reality when things you\u2019ve done wrong come to light. What he did and what he has to contend with now are much scarier that whatever could have caused those bangs or crashes in the apartment, and that\u2019s the realization that elevates this work from a typical but great family drama to a provocative, intriguing masterpiece.<\/p>\n

INFORMATION<\/strong><\/u>
\n\u201cThe Humans\u201d is playing at London\u2019s Hampstead Theatre until October 13. It is a 90 minute one act. <\/p>\n

STAGE DOOR<\/strong><\/u>
\nThe Hampstead\u2019s stage door situation is more like a \u2018everyone convene in the lobby!\u2019 situation. The cast is very friendly although I was too embarrassed to talk to everyone or ask for pictures because I\u2019m a weirdo. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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