Theater Digest - December 21, 2019

Hi, I'm Katie! I see a lot of theater. And when I say "a lot," I mean a lot. In 2019, I saw 50 shows in L.A., 7 shows in New York, and 4 shows in London. I used to be a theater critic for LA Weekly, and I still write the occasional theater review for Stage Raw. 

These are my subjective opinions—there's a good chance you won't agree with what I think about any particular show, but if you don't think I've defended my stance on a show well enough, let me know, and I'll be happy to give more context. 

As a rule, I won't be talking about any Disney/Fox shows. Since this newsletter is geared towards people in the entertainment industry, there's a good chance I won't like a show that you or someone you know was involved in. I'm sure that you/your friend put a lot of effort into your/their work! I've been in a few shows, I know how much work goes into putting on a show. But just as you're entitled to dislike TV shows your friends worked on, I'm allowed to dislike theater you/your friends may have worked on. I try not to be vindictive, but I also do make it clear when I don't think a show is worth the price of a ticket or the time spent watching it. 

I won't be writing much/any synopsis in these blurbs, but feel free to check out other reviews for synopses! Or just check out other reviews in general! Keep theater journalism alive & well! 

Each week, I'll remove everything that’s closed, and put ** next to anything that’s new!

Worth Seeing:

**Slave Play on Broadway [NY]. This play was very controversial when it debuted off-Broadway last year, but now the conversation seems to have shifted to how good this play is. It is provocative, yes, and certainly not the kind of show that all audiences are ready for (there’s pretty explicit sexual content and the play frankly addresses how white supremacy effects white and black people today). If you are the type of person who is open and receptive to hearing about those topics, then I’d say it’s definitely necessary viewing, but if you’re the kind of white person who would react negatively to the play’s message (like this person), perhaps stay away. I can’t speak to what the experience of seeing the show would be like for a person of color, especially for a black person, but I did find this article to be a good read: NY Times: What It’s Like to See Slave Play as a Black Person
Closes Jan 19 in NY.

**Freestyle Love Supreme on Broadway [NY]. This was so fun! It’s a fully improvised rap show, with a rotating cast of three rappers, a beatboxer, and two people on keys/other instruments. There’s also a special guest at every show, and at the show I attended, the special guest was Lin-Manuel Miranda, so that was very fun! I had the hugest grin on my face the entire show—it was just so entertaining and joyful! The cast is so talented, it’s a delight. They also have a few ways to get affordable tickets, so if you don’t have an expense account and want to see the show, let me know and I can give you some tips!
Closes Jan 12 in NY.

**Dear Jack, Dear Louise at Arena Stage [DC]. Often, people ask me what would be a good show to see with their parents/grandparents. It can be difficult for me to give advice, because a lot of the stuff I like has content that parents/grandparents might not enjoy. But this show is the perfect show to see with your family! It’s an epistolary love story; the playwright, inspired by his parents’ actual courtship, tells the story of how they fell in love by writing each other letters during World War II. It’s very charming, and not a challenging show in any way, which is sometimes what you need!
Closes Dec 29 in DC.

Waitress on Broadway & the West End [NY/London]. I love this show! So much. I think it was really done a disservice by opening in the same theater season as Hamilton—any other year, it would have easily won Best Musical and plenty of other awards. This show is so good and so well done on every level! I think it’s the kind of show that will appeal to people who don’t love musicals, too. 
Based on a movie distributed by Fox Searchlight.
Closes Jan 5 in NY and July 4 in London.
My full review: http://stageraw.com/2018/08/07/waitress-theater-review/

Magic Mike Live in Las Vegas and London [Vegas/London]. Both of these shows are quite fun, and the show’s writers (none officially credited, but they seem to be Channing Tatum & Lyndsay Hailey) have done a great job of creating a non-sleazy environment and a relatable guide in the emcee. The choreography (by Alison Faulk, Teresa Espinosa, and Luke Broadlick) is also astounding. There are some differences between the Vegas and London stagings, with each being tailored to both the different performance spaces and the casts, and I have to admit, I didn’t love the emcee I saw in London (and the British audience was also pretty rude, talking throughout the show), but all in all, it’s an entertaining and empowering night.
Open-ended run in Vegas and London.

School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play on PBS [NY] (it's online, but you can only watch it if the PBS website thinks you're in the New York City area). I reallllly liked this! I liked the script, and I liked seeing it staged even more. Sometimes Important plays are not good or enjoyable; this is an Important play that is also good and enjoyable. This is a filmed version of the off-Broadway production from last year, which should be identical to what I saw when it was in L.A. last fall.
Link to watch: https://www.thirteen.org/programs/theater-close-up/school-girls-or-the-african-mean-girls-play-ocalhd/
My full review: http://stageraw.com/2018/09/11/school-girls-or-the-african-mean-girls-play-theater-review/

A mixed bag:

**Oklahoma! on Broadway [NY]. The director of this production, Daniel Fish, makes a lot of interesting choices in his staging of this classic musical. It’s certainly not a traditional revival of the show, but there’s a lot more subtext to the text than you usually see. That said, I didn’t agree with some of the staging choices, and I thought Fish was like 80% of the way to reaching real profundity, but I didn’t find that the production ultimately closed that final gap, and I was left wanting. The show has such an incredible score, and it’s a treat to hear it performed live. Not a production to bring your grandparents to perhaps, but possibly worth checking out if you have the time, money, and a love for the Golden Age of musical theater.
Closes Jan 19 in NY.

& Juliet on the West End [London]. This is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet from Juliet’s perspective, set to a catalogue of songs written by Swedish pop maestro Max Martin, including “Teenage Dream,” “I Want It That Way,” and “Since U Been Gone.” If you’re the kind of person who looks at the track listing and has sung at least 75% of the songs in the show at karaoke, you’ll probably love & Juliet. It’s very fun, but, much like a Max Martin song, it falls apart the more you try and think about it (indeed, it’s cringeworthy to hear a professional actress sing, with perfect diction, “Now that I’ve become who I really are”). The cast’s accents are an incomprehensible melange, and I’m personally not a fan of the Tumblr-meets-Ed Hardy aesthetic the show has going on (it’s certainly… a choice), but it’s the kind of show that makes it easy to forget your troubles. I did feel that the way it addressed the non-binary character in the script was pretty clueless (i.e. continually using lyrics with female pronouns to describe a character who is trying to make clear that they’re neither male nor female), and overall, the creative team is regrettably not representative of the characters they’re showcasing on stage.
Open-ended run in London.

The Wolf of Wall Street off-West End [London]. As a whole, I was underwhelmed by this production, but there are some moments of emotional truth that hit hard here. This is a site-specific immersive production that the audience walks through and participates in moments from Jordan Belfort’s life, both at Stratton Oakmont and at home (the show is based on Belfort’s books, not the Scorsese movie). Every attendee will have a different experience at the performance; in the first act, I was mostly with Jordan’s wife (Rhiannon Harper–Rafferty) and assistant (Charlotte Brown), while in the second act, I tried to infiltrate the FBI’s investigation of Belfort before watching his life spin out. The cast’s American accents are far from convincing, and the production design feels cheap, which is especially disappointing given the high ticket price, but there is something very personal about seeing these events happen up close, especially when you’ve literally spoken with the characters throughout the night. The show doesn’t idolize or condone Belfort’s actions, but it seems many in the audience didn’t get that memo, and are looking for debauchery rather than a moral tale.
Closes Jan 19 in London.
An article I wrote a while back about seeing the real Jordan Belfort speak: https://www.laweekly.com/what-i-learned-from-2014s-most-famous-ex-cons-piper-kerman-and-jordan-belfort/

The Inheritance on Broadway [NY] (reviewed in London last November). This is an extremely ambitious work—a sprawling adaptation of Howard’s End, set across six acts, seven hours, and two plays. This telling of E.M. Forster’s book, which was published in 1910, is set in the present day, and (almost) all of the characters are gay men. A recurring theme is the lost generation of gay men who died in the AIDS epidemic, and the way the play portrays this is beautiful and haunting—in particular, the last scene of the first play is one of the most stunning moments I’ve ever seen on stage. And indeed, the first four hours of this play are quite good! And I commend the writer, Matthew Lopez, and director, Stephen Daldry, for keeping things interesting for four hours, that’s no easy task. But there are still three more hours after those first four, and those become less enjoyable as the play becomes more recursive and less grounded. Overall, the work is quite good, there’s just too much of it. I would honestly say that you could probably get away with seeing just Part 1, and skip Part 2.
Open-ended run in NY.

Come From Away on Broadway & the West End [NY/London]. My expectations going into this were pretty low, and the show exceeded them, but it didn’t win me over. The story is good, but because 9/11 plays such an important role in it, it’s at odds with the musical form. Also, the songs weren’t that good. The music was passable, but the lyrics were poor, over-relying on rhyming couplets, and, failing that, leaving lone lines to land with a thud. The book (the scenes between songs) was charming enough, and the whole thing was well-directed and -acted, but I couldn’t get into it. The book, music, and lyrics are all credited to the same two writers, so it’s hard to separate out individual elements.
This is set up at eOne.
Open-ended run in NY and London.

Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway & the West End [NY & London]. I originally saw this right after it opened on Broadway, and loved it then, loved it much less the second time, but I think it’s still worth seeing once, if you can afford the ticket price. If you can’t, don’t fret too much.
This is set up at Universal.
Closed in LA (back next season); open-ended run in NY and London
My original review of the Broadway production: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/01/review-dear-evan-hansen.html
My full review of the production at the Ahmanson: http://stageraw.com/2018/10/24/dear-evan-hansen-theater-review/

Ain’t Too Proud on Broadway [NY] (reviewed at the Ahmanson last August). I wanted to like this. I mean, it’s a musical based on the Temptations! Great songs. And the musical performances are realllllly good! But the show as a whole is uneven, thanks to a lackluster book. The director, Des McAnuff, who also directed Jersey Boys and Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway, seems to be falling into a visual shtick, but it didn’t bother me too much here. 
Note: this may have undergone development between the LA and New York runs, but I still wouldn't be inclined to see it a second time.
Open-ended run in NY. 
My full review: http://stageraw.com/2018/08/28/aint-too-proud-theater-review/

Not worth it:

**Hadestown on Broadway [NY]. I know! It won the Tony for Best Musical! But I didn’t like it! Ultimately, I didn’t like the score, and since the show is pretty much entirely sung-through, it made it quite difficult for me to like the show as a whole. It seemed like the composer, Anaïs Mitchell, has difficulty writing for a male voice, because it didn’t sound like any of the three leads had a vocal part that sat in a comfortable part of their range, and Reeve Carney, who plays Orpheus, really seemed to be straining vocally when I saw it (I also didn’t care for any of his acting choices). Musically, the score was interesting, though not too hummable, and I found the lyrics to be clumsy, which is a problem as they provide the main/only storytelling mechanism.
Open-ended run in NY, coming to LA in the next year or so.

Cyrano on the West End [London]. I saw this in previews, so I’m technically not supposed to talk about it I think, but speaking broadly about the show (some specific details might change before it officially opens, but I can’t imagine the concept will change drastically), I didn’t care for it at all. James McAvoy is quite good in the title role, but the concept/direction of this production just did not work for me in the slightest. The staging can generously be described as avant-garde, with minimal props & sets, and the characters often looking off into different directions, but not at each other. Textually, I find a few couplets go a long way, and this new adaptation is nothing but couplets, which quickly proves tiresome (granted, is how the original was written, but the theatrical form has advanced significantly in the past 120-some years). I was also unfortunate enough to have terrible seats that were full-price (i.e. not discounted as “partial view,” which they definitely were—I would not recommend any seat in the Upper Circle, they all seem to have horrendous sightlines).
Closes Feb. 29 in London.

Love Actually, Live at the Wallis [LA] (Reviewed last December). This is a “For the Record” show, if you’ve ever seen one of those before; they project scenes from a beloved movie and intercut the scenes with songs that were in or adjacent to the movie at the time of its release, performed live. So it plays in 5 minute bursts: projected scene, live song, scene, song, ad infinitum (or nearly—this one clocks in at almost three hours). Fun fact, these For the Record shows were quite illegal in their early days, they never licensed any of the content they used, but I guess they’ve worked that out now. The cast here are all good singers, but due to the form of the show, they don’t have a ton to do. The show blasts you with nostalgia, and perhaps that’s effective for Love Actually superfans, but for anyone who’s less than a superfan, it will likely leave you wanting something of substance.
Closes Dec 29 in LA.

Between Riverside and Crazy at the Fountain [LA]. Nothing about this play or production really worked for me, but I recognize that I’m in the minority, because I know a lot of people liked it. Maybe the cast was off at the performance I saw—there were certainly quite a few flubbed lines, which I found surprising over a month into the run. All the actors felt like they were in productions of this play that were independent of each other; it didn’t feel cohesive. The writing was fine (the play won the Pulitzer in 2015), and while it’s great that the playwright is centering black and Latinx protagonists, it felt off to me, since the playwright is from neither community, and at times, he seems to be manipulating the characters of color in ways that reinforce the white characters’ (and potentially a white audience’s) negative perceptions of those characters.
Closes Jan. 26 in LA.

On my radar:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in London/NY/San Francisco. The time commitment and ticket cost have kept me from seeing this one so far. 
Sing Street off-Broadway

Upcoming shows I'm seeing: 

The Last Ship at the Ahmanson
What the Constitution Means to Me at the Taper Forum (tent.)

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