Theater Digest - February 13, 2020
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!
I know it’s been a little while since I sent an update! I haven’t had the chance to see many shows. I hope you’ll forgive me for this unusual update format—there are three new additions below, one from a show I saw here last summer that’s now in New York, one from a show I saw a couple years ago that’s now in New York, and one from a show I just saw tonight. Because of the long weekend and the fact that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day and you might want to go on a theater date, I’m sending a missive now, even though I’m seeing three more shows this weekend. I’ll send an update later with my thoughts on those shows.
Worth Seeing:
**Cambodian Rock Band off-Broadway [NY]. I initially saw this at South Coast Rep before I started writing my theater digest, but I still remember this production so vividly (the director and much of the cast have stayed with the production in the nearly two years since it premiered in Costa Mesa). This is an incredible, beautiful, poignant show, and Lauren Yee’s writing really shines. I’ve liked her other works King of the Yees and The Great Leap (which I wrote about last fall), but this is my favorite of everything she’s written. It’s about the Cambodian genocide, so it can’t be described as a feel-good piece, but it’s an important piece of art, and done so well.
Closes Mar. 14 in NY.
Waitress on the West End [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 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:
**The Father at the Pasadena Playhouse [LA]. I didn’t know much about this show going in, but I knew I wanted to see it based solely on the strength of Alfred Molina’s performance in Red at the Taper Forum in 2012—he was incredible, and just based on that, I was willing to see whatever he’s in. He is truly magnificent in this play, where he plays an aging man with dementia (the play has also been turned into a movie, which premiered at Sundance a few weeks ago). I’d almost say it’s worth going to see the show just for his performance and for the pervasive atmosphere director Jessica Kubzansky evokes, but unfortunately, the rest of the cast surrounding Molina does a poor job, and the sound design in between scenes caused me physical discomfort, both of which kept me from getting fully into the play. I also didn’t find Christopher Hampton’s translation of the French text to be particularly fluid; even in Molina’s skilled hands, ends of words and phrases stick out unnaturally, like jagged edges.
Closes Mar. 1 in LA.
Volta at Dodger Stadium [LA]. This is a Cirque du Soleil show; if you’ve been to a Cirque show before, you kind of know what to expect here. There are plenty of jaw-dropping, death-defying stunts, and the plot doesn’t make much sense. Volta also features the only clown I’ve ever seen with a jawline so sharp, it looks like it could give you a paper cut. I must admit, my jaw was clenched for most of the show, I was so stressed out about the cast’s well-being. This was fun, but tickets are pretty pricey.
Closes Mar. 8 in LA; moves to Orange County after that.
& 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 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:
**Dana H off-Broadway [NY] (reviewed at the Kirk Douglas last summer—this is a rolling premiere of the same production in LA, Chicago, and NY). I can't in good conscience recommend this play, though I'm sure some will appreciate it. It is a play that is good, with a very strong and compelling performance at its center, but I felt the play was exploitative and it made me very uncomfortable. It's about the playwright's mother and a deeply traumatic incident she underwent over 20 years ago. What she experienced was horrific, but as good as the actress playing Lucas Hnath's mother is, I felt like I was eavesdropping on a conversation I shouldn't have heard. Because theater at a large theater companyy is, by nature, both iterative (in that there are typically eight performances a week) and commercial (most tickets cost at least $40 each), to me, it felt like Hnath was exploiting his mother's trauma, and in so doing, cheapens it. I'm sure this show will provoke a variety of reactions, and I well may be in the minority feeling this way, but it was a play that made me deeply unsettled on a variety of levels.
Closes Mar. 22 in NY.
The Last Ship at the Ahmanson [LA]. I didn’t catch this in New York, and I guess it’s been revised since that run, but I didn’t care for this at all. Between the ensemble’s thick Northern English accents and really poor sound design, I could barely follow what was being said, especially when anyone was singing. When I could tell what was going on, I found the plot hard to follow, as it seems to require more than a passing familiarity with Margaret Thatcher’s policies as Prime Minister—not something I learned in school, or was alive to experience.
Closes Feb. 16 in LA.
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.
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:
Vampire Song by Qui Nguyen at the Geffen
She Loves Me at South Coast Rep
Kinky Boots directed by John Tartaglia at 3-D Theatricals
Found at the LATC
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