Theater Digest - March 5, 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!

Worth Seeing:

**Company on Broadway [NY] (reviewed in London in 2018). I’ve studied Company, Sondheim’s seminal 70s musical about a 35 year-old man who can’t/won’t find love, and I’ve never really enjoyed it, mostly because I never really cared for the main character, Bobby. But this production, which gender-swaps about half the characters (Bobby becomes Bobbie; Amy, who sings “Not Getting Married Today,” becomes Jamie, half of a same-sex couple; and the three girls Bobby dates are now three guys) really spoke to me. All the critiques of why Bobby hasn’t settled down yet, which feel facile when Bobby’s a straight man, suddenly gain new depth when they’re launched at Bobbie, given the age-old debate about whether women can really “have it all.” Not everything translates seamlessly when gender-swapped, but I really appreciated the nuance and complexity the director (Marianne Elliot, whose War Horse, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, or Angels in America you may have seen—all were on Broadway, and the first two came to the Ahmanson) brought to this new take. Elliot primarily works in plays, rather than musicals, and some of the staging choices did feel like generic musical theater blocking, but those are small quibbles, given how radically she transformed the text. And of course, Patti LuPone is a delight as Joanne, who sings “The Ladies Who Lunch.”
Open-ended run in NY.

Revenge Song at the Geffen [LA]. This is an imperfect show, definitely, but what the playwright Qui Nguyen does in his works is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before (unless you’ve seen Vietgone or its sequel, Poor Yella Rednecks). Nguyen has an incredible ear for dialogue, and the text and staging are compelling. The Geffen is an upscale theater company, so it’s fascinating to see something with such a scrappy, experimental vibe there, but I’m glad to see any large regional theater produce something that’s not a “safe choice.” Tickets can also be affordable, with $20 rush tickets available through the TodayTix app. I didn’t know too much about this play going into it, but I knew I like Nguyen’s writing, so I showed up and enjoyed the ride!
Closes Mar. 8 in LA.

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. 22 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:

**Found at IAMA Theatre [LA]. The songs in this new musical are really good, and I definitely recommend checking out the composer, Eli Bolin, if you haven’t (he also wrote the songs for John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch on Netflix). The book is pretty lackluster and predictable, but on the whole, the show is mostly enjoyable.
My full review: http://stageraw.com/2020/03/05/found-theater-review/
Closes Mar. 23 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 Play That Goes Wrong off-Broadway and on the West End [NY/London]. There are some really funny moments in this show, but it's too long, even at two hours, including intermission. I wish it had been 80 minutes, sans intermission. 
Closes in Nov. 22 in New York; open-ended run in London. 
My review: http://stageraw.com/2019/07/15/play-that-goes-wrong/

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.
Closes Mar. 15 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, coming back to LA next season

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.
Open-ended run in NY and London, coming back to LA next season
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; coming back to LA next season 
My full review: http://stageraw.com/2018/08/28/aint-too-proud-theater-review/

Not worth it:

**Escape to Margaritaville at the Dolby [LA]. While it’s not the worst show I’ve ever seen (that honor goes to Love Never Dies), this is definitely up there. It’s offensive, unrelatable, deeply unfunny, and tremendously banal. I couldn’t even care enough to truly hate it. Needless to say, at intermission, I quickly made an escape from Margaritaville—it was not worth the time and parking money I would have spent to stay.
Closes Mar. 8 in LA.

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 Apr. 11 in NY.

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.

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
Girl from the North Country on Broadway
The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway
Six on Broadway & the West End

Upcoming shows I'm seeing: 

Poor Clare at the Echo
The SpongeBob Musical at the Dolby
Hair at the LA LGBT Center
The Antipodes at the Taper

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