January 19, 2023
I Can’t Even Deal With: “Garage Sale Mystery” on TV
I can’t really express the fluctuating emotions I am feeling now that I know this exists:
No no don’t touch that…dollhouse furniture?
I’m glad Aunt Becky is working since getting off that soft-core porn from the CW, the 90210 reboot. But did she had to pick the TV movie with the most hilariously awful title and premise in recent history for her comeback?
Hallmark Channel’s new movie, “Garage Sale Mystery”, is already poised to be the network’s greatest achievement this century. It’s about a woman (Lori Loughlin/Rebecca Donaldson/Aunt Becky Katsopolis) who is really good at antiquing and buying other people’s crap when they throw this crap on the front lawns of their houses and expect passersby to pay them money in exchange for said crap, which the passersby then pick up with their hands and carry into their own houses. Or, what we Americans call ‘garage sales’.
Hallmark Channel’s new movie, “Garage Sale Mystery”, is already poised to be the network’s greatest achievement this century. It’s about a woman (Lori Loughlin/Rebecca Donaldson/Aunt Becky Katsopolis) who is really good at antiquing and buying other people’s crap when they throw this crap on the front lawns of their houses and expect passersby to pay them money in exchange for said crap, which the passersby then pick up with their hands and carry into their own houses. Or, what we Americans call ‘garage sales’.
So, Aunt Becky, in her antiquing glory, becomes Detective Aunt Becky when a string of burglaries occur in a neighborhood that really loves the aforementioned good-natured exchange of crap. She somehow puts her skills at buying crap to use in detectiving who the burglar is. This is from the official website’s description of the movie:
“As she gets closer to the truth, Jennifer learns that crime solving can be far more dangerous than any garage sale.”
HAHAH. I mean, it doesn’t really get any better than that. Because we all know garage sales are extreeeemely dangerous. That’s what town curfews are really for – to stop people from the danger of meeting their neighbors and effectively digging through their trash. Gotta protect people’s secrets, you know! I wonder if that’s the message Hallmark has been going for all these years, with their impressive litany of made-for-mockery titles. Maybe all Hallmark movies form one sophisticated case for strengthened privacy laws.
“As she gets closer to the truth, Jennifer learns that crime solving can be far more dangerous than any garage sale.”
HAHAH. I mean, it doesn’t really get any better than that. Because we all know garage sales are extreeeemely dangerous. That’s what town curfews are really for – to stop people from the danger of meeting their neighbors and effectively digging through their trash. Gotta protect people’s secrets, you know! I wonder if that’s the message Hallmark has been going for all these years, with their impressive litany of made-for-mockery titles. Maybe all Hallmark movies form one sophisticated case for strengthened privacy laws.
“As she gets closer to the truth, Jennifer learns that crime solving can be far more dangerous than any garage sale.”
It is accurate, I guess. Solving crime can be more dangerous than a garage sale; it’s just not guaranteed to be. We all know garage sales are up there with walking on beds of nails and eating raw produce in Asia. Hiiiighway toooo the danger zone.
Anyway, I cannot wait to see this movie, and I’m sure you feel the same way. I hope it’s good, for Aunt Becky’s sake. Just look at how happy and optimistic she looks at left! But she doesn’t even realize it’s all gonna come crashing down. I have a feeling this film is going to epic. Stay tuned; we are totally going to live-blog this. Oh crap, it’s airing on Yom Kippur. Ok, someone remind me to DVR this anti-Semitic piece of wonderment.
Anyway, I cannot wait to see this movie, and I’m sure you feel the same way. I hope it’s good, for Aunt Becky’s sake. Just look at how happy and optimistic she looks at left! But she doesn’t even realize it’s all gonna come crashing down. I have a feeling this film is going to epic. Stay tuned; we are totally going to live-blog this. Oh crap, it’s airing on Yom Kippur. Ok, someone remind me to DVR this anti-Semitic piece of wonderment.
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Broadway’s “Dear Evan Hansen”: Why Dehydration from Crying is Possible but Worth It
I have never put off writing about a show as long as I put this one off. Long-time readers know that I have the most fun writing about bad shows, or at least shows with elements of the ridiculous in them. It’s so much easier! And funnier! But shows that are good are harder. Shows that are great? Really hard. Shows that are so amazing that they rip your heart out and replace it with a new heart composed of their music and brilliance and all of the feels plus new feels? Rill hard guys. And that’s what “Dear Evan Hansen” is, and what it did to me, both off and on Broadway. Although we saw it on Broadway just a few months ago, I just realized I saw the Second Stage production on Mother’s Day weekend, so a full year ago. So this is overdue, sorries.
Not a day has gone by when I don’t think about this show (or listen to the cast album). If you don’t know me well enough personally to know my schej, know that I write about maybe 1/3 of the shows I actually see. So I see a lot. And “Dear Evan Hansen” is one of the best original shows I have seen. Just, period. At first I was going to say ‘of the past few years’ – which is pretty strong company already because that time frame includes “Hamilton”, which you are aware is beyond amazing – but that if you offered me free tickets to a show to go see a thousand more times, I would pick “Evan”, partly because I have dry eye syndrome and need to make my eyes water a lot so ya know job done but mostly because I’d wanna be in Hamilton so ya know technicalities &c. But upon further reflection I a) get stage fright so no but b) “Evan” really is one of the best, just period (or full stop), that I’ve ever seen. It’s moving and surprising, pulling off more and more insight and nuance when you think it’s done as much as it can in that regard. When I first saw it, I didn’t expect to sob uncontrollably at an off-Broadway show about a teenage boy. That’s pretty much all I knew about it going in, that it was about a teenage boy, which is hilarious but not recommended – you should know that it can be grave and that you gon cry. Apparently same went for the middle-aged men next to me who were dragged by their kids and wives to the theatre, and the 6-year-old girl behind me who needed a tranquilizer and for her idiot parents to remind her that it’s just make-believe as she had a panic attack. (Seriously, parents, do your research before bringing children to a movie or a show or anything. NOT EVERYTHING IS OKAY FOR THEM ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S ABOUT CHILDREN COMMITTING SUICIDE.)
Another thing readers will know is that I traffic in spoilers. Ah ‘ont kerr. Shows, movies, I usually ‘review’ by explaining and commenting on the plot so caveat emptor. But an important part of the “Evan” experience is learning the story as it unfolds. Being spoiled and not getting to experience the story as it’s told and as secrets are revealed and as surprises unfurl would be such a shame. By this point, I’m sure it’s impossible to have avoided all information as I did (unwittingly) a year ago, before this show was super duper popular. So I’m going to try my best to talk about the show without doing my usual spoiling spree. I am going to assume that you probably know it’s about a teenager committing suicide and how it affects those in his life (and not in his life) in the aftermath, both because I think it’s common knowledge in the show’s advertising and because I kind of already mentioned that above. Despite how awkward I think some of this will read, it’s worth it if anyone reading this has the chance to see the show. It’s so so special to me and I want you to gasp at least once when you see it or at the very least not be the person responsible for you not gasping.
“Dear Evan Hansen” tells the story of a high school student who suffers with some serious anxiety and has no real friends. He likes trees? and worked at a national park or some such maybe over the summer? where he fell from a tree and broke his arm (hence the show’s logo). He’s an outcast who feels invisible, as he tells us in his big song, the best song in the show on most days, “Waving Through a Window”. This is Evan’s first big song in the show, and it’s a beautiful, glorious beast. Ben Platt, Tony-worthy if there ever was such a thing, has to sing this monster of a song as the very first musical thing he does in the show. Like, it opens, he has a few short book scenes, and then the first thing he sings is this confession about how he feels like his whole life is being lived from the outside looking in, and like he’ll never be able to do anything about it. His performance bursts at the seams. It’s raw and wrenching and unmatched in terms of pure unadulterated vulnerability yet vocal insanity. That is until of course his next big song and then the same goes for that and then the next one after that and so on. He can sang, is what I’m saying, and he gives everything he has to every word he sings that there’s really no medical explanation for how he regenerates. Ben’s physical commitment to this anxious, awkward character is so complete that you will forget that he’s acting. This full embodiment, with all the nervous tics and quirks and vocalisms, will convince some that Ben isn’t acting at all, that this has to be just how the actor is in real life, because it seems so natural and so impossible to fake, but he’s just an incredible actor, which you wouldn’t know if you just saw him do some cute magic in “Pitch Perfect” but you would know if you saw him in “The Book of Mormon”, playing Elder Cunningham even though he is skinny.
Evan lives with his mom Heidi, who works tirelessly as a nurse and goes to school at night and tries to take care of her son, so despite her meaning well, she isn’t aware of what’s going on with him. He also, like most teenagers, won’t be open and tell her. She tries to get Evan to take his anxiety meds and do what his therapist wants him to, but there’s only so much she can do when he won’t tell her that anything is wrong. Not that that excuses her lack of awareness, but it does explain it. As Heidi, Rachel Bay Jones is a force. She’s a favorite of mine because she took the usually nothing role of Catherine in “Pippin” and made it one of the funniest performances ever. She’s a brilliant comedian who should have won a Tony for that. Seriously my two biggest Tony Gripes™ are 1) Raul Esparza shattering the earth in “Company” but losing to David Hyde Pierce for I don’t know, Frasier? I mean I saw the show DHP won for and he was great as usual but come on, and 2) Andrea Martin winning for the same show when Rachel should have but wasn’t even nominated. Luckily, she is this year, for this powerhouse performance of a single mother trying to do her best. And it’s so impressive to see Rachel do a completely dramatic performance, without her ridiculous comedic skills to rely on. She breaks your heart reminding you that it’s not just kids who can feel invisible. I dare you not to do that awfully embarrassing hyperventilating crying when she sings her big wrenching song “So Big/So Small”. JFC.
So, plot without spoilers, hmm. Very early in the school year, one of the characters commits suicide, and the show is about how the boy’s family and classmates, and others, deal with it. A tiny-seeming misunderstanding, one that could be cleared up with the simple phrase ‘oh that’s not actually what you think it is’, gives Evan a chance to at least pretend that his life has more meaning than it does, by fabricating a relationship with the boy in order to help the family grieve. His intention is debatable, because although he’s obviously going along with the lie in order to help the mourning family (‘oh look our outcast son had a friend, and he was a good friend back to him and not a total shit like we thought’), Evan continues the charade because it gives him purpose, and popularity, and the knowledge of what it’s like to be cared for. Which you can’t really blame him for! It’s an awful no good thing to lie about and ohhh how it growwws but this kid is feeling seen for the first time, and that’s hard to give up. The biggest problem people seem to have with this show is that they’re mad Evan gets away with so much, that he doesn’t get really punished for his lies, and that he’s doing a terrible thing, which makes him a terrible person. First of all, doing a dumb thing doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. And he does indeed suffer for it (have you SEEN Ben perform “Words Fail”? He literally is pouring snot out of his face), so I don’t know what other kind of punishment people want to see. Not letting him get into any college? What? He’s lying for the benefit of these people in mourning. What he does, when you consider how it affects them, is beautiful in the short-term. It’s confusing, because yes overall it’s terrible to be lying about it and that makes it hard to grapple with because the immediacy of how it soothes their aching souls is also beautiful. It’s a bit of comfort he’s providing when nothing else would do it. You see the stories and lies start taking shape slowly but deliberately, and it all happens so naturally that you’re kind of right there with Evan saying ‘oh just make something up to make them stop crying!’ And of course it gets out of hand, and it’s wrong from the beginning, but still it helped give them something to actually mourn for a little and you can’t fault him for that. The reasons for his lies get even more complicated when we learn how much Evan needed this too, because even just pretending that he mattered to someone brings him a lot of comfort. The criticism misses the point of what’s driving Evan to continue the fabrication, the reasons which are perfectly laid out in “For Forever”, the first time Evan starts lying to the grieving family about his friendship with the son. He tells them that their son was there when he broke his arm, saying “I’m on the ground/my arm goes numb/I look around/and I see him coming to get me/he’s coming to get me/and everything’s okay”. The truth is that Evan fell, all alone, and was on the ground for a while before anyone found him, alone with his misery (and the truth, we learn, surrounding his fall). The way Ben’s voice breaks when he says these lines, it’s obvious how badly he wishes it were true that a friend actually was there to find him when he was hurt. It’s heartbreaking and so clear at that point that Evan is doing this because he needs it just as much as the family does. And his game of pretend ends up giving his life and his relationships a lot more actual meaning than they otherwise would have had.
As the grieving mother, Jennifer Laura Thompson is a wreck most of her onstage time, and I don’t know how she does it. Crying the whole time is understandable, of course, that goes without saying, and Jennifer manages to bring you along with her the entire time as she sobs and then tries to smile and listens to stories and then sobs again. She doesn’t get much more to do than sob, but still she’s wonderful. She’s so perfect as a suburban white middle-class lady too, opening the show in the morning in her stretchy gym pants. We learn that, like all suburban white middle-class ladies worth their salt, she’s gone through periods of various trendy lifestyles to give her life some purpose or maybe just to be trendy, from being Buddhist last year (obvs) to one year ‘not eating anything that came from animals’. It’s too bad that one didn’t stick but honestly, this is the first vegan joke in recent pop culture that wasn’t very very lame, so bravo. As the father, Michael Park returns to Broadway (he originated the role) after John Dossett played the role off Broadway, and both were very good in a not very fleshed out role. (Honestly I didn’t know the actor had changed I’m sorry? Older white men I mean.) He’s a very stereotypical white man with money, talking about how stressed he is at work and how disappointed he always was in his no-good no-ambition son that was nothing like he was ‘supposed’ to be. His character does get more attention in the Act II opener when he teaches Evan how “To Break in a Glove” and gives Evan the baseball mitt that his son never touched. It’s heartwarming, but a little boring and slow – but you don’t even care that this is breaking my #1 show structure rule (you need a great rousing Act II opener to bring everyone back into the story after intermission) because you need a break from everything that came before. A 20 minute intermission is not long enough to get your heart rate back to normal and your head to stop whirling from all the painful crying before the break. So this song, although the weakest in the show, is fine but more importantly necessary because you need a little bit of an emotional break. And the fact that a scene of a father who lost his son teaching another boy whose father left him about baseball with the dead son’s glove is considered an emotional break (relatively) shows just how much you gon cry.
As Zoe, the cute girl that Evan has had a crush on forever, Laura Dreyfuss is wonderful. Her unique voice is really cool and a little gravelly despite her youth but shockingly strong at times, and she is completely believable in everything her character does. It adds another level to both the inappropriateness and the inexorableness of Evan’s lies that they bring him closer to his dream girl. I love her voice on “Requiem”, her refusal to mourn the brother she thought she hated. It’s such a glorious song, despite its melancholy, showing how the different family members react to the death, with the mother being optimistic that Evan’s stories (and fabricated emails) prove that she was right to always have faith in her son, and the father angry that the son disappointed him yet again. I also love the lyric Zoe sings “When the villains fall/the kingdom never weeps/no one lights a candle to remember” because this is soooo exactly “No One Mourns the Wicked” from “Wicked” (“No one mourns the wicked/no one cries they won’t return/no one lays a lily on their grave” &c) and I kind of crack up through the tears when I remember this.
As Connor, Mike Faist is sneakily good, so sneaky that his much-deserved Tony nomination was a huge but very welcome surprise to literally everyone, even the voters I bet. In his intense interactions with Evan after the suicide, Mike manages to maintain the true essence of Connor while still conveying that he’s being shaped by Evan, that he’s really a part of Evan’s imagination. His song “Disappear” is really moving when you look at it from both forms of his character, both the real Connor and the one that is a part of Evan. He’s also freaking hilarious in “Sincerely, Me”, the most fun song of the show and thank god an actual laugh-out-loud scene. This is in large part due to the comic relief Jared, played by Will Roland as every jewish boy who ever went to my overnight camp. When Evan tries to talk to him in school, Jared reminds him that they are just ‘family friends’, which is so suburban jewish I can’t stand it. His timing on his hilarious lines is the funniest part of the show, and so necessary because of the aforementioned floods of tears. He and Kristolyn Lloyd as Alana round out the cast as Evan’s main school friends, Alana being a very stereotypical overachiever who brags about all the various clubs she is president of. As a result, it is obvious that she would be ‘co-president’ with Evan when they form a suicide awareness group, and you accept it as just another thing she wants to put on her college applications. But of course, like everything in this show, it ends up meaning more, because of course, like everyone in this show, Alana too struggles with feeling invisible and like her life doesn’t matter, as does Jared, whose sarcastic and endless humor serves as his armor against the world. We don’t even consider that these two smaller characters would have the same problems and journey of self-reflection as our main character, but that’s the entire point of the show, that everyone has these same heartaches and worries and everyone feels unimportant at times. It’s the most universal, uniting show ever.
I know you’re probably like JFC this sounds like the saddest most miserable stuff you could sit through for 2 ½ hours. And it isssss but it’s also the most incredible and moving and important show in a while. I am still in awe in every way. The set, even. I loved the brilliant use of projections, usually and deservedly maligned for being a cheap and cheap-looking way to enhance scenery. But here, instead, it nails the modern age by using the projections almost exclusively to show social media and other internet usage. When Evan’s story begins to spread and then goes viral, the reactions of people on the internet across social media stream on the walls and pillars of the stage. That connection to how our lives really look today, I can’t get over how brilliant it is. Then, the book is so original, finally, a really truly original modern story for today, and the score is one of my favorites. That’s no surprise considering it’s from one of my favorite composing teams, Pasek & Paul, fresh off their Oscar-winning work on “La La Land”. It seems like “The Great Comet” is picking up Tony awards steam and so they might not win a Tony this year too, but they really should. This score will rip your heart out like I said before, but it will put it back together very carefully too. The story is inspired by Benj Pasek’s experience in high school, which adds more depth to the story’s real-life parallels and just ugh it’s so sad. It’s hard because everyone has lost or knows someone who lost someone in this way, and it seems crazy to sit in a dark theatre remembering your sadness. But the show tells us how important it is to learn from heartache and try to help even one person feel better in their skin. Yes, the big songs of the show, like “You Will Be Found”, will make you sob, but that’s because it’s mostly uplifting and comforting, not just sad. It’s such a great song. I really can’t get over how important this show is for kids, and adults, today, when everything seems so cruel and unfair and horrible. It’ll crush you and dehydrate you from crying, yes, but then it’s like a rainbow after the storm when it seems like everything is going to be okay. There’s a sense of relief that comes with all the sadness, especially with “You Will Be Found” and the Finale, oh god that finale. I wish I could tell you to go see it now, heck I wish I could go see it again this weekend, but it’s sold out for a while (yay!!). Buy tickets for when you can though; you’ll be glad you did. And start listening to the cast album. BSE.
Another thing readers will know is that I traffic in spoilers. Ah ‘ont kerr. Shows, movies, I usually ‘review’ by explaining and commenting on the plot so caveat emptor. But an important part of the “Evan” experience is learning the story as it unfolds. Being spoiled and not getting to experience the story as it’s told and as secrets are revealed and as surprises unfurl would be such a shame. By this point, I’m sure it’s impossible to have avoided all information as I did (unwittingly) a year ago, before this show was super duper popular. So I’m going to try my best to talk about the show without doing my usual spoiling spree. I am going to assume that you probably know it’s about a teenager committing suicide and how it affects those in his life (and not in his life) in the aftermath, both because I think it’s common knowledge in the show’s advertising and because I kind of already mentioned that above. Despite how awkward I think some of this will read, it’s worth it if anyone reading this has the chance to see the show. It’s so so special to me and I want you to gasp at least once when you see it or at the very least not be the person responsible for you not gasping.
“Dear Evan Hansen” tells the story of a high school student who suffers with some serious anxiety and has no real friends. He likes trees? and worked at a national park or some such maybe over the summer? where he fell from a tree and broke his arm (hence the show’s logo). He’s an outcast who feels invisible, as he tells us in his big song, the best song in the show on most days, “Waving Through a Window”. This is Evan’s first big song in the show, and it’s a beautiful, glorious beast. Ben Platt, Tony-worthy if there ever was such a thing, has to sing this monster of a song as the very first musical thing he does in the show. Like, it opens, he has a few short book scenes, and then the first thing he sings is this confession about how he feels like his whole life is being lived from the outside looking in, and like he’ll never be able to do anything about it. His performance bursts at the seams. It’s raw and wrenching and unmatched in terms of pure unadulterated vulnerability yet vocal insanity. That is until of course his next big song and then the same goes for that and then the next one after that and so on. He can sang, is what I’m saying, and he gives everything he has to every word he sings that there’s really no medical explanation for how he regenerates. Ben’s physical commitment to this anxious, awkward character is so complete that you will forget that he’s acting. This full embodiment, with all the nervous tics and quirks and vocalisms, will convince some that Ben isn’t acting at all, that this has to be just how the actor is in real life, because it seems so natural and so impossible to fake, but he’s just an incredible actor, which you wouldn’t know if you just saw him do some cute magic in “Pitch Perfect” but you would know if you saw him in “The Book of Mormon”, playing Elder Cunningham even though he is skinny.
Evan lives with his mom Heidi, who works tirelessly as a nurse and goes to school at night and tries to take care of her son, so despite her meaning well, she isn’t aware of what’s going on with him. He also, like most teenagers, won’t be open and tell her. She tries to get Evan to take his anxiety meds and do what his therapist wants him to, but there’s only so much she can do when he won’t tell her that anything is wrong. Not that that excuses her lack of awareness, but it does explain it. As Heidi, Rachel Bay Jones is a force. She’s a favorite of mine because she took the usually nothing role of Catherine in “Pippin” and made it one of the funniest performances ever. She’s a brilliant comedian who should have won a Tony for that. Seriously my two biggest Tony Gripes™ are 1) Raul Esparza shattering the earth in “Company” but losing to David Hyde Pierce for I don’t know, Frasier? I mean I saw the show DHP won for and he was great as usual but come on, and 2) Andrea Martin winning for the same show when Rachel should have but wasn’t even nominated. Luckily, she is this year, for this powerhouse performance of a single mother trying to do her best. And it’s so impressive to see Rachel do a completely dramatic performance, without her ridiculous comedic skills to rely on. She breaks your heart reminding you that it’s not just kids who can feel invisible. I dare you not to do that awfully embarrassing hyperventilating crying when she sings her big wrenching song “So Big/So Small”. JFC.
So, plot without spoilers, hmm. Very early in the school year, one of the characters commits suicide, and the show is about how the boy’s family and classmates, and others, deal with it. A tiny-seeming misunderstanding, one that could be cleared up with the simple phrase ‘oh that’s not actually what you think it is’, gives Evan a chance to at least pretend that his life has more meaning than it does, by fabricating a relationship with the boy in order to help the family grieve. His intention is debatable, because although he’s obviously going along with the lie in order to help the mourning family (‘oh look our outcast son had a friend, and he was a good friend back to him and not a total shit like we thought’), Evan continues the charade because it gives him purpose, and popularity, and the knowledge of what it’s like to be cared for. Which you can’t really blame him for! It’s an awful no good thing to lie about and ohhh how it growwws but this kid is feeling seen for the first time, and that’s hard to give up. The biggest problem people seem to have with this show is that they’re mad Evan gets away with so much, that he doesn’t get really punished for his lies, and that he’s doing a terrible thing, which makes him a terrible person. First of all, doing a dumb thing doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. And he does indeed suffer for it (have you SEEN Ben perform “Words Fail”? He literally is pouring snot out of his face), so I don’t know what other kind of punishment people want to see. Not letting him get into any college? What? He’s lying for the benefit of these people in mourning. What he does, when you consider how it affects them, is beautiful in the short-term. It’s confusing, because yes overall it’s terrible to be lying about it and that makes it hard to grapple with because the immediacy of how it soothes their aching souls is also beautiful. It’s a bit of comfort he’s providing when nothing else would do it. You see the stories and lies start taking shape slowly but deliberately, and it all happens so naturally that you’re kind of right there with Evan saying ‘oh just make something up to make them stop crying!’ And of course it gets out of hand, and it’s wrong from the beginning, but still it helped give them something to actually mourn for a little and you can’t fault him for that. The reasons for his lies get even more complicated when we learn how much Evan needed this too, because even just pretending that he mattered to someone brings him a lot of comfort. The criticism misses the point of what’s driving Evan to continue the fabrication, the reasons which are perfectly laid out in “For Forever”, the first time Evan starts lying to the grieving family about his friendship with the son. He tells them that their son was there when he broke his arm, saying “I’m on the ground/my arm goes numb/I look around/and I see him coming to get me/he’s coming to get me/and everything’s okay”. The truth is that Evan fell, all alone, and was on the ground for a while before anyone found him, alone with his misery (and the truth, we learn, surrounding his fall). The way Ben’s voice breaks when he says these lines, it’s obvious how badly he wishes it were true that a friend actually was there to find him when he was hurt. It’s heartbreaking and so clear at that point that Evan is doing this because he needs it just as much as the family does. And his game of pretend ends up giving his life and his relationships a lot more actual meaning than they otherwise would have had.
As the grieving mother, Jennifer Laura Thompson is a wreck most of her onstage time, and I don’t know how she does it. Crying the whole time is understandable, of course, that goes without saying, and Jennifer manages to bring you along with her the entire time as she sobs and then tries to smile and listens to stories and then sobs again. She doesn’t get much more to do than sob, but still she’s wonderful. She’s so perfect as a suburban white middle-class lady too, opening the show in the morning in her stretchy gym pants. We learn that, like all suburban white middle-class ladies worth their salt, she’s gone through periods of various trendy lifestyles to give her life some purpose or maybe just to be trendy, from being Buddhist last year (obvs) to one year ‘not eating anything that came from animals’. It’s too bad that one didn’t stick but honestly, this is the first vegan joke in recent pop culture that wasn’t very very lame, so bravo. As the father, Michael Park returns to Broadway (he originated the role) after John Dossett played the role off Broadway, and both were very good in a not very fleshed out role. (Honestly I didn’t know the actor had changed I’m sorry? Older white men I mean.) He’s a very stereotypical white man with money, talking about how stressed he is at work and how disappointed he always was in his no-good no-ambition son that was nothing like he was ‘supposed’ to be. His character does get more attention in the Act II opener when he teaches Evan how “To Break in a Glove” and gives Evan the baseball mitt that his son never touched. It’s heartwarming, but a little boring and slow – but you don’t even care that this is breaking my #1 show structure rule (you need a great rousing Act II opener to bring everyone back into the story after intermission) because you need a break from everything that came before. A 20 minute intermission is not long enough to get your heart rate back to normal and your head to stop whirling from all the painful crying before the break. So this song, although the weakest in the show, is fine but more importantly necessary because you need a little bit of an emotional break. And the fact that a scene of a father who lost his son teaching another boy whose father left him about baseball with the dead son’s glove is considered an emotional break (relatively) shows just how much you gon cry.
As Zoe, the cute girl that Evan has had a crush on forever, Laura Dreyfuss is wonderful. Her unique voice is really cool and a little gravelly despite her youth but shockingly strong at times, and she is completely believable in everything her character does. It adds another level to both the inappropriateness and the inexorableness of Evan’s lies that they bring him closer to his dream girl. I love her voice on “Requiem”, her refusal to mourn the brother she thought she hated. It’s such a glorious song, despite its melancholy, showing how the different family members react to the death, with the mother being optimistic that Evan’s stories (and fabricated emails) prove that she was right to always have faith in her son, and the father angry that the son disappointed him yet again. I also love the lyric Zoe sings “When the villains fall/the kingdom never weeps/no one lights a candle to remember” because this is soooo exactly “No One Mourns the Wicked” from “Wicked” (“No one mourns the wicked/no one cries they won’t return/no one lays a lily on their grave” &c) and I kind of crack up through the tears when I remember this.
As Connor, Mike Faist is sneakily good, so sneaky that his much-deserved Tony nomination was a huge but very welcome surprise to literally everyone, even the voters I bet. In his intense interactions with Evan after the suicide, Mike manages to maintain the true essence of Connor while still conveying that he’s being shaped by Evan, that he’s really a part of Evan’s imagination. His song “Disappear” is really moving when you look at it from both forms of his character, both the real Connor and the one that is a part of Evan. He’s also freaking hilarious in “Sincerely, Me”, the most fun song of the show and thank god an actual laugh-out-loud scene. This is in large part due to the comic relief Jared, played by Will Roland as every jewish boy who ever went to my overnight camp. When Evan tries to talk to him in school, Jared reminds him that they are just ‘family friends’, which is so suburban jewish I can’t stand it. His timing on his hilarious lines is the funniest part of the show, and so necessary because of the aforementioned floods of tears. He and Kristolyn Lloyd as Alana round out the cast as Evan’s main school friends, Alana being a very stereotypical overachiever who brags about all the various clubs she is president of. As a result, it is obvious that she would be ‘co-president’ with Evan when they form a suicide awareness group, and you accept it as just another thing she wants to put on her college applications. But of course, like everything in this show, it ends up meaning more, because of course, like everyone in this show, Alana too struggles with feeling invisible and like her life doesn’t matter, as does Jared, whose sarcastic and endless humor serves as his armor against the world. We don’t even consider that these two smaller characters would have the same problems and journey of self-reflection as our main character, but that’s the entire point of the show, that everyone has these same heartaches and worries and everyone feels unimportant at times. It’s the most universal, uniting show ever.
I know you’re probably like JFC this sounds like the saddest most miserable stuff you could sit through for 2 ½ hours. And it isssss but it’s also the most incredible and moving and important show in a while. I am still in awe in every way. The set, even. I loved the brilliant use of projections, usually and deservedly maligned for being a cheap and cheap-looking way to enhance scenery. But here, instead, it nails the modern age by using the projections almost exclusively to show social media and other internet usage. When Evan’s story begins to spread and then goes viral, the reactions of people on the internet across social media stream on the walls and pillars of the stage. That connection to how our lives really look today, I can’t get over how brilliant it is. Then, the book is so original, finally, a really truly original modern story for today, and the score is one of my favorites. That’s no surprise considering it’s from one of my favorite composing teams, Pasek & Paul, fresh off their Oscar-winning work on “La La Land”. It seems like “The Great Comet” is picking up Tony awards steam and so they might not win a Tony this year too, but they really should. This score will rip your heart out like I said before, but it will put it back together very carefully too. The story is inspired by Benj Pasek’s experience in high school, which adds more depth to the story’s real-life parallels and just ugh it’s so sad. It’s hard because everyone has lost or knows someone who lost someone in this way, and it seems crazy to sit in a dark theatre remembering your sadness. But the show tells us how important it is to learn from heartache and try to help even one person feel better in their skin. Yes, the big songs of the show, like “You Will Be Found”, will make you sob, but that’s because it’s mostly uplifting and comforting, not just sad. It’s such a great song. I really can’t get over how important this show is for kids, and adults, today, when everything seems so cruel and unfair and horrible. It’ll crush you and dehydrate you from crying, yes, but then it’s like a rainbow after the storm when it seems like everything is going to be okay. There’s a sense of relief that comes with all the sadness, especially with “You Will Be Found” and the Finale, oh god that finale. I wish I could tell you to go see it now, heck I wish I could go see it again this weekend, but it’s sold out for a while (yay!!). Buy tickets for when you can though; you’ll be glad you did. And start listening to the cast album. BSE.
Tony Awards 2014: What Is This, The Golden Globes??
The Tony Awards are here! You guys remember how balls-out crazy I got for the Oscars? The Tonys are like 100 times more important to me. And to the world. Because THEATRE! Music! Dancing! Hugh Jackman and/or Neil Patrick Harris without fail every year! & this year, both of them (Jackman hosting, NPH 100% winning)! But the Tonys are not all kick lines and high Es and people who say ‘the-ah-tuh’. No, there’s shit going down.
So here’s the 411 on Mr. Tonys. We all know it’s called show business for a reason, but recently the actual reach of poisonous business interests has been made clear to me. Due to the Tony voting body comprising many road producers (read: for those tour companies that come to your little podunk town), NYC producers, and other kinds of people who are like the oil barons of the theatre, the Tonys are really a way for people who want to make more money to ensure that they have an easier time at it. Meaning, often the shows that win awards are the shows that are the most bankable for the masses, because having “Tony-award winning” in front of a show’s title will draw more crowds. This means that maybe the best, most deserving shows (*cough* Bridges of Madison County *cough*) of the season will be ignored in favor of shows like “Aladdin” and “Beautiful” that will likely make the most money. It’s not surprising that the Tonys are like ALL other awards, in that the best isn’t necessarily what wins, but it’s sad nonetheless.
Regardless, I hold out hope that, even if the nominations never get it really right, the awards will at least produce some justice. We can all rant that awards mean nothing (because they really don’t), but everyone still wants to win! So below are my thoughts on the main categories, what I think will go down, what I hope will occur, and what I can’t understand. Tune in to CBS on Sunday, June 8 at 8pm to see how I do. And more importantly, how Hugh Jackman doooo.
Regardless, I hold out hope that, even if the nominations never get it really right, the awards will at least produce some justice. We can all rant that awards mean nothing (because they really don’t), but everyone still wants to win! So below are my thoughts on the main categories, what I think will go down, what I hope will occur, and what I can’t understand. Tune in to CBS on Sunday, June 8 at 8pm to see how I do. And more importantly, how Hugh Jackman doooo.
BEST MUSICAL
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“Gentleman’s Guide“, the funny and charming romp about an 8th-in-line descendant of an earl who knocks off every relative ahead of him, should definitely win out of this admittedly less than stellar group. “Beautiful” is the spoiler because of the aforementioned road producers: it would tour soooo successfully, and a Tony would help that (though it wouldn’t be necessary). “After Midnight”, while exceedingly entertaining (at least for an hour), was a straightforward jazz, dance, big band revue, not a musical with any sort of plot, so I don’t know who the show slept with to get nominated here.
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BEST PLAY
“Act One” “All the Way” “Casa Valentina” “Mothers and Sons” “Outside Mullingar” |
Although many are putting “All The Way”, about Lyndon B. Johnson, as the frontrunner, my vote would be for “Casa Valentina”, about which I have written but not posted the review. Harvey Fierstein wows again with a show about 1960s men who secretly loved to wear women’s clothing. At times heartwarming and at times heartbreaking, “Casa” was a wonderful, somehow old-fashioned-seeming night at the theatre.
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BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” “Les Miserables” “Violet” |
Oh man, this pathetic category. Three nominees? Yeesh. “Les Mis” is done well, but who isn’t sick of this show right now?? Because I sure am. “Violet” is well done and people are flipping out over it, but it didn’t win me over. Read about why here. The unstoppable winner is “Hedwig”, or the Neil Patrick Harris show. I haven’t seen it because tickets are like $500 but it’s a definite winner.
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BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY “The Cripple of Inishmaan” “The Glass Menagerie” “A Raisin in the Sun” “Twelfth Night” |
Now this is an interesting category!! All four of these productions were wonderful, and three were so stellar as to be mind-blowing. “Cripple”, with Daniel Radcliffe, was incredibly well done and entertaining, thanks to a top-notch ensemble. “Menagerie” is widely thought to be the greatest production of the play ever, with Cherry Jones and Celia Keenan-Bolger giving benchmark performances. But even these stellar shows can’t top the all-male “Twelfth Night” straight from the Old Globe, which provided a perfect, hilarious, authentic theatrical experience.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
Mary Bridget Davies, “A Night With Janis Joplin” Sutton Foster, “Violet” Idina Menzel, “If/Then” Jessie Mueller, “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” Kelli O’Hara, “The Bridges of Madison County” |
Hot damn. This is the category that is giving me agita. Jessie Mueller is giving a star-making turn as Carole King in “Beautiful” and will be deserving when she wins the statue on Sunday. But my vote would have gone to O’Hara, the greatest current leading lady on Broadway who isn’t Audra McDonald, for her unbelievably perfect performance in “Bridges”. She won’t win Sunday, but in a few years the theatre community will be like, “WTF how did Kelli not win for “Bridges” in 2014? F-ing f-ers, those voters!” Truth.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE IN A PLAY
Tyne Daly, “Mothers and Sons” LaTanya Richardson-Jackson, “A Raisin in the Sun” Cherry Jones, “The Glass Menagerie” Audra McDonald, “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill” Estelle Parsons, “The Velocity of Autumn” |
Another very crowded category, Best Actress in a Play is not without some controversy. Some people think “Lady Day” should have been categorized as a musical instead of a play, and so Audra would be in the list above. I believe the committee got this right, because the music in “Lady Day” is presented in a concert format; it doesn’t drive plot or story or anything. But even if it were considered a musical and Audra was moved, she’d still win. In both categories. In every category. Although Cherry Jones was incredible as well, people want to see Audra make history with her sixth Tony, making her the first person to win in all four acting categories.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
Neil Patrick Harris, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Ramin Karimloo, “Les Miserables” Andy Karl, “Rocky” Jefferson Mays, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” Bryce Pinkham, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” |
Speaking of crowded categories! My favorite of the season, Steven Pasquale (“Bridges”) was pushed out in favor of the surprise Pinkham, but everyone in here is giving wonderful performances. Ramin is a butter-voiced, ab-baring angel, Andy Karl as “Rocky” was utterly charming and amazing, and Mays gives not just one but eight wonderful performances playing all the doomed heirs in “Gentleman’s Guide”. Mays would be a shoo-in in a different year, and still may surprise, but it would indeed be a surprise if anyone but NPH won, as he is giving the performance of his life as the post-op trans woman Hedwig. Someone buy me a ticket?
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE IN A PLAY
Samuel Barnett, “Twelfth Night” Bryan Cranston, “All the Way” Chris O’Dowd, “Of Mice and Men Mark Rylance, “Richard III” Tony Shalhoub, “Act One” |
Cranston, in his Broadway debut, is winning over crowds and Broadway snobs with his impressive turn as LBJ in a threeeee-hour play. A win for this fun-loving drug dealer would be deserved. But my vote would be for Barnett, a lovely as hell Viola in the lovely as hayell “Twelfth Night”. I also just love that Chris O’Dowd was nominated for a Tony. He is adorable. I hope Franco wasn’t too upset.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A FEATURED ROLE IN A MUSICAL Linda Emond, “Cabaret” Lena Hall, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” Anika Larsen, “Beautiful – The Carole King Musical” Adriane Lenox, “After Midnight” Lauren Worsham, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder” |
Okay. So. This category feels like a total crapshoot. Lena Hall is the frontrunner, even though she wasn’t nominated for the Drama Desk, because of her star-making turn (so many of them this year!) in “Hedwig”. Emond is her close competitor, but I admit my tickets for “Cabaret” aren’t until July. I loved Anika in “Beautiful”, but it doesn’t seem like a Tony role. Worsham was fine, but how she got the nom over her castmate Lisa O’Hare I’ll never understand. Lenox was f-ing fantastic unbelievable astounding in “After Midnight” (again, review written but not posted, I’m behind)…but she is onstage for literally 4 minutes. It would be worse than Dame Dench’s win for “Shakespeare in Love”. So, I would say Hall. But whatever, man.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A FEATURED ROLE IN A PLAY
Sarah Greene, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” Celia Keenan-Bolger, “The Glass Menagerie” Sophie Okonedo, “A Raisin in the Sun” Anika Noni Rose, “A Raisin in the Sun” Mare Winningham, “Casa Valentina” |
CELIA!!! Celia is always perfection, but her Laura was super perfection. She will deservedly win her first Tony, although Winningham and especially newcomer Greene impressed me greatly. But CELIA!!!
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A FEATURED ROLE IN A MUSICAL Danny Burstein, “Cabaret” Nick Cordero, “Bullets Over Broadway” Joshua Henry, “Violet” James Monroe Iglehart, “Aladdin” Jarrod Spector, “Beautiful – The Carole King Musical” |
Oh man, I’d be happy if ANY of these fine men won. Danny B is a often-nominated, beloved Broadway workhorse who is always terrific, but it’s just not his year (again). Nicky C was the greatest part of “Bullets” (again…review coming) but his nomination is enough of a reward. Joshy H is the greatest part of “Violet“, mostly because of his amazing solo “Let It Sing“, and Jarrody S is my new favorite. But James..um.. I (doesn’t really work with I) is playing the freaking Genie. In “Aladdin”. So, yeah, he’s gonna win. They made up a special Oscar for Robin Williams because of that role! Can’t lose! I want to play the Genie. I would totally make you order off both columns.
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BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A FEATURED ROLE IN A PLAY Reed Birney, “Casa Valentina” Paul Chahidi, “Twelfth Night” Stephen Fry, “Twelfth Night” Mark Rylance, “Twelfth Night” Brian J. Smith, “The Glass Menagerie” |
This is a tough one, because the “Twelfth Night” love can work to cancel some votes out. But Rylance, always just the best imaginable at any role he plays, is again the best imaginable, this time as Olivia, hilarious and ridiculous and perfect. The only strong contender I can see taking it instead is Reed Birney as “Charlotte” in “Casa”, as a homophobic transvestite with lots of good speeches.
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BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
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SERIOUSLY IF JASON ROBERT BROWN DOESN’T WIN FOR “BRIDGES” (and for Orchestrations) THERE IS NO JUSTICE IN THE WORLD AND I WON’T ABIDE IT. I WON’T ABIDE IT!
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Well that’s all folks. As you can tell, my favorite show of the season, “The Bridges of Madison County”, was unfairly snubbed in most categories. It had the most beautiful music in years, and some of the best performances, but it didn’t sell enough tickets, it closed too early, and will not be properly rewarded (because, as we learned earlier, giving a Tony to a closed show won’t make you any money!). “Gentleman’s Guide” is the next best possible winner, but it’s not as incredible and life-changing as people are hyping it to be. I think the hype is a product of the general consensus that this batch of nominees is a bit unexciting, so people are trying too hard to convince themselves and others that that’s not the case in order to feel better about it all. The real story going into Sunday, though, is that Hugh Jackman can do anything and I mean en neh thang; NPH can also do pretty much anything and will win his first and last Tony; and you should go buy the “Bridges” cast recording because hot damn.
Enjoy the show!!!!
Enjoy the show!!!!