“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” Lives Up To Its Name, & Then Some
The friendly rivalry between King and her husband-and-writing-partner-for-most-of-the-show Gerry Goffin, and Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, provided an enjoyable way to structure the show. I loved that the performances of the songs came about because they were writing them. It was never “Let’s break out into song here to express our feelings” it was “Listen I just wrote this song want to hear it?” The realism is a good way to win over musical theater haters, not that I care about such weirdos.
Mueller really is just perfect, as perfect as anyone besides the real-life figure could be in a role. She is heartbreaking and relatable, and it’s a special performance to witness. What she is doing with her voice, an homage more than an imitation of king, is so impressive. I asked her if it was hard and more importantly if it hurt, because doing a different voice for that many hours a week can’t be healthy. But she seemed fine and I’m sure is being coached well. She is the newest star of this generation and I am thrilled for her. She breaks your heart and then together you’re healed through the powerful music.
Even if you are a King fan, you will be surprised by just how prolific a songwriter she was before she started singing her own tales. Not only did she write “One Fine Day”, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”, “Some Kind Of Wonderful”, “Up On The Roof”, “Take Good Care of My Baby”, but she also freaking wrote “The Loco-Motion”! Can you even believe that? And then of course you get a smattering of King’s more personal work that she sang herself: “Natural Woman”, “Too Late”, “I Feel the Earth Move”, “Beautiful”, &c. Damn she is brilliant. I can’t wait to see this show again.
So, because of the very familiar music, and because so many adults grew up with this music, “Beautiful” is the kind of show that brings hundreds of middle-aged ladies out for ‘girls night’. If you can stand these perhaps slightly tipsy women pretty much announcing “OH I LOVE THIS SONG!” and “OH THIS IS SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL!’ when they hear the beginnings of each piece, then you’ll be fine. If, like me, the mere thought of this lack of decorum makes your blood run cold as if you were watching a Spice Girls musical, you should probably have a drink first. But you should absolutely still see the show. Here’s a sneak to enjoy while Telecharge.com loads.
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London’s “42nd Street”: Come and Meet Those Dancing Feet and the Appalling Sexists Attached to Said Feet…And Peggy
A few days ago, I saw the revival of “42nd Street” on the West End. P.S., I still don’t know if it’s ‘on’ the West End or ‘in’ the West End, and this is an example of the type of thing I was distractedly thinking about during this positively ludicrous musical. At several moments during the show, I was struck by the thought that Jane the Virgin’s season 2 feminist killjoy of a thesis advisor would have stopped the show and JUMPED onto the stage to stop the atrocities of sexism from continuing. Every few minutes I could see Professor Donaldson shaking her head, then dropping her jaw, and then refusing to be a party to it any longer and marching onstage to shout “NO NO NO!!” And sure I have an overactive confrontation-imagination but I was as livid as the professor was. Enraged by both the rampant sexism in the show and the fellow audience members on their phones, confused by the lack of plot and the fellow audience members who wouldn’t stop talking, I tried to calm myself down by thinking over and over “this show is from almost 100 years ago, it’s okay, it was a product of its time, everyone knows that this sexist crap wouldn’t fly today, at least the dancing is great.” But it didn’t work because I think the majority of people (helloooo Trump voters) don’t actually know that misogyny belongs in the bygone era, and what was being presented onstage was very problematic to be tapping our feet along to.
Another thing I didn’t know? That Sheena Easton was the star! I usually know if there’s anyone famous in the show I’m about to see but for this I literally sat down in my seat, opened the programme that I just bought that wouldn’t fit in my purse because it’s one of those unnecessarily giant ones, and then said ‘Oh…what.” Sheena Easton is a pretty famous recording artist from the ‘80s and ‘90s who won some Grammy awards and sang one of the Bond themes, “For Your Eyes Only”, which I can’t remember but I can tell you is better than the Bond theme that won an Oscar last year because everything is. I knew her because of her song with Kenny Rogers “We’ve Got Tonight” (who needs tomorrowwww) (you should watch a 1983 concert performance of that song pretty much JUST FOR HER INSANE OUTFIT WHAT IS SHE WEARING) and because I have a foggy memory of Danny Tanner mentioning her on “Full House”.
I know I said ‘lack of plot’ before but the show is of course roughly ‘about’ something. It starts absolutely stunningly, which is almost worse because my high hopes for finally seeing this show performed were lifted even higher and I was like whoaaa ahhhhhhhhh and then it all came crashing down. But not yet! The heavy red velvet curtain slowly rose to reveal 50 pairs of feet tap-a-tap-a-tapping like their lives depended on it, and as it continued going up we see oh yes their lives do indeed depend on it – it’s an audition. The dozens and dozens of gorgeous dancers flail about in perfect unison as a musical director shouts stuff and demos stuff and they just keep going and it was glorious!! I really love watching incredible dancing, and this show had tons of it. This classic opening is one of the good bits. So the music and dance directors pick their chorus girls and boys and the audition is over but then eeeeee! in storms a little spitfire of a dancer named Peggy Sawyer (Clare Halse) who is late and dressed like a lavender sailor but still wants to try out. She tells everyone she just got off the train from Allentown, Pennsylvania, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t that far, dear, you were one state away. The musical director, having just seen 50 great dancers, has no need for her, but the young male star of the show, Billy Lawlor (Stuart Neal), is like ‘Oh hey you are a non-ugly non-old female person I am going to touch you inappropriately and not let go of your arm as I flirt obnoxiously with you and tell you how we are going to end up just swell lovers so I will help you get their attention and audition even though there’s no reason to allow this to happen.’ So Billy and Peggy sing a song in front of everyone about how they are young and healthy so they might as well hook up I’m not joking, but like I said the show was cast and the dance director tells Peggy to ‘amscray, toots!’ which is clearly another of the good bits, and she runs off and barrels right into Julian Marsh, the hot-shot big-time director (Tom Lister), who is like whoooo is this football player tackling me but hey I kind of liked it. He really says that, it is gross. Peggy is mortified as she should be and runs out, forgetting her purse. What a lucky coincidence because of course she has to come back for her purse later! What mature story-telling devices! So Peggy comes back another day, but she is wearing the same lavender sailor suit and by now I just feel bad for the girl. She wears it most of the show, btw. But it has to be another day because everyone is there for a legit rehearsal, and rehearsals never start immediately after auditions that would be crazy. But so is this outfit. Anyway, songwriter Maggie Jones (Jasna Ivir) and a few of the more prominent chorus girls invite Peggy to eat lunch with them, where they don’t actually eat but have a DANCE OFF. This is another very sophisticated way to let the story tell us that Peggy is the best dancer of the lot, it is not forced at all no sir. So this scene is ridonkulous as a book scene, but it is amazing as a dance scene because Clare Halse really is the best tap dancer like ever. It might have a lot to do with the very difficult things they were making her do but her dance-off tapping ranks up there with “Shuffle Along” in terms of how worried I was that dancers’ legs were going to fall off.
In YET ANOTHER oh so clever and not at all eye-rolly twist, the show is suddenly short a girl so the curbside dance-off in the middle of Times Square pays off because Julian the director sees Peggy and is like ‘you’ll do!’ It’s not clear, though, whether they really are short a girl or whether Julian is just a gross old man who likes what he sees. Well no, the latter is very clear, it’s just a question of whether the former is true also. It doesn’t matter thought because all of a sudden Sailor Moon is in a new musical’s cast because she was late, assaulted the director, absentmindedly left behind her belongings, and then danced like nobody was watching when the director was watching. Well I’m inspired. By the way Julian refers to her sometimes as ‘Allentown’ which is cute once and then very annoying the rest of the time.
The show that Peggy is now in is a big new risky expensive musical called “Pretty Lady”, starring the legendary Dorothy Brock (Easton), who is a difficult and stubborn diva who refuses to do things like sing for the creatives when she doesn’t feel like it. Although she is talented, Brock is not a dancer, so they have the ensemble just dance around her while she sings. The team needed to hire her because she brings the financial backing – her old rich southern sugar daddy is putting up the money to produce the show. Why a woman of such renown and seemingly money of her own would spend time with a man purely for his money is unclear, but it is presented as ordinary in the show because women are terrible and do dumb things. Brock has a boyfriend, Pat Denning (Norman Bowman), who sneaks around to see her, but Julian Marsh, the director, doesn’t want him distracting his leading lady or complicating things with old moneybags so he hires ‘goons’ to beat him up. Totally normal. Oh it’s important to note here that I started to get the sense we were supposed to see Julian Marsh as a romantic leading man. I mean. No. But then every interaction with Peggy confirmed this, because he flirted with her a lot yet was cruel and a textbook abuser. It was very strange. We will return to this later.
The show leaves for its out-of-town pre-Broadway tryout, which is moved from Atlantic City to Philadelphia for reasons I don’t remember because I was too busy shouting ‘woooooo Phillayyyyy!’ At a party one night, Peggy overhears Julian ordering the goons to come again to teach a lesson to Pat Denning, who won’t leave the woman he loves alone. Peggy rushes to warn Pat that his life is in danger, but she is interrupted by that intolerable Billy Lawlor, who is not her boyfriend or even her friend, but still feels that he is entitled to control Peggy because he is a man. He asked her hey pretty lady where you off to, and she is frantically like ‘I have to warn a friend his life is in danger!’ or something and Billy chooses the wrong thing to focus on and says, ‘what…a male friend?’ and walks away dejected and it took all my might not to yell down to the stage ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT. This little prick has seriously had one previous conversation with Peggy and he’s mad at her for trying to save someone’s life? Fragile white masculinity is THE WORST. This is the type of man who punches a woman on the dance floor after she politely turns down his invitation to dance. (This happens often by the way. Men are A MESS and I blame ‘30s-era musical comedy for a lot of it no I’m just joking obviously but all this kind of crap presented as normal makes it normal!)
Luckily, Peggy reaches Pat and Dorothy in time, but the inane misogyny is far from over. When Peggy rushes into their private room to warn Pat, Dorothy immediately assumes that they are having an affair. I MEAN. I know things were different in the ‘30s but were men and women just not allowed to speak to each other unless they were a couple? My goodness. Then Dorothy goes down the party all upset and decides this is the perfect moment to tell her southern sugar daddy that it’s over and that she doesn’t love him at all, and he of course threatens to pull his money from the show. The creatives are terrified, so to distract him from ruining their show, they throw chorus girls at him. One prominent girl, Annie, had to flaunt her boobs like 10 different times in the show, and four times in this party scene alone to distract and calm down various old men. It was very bad. But it worked because he left his money in the show. And then he got together with the songwriter Jones, which was expected because she was overweight and these types of ‘comedies’ always throw the few non-perfect non-young bodies together.
Okay so this is all act one, and I know it seems like a lot of plot even though I said there was no plot. It is not a lot of plot though. I am devoting many, many more words to all the action I just described than the actual show’s book does. All of what I just described takes maybe five minutes to work out onstage. The show is mostly big dance numbers from the show within the show and I don’t get how this is a show or how I could say show more times in one sentence. It is 99% the ensemble practicing the musical numbers in “Pretty Lady”. Seriously. It’s dance scene after dance scene, all taken from this new musical “Pretty Lady” that also has no plot and even less of a story, so it seems from what we see, and the drama going on with the cast happens very briefly around these big dance numbers. I’ve never seen a show with more big dance numbers. Every one of them pretended to be the showstopper, but then another one was right behind it. And they were all wonderful. Even though I am harping on the story here and will continue to do so because it is abominable and gets worse, the dancing and the performances were all incredible. But, there’s a reason no other show has as many showstopping dance-heavy musical numbers – when they have nothing to do with the plot, it gets boring. It’s like being at an advanced tap recital and yes they are all insanely amazing but the dances have nothing to do with anything and nothing to do with the other dances we’re seeing. It’s just a mess of great dancing but just like too much of anything it starts to get intolerable. I had a bad headache.
In one of the early big dance numbers, Billy sings a song called “Dames”. It’s about how as long as there are beautiful dames around, nothing else matters. This is a very meta song, telling the audience just to enjoy the beautiful girls dancing all around the whole time and not to worry about the very thin book and very offensive dialogue. I felt like Billy was singing to me being like ‘stop complaining said the farmer who told you a calf to be just enjoy yourself!’ You might think I’m overreacting but look at these lyrics:
Who writes the words and music
For all the girly shows?
No one cares and no one knows.
Who is the handsome hero
Some villain always frames?
But who cares if there’s a plot or not
When they’ve got a lot of dames!
What do you go for
Go see a show for?
Tell the truth
You go to see those beautiful dames!
My god. I mean they are flat out telling us that this whole show is really just an excuse to stare at pretty women. They have no remorse.
Just when you thought that was enough, “Dames” ends and the cast has to rehearse the next song in “Pretty Lady” called “Keep Young and Beautiful”. YOU HEARD RIGHT. It’s an ensemble number with all the girls dressed in skin colored, very bare, lingerie-like costumes and they are told to KEEP YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL. Lyrics from this winner:
Keep young and beautiful
It’s your duty to be beautiful
Keep young and beautiful
If you want to be loved.
If you’re wise, exercise all the fat off
Take it off, off of here, off of there…
Take care of all those charms
And you’ll always be in someone’s arms.
Keep young and beautiful
If you want to be loved.
F-ING CHRIST ON A CRACKER. I thought I was being pranked and not the good too much tuna kind of pranking. This is a new level of sexist nonsense in theatre to me, on par with if not surpassing “Funny Girl”.
Throughout these musical numbers, Peggy trips and falls and bumps into people at every turn. I don’t understand. She is supposed to be the best dancer they’ve ever seen, and according to folklore the audience is supposed to be rooting for her success the entire show. Um. She kept falling, though? Why would I want someone to become a big Broadway star if she fell into everyone every time she danced? That kind of nonsense is not covered by insurance. It’s very confusing, because Peggy is an amazing dancer – amazing. I was really stunned at how talented Clare Halse was. But how can you reconcile Peggy being the best dancer ever with her falling all over the place when she dances?! Is it just to continue the trend of women in this show being flighty and/or incompetent? All it does is show her to be unqualified to perform live, and I would have fired her after she bumped into her fellow performers the first time. Then, at the big first preview finale in Philly (the song “42nd Street” and our real Act I finale), Peggy knocks Dorothy Brock over and breaks her ankle. True, someone else knocked into Peggy, but she still was flying all over all the time. Peggy FINALLY gets fired, and we’re supposed to be upset for her because we’re supposed to be rooting for her, but why would we be rooting for someone who can’t dance without bumping into people? Ahhh!
Then in Act II, when they think they have to close the show because they don’t have a star (why Brock can’t still sing while doing the same stand-and-deliver planted method she was doing before, I don’t understand), the chorus girls convince Julian that Peggy could be the star. Peggy who he just fired. Julian, who is a very unkind, frightening man, IMMEDIATELY believes them that the mess of a dancer he just fired could certainly be his star, so he runs to the train station to stop her from going back to Allentown. They say Allentown SO many times. To continue the trend of nonsensical things happening, Peggy doesn’t WANT to go back to the show and doesn’t WANT to be the star. It is yet again hard to root for someone to become a big star when she doesn’t jump for joy at this invitation. So Julian, freshly convinced that she’s the best there is even though he has never heard her sing or act, has to persuade Peggy to come back. And he does this by singing one of the most beloved songs from early musicals, “Lullaby of Broadway”. The fact that this delightful song that is forever linked to the great Jerry Orbach is used in this show at this absurd scene makes me very upset. Why would this prominent director need to use everything’s he got to convince a chorus girl who ostensibly wanted to be a star to in fact be a star, I do not understand. Also, in this context and given how creepy Julian is, a lot of the lyrics became creepy. He calls her baby a lot and clearly thinks exactly like Billy Lawlor about her except worse because he is in a position of power over her. At least Tom Lister has a very strong voice and sounded great.
The rest of Act II features more big dance numbers that have nothing to do with anything, and Peggy trying to learn the entire show in 48 hours, because Julian, professional abusive man, decides to open cold in two days and cancel out-of-town tryouts AND previews FOR NO GOOD REASON. Ugh this man is the devil. We get a big dance scene from “Pretty Lady”, and then a glimpse of Julian forcing Peggy to insanity in nonstop rehearsal. Then we get another big dance from “Pretty Lady”, and then we see Julian hurting Peggy’s arms and not letting her rest or eat or sleep or stop dancing until the curtain rises on opening night. See that’s not the best way to get a great performance out of someone. She breaks down from exhaustion and stress, and Julian gives her an energy boost by KISSING HER. I really almost screamed ‘this is harassment at the very leeeeassssstttt he should be in jaaaaaiiiiillll.’ But because this was written by dirty old men, Peggy gets a new wave of energy and is just an adorable ball of joy again because she liked it, of course she did, he’s a powerful man and why wouldn’t she! UGHASDJF;ALKWEJ FAW.
One of the random dances we see from “Pretty Lady” is the song “We’re in the Money”. I bet you can’t guess how it is staged. So four orphan children (four dancers dressed up in sooty faces and clothing from ‘Annie’) are playing under a bridge and they find a dime in a grate! And then they sing ‘We’re in the Money’. I can’t make this shit up it was INSANE. After the orphans sing a verse, the rest of the enormous ensemble comes out dressed in shiny gold costumes dancing with GIANT DIMES and the set changes to a gilded one and the dancers hoist their giant dimes into the light and then they put them down and dance atop them and if you listen closely you will hear the sound of a girl who thinks she is going crazy whispering ‘just like what is happeninggggg’.
Then there is more abuse of Peggy from Julian but as long as he kisses her she is revived! It’s not abuse if he really likes you!
Then. Oh then. We finally see the full version of their big “Pretty Lady” finale, the song “42nd Street”, that was cut short before when Dorothy was injured. The song is atrociously rhymed and I was audibly groaning every time the chorus sang “Naughty, bawdy, gawdy, sporty, forty-second streeeet.” SPORTY!!!! WHAT! Thank god this is in England so the words kind of rhyme but what on earth did they do in New York with this song? Holy cow. Peggy and Billy dance in the grungy, dark, twisted Times Square, in a much more adult and serious style than all the other dancing. Various players fill the stage, including a man who looks like a mime, wearing red gloves. But oh no, it’s not a mime, it’s a mugger! Well maybe he is a mime and a mugger but anyway he steals a lady’s purse and two cops shoot him dead. While Peggy and Billy are dancing. As your jaw drops open and you wonder um HOW did “Pretty Lady” go from repeated drivel about how great attractive young girls are to a gritty scene in Times Square where SOMEONE GETS SHOT, the cops drag the mugger’s body offstage and Peggy and Billy begin to dance again. WHAT THE HELL IS PRETTY LADY ABOUT?!!??!!!
Well, we have to just guess, because that’s pretty much how “Pretty Lady” ends, and “42nd Street” ends shortly thereafter, when opening night ends and Peggy is a huge star who has a huge crush on her abusive director. I just. I’m very tired. Julian is a textbook abuser and it is revolting that he is considered a romantic part and that the whole Marsh/Peggy dynamic is a classic one in the musical theatre canon. Blechhh. I wish it ended with her punching him and being like now that I’m a star I’m going to make sure you never work in this town again. I need to do a revival that is really a rewrite but the estates would never sign off on it. Maybe it would be excused as fair use because it would really be a social commentary on the original. Hmm.
Anyway, you might be wondering why Sheena Easton is considered the star but all I really talked about was Peggy. Well, aside from singing a few songs (and Sheena did a fantastic job), Dorothy isn’t in it that much. She only has one short scene in ALL of Act II! But Dorothy Brock is considered the leading role and Peggy the featured, and Christine Ebersole won the Tony for Leading Actress for playing Brock. BUT THIS MAKES NO SENSE. The show is all about Peggy, and she is in it 10 times as much as Brock is! and 20 times as much as Julian is! Yet Dorothy and Julian get the final bow at curtain call! Whyyyyy oh this makes me so angry!
So I obviously have a few strong feelings about this drivel and you probably think that this was the most I’ve ever hated a show. But while I hate the story and the character interactions and everything it says about women, it was still a very enjoyable production because the performances and the dancing are so wonderful. If you plug your ears while characters talk and during a few garbage songs, and you just watch the dancing and listen to the singing, it’s a decent time at the theatre. It’s the pesky story and characters and yeah everything it says about women that foul it all up. So don’t think of it as a show. Try to convince yourself that it’s a cabaret performance, all unconnected dances and songs just for their own sake, and not telling any larger story, and then it is enjoyable. I mean it’s not telling any story anyway, really. Ugh what a shitshow.
HI HOW PROUD ARE YOU OF ME FOR NOT SAYING ‘AND PEGGY’ THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE THING
Broadway’s “Dear Evan Hansen”: Why Dehydration from Crying is Possible but Worth It
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.