January 19, 2023
‘Bayside! The Musical’ in London: Did They Even Have ‘Saved By The Bell’ Here?by Randi / March 13, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about ‘The Birthday Party’, Harold Pinter’s play currently playing at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre (I know) until April 14.
I’ve said in the past that I am not a huge fan of Harold Pinter plays, but I keep seeing them because Elaine Stritch tells me to. I just don’t understand them. They never make any sense and I always leave the theatre going, ‘…what?’ And it’s not just me being stupid; apparently, that’s his thing. Pinter got his jollies by giving audiences vague hints at plot and truth and then letting them decide what’s what. Which I guess is a valid thing for you to do if you have a purpose, but I never know what that purpose is. It’s not like I’m having deep epiphany-like thoughts when trying to figure out wtf was happening. But, anyway, it turns out that FINALLY, you can enjoy a Pinter play even though you don’t know what’s going on, as I learned from London’s new production of “The Birthday Party”. There’s a lot of crazy going on and there’s no real sense of what’s true or even who is real, but it’s a really enjoyable, provocative time.
I’m not saying I like Pinter now or anything, merely that his work doesn’t have to be synonymous with agony. And maybe I was just won over by how cute it is for a Pinter play to be showing at the Harold Pinter Theatre. It’s so cute. If the situation were a doggo I’d pat its head. I wondered for a minute if from now on they could only produce Pinter plays in that house because otherwise it would feel like backpedaling but I just looked it up and the next thing coming in after ‘The Birthday Party’ leaves is ‘Cirque Berserk!’ so, no. Anyway, TBP was the first Pinter show I didn’t need a drink after (I don’t drink but you get what I mean) (well I did require ice cream and so we got soft serve and I liked it and I loved it) and it’s for a few reasons: 1. The direction by Ian Rickson felt well considered and correct for conveying the bits of the story. The cast was phenomenal, but the casts have been great in all the Pinter plays I’ve seen, so I think it comes down to the direction here. 2. This play is actually interesting. Unlike past shows, I didn’t despise all the characters and I actually cared about some. The only Pinter play I’ve seen twice (Broadway and West End) was ‘No Man’s Land’ and I wanted all of those characters to die, or at least suffer torture, maybe like having to watch their play. But here, I cared about poor wobbly-brained Meg and her nice, benign husband, and I didn’t want anything bad to happen to poor sad-sack Stanley. Well at least at first. If he’s real. Let’s get down to it.
TBP (not The Bad Place (well maybe The Bad Place)) tells the story of Meg and Petey, an old couple living in a quiet English seaside town, running a boarding house. Petey works by the shore, setting up deck chairs for the tourists and Meg makes him bowls of cornflakes and inquires incessantly as to whether they’re ‘nice’, as that’s how British English describes food and I think no matter how long I live here I will never stand for it. As a long-married couple, they seem boring but inoffensive, and Meg’s unremitting questions about the weather and whether it’s ‘nice’ like the cornflakes and whether the fried bread she made Petey is ‘nice’ are annoying but in a ‘oh you old biddy’ type way and not in a rage-inducing way. They’re harmless, bland, so they seem at first. Petey is played by Peter Wright, and I just love when actors play characters with the same name. It makes me laugh to imagine costars saying ‘Oh hey Pete – oops, I mean Pete’ it’s nonsense don’t worry about it. Meg is played by the great Zoe Wanamaker and she is all kinds of unstable genius. Her state of mind, at first easily brushed aside as that of an old biddy, is really the centerpiece of the play, and the question of whether she’s a trustworthy commentator on her surroundings and the people around her shockingly morphs into whether everything we saw was just in her head. And Zoe conveys that with restraint and precision.
The boarding house has one lodger, a man named Stanley who is as peculiar as he is disheveled. Played by the outstanding Toby Jones, Stanley raises more questions than he or anyone in any Pinter play will ever answer. He’s been staying at Meg & Petey’s house for a year now, after working as a concert pianist all over the world…or maybe just all over England…or maybe he just played once. Meg treats him like a son, forcing him to wake up before too late, making him all his food, &c. At first I thought it was her son, and so you wonder about their relationship and then you wonder about Meg’s ‘offhand’ comment about how she always wanted a son. Does that explain why she treats him like this? or does that hint that he’s a figment of her imagination? Every little comment in this play is there for a reason. We will never be able to say for sure what they all add up to, but they definitely suggest that you can’t trust anything people say.
Everything changes when two men in business suits arrive, two mysterious men whose work and purpose for being in town are unknown and yet sinister. There’s the clear boss of the operation, Goldberg, played by Stephen Mangan who is usually hilarious but is here is terrifying. And sometimes hilarious but mostly terrifying. He’s Jewish and they mention that a lot. His colleague is an Irish man named McCann (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor), who is an unfrocked priest (from the village of Kamenka?), maybe, and seems nice but can be equally frightening when he gets riled up, which seems right for a priest. The two men take up a room at the house – which Petey is surprised that Meg has available for guests, which is surprising to us because we’re like aren’t you a boarding house? Stanley asks the men why on earth they would choose to stay here. Well, it’s a boarding house, right? Meg says repeatedly that it’s ‘on the list’ for seaside accommodations. Stanley scoffs and says that it isn’t a boarding house, but no one really makes anything of that.
The first act flies by and is really flawless. Well, it’s only 45 minutes so it better fly by, but still every bit felt necessary and enjoyable. The second act is a lot longer, an hour and a half maybe, and it’s a lot darker. Meg decides to throw Stanley a birthday party now that they have the men to be guests, along with neighbor Lulu (Pearl Mackie). Stanley resists and quite often tells Meg and the others that it’s not his birthday, that it’s actually next month, but no one seems to hear him or if they do they don’t mind. Meanwhile, Goldberg and McCann’s business is ever more clouded and yet more menacing, and they seem to know Stanley. And sometimes Stanley seems to know them. They have similar memories from their pasts and yet they deny them. Goldberg and McCann’s first names change at every mention. And while you first consider Stanley to be the unwitting victim in whatever game the men are playing, he morphs at times into the predator, albeit in an unknown fight. Everything feels up in the air and uncertain and nothing will stick as truth.
The actual birthday party is even stranger, with Meg too drunk to notice that the two men are psychologically torturing Stanley, who at one point freaks out and then tries to strangle Meg. It’s unclear who turns the lights out or why, but when they come back on it 100% looks like Stanley has killed Lulu. It’s undeniable and so I think it’s purposeful, for you to be so convinced of something only to find out later that that’s false, to further the entire theme of this play. (Pearl herself said at stagedoor that everyone always says to her ‘I thought you were dead!’ so we are clearly supposed to think that.) Every few minutes you think you figured out what’s happening, who’s good, who’s bad, but then that would all get turned on its head and you’d be back to square one.
It’s the kind of drama that makes you hold your breath a lot of the time, because there’s no predicting what is going to happen next and how bad it’s going to get for someone. And because so much is unknown and unclear, it’s overall very chilling. We don’t know what’s happening, the characters don’t know who each other are or what they want, and everything can very quickly turn even darker. While there’s a good deal of humor, that often makes everything scarier. Nothing like watching the terrifying Stephen Mangan laugh at something and then instantaneously become more threatening than before. Although my favorite part of the show is a very non-threatening joke, when McCann tells his boss, “You’ve always been a true Christian”, and Goldberg replies “…in a way.” But the best moment of perfect directing and acting and menace all around comes when Stanley erupts at Goldberg and yells at him for being a ‘dirty joke’, but Toby Jones holds the ‘j’ on joke in a way where it’s clear Stanley was about to say ‘dirty Jew’. It’s brilliantly done.
In the last scene, things sort of fell apart for me, simply because we don’t know what’s happening or why or where the men are taking Stanley. And all the unknown elements started to annoy me instead of inspire me to think more creatively or whatever Pinter wants us to do. It just got to be a bit much. But Zoe as Meg brings it home, as she reminisces about the party the night before, the utter shitshow of a party that led to attempted murders and other illegal activity, including the abduction of Stanley to who knows where. But she doesn’t know or care, she just knows she was the belle of the ball. And it’s framed exactly the same as the opening scene, just her talking to her placating husband, and you wonder if any of the intervening scenes actually happened or if reality, whatever that is, has been just this the whole time, just the two of them living their humdrum lives, talking over cornflakes with no one else around.
If I were watching this at home I would have been screaming the entire time. What are you doing! Who are you! Why wouldn’t you comment on what JUST HAPPENED? But as a whole, the play is really remarkably well done, and the acting is stellar. There are a few moments where you question why on earth an actor chose to deliver a line that way, not the way you would have expected it (often with Mangan’s character), but it makes a certain odd sense that everything even down to the delivery would be uncomfortable and often off-putting. A part of me wants to shake the ghost of Pinter and be like what the ffffffff happened but you know what, I think I’m okay just wondering about it. Or maybe I’ve reached that point in my Pinter experiences where I just don’t care anymore.
INFORMATION
This production is playing at the Harold Pinter theatre until April 14. The theatre is a mess and is the one most in need of a refurbishment. The lobby and entrance area is so small that not many people can actually fit there, which is for sure a fire hazard. If you are sitting in the stalls, sit in the area at stage right (house left) because that’s closer to the good toilets (they are like right there if you are in rows E-H, which we were yayyyyy) and the exit.
AUDIENCE
No phones, thank god, but somehow a LOT of talkers who didn’t understand that they shouldn’t be talking to their companions the entire time and like, NOT in a whisper??? Wtf is wrong with people.
STAGE DOOR
Everyone but Zoe came out and signed and took pictures! They were very nice. Actually Zoe may have come out but I bounced after a little because I needed the aforementioned ice cream. It’s not a bad walk to the vegan ice cream shoppe Yorica! so I strongly recommend going there afterwards. I love their soft serve. I love all soft serve but theirs is particularly good because it has that bland lightness I enjoy. What were we talking about? Oh theatre. Go see theatre.
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“Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” in London’s West End: Why Tho?
It’s important to have queer stories, but I don’t think you should get points just for ticking a box — they actually have to be good. With “Moonlight”, a film about not only gay characters but black characters winning the Oscar last year (despite the Academy being old white men) (and despite the incredible initial mixup), and with “Call Me By Your Name” up for awards this weekend, our entertainment culture has maybe? hopefully? finally reached the point where it’s not enough to have token minority characters or storylines; they also have to be interesting, imaginative, and worthwhile too. And done with respect. I don’t think any form of inclusivity that seems done just for brownie points should be lauded as the pinnacle of inclusivity. In London right now, however, you still get the points for a paint-by-numbers queer story even if it’s super thin and amateur. Because everybody is indeed talking about “Jamie”, the new London musical, and Brits are loving it, but it is…how do I say…not very good.
Like I said, literally everyone else adores it. And it has a lot of the kind of fun that mass crowds love in things like “Mamma Mia!” – you know, the bright, loud, danceable shows. No one is bothered if the dialogue is cringey or the songs are uninspired if everyone is bopping in their seat. But I am, because I am always waiting for a great British score and, well, I’m still waiting. With the exception of Tim Minchin’s scores (the superb “Matilda”, “Groundhog Day”), British musical theatre has been in trouble since, well, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s heyday. That’s a long time to go with nothing of true substance to show for it. Oh I’m sorry, I forgot that in that time frame of literal decades of dreck was Elton John’s “Billy Elliot” score. Okay so Tim Minchin, Webs, and Elton John. I guess all the promising writers went to Broadway. And to think people are surprised when I explain that Broadway is on a whole nother playing field to the West End when it comes to musical theatre. I know it sounds mean but tell me what British-born original musical of the last decade or two has been of the high quality you would expect from one of the greatest theatre cities in the entire world. Because of this draught, I was so pumped for “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie” because all I saw were rave reviews and I REALLY wanted London to have a great original musical finally that wasn’t a Broadway transfer. I wanted to fall in love with a brand-new score and listen to it until I memorized it and wait eagerly for it to go to Broadway. But this score is not that.
While it is outwardly fun — like there are bright colors and happy tunes and people dancing so the masses will be more than satisfied — and it is great to have the representation like this on such a stage and scale, I was just so unimpressed with the actual bones of the show. I wish I loved it, because it’s such a great story and it’s so important to show to people, especially young boys who identify with Jamie. I just wish such a great opportunity for representation came with quality writing.
It’s impossible not to compare this show to “Kinky Boots”. “Jamie”, to me, is about a production team that saw the enormous success of “Kinky Boots” all over the world and thought, ‘Hey, it seems that people really love stories about boys that don’t fit the traditional mold of masculinity, and the psychology that informs their decisions and how it affects the NOPE WAIT IT’S JUST ABOUT BOYS DRESSING UP AS GIRLS THAT’S IT WE WILL DO THAT!’ There was such potential in developing stories inspired by such departures from traditional male roles, but instead they seemed to mine the most asinine humor from it with a sort of baseline effort.
“Jamie” is about a teenage boy named Jamie who is living in a small English town where the accents are such that everyone pronounces his name ‘Jeh-meh’ and he is wayyy toooo faaaabulous for it. He wants to be a drag queen, and his loving but one-dimensional mother supports him, and his classmates and friends seem to find it cool, except for one of the typical asshole boys who thinks he is macho but is really obviously fragile in his masculinity. And his absentee father doesn’t approve but he was never really in his life or wanting to be. Okay, cool, Jamie, go be a drag queen, you are beautiful so you will be great at it. This is all clear in the first five minutes, though, and it’s very formulaic. Even formulaic setups could make great shows if they are handled well, but the remaining hours of the show feel just like filler, and on an amateur level. They fill it with the local drag shop (I’m sorry, what towns in rural England have entire shops for drag queens?) run by a great drag queen from the past named Loco Chanelle, a really low-effort drag name, who sings a very, VERY unnecessary and cringe-worthy song about his past and how he killed his lover maybe??, and it gets a goddamn REPRISE??? They fill it with a stern, annoying teacher who has a serious problem with Jamie’s breaking out of the straight lines she wants boys and girls to stay inside. Her outdated beliefs are only a tiny bit easier to believe than the fact that a school teacher in a tiny town has Christian Louboutin heels, another thing that is mentioned ostensibly to help the writers reach their word limit. And they fill it with bad music.
I hate writing this, because I do like liking things, and I want to love everything musical theatre so badly. Even with a lackluster book, if a show has fun or lovely or even just original music, that’s a win. But this score is complete cringe. The trite, derivative lyrics stick in your head, so it has that going for it. There’s the title song, where everyone jumps around like they’re at a rave and yells “Everybody’s talking about Jamie! Everybody’s talking about Jamie! Everybody’s talking about Jamie!” The melody is exactly how you are imagining it. I don’t even know if that song had other lyrics. The opening number, the one that has to set the tone for the whole show, is called, “And You Don’t Even Know It”, and it just says a phrase and then repeats “And you don’t even know it” over and over and over. “You’re a star! And you don’t even know it! Mini bar! And you don’t even know it!” Okay I made that last lyric up but you get the picture. I LOVE loved (sarcasm) the big ‘I Want’ number of the show, called “Spotlight”, where Jamie’s classmates sang of him “Out of the darkness, into the spotlight, out of the darkness, into the spotlight.” In that one was the part when I realized ‘ohhh this is going to be terrrrible’ — when the female classmates were sitting at a table doing the cups thing from ‘Pitch Perfect’ to the melody, the stupid thing you learn at summer camp when you’re little and somehow Anna Kendrick made cool? Anyway, the girls were doing that as accompaniment and my eyes got stuck in the back of my head. Then, ohh man, my favorite, the big runway catwalk number called “Work of Art” where everyone sang of Jamie (I’m sensing a redundant theme) about how he’s a work of art: “Mona Lisa isn’t she sir, work of art” was one lyric that I almost screamed at. I just…listen, not everything has to have Sondheim-level lyrics, but at least some effort would be appreciated.
Oh my real favorite part was when the mother had one of her hackneyed ballads about how she would do things differently if she met herself again (title of song: “If I Met Myself Again” picture 1000 eye roll emojis) and I SHIT YOU NOT, two dancers were BREAKDANCING during it. DURING A SAD BALLAD. It wasn’t ballet-like emotional dancing to the slow music; it was literally breakdancing to a nonexistent rhythm as though someone somewhere were scratching a record and Jason Mendoza was patiently waiting for the beat to drop but it never would. I looked around me in the darkness for the Punk’d cameras. I have never been so flabbergasted at direction choices. Man alive.
The only real conflict is for Jamie to get enough nerve to go onstage in his dress and not let the stupidest kid in school or the father that abandoned him get to him. That this super-confident, quick-witted boy would waste a moment thinking about what the mean boy in school thought of him was hard to believe, but okay, everyone has bullies in high school and it’s hard to deal with. But is this so-tiny-it’s-hard-to-even-call-him-a-minor-character really the only source of external conflict? To make up for that, Jamie fights with his mother for no good reason, and his mother sings a song about how he’s her boy (called “He’s My Boy”) and the audience was supposed to cry but it was forcing drama onto a cotton candy cloud that vanished into thin air as soon as pressure was applied to it.
Almost every character was stereotyped and lacking any semblance of nuance. I couldn’t believe that this show got this far without people editing it to bring it into the best shape possible. Or at least shape enough to run around the block. Only one character wasn’t completely clichéd and stereotyped, because it is one of the first appearances of such a character in musical theatre. Jamie’s best friend is a Muslim girl named Pritti (played by Lucie Shorthouse) who wears a hijab. As far as I know this is new, and this is minority representation this show deserves to be commended for. Lucie is the only character that gets to shine, aside from Jamie. She gets the one song in the show that didn’t make me want to tear my hair out, called “It Means Beautiful”, about the Arabic equivalent of the name Jamie. It’s not a great melody and the lyrics don’t live up to the nice sentiment that gives rise to the song (i.e., Pritti telling Jamie that he is indeed beautiful and look Arabic proves it), but still, it was decent. Lucie unfortunately does annoying popstar styling with her voice throughout the song, where she kind of catches the sound during held notes (something the director, if he exists, should have stopped) but she is really talented.
And Jamie himself shines bright. John McCrea has real star quality shining through even this pile. He stands out physically, a lithe, otherworldly-blonde, pale young man who regularly shows off how incredibly flexible he is. He manages to imbue the dullness with pops of vigor here and there, usually by doing an impossibly high kick in heels. He delivers one of the only lines that made me laugh – a bit where he’s trying to climb out the bathroom window and the mean teacher asks what he thinks he’s doing and he says “…Parkour??” That actually cracked me up. I hope that John gets a role in the future that is actually worthy of his talent.
Although I’m pretty sure he’s happy with this one. Everyone seems to be loving it.
Aside from the horrendous, actively bad score, the book is a mess as well. There is way too much of everything (so much attention to the drag queen, the teacher, the father, the friends) and yet not enough of those things to make it worthwhile, no real sense of understanding what they are trying to accomplish. And as if this storyline didn’t feel straight out of 1992 enough, there are outdated jokes peppering the book scenes, like talk of how all Kim Kardashian does is wear heels. It’s so low-effort.
OH so part of the nonexistent conflict is that the mean boy calls Jamie a ‘minger’ and Jamie is destroyed by it. So I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it was bad because it was basically the only real drama. Non-British people will likely not understand that part when they see it, but they are going to hate it anyway so whatever. So after the show I text my English friend “hey what does minga mean” because see I heard it with the accent, and she pretty much died laughing. She explained that it’s a very British way of calling someone skanky, like so skanky that no one would ever want to sleep with them. I thanked her for explaining it and then threw a glass at the wall in my fury over a musical basing all of its conflict over something so trivial as a boy calling another boy this word, as if Jamie, our unstoppable protagonist, would actually care that this idiot football player called him that.
Luckily the end sucked, with redemption of the white male asshole because who doesn’t love forgiveness that isn’t deserved. At least I guess we should try to redeem asshole children, who still have a chance to do some good, but I’m pretty sure that kid is going to remain a jerk forever. I’m angry that this disappointing show dragged (no pun intended) for almost three freaking hours. This isn’t “Les Mis”, people! And I’m angry and uncomfortable that a show that is professing to fill the niche of queer and inclusive art can still manage to be so sexist. There’s very often that unspoken but obvious thought that ‘we can’t be sexist towards women; we’re gay!’ and it’s definitely happening here. Its treatment of gender says while men like Jamie can cross gender lines and break down barriers, women shall remain in their supporting positions of the men around them. You may be thinking that there’s not a lot of good they can do for the women when this is a story about this one boy, but they manage to do a whole lot of bad, so. The girls in his school face a constant barrage of sexism from the male classmates, from being shown dicks they don’t want to see from dicks they don’t want to bother with, to being harassed with talk about how the boys will ‘drill’ them (they say ‘drilling’ a lot) whenever they want. And it’s a total Law & Order: SVU situation: The treatment is obviously bad, but it’s there not to serve as an example of bad behavior, but to serve as an example of what is considered normal. That pisses me off and it’s dangerous to include it in the show’s world as unnecessary examples of normalcy.
When the last musical assault on my ears and brain ended, the entire audience shot up to their feet quicker than I’ve ever seen. I guess when all the modern original musical work in your country is kind of on this level, you don’t expect, or get, any better.
AUDIENCE
The two old ladies in front of me were brushing their hair. One fumbled around her purse during the opening number, brought out a big brush, and brushed her hair, probably 100 strokes. Then she gave it to her friend. I can’t with people.
The best part of this show was the bubble tea I got next door afterwards.
Seeing “FRIEND: The One with Gunther” after losing Gunther
Those of you who know me, or who have been around here for a while, know that Friends is like water to me. And I drink more water than you think is healthy. I’ve needed Friends as a sort of lifeblood since I was a wee behbeh watching it on live TV. With everything you’ve ever said to me, I’ve immediately thought of the most applicable line from Friends in response and smiled to myself. Instead of my daily dose of viewing therapy (it’s not weird) one recent night, I went over to Wilton’s Music Hall (my fave London venue because I can pee at home and barely need shoes) to catch Brendan Murphy’s absolutely hysterical one-man show ‘Friend (The One With Gunther)’.
This 70-minute romp features Murphy in a sometimes-chaotic constantly energetic rehashing of all 10 seasons of the best show ever made from the perspective of the barista with hair brighter than the sun. It’s not so much an impression of Gunther that Murphy is giving in his portrayal, as he doesn’t waste time trying to act or sound like him, but more of an homage, a pledge of allegiance to appreciating what Gunther did as the only legitimate candidate for the oft-debated slot of ‘7th friend’. Gunther was in the most episodes after the main 6 cast members – 148 of the total 236 – and became a necessary part of the show, as familiar and constant as the couch in Central Perk. He’s usually a welcome sight to catch in the background, but when he comes more to the fore, he steals the show. His limited but potent lines reminded us that he was probably the best representation of our civilian selves on that screen, with his estimation and his annoyance with the main six.
In ‘Friend’, Murphy is a whirlwind of energy running around that stage. Gunther would never move so fast, but Murphy is instantly winning nonetheless. I started cracking up fast and furious right at the start when Murphy does a win-sided phincall and is telling his friend “yeah I’ll be about 70 minutes…yeah I expanded it a bit since the Fringe.” I was in hard on this comedy even though it had nothing to do with Friends yet. That sentiment continued as Murphy morphed into Gunther and told his early childhood tale: a clear paraphrase of Dr. Evil’s monologue in Austin Powers, you know the one, where he says his father claims he invented the question mark? I think husbo and I were the only ones who realized it was this excellent monologue, not because it’s niche but because we were the only non-drunks. These opening segments had me hooked and they were all clearly Murphy’s brand of comedy, not Gunther’s, which makes me want to see more from him on other subjects.
And then it moved on to the main subject, ‘Friends’ from Gunther’s perspective. Murphy told us the expected details – how he was in love with Rachel and how much he hated Ross, etc – as he attempted a rapid-fire run-through of every season and all the big plot points and what it was like for Gunther as opposed to Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe. As we went on, the show seemed to split into two aspects: the portrayal of Gunther sharing the deets as he lived them, vs a non-Gunther entity sharing a history of the show and its other minor players. The attempted run-through of all 10 seasons regardless of their import to Gunther’s story plus all the minor characters that Gunther never interacted with felt unnecessary and too divided from a core concept. And the non-Gunther-entity segments included a little too much audience work, like some trivia that felt too separated from a Gunther tribute.
However, these are just thoughts I’ve having thinking of it as a play and trying to consider its central thesis. But treated as a comedy show, who cares about a thesis if you are laughing your ass off the whole time. It doesn’t matter that the thread of what Gunther experienced is dropped at some point, and it doesn’t matter that Murphy’s tenuous enactment of our fave side character becomes more and more detached. It’s all really funny, most of all when he leans hard into his crush on Rachel and hatred of Ross and comes out the other end with the “Stan” segment, a work of complete and inspired genius. I was falling off my chair at this part – it’s so perfect.
This One With Gunther was more of a tribute to ‘Friends’ as a whole in the guise of being a tribute to this one fan favorite character rather than a legitimately full tribute to this character. However, it still felt like such a lovely treat to be able to experience so soon after the death of James Michael Tyler. My connection to Friends runs real deep (as it does for so many people even though I never could believe anyone else knew or loved it as much as I did until I saw this show and accepted that Murphy probably does) and so too does my assumed connection to all the characters after a lifetime of considering them like actual friends. Gunther is the first biggie that we’ve had to say goodbye to in real life and it’s a weird thing to grapple with, the death of someone you didn’t know who played someone you did know but who didn’t know you. It’s complicated to try to grieve for that person. What does it matter that it’s all a TV show?
I’m thus grateful to this show for giving me a timely outlet for thinking about Gunther a little more, and so glad that it turned out to be a hysterical original show and a great time. I’m only a little bit still full of hot rage fire at the audience, who was 90% messy sloppy drunks. They were so loud, literally shouting to each other, asking their friends at the other end of the row and behind them (jfc) if they wanted some of the wine they were passing around. They shouted to Murphy as though the show was a conversation, preempting his next lines (nb he was not asking for call and response). They were the kind of people that so badly wanted to prove that they knew all the inside jokes that they would ruin the joke for everyone else. People, you don’t have to prematurely scream ‘oh smelly cat!’ to show the rest of us that you are in on the joke. It’s ‘Friends’. EVERYONE IN THE WORLD is in on the joke. They were the kind of audience members that are blatant pathetic attention seekers, the ones who badly want everyone’s attention on them instead of the onstage talent and who you pity as a result but hate them for ruining your experience. It’s a testament to how much fun this show is that they didn’t completely ruin our time, though they were that bad that it was a close call. Brendan actually worked in jokes about the dozen-large group we were amidst, because he had to, they were that obviously disruptive. I’m mad that people like this who have no concern for anyone else around them in life get away with shit like this with no repercussions. They had a blast while we heard their loud chatter over what Brendan was saying a lot of time and suffered for it. When a few of them put their phones up and started filming, an usher halfheartedly waved to them to say no and then left. Great enforcement guys! They didn’t even see her. Anyway, this audience was full of pathetic pieces and that was a shame. Gunther would call these people azels, and then we serve them sneezers.
