It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re talking about “The Autumn of My Springtime”, at Tbilisi, Georgia’s famed Marionette Theatre.

Well, this is a first! Puppets scare me so I haven’t really sought out puppet shows - or as the fancy people call the fancier kind, ‘marionette theatre’. But a visit to the Rezo Gabriadze Theatre in Tbilisi, Georgia (not that Georgia) (unless you thought of the former-Soviet country (then you’d be right)) is one of the must-dos when visiting that city. I don’t know about you, but when I think marionette show, I think of John Cusack creepy AF in “Being John Malkovich”, a performance that still gives me nightmares because he made Malkovich’s entire life about creepy puppets?? Malko was in the og sunken place! So sad. Or I think of the ‘I got no strings to hold me down’ bit from Pinocchio and that’s equally terrifying so yeah, I’d usually say nah thanks to marionettes with their creepy faces and their creepy small but emotive hands. But now I will first think of Rezo Gabriadze’s surprisingly poignant show “The Autumn of My Springtime” and how wonderful it is. I’m not rushing out to see more scary puppets, but I fully insist that all Tbilisi visitors do.
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​It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re taking another look at the West End production of “Hamilton: An American Musical”, currently playing in London until probably the end of time.

Last week, I got to see “Hamilton” again. I’m very lucky to have seen it multiple times because, well first of all because it’s the best, but secondly, and more importantly for our purposes here, there’s not much that reviews coming out at this point can say about this show so it’s great to talk instead about how this production is evolving. If I read one more London critic reviewing it anew now and making a “I got to be in the room where it happened’ joke I will vomit. Well first I’d find out where he got his morning coffee and I’d throw it in his face (not when it’s too hot of course I’m not a monster) and I’d be like DID YOU THINK YOU WERE BEING ORIGINAL??? And then I’d vomit. Luckily we don’t have to get into all the details about what this show is about or the basics of the elements because I’m prettayyy prettayyy sure you know already, and if you don’t you can read past reviews here​ and here. ​So we get to talk about the London production and how it has improved, or worsened, since it was in previews.
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IT'S THEATRE THURSDAY! Today we are talking about 'Macbeth' at the Royal Shakespeare Company Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon. I KNOW! ​

To celebrate Jesus’s zombification this past week, my family took a wee little trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon, the birthplace of that other influential man, William Shakespeare, or as I call him endearingly, Billy Shakes. We visited the wee little house where he was born and grew up, and the not so wee cottage where his future wife, Anne Hathaway (not that one) grew up down the road, as well as the truly authentic Ye Olde Souvenir Shop of yore where my mom could buy magnets of Meghan Markle. But that’s all for a different post. Today is Theatre Thursday, and so we will talk about the most exciting thing to me about visiting Stratford – seeing a performance by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Our dates coincided with their performance of Macbeth, which despite reading a lot and knowing in various inspired-by forms, I’ve never seen performed as written. Exciting! Guess what, Macbeth is forked up. Like reals forked up. It’s so gory and troubling and violent and creepy. That Billy tho.
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It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we’re talking about the Hampstead Theatre’s production of “Caroline, or Change” playing until April 21. It transfers to the West End in November. 

​I was always obsessed with musical theatre, and in 2004 I could finally travel alone to NYC whenever I wanted/whenever my college schedule allowed and see Broadway shows more often. It was a big year – that was the year of ‘Wicked’, ‘Avenue Q’, ‘The Boy From Oz’, Alfred Molina’s ‘Fiddler’, Donna Murphy’s ‘Wonderful Town’, Audra in ‘Raisin in the Sun’. Such a busy season! I got to see Idina in ‘Wicked’, but another new show with a supposedly killer leading lady role slipped under my radar. That was ‘Caroline, or Change’, starring Tonya Pinkins as Caroline, a Tony-winning Anika Noni Rose as her daughter Emmie, and a score by Jeanine Tesori and Tony Kushner. It seemed pretty beloved, an interesting civil rights-age drama taking place in Louisiana, about a black maid working for a Jewish family but also with singing electrical appliances. How did that work, I wondered? It remained high on my list of shows I wanted to see someday, and so when the current English revival moved closer to the West End – to the Hampstead Theatre up north of the city – I did a little jig and said halleluyer, because I would finally see it.
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​I have to admit that I did not know about Kyiv. Not Kiev; I knew about Kiev. But that's all I knew. Let me splain. As we planned our trip from Russia through Eastern Europe and back home to London, my husband said "we should go to Kyiv"- pronounced Keev. And I said "where is this 'Keev' I never heard of it" and he was like "Kyiv is the capital of Ukraine??" and I was like "no that's Kiev and it is pronounced 'Kee-ev'"and he was like "wat" and I was like "what is happening" and I learned that Kiev ('Kee-ev') is the Russian word for the city, and since gaining their independence, Ukrainians have been very serious about reclaiming their own word for their capital city, 'Kyiv' (Keev), the one syllable version that was unknown to me. Can we blame the Russian bots for my ignorance? Now I'm all smarted up and ready to talk about this great city, Kyiv. Or Kiev, if you wanted to I guess. I like the sound of the two-syllable evil version better, but my preferences as a non-Ukrainian don't matter. Do as the people want us to. It's Kyiv.  
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It's Theatre Thursday! Today we're talking "Pippin", at the Southwark Playhouse in London until Saturday. 

“Pippin” is one of my best known, and best loved, shows. It lends itself so well to grandiose ridiculous spectacle, like in the most recent Broadway production, while still having a beating heart, an eternally provocative book, and one of the best all-around scores in musical theatre. So I was intrigued to see what a little almost-black-box of a theatre like Southwark Playhouse could do with the material. It’s been a long time since I saw a production of Pips that wasn’t full-out Cirque du Soleil treats – in fact, the last time was in high school, when I was indeed in a non-circus non-world-class-acrobat version. I couldn’t help but wonder (just a little call out to Miranda running for governor treats!), how strong are the bones of the show? Will it still produce the thrills and astonishment I remember even without all the flying through the air with the greatest of ease? And the answer is, those bones must have read The China Study and learned about how milk really isn’t the answer to osteoporosis and instead they’re eating vegetables and doing resistance training because hell yes, they are strong. 
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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.​
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​After our lovely time in Volgograd, we had to return to Moscow in order to get into Eastern Europe (to Kyiv, Ukraine). If you look at a map (or the map above how bout), you'll notice that it's a sharp backwards turn to go Volgograd-Moscow-Kyiv (it's the part of the map that is like an A) and kind of silly when Volgograd to Kyiv directly would save hours and hours and make a lot more sense. But guess what's happening on that route? CRIMEA. Can't go through there! Ever since the Russian Federation annexed Crimea (in March 2014), pro-Russian protests in the region escalated to armed conflict between the separatist forces and the Ukrainian government. Thousands of people are fighting still and it's very dangerous. Russia is, as uzh, very cagey about everything bad it's doing, and it deny its presence in the region almost as often as it confirms that 'military specialists' are there. Russia is real trouble and we didn't want to reward its terribleness with more tourism money spent there, but we had no choice so back to Moscow we went. 
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It's Theatre Thursday! Today we are discussing "Girl from the North Country", which is playing at the Noel Coward theatre in London until March 24.
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​As I’ve said hundreds of times, I love going into shows cold, not knowing any spoilers, not knowing the words to all the music yet, just a blank slate ready to be won over. But I may have gone overboard this week because not only did I know nothing about London’s new play “The Girl from North Country”, I knew wrong information. I thought this was about farming life in Ireland. Cue all the laughing-crying emojis because it’s about MINNESOTA. Duluth, specifically. I guess that is easily confused with Dublin? Regardless of my hysterical laughing when the show started and I heard them say ‘Duluth, Minnesota’ (internalized laughing, of course), and despite the awkwardness of this disjointed, rickety show, it’s a nice piece of theatre, enjoyable in spite of itself.
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