January 19, 2023
Eating Vegan in Liverpool: Maray & Our Kitchenby Randi / August 17, 2018
It’s Theatre Thursday! Today we are talking about Ontroerend Goed’s interactive theatrical play LIES, which played London’s Almeida Theatre this summer.
Capitalism is the devil, right? Down with capitalism? And down with big too-big-to-fail banks and fake money scams that don’t make any sense but that our entire global economy depends on, right? Yes, right, unless you’re the one making that money. Then your clear moral vision gets a little cloudy and it gets harder to say ‘no stop all of these terrible things that are destroying the world!’ because you’re too busy making like Mona Lisa Saperstein and saying “MONEY, PLEEEEEASE”. At least this is the moral of the story at LIES, the interactive theatre experience that ran at London’s Almeida Theatre until last Saturday (sorriessss all that cash has destroyed my ability to care that y’all missed it).
You can’t really call it a play, but LIES (which is stylized with currency symbols as you can see in the photo but I can’t really do on my computer without taking a few minutes of effort, which I don’t want to do anymore because again moneycashdontcare) is a powerful, intense, truly immersive theatrical event like nothing has ever been immersive before. The latest work from Belgian theatre collective Ontroerend Goed (and no I don’t know how to pronounce that but I’m going to say it’s…phonetically?) to play in London, LIES attempts to show how volatile the financial world is, yes, but also how artificial it all is. Alexander Devriendt, the artistic director of the OG collective (it’s just easier), explains in his programme note that his journey into the financial world revealed endless ‘magic tricks’, an entire global system of functioning that relies on absolutely nothing of substance. It’s all pixels on screens, he said, all the money we use and trade and owe, and nothing refers to anything real like the pile of gold of the past or something. Devriendt cites a philosopher who once said that “if everybody would know what money is, a revolution would break out.”
But even after 2008, and movies like “The Big Short” explaining to us non-experts how forked up the system is, nothing happened, nothing changed. Why is that? LIES intends to show the audience how precarious the economy really is, and maybe to spark a revolution by getting us to understand how dangerous it is to leave the control and knowledge of the financial world to just a select few.
And it is indeed dangerous for only a few people to have control, as evidenced in the performance I attended by…my own actions. Man, did I get swept up in ‘earning’ money and out-pacing all my tablemates in my returns. Let’s get down to the details. One by one, the audience members were taken into the dark room and sent to one of 10 blackjack-type tables, each with one cast member sitting in the dealer’s position. I’ll refer to them as dealers even though we weren’t playing cards. Unless you are disabled and need to remain with your companion, you don’t sit with the people you came with. I was upset at first that I couldn’t sit with Husbo, but now I totally understand how important it is to be anonymous to the people you’re with, with the freedom to act as depraved as you can.
Our table of six players was a country with our name taken from the first person who was seated at our table. The cast named the tables/nations quickly and impressively, with names like ‘Josovo’ (hilarious!), ‘United Andrew’, and ‘Markocco’. Each table/nation had six players, and each of us was to act as banks, with the dealer acting as the national government/central bank. (Can you tell already that I don’t know how economy do?) So, yeah, when I say this theatre was interactive, I mean it was forking interactive. This would be an absolute nightmare for those of you who hate when you’re in a regular theatre and an actor makes eye contact with you. You are part of this.
The only lights came from bald fluorescent bulbs hanging over each table, so that when you were at your table it felt like you were being interrogated. They also played weird music that made my blood pressure rise, and every so often they would announce how much money the international community earned – and how much the temperature in the room had increased. Creepily, every announcement the Dealer made would be stated in unison with all the other tables’ dealers. When you heard their unison chanting over the din of the room, it was kind of horrifying.
To begin, our dealer man told us to take out all the cash we had on us. I didn’t have my wallet, but luckily we were told by front of house staff to have at least a note or a pound on us, so I had a 5 pound note from Husbo. The dealer told us we could choose to invest up to 20 pounds, so everyone else at my table gave in that maximum, except me, with my fiver. We put our investments in envelopes (so everyone gets back their real money at the end) and we got back chips representing our investments, but in millions. My little baby stack of 5 chips was so baby! The dealer gave each of us a dice and said that the first opportunity for growth was on a deal that paid out at a 1:1 rate, meaning if you risked $1 million and succeeded, you got another $1 million back. To succeed, you had to roll 3, 4, 5, or 6. So the odds were in your favor, and we rolled about 4-5 times. There were only a few losses when you had such good odds of a successful roll.
After a few successful rounds of investment, Dealerman said that the central bank was booming, and our nation could start selling, and we could start buying, government bonds. Okay, I saw at this point that it wasn’t going to be as simple as just ‘rolling dice and doubling your ante’. Dealerman offered me a $10 million loan from the central bank, and I said yes but I don’t think I had a choice (they have to keep the game going and I needed to be competitive). I bought a few bonds as we were told that the value of these would only increase, as long as our central bank stayed healthy.
Next, Dealerman told us that we were doing well as a nation and we could now make investments at a 2:5 return. Meaning, you risked 2 chips but if you rolled 4, 5, or 6, you would win 5 chips. So, higher stakes for losing, and fewer winning rolls, but better returns. I did pretty well rolling high numbers (take me to Vegas! No just kidding I hate it there!) and you could no longer tell that I started at such a deficit compared to my tablemates – but that’s also because the Dealer was giving everyone loans like whoa. To mark your loans, he’d give you 10 chips, and then in the central bank he would put a blank card and write $10 million and your name. These debts became crucial to our central bank’s solvency.
Soon, the cast members from the other tables/nations came around to sell their bonds on the international market, which our Dealer went off to do too. On a board in the middle of the dark room was a list with all our country names and our current credit rating, from A to C. We were at a B, which is fine, but there were already nations with B+ ratings and A-, and even one A. We needed to improve our rating, whatever the heck that means! We started betting even faster and buying lots of bonds. I think. It’s all a money-grabbing blur.
Then things got interesting. Dealerman said that one of our banks could have the opportunity to short deals in order to hedge its losses. This was represented by a Short card, and we had to bid on it to win it. This is where I thought, ‘oh bloody oh, me and my inability to retain financial information.’ See, I’ve seen ‘The Big Short’, several times actually, and every time I understand completely what’s happening, but the second it ends, I forget all the lessons I learned. So I didn’t immediately realize how baller this card would be and how I’d be the ultimate winner. Shorting is like betting against the success of a deal, so that if a bank invests in something but the deal fails, you win. So if one of my tablemates bet on the 2:5 deal but lost, I’d win what they risked if I shorted the deal. I mean I think that’s how it works; don’t quote me. One of my tablemates got it for $12 million. That would have wiped out nearly all my money, so I was too nervous and too unsure of what it would get me. But a few rounds later, the Dealer had one more, a final Short card, for sale. I was going to get this no matter what, and you know what, I did – I paid $21 million for it. And it was worth it. I immediately started doing what the other guy with the Short card at my table was doing – shorting his own investments. Meaning, even when he lost/didn’t roll 5 or 6, he didn’t lose anything. We both started doing that on the 5:15 deals and we were positively swimming in chips like drunk Londoners on Saturday nights. It was SO MUCH FUN. Sure, shorting your own investments probably is illegal, but we were allowed to do it here, so we did. And it would have felt mean to use it on our new friends, like “oh you suck at rolling I bet that you are going to fail again.” That’s not how you make friends.
In the next round, we had the opportunity to make deals on a 5:15 rate of return, rolling only 5 or 6 to win. That’s a huge risk, and it’s so hard to roll just 5 or 6, but it didn’t matter for me with the Short card! I literally could never lose. It got almost impossible for me to count all my returns at the end of every round. One time, I did mess up when counting the returns – I put some of them in my capital pile. It was all just too much to keep track of! But that was tax evasion, and so I had to play a round with red dice! How embarrassing.
Even more fun, Dealerman then said we had the opportunity for two mergers to happen in our nation. The animalistic drive of capitalism had already gotten to us, so my buddy with the other Short card and I merged our banks. We would be unstoppable, and, as the Dealer told us, we were now too big to fail, for the sake of our nation’s economic health. We played, I mean invested, more 5:15 rounds, bought and sold more bonds on the national and international markets, and soon I couldn’t even count my returns at the end of every round (to pay my share of taxes to the central bank) without the Dealer’s assistance.
And everything the Dealer paid out from central was getting more and more unwieldy – my return of $15 million each winning roll was decreasing rapidly in the number of chips it had versus cards: it started with 15 chips, but then it was 10 chips and 5 bond cards (a mix of ours and other nations’), then it was 5 chips and 10 cards – both of bonds and debt holdings from other players. We reached a point by the end where I was getting maybe 1-2 chips and the rest was different kinds of cards to keep track of, awkward ‘financial products’ that mixed cash, national bonds, international bonds, and debt cards from all my fellow players. And this is where the truth kind of started to kick in – what was this money we were making? So much of it these cards that kind of represented money out of thin air, with nothing of substance backing it up. Sure I could try to make some of the players pay their debt cards off with actual chips, but it would still count exactly the same for me. And if you tried to pay off your debt with the central bank, it would hurt it, and possibly affect our rating. One of my tablemates wanted to pay off some of his debt with the central bank once he made a lot of money, and Dealer said he could – but to think about it, because having that debt helped shore up our government’s economy and losing it could hurt our nation. Obviously he didn’t pay it off, and we all kind of realized how so much of the economy is based on literally nothing, all houses made of playing cards, which was a little on the nose here.
But red alert! Four of the 10 nations in the room were crashing! They were all in dire need of a bailout, but the international community was told we could only save one of them, leaving the other three to crash. It would be decided by a vote, so each table voted on the one whose products they had the most of – like if we bought more bonds of one of those countries than others, we were voting to save them, because otherwise their products would be worthless. So one of them was saved, and whatever we had from the other three was indeed worthless.
We started getting a little more nervous about what was going on with the international community – but we were also rolling in dough and winning each roll was addictive. I am hundo p a democratic socialist – I think rich people should pay a whole lot more in taxes for the good of everyone and I don’t think billionaires should exist – but in this environment, I was a RAGING CAPITALIST. It was insane, how focused everyone remained on making money and how we didn’t really stop to think about whether the weird financial products we were creating as time went on were really worth any actual money, or whether they should be. By the time they stopped us, I had earned $130 million! And I started with 5 pounds! Man alive for an instant I was like ‘I’M GONNA BE A TRADER! I MEAN A GAMBLER! I MEAN I DON’T KNOW WHAT I MEAN!’ But then I came back to my senses and was like, oh this is troubling, and man alive the world economy desperately needs to change.
Good game, Ontario Reverend Goatherd, good game.
INFORMATION
The show ran a straight two hours of intense concentration and really high blood pressure. They let you bring in water bottles but nothing that could spill (and nothing could be kept on the table). If you’re me, you needed ice cream afterwards, but others will need a hard drink – which explains why every banker is addicted to drugs.
But even after 2008, and movies like “The Big Short” explaining to us non-experts how forked up the system is, nothing happened, nothing changed. Why is that? LIES intends to show the audience how precarious the economy really is, and maybe to spark a revolution by getting us to understand how dangerous it is to leave the control and knowledge of the financial world to just a select few.
And it is indeed dangerous for only a few people to have control, as evidenced in the performance I attended by…my own actions. Man, did I get swept up in ‘earning’ money and out-pacing all my tablemates in my returns. Let’s get down to the details. One by one, the audience members were taken into the dark room and sent to one of 10 blackjack-type tables, each with one cast member sitting in the dealer’s position. I’ll refer to them as dealers even though we weren’t playing cards. Unless you are disabled and need to remain with your companion, you don’t sit with the people you came with. I was upset at first that I couldn’t sit with Husbo, but now I totally understand how important it is to be anonymous to the people you’re with, with the freedom to act as depraved as you can.
Our table of six players was a country with our name taken from the first person who was seated at our table. The cast named the tables/nations quickly and impressively, with names like ‘Josovo’ (hilarious!), ‘United Andrew’, and ‘Markocco’. Each table/nation had six players, and each of us was to act as banks, with the dealer acting as the national government/central bank. (Can you tell already that I don’t know how economy do?) So, yeah, when I say this theatre was interactive, I mean it was forking interactive. This would be an absolute nightmare for those of you who hate when you’re in a regular theatre and an actor makes eye contact with you. You are part of this.
The only lights came from bald fluorescent bulbs hanging over each table, so that when you were at your table it felt like you were being interrogated. They also played weird music that made my blood pressure rise, and every so often they would announce how much money the international community earned – and how much the temperature in the room had increased. Creepily, every announcement the Dealer made would be stated in unison with all the other tables’ dealers. When you heard their unison chanting over the din of the room, it was kind of horrifying.
To begin, our dealer man told us to take out all the cash we had on us. I didn’t have my wallet, but luckily we were told by front of house staff to have at least a note or a pound on us, so I had a 5 pound note from Husbo. The dealer told us we could choose to invest up to 20 pounds, so everyone else at my table gave in that maximum, except me, with my fiver. We put our investments in envelopes (so everyone gets back their real money at the end) and we got back chips representing our investments, but in millions. My little baby stack of 5 chips was so baby! The dealer gave each of us a dice and said that the first opportunity for growth was on a deal that paid out at a 1:1 rate, meaning if you risked $1 million and succeeded, you got another $1 million back. To succeed, you had to roll 3, 4, 5, or 6. So the odds were in your favor, and we rolled about 4-5 times. There were only a few losses when you had such good odds of a successful roll.
After a few successful rounds of investment, Dealerman said that the central bank was booming, and our nation could start selling, and we could start buying, government bonds. Okay, I saw at this point that it wasn’t going to be as simple as just ‘rolling dice and doubling your ante’. Dealerman offered me a $10 million loan from the central bank, and I said yes but I don’t think I had a choice (they have to keep the game going and I needed to be competitive). I bought a few bonds as we were told that the value of these would only increase, as long as our central bank stayed healthy.
Next, Dealerman told us that we were doing well as a nation and we could now make investments at a 2:5 return. Meaning, you risked 2 chips but if you rolled 4, 5, or 6, you would win 5 chips. So, higher stakes for losing, and fewer winning rolls, but better returns. I did pretty well rolling high numbers (take me to Vegas! No just kidding I hate it there!) and you could no longer tell that I started at such a deficit compared to my tablemates – but that’s also because the Dealer was giving everyone loans like whoa. To mark your loans, he’d give you 10 chips, and then in the central bank he would put a blank card and write $10 million and your name. These debts became crucial to our central bank’s solvency.
Soon, the cast members from the other tables/nations came around to sell their bonds on the international market, which our Dealer went off to do too. On a board in the middle of the dark room was a list with all our country names and our current credit rating, from A to C. We were at a B, which is fine, but there were already nations with B+ ratings and A-, and even one A. We needed to improve our rating, whatever the heck that means! We started betting even faster and buying lots of bonds. I think. It’s all a money-grabbing blur.
Then things got interesting. Dealerman said that one of our banks could have the opportunity to short deals in order to hedge its losses. This was represented by a Short card, and we had to bid on it to win it. This is where I thought, ‘oh bloody oh, me and my inability to retain financial information.’ See, I’ve seen ‘The Big Short’, several times actually, and every time I understand completely what’s happening, but the second it ends, I forget all the lessons I learned. So I didn’t immediately realize how baller this card would be and how I’d be the ultimate winner. Shorting is like betting against the success of a deal, so that if a bank invests in something but the deal fails, you win. So if one of my tablemates bet on the 2:5 deal but lost, I’d win what they risked if I shorted the deal. I mean I think that’s how it works; don’t quote me. One of my tablemates got it for $12 million. That would have wiped out nearly all my money, so I was too nervous and too unsure of what it would get me. But a few rounds later, the Dealer had one more, a final Short card, for sale. I was going to get this no matter what, and you know what, I did – I paid $21 million for it. And it was worth it. I immediately started doing what the other guy with the Short card at my table was doing – shorting his own investments. Meaning, even when he lost/didn’t roll 5 or 6, he didn’t lose anything. We both started doing that on the 5:15 deals and we were positively swimming in chips like drunk Londoners on Saturday nights. It was SO MUCH FUN. Sure, shorting your own investments probably is illegal, but we were allowed to do it here, so we did. And it would have felt mean to use it on our new friends, like “oh you suck at rolling I bet that you are going to fail again.” That’s not how you make friends.
In the next round, we had the opportunity to make deals on a 5:15 rate of return, rolling only 5 or 6 to win. That’s a huge risk, and it’s so hard to roll just 5 or 6, but it didn’t matter for me with the Short card! I literally could never lose. It got almost impossible for me to count all my returns at the end of every round. One time, I did mess up when counting the returns – I put some of them in my capital pile. It was all just too much to keep track of! But that was tax evasion, and so I had to play a round with red dice! How embarrassing.
Even more fun, Dealerman then said we had the opportunity for two mergers to happen in our nation. The animalistic drive of capitalism had already gotten to us, so my buddy with the other Short card and I merged our banks. We would be unstoppable, and, as the Dealer told us, we were now too big to fail, for the sake of our nation’s economic health. We played, I mean invested, more 5:15 rounds, bought and sold more bonds on the national and international markets, and soon I couldn’t even count my returns at the end of every round (to pay my share of taxes to the central bank) without the Dealer’s assistance.
And everything the Dealer paid out from central was getting more and more unwieldy – my return of $15 million each winning roll was decreasing rapidly in the number of chips it had versus cards: it started with 15 chips, but then it was 10 chips and 5 bond cards (a mix of ours and other nations’), then it was 5 chips and 10 cards – both of bonds and debt holdings from other players. We reached a point by the end where I was getting maybe 1-2 chips and the rest was different kinds of cards to keep track of, awkward ‘financial products’ that mixed cash, national bonds, international bonds, and debt cards from all my fellow players. And this is where the truth kind of started to kick in – what was this money we were making? So much of it these cards that kind of represented money out of thin air, with nothing of substance backing it up. Sure I could try to make some of the players pay their debt cards off with actual chips, but it would still count exactly the same for me. And if you tried to pay off your debt with the central bank, it would hurt it, and possibly affect our rating. One of my tablemates wanted to pay off some of his debt with the central bank once he made a lot of money, and Dealer said he could – but to think about it, because having that debt helped shore up our government’s economy and losing it could hurt our nation. Obviously he didn’t pay it off, and we all kind of realized how so much of the economy is based on literally nothing, all houses made of playing cards, which was a little on the nose here.
But red alert! Four of the 10 nations in the room were crashing! They were all in dire need of a bailout, but the international community was told we could only save one of them, leaving the other three to crash. It would be decided by a vote, so each table voted on the one whose products they had the most of – like if we bought more bonds of one of those countries than others, we were voting to save them, because otherwise their products would be worthless. So one of them was saved, and whatever we had from the other three was indeed worthless.
We started getting a little more nervous about what was going on with the international community – but we were also rolling in dough and winning each roll was addictive. I am hundo p a democratic socialist – I think rich people should pay a whole lot more in taxes for the good of everyone and I don’t think billionaires should exist – but in this environment, I was a RAGING CAPITALIST. It was insane, how focused everyone remained on making money and how we didn’t really stop to think about whether the weird financial products we were creating as time went on were really worth any actual money, or whether they should be. By the time they stopped us, I had earned $130 million! And I started with 5 pounds! Man alive for an instant I was like ‘I’M GONNA BE A TRADER! I MEAN A GAMBLER! I MEAN I DON’T KNOW WHAT I MEAN!’ But then I came back to my senses and was like, oh this is troubling, and man alive the world economy desperately needs to change.
Good game, Ontario Reverend Goatherd, good game.
INFORMATION
The show ran a straight two hours of intense concentration and really high blood pressure. They let you bring in water bottles but nothing that could spill (and nothing could be kept on the table). If you’re me, you needed ice cream afterwards, but others will need a hard drink – which explains why every banker is addicted to drugs.
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“Sunset Boulevard” in London: Glenn Close is Amazing, That’s All That Matters
For some unknown reason (*cough* sexism *cough* misogyny), the biggest roles for women in musical theatre are characters considered past their prime, doomed to fail, and most importantly cah-freaking-razy, with the crazy level ranging from simmering to boiling to overflowing and knocking the pot off the stove, all in one big belting song. Oh and written by men, naturally, but that’s because female composers aren’t given as much opportunity just as in any field and you know what, that’s an issue for another day. Today, we are talking about the current toast of the West End, “Sunset Boulevard” starring the astonishing Glenn Close. (Just Sunday evening, Imelda Staunton won an Olivier Award (rightly so) for her performance in “Gypsy” as the other extremely important crazy-old-lady musical theatre role in a production that was the toast of London last year. Funnily enough, the last great Mama Rose in “Gypsy” on Broadway was Patti LuPone, and in 1993 Patti famously originated the role of Norma Desmond in “Sunset” in London and was supposed to open it on Broadway but Andrew Lloyd Webber? hates her! she hates him too! And he cast Glenn Close for the Broadway version without telling Patti. Musical theatre trivia is FLAMES.)
Last night, “Sunset Boulevard” opened in London for the first time since that original production more than 20 years ago, starring original Broadway lead Glenn Close for her West End debut. (I saw the show’s first preview Friday night, but given that the preview period was only one weekend, I believe no changes were made.) As Norma Desmond, Glenn is riveting and haunting, carefully releasing the crazy rope with the utmost control so you believe every step of her journey. You believe it, you don’t support it. No one in the show is likeable, which is hard, but the whole purpose of this production is Glenn’s performance. Despite the source material specifying that Norma is 50 years old, Glenn is perfectly cast now as the aging former queen of silent film, at almost 70 years old herself. When the movie first came out, 50 being the age of haggard and scary old ladies whose I don’t know skin and toes fall off if you startle them seemed acceptable, but now that’s just laughable, so yeah, this is a good if unspoken change.
As you probably know from the movie and if you don’t you should go watch it, Norma Desmond used to be the biggest star in Hollywood, the most important and greatest face in silent films, but then she stopped having a 1 in front of her age and everyone was like bye Felicia, you gross and old, like not just for this movie, like for the earth. So she did what most celebrities do when they lose their status but still have lots of money – she became a recluse in her enormous, gaudy mansh on Sunset Boulevard (get it, that’s the title, and it’s where she lives), with only her creepy AF manservant Max tending to her day and night. When young screenwriter Joe Gillis lands at the house trying to flee from old-timey gangstas (fedoras, suits, and all), Norma is ecstatic that this handsome man can a) help her with her behemoth script for her comeback film ‘Salome’ (though she spits on the word comeback, hates it!) and b) be her kept boy for all kinds of gross things. Let’s talk about Joe for a minute. Joe sucks. Joe wears terrible pants but thinks he’s hot shit. He’s apparently behind on bills, and that’s why the gangstas are after him and his car, but like, are they so wrong? Does he really owe them money? What kind of business did he get himself into? What kind of man flees from his responsibilities and shacks up with a strange (both meanings) lady just because it’s super comfortable and he likes fancy things and doesn’t care about dignity? Such a weak-willed diddadoof. You’re like, who’s supposed to care that he gets shot? Me? Oh you’re serious? No. Oh, not a spoiler p.s., even if you haven’t seen the movie it’s not, because before a word of the play is spoken there is a body floating (hanging from wires) in the pool (over the very coolly lit orchestra pit), dressed in the clothes Joe is wearing. So you’re like, oh cool at least it ends well.
Glenn is in such control that she actually makes you understand Norma. Instead of playing her at full-tilt psycho like she easily could be, she vacillates between batty and harmless to delusional to dangerous and psychotic and all things in between with expert restraint. You easily see the changes that Joe’s company brings to her and in turn the changes she undergoes when threatened with his departure, so that at the end, when she is lost in her delusions (with her famous “I’m ready for my close-up” line) you are there with her, accepting her lunacy completely and not in a detached way that a lesser actress might leave you. She effectively shows that some roles are meant to be played by an actress that sings and not a singer who acts. Fully the former, Glenn’s acting is indeed beyond wonderful, but her singing is pretty wrecked. And this is actually so powerful that it seems impossible that the character could be performed any other way. Several years ago, when “Next to Normal” came out, reviewers said Alice Ripley’s raw and ragged vocal performance was like a razor’s edge that cut you to the core. (Alice Ripley has a fantastic voice; the raggedness was a mixture of acting choice and the role tearing her apart emotionally and physically. And it was spectacular.) Glenn’s voice here is like that but 100x more pronounced. It’s frayed and uneven and reminded me of woven baskets for unidentifiable reasons, but at times it is that same blade cutting through everything else. Somehow, oddly, her quieter, seemingly easier parts were where she faltered most, and then on the big numbers with huge belted high notes, she delivered on those! The exact opposite of what you would expect from a normal person. In a role like this, all of this totally worked because she is supposed to be very damaged but strong in her delusions. And, it showed that she was acting the songs above all, which is most important. Given that her two big numbers, “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye” are also the most famous and most important songs of the show, it’s pretty wonderful that those are the ones she fully delivered on. No matter the reasons why they stood apart, as long as they did.
I am saying repeatedly that Glenn’s acting is what makes this show worth seeing (not that you can get tickets really; it’s sold out and ending in a month). That’s because it’s a crap show otherwise. This production is done exceedingly well, but it’s a crap show underneath. With music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics and book by people who aren’t peculiar billionaires, “Sunset” has 3 strong songs and then a WHOLE BUNCH of terrible, mind-numbing recitative repeated. You get the schmoozy “Let’s Have Lunch” at the beginning, which does establish the era and the schmooziness of makin’ pictures back then, but I don’t see how that demonstration is worth the sacrifice of art, enjoyment, pleasure, musicality, anything else. What about hooking the audience and building excitement? It’s just bleh. Who cares if it tells you what decade we’re in – costumes can do that better, and oh yeah, everyone seeing this already knows. This past week, my showtune rotation has been stuck on “Ragtime” and “In The Heights”, two great shows with impressive, blood-pumping, heart-racing openings. I love a good opening number. “Sunset” doesn’t have one, and so it becomes incredibly easy not to care about the story. And then immediately we go into “Every Movie’s A Circus”, which introduces us to Betty (a fine-voiced Siobhan Dillon) and the melody that will be repeated 1000000 times before the curtain falls. See, at first, you hear the melody of “Every (beat) movie’s a circus” and think, whatever, not exactly inspired music or lyrics but let’s move on to better things. But no, you never get to move on to better things because this melody is repeated for Every. Single. Book Scene. That and one other motif are repeated ad nauseam, and I mean nauseam. Someone decided that it would be a good idea if all the dialogue were sung to the same shitty melody over and over again, so much so that people (cough husband cough) were ready to cut off their ears if it meant being spared yet another tortuous go-round. Sometimes repeated recitative melody works, like for example in “Hamilton”, you get the melody from “Daddy said to be home by sundown” “Daddy doesn’t need to know” repeated several times throughout the show, as well as other core motifs. But they have purpose and meaning in their repetition, and they don’t beat you over the head with it so consistently that you want to beat your own head. It got physically painful to hear towards the end, when things are supposed to be dramatic and changing and you’re feeling the climax build and then like a sad clown coming back for a lame joke you get that same bullshit “every (beat) something’s a something” and it takes all your might not to F-ING SCREAM from the front of the dress circle to JUST STOP IT. 80% of this score is the stuff that gets played on the Sirius XM Broadway channel that makes my dad yell “Who do they think wants to listen to this schlock! Play the good stuff!” And sure, you could be arguing, ‘hey you even said there were 3 really strong songs and a few fine ones, so why complain about the recitative parts or say this isn’t a great show’ and I will answer because those repetitious sung book scenes were completely unnecessary, and unnecessary bullshit garbage makes me angry. There was no reason the book scenes couldn’t have been spoken instead of repeating the 2 motifs over and over beyond all semblance of purpose.
The opening of Act II, Joe’s big title number, is so much stronger than every other non-Glenn moment, thank goodness for that (although some of the lyrics are super cringe-worthy). Right before this number, to start the act, Joe emerges from the ‘pool’ in only a skimpy bathing suit, and someone in the balcony started applauding (he’s quite ripped) and then others joined in. It was hilarious. Joe is played by Michael Xavier, and he did a fine job with a terrible character. He really showed us Joe’s grappling with his own pitifulness and desperation and, by the end, self-loathing. Another very strong non-Glenn aspect was Fred Johanson as Max, Norma’s steadfast butler/servant/assistant and, we find out, former director and first husband. I feel like in the movie this latter revelation felt much more revelatory, but here it was stated and then completely glossed over, robbing it of all dramatic potential. Very odd. But great news, Johanson has a terrifically booming operatic voice and actually sang a non-annoying song very well. When we finally got to his solo number, husband actually sighed in relief and said at least someone up there can sing. No but seriously it was nice to hear. His voice in this cacophony of whatever was 100% in “Love Actually” when the little girls ask Hugh Grant to sing a carol and he starts singing “Old King Wenceslas” and then his driver joins in and has this enormous strong baritone and Hugh’s like whaaaat! That’s what Max is to this production. I mean, Glenn Close is still Hugh Grant and that’s why you’re watching, but it’s nice to hear a strong voice cut in.
Siobhan Dillon as Betty also has a beautiful voice, but by the time she gets to show off, it’s late in Act II and you’ve learned by now that Betty is a thankless character with no chemistry with Joe, and thank goodness for it, because as we established earlier, Joe sucks, and Betty has a good life ahead of her and is better off without him. So they have this big love-song duet that is supposed to be very emotional, but you feel absolutely zero anythings for them and just want them to stop so the story can get back on track.
But none of this matters because Glenn Close is giving a tour de force performance, a masterclass in acting, a role for the ages, and every other cliché you can think of. But it’s true. It was incredible to see her in such a defining role for the first time in so many years. All around, it’s just special. This production is staged more like a concert, extremely pared down with the sets just composed of dark industrial metal staircases going this way and that, a stray sofa or table brought in for various scenes, and an extravagant, almost ghastly Phantom-style chandelier coming down to represent the mansion. At first, I was upset not to get a garishly lavish set, but then I realized it was so much better this way, for two reasons: 1) No set could really live up to how extravagant the house is supposed to be; it would just be a underdeveloped attempt at showing it. This way, our imaginations more easily filled in the blanks. 2) The bare bones set let Glenn shine through even brighter. There were no distractions from her performance, and her performance is really all that matters here. Along with the rest of the audiences this month, I’m lucky to have seen her in this role.
AUDIENCE
Several phones lit up, especially from the big wigs in tuxes with buckets of champagne on ice in the private boxes. I mean, there is something about the entitlement of the upper class. Otherwise, the audience was extra attentive and extra vehement in its praise, with boisterous shouts of “Bravo!” from many members every time Glenn did something. It felt almost too much but she was great, so, there you go.
STAGE DOOR
It was a mess. The guards had no idea what they were doing and after 45 minutes realized that they had to move the enormous crowd to make room for Glenn’s car right up front. They need to set up much longer barricades and hire a guard that has any clue what to do. I waited an hour and then gave up; the crowd was too pushy to deal with. Other cast members came out but walked right away, assuming no one was waiting for them. An hour I would like back please.
As you probably know from the movie and if you don’t you should go watch it, Norma Desmond used to be the biggest star in Hollywood, the most important and greatest face in silent films, but then she stopped having a 1 in front of her age and everyone was like bye Felicia, you gross and old, like not just for this movie, like for the earth. So she did what most celebrities do when they lose their status but still have lots of money – she became a recluse in her enormous, gaudy mansh on Sunset Boulevard (get it, that’s the title, and it’s where she lives), with only her creepy AF manservant Max tending to her day and night. When young screenwriter Joe Gillis lands at the house trying to flee from old-timey gangstas (fedoras, suits, and all), Norma is ecstatic that this handsome man can a) help her with her behemoth script for her comeback film ‘Salome’ (though she spits on the word comeback, hates it!) and b) be her kept boy for all kinds of gross things. Let’s talk about Joe for a minute. Joe sucks. Joe wears terrible pants but thinks he’s hot shit. He’s apparently behind on bills, and that’s why the gangstas are after him and his car, but like, are they so wrong? Does he really owe them money? What kind of business did he get himself into? What kind of man flees from his responsibilities and shacks up with a strange (both meanings) lady just because it’s super comfortable and he likes fancy things and doesn’t care about dignity? Such a weak-willed diddadoof. You’re like, who’s supposed to care that he gets shot? Me? Oh you’re serious? No. Oh, not a spoiler p.s., even if you haven’t seen the movie it’s not, because before a word of the play is spoken there is a body floating (hanging from wires) in the pool (over the very coolly lit orchestra pit), dressed in the clothes Joe is wearing. So you’re like, oh cool at least it ends well.
Glenn is in such control that she actually makes you understand Norma. Instead of playing her at full-tilt psycho like she easily could be, she vacillates between batty and harmless to delusional to dangerous and psychotic and all things in between with expert restraint. You easily see the changes that Joe’s company brings to her and in turn the changes she undergoes when threatened with his departure, so that at the end, when she is lost in her delusions (with her famous “I’m ready for my close-up” line) you are there with her, accepting her lunacy completely and not in a detached way that a lesser actress might leave you. She effectively shows that some roles are meant to be played by an actress that sings and not a singer who acts. Fully the former, Glenn’s acting is indeed beyond wonderful, but her singing is pretty wrecked. And this is actually so powerful that it seems impossible that the character could be performed any other way. Several years ago, when “Next to Normal” came out, reviewers said Alice Ripley’s raw and ragged vocal performance was like a razor’s edge that cut you to the core. (Alice Ripley has a fantastic voice; the raggedness was a mixture of acting choice and the role tearing her apart emotionally and physically. And it was spectacular.) Glenn’s voice here is like that but 100x more pronounced. It’s frayed and uneven and reminded me of woven baskets for unidentifiable reasons, but at times it is that same blade cutting through everything else. Somehow, oddly, her quieter, seemingly easier parts were where she faltered most, and then on the big numbers with huge belted high notes, she delivered on those! The exact opposite of what you would expect from a normal person. In a role like this, all of this totally worked because she is supposed to be very damaged but strong in her delusions. And, it showed that she was acting the songs above all, which is most important. Given that her two big numbers, “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye” are also the most famous and most important songs of the show, it’s pretty wonderful that those are the ones she fully delivered on. No matter the reasons why they stood apart, as long as they did.
I am saying repeatedly that Glenn’s acting is what makes this show worth seeing (not that you can get tickets really; it’s sold out and ending in a month). That’s because it’s a crap show otherwise. This production is done exceedingly well, but it’s a crap show underneath. With music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics and book by people who aren’t peculiar billionaires, “Sunset” has 3 strong songs and then a WHOLE BUNCH of terrible, mind-numbing recitative repeated. You get the schmoozy “Let’s Have Lunch” at the beginning, which does establish the era and the schmooziness of makin’ pictures back then, but I don’t see how that demonstration is worth the sacrifice of art, enjoyment, pleasure, musicality, anything else. What about hooking the audience and building excitement? It’s just bleh. Who cares if it tells you what decade we’re in – costumes can do that better, and oh yeah, everyone seeing this already knows. This past week, my showtune rotation has been stuck on “Ragtime” and “In The Heights”, two great shows with impressive, blood-pumping, heart-racing openings. I love a good opening number. “Sunset” doesn’t have one, and so it becomes incredibly easy not to care about the story. And then immediately we go into “Every Movie’s A Circus”, which introduces us to Betty (a fine-voiced Siobhan Dillon) and the melody that will be repeated 1000000 times before the curtain falls. See, at first, you hear the melody of “Every (beat) movie’s a circus” and think, whatever, not exactly inspired music or lyrics but let’s move on to better things. But no, you never get to move on to better things because this melody is repeated for Every. Single. Book Scene. That and one other motif are repeated ad nauseam, and I mean nauseam. Someone decided that it would be a good idea if all the dialogue were sung to the same shitty melody over and over again, so much so that people (cough husband cough) were ready to cut off their ears if it meant being spared yet another tortuous go-round. Sometimes repeated recitative melody works, like for example in “Hamilton”, you get the melody from “Daddy said to be home by sundown” “Daddy doesn’t need to know” repeated several times throughout the show, as well as other core motifs. But they have purpose and meaning in their repetition, and they don’t beat you over the head with it so consistently that you want to beat your own head. It got physically painful to hear towards the end, when things are supposed to be dramatic and changing and you’re feeling the climax build and then like a sad clown coming back for a lame joke you get that same bullshit “every (beat) something’s a something” and it takes all your might not to F-ING SCREAM from the front of the dress circle to JUST STOP IT. 80% of this score is the stuff that gets played on the Sirius XM Broadway channel that makes my dad yell “Who do they think wants to listen to this schlock! Play the good stuff!” And sure, you could be arguing, ‘hey you even said there were 3 really strong songs and a few fine ones, so why complain about the recitative parts or say this isn’t a great show’ and I will answer because those repetitious sung book scenes were completely unnecessary, and unnecessary bullshit garbage makes me angry. There was no reason the book scenes couldn’t have been spoken instead of repeating the 2 motifs over and over beyond all semblance of purpose.
The opening of Act II, Joe’s big title number, is so much stronger than every other non-Glenn moment, thank goodness for that (although some of the lyrics are super cringe-worthy). Right before this number, to start the act, Joe emerges from the ‘pool’ in only a skimpy bathing suit, and someone in the balcony started applauding (he’s quite ripped) and then others joined in. It was hilarious. Joe is played by Michael Xavier, and he did a fine job with a terrible character. He really showed us Joe’s grappling with his own pitifulness and desperation and, by the end, self-loathing. Another very strong non-Glenn aspect was Fred Johanson as Max, Norma’s steadfast butler/servant/assistant and, we find out, former director and first husband. I feel like in the movie this latter revelation felt much more revelatory, but here it was stated and then completely glossed over, robbing it of all dramatic potential. Very odd. But great news, Johanson has a terrifically booming operatic voice and actually sang a non-annoying song very well. When we finally got to his solo number, husband actually sighed in relief and said at least someone up there can sing. No but seriously it was nice to hear. His voice in this cacophony of whatever was 100% in “Love Actually” when the little girls ask Hugh Grant to sing a carol and he starts singing “Old King Wenceslas” and then his driver joins in and has this enormous strong baritone and Hugh’s like whaaaat! That’s what Max is to this production. I mean, Glenn Close is still Hugh Grant and that’s why you’re watching, but it’s nice to hear a strong voice cut in.
Siobhan Dillon as Betty also has a beautiful voice, but by the time she gets to show off, it’s late in Act II and you’ve learned by now that Betty is a thankless character with no chemistry with Joe, and thank goodness for it, because as we established earlier, Joe sucks, and Betty has a good life ahead of her and is better off without him. So they have this big love-song duet that is supposed to be very emotional, but you feel absolutely zero anythings for them and just want them to stop so the story can get back on track.
But none of this matters because Glenn Close is giving a tour de force performance, a masterclass in acting, a role for the ages, and every other cliché you can think of. But it’s true. It was incredible to see her in such a defining role for the first time in so many years. All around, it’s just special. This production is staged more like a concert, extremely pared down with the sets just composed of dark industrial metal staircases going this way and that, a stray sofa or table brought in for various scenes, and an extravagant, almost ghastly Phantom-style chandelier coming down to represent the mansion. At first, I was upset not to get a garishly lavish set, but then I realized it was so much better this way, for two reasons: 1) No set could really live up to how extravagant the house is supposed to be; it would just be a underdeveloped attempt at showing it. This way, our imaginations more easily filled in the blanks. 2) The bare bones set let Glenn shine through even brighter. There were no distractions from her performance, and her performance is really all that matters here. Along with the rest of the audiences this month, I’m lucky to have seen her in this role.
AUDIENCE
Several phones lit up, especially from the big wigs in tuxes with buckets of champagne on ice in the private boxes. I mean, there is something about the entitlement of the upper class. Otherwise, the audience was extra attentive and extra vehement in its praise, with boisterous shouts of “Bravo!” from many members every time Glenn did something. It felt almost too much but she was great, so, there you go.
STAGE DOOR
It was a mess. The guards had no idea what they were doing and after 45 minutes realized that they had to move the enormous crowd to make room for Glenn’s car right up front. They need to set up much longer barricades and hire a guard that has any clue what to do. I waited an hour and then gave up; the crowd was too pushy to deal with. Other cast members came out but walked right away, assuming no one was waiting for them. An hour I would like back please.
Sting’s “The Last Ship” Leaves Its Mark As It Leaves Broadway
It’s a sad state on Broadway when small, lovely shows can’t succeed. Granted, if you are a tourist with time for only one show in NYC, you’re going to try for “The Lion King” or “The Book of Mormon” (unless you are Mormon) or “Beautiful” (because middle-aged ladies freaking love to sing along in that show, the horror). Tourists, the people that new shows need to attract, are understandably reluctant to risk limited time and money for unproven ventures like “Big Fish”, or the BSE® “The Bridges of Madison County”, or, this season, “The Last Ship”.
“The Last Ship” is the latest artistic casualty on Broadway, closing this past weekend after a short run of just under four months. It wasn’t great, but damn it was moving, lovely, and unique. It sounded like nothing else on Broadway now or in recent memory. Sting, yes that Sting, wrote the musical inspired by his childhood and the shipbuilding yards of the northern UK. His music for “The Last Ship” sounds like quintessential Sting: haunting, dark, but beautiful.
The crazy thing is, I hated the music when I first heard it last year. I attended the Tony Awards dress rehearsal, and along with my bff and my mom I was like, ‘ughhh Sting get off the STAGE this is TERRIBLE’! And then!! And then they had Sting rehearse his song a second time! They could have made Neil Patrick Harris do “Sugar Daddy” again or repeated the amazing “Gentleman’s Guide” number but nooo we had to listen to old Irish wailings twice? I was literally groaning and almost yelling at the people in charge. That’s how crazy I was. And it’s possibly the problem the show had in getting off the ground – the style of music isn’t easy to accept; it is not a recognizable Broadway style. You might not like it at first. But the second or third time, you fall madly in love and can’t stop listening to it or singing it. Maybe that’s what it takes to wrap your mind around something so new and so moving. Listen for yourself:
The crazy thing is, I hated the music when I first heard it last year. I attended the Tony Awards dress rehearsal, and along with my bff and my mom I was like, ‘ughhh Sting get off the STAGE this is TERRIBLE’! And then!! And then they had Sting rehearse his song a second time! They could have made Neil Patrick Harris do “Sugar Daddy” again or repeated the amazing “Gentleman’s Guide” number but nooo we had to listen to old Irish wailings twice? I was literally groaning and almost yelling at the people in charge. That’s how crazy I was. And it’s possibly the problem the show had in getting off the ground – the style of music isn’t easy to accept; it is not a recognizable Broadway style. You might not like it at first. But the second or third time, you fall madly in love and can’t stop listening to it or singing it. Maybe that’s what it takes to wrap your mind around something so new and so moving. Listen for yourself:
Sadly, most shows need to garner an immediate and large fanbase, and it is just getting more and more difficult for new non-jukebox and non-movie-based shows to do this. Sting himself joined the cast in the middle of the run to try to boost ticket sales, proving how devoted and proud he was of this work. I saw the show once Sting had joined, and it was completely magical. That was in large part due to Sting’s presence and incredible voice, but considering he took on only a minor role, it was also due to the rest of the wonderful cast and that haunting music.
The show concerns the people living in a small northern England town, in which the main source of work is in the shipyard. Corporate goons (not really) declare that they are closing the poorly performing shipyard as times achange because new ventures would bring in more income. Instead of accepting the offer to find new jobs working for the villainous (not really) company, the townspeople decide to work together to build one last ship as a symbol of the lives they’ve known and because it would be nice and fun and I guess they had nothing else to do either because it’s freaking way north England and it’s cold and boring there and there is no theatre. Anyway they make this really lovely commitment, yet you can also see why some people had trouble with the book – they were like, soooo this is about people building a ship in protest sort of okay that’s boring. It’s far from the type of fare one would consider worthy of a musical, but the wonderful performances and the poignant music made it more than worthy.
Immediately, the musical sets a certain tone with just the first few bars of the opening song, “Island of Souls”. It sounds like Sting but transposed for theatre, and it’s a bit eerie, a bit sad, and totally lovely as the voices of the ensemble mesh to almost resemble the winds of the ocean. A young teenager leaves his girlfriend behind as he sets off to find his fortune on the seas; the boy’s harsh father confirms his disappointment in him; the men of the town continue building their ships. This first look at the story to come effectively sets the stage.
The show concerns the people living in a small northern England town, in which the main source of work is in the shipyard. Corporate goons (not really) declare that they are closing the poorly performing shipyard as times achange because new ventures would bring in more income. Instead of accepting the offer to find new jobs working for the villainous (not really) company, the townspeople decide to work together to build one last ship as a symbol of the lives they’ve known and because it would be nice and fun and I guess they had nothing else to do either because it’s freaking way north England and it’s cold and boring there and there is no theatre. Anyway they make this really lovely commitment, yet you can also see why some people had trouble with the book – they were like, soooo this is about people building a ship in protest sort of okay that’s boring. It’s far from the type of fare one would consider worthy of a musical, but the wonderful performances and the poignant music made it more than worthy.
Immediately, the musical sets a certain tone with just the first few bars of the opening song, “Island of Souls”. It sounds like Sting but transposed for theatre, and it’s a bit eerie, a bit sad, and totally lovely as the voices of the ensemble mesh to almost resemble the winds of the ocean. A young teenager leaves his girlfriend behind as he sets off to find his fortune on the seas; the boy’s harsh father confirms his disappointment in him; the men of the town continue building their ships. This first look at the story to come effectively sets the stage.
We jump 15 or so years to find that teenage boy, Gideon, returning to the town now an aimless man (Michael Esper), having failed in his pursuits and looking for his old love. That girl, Meg, is now a tough ass broad played by the superb Rachel Tucker, whose belt seemingly has no limits. Of course Meg has a son about 15 years old, and of course Gideon turns out to be the father. Kind of cliché there. Meg’s long-time partner, Arthur (Aaron Lazar), has raised the boy as his own as he waits for Meg to finally marry him. The chemistry of the reunited lovers is palpable, as is the shaky position of pretty decent guy Arthur as he realizes Meg still has feelings for Gideon. One of my absolute favorite parts of the show is that, despite the evident remnants of love between Meg and Gideon, she chooses to remain with Arthur, who is the right man for her now. Expecting Meg and Gideon to end up together, I had already written Arthur off as another ill-treated musical character who never really did anything wrong but whom the audience for some reason roots against – like Benny in “Rent”. (Seriously – what did he do wrong?) So I was pleasantly surprised when the plot took the much more mature path of recognizing that a person’s needs change with time just as much as the person does. It was a beautiful aspect of the book.
Then we have the great Fred Applegate as the town’s priest who is also bad ass as well as big-hearted. They give poor Fred cancer and kill him off in Act 2. Another unnecessary clichéd development. But Fred himself never does wrong, and he was so lovable here as the outspoken, can’t-be-arsed with manners and tradition man of the cloth.
Anyway, the company announces the closing of the shipyard, and the town mourns the forthcoming loss of its defining feature. Priest Fred Applegate convinces the foreman and the builders that they need to build one last glorious ship in order to achieve closure as well as feel proud of themselves for their fine work all these years. Newly arrived Gideon causes quite a stir and decides to help the men even though he left originally to avoid working in the shipyard, effectively. It’s all camaraderie and emotional growth through the symbolic work from here on out.
While the first act was nearly flawless, the second act was kind of a mess. I can’t deny that there were serious problems there. It slowed down in large part due to its breaking of my NUMBER 1 RULE OF MUSICALS: Do not start Act II with a crappy slow song, especially if it is sung by a minor and/or old man character. Seroiusly. To bring people back in from intermission – a truly marvelous segment of time in which you can eat ice cream and freaking pee – you need to start with a rollicking good number. They technically tried to satisfy my rule by having some ensemble girls belt a fun ranty song about the men, but it was still an intermission song, like “Telly” in “Matilda”, and not officially part of the show. So the real first song of Act II was Priest Fred Applegate, who is old and dying, and just ugh. Not the best way to start out, and kind of unnecessary overall. It was absolutely akin to last season’s “Rocky”, in which Dakin Matthews (Headmaster Charleston) as Rocky’s coach starts Act II with a shit song about his old days in the ring. Oh my god, no. Both of these songs dragged the shows’ momentum to a halt and set the stage for mostly lackluster second acts. Hey Broadway, stop this nonsense of having the lovable old men sing shit songs to bring us back in. ahhhh.
It didn’t help that the next song was my least favorite. Gideon and his son get arrested when all the shipbuilders try to protest the yard’s closing. In their jail cell for some forced father-son time, Gideon sort of teaches his son to fight but also to dance??? The song is literally called “The Night The Pugilist Learned How to Dance”. I just no I can’t deal with it.
Luckily, after that, the book picked up and the music got back to being awesomely entertaining. Brian Yorkey (of “Next to Normal”) and John Logan (from film) wrote the book, and despite its slow bits, I thought it was a nice job done on such a small, personal story. Again, killing the priest seemed like unnecessary additional drama in a freaking drama, but it did give rise to one of the best scenes: his wake. To honor such an awesome man, the town throws a crazy Irish-jig dancing kind of wake, and it’s an incredibly fun ensemble number that I would have loved to have seen on the Tonys if the show lasted longer.
Another fantastic ensemble number was the exuberant Act I drinking song “We’ve Got Now’t Else”, which my friend and I spent all of intermission trying to decipher. (“What the hell were they saying? We’ve got what else? Huh?” Still don’t really know what it means but whatevs.)
Seeing Sting in the role of Jackie, the ship yard foreman, was a treat I am so lucky to have experienced. But Jackie is only a supporting part; the rest of the cast was wonderful and made the show as enjoyable as it was overall. I wish the show could have gotten the better run that it deserved. Hopefully the show will find new life, maybe in the West End (where it should have started). But this is the kind of small, touching show that stays with you, so for all the people who did get a chance to enjoy it, at least it’ll remain a part of us. At least the good songs will.
Then we have the great Fred Applegate as the town’s priest who is also bad ass as well as big-hearted. They give poor Fred cancer and kill him off in Act 2. Another unnecessary clichéd development. But Fred himself never does wrong, and he was so lovable here as the outspoken, can’t-be-arsed with manners and tradition man of the cloth.
Anyway, the company announces the closing of the shipyard, and the town mourns the forthcoming loss of its defining feature. Priest Fred Applegate convinces the foreman and the builders that they need to build one last glorious ship in order to achieve closure as well as feel proud of themselves for their fine work all these years. Newly arrived Gideon causes quite a stir and decides to help the men even though he left originally to avoid working in the shipyard, effectively. It’s all camaraderie and emotional growth through the symbolic work from here on out.
While the first act was nearly flawless, the second act was kind of a mess. I can’t deny that there were serious problems there. It slowed down in large part due to its breaking of my NUMBER 1 RULE OF MUSICALS: Do not start Act II with a crappy slow song, especially if it is sung by a minor and/or old man character. Seroiusly. To bring people back in from intermission – a truly marvelous segment of time in which you can eat ice cream and freaking pee – you need to start with a rollicking good number. They technically tried to satisfy my rule by having some ensemble girls belt a fun ranty song about the men, but it was still an intermission song, like “Telly” in “Matilda”, and not officially part of the show. So the real first song of Act II was Priest Fred Applegate, who is old and dying, and just ugh. Not the best way to start out, and kind of unnecessary overall. It was absolutely akin to last season’s “Rocky”, in which Dakin Matthews (Headmaster Charleston) as Rocky’s coach starts Act II with a shit song about his old days in the ring. Oh my god, no. Both of these songs dragged the shows’ momentum to a halt and set the stage for mostly lackluster second acts. Hey Broadway, stop this nonsense of having the lovable old men sing shit songs to bring us back in. ahhhh.
It didn’t help that the next song was my least favorite. Gideon and his son get arrested when all the shipbuilders try to protest the yard’s closing. In their jail cell for some forced father-son time, Gideon sort of teaches his son to fight but also to dance??? The song is literally called “The Night The Pugilist Learned How to Dance”. I just no I can’t deal with it.
Luckily, after that, the book picked up and the music got back to being awesomely entertaining. Brian Yorkey (of “Next to Normal”) and John Logan (from film) wrote the book, and despite its slow bits, I thought it was a nice job done on such a small, personal story. Again, killing the priest seemed like unnecessary additional drama in a freaking drama, but it did give rise to one of the best scenes: his wake. To honor such an awesome man, the town throws a crazy Irish-jig dancing kind of wake, and it’s an incredibly fun ensemble number that I would have loved to have seen on the Tonys if the show lasted longer.
Another fantastic ensemble number was the exuberant Act I drinking song “We’ve Got Now’t Else”, which my friend and I spent all of intermission trying to decipher. (“What the hell were they saying? We’ve got what else? Huh?” Still don’t really know what it means but whatevs.)
Seeing Sting in the role of Jackie, the ship yard foreman, was a treat I am so lucky to have experienced. But Jackie is only a supporting part; the rest of the cast was wonderful and made the show as enjoyable as it was overall. I wish the show could have gotten the better run that it deserved. Hopefully the show will find new life, maybe in the West End (where it should have started). But this is the kind of small, touching show that stays with you, so for all the people who did get a chance to enjoy it, at least it’ll remain a part of us. At least the good songs will.
