January 19, 2023
Bukhara, Uzbekistan: Ancient City Hasn't Upgraded in Millenniaby Randi / December 6, 2017
It’s Theatre Thursday y’all! Today we are talking about “Mother Courage and Her Children”, currently at London’s Southwark Playhouse until Saturday (eek go now).
It’s pretty rough out there, with war-mongering racists and Nazis and sexists running things (into the ground). So there’s no better help for dealing with all of these real-life horrors than sitting through a three-hour play about how terrible war is for everyone. No I’m not being sarcastic. Southwark Playhouse’s production of “Mother Courage and Her Children”, the anti-war epic play from Bertolt Brecht, is a small, simple, yet powerful one about how even those who think they might profit or benefit somehow from war will suffer. There are two things you can count on, really: War is terrible for everyone, and the Southwark Playhouse will always put on quality productions. Even though my attention span usually maxes out after about 15 minutes (usually when I have to pee), I thought this was a stellar show. Sure I was a ball of sorrow for the rest of that day but who isn’t nowadays!
Written in 1939 amid Nazi takeovers, “Mother Courage” stood as a testament against fascism, a prime example of art as resistance. Brecht, a startlingly prolific playwright if ever there was one (you think I write a lot), actually wrote nine (9) (NEIN) plays against fascism and Nazism, but “Mother Courage” stands out from the lot and is considered by many to be the greatest anti-war play of all time. OF ALL TIME! That’s pretty impressive for something the guy wrote in just about a month! Lightning speed, but I guess when you have something crucial to say it comes pouring out. Now I don’t know if I can say whether it’s the best of all time but is powerful and haunting and funny at times and most of all a strong reminder that war is not in fact a science (#pippin) but is bad for everyone, on every side. So let’s all continue to cross our fingers that we don’t get involved in another one eh?
True to form, Brecht didn’t set the play during Nazi rule but during the Thirty Years War in the 1600s, involving all the Eurozone. He tells the story of Mother Courage, the name everyone in Sweden knows a middle-aged woman named Anna by, who sells goods out of a rickety wagon with the help of her three children, all from different fathers. We have the honest but dumb (“they said you were pretty but dumb….no I’m sorry that’s ‘pretty dumb’”) Swiss Cheese, in a name that I’m SURE could have been translated better from the German but okay, it doesn’t completely take you out of the serious moments to hear people wailing about a guy named Swiss Cheese or anything; the arrogant and aggressive Eilif, who you know what I’m actually gonna describe as braggodocious; and the mute Kattrin, who obviously has trouble communicating but who often (and crucially) manages to find a way. Mother Courage isn’t a particularly good person. She likes when there’s a war going on, because she can make a decent business selling supplies and food and whatever else to soldiers. Her mind for business seems to take precedence over anything else, including her morality and her common sense.
This production boasts a translation from the original German (real name: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder LOVES IT) by Tony Kushner, the writer of “Angels in America” Mother Courage is portrayed by Josie Lawrence, who I only knew from the British version of ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway” back in the day. She is a genius improviser, and it turns out a pretty genius actress too. (Who knew? Oh everyone in Britain. Her bio in the programme is the longest one I’ve ever seen.) Josie deftly makes Courage a bit likable at times while also being hard to root for since she loves war and everything, and puts making money ahead of everything else, even her children.
When we meet Courage and the kiddies, they’re pulling the knickknack wagon into a camp where a few officers are trying to recruit more soldiers into the Swedish army. Interested in the children, the officers try to persuade them to sign up. Courage is like, hell no, get away from my kids, and hey I’m going to tell your fortune. She puts pieces of paper in a hat, some with black crosses on them, which foretell the officers’ deaths. The officer chooses a slip with the black cross, oh no he gon die. Well yeah it’s war. The kiddies want to play too because kids love games (they are young adults btw not toddlers like I’m making them sound) and Courage is like oh sure okay I know you’re all going to get blank ones because we are the rare few blessed during wartimes. Of course, all three children pull pieces of paper with black crosses, so we know from the start that they’re gon die too. You would think that Courage would get her kids as far away from the warzone as possible to try to save them from their fate, but she loves war and selling her goods so they stay in the thick of it. In fact, Eilif, the terrible, signs up to army (mother) right then and there, not really caring that he’s probably (definitely) going to die in it; he just really wants to start slaughtering people (true). Courage wails a little but then moves on with Swiss Cheese (can I call him something else) and Kattrin, pulling the wagon and selling their wares to the next camp of soldiers.
Between scenes, we’re to understand that years are passing. The next time we see the conceited Eilif, played by a kind of terrifyingly effective Jake Phillips Head (Screwdriver), he’s the toast of the battalion and the general’s new favorite because he killed a bunch of peasants and stole their cattle. Like…that’s not a good thing guys. War is despicable. Courage runs into him (Sweden so small?) and yells at him not for slaughtering civilians but for putting himself in danger. Good job teaching him how to not be evil. This is a good time to tell you that the play features several very strange songs to augment the action, songs actually featured in the original, which I couldn’t believe. They really do (sometimes) complement the rest of the drama, but they veered into kind of silly very often. And because of the, shall we say, interesting acoustics and sound setup caused by the rickety tarped-in room, they all had to kind of shout, so everyone’s singing voice became a shouty voice and it sounded super gravelly and all I could think was ‘alright I’m shouting. I’m shouting I’m shouting I’m shouting!” Still, the songs did work, mostly.
The next scene, a few years later, we meet Yvette, the camp prostitute (is everyone named Yvette in dramatic works a prostitute?) who is a welcome bit of fun into all this darkness. Played by a hilarious and fully committed Laura Checkley, she’s all floozy and bestockinged and Courage tells Kattrin ‘don’t fraternize with soldiers and end up like her!’ and Yvette sings a song about fraternizing (literally it’s called The Fraternization Song). Kattrin tries on her high heels in secret and prances about with scarves and stuff pretending to be a pros (‘my daughter was a pros”). When Courage sees her, she flips out and Kattrin breaks down, being somewhat developmentally delayed, and Courage tries to comfort her in a manner we see repeated throughout the show. Maybe if you didn’t upset her in the first place, Courage, but anyway, the relationship between the two is really quite well done and I loved how Josie would stroke Phoebe’s face in the same manner every time. The actress, Phoebe Vigor, was remarkably good considering she had no lines. I thought she was consistently effective. I might be biased because she looked like my friend from high school.
Meanwhile, Swiss Cheese…you know what, I’m gonna call him Gary, in honor of the UK vegans calling vegan cheese Gary. Gary is played by a strong Julian Moore-Cook. So Gary by now has gotten a job in the army not as a soldier but as a paymaster, something Courage could approve since he watches over all the money. And since he’s such an honest fool, he’ll never be guilty of stealing or cooking the books. Of course, his good intentions backfire, and when he is in possession of the cash box for the regiment, the Catholics invade. He hides the cash box so it doesn’t get stolen, but the Catholics capture him and torture him to give it up, which he won’t do. He’s a pretty good guy. Unfortunately, his mother isn’t the best, and when she has a chance to sell her wagon to pay off the captors to free her son, she doesn’t. This intense scene took the air out of the room a bit. Instead of selling the wagon, Courage has the idea to pawn it and then buy it back by using the money in the cashbox, which she assumes Gary will help her find. So she plans to offer the captors the full amount she got in the pawn, but then she learns that Gary threw the box in the river, thus denying her the opportunity to get the money back immediately. Even though her son’s life is on the line, she backtracks on the price and offers less than the full amount she has, leaving something for her to use to get her business back up. When she gets word that the captors rejected her offer, she finally jfc decides to offer all the money she has, but it’s too late. One down two to go. This was the worst part, because Gary was the nice one and this was the clearest instance of Courage’s backward priorities causing tragedy. Josie was scarily believable in this scene, hesitating before making her offers so you could sense her really weighing her choices, thinking for a second about what she wanted to save more, her son or her business, and making us wonder whether any common sense or clarity was getting through to her at all.
Oh so meanwhile, a chaplain from Eilif’s camp (David Shelley) has been traveling with Courage and the kids for a while and he continues with them for many years after, for reasons unknown. I mean he probably loves her but, like, why. Shelley is great in this role, and he comes off the best in the songs, I think. Those weird ass songs. They work but they’re so strange, a mix of folk songs and super emo ragers and Irish drinking songs. Anyway the chaplain proposes to Courage at one point but she turns him down because she likes really shitty men more, like this army cook she runs into every now and then who somehow makes a good impression on her even though he’s the embodiment of white male commenters on youtube.
A few years later, they get word that the war has ended. No one knew for a few days because news didn’t travel as quickly as it does now. Courage is pissed because she still has all this stock to sell and her business is more important that the lives that will be saved now. Unfortunately for Eilif, his is the rare life that peace will be the downfall of, because he did another peasant-killing spree for no good reason, and now that it was peacetime, this same exact action that made him the general’s favorite during wartime is now grounds for execution. Courage is out trying to sell her goods to townspeople before they find out it’s peacetime, so she didn’t know about her next son’s death. It’s unclear whether she ever finds out, actually. But there’s another twist: News travels so slow back in these times that not only did they not hear about peace for a few days, they didn’t immediately hear that the peace lasted like an hour and it actually IS war time still! Isn’t Courage so happy! She loves war! Kind of a shame that if they waited like thirty more minutes the army would have given Eilif a medal for his actions instead of killing him, but he was a shit person anyway soooo not too sad.
But as the years pass, supplies and food dwindle to nothingness, and Courage is left alone with Kattrin and the shitty cook, who had driven off the chaplain with his mean and immature youtubery. As they all traverse the countryside starving and broke, the cook finds out that he inherited an inn in Utrecht and asks Courage to go there with him and start a new life with actual shelter – but without Kattrin. She ugly. Or something, that’s the kind of thing he would say. Courage for some unknown reason really is into the cook, so it’s kind of surprising when she shows a heart and quotes Lifetime movies: “not without my daughter!” So then he leaves (every scene someone else departs and leaves Courage to pick up more of the slack), and Courage and Kattrin have to pull the pretty empty wagon alone.
Later, they’re staying with a peasant family one night and Courage goes into the town to do some trading. But the Catholics invade and force the peasants to show them into the city where they’re going to kill everyone. The peasants capitulate because they don’t want the soldiers to hurt them but like aren’t they going to kill everyone anyway?? Kattrin, showing unbelievable strength and maybe the only one with a moral compass, climbs on the roof and beats a drum in order to wake the townspeople and warn them of what’s coming. The soldiers shoot her but not before she succeeds in her pretty valiant mission. I thought Phoebe was so good in this scene, maybe because I was just so thirsty for one character in this show to show some selflessness and morality and when it finally happened I was quick to give all the credit to the actress, but still, she was so determined and emotional. Just great work, which was followed by more great work from Josie who mourned her last child, gave her to the peasants to bury, and then struggled to pull her wagon all alone. Did she learn at this point that war is terrible? It’s unclear, whether she gathers her strength to go back to business because it’s what she has to do and it’s all she knows, or because it’s all she can do with her life now. But it’s clear to the audience that no one wins in war and nothing good ever comes from it. Except good art, I guess.
INFORMATION
Mother Courage is playing at the Southwark Playhouse until Saturday, December 9. Tickets are stupid cheap for shows here considering how high the quality usually is. The house is rearranged so that it’s two sets of bleachers facing each other and the cast runs through the aisles a lot. Very small and intimate.
STAGEDOOR
Southwark doesn’t really have a stagedoor because the cast comes through the lobby and bar area and everyone just mingles. Fun!
True to form, Brecht didn’t set the play during Nazi rule but during the Thirty Years War in the 1600s, involving all the Eurozone. He tells the story of Mother Courage, the name everyone in Sweden knows a middle-aged woman named Anna by, who sells goods out of a rickety wagon with the help of her three children, all from different fathers. We have the honest but dumb (“they said you were pretty but dumb….no I’m sorry that’s ‘pretty dumb’”) Swiss Cheese, in a name that I’m SURE could have been translated better from the German but okay, it doesn’t completely take you out of the serious moments to hear people wailing about a guy named Swiss Cheese or anything; the arrogant and aggressive Eilif, who you know what I’m actually gonna describe as braggodocious; and the mute Kattrin, who obviously has trouble communicating but who often (and crucially) manages to find a way. Mother Courage isn’t a particularly good person. She likes when there’s a war going on, because she can make a decent business selling supplies and food and whatever else to soldiers. Her mind for business seems to take precedence over anything else, including her morality and her common sense.
This production boasts a translation from the original German (real name: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder LOVES IT) by Tony Kushner, the writer of “Angels in America” Mother Courage is portrayed by Josie Lawrence, who I only knew from the British version of ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway” back in the day. She is a genius improviser, and it turns out a pretty genius actress too. (Who knew? Oh everyone in Britain. Her bio in the programme is the longest one I’ve ever seen.) Josie deftly makes Courage a bit likable at times while also being hard to root for since she loves war and everything, and puts making money ahead of everything else, even her children.
When we meet Courage and the kiddies, they’re pulling the knickknack wagon into a camp where a few officers are trying to recruit more soldiers into the Swedish army. Interested in the children, the officers try to persuade them to sign up. Courage is like, hell no, get away from my kids, and hey I’m going to tell your fortune. She puts pieces of paper in a hat, some with black crosses on them, which foretell the officers’ deaths. The officer chooses a slip with the black cross, oh no he gon die. Well yeah it’s war. The kiddies want to play too because kids love games (they are young adults btw not toddlers like I’m making them sound) and Courage is like oh sure okay I know you’re all going to get blank ones because we are the rare few blessed during wartimes. Of course, all three children pull pieces of paper with black crosses, so we know from the start that they’re gon die too. You would think that Courage would get her kids as far away from the warzone as possible to try to save them from their fate, but she loves war and selling her goods so they stay in the thick of it. In fact, Eilif, the terrible, signs up to army (mother) right then and there, not really caring that he’s probably (definitely) going to die in it; he just really wants to start slaughtering people (true). Courage wails a little but then moves on with Swiss Cheese (can I call him something else) and Kattrin, pulling the wagon and selling their wares to the next camp of soldiers.
Between scenes, we’re to understand that years are passing. The next time we see the conceited Eilif, played by a kind of terrifyingly effective Jake Phillips Head (Screwdriver), he’s the toast of the battalion and the general’s new favorite because he killed a bunch of peasants and stole their cattle. Like…that’s not a good thing guys. War is despicable. Courage runs into him (Sweden so small?) and yells at him not for slaughtering civilians but for putting himself in danger. Good job teaching him how to not be evil. This is a good time to tell you that the play features several very strange songs to augment the action, songs actually featured in the original, which I couldn’t believe. They really do (sometimes) complement the rest of the drama, but they veered into kind of silly very often. And because of the, shall we say, interesting acoustics and sound setup caused by the rickety tarped-in room, they all had to kind of shout, so everyone’s singing voice became a shouty voice and it sounded super gravelly and all I could think was ‘alright I’m shouting. I’m shouting I’m shouting I’m shouting!” Still, the songs did work, mostly.
The next scene, a few years later, we meet Yvette, the camp prostitute (is everyone named Yvette in dramatic works a prostitute?) who is a welcome bit of fun into all this darkness. Played by a hilarious and fully committed Laura Checkley, she’s all floozy and bestockinged and Courage tells Kattrin ‘don’t fraternize with soldiers and end up like her!’ and Yvette sings a song about fraternizing (literally it’s called The Fraternization Song). Kattrin tries on her high heels in secret and prances about with scarves and stuff pretending to be a pros (‘my daughter was a pros”). When Courage sees her, she flips out and Kattrin breaks down, being somewhat developmentally delayed, and Courage tries to comfort her in a manner we see repeated throughout the show. Maybe if you didn’t upset her in the first place, Courage, but anyway, the relationship between the two is really quite well done and I loved how Josie would stroke Phoebe’s face in the same manner every time. The actress, Phoebe Vigor, was remarkably good considering she had no lines. I thought she was consistently effective. I might be biased because she looked like my friend from high school.
Meanwhile, Swiss Cheese…you know what, I’m gonna call him Gary, in honor of the UK vegans calling vegan cheese Gary. Gary is played by a strong Julian Moore-Cook. So Gary by now has gotten a job in the army not as a soldier but as a paymaster, something Courage could approve since he watches over all the money. And since he’s such an honest fool, he’ll never be guilty of stealing or cooking the books. Of course, his good intentions backfire, and when he is in possession of the cash box for the regiment, the Catholics invade. He hides the cash box so it doesn’t get stolen, but the Catholics capture him and torture him to give it up, which he won’t do. He’s a pretty good guy. Unfortunately, his mother isn’t the best, and when she has a chance to sell her wagon to pay off the captors to free her son, she doesn’t. This intense scene took the air out of the room a bit. Instead of selling the wagon, Courage has the idea to pawn it and then buy it back by using the money in the cashbox, which she assumes Gary will help her find. So she plans to offer the captors the full amount she got in the pawn, but then she learns that Gary threw the box in the river, thus denying her the opportunity to get the money back immediately. Even though her son’s life is on the line, she backtracks on the price and offers less than the full amount she has, leaving something for her to use to get her business back up. When she gets word that the captors rejected her offer, she finally jfc decides to offer all the money she has, but it’s too late. One down two to go. This was the worst part, because Gary was the nice one and this was the clearest instance of Courage’s backward priorities causing tragedy. Josie was scarily believable in this scene, hesitating before making her offers so you could sense her really weighing her choices, thinking for a second about what she wanted to save more, her son or her business, and making us wonder whether any common sense or clarity was getting through to her at all.
Oh so meanwhile, a chaplain from Eilif’s camp (David Shelley) has been traveling with Courage and the kids for a while and he continues with them for many years after, for reasons unknown. I mean he probably loves her but, like, why. Shelley is great in this role, and he comes off the best in the songs, I think. Those weird ass songs. They work but they’re so strange, a mix of folk songs and super emo ragers and Irish drinking songs. Anyway the chaplain proposes to Courage at one point but she turns him down because she likes really shitty men more, like this army cook she runs into every now and then who somehow makes a good impression on her even though he’s the embodiment of white male commenters on youtube.
A few years later, they get word that the war has ended. No one knew for a few days because news didn’t travel as quickly as it does now. Courage is pissed because she still has all this stock to sell and her business is more important that the lives that will be saved now. Unfortunately for Eilif, his is the rare life that peace will be the downfall of, because he did another peasant-killing spree for no good reason, and now that it was peacetime, this same exact action that made him the general’s favorite during wartime is now grounds for execution. Courage is out trying to sell her goods to townspeople before they find out it’s peacetime, so she didn’t know about her next son’s death. It’s unclear whether she ever finds out, actually. But there’s another twist: News travels so slow back in these times that not only did they not hear about peace for a few days, they didn’t immediately hear that the peace lasted like an hour and it actually IS war time still! Isn’t Courage so happy! She loves war! Kind of a shame that if they waited like thirty more minutes the army would have given Eilif a medal for his actions instead of killing him, but he was a shit person anyway soooo not too sad.
But as the years pass, supplies and food dwindle to nothingness, and Courage is left alone with Kattrin and the shitty cook, who had driven off the chaplain with his mean and immature youtubery. As they all traverse the countryside starving and broke, the cook finds out that he inherited an inn in Utrecht and asks Courage to go there with him and start a new life with actual shelter – but without Kattrin. She ugly. Or something, that’s the kind of thing he would say. Courage for some unknown reason really is into the cook, so it’s kind of surprising when she shows a heart and quotes Lifetime movies: “not without my daughter!” So then he leaves (every scene someone else departs and leaves Courage to pick up more of the slack), and Courage and Kattrin have to pull the pretty empty wagon alone.
Later, they’re staying with a peasant family one night and Courage goes into the town to do some trading. But the Catholics invade and force the peasants to show them into the city where they’re going to kill everyone. The peasants capitulate because they don’t want the soldiers to hurt them but like aren’t they going to kill everyone anyway?? Kattrin, showing unbelievable strength and maybe the only one with a moral compass, climbs on the roof and beats a drum in order to wake the townspeople and warn them of what’s coming. The soldiers shoot her but not before she succeeds in her pretty valiant mission. I thought Phoebe was so good in this scene, maybe because I was just so thirsty for one character in this show to show some selflessness and morality and when it finally happened I was quick to give all the credit to the actress, but still, she was so determined and emotional. Just great work, which was followed by more great work from Josie who mourned her last child, gave her to the peasants to bury, and then struggled to pull her wagon all alone. Did she learn at this point that war is terrible? It’s unclear, whether she gathers her strength to go back to business because it’s what she has to do and it’s all she knows, or because it’s all she can do with her life now. But it’s clear to the audience that no one wins in war and nothing good ever comes from it. Except good art, I guess.
INFORMATION
Mother Courage is playing at the Southwark Playhouse until Saturday, December 9. Tickets are stupid cheap for shows here considering how high the quality usually is. The house is rearranged so that it’s two sets of bleachers facing each other and the cast runs through the aisles a lot. Very small and intimate.
STAGEDOOR
Southwark doesn’t really have a stagedoor because the cast comes through the lobby and bar area and everyone just mingles. Fun!
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Strong London Transfer of Sorkin’s To Kill A Mockingbird
It’s Theatre Thursday! Opening night of this production is tonight! I saw it a few weeks ago so here we are! Have fun tonight to everyone who didn’t get into fights with people that rhyme with Belfont Crackintosh and get blacklisted from press lists!
What a treat for London! Aaron Sorkin’s very-Aaron-Sorkin adaptation of the classic Harper Lee novel To Kill A Mockingbird has successfully made the jump from Broadway to add some heavy heavy drama, depth, and intelligence to current West End offerings. With the familiar portrayal of the novel’s events, some great performances, and subtle improvements on the source material, this production is a must. And I’m not just saying that because I got to stand next to my fave male theatre director OF ALL TIME, Bartlett Sher, for a few minutes as he tweaked his work. (“T-W-E-A-K tweaking. It sounds like…he’s…married. Married 3 kids.”)
As an American, my DNA comprises the book To Kill A Mockingbird like it does peanut butter and apple pie (not together ew gross! wait, actually… (I truly just made the two faces of that girl in the gif, you know the one)). I assumed that British folk did not have to read the book in their version of middle school as commonly as we did (every single American schoolchild reads it) and according to some of my British friends that is correct, since they didn’t have to. The draw, then, to this show and the cultural importance of it might not be as compelling as it was in NYC. But hopefully it still makes its mark.
TKAM tells the story, as you know (unless you’re a British schoolchild), of nice-man lawyer Atticus Finch, his children Scout (tough girl!) and Jem (boy of middling toughness!), their new friend Dill (based on Truman Capote!), and the Alabama town they live in and all its eek-face-making goings-on. Atticus is tasked to represent a black man accused of raping a young white girl, Atticus being one of the few non-super-racist whites of the town and thus the accused’s only chance at justice. Even though everyone and their dog knows the man, Tom Robinson, is innocent, the politics of the town and time mean that getting justice for the man will be a longshot.
The courtroom drama scenes are so well done. So much time is devoted to Mayella’s and Bob Ewell’s testimony and you want to scream the whole time but it is mfing gripping drama. I haven’t been that nervous and breathless watching cross examinations since I was an intern in a real courtroom for a trial of this very nature, although the attorneys there could have really used some Sorkin writing on their side (and that IRL defense attorney was actually more offensive, racist, and bigoted than the prosecution here! hooray America!).
Rafe Spall’s Atticus carries the show fine, and is strong in the scenes with the children. He’s good in the court scenes too, although his surprisingly loud screaming at the end felt like a shocking misfire for a character always shown as level-headed. Yes, it’s to show he’s losing his famous patience with this miscarriage of justice, but even so, a little too much to be believable. Scout, our narrator, is playedth by Gwyneth Keyworth, who has some amazing moments (“go right for the eyes!” being literally the hardest I’ve laughed in the theatre in years) but needs to work on her uneven accent. My fave performance of the whole shibang comes from David Moorst as a spindly and sprightly Dill, who is gottam HILARIOUS 70% of the time and completely heartbreaking 40% of the time (that’s right) with no lag time. I could cry again thinking of him. HE’S NOT REAL, I have to keep telling myself otherwise it’s unbearable. (Moorst played Puck in that beyond perfection production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Bridge so I guess he joins my list of favorite UK actors, cool cool cool.)
What I really loved about this production was how Atticus, long heralded in American culture as the faultless hero white man who helped solve racism, was called out for trying to be nice to everyone, even to bad racist people. His long-time black maid, Calpurnia (Pamela Nomvete), does the calling out over time and then all at once, in a satisfying and believable way, though the bigness of that moment’s portrayal feels a bit forced Atticus was rightly revealed as being neutral towards offenders, like a modern person still trying to be friends with Republicans who vote others’ rights away, and finally having that stated as unequivocally wrong-headed. This is what I meant as some of the “subtle improvements on the source material”, although it has been so long since I read the book that maybe it’s in there. But I very much appreciated Sorkin’s making it clear that trying to be nice to everyone means you are nice to people who aren’t nice to some, who are evil in fact, who don’t deserve it. Being Switzerland to everyone means you’re also Switzerland to the Jews. (Look it up!)
Despite the length of the show (see infra), it moved well (like so many musical theatre actors on their resumes). Well, for the most part — hopefully by tonight the final 20 minutes will have been tightened, because it was like a belt on its biggest beltloop when it needed to be on maybe its second-to-smallest. The whole part with the sheriff and the judge and Atticus being CONVINCED for no good reason that his skinny lil son killed a man?? (Brick killed a guy!) felt like I was being draggggeduh physically through molasses. It was not believable that Atticus wouldn’t get the picture for that f-ing long. I kept wanting to shout “he ran into my knife! he ran into my knife ten times!” Would’ve livened that scene up (although omg when Boo appears, my heart!! it’s so good!). BUT ANYWAY. TKAM is an always timely reminder that the justice system does not work for everyone, and that the same general issue — vital decisions made without the burden of facts — have opposite results for different people (i.e., it destroyed Tom’s life, and it saved Boo’s). It’s an important-feeling, high-quality production that benefits from Sorkin at his West Wing best and not at his Molly’s Game worst (it was just on TV, it is all voiceover narration? so annoying. Congrats to Chasty though, love her).
INFORMATION
My performance began at 19:35, Act I ended at 20:56 (WOOF that’s a lot to ask of my bladder, I am aware that’s not normal don’t worry), and the show ended at about 22:30. long! but great! It might have been (hopefully) tightened up by tonight but I can’t say because of the aforementioned yet-another shit list I’m on for being honest/not taking other people’s shit.
AUDIENCE
Masks on about 10% of people, 80% of unmasked coughing like it was their gottam job. COOOOOL.
TIP
If you sit in the stalls house left, there’s a little hidden ladies toilet that you can run to and beat the queue, what a treat.
“Spongebob Squarepants” on Broadway: Tons of Fun but Ultimately for Kids
It’s Theatre Thursday! I saw “Spongebob” on Broadway and we’re gonna talk about it! It closes September 16.
He’s says he’s ‘not a simple sponge’…but he kind of is. And although fans of this season’s new Broadway musical “Spongebob Squarepants” will say that people of all ages can enjoy the show (and that’s true, they will), it was created for kids and that’s who it’s geared towards and that’s who I am and that’s who I care about. Okay not the last two bits I got carried away. “Spongebob” the musical is a lot of fun, and a technical marvel, but it’s a bit of a letdown for adults. And considering adults have to accompany the screaming children (yes they did scream) to the theatre and buy at least two tickets, the profit-making model for this show doesn’t really work. Unlike Disney shows from the past, the adults aren’t given equal consideration here, and so few adults will be present without children (I think my sister-in-law and I were the only unaccompanied adults when we saw it). And while it’s very sad news, I’m not surprised that the show just announced that it will be closing in September, because it takes a lot of rich people to decide to spend $100+ on taking their kids to see this when they’ve been watching the TV show for free for years.
He’s says he’s ‘not a simple sponge’…but he kind of is. And although fans of this season’s new Broadway musical “Spongebob Squarepants” will say that people of all ages can enjoy the show (and that’s true, they will), it was created for kids and that’s who it’s geared towards and that’s who I am and that’s who I care about. Okay not the last two bits I got carried away. “Spongebob” the musical is a lot of fun, and a technical marvel, but it’s a bit of a letdown for adults. And considering adults have to accompany the screaming children (yes they did scream) to the theatre and buy at least two tickets, the profit-making model for this show doesn’t really work. Unlike Disney shows from the past, the adults aren’t given equal consideration here, and so few adults will be present without children (I think my sister-in-law and I were the only unaccompanied adults when we saw it). And while it’s very sad news, I’m not surprised that the show just announced that it will be closing in September, because it takes a lot of rich people to decide to spend $100+ on taking their kids to see this when they’ve been watching the TV show for free for years.
But even so, if you are able to see the show before it closes in two months, you should check it out. I never watched the TV show and only had a passing familiarity with what Bob Esponja (what the poster for the movie said in Spain and so what my husbo and I call Spongebob 100% of the time for the past 3 years) and his friend the pink starfish looked like before I sat in the uppermost balcony at the Palace Theatre (that $30 rush ticket though) amid hundreds of screaming, eating, texting children (and their worse-behaved parents) for this show. I was prepared for this kind of audience, and even so, given the multitude of surprisingly positive reviews and the insanely strong fan base, I was prepared to love it. I had a good time, but I didn’t love it.
This musical tells the story of this simple sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea (SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS okay that part I knew before too who DOESN’T know the theme song and then it goes like abhorrent and boorish and porous is he!!) in a cute little under the sea town called Bikini Bottom and he has other species friends and bosses and frenemies and it’s all cute. BUT THEN, they get news that a nearby volcano is going to erupt and destroy their town! Oh noes. Almost everyone agrees that they should leave town (I mean, right?) before doomsday. The villains, Plankton and his robot (?) wife, offer that they should put all town residents in an escape pod to get to their next home, and everyone is like wow great idea but Plankton and sea-Janet really just want everyone in one confined space so they can hypnotize them and convince them to eat at their failing restaurant instead of at the very popular Krusty Krabs, where Spongebob works as a fry cook. (How do they fry under water.) Spongebob is the only one who doesn’t want to flee the coming horror, because he simple. He thinks they should fight for their home, and so he sets off on a mission to save the town in the two days he has before the predicted eruption. Meanwhile, the rest of the town plans a concert to raise money to pay for the escape pod.
Okay fine, a little silly but a decent story choice for a Spongebob musical! But guess what, it’s also quite political and timely. While Bob Esponja is like hmm how do I stop a volcano, maybe with French fries???, the rest of the town is looking for someone to blame for everything, as most people do when something goes wrong (except unlike in real life, the people looking to blame an innocent person aren’t also the ones responsible). So the townsfolk decide to blame Sandy Cheeks, the smart adorable FEMALE squirrel, all things that powerful people despise, for the impending destruction. Of course, blame the smart woman! They choose her because she’s a land mammal, and so it’s easy to turn the town against her with chants of how she doesn’t belong there. I KNOW, it’s pretty darn topical. Also, Sandy is played by Lilli Cooper (the great), who is black, so it’s really poignant to show her being ostracized so the mostly white kids (hopefully) get the connection and see that that’s bad. Even though the town is trying to drive Sandy out, Spongebob convinces her to help him save the day, since Sandy is a brilliant scientist (and the real hero of the show). She creates a device that when dropped into the mouth of the volcano will turn the lava flow into harmless bubbles and I am here for that kind of scientific discovery, Elon. Spongebob volunteers to be the sad sack who has to drop the machine into the volcano, so a lot of the second act is him climbing the volcano/the little moving set piece. Obviously, he makes it to the top and saves the day and the town, and the town lauds him and forgives Sandy for being black but literally gives her nothing else, no acclaim for being the actual savior of everything and so I was a little salty and kind of wish that the town actually was destroyed because fuck that, this badass girl is a squirrel who is a scientist and she’s merely ALLOWED TO KEEP LIVING IN THE TOWN WHILE THE STUPID WHITE MAN FRY COOK IS CONSIDERED THE HERO OF IT ALL? please. Anyway that’s just my take on it, because of course Bob was going to be the hero in the show named after him, but how good would it have been to turn the tables on him and be like ‘thanks for doing the manual labor portion of the job now let’s have a parade for this amazing black girl!’ but no. So that’s the plot and it’s cute but it gets a little long considering it’s a kids show. The second act needed to be shorter.
So, full truth here. The best reviewed thing about this show, besides its set design, is ts leading spongeman, Ethan Slater, in a miraculous Broadway debut that has him singing, dancing, and pretty much jumping up and down and all around like a dynamo/bouncing ball/firework/sponge for hours and hours and keeping those energy levels up and keeping the rest of his cast energized and engaged and just being adorable and amazing and Tony-worthy, so everyone said. He was 98% of the reason I saw the show, the other 2% being for the set and the 12 Tony nominations it received. But apparently, those energy levels are real hard to keep up for 8 shows a week for months on end, because starting in about May, Ethan low-key started taking off at least one performance a week. And I fully understand why, and I appreciate that anyone doing this role full time would have to do that to stay alive because it requires absolute insane physicality from its star. But they should have set a defined performance and a defined alternate, as they do for most stars doing 7 of 8 shows. The ‘random’ performance he took off that week was my performance. Like, fuck. Curtis Holbrook, the understudy, did a marvelous job and I had zero complaints, but I didn’t get to see the performance that everyone was raving about. I can’t imagine what Ethan could do differently, though, to make people think he was robbed of a Tony. It’s a great, meaty, exhausting role, but it’s no great feat of acting.
And the cast is great all-around, really, with nice performances from Cooper and Skinner and a standout one from tap-dancing phenomenon Gavin Lee, as Squidward. He wears a costume that gives him four legs, and he brings the house down with a long extravagant tap number. It’s the best part of the show, rightly so given that he’s the one true vet up there. The tap dance alone that he does is difficult and impressive enough, but the fact that he’s doing it with four legs – and making it seem effortless – is astounding. There’s also a standout vocal performance from Jai’len Christine Li Josey, an 18-year-old girl who won the 2014 Jimmy Awards, kind of the Tonys for high school musical theatre performers. Her voice is the kind that’s a gift from the gods. She’s absolutely insane. She wasn’t the most natural actor, but with that voice I’m sure she will have a strong career, one that I hope includes “Seasons of Love” soloist among other bigger parts.
The biggest news surrounding this production is what I consider one of its biggest flaws: that its score was compiled by a seemingly endless list of super famous musicians, including Sara Bareilles, David Bowie (RIP hope this isn’t the last thing he did), John Legend, Lady Antebellum, Steven Tyler, Cyndi Lauper, I mean it’s very ridiculous that this is a list of composers for one Broadway show. Each musician wrote one song in the show, and while it’s fun to be like ‘Oh this song was written by…THE RAPPER T.I.???? and this one by…Panic! At the Disco?????’, that kind of set up does not make for a cohesive musical. It makes for a disjointed one, with no real common threads that a musical needs to succeed as a whole and not just be a concert set against a story. Fun fact: For a long time my dad thought it was Panic! At the Drive-in because Sirius radio only showed the band’s name up to D and he assumed it stood for drive-in. The best songs by far were “Bikini Bottom Day”, by Jonathan Coulton, and Bareilles’ pirate song, which had nothing to do with the plot and was used as a silly intermission ender.
I think if the score was written by one great composing team, the musical would have been better and lasted longer, because every visual aspect of the production is superb. David Zinn’s set design is a marvel, and he rightly won the Tony for it. He uses everyday items – kind of like what you would (too easily) find floating in the ocean as garbage – to create this seascape of underwater magic that still feels familiar. His best work is the enormous Rube Goldberg contraptions on the sides of the stage that come into play at specific moments, huge devices that use little balls to spin wheels to drop levers to push handles &c &c to spit beach balls at the cast or something like that. It was the best.
The amazing visual treats also include Christopher Gattelli’s fun and inspired choreography, with magical moments like when the cast holds yellow sponges in the dark to e.g. make Bob’s flying cape in “Simple Sponge”. That number was actually gorgeous. And everything is handled masterfully by Tina Landau’s direction. Bringing this kind of show to life is difficult, and she deserves all the acclaim, like Sandy, for bringing it all together. Even the costumes were phenomenal, using regular clothes for the most part to evoke the familiar characters. Spongebob doesn’t wear a big suit like he’s just outside the theatre door hounding tourists in Times Square. He just wears a yellow shirt and red tie and plaid pants – and it works brilliantly. Patrick the starfish (a lovable Danny Skinner) wears an oversize pink tee shirt paired with green shorts in another so-simple-it’s-brilliant technique.
So the visuals are great. But it’s the other senses that get attacked. It’s the loudest musical ever. The fact that they were nominated for a Sound Design Tony is 100% due to the fun special effects produced live by the man (sorry can’t find your name) in the first balcony box with a keyboard equipped with the craziest sounds, like bubbles and squeaks and other noises of all sorts that aren’t British foods. That’s all done very well and amusingly but it gets to be a little too much. But who can even pay attention to them when the theatre is full of ear-damaging speakers that make everything so loud it would be bad even with earplugs? It was painful at times. And I’ve heard from people who sat in different sections that they could barely hear it! What is going on with the sound in this theatre? It sounds like a g-d mess. Is it so loud in most places to keep children’s attention? Maybe? but damaging everyone’s eardrums seems like not the right solution. And if kids are going to lose focus, having everything be super loud isn’t going to help. The rock concert that Squidward stages showed this more than ever, because a rock band plays and it’s just awfully loud and I wanted to scream get off my lawn.
I mean I’m starting to get too deep into the ranty ravey portion of my theatre discussions, and we don’t need to do that. “Spongebob” was a fun confection of a Broadway show, but I wish that they paid more attention to making it a fully realized show that adults would enjoy and not just kids, and that includes paying more attention to the crux of a musical – the score. As it is, it’s cheerful and fun and it’s a helluva lot better than anyone predicted when they first announced a Spongebob musical, but I wish it was truly great.
INFORMATION
If you go, turn off your phone and don’t bring loud food and drinks in or treat it like you’re at a party, because you’re not a monster. But don’t expect anyone else to follow your lead.
This musical tells the story of this simple sponge who lives in a pineapple under the sea (SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS okay that part I knew before too who DOESN’T know the theme song and then it goes like abhorrent and boorish and porous is he!!) in a cute little under the sea town called Bikini Bottom and he has other species friends and bosses and frenemies and it’s all cute. BUT THEN, they get news that a nearby volcano is going to erupt and destroy their town! Oh noes. Almost everyone agrees that they should leave town (I mean, right?) before doomsday. The villains, Plankton and his robot (?) wife, offer that they should put all town residents in an escape pod to get to their next home, and everyone is like wow great idea but Plankton and sea-Janet really just want everyone in one confined space so they can hypnotize them and convince them to eat at their failing restaurant instead of at the very popular Krusty Krabs, where Spongebob works as a fry cook. (How do they fry under water.) Spongebob is the only one who doesn’t want to flee the coming horror, because he simple. He thinks they should fight for their home, and so he sets off on a mission to save the town in the two days he has before the predicted eruption. Meanwhile, the rest of the town plans a concert to raise money to pay for the escape pod.
Okay fine, a little silly but a decent story choice for a Spongebob musical! But guess what, it’s also quite political and timely. While Bob Esponja is like hmm how do I stop a volcano, maybe with French fries???, the rest of the town is looking for someone to blame for everything, as most people do when something goes wrong (except unlike in real life, the people looking to blame an innocent person aren’t also the ones responsible). So the townsfolk decide to blame Sandy Cheeks, the smart adorable FEMALE squirrel, all things that powerful people despise, for the impending destruction. Of course, blame the smart woman! They choose her because she’s a land mammal, and so it’s easy to turn the town against her with chants of how she doesn’t belong there. I KNOW, it’s pretty darn topical. Also, Sandy is played by Lilli Cooper (the great), who is black, so it’s really poignant to show her being ostracized so the mostly white kids (hopefully) get the connection and see that that’s bad. Even though the town is trying to drive Sandy out, Spongebob convinces her to help him save the day, since Sandy is a brilliant scientist (and the real hero of the show). She creates a device that when dropped into the mouth of the volcano will turn the lava flow into harmless bubbles and I am here for that kind of scientific discovery, Elon. Spongebob volunteers to be the sad sack who has to drop the machine into the volcano, so a lot of the second act is him climbing the volcano/the little moving set piece. Obviously, he makes it to the top and saves the day and the town, and the town lauds him and forgives Sandy for being black but literally gives her nothing else, no acclaim for being the actual savior of everything and so I was a little salty and kind of wish that the town actually was destroyed because fuck that, this badass girl is a squirrel who is a scientist and she’s merely ALLOWED TO KEEP LIVING IN THE TOWN WHILE THE STUPID WHITE MAN FRY COOK IS CONSIDERED THE HERO OF IT ALL? please. Anyway that’s just my take on it, because of course Bob was going to be the hero in the show named after him, but how good would it have been to turn the tables on him and be like ‘thanks for doing the manual labor portion of the job now let’s have a parade for this amazing black girl!’ but no. So that’s the plot and it’s cute but it gets a little long considering it’s a kids show. The second act needed to be shorter.
So, full truth here. The best reviewed thing about this show, besides its set design, is ts leading spongeman, Ethan Slater, in a miraculous Broadway debut that has him singing, dancing, and pretty much jumping up and down and all around like a dynamo/bouncing ball/firework/sponge for hours and hours and keeping those energy levels up and keeping the rest of his cast energized and engaged and just being adorable and amazing and Tony-worthy, so everyone said. He was 98% of the reason I saw the show, the other 2% being for the set and the 12 Tony nominations it received. But apparently, those energy levels are real hard to keep up for 8 shows a week for months on end, because starting in about May, Ethan low-key started taking off at least one performance a week. And I fully understand why, and I appreciate that anyone doing this role full time would have to do that to stay alive because it requires absolute insane physicality from its star. But they should have set a defined performance and a defined alternate, as they do for most stars doing 7 of 8 shows. The ‘random’ performance he took off that week was my performance. Like, fuck. Curtis Holbrook, the understudy, did a marvelous job and I had zero complaints, but I didn’t get to see the performance that everyone was raving about. I can’t imagine what Ethan could do differently, though, to make people think he was robbed of a Tony. It’s a great, meaty, exhausting role, but it’s no great feat of acting.
And the cast is great all-around, really, with nice performances from Cooper and Skinner and a standout one from tap-dancing phenomenon Gavin Lee, as Squidward. He wears a costume that gives him four legs, and he brings the house down with a long extravagant tap number. It’s the best part of the show, rightly so given that he’s the one true vet up there. The tap dance alone that he does is difficult and impressive enough, but the fact that he’s doing it with four legs – and making it seem effortless – is astounding. There’s also a standout vocal performance from Jai’len Christine Li Josey, an 18-year-old girl who won the 2014 Jimmy Awards, kind of the Tonys for high school musical theatre performers. Her voice is the kind that’s a gift from the gods. She’s absolutely insane. She wasn’t the most natural actor, but with that voice I’m sure she will have a strong career, one that I hope includes “Seasons of Love” soloist among other bigger parts.
The biggest news surrounding this production is what I consider one of its biggest flaws: that its score was compiled by a seemingly endless list of super famous musicians, including Sara Bareilles, David Bowie (RIP hope this isn’t the last thing he did), John Legend, Lady Antebellum, Steven Tyler, Cyndi Lauper, I mean it’s very ridiculous that this is a list of composers for one Broadway show. Each musician wrote one song in the show, and while it’s fun to be like ‘Oh this song was written by…THE RAPPER T.I.???? and this one by…Panic! At the Disco?????’, that kind of set up does not make for a cohesive musical. It makes for a disjointed one, with no real common threads that a musical needs to succeed as a whole and not just be a concert set against a story. Fun fact: For a long time my dad thought it was Panic! At the Drive-in because Sirius radio only showed the band’s name up to D and he assumed it stood for drive-in. The best songs by far were “Bikini Bottom Day”, by Jonathan Coulton, and Bareilles’ pirate song, which had nothing to do with the plot and was used as a silly intermission ender.
I think if the score was written by one great composing team, the musical would have been better and lasted longer, because every visual aspect of the production is superb. David Zinn’s set design is a marvel, and he rightly won the Tony for it. He uses everyday items – kind of like what you would (too easily) find floating in the ocean as garbage – to create this seascape of underwater magic that still feels familiar. His best work is the enormous Rube Goldberg contraptions on the sides of the stage that come into play at specific moments, huge devices that use little balls to spin wheels to drop levers to push handles &c &c to spit beach balls at the cast or something like that. It was the best.
The amazing visual treats also include Christopher Gattelli’s fun and inspired choreography, with magical moments like when the cast holds yellow sponges in the dark to e.g. make Bob’s flying cape in “Simple Sponge”. That number was actually gorgeous. And everything is handled masterfully by Tina Landau’s direction. Bringing this kind of show to life is difficult, and she deserves all the acclaim, like Sandy, for bringing it all together. Even the costumes were phenomenal, using regular clothes for the most part to evoke the familiar characters. Spongebob doesn’t wear a big suit like he’s just outside the theatre door hounding tourists in Times Square. He just wears a yellow shirt and red tie and plaid pants – and it works brilliantly. Patrick the starfish (a lovable Danny Skinner) wears an oversize pink tee shirt paired with green shorts in another so-simple-it’s-brilliant technique.
So the visuals are great. But it’s the other senses that get attacked. It’s the loudest musical ever. The fact that they were nominated for a Sound Design Tony is 100% due to the fun special effects produced live by the man (sorry can’t find your name) in the first balcony box with a keyboard equipped with the craziest sounds, like bubbles and squeaks and other noises of all sorts that aren’t British foods. That’s all done very well and amusingly but it gets to be a little too much. But who can even pay attention to them when the theatre is full of ear-damaging speakers that make everything so loud it would be bad even with earplugs? It was painful at times. And I’ve heard from people who sat in different sections that they could barely hear it! What is going on with the sound in this theatre? It sounds like a g-d mess. Is it so loud in most places to keep children’s attention? Maybe? but damaging everyone’s eardrums seems like not the right solution. And if kids are going to lose focus, having everything be super loud isn’t going to help. The rock concert that Squidward stages showed this more than ever, because a rock band plays and it’s just awfully loud and I wanted to scream get off my lawn.
I mean I’m starting to get too deep into the ranty ravey portion of my theatre discussions, and we don’t need to do that. “Spongebob” was a fun confection of a Broadway show, but I wish that they paid more attention to making it a fully realized show that adults would enjoy and not just kids, and that includes paying more attention to the crux of a musical – the score. As it is, it’s cheerful and fun and it’s a helluva lot better than anyone predicted when they first announced a Spongebob musical, but I wish it was truly great.
INFORMATION
If you go, turn off your phone and don’t bring loud food and drinks in or treat it like you’re at a party, because you’re not a monster. But don’t expect anyone else to follow your lead.
