This Gaudy Gilded Stage

Yesterday, PJ and I drove up to Columbus to see the matinée of Wicked, which is spending a month at the Ohio Theatre. My sister, my friend James and his partner, my parents, and just about everyone else I know has already seen it, so PJ and I thought that we’d avail ourselves of the opportunity to see the company in Columbus. I’m glad we did. Wicked isn’t the greatest musical I’ve ever seen, but it’s entertaining and a lot of fun! I definitely recommend it.

As I’m sure everyone knows, Wicked tells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, i.e., the “real” story behind The Wizard of Oz. The show begins just after the announcement of the Witch’s death by water. The citizens of Oz soon recall the Glinda was rumored to have been friends with the Wicked Witch, so they want to know how that was possible. The rest of the show is told in flashback, as Glinda reveals what really happened between her, the Witch, and the Wizard.

What I like most about this re-telling is its emphasis on politics and the way in which propaganda shapes political reality. If you get people to believe whatever you tell them, then you can start telling them anything. In many ways, this production is an indictment of the Bush era and the creation of “truth” out of nothing more than lies that protect the administration in power. In this way, this musical is rather bold — I wonder how many of my fellow Midwesterners who saw it yesterday got this message too!

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The third play PJ and I saw in London was War Horse, which is based on a children’s book of the same name by Michael Morpurgo. It relates the story of a horse who is sold to the British cavalry at the beginning of World War I. The tale of this one horse becomes a meditation on the inhumane treatment of horses during the war. Here’s the “trailer”:

This preview gives you a little taste of what makes this production so amazing: the puppetry, which was designed by the Handspring Puppet Company. All of the horses in the show are puppets, but the amazing part is that you quickly forget that these horses are puppets and not real horses. They really seem to emote and to move like real horses. It’s amazing that these puppeteers can make you care about puppets in this way! PJ and I were both astounded by this aspect of the play. It’s the magic of theater at its best.

War Horse starts with young Albert being assigned to help raise a horse, Joey, that his drunken father has spent all of the family’s money buying just to spite his brother. When war is declared, the drunken father sees a chance to make a quick buck and sells Joey to the cavalry. Albert swears that he will find him again and bring him home.

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When PJ and I were planning our trip to England last month, the one show I definitely wanted to see was Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I love the movie, which is one of the great gay-themed films of all time, way ahead of its time. So, as soon as we landed in London and checked into our hotel we got our tickets for Priscilla for the second night we were in town.

I’ll state up front that this is going to be a mixed review. On the one hand, the show was entertaining. I especially liked the actors and was incredibly impressed with the stagecraft of the show, especially the quick costume changes. On the other hand, this show is little more than a collection of random songs — none of which are original — tied together by the barest of plots. As a result, we couldn’t care less about the characters or what happens in the show; we’re just waiting for the next big production number. I wish it had been more interesting on a narrative level.

The obvious point of comparison for this production is Billy Elliot, a great movie and show. Its creators took the plot of the movie, augmented it to make us care even more about the characters and time period, and then added original songs. It is an interesting show on every level, and it says something about gay issues.

Priscilla on the other hand is really just trying to make money. The creators clearly made a decision to use only old songs that audience members could sing along with–“You Were Always on My Mind,” What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “Hot Stuff,” and “I Will Survive” to name a few examples–as a way of filling the seats. It seems like this is a winning strategy, but the show could have drawn audience and been innovative and interesting. Why couldn’t they have taken a page from Billy Elliott and done more?

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Perhaps the main goal of PJ’s and my recent trip to England was to see a few shows. The last time we were there most of the shows we saw were total crap, so we really wanted this trip’s theater to be better. We ended up seeing four shows. Almost as soon as we arrived, we took the Tube to the Leicester Square tickets booth and bought tickets for our first two nights in London.

We knew we wanted to see Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but it wasn’t playing on Monday night (our first night in London) so we bought tickets to another show, Holding the Man. PJ had read about it beforehand and knew that it was also an Australian “gay play,” which was enough for us. We bought tickets for Priscilla for Tuesday night, so we figured the theme of our visit would be gay Australian theater!

We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. Holding the Man is much more than just a gay Australian play. It is an amazingly affecting theatrical experience. Unfortunately, the West End production has now closed, but the play itself is so good that I would recommend any production of this play.

Holding the Man is based on the memoir of Timothy Conigrave, an Australian writer, actor, and activist. Conigrave’s memoir follows his 15-year relationship with John Caleo. The two men met while still in high school, a Catholic boys school. Caleo was the captain of the school’s football team. The play’s early scenes detail their courtship and eventual coming out to their parents. When Conigrave goes off to college and wants to experiment with other men, the couple briefly breaks up. The second half of the play focuses on the latter years of the mens’ relationship and takes place in the AIDS era. Both men eventually dies of AIDS-related illnesses.

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While PJ and I were in NYC last month, we saw four plays/musicals, including God of Carnage, which won the Tony for Best Play last year. We try to keep abreast of the best play winners, so PJ especially wanted to see this one. The original cast, which included James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden, has already departed from the show. It now stars Christine Lahti, Jimmy Smits, and Annie Potts, all of whom we were looking forward to seeing.

The play centers around a meeting between two sets of parents. One of their sons has hit the other couple’s son with a stick, knocking out some of his teeth, during a playground brawl. Both couples begin the meeting by wanting to keep things polite and friendly, but as they realize that the playground incident is more complex than just one kid bullying another they also begin to fight among themselves over other issues. A few drinks later, everyone is screaming at everyone else.

All four members of the cast were good in their roles. Smits plays a big time lawyer who is constantly interrupted by one of his major clients calling him on his cellphone. He is married to Potts’ character, a wealth manager, and the two of them are the parents of the kid who hit the other one. Potts is great as a mother torn between wanting to keep everything friendly and her pride that her son has beaten up the other kid rather than be a “pussy” or a “fag.” Lahti plays the other mother. She wants to protect her son, who isn’t quite as innocent as she would like to believe, and wants the other kid punished. Her husband is played by Ken Stott, who acted in the London production of this play.

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While we were in NYC last week, PJ and I saw one off-Broadway play, The Understudy, which was written by Theresa Rebeck and stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Justin Kirk, and Julie White. We saw White a couple of years ago in her Tony winning performance in The Little Dog Laughed, which was a great, devastatingly satiric play on Hollywood, and so we looked forward to seeing her again in this work, which, at least on paper, sounds a little like The Little Dog Laughed.

Kirk, who is perhaps best known for his work in Weeds and Angels in America, plays Harry, who has just been hired as the understudy for an action movie star, Jake, played by Gosselaar. Jake and another action star, Bruce, are starring in a hit Broadway play that is a recently discovered work by Kafka. The play-within-a-play more or less combines elements from Kafka’s The Trial with elements from The Castle. There are sixteen roles in the Kafka play, but Bruce plays fifteen of them and Jake plays one. Harry is Jake’s understudy, and Jake is Bruce’s understudy. The real-time action of The Understudy involves a rehearsal of the play so that Harry can learn Jake’s part.

White plays the stage manager, Roxanne. She’s trying to keep everything together despite several setbacks. She used to be an actress but had to give up that career when she fell apart after a breakup. She also has a complicated relationship with each of the other characters. And finally, her tech person, Laura, is too stoned to be entirely cooperative during the rehearsal.

Basically, on one level this play is about these characters’ relationships with one another; on another level it’s an exploration of the current economic realities of Broadway, the need to attract large audiences and the use of big name movie stars to do so. The play explores some of the complications this use of movie stars on Broadway entails.

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When PJ and I planned our trip to New York this year, there was one show I absolutely wanted to see: the revival of South Pacific. So, this was the only show for which we bought advance tickets. I’m glad we saw it — it’s a wonderful interpretation of the musical — but we clearly did not need advance tickets: we sat in the balcony with only about 20 other people. The theater was probably less than two-thirds full. I assume the production won’t be sticking around much longer (unless the weekends really bring in the crowds — we saw it on Wednesday night).

As I’m sure everyone knows, this 1949 musical is about the war in the South Pacific in the early 1940s. It tells the story of Ensign Nellie Forbush, a girl from Little Rock, who meets Emile de Becque while stationed on an island. The two instantly fall in love when they see each other across a crowded room; the play is about what happens when they begin to learn a little more about each other’s lives and beliefs. The secondary plot is about a hotshot lieutenant, Joe Cable, who sees an opportunity to turn the tide of the war. His plans are complicated by Nellie and Emile’s relationship and his own attraction for a native islander. Both couples have to confront the Americans’ racism to varying degrees of success. The play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950.

I’d never seen a live production of the play before. I had seen the 1958 film, which I have mixed feelings about. I like the songs and message, but the movie’s direction is too much for its own good. In particular, the film is famous for its mood coloring, which never appealed to me.

My parents raised my sister and me on old movies, and this one was probably one of the racier ones that we were allowed to watch. I was totally crushing on John Kerr, and I loved the song “Bali Hai” beyond all reason. I now think it resonated with my adolescent queer yearning for love and unconscious knowledge that it would have to be found elsewhere than in my parents’ community.

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Last week, PJ and I saw four plays while we were in New York City: Finian’s Rainbow, South Pacific, The Understudy, and God of Carnage. None of them knocked our socks off, but I enjoyed the musicals a lot and we were both pleasantly surprised by The Understudy.

We arrived in New York on Tuesday. We didn’t buy advance tickets in case our flight was delayed or something like that happened. SO, after we checked into our hotel we went to the TKTS booth for discount tickets. We did this last year and were really happy with the tickets we got for In the Heights.

Also like last year, we had nothing in mind for the Tuesday night show. We just knew we wanted to see a musical. If there had been tickets for it, we probably would have seen A Little Night Music starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, but that wasn’t available. One of the options PJ suggested was Finian’s Rainbow, which we knew almost nothing about. The only thing we knew was, as PJ pointed out, Cheyenne Jackson was in it. That seemed more tempting to me than the other alternative PJ suggested, Hair. I intend to write more about Mr. Jackson in another blog later this week, so I’ll save some of my thoughts about him for that. For this post, I’ll just start by saying that this was our chance to see him in person, and I was going to take it unless PJ insisted on Hair. He didn’t.

So, we got out tickets for Finian’s Rainbow. Overall, it’s kind of lightweight even for a musical. It originally ran in 1947. The plot revolves around Finian, an Irishman who moves from Ireland to the mythical state of Missitucky with his daughter, Sharon. Sharon soon catches the eye of Woody, who is leading an effort to combat the racist policies of Senator Rawlins. We soon learn that Finian has stolen a pot of gold from a leprechaun, Og, who wants his gold back. Comic mayhem ensues.

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While we were in New York City this week, PJ and I saw four plays: Mouth to Mouth, off-Broadway, and three Broadway shows, In the Heights, The Seagull, and Gypsy. These four plays were all at least as good as the plays we saw last year, which was a little surprising since we hadn’t really planned on seeing two of them.

We arrived in NYC a couple of hours later than we had planned — airport delays — on Monday. So, we rushed to check in and then walked over to the TKTS booth to see what we could find to see. Unlike past years, we decided this time to only buy tickets at the discount booth, which obviously meant that we didn’t necessarily have control over what we saw. Furthermore, Mondays are mostly dark, which means that few shows are actually playing.

We had looked on the Internet before arriving in NYC to see what was playing on Monday. One of the shows we thought might be interesting was Kevin Elyot’s Mouth to Mouth. We also liked that this play was being performed at the Acorn Theater. Last year we saw Things We Want at the Acorn, and the year before that we saw The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie there. So, it’s now a bit of a tradition for us to see a play at the Acorn each time we’re in New York.

Mouth to Mouth is about a man who’s HIV positive, Frank, played by David Cale, who is racked with guilt over a secret he’s keeping from his best friend, Laura, played by Lisa Emery. Over the course of the play we go back and forth between the present and the previous year as we learn what Frank’s secret is and how it affects him and the people around him.

One of these people is Laura’s son, Philip, played by Christopher Abbott. Philip makes quite an entrance: he arrives onstage wearing only jeans. While the part calls for Abbott to be sexy and alluring, he manages to bring more than just a great body to the role. Philip is a complicated character, one that remains elusive since the play is more or less told from Frank’s point of view.

This elusive quality is one of the complaints I have about the play. I think it would work better and be far more engaging if we knew more about Philips’ motivations, behaviors, and point of view. Elyot is trying to explore very complicated ground in this work — I don’t want to summarize it too fully since that would lessen the play’s impact for anyone who might see it — but this ground could be even more complex and interesting.

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