Thursday, January 22, 2015

Review: Othello

There are a lot of factors, of course, but I think one of the reasons that West Side Story worked, and continues to work so well is because gangs are one of the last areas in contemporary life where audiences will readily accept that murderous violence can spring up at the drop of a hat. Frantic Assembly's Othello, running at the Lyric Hammersmith, adopts this setting, and the feel does remind one of West Side Story, but it manages to achieve its startlingly contemporary feel with Shakespeare's original language. 

Said language is, admittedly, in a shortened form-- 100 minutes with no interval, though the scenes were adapted masterfully and nothing essential felt lost-- and delivered in heavy Northern accents that had the London A-levels students sitting around us giggling for about the first quarter of the play. Boys and girls alike have track pants and trainers, the ladies in crop tops and the boys in hoodies. They smoke and drink and play the slots machine in the corner, the 'Turkish fleet' consists of unseen honking cars and a brick thrown through a bar window, and lieutenancy is conferred by passing along custody of a baseball bat. Scenes are supplemented with long, silent sequences of dynamic, hip-hop inflected dance that tells the story as clearly as any of the dialogue. 

Othello's (Mark Ebulue) difference is marked in many ways besides his race: he's more obviously muscular than other men, southern-accented, and calm and steady in contrast to the impulsive exuberance of the others-- which makes the change that Steven Miller's temperamental Iago is able to work in him so sinister. This is not an Iago who is able to think ten steps ahead-- we see him working it all out in the moment, sometimes almost a beat too slowly (as when Roderigo threatens to expose him)-- and the excitement and tension of watching this process is at least as compelling as more composed Iagos playing ringmaster. 

Kirsty Oswald's Desdemona is perhaps my favorite I've ever seen: spirited and defiant not just to her father, but throughout. She does not cry for the entirety of the final two acts, as so many Desdemonas unfortunately do, but teases, flirts, and fights for her life. She's no chaste angel, but it is equally clear that she would never betray the man she loves. One of the most interesting examples of director Scott Graham's adaptation is the rearrangement of scenes and entrances to allow Desdemona and Othello to have an early scene alone. I'd never before realized that they are, in the original text, never left by themselves before he kills her. Here, they are allowed a moment of intimacy and private tenderness that grounds their love in more than just public protestations. Desdemona's friendship with Emilia (Leila Crerar) is one of equals, and the latter's desperate loyalty comes from a form of friendly love that is much more recognizable to a modern audience than the mistress/servant relationship. After shrinking from Iago's cruelty and allowing herself to be casually groped by most of the others, Emilia blazes to life in the final third of the play, and when she finally seizes the right to speak for herself, she is fearless and formidable. 

The set (design by Laura Hopkins) moves seamlessly from very dingy bar to back alley, but even when safely indoors the walls will undulate to underscore the characters' uncertainty and distress-- as Cassio (a charming Ryan Fletcher) is getting wasted, for example, or Iago is panicking about how to plant the handkerchief on him. Though the excellent dance/movement sequences peter off towards the end of the play, the final moments of violence are viscerally shocking in a way that such well-trodden tragedies often cannot quite manage. I was most aware, during the final moments, of how young everybody seemed to be-- and that unlike the glooming peace that ends many versions of Othello, the cycle of violence here has no end in sight. 

Friday, January 9, 2015

Adaptations: Into the Woods

All in all, Into the Woods is-- fine. The cast are all good to great, everything looks very pretty. But frustratingly, I think if a little more time had been spent thinking not about just putting the musical onto the screen, but adapting it to the screen, it could have been a truly great musical movie. 

What I mean by this is, Into the Woods' jokes, subversions, and structure are built on top of theatrical tropes, not least the device of the intermission itself. It's a musical that's made to be cut in half, and its structure within the acts-- especially the first-- relies on repetitions, reprises, montage-esque group numbers, and direct address. Rob Marshall did not grapple with how to translate any of these devices to film, beyond cut-away montages for the group numbers and changing some direct-address songs to be delivered to other characters. But more than the slight awkwardness of these choices, it's missing the point: Into the Woods riffs not just on fairy tales, but on the way those stories are told in the theatre. I don't know what cinematic devices could replace things like the false ending before intermission, but I'm sure such tropes exist, and utilizing them to turn Into the Woods into a movie that comments on film in the same way the play comments on theatre would have pushed it, in my opinion, over the line into becoming the movie musical that finally cracks the code. This might also have forced the filmmakers to think harder about the story they were telling, and pushed them away from some cuts and changes that ultimately left the second half, which is supposed to be the weighty one, feeling a bit bloodless. 

This hinges, in part, on a decision that I thought I would hate but instead found almost worked: actual kids playing Jack and Little Red Ridinghood. After Little Red's number, I was firmly in the "no" camp-- the song lost all of its hesitant glances towards impending adulthood, and the sexual elements just felt like an unfortunate implication. But after both her and Jack (who I felt straddled the becoming-an-adult line better than Red) delivered their songs to the Baker, I began to be intrigued by the idea of the Baker becoming a sort of semi-unwilling receptacle for children's stories, and hoped it would maybe replace stepping into his father/narrator's shoes as a reason for becoming a storyteller himself at the end. It also made me look anew at the progression of the lessons learned, seeing more clearly that in the first half, the children (and to a great extent, the Baker and his Wife, and the Witch as well, are still like children) come of age and learn their expected lessons. And then in the second half, the adults realize that the lessons don't stop now that you're grown. Unfortunately, that's not quite what happened. 

Yes, they don't kill Rapunzel. And it doesn't work. The Witch learning that you have to let your children go is easy and boring; the Witch finally being proven right that the world is dangerous, but finding only loss in the victory is complicated and interesting and much sadder. Losing the reprise of "Agony" also doesn't work, and not just because it clearly would have been amazing-- but because you lose not only the comedy, but the weight behind the Prince's later confession that he thought marriage would mean an end to longing. And finally, while losing "No More" almost works, it's just a huge shame, and makes the Baker's decision to return feel far too quick and easy. All of these choices combined to make the problems of the second half feel much simpler and shallower than those of the first-- which is, of course, the opposite of how it ought to feel. 

There's a lot of good too, mostly in the performances-- which might be a first in 21st century movie musicals. I was completely enamored with James Cordon and Emily Blunt's Baker and Wife, and I thought the decision to have Cordon narrate was the best thing you can do if you can't have the narrator visible. They had fantastic chemistry and the exactly right sense of partnership. I only wish that Lapine hadn't felt the apparent need to water down their prickliness from his original script: they never really fight here, never snap or get angry, and there's something lost (particularly in "Moments in the Woods") when their fantastic teamwork isn't paired with reminders that their marriage is also difficult, and they don't always get along. But Emily Blunt escapes Joanna Gleason's long shadow, and James Cordon made me badly wish I could have seen his rendition of "No More." 

 Anna Kendrick is utterly charming, though Cinderella probably suffered most from the oddly quick and shallow feel of what would be act two. Aside from my total shock that Chris Pine can sing, there's nothing to say about "Agony." You just have to see it.

And the film itself is unquestionably worth seeing. But I suspect those who are encountering Into the Woods for the first time on screen will need to look to the stage to understand what has made it an enduring classic of musical theatre. 

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Top Plays of 2014

I'm positive that there are things I'm missing from early in the year, because I only have notes through April with me now. But, in chronological order, here are my top ten plays from 2014. It was harder to narrow down than I thought it would be, and so when it was a close call I went with the ones that have stuck with me, and that I've kept thinking about long after I saw them. It's been a pretty remarkable year for shows like that. 

1. Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812: This is probably cheating, since I saw it for the first time shortly after moving to NYC in 2012. I absolutely adored it then, and I absolutely adored it when I saw it again after its move from Ars Nova to a bigger midtown location. It's a rock opera, written by Dave Malloy and directed by Rachel Chavkin, adapted from a small slice of Tolstoy's War and Peace. Young, naive Natasha Rostova travels to Moscow to await the return of her betrothed, Andrey, from the wars, but finds herself enchanted by the beautiful and not wholly trustworthy Anatole. Her story eventually intertwines with that of Pierre, Andrey's best friend, unhappily married to Anatole's sister. Dave Malloy originated the role of Pierre (though he was no longer playing it by the time I saw it in 2014) and Philippa Soo, playing Natasha, is staggeringly talented and a name to watch. 

The music is beautiful, the performances were spot-on, the staging was inventive and made sitting through a three-hour rock opera adaptation of a Russian novel a positive delight. Oh, also, the actor playing Dolokhov gave us free wine because we happened to be sitting with someone he knew, so... all around, everything you want from an evening of theatre. 

(seriously, if anyone reading this doesn't know this show, download it at once, it's truly great) 

2. Twelfth Night: Okay, this one is probably also cheating, because I also saw this in both 2013 and 2014. But it's part of the reason I'm here in London now, so that's probably important. And this production completely transformed the way I look at Twelfth Night, which I freely admit I never much liked before, and now consider one of my favorites. This production allowed me to rediscover the joy in the play, which a lifetime of watching knock-offs of the Trevor Nunn film version had almost completely sapped away. It was my first all-male production, and I found the experiment fascinating-- and also that it justified my impulse that there is more than just nerdy dramaturgical interest to be gained from understanding early modern playhouse practice as deeply as possible... which in turn helped me justify the mostly completely batty decision to come to London. 

3. Cripple of Inishmaan: This play taught me that I might possibly like two things I thought I didn't: Daniel Radcliffe's acting, and Martin McDonagh's writing. Blasphemy, I know-- but the only thing I ever read of his was The Pillowman, and then I was too traumatized to read more. But Inishmaan was an utter delight, and I will be the first to acknowledge that I seriously misjudged Daniel Radcliffe's talents-- and more importantly, I think, his humbleness and his obvious dedication to working hard at the job of acting, not just coasting along as a movie star, as he obviously could. 

4. Much Ado About Nothing: I was terribly excited for Shakespeare in the Park's Much Ado About Nothing, and the show far exceeded my high expectations-- mostly by completely transforming those expectations. Like Twelfth Night, this production completely changed my understanding of the essential dynamics of the play. Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater's Beatrice and Benedick were unlike any I've seen in the best possible way: rather than being obviously the two smartest, coolest people in the room-- so that the question of their getting together only seems to be an eye-rolling matter of when-- they portrayed the quarrelsome lovers as proud and prickly, lashing out when you sense they'd rather reach out, if only they weren't too afraid of being mocked. This is not to suggest that the pair were soaked in maudlin self-loathing, but rather that their vast intelligence and genuine high spirits were also undergirded with a strong instinct for self-preservation. Most interestingly, this had the effect of raising actual questions about their eventual union. Would they actually manage to overcome their quips and fear to get together? Their public denials in the last scene read to me, for the first time ever, not just as a silly final layover before the inevitable happy ending, but a moment in which there seemed to be a real chance that they would choose pride and safety over happiness at last. 

5. Two Gentlemen of Verona: My wish for 2015 is that more people start producing all-female Shakespeare that a) isn't The Taming of the Shrew and b) doesn't feel like it needs to hedge its bets with explanations, framing devices, and commentary. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's Two Gentlemen of Verona was a perfect example of the power that simply presenting a play and letting women embody it can have. The gender decision spoke for itself: director Sarah Rasmussen wisely recognized that no more adornment was required.  

6. Into the Woods: I'd never actually seen a live Into the Woods before this production at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It's a hard play for many musical theatre fans to see, I think, because the filmed Broadway version casts such a long shadow. But Amanda Denhert's production straddled the perfect line between staking an interpretive claim and sucking the magic out of the show by privileging the director's vision above the strength of the play itself. It was, in other words, sufficiently different from the original version to shake off the specters of Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason, and Chip Zien, but did not feel the need to achieve this by, say, setting it in modern-day New York City.  

7. Julius Caesar: Yet another production that helped me see a play I thought I knew very well in an entirely new light. As I wrote, the trouble with Julius Caesar often seems to be that all the good bits-- or at least all the famous bits-- happen in acts 1-3. But Tom McKay's beautiful, soulful Brutus so fully inhabited the heart of the play, it became not just a story of politics and assassination, but a character study that had to be followed to the bitter end. 

8. The James Plays (plus part 3): I can't stop thinking about these plays. Weeks after seeing them for the second time, I had to go buy the script because I couldn't stop trying to remember lines, scenes, and moments. The last time I can remember seeing a play and it having that kind of effect, the play was by Shakespeare. The opening scene of James I might be one of the best-written first scenes I've read, full stop. I've linked them anyway, but my reviews are so far from encompassing what I've come to think and feel about these plays, because I wrote the reviews right after seeing them, and it turns out these plays take much more time than that to fully unfold. 

9. Charles III: When I first read about Charles III last spring I was desperate to see it, and I'm so glad that I not only got the chance, but it was exactly as awesome as I thought it would be. I was worried that I wouldn't understand the politics of it, but Mike Bartlett's drama is much more human than that. It's a classic Shakespearean historical tragedy, and its setting in the near future rather than the past only serves, somehow, to reinforce this feeling. As the man said, what's past is prologue. 

10. The Knight of the Burning Pestle : How often do you feel pure, joyful delight in the theatre? Not often enough. But what's so remarkable about Burning Pestle is that it achieves this joy without just being a confection of a play. It's terribly silly, but it's not shallow. George and Nell ground the play, radiating warmth and welcome. If more plays reminded people that there's no right way to go to the theatre, maybe more people would come.