Over the winter break, I took two brief trips to New York City to remind myself of how much I love the New York theatre scene. I'm not sure which I love better for theatre: New York or London. But either way, I do have a sentimental attachment to New York, and it was nice to have gotten the chance to visit and to take in two shows, one on Broadway and one off.
August: Osage County, a new play by Tracy Letts, the author of the play-turned-film Bug, is a production that started at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, a theatre known for its ensemble acting. Transfering the play, a property without known actors or a well-known source material, to Broadway was risky, but, because critics have heralded the play, it looks as if its limited run at the Imperial Theatre (a large theatre to fill), will pay off. Personally, I felt that the play, which has been compared to O'Neill's family dramas, was a bit lighter on substance than I would have liked. Its ending packed a wallop and its hard-working cast made it compelling, but the sharp dialogue felt more showy than genuine to me. It's a play sure to be a contender once the time comes for Pulitzer selection and one that's shown up on plenty of critics' top ten lists, but I still think I'll be rooting for the underdogs instead.
The other play I saw in New York this winter break, a production of Samuel Beckett's 1960 play Happy Days, struck my fancy far more. Starring Fiona Shaw and directed by renowned British director Deborah Warner, the production is on tour from the National Theatre in London, a theatre I've come to know and love over the past few months. In New York, it played at Brooklyn Academy of Music in the Harvey Rose Theatre, a space bearing many similarities in its style to Peter Brook's Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, a theatre that felt to me incredibly lived-in and full of life.
Fiona Shaw gave one of the most thrilling performances I've ever seen in the piece, which focuses on ever-sunny Winnie, buried up to her waist (and later her neck) in sand, and her compulsion for filling the hours between "the bell for waking and the bell for sleeping." It's not a very mainstream play, but at the same time its humor abounds and makes the piece far more accessible than it would seem at first glance. Most importantly the play reflects the truth of its audience's day-to-day routines, so that by the time we've laughed our way through the 100-minute production we realize we've not only been laughing at Winnie, we've also been laughing at ourselves.
This semester is already off to an impressive start!
On Friday night, I went back to the National to see Present Laughter, a production of a 1942 Noel Coward play that was far more remarkably funny than I ever could have expected, having not previously known the joys of Coward. Starring Alex Jennings (most known for playing Prince Charles in The Queen), the production, which features lavish sets, played around with acting types of its time to hilarious effect. For a production that lasted three hours, there wasn't a dull moment in evidence, thanks to the brisk production of Howard Davies's production.
Sitting in my seat at intermission, I couldn't help but think how much I've genuinely come to love the National Theatre, having seen an array of plays in its three variously sized auditoriums (Chatroom/Citizenship; The Emperor Jones; Rafta, Rafta...; War Horse; The Women of Troy; and Present Laughter, with Much Ado About Nothing, Major Barbara, and Statement of Regret soon to come). They really do a great variety of modern and classic works and with consistently sumptuous acting. We really need a national theatre in the U.S., a place where great writers, actors, and directors want to work, and a place where government arts funding is bestowed generously without checks on the productions' content.
On Saturday, I made the long trek out to the Watermill Theatre in the little village of Bagnor out near Newbury, England, in order to see the new John Doyle-directed production of Merrily We Roll Along. It was certainly a good thing I left plenty of time before the show to get there, because, even after the hour-long train ride to Newbury and the twenty-minute bus ride to the Hare and Hounds Inn, there was still a half-hour rural hike by foot into the village before I was finally at the theatre. Savoring a much-needed glass of wine before the show, a nice couple (Tony and Jean) offered me a much-valued ride back to the train station after the show. The trip out of London really served to show how nice the English people are. People were very helpful at the bus station and very friendly at the theatre.
As for the show, I was very much anticipating the production because of the recent Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd and Company that I'd seen, also directed by John Doyle and featuring Stephen Sondheim-penned scores. John Doyle, who frequently makes use of the actor-musician tradition in his productions, is really a very deft director of musical theatre. Some would say his actor-musician technique has worn out its welcome, but I think it really adds opportunities for introspection in regards to plot and character. Why does a particular character play a particular instrument? How do the characters and their instrumentations come together? It's not haphazard in a Doyle production, or, at the very least, an audience is left to read additional levels into the text.
I'd been wanting to go to the Watermill Theatre for years now, and the production certainly wasn't a letdown. It's a show I've seen several times before in college productions, and one that I love even more every new time I see it. Focusing on a group of friends, starting with their disappointing midlife crises and commencing with their optimistic beginnings (running backward in time), Sondheim and book writer George Furth, have really created a deft portrait of the loss of innocence. In his production, Doyle added additional layers to the piece by including filmic production elements, including an ominous and centrally-placed film projector, on which new rolls of film are fitted to unwind during each successive new scene. Characters throughout the piece are also left to unspool rolls of film symbolically, a touch that could have seemed more tedious but which I appreciated within the context of this production, which overall succeeded in stripping away the material to its bare essentials.
What I was most thankful for was the retaining of the brass elements within the show's orchestrations. What left me most cold about the recent revival of Company was its lack of brass. Company and Merrily are Sondheim's two most brass-heavy scores, owing to the New York hustle and bustle evident within both pieces. Without the brass, Company felt entirely too cold, but this Merrily is full of blood and verve and life. Doyle manages to be inventive and faithful at once, and it's really added up to a satisfying production that I hope will transfer to bigger houses in London and/or New York to reach larger audiences. The lucky few who travel out to the Watermill to see it in its original incarnation will most certainly not be disappointed. I know I wasn't.
And so my spring in London is off with a bang! This week, I'm looking forward to the London premiere of David Hare's The Vertical Hour at the Royal Court which I admired during its stint on Broadway in late 2006, and the production of Much Ado About Nothing starring Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale at the National Theatre. Next weekend will also be interesting, including a return visit to The Women of Troy at the National and a first trip to Statement of Regret in the smaller Cottesloe Theatre at the National. Next Sunday I'm also taking in Cat Power's concert at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. It's a busy week! I'll be back to report more in the near future!
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