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sea_changed) wrote2019-01-18 01:51 pm
2018 in theater and concerts
Concerts:
Dessa. Incredible, as always. Getting to hear much of the new album live was lovely, but it was when she did Dixon's Girl that the place went crazy and I nearly died. As always, her patter between songs was half the fun; I cried during Velodrome, which I think is my favorite of the new stuff (followed closely by I Hope I'm Wrong, which she didn't do live). Truly wonderful.
David Byrne. This was one I worked, and while I was looking forward to it I wouldn't have bought a ticket on my own. But it was crazy good: Byrne's theatricality is cohesive and thought-through and stunningly executed, and it felt like something more like experimental theater than I would've expected. I loved it.
Janelle Monáe. Really good, as can only be expected. Django Jane and Electric Lady were especial highlights.
Renée Elise Goldsberry. This was almost by accident, and an absolute dream. Out of the original Hamilton cast I have an especial attachment to her: seeing her live again was utterly amazing. She started right out of the gate with Spanish Harlem, and did several lovely Aretha covers over the course of the night; she pulled up a couple of her backup singers to do Schuyler Sisters, and did a sort of stripped-down version of Satisfied; she also pulled out Rent, and a smattering of other things, all of which she sang wonderfully.
Theater:
I don't have my program collection with me at the moment, so this may be missing things, though I think I have most if not all. ETA: And indeed I did miss something; Hamlet is now added to the list below. I thought I'd seen more Shakespeare.
Indecent (Guthrie Theatre) [I appreciated seeing it live, but the recorded original was still better than this live version; it wasn't done with anything near the feeling of the original]
The Humans (National Tour)
Assassins (Theatre Latté Da)*
School of Rock (National Tour)
Familiar (Guthrie) [Lovely and very funny]
A People's History (Guthrie) [Only one part, which I'm still sad about]
Hamlet (Wayward Theatre Co) [Staged in a giant Gilded Age mansion, which was excellent though could've been utilized better; otherwise average, though did some late-Act V text rearranging I actually thought worked beautifully]
Something Rotten (National Tour) [Generally average, though the musicals pastiche number had me cackling with joy]
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (Guthrie)
Joan of Arc (Broadway)
Angels in America (Broadway)*
Hello, Dolly (Broadway) [Bernadette Peters's run, and despite being underwhelmed by the production itself it was an Experience]
Henry V (Public Theatre)
Jersey Boys (National Tour)
Chicago (National Tour)
West Side Story (Guthrie)*
Love Never Dies (National Tour)
Hamilton (National Tour)*
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Tour) [Being who I was as a kid I've seen this several times before, though there are a few things that remain funny]
* denotes a particular favorite, talked about more below. All the National Tours (except Hamilton) I worked, and thus saw involuntarily and likely more than once; this was a rough season, and I probably would've gone only to Chicago if given the choice. My mom decided to experiment with getting season tickets to the Guthrie, which I benefited from mightily, and while it was an interesting experiment I think the general consensus was that that was really not something she wanted to spend money on. I also benefited from friends' extra tickets and volunteer slots, which meant that I bought tickets to proportionally very few of these, though I spent enough regardless. Otherwise, a pretty light year.
Particular favorites out of that lineup were:
Assassins. This was incredible. This show requires achieving such a terribly delicate balance in order to pull it off, but they did so with aplomb (not surprising if you know the company, yet still). The irony was thick but the characters were presented with depth and thought, and every beat, of both humor and horror, and sometimes both at once, was hit with precision. I'm still not over it.
Angels in America. I set aside a day to see both parts back-to-back, and it was absolutely the way to do it. This was the first time I'd seen it live, after being in love with the script for years, and it had all the attendant emotion from that, but the production itself was excellently done as well. I was not overly sold on Andrew Garfield's Prior: it felt like he was doing Prior more than being him, though that didn't lessen my enjoyment overall. His FUCK YOU I'M A PROPHET had the entire theater in stitches, at a point where we really needed the release of it; in general, watching it felt more of a communal experience than I'm used to having in a Broadway theater. (Though there was some unfortunate clapping for Louis's Democracy in America speech; at some point I want to write a thing about performative audiences and how quickly that becomes cringeworthy.) Everyone else was excellent; the production design was lovely. Overall extraordinarily wonderful.
West Side Story. This is one of my very favorite musicals ever, despite it's problematic elements, and I was very excited to see it. The cast was excellent: Tony had a voice on him like you wouldn't believe; Maria's actress played her younger than she's usually played (which is to say, her canonical age), which was a great choice; Riff's dancing was amazing. The production was billed as having new choreography, though largely it seemed to be just a watered-down version of the original; Jerome Robbins casts a long shadow, and not one that's easy to get out from under (or worth it if you do, most likely). It was also a partly color-blind production, which I found a baffling choice, considering the show: though there were distinct positives (Riff was black, and as mentioned did a wonderful job; all the actors of color playing Jets were really excellent), at the end of the day casting black actors as violent would-be rapist gangsters feels something less than progressive.
Hamilton. My third time seeing it; as always a religious experience. I've found that my criticisms of the production haven't dulled: I still find the choreography overblown and clunky, the direction overly broad, the lighting tacky. In general, I've felt and continue to feel that the production choices don't effectively support the genius of the music: they're very staid musical theater choices, whereas the soundtrack so emphatically is not.
All that said, of course, I adore it and will continue seeing it whenever I have the chance (and the money), because seeing new interpretations of the music and the characters will always be worth it. The standout this time for me was Nik Walker as Burr: I was unsure of him at first, as he seemed overly broad and flippant, but he pulled it in so effectively in the private moments of the show that he paid off all of his choices splendidly. His Wait For It was the best I've seen: the stunning and visible effort he expended in containing and controlling himself during the course of the song was something to see. I was ecstatic to be able to be Shoba Narayan as Eliza, and she was utterly lovely; from the first moment Ta'Rea Campbell opened her mouth in Schuyler Sisters I fell in love. Joseph Morales as Hamilton did an excellent job. The same character portrayals I took issue with in Chicago I took issue with here as well: King George has gotten way too broad (which is. . .saying something), as has Jefferson: he ceases to be effective once he's become a caricature. Daveed balanced the joke and the character so well I'm not sure I fully appreciated it until I've seen other--perfectly good--actors not be able to manage it. I wasn't overly impressed with Marcus Choi's Washington, either, though he pulled out a lovely One Last Time.
I sobbed my way through the last third or so of the second half, which I credit Shoba for in large part, as well as my general overwhelming feelings about the whole thing.
no subject
1. I love, love Assassins. One of my favorite Sondheims. I saw a production many years ago with Neil Patrick Harris as the Balladeer/LHO (back when everyone still thought of him as Doogie Howser). It was a little uneven and dragged at the end but the
The Gun Song / The Ballad of Czolgosz and The Ballad of Guiteau were wonderfully staged.
2. I missed this round of Angels in America. I saw the Ivo von Hove mashup (five hours! all three plays! in dutch!) a few years ago and so that was Angels for me for the next decade. Prior...(draws hearts around him. I think my Prior is still Justin Kirk's.) Now I want to go back and do a rewatch of it.
For me part of the genius of the play is that everyone has got layers and a perspective that I can understand. Even Roy Cohn.
I do wish someone would revive Caroline, Or Change. I missed it, but heard it - and Tonya Pinkins especially - were spectacular. [Note: I just checked and it's on the West End. Perhaps it will come stateside but I haven't heard anything about that...]
3. Yes, yes, yes to your criticisms of Hamilton. Those dancing (gyrating!) ladies and their costumes...When I saw it I felt like a lot of the time there were too many people on stage; it got crowded.
ETA: David Byrne! So jealous...
no subject
1. Assassins is so wonderful, and so dizzyingly complex. I would've loved to have seen the NPH Broadway iteration (though perhaps even more so the original Off-Broadway, which I find is the version of the soundtrack I inevitably reach for). There was an Encores! version I think last year, which I was dubious about from clips (for what that's worth) but separated out the Balladeer and LHO roles and cast a black actor as the Balladeer, which I thought was a fascinating choice and one I'd like to see repeated in other productions.
2. That Ivo von Hove Angels sounds like it was an experience; they talk about it a bit in The World Only Spins Forward and I was just !!!. And I completely agree wrt the genius of the play: its genius lies very much in its humanity, and its granting of humanity both by Kushner to his characters and by the characters to each other.
I would love for Caroline, or Change to get the big Broadway revival it deserves. I was lucky enough to see a regional production of it maybe ten years ago, which I only remember snippets from, but the overall effect of it has stuck with me since.
3. I definitely agree that the stage feels crowded, a lot of the time, and often it seems to no purpose: not only are there a lot of people, but they don't seem to be doing anything except making chaos. (As I said, disgruntled, to a friend at one point: "have they ever heard of a stage picture? Apparently not!") It seems like every production choice is very pedestrian Broadway, while the music itself is anything but, and it's heavily disappointing. I would say I lie in wait for what a revival could bring, but it seems likely that this iteration will run for the rest of all of our natural lives, so.
no subject
The perils of musical theater? I, admittedly, don't see as much of it as I do plays. But looking back, the one that stands out for me wrt staging is Fun Home. Which came out the same year as Hamilton, I think, and got lost in the shuffle a bit.
Anyway, thanks for letting me ramble on. Very excited to meet another theater person.
no subject
Re: staging, I do think it's a peril of musicals in that musicals are the shows most often packaged as touristy moneymakers, and thus most often get the clunky "tried and true" (read: crazy boring) production package. But the two best Broadway productions I've seen in recent years were both musicals: Fun Home, as you say, was stunning for a number of reasons very much including its staging and direction choices (which unfortunately got lost somewhat in translation to a proscenium for the tour, which I think only reiterates what good choices the original production made) and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, which utterly blew me away (even in its translated Broadway staging). So I have faith in the form (and I think, done well, the natural unnaturalness of it can help spur great stagecraft), but I think it too often gets dragged down by preconceptions of what it is, rather than ideas about what it could be.
And that's my screed; I should be thanking you for letting me ramble on.