A dark comedy centered on a descendent of Rebecca Nurse, one of the women accused of witchcraft in 17th century Salem. After losing her job at the local Salem witch trial museum (for telling patrons the true stories), Becky finds herself skeptically resorting to witchcraft to solve the problems she is facing - her granddaughter's struggle with depression, her chronic pain, her missed opportunity for love, and a curse (never quite explained or resolved) on her family dating back to 1693.
The play is funny, but it lacks emotional power and an epiphany moment never really comes. It also does a great job of questioning our understanding of this historical event; Becky calls out that The Crucible by Arthur Miller is most people's reference point, but that Miller's play is largely about his desire to sleep with the much younger Marilyn Monroe. A modern day witch, played to big laughs by Candy Buckley, guides Becky and gives us a peek into witchcraft today - crystals and ashes and tinctures. But the Witch also notes that rituals are really about the person's intention. Deirdre O'Connell is excellent as Becky descending into an opioid addiction (albeit this plot point has holes and is overall unnecessary) and then descending further during withdrawal. The best scene is when Becky hallucinates that she is Rebecca Nurse on trial and the script follows the historical transcript - a powerful depiction of the insanity that gripped the Salem community. A history lesson, only slightly more engaging, on the Chinese Exclusion Act. The characters in this play bring a bit of life to this little known era of American history. The gold rush of the 19th century is over, the need for Chinese laborers on the transatlantic railroad is over, and Americans have turned on Chinese immigrants. But the myth of the "gold mountain" looms large for poor farmers in rural Taishan, and they will endure anything for a chance to make money in America.
Jinn S. Kim wins over the audience in the opening scene as Gee, a Chinese immigrant seeking US citizenship so he can visit his family in China. He is funny and personable to the immigration official with limited, accented English. When he speaks to the translator the accent falls away to indicate he is speaking Chinese, and the translator in turn is able to help him by giving tips on how to game the system. We learn that the story Gee tells of his family's history in America is just that - a story that thousands of Chinese men tell to attempt to claim rightful citizenship under the many exclusion laws. Gee succeeds and upon his return to China he enlists Moon Gyet (Eric Yang) to follow in his footsteps and help him with his laundry business in America. Gyet must take on a new name, leaving behind his mother and his true Chinese identity in order to live a hard and undesirable life in America. He endures multiple interrogations over 17 months at Angel Island Immigration Station; these scenes are the strongest of the play. Gyet answers inane question after question with a stoic face, but we can see the tension in his body. It's an impressive performance, but even these scenes are a beat too long - the play could have been tighter at 90-100 minutes with no intermission. There are so many layers to unpack here, but one of the main themes that stood out to me is that of transformation. The play starts by transforming the Broadway theater into a Black church, with the preacher encouraging the congregation (aka the mostly non-Black audience) to yell out, cheer, and eventually to stand up and dance. Its 2008 right after Obama wins the presidency, and the preacher is optimistic that having a Black man in the White House can only be good for Black people in the country. But just when the preacher finally gets the reluctant audience to stand up and dance, the scene ends suddenly and we hear the actual aftermath of Obama's win - an increase in hate crimes against Black people. The discomfort I felt as a white person during this scene is part of the point, and sets the stage for the absurdist premise.
The rest of the play takes place now, or in a not-so-distant future, and the US government has emailed every Black person in the country with the offer of a free one-way ticket to Africa. With Obama as the pilot and Kamala as the co-pilot, the last plane is departing soon and people must make their decisions. Peaches, the flight attendant of African American Airlines (Nik Alexander, understudy to the playwright Jordan E. Cooper, is amazing in the role - hilarious, magnetic, and glamorous) is our guide, and tells us that if someone turns around in doubt while boarding they will transform into a white man with no memory of their previous identity. Individual vignettes show different groups of people living their lives: women at an abortion clinic; actors on the set of a reality show confronted with a Rachel Dolezal "trans-racial" character; a wealthy family trying and failing to keep the personification of their Blackness in the basement; and inmates being released so they can catch the plane). Everyone in the cast plays multiple roles, completely transforming into different characters in each vignette. Crystal Lucas-Perry stands out as particularly transformative throughout - even her height seems to change - and especially as the personification of Blackness, she impressively becomes what feels like almost every flavor of Blackness in a rapid-fire monologue of accents and cultural references. After all of the passenger boards, Peaches must take the magical bag - Miss Bag - containing everything that Black people created while in this country and make her way onto the flight. But the bag does not budge, the roots go too deep. This is a talking play, and a long one. But I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Ralph Fiennes embodies Robert Moses in an engrossing performance. You cannot help but marvel at how his sheer will and powers of persuasion led to the construction of expressways, bridges, and parks in and around New York City. Fiennes shines as Moses and the other characters understandably fade into the background, supporting the man both literally and figuratively. His foil, Jane Jacobs, is introduced too early - her life scantily summarized in the first act when her role really comes into view decades later. And the impact you feel from Jacobs's speeches is also markedly less, reducing her role in history to the triumph of saving Washington Square part (we saw Mary Stillwaggon Stewart in place of Helen Schlesinger, but it is the writing that lacks power here).
I left the theater marveling at the mark this man has left on our city, and dreaming about what life in New York City (and the country) would be like if only Moses had been less racist, less classist, and a lover of trains instead of cars... Finally - a new musical with great songs, excellent dancing (and lots of it!), extravagant and varied set pieces, and clever writing with lines that make you laugh aloud. The singing is there, the acting is there - not only are the leads fabulous, but everyone in secondary roles and the chorus is as well. Whether or not you've seen the classic movie, this refreshed version will entertain and delight. The show expertly builds on the original, staying true to the bones of the plot and the characters while also adding new flavors (and free from any dated homage to Marilyn Monroe that one might expect).
There are so many standout scenes and actors - the tap dancing chase scenes that are incredibly complex without being chaotic; the onstage transformation of Joe and Jerry to Josephine and Daphne (Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee); any scene with the hilarious Kevin Del Aguila as Osgood; Adrianna Hicks as Sugar Cane belting out songs; Natasha Yvette Williams bringing a sassy Sweet Sue to life... and more. There are plenty of nods to key moments or lines in the movie, but the contemporary lens is notable - Daphne's character explores her femininity as more than a simple disguise, and the roles written specifically for Black actors bring talk of racial discrimination into the script. These adjustments and additions give this farcical romp just a touch of gravity (not much). Monologue after monologue moves the story forward, each delivered with passion and impressive stamina. There is not a weak link in the cast of this classic play. The set is beautifully constructed with the intricately carved family piano sitting ominously in the corner, coming alive as a character itself and serving as a daily reminder of the family's traumatic history. Berniece and Boy Willie, sister and brother, both grapple with how to reconcile their ancestors' experience in slavery. Their clashing ideas of how to remember and reclaim their family story comes to a head over whether to keep or sell the piano: keep and preserve the physical embodiment of the family's story or sell the piano to claim a new life on the land where the family once toiled.
I can only describe this as Kate Nash's fever dream homage to Paris. A chaotic and confusing hodgepodge of existing and new songs shoehorned into too many plot lines with too many dancers trying to express too many things, and at the same time lacking both character development and clear motivations for the characters' actions. It's not all bad - most of the songs are catchy and enjoyable if you like Kate Nash, and there are real dancers here with real talent.
Here are a few changes that I brainstormed during the first act that could really turn this thing around: 1- Put the 10-piece live band on stage with Nash anchored as the singer - and only singer - in a concert-style presentation (The music was played live but piped in from another theater in the building. As the "narrator," Nash lurks around the stage narrating, singing, sometimes taking over to sing midway through a character's song, and partially participating in choreography, but she's best when she sits down at the piano to simply play and sing.) 2- Reduce the dancers by half and tell a simple narrative as a classic ballet does, expressing minimal plot points through movement 3- Cut all the dialogue 4- Remove focus on one of the three couples to simplify the plot and shorten the overall run time (2 hours and 10 minutes with an intermission could easily become 90-100 minutes with no intermission) |
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