Another two-show day! Therese Raquin and Lazarus



Remember a couple of weeks ago when my Tony-voter boss invited me to see the matinee of Therese Raquin but really had tickets to Dames at Sea instead?  Well, yesterday afternoon, he REALLY had tickets to Therese Raquin, so he invited me to tag along.  And I've had plans to see Lazarus at New York Theatre Workshop for weeks, so it just happened to be another two-show day.  I was pretty beat by the end of it...

I'm not a big fan of Keira Knightley, to be honest right up front.  She's lovely to look at, seems dedicated to her craft, and I applaud her choices of which films to make, but I don't really see anything going on in her performances.  To me, she has two facial expressions and she makes whatever manufactured emotion she's showing us fit in one of those facial expressions.  And so it was in Therese Raquin.  I often wonder if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy and I will never see something different in a performer once I realize what doesn't work for me, but I'm always optimistic to be proved wrong, and I'm sorry when I'm not.

Zola's story IS a tough one, I'll admit.  It's bleak and depressing, with nowhere really to go but down, and this adaptation is rather unrelenting in its bleakness.  Plus it doesn't really give us any reason to care about these characters or what happens to them.  So I guess I can't completely fault the acting when I also found the adaptation wanting in many places.  I will say, however, that the production is gorgeous to look at and it's beautifully staged, so I did feel engaged and interested through some of the afternoon, and also distracted and frustrated through other parts of the production.  There were stretches where I really felt a part of the action, so it made the more remote and chilly parts even more disappointing.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

I did think that Judith Light was fantastic - she is compelling to watch, even when in a wheelchair and unable to speak.  Her eyes tell a very strong story.   On the whole, though, it seemed the cast were all in different types of plays - I've considered Zola a naturalistic storyteller, but no one was really adopting that style, either choosing a quirky musical comedy sort of breezy performance or an Expressionistic film kind of thing.  I didn't think they all went together as a cohesive whole, though everyone was at least committed to telling the story, even if I didn't get on board with their storytelling method.  Oh, and an unbidden refrain from the musical Thou Shalt Not (another adaptation of Therese Raquin) popped into my mind at one point.  You never want to be hearing "Tug Boat" in your mind while watching a serious moment...

But, all in all, I did sort of enjoy the production, considering I enjoy the source material and I did find the set, lights and costumes to be spectacular.  There was always something gorgeous to look at, and that includes the performers, and they told the story well enough to keep me entertained.  Ish.  How's that for wishy washy?  :)

As for my second show yesterday, a lovely gal pal from the office is a HUGE David Bowie fanatic, so she's been dying to see Lazarus.  I enjoy David Bowie, but wouldn't consider myself an expert on his music, so the two of us seeing the show together was probably an interesting mix.  Luckily, a handsome gentleman friend from the office could get us tickets during the early presale.  We've had these three tickets for quite a while and were so excited to see the show last night.  Unfortunately, our handsome office friend couldn't join us because he got food poisoning (which is the WORST), but hopefully he'll get to go another time.  It made for some confusion at the box office, but thankfully my office gal pal and I got in.  I had forgotten we weren't seated together, but maybe that was for the best.

The show opens next week, so it's probably frozen, but I'll only offer a few thoughts.  All I'll say is that Lazarus was not my cup of tea in the extreme, it did not make itself known to me, and I can't say I enjoyed myself.  And I may have been chanting in my mind during the last half hour of the show, 'please be over, please be done, please be over.'  Though I did enjoy the music, most of the performers and some of the imagery.  Many people in the audience jumped to their feet at the end and seemed to be thrilled by it.  So, maybe I'm just not their target audience.  The show is a sequel, of sorts, to The Man Who Fell to Earth, which I've never seen, so I was frequently confused.  I could say a lot more about the production, but since it appears it was a long shot that I would love it, I won't.  The performers were all good, I wish them well, but Lazarus was a long intermissionless two hours for me...

For those of you who are Bowie fanatics and are dying to see the show and have heard it's sold out from now until it closes, there were empty seats scattered throughout the house last night.  I'd say go to NYTW and get on the cancellation line, you may be lucky enough to get in.  I think there were only two or three people on line last night and they all got in.  Plus, there were two empty seats right in front of me - I convinced myself that David Bowie would be slipping into one of those seats after the lights went down and was disappointed that they stayed empty all night.  Not that having Bowie in front of me would've cleared anything up for me, but it would've been cool to be so close to him.  Ah well.