The Busy-ness Continues...

I am seriously in awards-season-mania at the moment.  I'm just seeing things left and right, which is great.  I'm very fortunate to have friends who will take me to things, so I haven't had to make myself broke to see so much.  I have Off-Broadway things coming up, and happily, ballet season has started!  So there will be a lot to report!  In fact, this will probably be a long post, so perhaps I'll only offer highlights, because my brain is quite scrambled at the moment with so much art floating around in it.

Last Saturday afternoon, I went out to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to see another production of Long Day's Journey Into Night, starring Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville.  I've had this ticket seemingly forever and it was grand to finally get there.  I'm a fan of Jeremy Irons from WAY back - I've only seen him on stage once, though, in a dreadful show that I can barely remember.  So when I got the email from BAM offering a ticket discount, I pounced.  Of course, BAM's idea of a discount is not very cheap, so I guess I'm extra-grateful for all the free stuff I've been able to enjoy lately, because Long Day's Journey, and then my tasty dinner after, were not terribly inexpensive.

It's only been a few years since I last saw Long Day's Journey Into Night - I was treated to a matinee of the last Broadway revival with Jessica Lange and Gabriel Byrne by a handsome Tony voter boss.  You can remind yourselves of my thoughts on that one HERE.  I wish I had more of a photographic memory - I wish I could remember more clearly the production with Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Dennehy.  All I remember is that I adored it, but not really the specifics of why I adored it.  Oh well.  

I very much enjoyed this production - I thought Lesley Manville was simply stunning and I thought Jeremy Irons was wonderful as well.  I also greatly enjoyed Matthew Beard as Edmund - when I looked at his bio, I saw that he had been in the last Broadway revival of David Hare's Skylight and I liked him very much in that as well.  It was nice to see him again.  I thought he found the fatalistic qualities of Edmund, yet still the youthful hope that exists somewhere inside him.  He didn't have much of a rapport with the actor playing Jamie, though, and I found that actor altogether too contemporary and affected.  The effect of the final scene between the brothers was completely stunted by the affectations of the actor playing Jamie - I didn't believe him at all, so that almost made the end of the play unsatisfying, but Lesley Manville came back on stage and her final monologue was scary and beautiful.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

I thought she found so many layers to Mary - the self-loathing, the fear, the mania.  When she would burst out with a criticism of one of her men, you could see her automatic revulsion of herself.  And she was heartbreaking in trying to keep herself from going up those stairs.  Jeremy Irons was a wonderful counterpoint to her - he tried to keep up the facade and bravado, with the vainglorious actor peeking through.  But it was devastating to watch his realization that Mary had succumbed to her addiction again.  And Irons and Manville had a touching physical chemistry as well.  This production really showed the love/hate relationships between each member of the family and I liked that aspect of it.

I was very happy to made the trek to Brooklyn on a rainy Saturday afternoon to see Long Day's Journey Into Night (and then to Boqueria afterwards for a delicious tapas dinner).  Monday afternoon, I was grateful to go with a Tony voter boss to see a special matinee of the Broadway revival of Carousel.  I've never actually seen a production of Carousel, though I've of course seen the movie over the years.  I listen to the cast album of the 1994 London revival a lot, since the music is so gorgeous, so I was grateful to be able to see the show.

I left rather unsatisfied.  I knew that the show was problematic, of course, but figured the glorious music and plentiful dancing would get me through.  Well, the music was glorious the show was beautifully sung, and there was a lot of gorgeous dancing (I was happy to recognize dancers from ABT and NYCB), but the lead performances seemed tentative to me (at least in their scene work, not in their songs), as if they know the show is problematic, too, and if they just sort of skate around the problems, no one will notice.  I noticed.

even the Playbill forgets Julie

The opening "Carousel Waltz" is simply to die for - when the carousel seemingly falls from the sky, it's a glorious image and I was ever so happy.  What an opening!  But then the rest happened.  Anytime someone opened their mouth to speak, the words were just so uncomfortable.  And I think this particular production did nothing to either address the discomfort or do something about it.  So it sort of just laid there.  I never really thought of Julie Jordan as a supporting character before, but she really is here, with Billy's arc and redemption (yikes) as the main story, but since Julie is so diluted, there's no transcendent love story to cheer.  I don't know, maybe I'm just too worn out by years of men telling the stories of women and they tell us to just deal with it.  But there was no redemption for me, no happy ending.  How much more interesting could this show have been if interpreted by a women?  I don't know.  There was beautiful music to keep me there, though, and I guess I'm glad I saw it.  I'm grateful to my Tony voter boss for taking me.  I'll be seeing the third Tony-nominated musical revival next week and I'm already wondering what my response to THAT one will be.

Tuesday night, I went down to New York Theater Workshop with a handsome friend who was treating me to the Caryl Churchill play Light Shining in Buckinghamshire.  I will admit I did no research on this play, I had no idea what the reviews were like, I didn't know what it was about, I just went in completely blindly, because, hello, Caryl Churchill.  This play was written in the 1970s, but it is certainly timely now, with the talk of revolution and rebellion of the masses and how government can screw things up.  

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire takes play in the 1600s, dealing with England post-Reformation and Oliver Cromwell and other pieces of history where I am woefully ignorant.  The end of the first act is a recreation of the Putney Debates, discussions between 'radical groups' and Parliament to try to set up a more equitable society.  This was some heavy, smart, intellectual, occasionally dry, stuff.  I may have been occasionally confused and/or distracted, but I was never bored.  But in the interest of full disclosure, a full third of the audience left at intermission.  I've never seen a second act with so many empty seats that had been full in the first...

Beautifully acted, designed, and directed (oh, and the cast is completely diverse, in age, gender, race, and ability, which was fantastic and how things should always be), Light Shining in Buckinghamshire is not easy, but there is much that is shockingly timely and totally worthwhile there.  And, I'm sorry, a long and occasionally dry play by Caryl Churchill is much better than a lot of what's out there.  Being treated, as an audience member, as someone who has a brain is a rare delight.  I may not have been able to use my brain to its full capacity throughout the play, but I'm appreciative that Caryl acknowledges, with all her plays, that I have one.