Death Takes a Holiday

By Jonathan Jones
Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I loved this simple work.

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

By Jonathan Jones
Monday, July 25, 2011

On second viewing, I must provide context: my mates who I talked into seeing the show ("Everything is dark on Monday night, right?") were not nearly as impressed. They felt the heart of the movie was a little muddled in this extravaganza, but I was undeterred. My love for this confection knows no bounds.

Bette Midler Presents Priscilla: Queen of the Desert is playing at the Palace Theatre, in the heart of Times Square. Tickets can be purchased here.

Catch Me if You Can

By Jonathan Jones
Sunday, July 24, 2011

The brilliant Kerry Butler tearing it up in "Fly Fly Away"

The only other highlight was Norbert Leo Butz' Tony winning turn as Agent Hanratty, who's "Don't Break the Rules" stopped the show.

Mary Poppins

By Jonathan Jones
Saturday, July 23, 2011

I'm sure that for many, their love of the film inhibits their ability to really appreciate this work (not to mention the generation that loved the books), but I did not experience this difficulty either of the two times I sat through the performance. I was in theater heaven, and happy to be there.

Teacher, Teach Me

By Jonathan Jones
Friday, July 22, 2011

I love Tyne Daly. I've said it. Accept it. Move on.

Terrence McNally is often brilliant (I'd say always, but, you know, Catch Me if You Can is so unfortunate...), and Master Class is not exception. More brilliant than the script is Tyne Daly's performance. I don't know anything of Maria Callas the woman (see Three Hotels review where I felt I needed more context), but McNally provides us with all the information we need to know - and when interpreted by such a strong, gifted and skillful performer as Ms. Daly, there really is no escaping the who, when, how, or why of this piece. Ms. Daly is witty, charming, cunning, and contemptuous. Her words move us, but not nearly as much as a look or a pursing of the lips. Such subtlety can easily be lost in the houses of Broadway, but her face is so expressive and her presence so much larger than life, there is no mistaking the minutia of her performance. I was entralled. I was charmed. I remembered everything I despise about acting classes. And I was giddy with the thrill of being in the habitation of such a high degree of theatrical skill. 

They Took the Milk

By Jonathan Jones
Thursday, July 21, 2011

Oh, the bliss of ignorance. The scandal of Nestle's marketing of infant formula in developing nations, and the subsequent deaths caused due to the lack of clean water is a historical reality that I was unaware of. Corporate greed and lack of ethics are not surprising, but this significant context was not there for me to hold onto while watching Baitz' Three Hotels. If the play is well made, you shouldn't need that context to make it work. Alas, as this work is constructed of three mammoth monologues, there was little else on which I could hang my hat. 


To say that nothing happens in this drama is altogether an understatement. In three acts, we here from a man, his ex wife, and the man again. They speak directly to the audience, part stream of consciousness, part inner monologue. There is no reality. In spite of the title and the busy set design and requisite transitions, there is no place. There are only words. Steven Weber and Maura Tierney were in overdrive, trying to make the plight of these characters compelling, but we needed a bit more in the script to support them. Baitz is no Lindsay-Abaire so the heartache that should accompany the piece is lacking, but he definitely is deserving of accolades for tackling this subject matter.

Virgin White for the Montagues and Capulets?

By Jonathan Jones
Wednesday, July 20, 2011

In order to remedy my virulent reaction to The Venetian Twins, a second helping from Shakespeare & Company was in order. 


David Gelles was a revelation as Romeo; youthful, fun, ambitious, naive, and altogether adorable. Susannah Millonzi was caustic and abrasive; a young Hilary Swank of sorts. I can understand the attraction to this type: if Juliet is going to have the drive we need of her, she should not be the innocent waif, but Ms. Millonzi was too rough around the edges to realize the role. 


Choosing to put the entire cast in white for every scene except Capult's ball was indeed bold, but certainly misguided. While Romeo and Juliet may be immune from the history of violence between their families, the other characters are not. Thus, to say they were all pure and innocent is far and beyond a misunderstanding of the text. Other misunderstandings included the aforementioned ball, where Juliet dutifully and happily danced with Paris. That she were too young to marry and has only agreed to even meet the man to please her mother, the gaiety with which she caroused with Paris was wrong indeed. 


Starla Benford played a jovial and new Nurse, imagine a Wendy Williams of sorts. Although the attitude and anachronistic take was out of place in this production, it was a pleasing choice. Kevin O'Donnell's bawdy Mercutio knew no bounds, and shocked at times. It was more than I would have liked, but I appreciated the dedication and entertainment value therein.


At three hours, the "Two Hours traffic" phrase was excised from the prologue, and it too was an unfortunate misunderstanding as the tragedy dragged on and on. Again, you can do better S & C.

O Goldoni, Goldoni, Wherefore Art Thou?

By Jonathan Jones
Wednesday, July 20, 2011

A hot mess is on stage at Shakespeare & Company, if ever there was one, and The Venetian Twins is it. In fairness, I must first point out that the star, David Joseph, is incredibly gifted and too talented to be wasting his time in this dreck. Second, there were many children in the audience whom appeared to be amused by this monstrosity. But I am not a child and David Joseph should be doing brilliant work far from this ode to Nickelodeon/Disney Channel children's entertainment.


Unto itself, Goldoni's classic Commedia confection is indeed worthy of revival and given the nature of the form, should certainly be updated as a production sees fit. Nonetheless, here, with jokes about Beyonce and dialogue like, "Oh no she didn't" and diva snaps and attitude to follow, this work was amateurish and misguided: high school theatre run amok. You can do better S & C, you can do better.

I Will Not Cease...

By Jonathan Jones
Tuesday, July 19, 2011

I don't get the hype. Mark Rylance is brilliant, let there be no mistaking that. He could stand on stage and read the phone book and he would have more presence and be more interesting to watch than any actor appearing in the Great White Way of late. But this play...


I didn't care about the Rooster. As the play unfolded, in fact, I cared less and less about him. Like The Cherry Orchard, with the waiting around for the inevitable, here too I felt like I was waiting just the same. While he needed his brood, they seemed disrespectful of what he provided for them and thus, they were equally uncompelling. Calling up the ancients was undeveloped and unrealized. They could have gone much further (a recurring theme in many works I've seen in these many weeks). Jerusalem (the folk song from which the play gets it's title) is completely unknown in the US, so the significance of the work is entirely lost in the American context. 


I often wonder, "Why this play? Why now?" Perhpas in the UK at The Royal Court, this all made sense, but here in New York, I was set adrift without a flotation device, so I drowned among the ideas, ideas that did not speak to me, that did not interest me, that did not engage.

A Cold and Lonely Existence, Mr. Pinter

By Jonathan Jones

Friday, July 15, 2011

What a script! My exposure to Harold Pinter has been very limited (I wasn't a theatre major, after all), but I am always open to seminal works by the great masters, particularly of modern drama. Given that Ian Rickson's current hit Jerusalem was a bit lost on me (review to come), this was a pleasant departure. Spare and even keeled, Betrayal was an empty pallete, from which the actors were able to ruminate on the text and present heartbreak, joy, anguish, bitterness, and honesty. Kristin Scott Thomas draws the audience in, her silence saying more than her words at times. We laugh with her, and were she a crier, we might cry too, but rather, we enjoy the silence and internalize what goes unsaid. Ben Miles and Douglas Henshall deliver as the two men in her life; for Miles, his strength and jagged-edged emotion cuts to the core. He is cold and vindictive; calculating and sinister. Mr. Henshall is lovable and seductive--every bit the man you could not resist. A triumph of theatre, if ever there was one.

London Road

By Jonathan Jones

Thursday, July 14, 2011

By now, I would imagine you’ve begun to understand that I have a very high standard for theatre. I will see almost anything, but rarely do I find something that I like, let alone something that blows me away. London Road has done it.

Call it documentary theatre; call it performed ethnography—no matter. People in a town were interviewed and their words were turned into a theatre piece. It’s been done many times before, rarely to great effect, and often quite boring. No matter how interesting the subject matter, you often get a bunch of talking heads and limited action. To deal with this challenge, the artists behind London Road have turned the work into a musical. Thus, the most precious and the most mundane of statements are repeated, harmonized, and brought to life in such a way that cannot be imagined without seeing the work. 


At the start, I will admit that I was definitely cautious, but within minutes I was grinning ear-to-ear. This is not showy musical theatre. This is not a dance or otherwise performance extravaganza. This is simple suburban people describing how their world was turned upside down causing them to reach out to one another to re-imagine what their community could be. There are moments of heartbreak and moments of glee; moments of exasperated embarrassment, and moments of heart so well crafted that I personally wanted to thank each and every member of the cast and crew for reminding me of what I love most about life and theatre. 


Yesterday, I indicated that the theatre gods were deeply unhappy at the National (and from what I understand, the disastrous A Woman Killed with Kindness was no exception tonight), but a very little show with an enormous heart are beating quite loudly at the Cottesloe reminding all who enter that there is still hope beyond the grand yet misguided theatrics taking place on the larger stages.

Theatrical Diarrhea

By Jonathan Jones
Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Oh, my. I will begin by telling you that this work by Ibsen deserves a bit more attention as a study in ambition. Ibsen described the piece as his most important work, yet it is rarely seen, and never before in England. Here, we have a problem. Given the historical nature of the piece, it has much educative relevance. Further, as it unpacks the ways in which unsuspecting individuals who are thrust into positions of power can run amok, there is much to be considered within the work.


Alas, at tonight at the National, we were treated to what can best be described as theatrical diarrhea. Like Saturday's RSC treatment of Macbeth, the approach here seemed to be an ambition to use every theatrical device at the director's disposal. Further, a variety of metaphorical allusions were made to conflicts and crisis of the last thirty years as well as over-indulgent religious imagery which seemingly could only be utilized in order to inflame rather than encourage dialogue and thought. This approach is directly in conflict with the goals of the writing, and while I have never been a director who felt that I must be faithful to the writer's intent, this really was too far off the mark.


I will say that I had no impulse to leave at the interval - though perhaps if I knew the work already, I wouldn't have even made it that far. Like a train wreck that you  cannot turn away from, this was perhaps equally an exercise in just seeing how bad it could get. And here (like my experience at Henry V at the National in July, 2003), the depths knew no bounds.

There Is No Place Like Home: Now get the hell off of the stage before I call the theatre police!

By Jonathan Jones
Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Every now and again, the gods of musical theatre look down upon the earth in utter horror at the lack of innovation, ingenuity, or creativity. In retaliation, they thrust upon us theatrical disasters of epic proportions. You know them well: Nick & Nora, Starlight Express, Mamma Mia, Love Never Dies. To be added to the list is Lord Lloyd Webber’s latest, and perhaps finest, travesty, The Wizard of Oz. Wicked, oh Wicked. Wherefore art thou Wicked? It is your success that is to blame for this unimaginable abomination. Gone is your brain. Gone is your heart. Gone is your courage. In its place, we have Michael Crawford impersonating Liberace in one moment, and Regis Philbin in the next. The Wicked Witch of the West appears styled after Sour Grapes from the 1980’s incarnation of The Smurfs, and Glinda is a disco ball, floating across the stage (she couldn’t possibly arrive by bubble: it may incur a lawsuit). Toto has been replaced by a fluffy white sheep running around the stage and barking at will (he got the loudest applause in the curtain call). In the Oz moments, they couldn’t help themselves but to steal cast away costumes and props from Wicked (yes, the streamers and the green goggles were on full display tonight), but who could blame them? Only the set was worthy of any accolade, and only due to their economic use of space. Spiderman inspired moments of flying around the audience abound, but nowhere near as daring as the original. And then there are the songs…. In fact, the added music may be the most sinful of all. Rodeo music was the theme for Kansas—who cares if it was entirely out of place alongside Harold Arlen’s classics? Hoedown was on Webber’s menu, score be damned! And then, of course, the Wicked Witch’s bizarre flamenco moment with the winkies, who took off their flowing grey coats to reveal red shirts and trousers held up with sexy black suspenders. Nevermind that the choreography was reminiscent of Mariah Carey’s finer stage performances: with the witch (in this moment, hair blown out like a troubled Beyonce video) apparently showing that her real control over the winkies was not mystical, but rather inappropriately sexual, there was clearly no limit to what this concoction had to offer: Epic Disaster.




And since the unfortunate number in Spiderman about shoes was not a significant enough disaster in its own right, we now have another number about shoes to remind us what does not make good musical theatre songwriting subject matter:

There is an entire YouTube channel dedicated to this monstrosity, Enjoy:


The Wizard of Oz @ the London Palladium YouTube Channel


Don't believe my tirade? See for yourself:

Just Sell the Place and Move On!

By Jonathan Jones
Sunday, July 10, 2011

Oh Chekhov, why do we revere you so? As a fine example of twentieth century theatre, where nothing happens, I do suppose The Cherry Orchard succeeds, but what else is there to care about? As a departure from the melodrama of the preceding century, we can imagine that this could seem a breath of fresh air, but Ibsen’s work is so much more interesting to me. This new translation by Andrew Upton was indeed witty at times, and the actors were certainly having many amusing and interesting exchanges, but this could not save us from three hours of trying to sell off the damn orchard that no one seemed interested in letting go of. As per my review of Chicken Soup with Barley, I’m all for waving the socialist flag, but as our protagonist’s ties to the family orchard are essentially unmoved, I found the work to be on the wrong side of my political alignment. Despair at the turn of the century was indeed affecting; but despair at the hands of selling your family home for a small fortune and going off to Paris to rekindle your lost love was beyond that which I cared to invest my energies or sympathies.

Macbeth: Suffer the Children

By Jonathan Jones
Saturday, July 9, 2011

Macbeth at the RSC in 2004 was a revelation of economy and horror. The work ran for about an hour and the clever approach to staging and technical aspects added to the overall atmosphere of the work. In its current incarnation, directed by current RSC artistic director Michael Boyd, the production is a muddled disaster. The weird sisters are replaced with children: ghosts of sorts who run amok at various moments in the piece. We have seen The Shining; we know what horrifying children look like--and these Nordic looking dolls in pastel blue with dirty faces are not it. Further, the set was largely comprised of a church in a state of decay and defacement after the war. As such, there were all kids of holes in the walls and blown out windows. The children could have haunted us throughout. Instead, Boyd had both the children and each subsequent murder victim running around as though there was an ongoing game of tag being played. Between that and the gratuitous blood that added nothing to the work (competing with the far superior co-production of the Folger and 2 Rivers Theatre Company in 2008, currently available on DVD I imagine). Jonathan Slinger's Macbeth and Aislin McGuckin's Lady M were both powerful and formidable (though Lady M was ineffectively done up as Elizabeth I), but the melee in which they were performing was too unwieldy to really allow them to shine through.


Of the new RSC theatre, the space is indeed more intimate than its cavernous predecessor. However, having lots of new gadgetry and ramps running here and there are too many toys for a director who apparently has a limited faculty in discerning what adds to the narrative and what detracts from it. With time, hopefully he'll strike a more considerate balance.

Cardenio: The Lost Shakespeare

By Jonathan Jones
Saturday. July 9, 2011

In the past eight years, I’ve now seen eight productions at the RSC. Of them, I have enjoyed two: 2004’s Macbeth and this production of Cardenio. Unto itself, there is much to be critical of within the play itself. The character of Fernando is so incredibly despicable that it becomes somewhat difficult to care about his arc through the story because you really just want him to fall into a pit and die rather than be forgiven by his lady-friend and living happily ever after. Nonetheless, taking a nod from the fun loving and unpretentious simplicity of productions at the Globe, this work was presented with perhaps a few too many moments of mugging and tomfoolery to really soar, but I certainly appreciated the approach. Oliver Rix made his RSC debut in the title role and he was really charming and fun to watch. In spite of his character’s misgivings, Alex Hassell too was a delight.

Like The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII, Cardenio is thought to have been a collaboration between Shakespeare and John Fletcher. First performed in 1613, the work was mysteriously not included in the Folio of 1623, nor was it ever published and long thought to have been lost. Not until 1727 is thee play Double Falshood performed in London, billed as a lost work of Shakespeare and Fletcher. This RSC production expands upon the 1727 script, adding scenes that are included in the original source material (Cervantes’ Don Quixote) but omitted from the 1727 script. The dialogue is nowhere near as clever as we would normally expect from Shakespeare, nor is the structure as tight, but onto itself, the work had many amusing moments and is indeed a worthy relic to be considered for inclusion in secondary theatre studies.

Another Classic Never Dies

By Jonathan Jones

Friday, July 08, 2011

Tonight, I journeyed to the Garrick Theatre for a performance of Pygmalion featuring Rupert Everett as Henry Higgins and newcommer Kara Tointon as Eliza Dolittle. I have neither seen My Fair Lady (musical theatre blasphemy, I know – but what can you do?) nor Pygmalion, though through years of teaching musical theatre, I’ve grown accustomed to the tale. In this telling, directed and designed by Philip Prouse, all things clever and amusing were in full display, much to my delight and that of the capacity audience around me. Dialect hell could easily do this wrong, but with firm instruction, Ms. Tointon was an auditory symphony, though her later scenes were a bit bereft of honesty. Yet, she’s young and was a good sport about it. I last saw Mr. Everett in Blythe Spirit in New York. Bombastic and overblown as ever, tonight’s performance was in no way exceptional, though his charm was indeed a bit dim tonight (a combination of his performance and the thankless role). Diana Rigg was luminous as Mrs. Higgins, providing effortless warmth and depth, allowing the heart of the work to shine through. Similarly, Peter Eyre’s Colonel Pickering was every bit the savior one would hope he could be. The sum total was a tittering amusement that warmed me to the core on a chilly mid-summer evening.

Hail Hamlet

By Jonathan Jones
Thursday, July 7, 2011

My love for Hamlet was never so certain as it was today at the Theatre Royal Haymarket for Trevor Nunn's rendition of Tom Stoppard's classic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The love enabled me to forgo any deep criticism of the work and focus my attention on the fun of the piece and the cleverness involved in its construction. The influence of Waiting for Godot is not lost on anyone, but did Stoppard intend that the set would be interchangeable? Who can say? The lead actors (Samuel Barnett and Jamie Parker) are both of The History Boys fame and were indeed delightful to watch pose and play as the work unfolded. Given the fun they appear to have had, it is not surprising that the work is enjoyed so much by high school and undergraduate students as it is indeed sophomoric and light--but nothing wrong with that on a Thursday afternoon. I can't say that my colleagues were nearly as amused, but then, they haven't taught Hamlet to high school students--not yet anyway. I'll hear their criticisms after that.

Realism: A Mixed Bag

By Jonathan Jones

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

The revival of Anthony Nielson’s Realism at the Soho Theatre was indeed an example of a promising work, executed as a largely missed opportunity. While the idea behind the work was quite strong (a man sits alone in his apartment for a day and all the thoughts he has come to life around him, no matter how abstract or culled directly from his memory), yet the execution was too realistic to allow the work to really live as fully as it might. Given the circumstances of the play, I would have liked to have seen a much more expressionistic take in the production. There was one moment where a character crawled out of the television set, and given his physicality, I was immediately reminded of Tim Burton’s work in Beetlejuice and I spent some significant time waiting for the walls to fly away and reveal the darker and more discombobulated recesses of the man’s mind. This never happened. Further, a number of scenes are supposed to happen in real time in the midst of the imaginings, yet the director here (Steve Marmion, also artistic director of the Soho Theatre) did not effectively distinguish between the real the surreal, at one pivotal point near the close of the play, he even inadvertently reversed the two. This unfortunately made for an extraordinary unsympathetic character who, while charming at times, deserved only the misery that his inner thinking displayed, yet he was forgiven for his shortcomings in an unfortunate way by another character. A mixed bag for sure, but plenty to chew on and worthy of new directors working to take the drama in many more interesting directions.

If You Don't Care, You'll Die...The Fight Lives On

By Jonathan Jones

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

As Chicken Soup with Barley began unfolding tonight at the Royal Court Theatre, I was dazed and confused by the subject matter and its relevance today. Point 1: as an American and given our history of shunning all things Communist and Socialist, I was historically out of my depth (teaching Animal Farm for three years offered some limited support, but this was for more site specific to the London experience circa 1935 - 1955). Point 2: Beyond the historical that was beyond my comprehension, I didn't understand what relevance the work had today given that it was so specific to the time and place within which it was created.

Fortunately, the performances of Samantha Spiro (Sarah) and Danny Webb (Harry) were so layered and moving, there was plenty to occupy the mind and maintain my curiosity as to what they were on about. During Act Two, when the daughter Ada railed on about the filings of the Communist and Socialist movements in the UK, it began to come to a point of clarity. She says, "How can we care for a world outside ourselves when when the world inside is in disorder?" Ah yes, now we were getting somewhere. As the disorder within each of the characters grew to their respective tipping points, the family drama really began taking shape, but it was not until Sarah's final scene of the play when it really became evident that this was a work revived to both criticize the current austere conservatism as well as remind those of use with Socialist ideals just what it is that was so worth fighting for in the last century and why we mustn't allow our complacency at present to get the best of us. Sarah rails on her son Ronny, but it is the audience that Arnold Wesker so cleverly wishes to address, "When you were a baby and there was unemployment and everybody was thinking so--all the world was a communist. But it's different now. No the people have forgotten. I sometimes think they're not worth fighting for because they forget so easily. You give them a few shillings in the bank and they can buy a television so they think it's all over, there's nothing more to be got, they don't have to think anymore! Is that what you want? A world where people don't think anymore?" Well said, comrade. Well said.

Beauty Manifesto

By Jonathan Jones
Monday, July 4, 2011

Tonight was our final production from the Connections Festival, Beauty Manifesto by Nell Leyshon. The play was created in concert with a youth theatre ensemble who worked with the playwright for a full week discussing the pressures from mass media and peers to conform to a particular body type. The result was admittedly a surface level distopia wherein young people can "elect" to go in for surgery on their 16th birthday in order to become society's ideal of perfection. The production we saw took cues from fashion advertisements and pop culture choreographed to electronic music that reminded me very much of my take on Julius Ceasar two years ago (see below). While the work was not perhaps evocative enough to really encapsulate the gravity of the subject matter, I did feel that it provided a great opportunity for audience members to engage in a dialogue about the topic, making the event fully worthwhile (granted, there was no such talkback or follow-up activities connected to this presentation, but that is certainly where I would take it).


Here is a scene from a competing production of Beauty Manifesto:

Here is a clip of the production I directed of Julius Caesar two years ago. Tonight's production had a similar look and feel:

Much to Do about Noting

By Jonathan Jones

Saturday, July 2, 2011

I've seen many a production of Shakespeare in my theatre going days, and by far, my favorite place to see the works are at Shakespeare's Globe. There is no contrived setting put upon the play; no anachronistic costumes or set pieces to evoke some other time or place. The plays are presented as they should be: so the words speak for themselves, and the players truly play and invite the audience to join in on the fun.

This latest reinvention of Much Ado (my third viewing at the Globe) did not disappoint. The acting was almost entirely flawless; particularly Eve Best, whose Beatrice was indeed luminous. The hissing from the audience just before the interval at the close of Act III, Scene II (directed at Don John, delighted at the success of his plot to defame Hero) bespoke the joy with which we as audience members exuded having been so deeply connected to the stage action. 

Needless to say, the work is less fun than it had been with Mark Rylance nearly ten years ago, but my smile rarely vacated my face as the noting and trivial playfullness of "nothing: unfolded.

The Pied Piper, or Some Such

By Jonathan Jones

Friday, July 1, 2011

Frank and Ferdinand by Samuel Adamson as presented by Ulidia Integrated College featured  few brilliant young actors, all of whom tackled some incredibly complex material. The play itself was unfortunately complicated and difficult to follow; by the time I had some sense of what was going on, I had forgotten the entire opening. Essentially, a village in a war-ravaged country dealt with the overnight disappearance of 130 children. A metaphorical connection to The Pied Piper of Hamlin was engaged, but it was very difficult to determine how realistic the proceedings were or were we just indeed seeing a re-imagined Piper. Book ending the piece with a story book with "Once Upon a Time" on the cover did not help to clarify the subject anymore. Jack Kerr played an indomitable Sebastian (the Piper) and his charismatic gravitas were beyond believable, but much of the narrative was sublimated in murky water--waters indeed that drowned a number of the remaining children.