NT at Home part 3
Dec. 23rd, 2021 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficAnd now for the shows that range from forgettable to wretched. Content warning that Deep Blue Sea, Hansard, and Julie all deal directly with suicide. (There are a lot of plays about suicide/with surprise suicide? Why is that?)
Parts one and two of my NT at Home reviews.
Everyman
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in this 2015 adaptation of a medieval morality play. As such, it has a modern skin—showing him partying and doing lines of cocaine, having a set design of neon lights, bringing in criticisms of pollution and consumerism—but remains fundamentally medieval in nature. In the moment of his death, the unnamed protagonist (Everyman) is confronted by Death and forced to account for his lack of Good Deeds in life. He goes through various vignettes with allegorical figures of Greed and Sloth and the like, and confronts his family and friends to realize that his lack of care for the relationships means that no one cares for him. This serves to show the Wrong Way he lived his life, but ultimately there cannot be catharsis or growth as he was dead at the start of the play. The production design is fantastic, but ultimately it’s a fairly simple, and extremely Christian, fable that resists narrative. Interesting as a historical piece—I hadn’t seen a morality play before though had certainly heard of them—but not that satisfying.
Comedy of Errors
I have long said that Comedy of Errors is my favorite Shakespeare—but really, it’s the 1987 Flying Karamazov Brothers version that is my favorite. (You can find the whole thing on youtube.) I grew up with that and have seen it countless times. Therefore I can practically recite this play and am used to certain delivery of the jokes.
The 2011 National Theatre version is—fine? Mostly I just wished I was watching the FKB version. There’s a certain velocity you have to keep up to the slapstick and the banter, and I thought this one dragged. Also, without the gloss of nostalgia, this is a play about fairly horrible people where a good chunk of the humor is a master beating his slave. So, you know.
Chewing Gum Dreams
Chewing Gum Dreams is a 45-minute monologue written and performed by Michaela Coel about a 14-year-old black girl as she navigates friendships, bullying, lousy schooling, racism, and budding sexuality. Unfortunately, this was performed on a black box stage and filmed for archive, so the camera stays static showing the whole stage despite there only being one person on it. Between the accent (I’m not great at identifying different British accents, but I would peg as working class) and the fact that the actor was playing multiple characters, I could not follow what was going on. I think this one just suffered enormously from being recorded rather than seen live. Also, I don’t love coming of age narratives in general? Not for me.
The Deep Blue Sea
The Deep Blue Sea is billed as “a powerful portrait of emotional turmoil in postwar Britain,” and…I don’t get it?
The play opens with Hester found in her flat after a failed suicide attempt—failed because she didn’t put enough change in the gas meter to complete it. This triggers the neighbor to rifle her belongings and contact an estranged husband she’d been hiding from under an assumed identity. That makes it sound way more melodramatic than it is.
Mostly it’s just following this woman through a day where her lover leaves her for good and she’s forced to face the husband she walked out on. It’s an exploration of her isolation and depression. She spends a lot of it sobbing. The final scene (spoiler) is her crying uncontrollably as she cooks herself an egg, puts it on some toast and eats it—a statement that even when everything falls apart you just keep going.
Per the Wikipedia page, the playwright Terrence Rattigan wrote this very personally about his own breakup with a lover, and reskinned it as heterosexual for public consumption. This has been adapted many times, into radio plays and movies. I can only assume that it touched on something of the feeling of post-war Britain, but yeah. Didn’t work for me.
Hansard
I had to check the Wikipedia on this as I was watching to make sure it wasn’t secretly written by Edward Albee, because dear god it feels like it is. Or rather, it feels like someone wanted to write Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? but without the edgy danger that makes that play work.
For most of the run, you are in the front room of the country house of an MP, with just him and his wife, as they snipe at each other. Very clever writing, and you can tell Simon Woods chuckled to himself when he wrote some of these lines. It is set in the time of Thatcher, and the husband is a conservative MP with a liberal wife. Much of the runtime is criticisms of Thatcher’s politics. Since this was written in 2019, there is a too knowingness in the way the wife talks about it, as if she knows that Brexit is to come.
If it were just that, I’d call it entertaining performances but forgettable.
Then it took a hard right turn into NOPE.
You see, the reason the marriage has failed is because of their son’s death. Which was of course a suicide. Because he was gay. We know he was gay because (a) when given a prostitute for his sixteenth birthday he didn’t sleep with her but talked about chiffon instead, and (b) he wore women’s clothing. We got to the wife’s dramatic retelling of the time she came home and found him in one of her dresses and I went FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOU.
This is from 2019. There is no excuse to kill your gays. There’s no excuse to conflate dressing in women’s clothing with being gay. There’s no excuse for writing a gay character that kills themselves without ever having a line of dialogue—not even one related by anyone else. If this play had actually been from the eighties, I would have said, well, it’s of its time, what can you do. But this is atrocious for a modern play. It’s embarrassing. Do better, National Theatre.
Julie
Turns out this is an update of the naturalistic play “Miss Julie” by August Strindberg from 1888. The original was meant to illustrate social Darwinism—specifically that the upper-class Julie demonstrates her unfitness to live through her weakness. The servant shows his fitness to live through his dominance. The author wrote a preface to the play explaining that these characters are typical of their classes.
Why are we performing a eugenicist play in 2018?
The adaptation strips out the overtly Darwinist themes, but that leaves the play with a whole lot of…why are we watching this. The main character, Julie, is having a wild party for her 33rd birthday. She is very upset her rich father didn’t come even though she is…33. She seduces her father’s black chauffeur Jean. This is meant to be such a dangerous crossing of boundaries that it leads to her death but—why? Rich people sleep with servants. People cheat on partners. These are not life-ending events.
So Julie sleeps with the chauffeur, despite him being engaged to her maid. There is a lot of talking. Julie progressively gets more and more disturbed (she puts a bird in a blender at one point). At the end, she commits suicide by overdose on stage, which is genuinely upsetting to watch.
Just. Why.
Julius Caesar
It is perhaps unfair to put Julius Caesar so low on this list, after a couple of suuuuuper problematic entries. I’d never consumed Julius Caesar before, and I think I just don’t like this play. Despite being one of the shortest, I was very very bored.
This production stars Ben Whishaw as Brutus, and puts in allusions to MAGA that didn’t work for me. If you’re going to do a Trump satire, it needs to actually be Trump—this one evokes MAGA hats but without taking on any other part of Trumpiness. It’s as if to say—look, demagogues.
But yeah—just bored.
Angels in America
This was a full-on hate watch. I watched the first part, was like, the fuck was that. Started the second part, then let it sit for months before forcing myself through FOUR MORE HOURS. I hated this. Magical realism does not work for me, especially when characters are constantly commenting on the unreality. And there’s an absolute obsession with erect penises.
I know this is a seminal (ha) and beloved work, but it feels to me like its time has passed. This was groundbreaking for talking about AIDS and gay men in a time where very few things talked about that, but at this point, you can take your pick for AIDS narratives. (Personally, if we’re going to resurrect a boundary-breaking early piece of art written by gay men about AIDS, I’d vote for Longtime Companion.)
There were many, many witty pieces of dialogue (my favorite is “Fuck you, I’m a prophet!”), but they just run on and on. I’m sure I could write a paper about THEMES in this, but it all felt overblown and pretentious and I’m tired.
That said, from what I can tell, this is an amazing production of it. It reviewed very highly for the acting. If you’re going to watch Angels in America, this is a good version to pick I guess.
Seriously, though, when I finished it, I felt like I’d really accomplished something with my day even though all I’d done was resisted the urge to turn it off.
Treasure Island
And coming in dead last on the service (perhaps tied with I Want My Hat Back) is Treasure Island. This is also a review from when I watched on youtube:
This week's National Theatre at Home is Treasure Island. It's...Treasure Island. Just a very straight production of it. Another book not particularly suited to theatre. They decided to have Jim narrate it, as in the book, but as this is a nineteenth century novel, the quotes from the text are not particularly suited to speech, so Jim ends up doing that Theatre Declamatory thing, with lots of pauses and emphasis to make sure you follow, that ends up sounding the opposite of natural. They change a lot of the events of the back half of the story for--I don't know why?
I've read Treasure Island. I've watched quite a few movies of Treasure Island, including the ignominious Treasure Planet. This version does not bring a whole lot to the conversation. The Long John Silver is...fine, which is unfortunate, since Treasure Island lives and dies on its Long John Silver.
The radical reinterpretation of this one is making Jim Hawkins and several of the pirates girls, but then it doesn't change anything else, except the genders of some exclamations (and at one point, when Jim says she's the cabin girl, someone says, "That's strange.") They did change one thing though, with Jim as a girl--at a climactic point they had Silver kiss her. Which. Ew. No. Boy or girl, Jim Hawkins is TWELVE. And this is a children's book, so Long John Silver is just not that type of villain. Very much do not want.
They had a very clever remote-controlled mechanical parrot (that when it got too close to anyone's mic, you could hear the gears grinding). The set was pretty cool--with the sailors "raising" and "lowering" it with ropes. And Ben Gunn was flat entertaining.
But really, if you want Treasure Island, just go watch the Muppets one.
By my count, that leaves me with 14 plays on the service I haven’t watched, ranging from ones I’m looking forward to (another Arthur Miller) to ones I’m pretty much guaranteed to hate (Consent). Wish me luck.
Parts one and two of my NT at Home reviews.
Everyman
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in this 2015 adaptation of a medieval morality play. As such, it has a modern skin—showing him partying and doing lines of cocaine, having a set design of neon lights, bringing in criticisms of pollution and consumerism—but remains fundamentally medieval in nature. In the moment of his death, the unnamed protagonist (Everyman) is confronted by Death and forced to account for his lack of Good Deeds in life. He goes through various vignettes with allegorical figures of Greed and Sloth and the like, and confronts his family and friends to realize that his lack of care for the relationships means that no one cares for him. This serves to show the Wrong Way he lived his life, but ultimately there cannot be catharsis or growth as he was dead at the start of the play. The production design is fantastic, but ultimately it’s a fairly simple, and extremely Christian, fable that resists narrative. Interesting as a historical piece—I hadn’t seen a morality play before though had certainly heard of them—but not that satisfying.
Comedy of Errors
I have long said that Comedy of Errors is my favorite Shakespeare—but really, it’s the 1987 Flying Karamazov Brothers version that is my favorite. (You can find the whole thing on youtube.) I grew up with that and have seen it countless times. Therefore I can practically recite this play and am used to certain delivery of the jokes.
The 2011 National Theatre version is—fine? Mostly I just wished I was watching the FKB version. There’s a certain velocity you have to keep up to the slapstick and the banter, and I thought this one dragged. Also, without the gloss of nostalgia, this is a play about fairly horrible people where a good chunk of the humor is a master beating his slave. So, you know.
Chewing Gum Dreams
Chewing Gum Dreams is a 45-minute monologue written and performed by Michaela Coel about a 14-year-old black girl as she navigates friendships, bullying, lousy schooling, racism, and budding sexuality. Unfortunately, this was performed on a black box stage and filmed for archive, so the camera stays static showing the whole stage despite there only being one person on it. Between the accent (I’m not great at identifying different British accents, but I would peg as working class) and the fact that the actor was playing multiple characters, I could not follow what was going on. I think this one just suffered enormously from being recorded rather than seen live. Also, I don’t love coming of age narratives in general? Not for me.
The Deep Blue Sea
The Deep Blue Sea is billed as “a powerful portrait of emotional turmoil in postwar Britain,” and…I don’t get it?
The play opens with Hester found in her flat after a failed suicide attempt—failed because she didn’t put enough change in the gas meter to complete it. This triggers the neighbor to rifle her belongings and contact an estranged husband she’d been hiding from under an assumed identity. That makes it sound way more melodramatic than it is.
Mostly it’s just following this woman through a day where her lover leaves her for good and she’s forced to face the husband she walked out on. It’s an exploration of her isolation and depression. She spends a lot of it sobbing. The final scene (spoiler) is her crying uncontrollably as she cooks herself an egg, puts it on some toast and eats it—a statement that even when everything falls apart you just keep going.
Per the Wikipedia page, the playwright Terrence Rattigan wrote this very personally about his own breakup with a lover, and reskinned it as heterosexual for public consumption. This has been adapted many times, into radio plays and movies. I can only assume that it touched on something of the feeling of post-war Britain, but yeah. Didn’t work for me.
Hansard
I had to check the Wikipedia on this as I was watching to make sure it wasn’t secretly written by Edward Albee, because dear god it feels like it is. Or rather, it feels like someone wanted to write Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? but without the edgy danger that makes that play work.
For most of the run, you are in the front room of the country house of an MP, with just him and his wife, as they snipe at each other. Very clever writing, and you can tell Simon Woods chuckled to himself when he wrote some of these lines. It is set in the time of Thatcher, and the husband is a conservative MP with a liberal wife. Much of the runtime is criticisms of Thatcher’s politics. Since this was written in 2019, there is a too knowingness in the way the wife talks about it, as if she knows that Brexit is to come.
If it were just that, I’d call it entertaining performances but forgettable.
Then it took a hard right turn into NOPE.
You see, the reason the marriage has failed is because of their son’s death. Which was of course a suicide. Because he was gay. We know he was gay because (a) when given a prostitute for his sixteenth birthday he didn’t sleep with her but talked about chiffon instead, and (b) he wore women’s clothing. We got to the wife’s dramatic retelling of the time she came home and found him in one of her dresses and I went FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOU.
This is from 2019. There is no excuse to kill your gays. There’s no excuse to conflate dressing in women’s clothing with being gay. There’s no excuse for writing a gay character that kills themselves without ever having a line of dialogue—not even one related by anyone else. If this play had actually been from the eighties, I would have said, well, it’s of its time, what can you do. But this is atrocious for a modern play. It’s embarrassing. Do better, National Theatre.
Julie
Turns out this is an update of the naturalistic play “Miss Julie” by August Strindberg from 1888. The original was meant to illustrate social Darwinism—specifically that the upper-class Julie demonstrates her unfitness to live through her weakness. The servant shows his fitness to live through his dominance. The author wrote a preface to the play explaining that these characters are typical of their classes.
Why are we performing a eugenicist play in 2018?
The adaptation strips out the overtly Darwinist themes, but that leaves the play with a whole lot of…why are we watching this. The main character, Julie, is having a wild party for her 33rd birthday. She is very upset her rich father didn’t come even though she is…33. She seduces her father’s black chauffeur Jean. This is meant to be such a dangerous crossing of boundaries that it leads to her death but—why? Rich people sleep with servants. People cheat on partners. These are not life-ending events.
So Julie sleeps with the chauffeur, despite him being engaged to her maid. There is a lot of talking. Julie progressively gets more and more disturbed (she puts a bird in a blender at one point). At the end, she commits suicide by overdose on stage, which is genuinely upsetting to watch.
Just. Why.
Julius Caesar
It is perhaps unfair to put Julius Caesar so low on this list, after a couple of suuuuuper problematic entries. I’d never consumed Julius Caesar before, and I think I just don’t like this play. Despite being one of the shortest, I was very very bored.
This production stars Ben Whishaw as Brutus, and puts in allusions to MAGA that didn’t work for me. If you’re going to do a Trump satire, it needs to actually be Trump—this one evokes MAGA hats but without taking on any other part of Trumpiness. It’s as if to say—look, demagogues.
But yeah—just bored.
Angels in America
This was a full-on hate watch. I watched the first part, was like, the fuck was that. Started the second part, then let it sit for months before forcing myself through FOUR MORE HOURS. I hated this. Magical realism does not work for me, especially when characters are constantly commenting on the unreality. And there’s an absolute obsession with erect penises.
I know this is a seminal (ha) and beloved work, but it feels to me like its time has passed. This was groundbreaking for talking about AIDS and gay men in a time where very few things talked about that, but at this point, you can take your pick for AIDS narratives. (Personally, if we’re going to resurrect a boundary-breaking early piece of art written by gay men about AIDS, I’d vote for Longtime Companion.)
There were many, many witty pieces of dialogue (my favorite is “Fuck you, I’m a prophet!”), but they just run on and on. I’m sure I could write a paper about THEMES in this, but it all felt overblown and pretentious and I’m tired.
That said, from what I can tell, this is an amazing production of it. It reviewed very highly for the acting. If you’re going to watch Angels in America, this is a good version to pick I guess.
Seriously, though, when I finished it, I felt like I’d really accomplished something with my day even though all I’d done was resisted the urge to turn it off.
Treasure Island
And coming in dead last on the service (perhaps tied with I Want My Hat Back) is Treasure Island. This is also a review from when I watched on youtube:
This week's National Theatre at Home is Treasure Island. It's...Treasure Island. Just a very straight production of it. Another book not particularly suited to theatre. They decided to have Jim narrate it, as in the book, but as this is a nineteenth century novel, the quotes from the text are not particularly suited to speech, so Jim ends up doing that Theatre Declamatory thing, with lots of pauses and emphasis to make sure you follow, that ends up sounding the opposite of natural. They change a lot of the events of the back half of the story for--I don't know why?
I've read Treasure Island. I've watched quite a few movies of Treasure Island, including the ignominious Treasure Planet. This version does not bring a whole lot to the conversation. The Long John Silver is...fine, which is unfortunate, since Treasure Island lives and dies on its Long John Silver.
The radical reinterpretation of this one is making Jim Hawkins and several of the pirates girls, but then it doesn't change anything else, except the genders of some exclamations (and at one point, when Jim says she's the cabin girl, someone says, "That's strange.") They did change one thing though, with Jim as a girl--at a climactic point they had Silver kiss her. Which. Ew. No. Boy or girl, Jim Hawkins is TWELVE. And this is a children's book, so Long John Silver is just not that type of villain. Very much do not want.
They had a very clever remote-controlled mechanical parrot (that when it got too close to anyone's mic, you could hear the gears grinding). The set was pretty cool--with the sailors "raising" and "lowering" it with ropes. And Ben Gunn was flat entertaining.
But really, if you want Treasure Island, just go watch the Muppets one.
By my count, that leaves me with 14 plays on the service I haven’t watched, ranging from ones I’m looking forward to (another Arthur Miller) to ones I’m pretty much guaranteed to hate (Consent). Wish me luck.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-24 01:11 pm (UTC)Your review of Angels in America made me laugh ruefully, because I actually like that one too, but you're also fair in what you say about it. It's a true thing about Kushner in general, I think, that he has a real way with words but sometimes there are just TOO MANY words. Like, this monologue was great for a while, but it went on about twenty minutes too long and now I want this character to shut up, please.
Totally agree that Muppet Treasure Island is the Treasure Island of choice!
no subject
Date: 2021-12-27 12:52 am (UTC)