spatch

Sonya and I caught SpeakEasy's production of BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON on Wednesday night. I also caught it during its brief Broadway run in 2010 and both times was as thoroughly entertained as one can be with a musical which raises an interesting question: "What if Andrew Jackson, our seventh President, was a young emo rock star?" (Asked by the show's creators, one day, over coffee. Things don't get any higher concept than that.)

They've got a point, a very good one: Jackson was a political rock star, the first President who wasn't made by the caucus-loving political elite, a populist whose followers created a new political party for him and then trashed the White House during Jackson's open-to-the-public inaugural ball (a scene not included in the musical, but its spirit is definitely there.) And emo? He was definitely emo. He came from Circumstances which one would call Pretty Bad. His father died three weeks before he was born, his two brothers died during the American Revolution, and his mother died of cholera when he was fourteen. That's pretty much the perfect age for our musical Jackson to declare in song "Life sucks, and my life sucks in particular."(1) Jackson grew up hardened in battle, many battles really, and practiced ritual bloodletting with his wife. The dude was a cutter. I don't even know why I'm still pressing this point.

This, then, leads us to a very youthful musical about a youthful country performed by Kids These Days. I'm trying not to be dismissive here, I'm really not, but upon leaving the theater in 2010 I remarked "I think I know how thirty-somethings in 1968 felt when they saw Hair."(2) This youth culture is not mine; my youth culture was not this. This is the culture of bros, hipsters, fauxhawks and duckfaces. I am okay with this. The show requires brash, invincible twenty-somethings to put over the portrayal of a brash, invincible early 19th century country. When they collectively sing about taking the land "back" from the British, Spanish and natives, they need to believe, however naively, that they are "pretty sure it's our land, anyway." The musical is loud, angry, energetic, and in places sexypants as befits its slogan. In one of many wonderful anachronistic moves, our stage version of Andrew Jackson does not age beyond, say, twenty-three.

It's all a mish-mosh of period and contemporary, never trying to maintain one century over the other. Waistcoats, watch fobs and neck ruffs mix chaotically with t-shirts, tight jeans and eyeliner on everyone. Benjamin Walker, who originated the role of Andrew Jackson all the way from the show's first workshopping to West Coast tryouts to off-Broadway to Broadway, had the Billie Joe Armstrong look down pat. The score echoes Green Day in parts, but it also echoes Kander & Ebb: the backroom "Corrupt Bargain" which gave the 1824 election to John Quincy Adams when Jackson had won the popular vote is presented in a doodle-doo doodle-doo number which would have fit quite easily in Chicago. The next number goes right back to Green Day.

It's madness. There is no fourth wall; a contemporary narrator is shot in the neck before Jackson even takes office, which as Sonya pointed out to me, beats Assassins' record of early narrator removal. A song entitled "Illness as Metaphor" begins by refuting Susan Sontag but ends when it realizes "her cancer wasn't metaphorical at all... sorry." The Washington elite are preening runway queens. Henry Clay wears a weasel ascot with weasel head attached. Jackson has a Wii in his Oval Office and receives tour groups from Tennessee wearing orange "GO VOLS" shirts. James Monroe shows up in one of the show's final scenes, as Jackson receives an honorary doctorate from Harvard, and defiantly stays after another cast member informs him that he's dead by this point. Anachronisms, schmanachronisms, the musical just doesn't give a fuck and that's what makes it work.

( Mostly. )

The Drowsy Chaperone opened tonight in Boston and was just as charming and funny as I remembered, although it does lose something when you see it the second time and are ready for the bits. Still, the bits themselves were still delightful and Joye and I had a great time. It was interesting to see which new bits had been added in the course of a nearly two-year run plus a road tour, and how certain lines were delivered a lot more broadly than before to elicit more of a laugh. The fellow playing Man In Chair played it a bit more, well, gay than Bob Martin ever did (Martin played it more fussy; there's a difference) but he was still very good at what he did. The poignancy of the scene with the Super, however, was pretty much gone.

But that's okay, because the show did what a musical is supposed to, and if you don't know what it's supposed to do, the Man In Chair ought to be the one to tell you.

After the show Joye came back to the Haus of Rokk and played Rock Band until the neighbors told us to stop using the drum set. New rule, now: No drums after 11:00. Oops. Felt kinda dumba 'bout that.

Also today I began to sketch out new character ideas for a new... well, a new something. I can't give away too much right now, but one of the characters is named Flapjack Annie. Take that as you will.

Caught the Sweeney Todd revival last night at the Colonial with joyeous, with whom I share balcony season tix for the Broadway In Boston series. This revival was a compelling interpretation of the show and a great surprise to me. More of a workshop production than a Broadway revival (indeed this interpretation started that way), the minimal production is part dramatic reading, part recital, and part art piece.

There's only one set: a wood planked floor and high wall, a shelf of bric-a-brac taking up the middle third of the wall which serves as both props shelf and subtle decor, a piano at the bottom of the bric-a-brac and a coffin with separate plank cover on wooden blocks center stage which, at various points, is picked up, rotated, stood on end, and otherwise moved about. In this fashion it serves as a shop counter, dinner table, closed door, platform for Sweeney's barber chair, and, well, a coffin. There is no multi-level set, no mechanical chair, no searing bakehouse oven, nothing else. Most emotional and setting changes are marked with light cues. Stage blood is used in a very limited, very clean capacity.

Those going to the show expecting a Grand Guignol-style bloodbath are going to be sorely disappointed. In fact, there's more blood spilled on the logo and poster than there is spilled onstage.

There is no orchestra; the performers, many of whom have returned from the 2005 revival, play the instruments onstage themselves. The Beadle was usually on piano, the Beggar Woman played clarinet, Pirelli (in cross-gender casting) had an accordion and flute, Judge Turpin played trumpet and percussion, Johanna and Anthony both had a cello, young Toby had a fiddle, and Mrs. Lovett takes up the tuba (which makes excellent bally for "God, That's Good") but is mostly concerned with the triangle, as its ting often represents the exchange of money or Sweeney's razors glinting in the light. What makes this most impressive is the fact that, with the exception of the Beadle on piano, the show is performed without the benefit of sheet music. This is not one of Sondheim's simpler scores, mind you, even in this minimal arrangement, so memorizing the entire score is task enough. And when you accompany that with acting and moving set pieces about as necessary, you begin to realize the sheer amount of talent and hard work that each performer has put into not only their own performance but into the entire production as well. The performers also sang without mics, so there's another mark of respect from me.

And it works! At first the lack of full character interaction is a bit disconcerting (Anthony and Sweeney arrive in London and both face forward from different parts of the stage when they exchange their expository dialogue and song) but eventually there's eye contact, moving about, touching, reacting, and throat slashing. But again, the blood involved is not splattered about the stage; it's poured from one bucket to another bucket whenever blood is needed. Quite often it's Mrs. Lovett who's pouring the blood while Sweeney slashes a customer's throat, which while not quite a metaphor but not quite fully literal, emphasizes her role as co-conspirator in the grisly plot. Once dead, the victims don a white lab coat with bloody red collar, yet continue to interact with the show in musical and stagehand fashion.

This production, then, put more of an emphasis on the music and the performances than the melodrama and gore, but it was still just as unsettling, if not moreso. American culture has become a bit inured to bloody spectacles, and that's coming from someone who enjoyed the bloodbath that was Evil Dead: The Musical, but other sinister themes still can haunt us. The sparse wooden "room" of the set reminded me of Victorian-era crime scene photographs; some of the performers begin the show dressed as asylum attendants and ominously stand about (and nearly break out of the passive role and restrain Sweeney at one point) and there's the coffin, always the coffin right there in front of you. The show begins and ends (before the epilogue song, I mean) in the same silent, stark, creepy fashion. It was odd to then switch to smiling performers taking their curtain calls, but, well, opening night highs are unbeatable.

And I did what I don't normally do; I gave in to the theatrical swag and bought me a blood red coffee mug which reads "Mrs. Lovett's Meat Pies, Since 1846 - London - Paris - New York - Tokyo - Boca Raton" It's an interesting piece of bric-a-brac, and I admit the Boca Raton is a bit of a non sequitur, but it just adds to the quirk. (And after the events of the dinner at Chinatown's Pho Pasteur before the show, however, I shall not be drinking pennywort juice from the mug. It looked interesting, at least, but it tasted like pureed pea pod. That's great if pureed pea pod is your thing, and Wikipedia says it's often used to treat leprosy, so hey, bonus, but I won't be ordering it again.)

Ever have one of those mornings that start off so well that you think "Well, the only thing that could make this morning complete is an ice cream sandwich" and what do you know, there's ice cream sandwiches in the freezer?! Nrom nrom nrom. Friday started off that way. Quite nice.

Friday was a very long day. I took the Acela into New York for an evening of musical theater and then a late-late-late night bus ride back. Earlier this autumn I picked up one of the last few remaining face value tix for a Friday night performance of Young Frankenstein, currently in previews at the Hilton Theatre. Was pretty excited to get the tick (er, ticket) because hey, Mel Brooks and his creative team did a good job out with The Producers; hey, Andrea Martin is in it; hey, Sutton Foster too; and hey, Young Frankenstein was a funny film to begin with so if it gets the Producers treatment and goes all bigtime and stuff, I can boast and brag that I saw it before you did neener neener neener (with the exception of katre and some Seattle people, apparently.)

By the way, I finally discovered the beauty and glory that is the Acela train's Quiet Car. No cellphone conversations, no loud yammering, no screaming kids, just blessed quietness, all politely and quietly enforced. I mean, the loudest noises in the car, besides station announcements, were tiny things such as someone went rustling through a bag or an occasional "hrumph" from the older businessman seated next to me (he had a throat-clearing tic, apparently, or he just constantly did not like what he was reading.) All in all well worth the C-note you gotta drop for Business Class. I'm not sure if the Quiet Car only exists on the Express trains; there certainly wasn't one the last time I rode biz class on the Acela's local service, sitting in the Kiddie Business Class car and stopping at every station stop, it felt like, in Connecticut.

I arrived in NYC with the express intent of visiting the Museum of Television and Radio first, then dinner at a favorite restaurant, and then the show. It was a one-man trip, a solo venture, and I was glad to enjoy my solitude in the midst of the most crowdedest city in this time zone. And while I handily accomplished all three tasks, hooray hooray, I was not prepared for the insane humidity. God damn! The rain I was ready for but the humidity played hopscotch with my internal thermostat. I waited for my E train on the 42nd Street platform, amazed at the humid blech that hung over everything, in October, even! Whenever the A express stopped on the other side of the platform, I rushed over and hung out by the open doors of the blessedly air-conditioned train, then hustled back over to the E side. When I got to 53rd and emerged from the underground into the rain, my hair was already soaked and I hadn't even been aboveground yet.

( 1. In Which Pooh Bear Visits The Museum of Television and Radio )

I had to cut my time at the museum short for dinner. I still had some time left; your $10.00 admission allows you an hour's worth of viewing though they gave me nearly two (must've been a slow day) but I'd seen all I could see at that point. I'd definitely return with the list of flops I'd been working on.

Bidding Sandy and Fred adieu, I stepped back outside into the humidity, ambled over to a 6 train, and rumbled down to the 20s for some food.