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what's this, an entry? YES, I saw Theater and I have THOUGHTS
First a bit of backstory: about a week and a half ago I sprained my knee. I had bought tickets to see Sleep No More and Merrily We Roll Along for the 8th and 9th, and I really did not want to cancel my plans and miss the shows. I was wearing a knee brace and using a cane.
Sleep No More, if you're not familiar, is an interactive and immersive theater experience, held over five floors in a converted warehouse called the McKittrick Hotel. Actors ("residents") move throughout the space, performing - it's more modern dance than anything else, it's almost wordless - and the audience ("guests") are given masks and free to choose their own paths through the space. You can follow actors or poke around in drawers and closets and read letters and ignore the plot entirely. The story is Macbeth by way of Hitchcock's "Rebecca". I was lucky enough to see the show in a Boston run, where it was performed in a former school building, and I absolutely loved it. (Some of the images have stuck with me forever and I have absolutely used them in my writing. It's fanfic, so it's okay!)
Anyway. One of the things about the experience is that it normally involves a lot of walking around and going up and down stairs. Stairs are very fucking hard with a knee sprain, it turns out! I emailed the house manager and asked what accommodations they could make, and they let me know to arrive early and to make sure the staff knew I was allowed to take the elevators. And the way THAT works is to find a member of staff, wearing all black and a black surgical mask, and have them radio a staffer to bring the elevator to a particular floor. The buttons for calling an elevator on each floor are covered up. And the floors are somewhat mazelike, depending on the individual layout - a forest maze, a warren of little shops and offices, living quarters with a blasted-out garden - so finding staff and then finding my way back to the elevators was Somewhat Challenging. The staff weren't just stationed by the elevator, they were also doing things like herding the crowds away from actors to make sure they had space for a dance fight. Which I get! But also I got real tired going around in circles! The other downside was that the show is closing soon (although it's extended its end date a couple times) and so it has been PACKED, which sometimes meant being stuck at the back of a crowd that I couldn't see past. And any time an actor went up or down stairs I was like "well, I'm done with that, I guess."
THAT SAID. I still had a wonderful time and I'm so glad I went. Very early on I got a one-on-one with one of the actresses, a beautiful woman in a long green gown, who drew me into a bedroom for a brief encounter and then through the wardrobe and into what looked like a morgue, where she had a pas de deux with an actor with the saddest eyes in the world and then they ran off. I saw a whole bunch of taxidermy and watched what I think was the plotting of the thanes and the murder of the king, and then the bloodied king staggered into the hallway and extended his hand to me and I took it and got stage blood on my fingers. I scared the willies out of myself in the hospital floor by accidentally brushing a lock of hair in a cabinet. I watched dancing and fighting and dance-fighting and scrubbing of blood and maybe some out-damned-spot-ness. And I was able to snatch some moments to sit down and collect myself. It was a great night.
AND THEN. The next day! I went to see Merrily We Roll Along!
Legendary in the Sondheim canon for how quickly it closed! I was interested when I heard about the casting - Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez are a hell of a trio. Two of my friends saw the show late last year and said Danrad was born to play Charley, and that tipped me over into actually buying tickets. I did end up calling the theater to exchange my ticket from the balcony to the dress circle, again because stairs, but I don't think it would have had a huge effect on my experience because it's a pretty small theater.
Merrily is a weird little show, told in reverse chronology, and that's a tall order. But I thought it was a great production. I've never been a stan of Jonathan Groff but he was actually perfect for Frank, who starts out as an idealistic composer and then makes compromise after compromise and choice after choice to take him away from his old friends. And he's got a great voice, I can't pretend otherwise. Radcliffe has a slightly less strong voice but I think he was also fantastic. He nails the frenetic breakdown of "Franklin Shepherd, Inc.", he got across the love and frustration in "Old Friends" and the gritted-teeth optimism of "Opening Doors" and the open-heartedness of "Our Time." And so fantastically mobile, not quite doing backflips but basically right up to that.
And we had Sherz Aletaha, an understudy, as Mary, and she was PHENOMENAL. Like, future Tony winner. Mary can so easily veer into parody, a drunk and a sad sap, but I thought Sherz did such a great job of navigating the path backwards and unpeeling the layers and showing how it's not just unrequited love curdling into cynicism but also seeing how what she thought was an unbreakable trio was actually quite breakable. How she tries so hard to stay everyone's friend even as Charley and Frank's bond fractures. How missed chances can make you miserable. Her "Not a Day Goes By" was beautiful. Also, a beautiful pratfall in the opening party scene.
Honorable mentions: Krysta Joy Brown as a perfectly horrible Gussie and Katie Rose Clarke as a bright but surprisingly tough Beth. And the band was On Point. The only quibble I have is that there were some difficulties with the sound mixing, or maybe that the mics were malfunctioning. Anyway, great performances, great score, great show, so glad I went.
Not-theater related but important: I had a great solo dinner and then brought dessert back to my hotel and watched Barbie, which was fine. And I can recommend Bagel Pub by Penn Station for a good big-style bagel.
First a bit of backstory: about a week and a half ago I sprained my knee. I had bought tickets to see Sleep No More and Merrily We Roll Along for the 8th and 9th, and I really did not want to cancel my plans and miss the shows. I was wearing a knee brace and using a cane.
Sleep No More, if you're not familiar, is an interactive and immersive theater experience, held over five floors in a converted warehouse called the McKittrick Hotel. Actors ("residents") move throughout the space, performing - it's more modern dance than anything else, it's almost wordless - and the audience ("guests") are given masks and free to choose their own paths through the space. You can follow actors or poke around in drawers and closets and read letters and ignore the plot entirely. The story is Macbeth by way of Hitchcock's "Rebecca". I was lucky enough to see the show in a Boston run, where it was performed in a former school building, and I absolutely loved it. (Some of the images have stuck with me forever and I have absolutely used them in my writing. It's fanfic, so it's okay!)
Anyway. One of the things about the experience is that it normally involves a lot of walking around and going up and down stairs. Stairs are very fucking hard with a knee sprain, it turns out! I emailed the house manager and asked what accommodations they could make, and they let me know to arrive early and to make sure the staff knew I was allowed to take the elevators. And the way THAT works is to find a member of staff, wearing all black and a black surgical mask, and have them radio a staffer to bring the elevator to a particular floor. The buttons for calling an elevator on each floor are covered up. And the floors are somewhat mazelike, depending on the individual layout - a forest maze, a warren of little shops and offices, living quarters with a blasted-out garden - so finding staff and then finding my way back to the elevators was Somewhat Challenging. The staff weren't just stationed by the elevator, they were also doing things like herding the crowds away from actors to make sure they had space for a dance fight. Which I get! But also I got real tired going around in circles! The other downside was that the show is closing soon (although it's extended its end date a couple times) and so it has been PACKED, which sometimes meant being stuck at the back of a crowd that I couldn't see past. And any time an actor went up or down stairs I was like "well, I'm done with that, I guess."
THAT SAID. I still had a wonderful time and I'm so glad I went. Very early on I got a one-on-one with one of the actresses, a beautiful woman in a long green gown, who drew me into a bedroom for a brief encounter and then through the wardrobe and into what looked like a morgue, where she had a pas de deux with an actor with the saddest eyes in the world and then they ran off. I saw a whole bunch of taxidermy and watched what I think was the plotting of the thanes and the murder of the king, and then the bloodied king staggered into the hallway and extended his hand to me and I took it and got stage blood on my fingers. I scared the willies out of myself in the hospital floor by accidentally brushing a lock of hair in a cabinet. I watched dancing and fighting and dance-fighting and scrubbing of blood and maybe some out-damned-spot-ness. And I was able to snatch some moments to sit down and collect myself. It was a great night.
AND THEN. The next day! I went to see Merrily We Roll Along!
Legendary in the Sondheim canon for how quickly it closed! I was interested when I heard about the casting - Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez are a hell of a trio. Two of my friends saw the show late last year and said Danrad was born to play Charley, and that tipped me over into actually buying tickets. I did end up calling the theater to exchange my ticket from the balcony to the dress circle, again because stairs, but I don't think it would have had a huge effect on my experience because it's a pretty small theater.
Merrily is a weird little show, told in reverse chronology, and that's a tall order. But I thought it was a great production. I've never been a stan of Jonathan Groff but he was actually perfect for Frank, who starts out as an idealistic composer and then makes compromise after compromise and choice after choice to take him away from his old friends. And he's got a great voice, I can't pretend otherwise. Radcliffe has a slightly less strong voice but I think he was also fantastic. He nails the frenetic breakdown of "Franklin Shepherd, Inc.", he got across the love and frustration in "Old Friends" and the gritted-teeth optimism of "Opening Doors" and the open-heartedness of "Our Time." And so fantastically mobile, not quite doing backflips but basically right up to that.
And we had Sherz Aletaha, an understudy, as Mary, and she was PHENOMENAL. Like, future Tony winner. Mary can so easily veer into parody, a drunk and a sad sap, but I thought Sherz did such a great job of navigating the path backwards and unpeeling the layers and showing how it's not just unrequited love curdling into cynicism but also seeing how what she thought was an unbreakable trio was actually quite breakable. How she tries so hard to stay everyone's friend even as Charley and Frank's bond fractures. How missed chances can make you miserable. Her "Not a Day Goes By" was beautiful. Also, a beautiful pratfall in the opening party scene.
Honorable mentions: Krysta Joy Brown as a perfectly horrible Gussie and Katie Rose Clarke as a bright but surprisingly tough Beth. And the band was On Point. The only quibble I have is that there were some difficulties with the sound mixing, or maybe that the mics were malfunctioning. Anyway, great performances, great score, great show, so glad I went.
Not-theater related but important: I had a great solo dinner and then brought dessert back to my hotel and watched Barbie, which was fine. And I can recommend Bagel Pub by Penn Station for a good big-style bagel.
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