I saw this on Friday. Was depressing to see the upper circle 60% empty, but the audience that was there seemed to have a good idea of what they were in for. I cannot imagine how uncomfortable it would've been to see this thing in previews surrounded by casual fans of Sheridan Smith from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Even with the talent of the creatives involved, surely any half-discerning producer would've played this at a smaller theatre first to see if it had legs?
*
Let's start with some positives. I liked the performances, despite the palpable sense that they loathed a good deal of their own dialogue (the first scene between Manny and his wife is one of the only conversations I've ever watched that I'd feel comfortable comparing to "The Room"). I liked the set, in so far as it accomplished what it was trying to do. Oh, and I liked the orchestrations! They stuck out, but in a good way. Like weird Sondheim vamps.
But personally, my favorite thing about this production was the screen. I've seen a bunch of people compare its usage negatively with Jamie Lloyd's Sunset Boulevard - an inevitable comparison, given how recent that production was and how similar the subject matter is - but I disagree with that assessment.
Like, okay, let's go over the first big musical number, "Magic". It starts with Myrtle staring into her dressing table mirror, with her reflection projected onto the screen. This isn't like the random
Son of Mask-tier jumpscare closeups in Sunset; this is motivated, successfully capturing the intimacy of staring at your own reflection. When Myrtle gets up to dance on the stage, a freezeframe of her face remains projected on the screen, which conveys to the audience that this is all in her head. When the fantasy ends and she returns to the chair, the freezeframe reappears, telling us that in reality no time has passed. In the fantasy sequence itself, we get a top-down camera angle that beautifully captures Myrtle's branching shadows from the circling spotlights. I
really liked that image.
This number alone was enough to convince me that Ivo van Hove had more imagination regarding a camera's usage than Jamie Lloyd, and the rest of the show continued this trend. Shots are actually well-framed and blocked, with characters mingling naturally among the cameramen. There are a few lengthy sequences where the "documentary crew" naturally switches focus from character to character in one long take. Sometimes, short scenes that don't diagetically make sense to take place backstage (i.e. onstage) are presented via screen; other times, when only a few characters are backstage (i.e. onstage), the rest of the cast will appear via screen as atmospheric "stage dressing", mingling around a table or chatting at the stage door. Oh, and characters are allowed to actually emote, unlike the constipated melancholiacs in Sunset, which means close-ups are actually compelling to watch.
In the second number, Myrtle and Maurice's longing for each other is conveyed by having them staring at each other across a splitscreen. (Reminder that Jamie Lloyd conveyed Betty's longing for Artie by having his actor trudge in a straight line down the center of the shot.) The first time Nancy appears to Myrtle, the shot is backlit in a creepy way that makes the image look kinda dreamlike. There's a number in act 2 where the imaginary Nancy and an actor perform a sequence on stage but
only the actor appears on the screen. In Manny's big finale number, the camera rotates 180 degrees to show the audience.
Ideas! Imagination! Not seeing the same goddamn thing over and over again! After (IMO) the miserable failure of Sunset's direction, it was a joy to see a show that actually employed cameras and a screen in unique, compelling ways.
That was the nice part of this review. Now brace yourself for, uh, the
other part.
*
The book here is a laborious mess. I spent over two hours with this cast of characters, and I still feel like I have no idea what most of them feel or want or care about.
The central "narrative" (if you can call it that) is Myrtle's declining mental state. This gets off to a promising start with the death of Nancy, but after that her character remains frustratingly static. "I don't like my part, she's depressing, she should be funny." That's the extent of her dialogue for what feels like a solid hour. Her whining got so repetitious that by the midpoint of act 1 I just wanted to tell her to get over herself - which it goes without saying was
not the intended effect.
Manny, the director, is an enigma. He's married, yet his relationship with his wife is so confusingly established (and ultimately, so inconsequential) that the show would comfortably improve if they cut her entire character. He spends much of the first act behaving like an abrasive pr!ck to Myrtle, yet the two of them also share bizarrely-framed romantic moments. He gets an inspirational "magic of theatre" number in one of the final scenes (think Show People from Curtains but more self-aggrandizing), yet there's nothing in the rest of the show that establishes him as particularly loving his work or the people he works with.
David, the producer, is a complete non-entity who's sole story function is to have a thing for Myrtle. There's a hysterical scene (well, hysterical to me) where he's sitting on a sofa, singing a tender song to Myrtle and telling her how much he loves her. Then Manny walks in and practically shoves David out; "I'm married, so my fling has more dramatic stakes than yours!" says the subtext. Ironically, once the two of them actually start kissing, Manny's wife comes on stage and sings a sad song about how she doesn't really care that her husband is cheating on her. Jesus, it's like this show is
allergic to drama.
(Aside #1: Throughout act 1 I kept struggling to take anything Manny said seriously, though I wasn't sure why.
It wasn't until halfway through act 2 that I realized Hadley Fraser was constantly slipping into his "Young Frankenstein" voice.)
One of the consequences of the show's large cast is that everyone kinda gets lost in the crowd. At the start of the show, my instinct was to lump Maurice in with Manny and David as equal members of "Myrtle's harem". Maurice does stand out in having the earliest solo number of the three ("Trojan Women" - one of my favorite tunes in the show, I really enjoyed it) but instead of establishing him as Myrtle's most likely romantic partner, it kinda establishes him as... the worst option of the three? Like, maybe this'll change on a second listening, but the impression I got from the lyrics was that Maurice was a sexist jerk who resented Myrtle for "damaging" his prospects both personally and now professionally. I didn't pick up on anything to make me root for the two of them as a couple.
This is a big problem with Wainwright's songs - they're so abstract and "Jukebox-y" that I'm never quite sure if I'm correctly interpreting what they're trying to say, even on the emotional level. Instead of offering character/thematic insight, it feels like the songs are actively impeding my ability to relate to the piece. The audio in the theatre didn't help either; I frequently missed lyrics.
This problem effects Sarah too. There's so much interesting sh!t that you could dig into with her character: How is it that some women slip into writing sexist tropes? Are these tropes even sexist, or just challenging to think about? What is the root of the her dislike for Myrtle? Ultimately, these questions are all handwaved away with the explanation that Sarah is older than Myrtle, and that's that. Old, childless b!tches be depressed and bitter, I guess.
Sarah gets to sing the act 1 finale. The good news is that this was a f*cking incredible song and Nicola Hughs sung it spectacularly; the bad news is that it's a poor
musical theatre song. Again, there's so much stuff you could dig into with this character, so why are we wasting five minutes on the radical observation that... bad things sometimes happen? In one verse she simply recites landmarks and remarks that they might fall down someday. It might be evocative in a pop album, but on the stage I kept asking myself "Why is this particular character singing this particular song?" and coming up short.
(Aside #2: Also, this particular song undermines one of my favorite moments of the show. In the prior rehearsal scene, Myrtle starts singing and the rest of the crew reacts with bewilderment, as if this were a spontaneous musical number in real life. Other shows have of course had fourth wall-breaking "Aren't musicals weird?" jokes, but I've never seen the reactions played so straight before. I thought it was hysterical - but when Sarah burst into her own musical number mere moments later and literally nobody reacted, I felt a little cheated. It's a telling example of how poorly-defined the stylistic "rules" of this show are.)
*
The final few scenes of the show felt very tonally dissonant to me. Like, we've got that aforementioned inspirational number from Manny, then Myrtle gets an "I have completed my character arc" power ballad, then Myrtle and Maurice go on stage and do this half-improvised comedy routine with funny faces. I'm not gonna act like the show would've been improved if Myrtle had killed herself on stage or something, but the show in its first ~100 minutes presented itself as a Black Swan/Perfect Blue-esque dark psychological drama. But then Myrtle strangles her trauma, and everything's rosy? Happy endings all around?
I don't know. There's just so little "here" here. I feel sorry for the creatives involved (especially Wainwright, who I really admire and who really sounded like he was excited to write his first musical), but I can't give this show anything more than a 4/10 - closer to a 3 than a 5.
To end on a mildly positive note, I hope there's gonna be some kind of soundtrack recording. I doubt it'll change my mind on the stage-appropriateness of Wainwright's songs, but I think they were strong songs in their own right and they'd only improve on repeat listens.
