Nothing comes close to the Golden Coast: The Top Ten Things We Did in LA (Part 3 of 3)
Last Part of my LA Post! Because I fail at being concise, LOL. Inishmoooooore ado about something!
Back to part 1: http://reezoo.livejournal.com/11531.html
Back to part 2: http://reezoo.livejournal.com/11928.html
10. Lieutenant of Inishmore: Play Plus Bonus Q&A. (tl;dr) DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED FOR THE PLAY
There is Reezoo, fangirl, and Reezoo, rabid theatre goer. Never the twain shall meet, right? Wrong, so wrong; they did on the night of August 3rd when Chris Pine starred in Inishmore, huzzah! We came, we saw, we loved. And then, because somehow somewhere we did a good deed and made the karma gods happy, there was a Q&A session right after the performance that we could attend!
THE PLAY ITSELF
Before flying out to LA I had seen another of Martin McDonagh's works, The Pillowman, performed live (around Halloween, natch, so appropriate.) It was a dark, it was frightening, but it was brilliantly written and poignant and I loved it. So yes, I had some high expectations for his play The Lieutenant of Inishmore, despite the subject matter and the anticipated gore-senseless, depraved, and ultimately pointless gore. (The senselessness of the chaos and carnage onstage, for those not aware, is meant to symbolize the senselessness of the IRA and their idea that through terrorism they could best achieve the freedom of the Irish people; there IS a purpose to the madness.) I knew it would be bloody and brutal to watch, and as I am a weakling when it comes to gore I also knew I would no doubt be squirming in my seat throughout the entire production.
There was some of that, of course. But what I did not expect was that I would also be laughing so hard throughout the show that I could barely catch my breath. The play is staggeringly, hysterically funny. And no, it's not just nervous humor from discomfort-from the bodies being chopped up or from a cat's brains falling out of its head and onto a kitchen table, for example-a lesser playwright would have relied on that to get him laughs and make his play a famous footnote in the history of theatre.
No, the play is beautifully written, as skilfully crafted as anything I've ever seen onstage. Through conversations about crap-which seem to be pointless and about nothing at all, the characters seemingly yammering on-we learn more about their personalities and motivations than we could have in any other way. Small insignificant things revealed in this manner in the beginning pay off in a big way by the end; by the climax of the show the Chekhov's guns are firing one after the other, so fast, that you feel like you will go deaf from the sound and the fury of them; luckily you are gasping so hard with laughter that it muffles their noise. It was utterly unexpected, the amount of payoff the audience gets in this play, and a sheer delight; I have seen and read far too many things where facts or characters set up early on in the story go nowhere or get forgotten. It was fantastic to instead watch something where you are in good hands, where the playwright can be relied on to tell a brilliant story and not let you down. It made for an incredibly satisfying piece of drama, and because of it I want to make it my mission to see all of McDonagh's works performed now.
For example, it is brought up in several different ways by several characters that Mairead, the lone woman in the play, is a skilled marksman who longs to join the terrorists. She once shot out a bunch of cows' eyes, and she looks like a boy, both of which she is defensive about. Her brother Brendan and even Padriac, the crazy lieutenant of an IRA offshoot that she is crushing on, brings this up at random points in the story. At one of the high points in the action of the play, when the three terrorists are about to kill Padriac and end up taking him outside to shoot him, they suddenly stumble back into the house, their eyes shot out, and babblingly argue about whether it was a boy or a girl that did it. BOOM, Chekhov's gun fired-her seemingly strange skill just saved the "hero" and became a major plot point, and the three terrorists arguing about her gender becomes a source of comedy. And then it is that amazing marksmanship of hers and the fact that she used it to save Padriac that makes him completely fall for her, and they are suddenly making out onstage and shooting the terrorists and being so crazy together. And you are howling with laughter, and your soul is delighted to see all these small facts come full circle.
Another big one was the bits about Padriac and Mairead discussing cats, and you see she is as madly devoted to cats as he is, LOL. He talks about his beloved Wee Thomas, the Macguffin whose "death" set all these events into motion, and then she talks about her own beloved cat, and the realization hit me like a bullet to the brain. I grabbed Nyu's arm and was like no, nooooooo, and she just smiled knowingly, evilly, as she is apt to do. And yes, as the pit of my stomach kept sinking further and further down, and I waited in agony, the Chekhov's gun slowly cocking and taking aim, we see her go into the bathroom and come out later cradling a cat (the poor replacement cat for Wee Thomas, that was found and covered in black shoe polish in a well-meaning attempt by Donny, Padriac's uncle, and Brendan, Mairead's brother, to hide the truth of Wee Thomas' death from Padriac. The attempt fails spectacularly-Padriac may be crazy but he's not stupid-and in anger he shoots the poor replacement cat and flings it into the bathroom, to be utterly forgotten until this very scene.) And then, as I watched in horror, the Chekhov's gun goes off, literally, when in revenge for her dead, shoe polish bedraggled cat, Mairead shoots Padriac, the man she loves and the killer of her cat, in the head at point blank range. It was the best bit of dramatic irony I have seen performed in a long, long time.
(Nyu said her only regret about the whole performance was that since she had already read the play, and therefore knew the twists and turns of the story, she sadly missed out on the experience of being completely surprised by the plot. Luckily I had no such problems; for me it was a wild, startling, dramatic ride from start to explosive finish.)
And at the end, when Wee Thomas, the first real live cat of the night (all the rest were props, obviously) comes out and begins eating his food? OMG, I died, and so did everyone else in the audience. The senselessness of the violence we had just seen, it hits home when you see the furry impetus for all that violence is actually alive and well and just wants a bit of food. Sound and fury signifying nothing indeed.
(The only unanswered question in the whole play-and considering how complex things get, having only one is impressive-is this: did Padriac know Mairead would save him, when the terrorists took him outside? He is struggling mightily to free himself, yet from the look on his face you can see that he has some sort of plan up his sleeve. Did that plan include her amazing marksmanship, or is he just crazy enough to assume that there will be a way out for him yet? Nyu and I cannot decide.)
In short (too late), I can see now why Nyu had been waiting for five long years for the chance to see this play live, regardless of what actor or starship captain might be at the helm. It is a positively brilliant play, and I am so, so glad that she had the gumption to strong arm us into making this trip, so that the three of us could witness this brilliance for ourselves. Gluten free cookies for her, plates and plates of them!
THE ACTORS
While Chris might have been the big draw for many to come see it, this play is first and foremost an ensemble piece-hence the appropriateness of listing the cast in alphabetical order. There are no small parts or wasted actors; everyone has to do heavy lifting to make it a success (and a success it was.) And luckily they found amazing, brilliant actors to bring it to life.
The nice thing, and this was emphasized by Andrew Connolly (who played Christie, the head of the three terrorists) in the Q&A, is that the play just builds and builds in intensity all the way through. The actors are skilled enough that by the end, the momentum of the action becomes relentless; there is no room for the audience to breath, no way for the the rhythm of the story to break. And that is only accomplished by all the actors working in tandem, feeding off of each other and working together.
And as Nyu said, while she knew going in that there was a lot of black humor in the play, it is not nearly as funny on the page as it is when actually performed. And that is also a complete credit to the actors; to their study of their characters and their comedic choices and timing and camaraderie as they play off one another. Lines that should not on the surface get laughs did. Two men staring at a dead cat on the table for several minutes, saying nothing, becomes snickeringly funny. A man kissing a girl while holding a bloody dead cat and smearing it all over her yellow dress becomes hysterical. That is a tough feat to accomplish; luckily we were in the hands of skillful, consummate professionals-all the way down to Kevin Kearns (Brendan), who had just barely graduated from high school and despite his baby face was brilliant-who were more than up to the challenge of bringing this ambitious play to life.
CHRIS AS PADRIAC
But Chris, as Padriac, was definitely the highlight of the night.
In order for the play to be successful, you have to sympathize with Padriac; despite his insanity, and homicidal tendencies, and personal quirks, you have to root for him. And Chris manages that in spades. His Padriac is passionate, driven, and even charming. He could have just reprised his Darwin Tremor if he had so desired-another poor, crazy killer role-and the fact that he does not resort to that, but pulls out of his acting hat a completely different sort of character, speaks volumes about his abilities and talents.
The other brilliant thing about Chris is that he is, as Nyu wonderfully puts it, a character actor stuck in a sexy leading man's body. So he willingly throws himself into the pratfalls, and the crazy humor, and the broad physical comedy, that is necessary for a smaller part, and yet he has the good looks and charisma needed to be the lead of the show. (Watch the Reboot and count how many goofy faces and amazingly physical bits he does; I'm betting you'll find it's a lot.) Inishmore is no different; after learning from his uncle that his cat Wee Thomas is sick, Padriac wails and falls to the ground and crawls off the stage; Chris fully embraced the turmoil the character is facing at that moment and backed it up with physical actions. And it was a showstopper-the actors had to pause in the scene for a moment because we in the audience were clapping and laughing so hard. And then later on, when the three terrorists are going to kill him and are dragging him outside to do it, he is struggling mightily and just jumping all around, going for it full throttle, it was awesome.
The way that Andrew described Chris in the Q&A, and it is so apt, is that his brilliance is in completely taking the reigns of the show and driving it forward like a freight train, dragging the rest of the actors along for the ride. (He is Unstoppable? Ah bad pun bad, I'm sorry!) The other actors must be willing to jump on that train and keep it going, to be certain, but he is the one that has to set the train in motion; it is his momentum that drives the play and keeps it so engrossing. Right after his death the energy on the stage completely vanishes; part of that is due to the denouement, of course, but some of it is also simply that the life force, the spark, of his character has been snuffed out, taking the spark in the rest of the characters, especially Mairead, with it.
And I loved his voice in the performance. The voice he used for Padriac was, like, a whole octave lower than his normal speaking voice; much deeper, much richer. Like Nyu said, we kinda all did double takes at first to make sure it was actually him speaking and not someone else, LOL. And his accent was just fine, the perfect stage accent. It sounded natural enough, definitely practiced until perfected and not all garbled and mangled (ie Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors), yet not overly pronounced to be all LOOK AT ME I CANZ SPEAK ALL IRISH now, so that despite sounding very good it is actually bad (Meryl Streep, as much as I love her, can at times be horribly guilty of this, and she's like the grand dame of Hollywood actresses.) Many actors, even skilled ones, are guilty of doing either of those on occasion; Chris managed to skirt around those pitfalls in his performance somehow. You notice the accent at first only because, hello, it's Chris speaking, in not his usual voice; but soon you get immersed back into the goings-ons of the play, and it completely blends in and becomes as invisible as the costumes and the set-exactly what a stage accent should be.
(Nyu pointed this out later, but we saw three sides to Chris that night: Chris Pine as Padriac, mad cat loving terrorist; the transition that took place during the curtain call for the actors where the fictitious character called Padriac disappeared and the real person that is Chris Pine began to reemerge; and Chris Pine, tired actor and real person, at the Q&A. It was definitely interesting to witness that kind of transformation for ourselves.)
THE DESIGN
Oh, and a word about the design, because I cannot help it.
The stage is an amazing feat. The main room of the uncle's house, so normal looking, is surrounded by roughly textured blocks that symbolize not only rocks or blocks of peat or whatever, but from the odd angle they are set at they signify the chaos surrounding the events unfolding in front of us. The stage brings a sense of familiarity yet also puts us on edge; we know to expect something different, that something wicked this way comes, just from one glance at the set. Very nicely done.
The props were great as well. The bodies were amazing. They were obvious stage bodies, so I could watch the scenes using them without needing to cover my hands over my eyes, yet they were realistic enough that they did not become a joke in and of themselves; every crack or snap of “bone” was cringe-inducing. Even Nyu was admittedly creeped out by the sound, LOL, and theatre magic is old hat to her.
(After Padriac and Mairead kill the three terrorists, the stage goes completely black for several seconds; when the lights come back up, the “dead” actors are gone, the bodies now in their place, and copious amounts of glossy, bright-red blood is EVERYWHERE. Padriac and Mairead are forcing their uncle and brother to chop the bodies up and properly dispose of them (ie remove their heads, hands, teeth, etc so as not to be identifiable.) The comedy comes in how nonchalantly the two hapless relatives are performing this rather gruesome task, and how they complain and bicker about it as if it is nothing more irksome than chopping wood or some other backbreaking chore. Padriac and Mairead check up on their work and give them pointers and get all critical of how sloppy a job they are doing, LOL, as if they should know better how to dispose of corpses. Why so funny scene? Because it really, really was.)
The “blood” was very visually arresting, an angry red smear on the stage, a mar on an otherwise tranquil house. The only problem I had with it was its shininess-doesn't blood coagulate and get darker and more matte looking over time? This blood did not. But it did stand out, as it needed to, so ah well, no biggie. The problem with it from an acting standpoint was that it was very, very slick; even wearing grippy boots the actors were slipping and sliding around on it as they moved. Chris almost fell on his butt one time, LOL, but he caught himself before he did. (Nyu marveled that their actor's union would ever let them do a show where they could have the potential for great physical injury; the blood did create a bit of a danger for them. But the details of that must have gotten worked out somehow in their contracts pre-production.)
(A quick word on the violence in the show. Going into the play the violence of it was all I had heard about, and so I was expected nonstop gruesomeness and horror throughout the entire thing. This was not so, and such a presumption was utterly, utterly stupid of me, in retrospect. After all, where is the drama in that? How can you expect to create a buildup to a really spectacular climax, if you generously and gratuitously splatter violence all over your play early on? McDonagh is a better playwright than that. He introduced hints of the gore and violence at the very beginning-the uncle and brother staring at the dead “Wee Thomas” and holding his little body up, his brains falling out onto the kitchen table with a rather horrible smack-and then lets things slowly build so that the carnage at the end means something, that we are not already desensitized to it. Very, very nicely crafted. When audience members left, upset over the violence, LOL, most of them left during the chopping up of the bodies scene. The producer guy in the Q&A said he actually carries it as a badge of honor, that people are so upset over the violence they leave; that means he and the rest of the people involved in the show did their job. To those audience members I say, I sympathize, but if *I* can make it through, than anyone should be able to. Suck it up people!)
And Nyu had no complaints about the costumes whatsoever; she said all of them fit the personalities of their characters very well. If you know her like I do, you know just how high a compliment that is; she finds things about costumes to nitpick and criticize like it is her job (because it actually is, LOL.) Chris looked, um, very nice with his gunholsters and wonderfully fitting clothes, and that's all I'm going to say on that subject before I embarrass myself, hah.
And I liked the graphic design of the production materials (posters, program, web banners, etc.) The blocks of red on the pieces mimic the shape of the blocks on the stage, which I though was brilliant, and the lettering and the style of everything emphasizes the insanity and craziness that is in store. And putting both Padriac and Mairead in all of the main photos for the design was a nice touch. As someone who did not know the story of the play beforehand, showcasing them in the designs seemed like such a benign, even cliche choice; ah, how nice, the lead and his romantic interest together holding guns, blahblahblah. But in actuality, in the play, after Padriac's death MAIREAD takes on the title of the Lieutenant of Inishmore; the title of the play refers not just to Padriac but to Mairead as well. Because of this the idea of them both being the centerpiece of the designs not only makes sense, but it is almost imperative. Very nicely done.
THE Q & A
One of the producers, I believe, conducted the Q&A. As people left and those remaining for the Q&A settled in the front half of the seats, we decided it would be best for the three of us to sit in the front of the back half of the seats, in the second row, and so we moved there. Imagine our delight when he comes out and tells everyone that because of the immense cleanup needed for the show, those in the front half need to move to the back half! So we had prime seats. :D As the producer began taking questions, the actors began sporadically filing in; we applauded each actor as they emerged. They all wandered into the seats in the front half of the theatre, leaning against the backs of the chairs to face us for the Q&A. The three young actors all congregated over on the stage right side of the theatre, and the three others, coincidentally the Irish ones, all congregated by us on the stage left side.
Sean G Griffin (Donny, the uncle), had a scratch on his nose that he was trying to get to stop bleeding. At the end of the play, after the live cat walks out and begins eating his food, Sean is supposed to pick up the cat from its perch and hold it in his arms. Well, that night the cat had NOT wanted to come down from its perch, it just wanted to eat, so he had to fight with it for a bit to get it down, LOL. And apparently it scratched him on the nose while he was doing that. (There was some joking about how that was the only real blood onstage, ironic considering how much stage blood there was OMG.)
While we were doing the Q&A, the backstage hands had the stunt cat come out and practice eating the food. (All the cats used in the show are shelter cats, and will be adopted after the run of the show is over.) They also cleaned up the set; they set up tall boards around the main living room larea, forming a giant square pen around the main stage, wore hazmat suits, and just power hosed all the blood down. ;) Apparently they renovated the theatre a few years ago and installed a central drain under the stage; this is the first production to take use of that. It was fun to watch all of that go down in front of us.
Nyu got a question in, asking about the corpses used in the show, because she was utterly fascinated at how they were constructed. (She has been a props artisan all summer.) He said that they were done by Matthew Mungle, who once worked at the Taper forum as a prop man and now does the bodies for CSI. Inishmore presented a unique challenge for him, because he is used to doing props you dispose of after an hour, whereas these bodies had to be durable enough for 100+ shows. The bodies were made to specs, the faces of the actors cast, with bendable joints. The pieces of the bodies that separate during the show, such as the heads, spines, etc are connected to the body via wooden dowels, which the actors then saw through. They tested a number of dowels, from pine to locust wood, and finally settled on red oak as it is a good wood to saw through-not too soft, not too hard-and provides a satisfying, creepy crack that sounds like bones snapping. (And oh, does it ever, yikes.)
The blood used is soap based, so it is easy to wash and nontoxic (I cannot remember what Kevin said it tasted like; at this point Chris had come out, I think, and I was a bit distracted, LOL).
None of the actors used mikes; except for the musicals they never mike any of the shows there.
Someone asked an interesting question about how the play had been received in its motherland; Andrew Connolly took the question. (Andrew had been in the original Broadway production of Inishmore, and it seemed like he was the ringleader of the actors. He fielded the most questions during the Q&A, and the others seemed happy enough to let him.) He said that he did Cripple of Inishmaan to sold out houses, so there is a definite interest over there, but that it is hard to get mainstream approval in the country for Irish playwrights. That in general, the Irish wait for everyone else around them to give their approval before they acknowledge it themselves. Both O'Casey and Synge had the same problem as Martin, in getting approval; in O'Casey's case, they refused to do his show at the Abbey. He was so upset that he left Ireland and never came back.
Kevin Kearns was still in HS when the play started, he had tutors and all that. Someone was interested in how he balanced his schoolwork with being in the show. Again I was not paying close attention and taking careful notes because Chris had just come out, gaaaah I fail.
You will, of course, want to know about Chris perhaps? :D He came out well after all the others, freshly showered (all that blood, yikes) with his hair slicked back, and wearing a black/beige plaid shirt with hints of green, and these gorgeous dark jeans that looked like he had been poured into them; I kept staring at his gorgeous thighs throughout the Q&A, gah, horrible person that I am. He entered on the Irish actors' side, stage left, RIGHT BY US, and stayed there the whole time, pretty much directly in front of us, only a few feet away. :D He was drinking a large bottle of Smart Water the whole time (of course, as he is married to the stuff.) The first thing he did when he got settled was that lip licking thing of his, ahaha my night made right there, like it wasn't already from the play alone.
What was he like during the Q&A? He was pretty much the same as every other report of him I have heard. He was gorgeous, but looked so, so tired and very, very lean. (The role of Padriac does not require the actor to bulk up, so it is okay to be a bit wiry looking.) He yawned periodically throughout the Q&A, didn't really look at anyone in the audience, definitely looked like he would rather be anywhere else than with us. In contrast to this all of his costars seemed more energetic, and looked at and engaged themselves more with the audience. At one point he literally turned his back to us to sit in the chairs the correct way; no other way to read that kind of body language except as a not-so-subtle I WANT TO LEAVE NOW, WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING. It wasn't personal, obviously, but it was kind of disappointing.
During an early portion of the Q&A, after he had first come out, Zoe Perry (Mairead), looked over towards him with, I could have sworn, concern in her eyes. She could have been staring at Andrew, I suppose, as he was in the middle of answering a question, but it definitely looked like she was staring at Chris. It was hard to tell though. Right after that one of her fellow actors motioned for her to come sit by them, and she did, and they put their arm around her-like they were consoling her, circling the wagons? I am probably reading too much into this.
He was very friendly with Andrew, when he felt up to having some energy and engaging somebody. They were right next to each other, and would joke and talk quietly, looking like very comfortable friends. Andrew, from what I could see, seems like the perfect, consummate grizzled theatre veteran; here's hoping some of that rubs off onto Chris. The masterclass on how to schmooze with your audience did not take, obviously, but I'm sure Chris learned a lot of other great things from him.
I kinda wanted to, at some points during the Q&A, just shake Chris and be all, look, your fellow actors are no doubt tired too, but if they can get their acts together and talk to an audience that just paid to see them for a few minutes so can you! Especially because the stage vets are behaving marvelously and do not find this beneath them, so you should follow their example. Suck it up and be a man, man! But In his defense I will say this; he is the driving force of the show, and it is his energy that everyone else feeds off of. That has to be draining, and daunting, to have that pressure on you, especially when as an actor you are still relatively young; he is not quite thirty yet, after all. I would have folded like a house of cards at the mere idea of trying to achieve what he did in his performance. So yeah, I do understand the being tired thing and the so not wanting to be there thing. But please bb, you had better learn to handle this kind of thing, as it is part and parcel of being an actor, or life, no matter how talented you indeed are, it WILL be tough for you. (I still love him though, don't get me wrong. It is just ironic that, as someone whose profession is acting, he seems to wear his IRL emotions on his sleeve and is unable to BS his way through the simplest of things. So, so strange.)
The only question asked directly to Chris was if he had seen the play when it was on Broadway; his answer was, and I quote, "No, Thank God." Everyone laughed; the sincerity of his answer was so blatant. Andrew went on to say (and since he was in the original Broadway cast he can be considered an expert, yes yes?) that the original Broadway performance was much heavier, and in contrast this one has much more energy to it. There is a definite difference to both productions in his mind. (I cannot imagine this show being done heavily, OMG; I think that would be awful to witness. The levity and momentum in the version we saw made the ruthlessness of the play easier to swallow. So thank you, LA cast, for making it energetic and awesome!)
They discussed the luxury of the play, that it allows all the characters, even the supposedly secondary ones, to develop and grow during the performance, which the actors all loved.
Someone asked if Irishman really are mad for cats. :D The Irish actors answered and said no, PIGS, LOL, but that having a pig come out would be very awkward. :)
For the show they had three weeks of rehearsals, rather short, and then a week of previews, working around eight hours a day. (Though I am guessing the hours worked by the behind the scenes crew was much longer, LOL, it always is.)
THE DRIVE BY TOOLBAG DEBACLE
So, a great night of theatre, lots of energy on stage and in the audience, a great Q&A session, and no crazy questions by crazy fangirls directed at Chris so he was pretty much left alone, which he obviously wanted. A great ending to a perfect evening, right?
Oh look at you, so naive. The real world is never, ever that kind.
Because there was one question left to be asked, which, for me, ended up being far more horrific than anything that had been performed onstage.
So there was this nice looking little old lady in the row directly in front of us that had been patiently raising her hand for a good portion of the Q&A session. When they finally smiled at her and indicated that she could ask her question, she prefaced it by saying, "I saw Inishmore twice in New York..."
That right there should have been our first clue that this was not going to end well. (Nyu said HER first clue was that the lady sounded exactly like one of her old theatre professors that was absolutely crazy, LOL.) Casually dropping in that you have seen a show? Never leads to anything good. (Even the producer and Andrew knew it; especially from Andrew's face you could tell that he was thinking, OH REALLY, and wondering where she was going with this.)
Anyway, it goes downhill from there.
"I saw Inishmore twice In New York...and the actors in this performance don't have as good of accents as the ones in New York did. Can you tell me if this was a directorial choice, and if not why they didn't hire Irish actors to play the parts?"
D:
WHUT, SHE DID NOT JUST SAY THAT. SHE. DID. NOT. No way. But she had, OMG OMG OMG she had.
Again, just like with the awful question at the Eddie Izzard Q&A, everyone in the audience was stunned. Just completely flabbergasted. Nyu, L_T and I were completely hating life right then; in less than 48 hours we had witnessed not one, but two horrific drive-by toolbaggings, the sort of which no one should ever have to experience. Is there something in the water on the West Coast? Had all the smog from the fires north of LA somehow coagulated people's brains and made them say really stupid things? How is such a thing even possible?
Someone, probably the producer, in an attempt to somehow rationally answer her ridiculous question, said that the American union in LA does not allow the theatre to hire foreign actors unless they have a green card; thems the rules. So it limits how many Irish actors they can potentially hire. (He was being very, very kind, I thought, in trying to give her an objective answer. He earned his paycheck right there, no lie.)
The three Irish actors, bless their hearts, were all, um, well, WE'RE IRISH, and we think their accents are great. (Loud, loud applause from the audience at that, to show that we completely agreed with them.) And she, in a voice of sweetness and light, was all Oh I could tell YOU were, it was obvious", just digging in the knife a little bit more.
I could not believe this woman. At all. For someone who has obviously seen good theatre before at amazing venues and acts like she is all sophisticated, how could she not see just how uncouth, how completely unforgivable her question was? It baffled me, it still does even three weeks later. Had she not seen the same performance I just had? Had something about its brilliance escaped her? Or was she just one of those kind of crazy people who feel a need to tear others down to make herself feel superior, at the expense of the feelings and hard work of the gifted young actors who had just put on a rather amazing performance, one that was totally lost on the likes of her?
(For the record, I think that the latter is the most true.)
Do not get me wrong; she is completely entitled to her opinion that the accents were atrocious, just as I am entitled to my opinion that Meryl Streep, at times, overdoes her accents. I don't believe in shaming people for having ideas that differ from mine, I don't believe in unleashing the thought police on people or anything like that. Having the opinion that she did does not make her a bad person. What DOES make her a bad person is that she used her opinion to hurt others and be utterly disrespectful. Despite my opinion about Meryl, I respect her as a great actress, and would never, in a million years, if given the opportunity, snidely tell her my opinion about her accents in such a public, intimate venue. Is the golden rule really that dead, to be abused by an elderly woman who should know better in such a manner? It was disheartening to see.
(That is the end of Reezoo soapbox time; thank you for your attention.)
Through all of this insanity you could see Chris just completely shutting down; you could practically hear him retreating within himself, and it was so heartbreaking to watch. Because it really did feel like she was singling HIM out over everyone else, that her comments were directed right at him like a well aimed gun at point blank range. Which, considering how brilliant his performance was and how much I had been impressed by his accent, was so, so unfair.
It was insulting, it was rude. It also showed a lack of wordliness on her part, as a lot of what people consider to be correct Irish accents are just gross caricatures of the real thing. Just like anywhere else, the Irish have dialects, and not all Irish sound the same. How does she not know that and infer that maybe her hear, not that of the actors, is off? How does she not, ironically, realize that her comment makes her sound rather ignorant?
It was also an insult to the rest of the people involved in the production, not the least of which is Carla Meyer, the dialect coach, whose resume is long and quite impressive.
Someone in the audience, in an attempt to be supportive of the actors, just made things worse by being snide and telling the rude lady to be quiet and causing even more of a ruckus; he became just as bit a tool as she was. It devolved quickly from that point, and Andrew, I believe, took over and wrapped the Q&A up, thanked us for staying, we clapped for the actors, and made our way to the exits.
As we were getting up to leave, the awful lady with the awful question looked up at us and commented to no one in particular, "Well, I'd better get out of here before I get stoned," and had the gall to LAUGH about it. In my mind I am going, YES, YES YOU SHOULD.
The only saving grace for all of that rudeness was that, luckily, there was a group of older people in the audience that knew Chris; he had sort of pointed to them and acknowledged them in the audience during the curtain call. (Relatives? Family friends? Old teachers? All three?) He went over to them after the Q&A, and they hugged him and talked with him. At seeing them he seemed to light up a bit again; genuine smiles came to his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and he seemed much, much happier. It was nice to see that people he genuinely cared for were there for him, especially after that disastrous comment-like a human palate cleanser. As I was shuffling out of the theatre, past their group, very careful not to make eye contact or do anything stupid, I didn't mean to but I heard a smidge of their conversation. A lovely older lady that he knew (nothing like the horrible lady) told him he had been just marvelous, THANK GOODNESS. I could have hugged her. LISTEN TO HER CHRIS BECAUSE YOU WERE. They asked what he was going to do once the show was over and he said that right after the show he was going on vacation. (Good on him, boy has earned it.) And that was when I left the theatre, so I didn't hear any more. I was on my best fangirl behavior; his night was bad enough, no need to make it any worse. Luckily everyone else seemed to also be trying to give him privacy; no one went up to him bugging him for autographs or anything, at least not that I saw. Look at us, such a good audience! (With a few obvious exceptions of course.)
Apparently Nyu and L_T were near the awful lady outside the theatre, waiting for me as I had gotten separated from them in the shuffle, when another patron came up to her and said, "Just so you know, what you said was really rude." She kind of laughed it off, gah, but the patron was not having any of it and said, "NO, IT WAS REALLY RUDE", driving the point home.
(Thank you wonderful patron lady, thank you, I think I love you. Approrpiate, non-toolbaggy public shaming FTW.)
We did not stay after to see if Chris or the other cast members would come out and sign autographs or do any of that craziness; we were all tired, and crazy lady had drained us. We just got into our cute little rental car and made the trek back to our hotel. To cleanse OUR palettes we stopped by House of Pies first, yum yum. A sweet ending to a sweet, with the tiniest hint of sour, evening.
So yeah, one of the best trips EVER. Congrats LA, you didn't suck after all. ;) (Though I still hate the Katy Perry song singing your praises with the passion of a thousand tiny paper cuts.)
Bonus travel tip: In booking plane tickets to LA, if you can, FLY INTO LONG BEACH (LJB), avoid LAX like the plague that it is. It is the cutest little airport and no hassle at all; with its picturesque front and tiny shuttle planes, it felt like we were being whisked back to that magical time when people dressed up in heels and pearls to get on a plane, and they still served hot meals with real silverware, forreals. Plus our Enterprise lady was the nicest lady I have EVER dealt with in all my years of renting cars, OMG I loved her; the perfect beginning to an amazing trip. (We got to pick our car and chose a hot little red number, yay! So sporty, so cute. But I was the driver and am tall so, oh, my knees hated me by the end.)
I planned a ridiculous amount of time for us to travel to the airport for our return flight, because of my horrific memories of LAX, but it was all so unnecessary. Returning our rental car could not have been easier-you just hand it off to the agents and walk the super short distance back to the airport-and checking in and getting through security was a breeze. YES, YOU HEARD ME RIGHT. Maybe it was travel karma-I have been that passenger waiting in the LAX security line for what feels like forever, about to miss my flight and cursing the world, so maybe I was due an easy check-in for once-or maybe it is just that the Long Beach airport is fab. Whatever it was, huzzah!
The only prob we faced was that because of lightning storms in space in SLC, our flight was delayed, but still it's only a two hour flight, and we made it through just fine. Seeing the storm through the windows of the plane, with the dying sunset streaking everything red, was seriously one of the coolest things I have ever see. (Nyu: "It is like we are descending into Mordor! Me: "I know, right?" Gah we are dorks.)
The one truly large bummer of the trip: we want to go see Angels in America with ZQ over Thanksgiving weekend, and the first day they went on sale was during our trip. No prob, I picked out a hotel with free wifi, we're golden, right? WRONG. First, neither of our Macs could connect with it, boo, so internet ticket buying was out. (I hate you hotel.) So I woke a little before 7 (box office opened at 10 in NY) and called the ticket office on my cell like mad, for over an hour. No luck. I got L_T into calling as well, no luck. I finally gave up and got ready for the day, and tried again; this time I got someone! Only to have them tell me the dates we wanted (Sunday before Thanksgiving, matinee and evening performances) are all gone, unless we want to pay like $150 a ticket for prime tickets? D: WHAT IS THIS RIDICULOUSNESS. I'm sorry, I love ZQ and want to see the play live, but I am NOT shelling out that much PER TICKET to make that happen, no way. So it looks like during our trip to NY this fall we will be doing the waitlist thing to see the play, gah. It is karma for seeing Eddie AND Chris I think; too much of a good thing means no ZQ in my life. WE SHALL WAIT AND SEE. And if anyone else is in NY over that week, hollah at me so we can arrange to maybe meet, LOL!
THANK YOU FOR READING! Gold stars for you for making it through this, gah.
Back to part 1: http://reezoo.livejournal.com/11531.html
Back to part 2: http://reezoo.livejournal.com/11928.html
10. Lieutenant of Inishmore: Play Plus Bonus Q&A. (tl;dr) DO NOT READ IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED FOR THE PLAY
There is Reezoo, fangirl, and Reezoo, rabid theatre goer. Never the twain shall meet, right? Wrong, so wrong; they did on the night of August 3rd when Chris Pine starred in Inishmore, huzzah! We came, we saw, we loved. And then, because somehow somewhere we did a good deed and made the karma gods happy, there was a Q&A session right after the performance that we could attend!
THE PLAY ITSELF
Before flying out to LA I had seen another of Martin McDonagh's works, The Pillowman, performed live (around Halloween, natch, so appropriate.) It was a dark, it was frightening, but it was brilliantly written and poignant and I loved it. So yes, I had some high expectations for his play The Lieutenant of Inishmore, despite the subject matter and the anticipated gore-senseless, depraved, and ultimately pointless gore. (The senselessness of the chaos and carnage onstage, for those not aware, is meant to symbolize the senselessness of the IRA and their idea that through terrorism they could best achieve the freedom of the Irish people; there IS a purpose to the madness.) I knew it would be bloody and brutal to watch, and as I am a weakling when it comes to gore I also knew I would no doubt be squirming in my seat throughout the entire production.
There was some of that, of course. But what I did not expect was that I would also be laughing so hard throughout the show that I could barely catch my breath. The play is staggeringly, hysterically funny. And no, it's not just nervous humor from discomfort-from the bodies being chopped up or from a cat's brains falling out of its head and onto a kitchen table, for example-a lesser playwright would have relied on that to get him laughs and make his play a famous footnote in the history of theatre.
No, the play is beautifully written, as skilfully crafted as anything I've ever seen onstage. Through conversations about crap-which seem to be pointless and about nothing at all, the characters seemingly yammering on-we learn more about their personalities and motivations than we could have in any other way. Small insignificant things revealed in this manner in the beginning pay off in a big way by the end; by the climax of the show the Chekhov's guns are firing one after the other, so fast, that you feel like you will go deaf from the sound and the fury of them; luckily you are gasping so hard with laughter that it muffles their noise. It was utterly unexpected, the amount of payoff the audience gets in this play, and a sheer delight; I have seen and read far too many things where facts or characters set up early on in the story go nowhere or get forgotten. It was fantastic to instead watch something where you are in good hands, where the playwright can be relied on to tell a brilliant story and not let you down. It made for an incredibly satisfying piece of drama, and because of it I want to make it my mission to see all of McDonagh's works performed now.
For example, it is brought up in several different ways by several characters that Mairead, the lone woman in the play, is a skilled marksman who longs to join the terrorists. She once shot out a bunch of cows' eyes, and she looks like a boy, both of which she is defensive about. Her brother Brendan and even Padriac, the crazy lieutenant of an IRA offshoot that she is crushing on, brings this up at random points in the story. At one of the high points in the action of the play, when the three terrorists are about to kill Padriac and end up taking him outside to shoot him, they suddenly stumble back into the house, their eyes shot out, and babblingly argue about whether it was a boy or a girl that did it. BOOM, Chekhov's gun fired-her seemingly strange skill just saved the "hero" and became a major plot point, and the three terrorists arguing about her gender becomes a source of comedy. And then it is that amazing marksmanship of hers and the fact that she used it to save Padriac that makes him completely fall for her, and they are suddenly making out onstage and shooting the terrorists and being so crazy together. And you are howling with laughter, and your soul is delighted to see all these small facts come full circle.
Another big one was the bits about Padriac and Mairead discussing cats, and you see she is as madly devoted to cats as he is, LOL. He talks about his beloved Wee Thomas, the Macguffin whose "death" set all these events into motion, and then she talks about her own beloved cat, and the realization hit me like a bullet to the brain. I grabbed Nyu's arm and was like no, nooooooo, and she just smiled knowingly, evilly, as she is apt to do. And yes, as the pit of my stomach kept sinking further and further down, and I waited in agony, the Chekhov's gun slowly cocking and taking aim, we see her go into the bathroom and come out later cradling a cat (the poor replacement cat for Wee Thomas, that was found and covered in black shoe polish in a well-meaning attempt by Donny, Padriac's uncle, and Brendan, Mairead's brother, to hide the truth of Wee Thomas' death from Padriac. The attempt fails spectacularly-Padriac may be crazy but he's not stupid-and in anger he shoots the poor replacement cat and flings it into the bathroom, to be utterly forgotten until this very scene.) And then, as I watched in horror, the Chekhov's gun goes off, literally, when in revenge for her dead, shoe polish bedraggled cat, Mairead shoots Padriac, the man she loves and the killer of her cat, in the head at point blank range. It was the best bit of dramatic irony I have seen performed in a long, long time.
(Nyu said her only regret about the whole performance was that since she had already read the play, and therefore knew the twists and turns of the story, she sadly missed out on the experience of being completely surprised by the plot. Luckily I had no such problems; for me it was a wild, startling, dramatic ride from start to explosive finish.)
And at the end, when Wee Thomas, the first real live cat of the night (all the rest were props, obviously) comes out and begins eating his food? OMG, I died, and so did everyone else in the audience. The senselessness of the violence we had just seen, it hits home when you see the furry impetus for all that violence is actually alive and well and just wants a bit of food. Sound and fury signifying nothing indeed.
(The only unanswered question in the whole play-and considering how complex things get, having only one is impressive-is this: did Padriac know Mairead would save him, when the terrorists took him outside? He is struggling mightily to free himself, yet from the look on his face you can see that he has some sort of plan up his sleeve. Did that plan include her amazing marksmanship, or is he just crazy enough to assume that there will be a way out for him yet? Nyu and I cannot decide.)
In short (too late), I can see now why Nyu had been waiting for five long years for the chance to see this play live, regardless of what actor or starship captain might be at the helm. It is a positively brilliant play, and I am so, so glad that she had the gumption to strong arm us into making this trip, so that the three of us could witness this brilliance for ourselves. Gluten free cookies for her, plates and plates of them!
THE ACTORS
While Chris might have been the big draw for many to come see it, this play is first and foremost an ensemble piece-hence the appropriateness of listing the cast in alphabetical order. There are no small parts or wasted actors; everyone has to do heavy lifting to make it a success (and a success it was.) And luckily they found amazing, brilliant actors to bring it to life.
The nice thing, and this was emphasized by Andrew Connolly (who played Christie, the head of the three terrorists) in the Q&A, is that the play just builds and builds in intensity all the way through. The actors are skilled enough that by the end, the momentum of the action becomes relentless; there is no room for the audience to breath, no way for the the rhythm of the story to break. And that is only accomplished by all the actors working in tandem, feeding off of each other and working together.
And as Nyu said, while she knew going in that there was a lot of black humor in the play, it is not nearly as funny on the page as it is when actually performed. And that is also a complete credit to the actors; to their study of their characters and their comedic choices and timing and camaraderie as they play off one another. Lines that should not on the surface get laughs did. Two men staring at a dead cat on the table for several minutes, saying nothing, becomes snickeringly funny. A man kissing a girl while holding a bloody dead cat and smearing it all over her yellow dress becomes hysterical. That is a tough feat to accomplish; luckily we were in the hands of skillful, consummate professionals-all the way down to Kevin Kearns (Brendan), who had just barely graduated from high school and despite his baby face was brilliant-who were more than up to the challenge of bringing this ambitious play to life.
CHRIS AS PADRIAC
But Chris, as Padriac, was definitely the highlight of the night.
In order for the play to be successful, you have to sympathize with Padriac; despite his insanity, and homicidal tendencies, and personal quirks, you have to root for him. And Chris manages that in spades. His Padriac is passionate, driven, and even charming. He could have just reprised his Darwin Tremor if he had so desired-another poor, crazy killer role-and the fact that he does not resort to that, but pulls out of his acting hat a completely different sort of character, speaks volumes about his abilities and talents.
The other brilliant thing about Chris is that he is, as Nyu wonderfully puts it, a character actor stuck in a sexy leading man's body. So he willingly throws himself into the pratfalls, and the crazy humor, and the broad physical comedy, that is necessary for a smaller part, and yet he has the good looks and charisma needed to be the lead of the show. (Watch the Reboot and count how many goofy faces and amazingly physical bits he does; I'm betting you'll find it's a lot.) Inishmore is no different; after learning from his uncle that his cat Wee Thomas is sick, Padriac wails and falls to the ground and crawls off the stage; Chris fully embraced the turmoil the character is facing at that moment and backed it up with physical actions. And it was a showstopper-the actors had to pause in the scene for a moment because we in the audience were clapping and laughing so hard. And then later on, when the three terrorists are going to kill him and are dragging him outside to do it, he is struggling mightily and just jumping all around, going for it full throttle, it was awesome.
The way that Andrew described Chris in the Q&A, and it is so apt, is that his brilliance is in completely taking the reigns of the show and driving it forward like a freight train, dragging the rest of the actors along for the ride. (He is Unstoppable? Ah bad pun bad, I'm sorry!) The other actors must be willing to jump on that train and keep it going, to be certain, but he is the one that has to set the train in motion; it is his momentum that drives the play and keeps it so engrossing. Right after his death the energy on the stage completely vanishes; part of that is due to the denouement, of course, but some of it is also simply that the life force, the spark, of his character has been snuffed out, taking the spark in the rest of the characters, especially Mairead, with it.
And I loved his voice in the performance. The voice he used for Padriac was, like, a whole octave lower than his normal speaking voice; much deeper, much richer. Like Nyu said, we kinda all did double takes at first to make sure it was actually him speaking and not someone else, LOL. And his accent was just fine, the perfect stage accent. It sounded natural enough, definitely practiced until perfected and not all garbled and mangled (ie Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors), yet not overly pronounced to be all LOOK AT ME I CANZ SPEAK ALL IRISH now, so that despite sounding very good it is actually bad (Meryl Streep, as much as I love her, can at times be horribly guilty of this, and she's like the grand dame of Hollywood actresses.) Many actors, even skilled ones, are guilty of doing either of those on occasion; Chris managed to skirt around those pitfalls in his performance somehow. You notice the accent at first only because, hello, it's Chris speaking, in not his usual voice; but soon you get immersed back into the goings-ons of the play, and it completely blends in and becomes as invisible as the costumes and the set-exactly what a stage accent should be.
(Nyu pointed this out later, but we saw three sides to Chris that night: Chris Pine as Padriac, mad cat loving terrorist; the transition that took place during the curtain call for the actors where the fictitious character called Padriac disappeared and the real person that is Chris Pine began to reemerge; and Chris Pine, tired actor and real person, at the Q&A. It was definitely interesting to witness that kind of transformation for ourselves.)
THE DESIGN
Oh, and a word about the design, because I cannot help it.
The stage is an amazing feat. The main room of the uncle's house, so normal looking, is surrounded by roughly textured blocks that symbolize not only rocks or blocks of peat or whatever, but from the odd angle they are set at they signify the chaos surrounding the events unfolding in front of us. The stage brings a sense of familiarity yet also puts us on edge; we know to expect something different, that something wicked this way comes, just from one glance at the set. Very nicely done.
The props were great as well. The bodies were amazing. They were obvious stage bodies, so I could watch the scenes using them without needing to cover my hands over my eyes, yet they were realistic enough that they did not become a joke in and of themselves; every crack or snap of “bone” was cringe-inducing. Even Nyu was admittedly creeped out by the sound, LOL, and theatre magic is old hat to her.
(After Padriac and Mairead kill the three terrorists, the stage goes completely black for several seconds; when the lights come back up, the “dead” actors are gone, the bodies now in their place, and copious amounts of glossy, bright-red blood is EVERYWHERE. Padriac and Mairead are forcing their uncle and brother to chop the bodies up and properly dispose of them (ie remove their heads, hands, teeth, etc so as not to be identifiable.) The comedy comes in how nonchalantly the two hapless relatives are performing this rather gruesome task, and how they complain and bicker about it as if it is nothing more irksome than chopping wood or some other backbreaking chore. Padriac and Mairead check up on their work and give them pointers and get all critical of how sloppy a job they are doing, LOL, as if they should know better how to dispose of corpses. Why so funny scene? Because it really, really was.)
The “blood” was very visually arresting, an angry red smear on the stage, a mar on an otherwise tranquil house. The only problem I had with it was its shininess-doesn't blood coagulate and get darker and more matte looking over time? This blood did not. But it did stand out, as it needed to, so ah well, no biggie. The problem with it from an acting standpoint was that it was very, very slick; even wearing grippy boots the actors were slipping and sliding around on it as they moved. Chris almost fell on his butt one time, LOL, but he caught himself before he did. (Nyu marveled that their actor's union would ever let them do a show where they could have the potential for great physical injury; the blood did create a bit of a danger for them. But the details of that must have gotten worked out somehow in their contracts pre-production.)
(A quick word on the violence in the show. Going into the play the violence of it was all I had heard about, and so I was expected nonstop gruesomeness and horror throughout the entire thing. This was not so, and such a presumption was utterly, utterly stupid of me, in retrospect. After all, where is the drama in that? How can you expect to create a buildup to a really spectacular climax, if you generously and gratuitously splatter violence all over your play early on? McDonagh is a better playwright than that. He introduced hints of the gore and violence at the very beginning-the uncle and brother staring at the dead “Wee Thomas” and holding his little body up, his brains falling out onto the kitchen table with a rather horrible smack-and then lets things slowly build so that the carnage at the end means something, that we are not already desensitized to it. Very, very nicely crafted. When audience members left, upset over the violence, LOL, most of them left during the chopping up of the bodies scene. The producer guy in the Q&A said he actually carries it as a badge of honor, that people are so upset over the violence they leave; that means he and the rest of the people involved in the show did their job. To those audience members I say, I sympathize, but if *I* can make it through, than anyone should be able to. Suck it up people!)
And Nyu had no complaints about the costumes whatsoever; she said all of them fit the personalities of their characters very well. If you know her like I do, you know just how high a compliment that is; she finds things about costumes to nitpick and criticize like it is her job (because it actually is, LOL.) Chris looked, um, very nice with his gunholsters and wonderfully fitting clothes, and that's all I'm going to say on that subject before I embarrass myself, hah.
And I liked the graphic design of the production materials (posters, program, web banners, etc.) The blocks of red on the pieces mimic the shape of the blocks on the stage, which I though was brilliant, and the lettering and the style of everything emphasizes the insanity and craziness that is in store. And putting both Padriac and Mairead in all of the main photos for the design was a nice touch. As someone who did not know the story of the play beforehand, showcasing them in the designs seemed like such a benign, even cliche choice; ah, how nice, the lead and his romantic interest together holding guns, blahblahblah. But in actuality, in the play, after Padriac's death MAIREAD takes on the title of the Lieutenant of Inishmore; the title of the play refers not just to Padriac but to Mairead as well. Because of this the idea of them both being the centerpiece of the designs not only makes sense, but it is almost imperative. Very nicely done.
THE Q & A
One of the producers, I believe, conducted the Q&A. As people left and those remaining for the Q&A settled in the front half of the seats, we decided it would be best for the three of us to sit in the front of the back half of the seats, in the second row, and so we moved there. Imagine our delight when he comes out and tells everyone that because of the immense cleanup needed for the show, those in the front half need to move to the back half! So we had prime seats. :D As the producer began taking questions, the actors began sporadically filing in; we applauded each actor as they emerged. They all wandered into the seats in the front half of the theatre, leaning against the backs of the chairs to face us for the Q&A. The three young actors all congregated over on the stage right side of the theatre, and the three others, coincidentally the Irish ones, all congregated by us on the stage left side.
Sean G Griffin (Donny, the uncle), had a scratch on his nose that he was trying to get to stop bleeding. At the end of the play, after the live cat walks out and begins eating his food, Sean is supposed to pick up the cat from its perch and hold it in his arms. Well, that night the cat had NOT wanted to come down from its perch, it just wanted to eat, so he had to fight with it for a bit to get it down, LOL. And apparently it scratched him on the nose while he was doing that. (There was some joking about how that was the only real blood onstage, ironic considering how much stage blood there was OMG.)
While we were doing the Q&A, the backstage hands had the stunt cat come out and practice eating the food. (All the cats used in the show are shelter cats, and will be adopted after the run of the show is over.) They also cleaned up the set; they set up tall boards around the main living room larea, forming a giant square pen around the main stage, wore hazmat suits, and just power hosed all the blood down. ;) Apparently they renovated the theatre a few years ago and installed a central drain under the stage; this is the first production to take use of that. It was fun to watch all of that go down in front of us.
Nyu got a question in, asking about the corpses used in the show, because she was utterly fascinated at how they were constructed. (She has been a props artisan all summer.) He said that they were done by Matthew Mungle, who once worked at the Taper forum as a prop man and now does the bodies for CSI. Inishmore presented a unique challenge for him, because he is used to doing props you dispose of after an hour, whereas these bodies had to be durable enough for 100+ shows. The bodies were made to specs, the faces of the actors cast, with bendable joints. The pieces of the bodies that separate during the show, such as the heads, spines, etc are connected to the body via wooden dowels, which the actors then saw through. They tested a number of dowels, from pine to locust wood, and finally settled on red oak as it is a good wood to saw through-not too soft, not too hard-and provides a satisfying, creepy crack that sounds like bones snapping. (And oh, does it ever, yikes.)
The blood used is soap based, so it is easy to wash and nontoxic (I cannot remember what Kevin said it tasted like; at this point Chris had come out, I think, and I was a bit distracted, LOL).
None of the actors used mikes; except for the musicals they never mike any of the shows there.
Someone asked an interesting question about how the play had been received in its motherland; Andrew Connolly took the question. (Andrew had been in the original Broadway production of Inishmore, and it seemed like he was the ringleader of the actors. He fielded the most questions during the Q&A, and the others seemed happy enough to let him.) He said that he did Cripple of Inishmaan to sold out houses, so there is a definite interest over there, but that it is hard to get mainstream approval in the country for Irish playwrights. That in general, the Irish wait for everyone else around them to give their approval before they acknowledge it themselves. Both O'Casey and Synge had the same problem as Martin, in getting approval; in O'Casey's case, they refused to do his show at the Abbey. He was so upset that he left Ireland and never came back.
Kevin Kearns was still in HS when the play started, he had tutors and all that. Someone was interested in how he balanced his schoolwork with being in the show. Again I was not paying close attention and taking careful notes because Chris had just come out, gaaaah I fail.
You will, of course, want to know about Chris perhaps? :D He came out well after all the others, freshly showered (all that blood, yikes) with his hair slicked back, and wearing a black/beige plaid shirt with hints of green, and these gorgeous dark jeans that looked like he had been poured into them; I kept staring at his gorgeous thighs throughout the Q&A, gah, horrible person that I am. He entered on the Irish actors' side, stage left, RIGHT BY US, and stayed there the whole time, pretty much directly in front of us, only a few feet away. :D He was drinking a large bottle of Smart Water the whole time (of course, as he is married to the stuff.) The first thing he did when he got settled was that lip licking thing of his, ahaha my night made right there, like it wasn't already from the play alone.
What was he like during the Q&A? He was pretty much the same as every other report of him I have heard. He was gorgeous, but looked so, so tired and very, very lean. (The role of Padriac does not require the actor to bulk up, so it is okay to be a bit wiry looking.) He yawned periodically throughout the Q&A, didn't really look at anyone in the audience, definitely looked like he would rather be anywhere else than with us. In contrast to this all of his costars seemed more energetic, and looked at and engaged themselves more with the audience. At one point he literally turned his back to us to sit in the chairs the correct way; no other way to read that kind of body language except as a not-so-subtle I WANT TO LEAVE NOW, WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING. It wasn't personal, obviously, but it was kind of disappointing.
During an early portion of the Q&A, after he had first come out, Zoe Perry (Mairead), looked over towards him with, I could have sworn, concern in her eyes. She could have been staring at Andrew, I suppose, as he was in the middle of answering a question, but it definitely looked like she was staring at Chris. It was hard to tell though. Right after that one of her fellow actors motioned for her to come sit by them, and she did, and they put their arm around her-like they were consoling her, circling the wagons? I am probably reading too much into this.
He was very friendly with Andrew, when he felt up to having some energy and engaging somebody. They were right next to each other, and would joke and talk quietly, looking like very comfortable friends. Andrew, from what I could see, seems like the perfect, consummate grizzled theatre veteran; here's hoping some of that rubs off onto Chris. The masterclass on how to schmooze with your audience did not take, obviously, but I'm sure Chris learned a lot of other great things from him.
I kinda wanted to, at some points during the Q&A, just shake Chris and be all, look, your fellow actors are no doubt tired too, but if they can get their acts together and talk to an audience that just paid to see them for a few minutes so can you! Especially because the stage vets are behaving marvelously and do not find this beneath them, so you should follow their example. Suck it up and be a man, man! But In his defense I will say this; he is the driving force of the show, and it is his energy that everyone else feeds off of. That has to be draining, and daunting, to have that pressure on you, especially when as an actor you are still relatively young; he is not quite thirty yet, after all. I would have folded like a house of cards at the mere idea of trying to achieve what he did in his performance. So yeah, I do understand the being tired thing and the so not wanting to be there thing. But please bb, you had better learn to handle this kind of thing, as it is part and parcel of being an actor, or life, no matter how talented you indeed are, it WILL be tough for you. (I still love him though, don't get me wrong. It is just ironic that, as someone whose profession is acting, he seems to wear his IRL emotions on his sleeve and is unable to BS his way through the simplest of things. So, so strange.)
The only question asked directly to Chris was if he had seen the play when it was on Broadway; his answer was, and I quote, "No, Thank God." Everyone laughed; the sincerity of his answer was so blatant. Andrew went on to say (and since he was in the original Broadway cast he can be considered an expert, yes yes?) that the original Broadway performance was much heavier, and in contrast this one has much more energy to it. There is a definite difference to both productions in his mind. (I cannot imagine this show being done heavily, OMG; I think that would be awful to witness. The levity and momentum in the version we saw made the ruthlessness of the play easier to swallow. So thank you, LA cast, for making it energetic and awesome!)
They discussed the luxury of the play, that it allows all the characters, even the supposedly secondary ones, to develop and grow during the performance, which the actors all loved.
Someone asked if Irishman really are mad for cats. :D The Irish actors answered and said no, PIGS, LOL, but that having a pig come out would be very awkward. :)
For the show they had three weeks of rehearsals, rather short, and then a week of previews, working around eight hours a day. (Though I am guessing the hours worked by the behind the scenes crew was much longer, LOL, it always is.)
THE DRIVE BY TOOLBAG DEBACLE
So, a great night of theatre, lots of energy on stage and in the audience, a great Q&A session, and no crazy questions by crazy fangirls directed at Chris so he was pretty much left alone, which he obviously wanted. A great ending to a perfect evening, right?
Oh look at you, so naive. The real world is never, ever that kind.
Because there was one question left to be asked, which, for me, ended up being far more horrific than anything that had been performed onstage.
So there was this nice looking little old lady in the row directly in front of us that had been patiently raising her hand for a good portion of the Q&A session. When they finally smiled at her and indicated that she could ask her question, she prefaced it by saying, "I saw Inishmore twice in New York..."
That right there should have been our first clue that this was not going to end well. (Nyu said HER first clue was that the lady sounded exactly like one of her old theatre professors that was absolutely crazy, LOL.) Casually dropping in that you have seen a show? Never leads to anything good. (Even the producer and Andrew knew it; especially from Andrew's face you could tell that he was thinking, OH REALLY, and wondering where she was going with this.)
Anyway, it goes downhill from there.
"I saw Inishmore twice In New York...and the actors in this performance don't have as good of accents as the ones in New York did. Can you tell me if this was a directorial choice, and if not why they didn't hire Irish actors to play the parts?"
D:
WHUT, SHE DID NOT JUST SAY THAT. SHE. DID. NOT. No way. But she had, OMG OMG OMG she had.
Again, just like with the awful question at the Eddie Izzard Q&A, everyone in the audience was stunned. Just completely flabbergasted. Nyu, L_T and I were completely hating life right then; in less than 48 hours we had witnessed not one, but two horrific drive-by toolbaggings, the sort of which no one should ever have to experience. Is there something in the water on the West Coast? Had all the smog from the fires north of LA somehow coagulated people's brains and made them say really stupid things? How is such a thing even possible?
Someone, probably the producer, in an attempt to somehow rationally answer her ridiculous question, said that the American union in LA does not allow the theatre to hire foreign actors unless they have a green card; thems the rules. So it limits how many Irish actors they can potentially hire. (He was being very, very kind, I thought, in trying to give her an objective answer. He earned his paycheck right there, no lie.)
The three Irish actors, bless their hearts, were all, um, well, WE'RE IRISH, and we think their accents are great. (Loud, loud applause from the audience at that, to show that we completely agreed with them.) And she, in a voice of sweetness and light, was all Oh I could tell YOU were, it was obvious", just digging in the knife a little bit more.
I could not believe this woman. At all. For someone who has obviously seen good theatre before at amazing venues and acts like she is all sophisticated, how could she not see just how uncouth, how completely unforgivable her question was? It baffled me, it still does even three weeks later. Had she not seen the same performance I just had? Had something about its brilliance escaped her? Or was she just one of those kind of crazy people who feel a need to tear others down to make herself feel superior, at the expense of the feelings and hard work of the gifted young actors who had just put on a rather amazing performance, one that was totally lost on the likes of her?
(For the record, I think that the latter is the most true.)
Do not get me wrong; she is completely entitled to her opinion that the accents were atrocious, just as I am entitled to my opinion that Meryl Streep, at times, overdoes her accents. I don't believe in shaming people for having ideas that differ from mine, I don't believe in unleashing the thought police on people or anything like that. Having the opinion that she did does not make her a bad person. What DOES make her a bad person is that she used her opinion to hurt others and be utterly disrespectful. Despite my opinion about Meryl, I respect her as a great actress, and would never, in a million years, if given the opportunity, snidely tell her my opinion about her accents in such a public, intimate venue. Is the golden rule really that dead, to be abused by an elderly woman who should know better in such a manner? It was disheartening to see.
(That is the end of Reezoo soapbox time; thank you for your attention.)
Through all of this insanity you could see Chris just completely shutting down; you could practically hear him retreating within himself, and it was so heartbreaking to watch. Because it really did feel like she was singling HIM out over everyone else, that her comments were directed right at him like a well aimed gun at point blank range. Which, considering how brilliant his performance was and how much I had been impressed by his accent, was so, so unfair.
It was insulting, it was rude. It also showed a lack of wordliness on her part, as a lot of what people consider to be correct Irish accents are just gross caricatures of the real thing. Just like anywhere else, the Irish have dialects, and not all Irish sound the same. How does she not know that and infer that maybe her hear, not that of the actors, is off? How does she not, ironically, realize that her comment makes her sound rather ignorant?
It was also an insult to the rest of the people involved in the production, not the least of which is Carla Meyer, the dialect coach, whose resume is long and quite impressive.
Someone in the audience, in an attempt to be supportive of the actors, just made things worse by being snide and telling the rude lady to be quiet and causing even more of a ruckus; he became just as bit a tool as she was. It devolved quickly from that point, and Andrew, I believe, took over and wrapped the Q&A up, thanked us for staying, we clapped for the actors, and made our way to the exits.
As we were getting up to leave, the awful lady with the awful question looked up at us and commented to no one in particular, "Well, I'd better get out of here before I get stoned," and had the gall to LAUGH about it. In my mind I am going, YES, YES YOU SHOULD.
The only saving grace for all of that rudeness was that, luckily, there was a group of older people in the audience that knew Chris; he had sort of pointed to them and acknowledged them in the audience during the curtain call. (Relatives? Family friends? Old teachers? All three?) He went over to them after the Q&A, and they hugged him and talked with him. At seeing them he seemed to light up a bit again; genuine smiles came to his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and he seemed much, much happier. It was nice to see that people he genuinely cared for were there for him, especially after that disastrous comment-like a human palate cleanser. As I was shuffling out of the theatre, past their group, very careful not to make eye contact or do anything stupid, I didn't mean to but I heard a smidge of their conversation. A lovely older lady that he knew (nothing like the horrible lady) told him he had been just marvelous, THANK GOODNESS. I could have hugged her. LISTEN TO HER CHRIS BECAUSE YOU WERE. They asked what he was going to do once the show was over and he said that right after the show he was going on vacation. (Good on him, boy has earned it.) And that was when I left the theatre, so I didn't hear any more. I was on my best fangirl behavior; his night was bad enough, no need to make it any worse. Luckily everyone else seemed to also be trying to give him privacy; no one went up to him bugging him for autographs or anything, at least not that I saw. Look at us, such a good audience! (With a few obvious exceptions of course.)
Apparently Nyu and L_T were near the awful lady outside the theatre, waiting for me as I had gotten separated from them in the shuffle, when another patron came up to her and said, "Just so you know, what you said was really rude." She kind of laughed it off, gah, but the patron was not having any of it and said, "NO, IT WAS REALLY RUDE", driving the point home.
(Thank you wonderful patron lady, thank you, I think I love you. Approrpiate, non-toolbaggy public shaming FTW.)
We did not stay after to see if Chris or the other cast members would come out and sign autographs or do any of that craziness; we were all tired, and crazy lady had drained us. We just got into our cute little rental car and made the trek back to our hotel. To cleanse OUR palettes we stopped by House of Pies first, yum yum. A sweet ending to a sweet, with the tiniest hint of sour, evening.
So yeah, one of the best trips EVER. Congrats LA, you didn't suck after all. ;) (Though I still hate the Katy Perry song singing your praises with the passion of a thousand tiny paper cuts.)
Bonus travel tip: In booking plane tickets to LA, if you can, FLY INTO LONG BEACH (LJB), avoid LAX like the plague that it is. It is the cutest little airport and no hassle at all; with its picturesque front and tiny shuttle planes, it felt like we were being whisked back to that magical time when people dressed up in heels and pearls to get on a plane, and they still served hot meals with real silverware, forreals. Plus our Enterprise lady was the nicest lady I have EVER dealt with in all my years of renting cars, OMG I loved her; the perfect beginning to an amazing trip. (We got to pick our car and chose a hot little red number, yay! So sporty, so cute. But I was the driver and am tall so, oh, my knees hated me by the end.)
I planned a ridiculous amount of time for us to travel to the airport for our return flight, because of my horrific memories of LAX, but it was all so unnecessary. Returning our rental car could not have been easier-you just hand it off to the agents and walk the super short distance back to the airport-and checking in and getting through security was a breeze. YES, YOU HEARD ME RIGHT. Maybe it was travel karma-I have been that passenger waiting in the LAX security line for what feels like forever, about to miss my flight and cursing the world, so maybe I was due an easy check-in for once-or maybe it is just that the Long Beach airport is fab. Whatever it was, huzzah!
The only prob we faced was that because of lightning storms in space in SLC, our flight was delayed, but still it's only a two hour flight, and we made it through just fine. Seeing the storm through the windows of the plane, with the dying sunset streaking everything red, was seriously one of the coolest things I have ever see. (Nyu: "It is like we are descending into Mordor! Me: "I know, right?" Gah we are dorks.)
The one truly large bummer of the trip: we want to go see Angels in America with ZQ over Thanksgiving weekend, and the first day they went on sale was during our trip. No prob, I picked out a hotel with free wifi, we're golden, right? WRONG. First, neither of our Macs could connect with it, boo, so internet ticket buying was out. (I hate you hotel.) So I woke a little before 7 (box office opened at 10 in NY) and called the ticket office on my cell like mad, for over an hour. No luck. I got L_T into calling as well, no luck. I finally gave up and got ready for the day, and tried again; this time I got someone! Only to have them tell me the dates we wanted (Sunday before Thanksgiving, matinee and evening performances) are all gone, unless we want to pay like $150 a ticket for prime tickets? D: WHAT IS THIS RIDICULOUSNESS. I'm sorry, I love ZQ and want to see the play live, but I am NOT shelling out that much PER TICKET to make that happen, no way. So it looks like during our trip to NY this fall we will be doing the waitlist thing to see the play, gah. It is karma for seeing Eddie AND Chris I think; too much of a good thing means no ZQ in my life. WE SHALL WAIT AND SEE. And if anyone else is in NY over that week, hollah at me so we can arrange to maybe meet, LOL!
THANK YOU FOR READING! Gold stars for you for making it through this, gah.