Waiting for Godot and A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder
I really want to make notes about these two shows before I'm too much farther away from the trip to New York City. I did promise to write about them.
Waiting for Godot
On the Wednesday afternoon that we were in NYC, we went to see Waiting for Godot, starring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, with Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley. Now, Becket is tough stuff to take--hard work to interpret, hard to sit through if done poorly. I remember reading Godot in school and being left with not much of a positive impression. As has been bruited about in the press, the director took a comic approach to the script so, despite the ruins on stage both human and architectural (the set looked like an abandoned demolition site, with bits of random architectural detail; Vladimir and Estragon looked like a couple of homeless men with a Chaplinesque character about them), there was a lot of humor in the production. Mostly the humor comes from the absurdity, as Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot who will, it is expected, make some kind of change. (In fact, the idea of waiting for Mr. Godot becomes a punchline because, really, the endless waiting is enough to drive anyone crazy.) While Estragon complains about his poorly fitting shoes and Vladimir coddles his poor, unhappy friend, they encounter Pozzo and Lucky--and the moment they do, the metaphors come thick and fast: God's relationship to Man, the relationship between the rich and the poor, and so on.
As davidlevine said, it's a terrible script; what makes it work is the business that the actors and the director bring to it (video clip)--the soft touch, the comic approach, the recognition of and the humor in the absurdity of life. Very Shakespearean in this respect. The only thing that makes any of it bearable for Didi and Gogo is each other's company and affection. And for me, that was the point: life may be pointless, but we're in it together and together we can make it meaningful.
Stewart and McKellan are having a marvelous time on stage--two veteran actors having fun being showmen. There's a lot of wordless physical comedy here. Stewart in particular mugs and shrugs and double-takes his way across the stage. McKellan spends his time being entertainingly bewildered and miserable. As Pozzo and Lucky, Hensley and Crudup respectively bring strong performances to the mix. I found the relationship between the two characters pretty hard to take. They are there to illustrate man's inhumanity to man (and all the other metaphors I mentioned above), and they make their point--excellent performances both. But Stewart and McKellan are the draw here and they were totally worth seeing. The play was funny, layered but in the end inescapably dark. Still--because of its performers and direction--an excellent afternoon.
As Stewart and McKellan said goodbye to New York City at the end of their run, they tweeted some last pics of themselves around town. The set is delightful.
In a separate post, I want to talk about the relationship between Pippin and Waiting for Godot. I've thought about it quite a bit. It's there, if you look for it.
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder
One of the things I really wanted to do this trip was see a show I'd heard nothing about from friends. This show fulfilled that desire. The reviews were all good. Turned out that this musical was a kind of a caper, based on the same source material as Kind Hearts and Coronets. Set in Victorian-era London, it follows the adventures of one Monty Navarro who, it turns out, is 9th in line to the D'Ysquith family fortune and earldom. In revenge for the family's miserable treatment of his mother, Monty murders his way to the title, beguiling his new family, philandering his way between two women and having the time of his life. The perfect word for this show is that it's a romp; the New York Times called it daffy, and I can't argue with that assessment. I laughed my head off.
Its true star is virtuoso Jefferson Mays, who plays most of the members of the family D'Ysquith, men and women both, in a performance that makes him the hardest-working and the funniest man on Broadway. Bryce Pinkham as Navarro is by turns charming and dastardly. The two leading women, Lisa O'Hare as Sibella and Lauren Worsham as Phoebe, bring marvelous operetta voices to their roles, both with excellent comic timing--completely delightful each in their own very different ways. The show was a lot of fun, a light, merry diversion and a great choice for a final show to see during that week.
Waiting for Godot
On the Wednesday afternoon that we were in NYC, we went to see Waiting for Godot, starring Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, with Billy Crudup and Shuler Hensley. Now, Becket is tough stuff to take--hard work to interpret, hard to sit through if done poorly. I remember reading Godot in school and being left with not much of a positive impression. As has been bruited about in the press, the director took a comic approach to the script so, despite the ruins on stage both human and architectural (the set looked like an abandoned demolition site, with bits of random architectural detail; Vladimir and Estragon looked like a couple of homeless men with a Chaplinesque character about them), there was a lot of humor in the production. Mostly the humor comes from the absurdity, as Vladimir and Estragon wait for Godot who will, it is expected, make some kind of change. (In fact, the idea of waiting for Mr. Godot becomes a punchline because, really, the endless waiting is enough to drive anyone crazy.) While Estragon complains about his poorly fitting shoes and Vladimir coddles his poor, unhappy friend, they encounter Pozzo and Lucky--and the moment they do, the metaphors come thick and fast: God's relationship to Man, the relationship between the rich and the poor, and so on.
As davidlevine said, it's a terrible script; what makes it work is the business that the actors and the director bring to it (video clip)--the soft touch, the comic approach, the recognition of and the humor in the absurdity of life. Very Shakespearean in this respect. The only thing that makes any of it bearable for Didi and Gogo is each other's company and affection. And for me, that was the point: life may be pointless, but we're in it together and together we can make it meaningful.
Stewart and McKellan are having a marvelous time on stage--two veteran actors having fun being showmen. There's a lot of wordless physical comedy here. Stewart in particular mugs and shrugs and double-takes his way across the stage. McKellan spends his time being entertainingly bewildered and miserable. As Pozzo and Lucky, Hensley and Crudup respectively bring strong performances to the mix. I found the relationship between the two characters pretty hard to take. They are there to illustrate man's inhumanity to man (and all the other metaphors I mentioned above), and they make their point--excellent performances both. But Stewart and McKellan are the draw here and they were totally worth seeing. The play was funny, layered but in the end inescapably dark. Still--because of its performers and direction--an excellent afternoon.
As Stewart and McKellan said goodbye to New York City at the end of their run, they tweeted some last pics of themselves around town. The set is delightful.
In a separate post, I want to talk about the relationship between Pippin and Waiting for Godot. I've thought about it quite a bit. It's there, if you look for it.
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder
One of the things I really wanted to do this trip was see a show I'd heard nothing about from friends. This show fulfilled that desire. The reviews were all good. Turned out that this musical was a kind of a caper, based on the same source material as Kind Hearts and Coronets. Set in Victorian-era London, it follows the adventures of one Monty Navarro who, it turns out, is 9th in line to the D'Ysquith family fortune and earldom. In revenge for the family's miserable treatment of his mother, Monty murders his way to the title, beguiling his new family, philandering his way between two women and having the time of his life. The perfect word for this show is that it's a romp; the New York Times called it daffy, and I can't argue with that assessment. I laughed my head off.
Its true star is virtuoso Jefferson Mays, who plays most of the members of the family D'Ysquith, men and women both, in a performance that makes him the hardest-working and the funniest man on Broadway. Bryce Pinkham as Navarro is by turns charming and dastardly. The two leading women, Lisa O'Hare as Sibella and Lauren Worsham as Phoebe, bring marvelous operetta voices to their roles, both with excellent comic timing--completely delightful each in their own very different ways. The show was a lot of fun, a light, merry diversion and a great choice for a final show to see during that week.