In 'Stage Door' we share our live theater adventures...
Hugh Dancy & Ben Whishaw in "The Pride" back in 2011
If you noticed the blog was far from fruitful this past week in the posting it's because I was in Chicago visiting Nick and Tim. Nick and I took in the play "The Pride" on its closing weekend in the Windy City. His partner had worked on it as dramaturg and Nick thought I'd like it. He was right...
I must have just forgotten about this play because The Pride has been keeping a fairly high profile since its debut in 2008: Hugh Dancy and Ben Whishaw played the troubled lovers on the New York stage in 2011 (those two sure do play a lot of gays); I saw it in Chicago in 2013; and it's getting a UK revival starring Hayley Atwell in the female role (each actor plays at least two characters with the female role arguably shape-shifting the most) which starts performances next week at Trafalgar Studios. The new production co-stars popular British TV star Matthew Horne (Gavin & Stacey) in a tripled supporting role and Harry Hadden-Paton (The Deep Blue Sea) and Al Weaver (Marie Antoinette) as the lovers. The play by Alexi Kaye Campbell charts the changing social mores surrounding homosexuality not from a broad perspective but through time travel and intimacy, charting the mirrored troubled affair of two young men Philip and Oliver in both the 1950s (when Philip is married and both are closeted) and in the now (when they're out gay men with an on & off again romance -- off again mostly due to Oliver's sexual promiscuity). The Pride reminds yet again that all politics is personal, since you can feel the weight of external societal prejudices and rules and how the shifting condemnations, tolerance and acceptance affects the character of the men.
Since I knew someone on the inside it was fun to hear stories of which movies they made the Chicago cast and crew watch to get the British cadences (thought I've forgotten which already!) as well as the 50s melodrama tone (there was obviously some borrowing from Far From Heaven). And, as ever, I'm amazed by actors who can nail big long scenes and cap them with a streaming teardrop at the most precise and perfect moment imaginable in the scene which is what Patrick Andrews who played Oliver (and is a member of the queer synth-pop band Baathhaus) did in my favorite scene. I was in the front row and it was like watching a particularly great closeup in a movie.
John Francisco, Patrick Andrews and Jessie Fisher in the Chicago production
Are any of you UK readers planning to see the new production? Did anyone see the Dancy & Whishaw version in New York a couple of years ago?
I also recently saw "The Explorer's Club" at Manhattan Theater Club. It's a Victorian-era comedy about the titular club and the chaos that ensues when one of them proposes a female explorer, Phyllida (Jennifer Westfeldt, of Kissing Jessica Stein and Jon Hamm's other-half fame) for membership. She's earned a place as the discoverer of the NaKong Tribe of the Lost City of Pahatlabong. I kept waiting for everything to click and for the hilarity to escalate but mostly it stays at about the same level of funny once it gets past the complicated set-up stage. Since that level of funny is just fine -- I laughed a lot - I recommend it (though you'll have to hurry since it closes on August 4th) even if I admit I was hoping for some body-shaking guffaws in addition to the LOLs and the comic payoff of a deadly plant whose effects are described in a "wait for it!" punchline set-up kind of way, wasn't all it could have been. I think the problem is I compare every stage farce to the gold standard of Noises Off but that's unfair. That's like comparing every drama to Casablanca or The Godfather or something!
Carson Elrod and Jennifer Westfeldt in "The Explorers Club"
Lorenzo Pisoni is beautifully sweet and bumbling as the most progressive explorer and I also adored David Furr as the cocky chauvinist Sir Harry Percy but my MVP prize goes to Carson Elrod who plays the painted warrior "Luigi" that Phyllida has brought to England with her. It might be a one note role but then what kind of role isn't in slapstick farces? He attacks it with full committed physicality and comic zeal. Even behind the bar, where his character ends up in a stupid-fun plot turn, with only half of his body to work with, he sells it superbly. (I can't imagine the blocking, choreography, and rehearsal time that went in to the big laughs the cast gets dealing with his insane bartending skills!)
If you're in the mood for silly, it's the smart choice this week on stage.
What's the last thing you saw live? Have any recommendations for us?