Oh Mamma....

Mamma Mia – here we go again? I know that I am late to the Mamma Mia party; it’s been an international hit for years and somehow I am just now getting around to seeing it. I have nothing against ABBA and I love jukebox musicals, so this should be something that I really enjoy.

(Before I get started, if you want to read my official review click here)

And yet…there was something missing. What was it……?

Oh yes, a plot and dialogue.

Are those important?

The plot is this: Sophie is getting married and wants her Dad to walk her down the aisle. Except, according to her Mom’s diary from the year before she was born, that could be one of three men. So Sophie invites all three of them to the wedding because she will just “know” when she meets her Dad. Throw in two old band mates of her Mom’s, who naturally when they get together, put on their old costumes and sing their old songs (I can’t find too much fault in this as I can’t imagine this being a huge stretch for me and my friends, and we weren’t even in a band).

The dialogue consists of things such as this:
''I'm old enough to be your mother.''
''You can call me Oedipus.''
Cue song

Every line seems to be a cue for another song. Some of which, are distressingly out of context. As the person I went to the show with said afterwards,” If you are gong to use pop culture in a show then you must acknowledge that the audience knows the context of the song. So having her sing what is a love song to one of her potential Dad’s is a bit off putting”.

Agreed – You could argue that the song works in the context of the show, but if you listen to the words and realize it s a love song then it’s back to being creepy. And since there is so little meaningful dialogue (see above) the audience has no choice but to listen to the words of the song. It’s a vicious circle.

The choreography is, I suppose, designed to look like anyone from the audience could run up on stage and join in. To help show that each number is really a spontaneous expression of the characters about what is happening in the moment. Except, some of it I can do and no one is going to pay to see me dance. These people on stage are professional dancers, please; lets give them something interesting to do (and watch).

Then, there are the scuba themed dance numbers. Yes, I said numbers, as in plural.

I’ll wait while that sinks in

WTF?? Really? Someone thought that what the world needed was not one, but two scuba themed dance numbers? Accented in bright neon colors?

There’s a story that Kevin Smith the filmmaker tells about how he joined a movie to write the script and all the director could talk about is having the main character fight a giant mechanical spider. While Smith argued that it made no sense and couldn’t figure out how to add it in a coherent manner, and as things spiraled out of control, the director steadfastly demanded his mechanical spider. Eventually the film wasn’t made, but in the very next film this director made there was a giant mechanical spider. I feel like this can be the only plausible explanation for these scuba themed dance numbers. They had to be the dream of someone, who, come hell or high water, wanted two scuba themed dance numbers damnit!

Notice that I am not talking about the performances, that’s because they were very entertaining and talented. They made this crazy show more than the sum of its parts.

In the end, I did like the overall message of the show (albeit it didn’t arrive until the second to last line of the show) that there are “all kinds of families”.

While I loved the music (at over 20 songs, there was a lot of music), the performances and even the very small side plots, overall I think I’m not going there again.

Tell Me on a Sunday: Who to you go with to the theatre?

Tell Me on a Sunday: People…who go to theatre with other People…

Are the luckiest peeeeoople….

Sorry, I got Barbara stuck in my head there for a moment.

Right, so you may have noticed that I have not had a chance to write a whole lot lately, yeah, sorry about that.

It’s not that I didn’t want to write; I just literally had no free time in which to write. Hopefully the crazy that has kept me spinning will slow so I can get get in some blog time!

All righty then, enough with the chitchat here is todays Tell me on a Sunday question: With whom do you like to attend theatre? Is there a specific person? Why or why not?

I love to attend theatre with all of my friends, because they always notice something that I don’t, they interpret something differently than I do and are super interesting to do the post show chat with. (Also all of my friends are super interesting, hence their super interesting commentary) Not all of my friends are theatre people, and that’s fine with me. I don’t need you to know anything or everything about theatre to go with me; you just have to want to go (I’m easy like that).

But the person that always gets first pick of show tickets, whether she wants them or not, is my Mom. I love going to the theatre with my Mom. The things she notices and the way she comments on them always interest me. She likes theatre, but she didn’t study it. When I got into theatre she helped with song choices, rehearsals and even getting my hair dyed black (Thanks King and I).

I remember attending Les Miserables with my Mom. We had pretty good seats and were very interested since everyone and their Mother had told us that it was the BEST SHOW EVER. Apparently neither of us though that because once intermission arrived my Mom turned to me and said, “Did you see those pockets on his jacket? Beautiful!” I laughed because; in fact the show had such little pull for me that I was also looking at the seaming on this characters jacket (it was beautiful, and infinitely better than the show)

Another time were watching Jekyll and Hyde and as the show was going on she said,” The lighting on the ground is fantastic”. Since I had been watching the characters I had neglected to even notice that they had lit the floor to look like cobblestones and then change to tile depending on where the characters were going. (I was in high school then, I notice lighting now, I promise)

After every show we break down everything we just saw, from the performances to the sets, costumes and plot. We debate whether things that stuck with us are directing choices, acting choices or were specified in the script. We try to imagine how hard it must be to wear that ridiculous outfit or dance in those heels. Sometimes I love something that she couldn’t stand, sometimes we both gush but each over a different aspect of the show. Sometimes we go back at the end of a run to see how something has changed and debate all over again.

Yes, it is possible that I think my Mom is a theatre whiz because we find the same things funny, the same things annoying and both love a happy musical…but more than that I love having this to share with her, especially since she’s the one that helped make me into this theatre crazed person I am today. I guess it’s up to you if that something we should thank her for or not.

Happy Mother’s Day to the bestest theatre Mom I know.

So whom do you like to go with to the theatre? Why do you like going with them? I look forward to reading your responses!

Blind Faith

My good friend Bibliophile Girl is an awesome writer (you do follow her blogs, yes?... yes) and when she told me that she had an idea for a blog post I didn't even hesitate to say," Write it!"

Here she goes:

I have been honored with a request to guest post here on Theatrophile, and I hope that I do this blog justice. J

Let’s start off with an admission, shall we? I am not here to review “Rock of Ages” (EM here- that review is coming later- back to her post). Heck, I’m not even here to tell you about how we managed to find the only cab driver working in San Francisco who didn’t know what (or where) the Curran Theatre was. I am here to write about the concept of Blind Faith.

As I am sure that most of you have surmised by now, EM is a rabid theater attendee. But even behind Thursday’s Thesaurus, Tell Me on a Sunday, and other random features like her talking about overrated musicals and such…there is a true student of theater. And the student within EM…has fantastic taste in shows.

Case in point:

She and I had made plans to meet up in San Francisco, where we were both covering WonderCon for our respective gigs writing for Examiner.com (she as the San Diego Theater Examiner, I as the San Jose Book Examiner). Whenever we meet up, we end up doing something fun. We aren’t generally the “let’s-go-see-a-movie” types (No, we're the lets spend a bunch of $ types - EM), it usually manifests in a whole host of possibilities. This was no different.

While I was at work this week, I got an email the night she arrived in town. Here’s the title of her email: “Rock of Ages – Muy Importante – Open Me Now!”. So I opened the email – it was muy importante after all – and here’s what she said:

hi,

ok, so Im not sure what day or time you are able to come up here but Rock of Ages is playing up here and I really really want to see it. It runs 2 1/2 hours and they have a few options

They have shows on friday night and Saturday night at 8pm at the Curran Theatre. If you're not interested I totally understand, but I may go by myself.

If you are interested tell me which day and I'll buy tix ASAP

Notice that there isn’t exactly an explanation of what kind of show…just that it’s a show she would like to see. Sure, it was playing at a premier theatre in San Francisco. However, I once saw Robin Williams perform at the Curran. So, it could have easily been a concert-like show.

In any case, I didn’t give it that much thought. Hell, I didn’t even bother looking it up online. All I needed to see was “show” and “I really really want to see it”. I replied to her via Google chat – basically “go ahead and do it, 8pm Sat, I’m IN”.

I tell my husband about it, to which he says something like “Now what is this show you’re seeing?”…I replied….”Oh I don’t know, I think it’s a concert". I admitted to EM before our ill-fated cab ride that I had no idea what it was that we were going to see. She did a search on Google so she could accurately describe it, and sure enough, it was a musical.

Well we went to see it Saturday night as planned. It was an awesome show. So, so much fun. Oddly enough, my original supposition that it was a concert was not all that far off. :)

But I made my decision on two factors:

1. When it comes to shows, she generally knows what she’s talking about.

2. She thought it was a good idea to see it.

That was all I needed.

And that, dear readers, is what Blind Faith is.

Comics and theatre..unlikely allies

I am currently at a comic book convention in San Francisco. This may seem like a departure from theatre related things, but it’s really not. Theatre and comics have a lot more in common than you might think.

Do you know how many Broadway actors are in comic book related shows? Hugh Jackman played Wolverine (both in "Wolverine" and in all the "X-Men" movies), Liev Schrieber played Sabertooth in "Wolverine", Peter Sarsgaard will play the villain Hector Hammond along side fellow Broadway alums Angela Bassett and Geoffery Rush in the soon to be released “Green Lantern" movie. Three of those names have won Tony Awards and the other two have been nominated for them!

Spiderman: Turn off the Dark is playing on Broadway (don’t let the 5th push back of the official opening date sway your feelings on it's comic book origins) Warner Bros. and DC Comics are currently in process of creating Batman Live a stage spectacular touring production and every year Broadway and off Broadway theaters have musicals based on comic books, one of the most recent being a collaboration of actual comic books from the 1950's as a source material called My Comic Valentine: A Comic Book for the Stage.

Add to all of that the basic form of a comic book tends to follow the structure of the ancient Greek theater and explores all of the same subjects that theater does, which is why it so easily translates to stage. Revenge, love, heroes, villains, people who come to realize that "With great power comes great responsibility" are all plots that have been used by playwrights from Shakespeare to Stephen Sondheim to Stan Lee.

OK, gotta go…. Next panel is about to start J

In the Next Room or the vibrator play

As much progress society has made in the last century, one question still looms large “what do women want?”


In the Next Room or the vibrator play is at heart, a play about how men and women relate to each other. Dr. Givings is a gynecologist who treats women for “hysteria” in his operating room located just off his living room. His young wife, Catherine (desperately wants to be acknowledged and loved, by him and by her new baby, who she is having trouble producing enough milk to feed. Troubled by the fact that her baby needs a wet nurse and having her husband infatuated with his new science and love of electricity, she is alone and in need of any kind of stimulation.


Mrs. Daldry is brought to see the Doctor by her husband Mr. Daldry who is fed up with her nervousness, sensitivity to light and more importantly, to his touch. As he explains to the Doctor, “There is very little sympathy between us”. Dr. Giving’s assures Mr. Daldry that he and his assistant Annie have been very successful at curing women of their hysteria by inducing a “paroxysm” in them and that soon Mrs. Daldry will be acting like she once was before.

As Dr. Giving’s, Gercke is amusing in his portrayal of an educated man that has no clue what is going on. For a scientist who is interested in observation and figuring out the answers to puzzling questions he completely misses the fact that his wife is slowly withering of loneliness and envy from lack of attention from him. It becomes apparent that even though they have a child, the good doctor has never thought to truly look at and see his wife. At the end of the play, you sense their awkwardness with each other as they truly have a chance to truly look at each other for the first time. He is equally clueless with his patients as he recites stories about Thomas Edison and electrocuting elephants while in the middle of a treatment on a patient.

Personally, I loved this character. Here is an educated man who hasn’t figured out that he knows nothing about what counts, which is mainly everything in his life, including his wife. He is a gynecologist who doesn’t understand women, asking the husband of his patient what is wrong with his wife instead of her. Grated, some of this is the time in which it is set, but the other is that he is a man who observes but doesn’t really seem to see the people around him.

Catherine, who hires a wet nurse for her baby named Elizabeth (finds herself at loose ends with both her baby and her husband occupied. She befriends her husband’s patients as they come and go through her living room and overhears the interesting sounds coming from the next room, and finally succumbs to her curiosity of just what her husband is doing in there. As Catherine, she is funny and energetic in direct contrast to her husbands somber detached scientific approach. Her character is someone the audience can relate too, even with the period setting and societal rules. Who hasn’t wanted to feel loved and involved in their partners life?

As for what’s going on in the next room? The machine that lies at the center of this play looks like a giant cumbersome box on wheels that has a tendency to short out the electricity in the rest of the house. It is more fascinating as the technological advance that it is for the time, alongside the light bulb and the light switch than it is for the “miraculous properties” it might bestow upon the patients.

While the play does not provide all the answers to the infamous question of what women want, it makes it clear that something that would help is that same old answer of “love and attention”, but also shows that a paroxysm or two couldn’t hurt along the way.

This play does have some nudity and adult situations, so it’s probably best to leave the kids (or the more immature) at home.

In the Next Room or the vibrator play

As much progress society has made in the last century, one question still looms large “what do women want?”


In the Next Room or the vibrator play is at heart, a play about how men and women relate to each other. Dr. Givings is a gynecologist who treats women for “hysteria” in his operating room located just off his living room. His young wife, Catherine (desperately wants to be acknowledged and loved, by him and by her new baby, who she is having trouble producing enough milk to feed. Troubled by the fact that her baby needs a wet nurse and having her husband infatuated with his new science and love of electricity, she is alone and in need of any kind of stimulation.


Mrs. Daldry is brought to see the Doctor by her husband Mr. Daldry who is fed up with her nervousness, sensitivity to light and more importantly, to his touch. As he explains to the Doctor, “There is very little sympathy between us”. Dr. Giving’s assures Mr. Daldry that he and his assistant Annie have been very successful at curing women of their hysteria by inducing a “paroxysm” in them and that soon Mrs. Daldry will be acting like she once was before.

As Dr. Giving’s, Gercke is amusing in his portrayal of an educated man that has no clue what is going on. For a scientist who is interested in observation and figuring out the answers to puzzling questions he completely misses the fact that his wife is slowly withering of loneliness and envy from lack of attention from him. It becomes apparent that even though they have a child, the good doctor has never thought to truly look at and see his wife. At the end of the play, you sense their awkwardness with each other as they truly have a chance to truly look at each other for the first time. He is equally clueless with his patients as he recites stories about Thomas Edison and electrocuting elephants while in the middle of a treatment on a patient.

Personally, I loved this character. Here is an educated man who hasn’t figured out that he knows nothing about what counts, which is mainly everything in his life, including his wife. He is a gynecologist who doesn’t understand women, asking the husband of his patient what is wrong with his wife instead of her. Grated, some of this is the time in which it is set, but the other is that he is a man who observes but doesn’t really seem to see the people around him.

Catherine, who hires a wet nurse for her baby named Elizabeth (finds herself at loose ends with both her baby and her husband occupied. She befriends her husband’s patients as they come and go through her living room and overhears the interesting sounds coming from the next room, and finally succumbs to her curiosity of just what her husband is doing in there. As Catherine, she is funny and energetic in direct contrast to her husbands somber detached scientific approach. Her character is someone the audience can relate too, even with the period setting and societal rules. Who hasn’t wanted to feel loved and involved in their partners life?

As for what’s going on in the next room? The machine that lies at the center of this play looks like a giant cumbersome box on wheels that has a tendency to short out the electricity in the rest of the house. It is more fascinating as the technological advance that it is for the time, alongside the light bulb and the light switch than it is for the “miraculous properties” it might bestow upon the patients.

While the play does not provide all the answers to the infamous question of what women want, it makes it clear that something that would help is that same old answer of “love and attention”, but also shows that a paroxysm or two couldn’t hurt along the way.

This play does have some nudity and adult situations, so it’s probably best to leave the kids (or the more immature) at home.

Romeo and Juliet - the graphic novel?

In January I proclaimed that I was going to join Graphic Novel Challenge I bet you all thought that I had forgotten didn’t you? Well, here is the first one for review Romeo and Juliet The Graphic Novel: Original Text.

Having not been a regular graphic novel reader I was a bit hesitant about how I would feel when reading this novel. It seemed a bit silly at first to read a graphic novel adaption of a play written specifically to be performed aloud. Shakespeare’s language is meant to be heard, so how could they condense the language into small blurbs in bubbles over characters heads? Of course, in the novels favor, all the scene descriptions, time place, weather, etc... can all be found in the language so that all was able to be cut without sacrificing any of the plot or dialogue between characters.

The look of the novel is very traditional, and mirrors what most people would expect, especially if you have seen the Franco Zefferelli’s 1968 film. Nothing in the adaption seems out of place for the story it is telling. But what scenes are chosen to be illustrated and how is a very interesting choice. Much like a director, the illustrators had to chose what they felt was most important to show and how to show it to the audience. What scene can be told on one page with six panels, or three pages and 30 panels are all things that had to be broken down in a way that makes the story make the most sense. For the most part I think they got it right, The flight scenes are drawn with a sense of power and movement, so that the reader was invested in the fight, both thematically as it relates to the story and physically as something to see. The balcony scene has the romantic overtones (and Romeo on the balcony with Juliet as opposed to one the ground as Shakespeare intended) and the physicality of watching someone climb said balcony.

As a late to the game graphic novel reader I sometimes had problems following the order of the pictures and which way and when to read the wording (or maybe that’s not a normal thing and that’s just me?). Once I got into the flow of the story and the language (it helped that I have this play memorized, yes?) I liked the choices made to help with the telling of this story. At times there are things that seem almost overly spelled out, as the line and the action by the character are the same, but then I realize that in some ways this makes the action more clear than just by having them say it. On stage the line “I bite my thumb at them” can be lost, biting one’s own thumb can be too small a movement for people in the back row tosee. Some people may not realize this is an insult. The comic book somehow makes it quite clear through three panels. I would fight this guy if he did that to me!

Sometimes I had issues with a few of the drawings (sometimes there was a heavy black line on Juliet’s face that made her jaw look more mannish than a 14 year old girls ever should) but mostly the illustrators did a very good job recreating the scenes of Romeo and Juliet's world.

I am a fan of anything that brings theater and playwrights, especially Shakespeare, into a sphere that makes it easier for anyone (these novels aren’t just for kids) to read, understand and enjoy. I think this graphic novel adaption is an excellent way to introduce literature and theatre into someone’s life. This is an especially good way to introduce plays, most of which are meant to be heard and seen. At least in this format you can see it and read it, or you can even read it aloud. Definitely pick this up, it is very entertaining and true to the play from which it comes.

Now I am interested in the post apocalyptic, Romeo falls into a vat of nuclear waste and gains powers while Juliet has a secret identity graphic novel version. Anyone know where I can find that?