The Week in Review(s)

Welcome to today’s edition of ShentonSTAGE Daily, in which I look back on last week’s news and reviews (including my own)

FRIDAY FEBRUARY 3

Vicky Featherstone (pictured below) today became the third artistic director of a major London theatre to announce in the last three weeks that they are stepping aside, after Roxane Silbert at Hampstead and Michael Longhurst at the Donmar Warehouse.

In a statement, she said: “Although I am usually the last one to leave the party, it’s time for me to hand over the guardianship of this extraordinary, enduring mission to someone else. When I started this job in 2013 I set myself a time limit of ten years, and I am holding myself to that. There are no words for how life-changing, challenging, invigorating and complex this job is, and like everyone who has ever done this role here, it is forever part of my DNA.”

This is a complicated time to be an artistic director, to be sure. Negotiating all the competing aspirations, frictions and flash points of a world in which everyone wants representation on the same stage is difficult to juggle — and then sell to the theatregoing public, who may or may not be ready for it.

Featherstone has had her missteps — the unconscious anti-semitism of Al Smith’s Rare Earth Mettle naming an unsympathetic character Hershel Fink, which no one at the theatre appeared to notice until the show was about to open; and less significantly, a foolish stunt to hide the authorship of That is not who I am behind a fake name Dave Davidson (it turned out to be Lucy Kirkwood, not an unknown first-time “discovery” at all), were both embarrassing in their ineptness.

But she successfully opened the theatre to more diverse voices, especially amongst people of colour and queer artists.

Meanwhile, on Broadway, Justin David Sullivan, currently playing a featured role in the  transatlantic premiere of & Juliet, has taken themselves out of contention for this year’s Tony Awards, as the acting categories are still gendered and they identify as non-binary. As they told Playbill,

“I was told that I had to choose [the category in which] I felt comfortable, and in that process, I struggled a lot…  I felt like I couldn’t choose. I didn’t feel right being in either category because it didn’t resonate with me. I decided the only thing that felt right to me would be to abstain from nomination consideration.”

The Tony Awards administration acknowledged it, stating, ““Per Justin David Sullivan’s request to the Tony Administration Committee, they opted to withdraw themselves from eligibility.”

But J. Harrison Ghee, starring in SOME LIKE IT HOT, who also identifies as non-binary, will be considered for possible nomination in the leading actor category. In an interview with the Daily Beast, they stated,  

“I’m not going to put myself on this pedestal like, ‘I need it to change today. I never go into things expecting to be the person that changes everything. I’m just showing up and meeting the moment.”

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 4

I saw Sam Steiner’s Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons this afternoon, a few days after the press night and a bunch of mostly three-star reviews that had lowered my expectations a bit. This was useful to recalibrate the hype that’s been around this play since it premiered on the Edinburgh Fringe eight years ago, but I’d not seen myself before.

My own full review (for PLAYS INTERNATIONAL) is here: https://playsinternational.org.uk/lemons-lemons-lemons-lemons-lemons-harold-pinter-theatre-mark-shenton/.  This brings me, incidentally, full-circle back to where my professional theatre journalism career began, back in 1986: it was in the pages of Plays International, founded by Peter Roberts and then edited by him, that I had my first piece professionally published. Peter subsequently commissioned me as a regular feature writer, contributing monthly interview features.  

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 5

Today I headed back to New York for another week; the season has not exactly shifted into gear yet, though there is one Broadway opening during my time there (Pictures from Home, at Studio 54 on Thursday with Nathan Lane, Zoe Wanamaker and Danny Burstein, which I am seeing at a designated press matinee on Wednesday afternoon; see Thursday below).

But I’m able to catch quite a bit of cabaret — I’ll be paying four visits to 54 Below alone (see Monday and Thursday below, with additional visits on Tuesday and Saturday), plus another at Birdland (Melissa Errico, on Saturday) and Broadway star Heather Headley in concert at Carnegie Hall (on Friday). I am also catching two more solo shows: Sam Morrison’s SUGAR DADDY at Soho Playhouse (see Thursday) and Anthony Rapp’s WITHOUT YOU at New World Stages (on Sunday afternoon, my last show before I fly home later that evening).

And I’m also taking in a couple of repeats on Broadway, both of which I’ve bought (discount) tickets for: on Wednesday, I’m seeing SOME LIKE IT HOT again, but today, I landed at JFK at 11.40am, and by 3pm, I was at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre to catch the last performance of the revival of Richard Greenberg’s TAKE ME OUT. I previously saw this production’s original run at the Hayes last year, under the auspices of Second Stage. It has now been given an extended commercial run under the auspices of Barry and Fran Weissler.

Being at the last performance was a bit like being at SIX: whoops and cheers greeted every actor’s entrance, and there was more applause at the end of big speeches and scenes, too. Many in the audience seem to have been there before: when Jesse Williams made a curtain speech at the end of the show, he asked a guy in the front row how many times he’d seen it, and the answer came back was 16!

Of course front row centre affords a prime view of the several naked locker room shower scenes, where the cast let it all hang out, literally. I’m sure that’s not the only reason this spectator paid multiple visits, but it is certainly an eye-popping incentive. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such prolonged male nudity on a New York stage this side of NAKED BOYS SINGING, a downtown revue with a catchy title that summed up the show precisely.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 6

My main reason for being in New York this week is to see a 50th anniversary reunion concert of Pippin, one of my favourite-ever Broadway musicals, at 54 Below.

The show has always meant a lot to me, ever since I first saw it as a young teenager growing up in South Africa; and has continued to stay with me throughout my life and many subsequent productions. I wrote about it here: https://shentonstage.com/shentonstage-daily-for-tuesday-february-7/

And I returned for another helping on Tuesday, too! It was such a love-in for the show — itself an intimate seduction and invitation towards suicide that is ultimately rejected, so it embraces life! And by revisiting it so lovingly, these actors — 50 years on — prove they still have a powerful life force within each and every one of them!

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 7

In a column for The Stage today, Kate Maltby has written about how Amanda Abbington orchestrated a social media pile-on to critic Fiona Mountford after she gave a negative review to THE UNFRIEND that she is currently appearing in the West End in.

I wrote here about this previously; but Maltby makes the additional point: “What big-name actors may not realise is that when they set hundreds of thousands of social media followers on a critic, they are the ones abusing their power. I do understand why anyone who receives a bad review feels attacked, although Mountford’s review didn’t actually target Abbington’s performance, but Moffat’s writing. As for Moffat himself – he remains one of the most influential people in the creative industries. If Mountford feels that his TV presence has landed him a West End run he hasn’t earned, she is speaking up for every emerging writer who could have used that run and now won’t get the opportunity….. I interviewed Moffat ahead of The Unfriend. I liked him, a lot. I made clear in the resulting piece that I share the critiques that many feminists make of his work, but I was profoundly struck by the impact that trolling on that issue has had on his equilibrium. It is, he and I agreed, ‘dehumanising’ for a writer to see their humanity dismissed outright; there is a line between social critique of a writer’s work and rallying a pack to call him a bigot. If Moffat can understand how a social media pile-on feels, perhaps his collaborators should learn from him.”

I’ve had the occasional experience of the ‘orchestrated pile-on’, most notably when I wrote a defence of Broadway actor Sutton Foster when she was accused of racism after a decade-old video of her surfaced doing an impression of Jennifer Holliday’s performance singing ‘And I am Telling You I’m not Going.’

My article tried to suggest that Foster was merely paying a tribute to a fellow Broadway star, but Trevor Dion Nicholas posted an online video, directly addressing me, in which he described how I’d offended him with my defence of her.

As a social media pile-on immediately followed, I realised, of course, that it was not for me, as a white person, to say what was and wasn’t racist, and took the piece down and issued an apology. Still the attacks continued, as Nicholas was joined by fellow performer Cedric Neal in stirring up a reaction.

The irony was that I’d written a previous column supporting Neal after he’d tweeted his experiences of auditioning for The Phantom of the Opera in London. My previous attempt to be an ally counted for nothing; now I was the bad guy — and the actor has since blocked me on Twitter.

That’s of course his personal choice — but I’ve also been told firmly to keep to my side of the street. Which I now firmly try to stick to.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 8

I saw SOME LIKE IT HOT when it first opened in December (and wrote about it here at the time). Despite mostly enthusiastic reviews, it has been slow to gain traction, at least from the attendance and box office point of view (which is all that really matters, ultimately, in the commercial marketplace of Broadway).

So I’ve been keen to see it again ever since, and today I took the opportunity of having an open evening to do so, picking up a heavily discounted front side stalls seat. The seats on either side of me were unoccupied, which is a blessing in a Broadway house when you don’t have the luxury of an aisle seat  (which is what you often get on a reviewing ticket); and was able to enjoy it at very close quarters from the fourth row.

A second viewing confirms how thrillingly slick Casey Nicholaw’s production of this old-fashioned musical is; but also how smartly Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin’s book is in dealing with the journey of Jerry to embracing his alternative identity of Daphne really is. It also makes knowing references to racism of the period it is set in.  

Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s score may be full of knowing pastiche, but it’s a full-blooded Broadway sound that fits the moment perfectly, too.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 9

In the last 36 hours, I’ve seen two shows at Studio 54: a matinee yesterday in the main theatre (the former nightclub, restored to its original use); and a late night presentation tonight at 54 Below, the cabaret nightclub in its former basement of a musical John and Jen. And today I also squeezed in a 7pm solo play downtown in SoHo.

The Studio 54 play was PICTURES FROM HOME, which opened officially last night — there are other reviews here. Based on photographer Larry Sultan’s 1992 photo memoir of the same name, in which he documented his many visits to his parents Californian home in the 1980s, it’s a powerfully moving and loving portrait of trying to make sense of them, himself and their inevitable mortality.

Sultan’s father was a salesman, like Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, but unlike Arthur Miller’s character, he ultimately became a CEO — though he would lose his job and become dependent on his real estate broker wife’s income. They are played by one of Broadway’s most beloved comic actors Nathan Lane, and transatlantic theatrical icon Zoe Wanamaker respectively, while Danny Burstein plays their photographer son. It’s a stellar cast for a quietly wonderful and touching play.

I was also back at 54 Below tonight at 9.30pm for a concert version of Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald’s 1993 musical JOHN AND JEN, with the composer himself leading a five-strong strings orchestra from the piano. A quietly stunning chamber musical, Lewis Cornay and Rachel Tucker reprised their astonishing performances from Southwark Playhouse production in 2021.

And earlier tonight I headed down to Soho Playhouse for another show that centred on grief and loss, like John and Jen does, too. Sam Morrison’s heartfelt and hilarious, tender and heartbreaking account of losing his partner Jonathan, who was twice his age, to Covid (they are pictured above together).

He’s just 28 years old, but this self-described “anxious, asthmatic, gay, diabetic Jew” brings a shattering humanity and maturity to facing what has happened to him that is also performed by him with such vivacity that it is also both outrageously and courageously funny.

SHOWS AHEAD IN LONDON, SELECTED REGIONAL THEATRES AND ON BROADWAY

My regularly updated feature on shows in London, selected regional theatres and on Broadway is here: https://shentonstage.com/theatre-openings-from-w-c-february-6/

I’ll be back in the UK on Monday — just in time to catch the opening that evening of the London transfer for STANDING AT THE SKY’S EDGE from Sheffield’s Crucible to the National, and will be reviewing it for PLAYS INTERNATIONAL.

See you here on Tuesday

I will be back on Tuesday. If you can’t wait that long, I may also be found on Twitter (for the moment) here: https://twitter.com/ShentonStage/ (though not as regularly on weekends)