shannon_a

We've now seen our first play in Kauai, "She Kills Monsters" from the Kauai Community Players.

I guess it wasn't technically our first play in Kauai, as we saw "South Pacific" some years ago, but that wasn't the same thing: we were still "visitors" then, and it was a pretty touristy activity, put on at a hotel with a fancy dinner and such. This, instead, was very much a local thing.

And, it was a pretty great experience.

The play immediately had my attention, because it was about a young woman who connects with her late sister by playing a Dungeons & Dragons adventure that her sister wrote. And the writing by Qui Nguyen is really top rate: clever and funny and touching.

There was a lot of really clever framed, multi-layered storytelling, of the sort I adore. You at some points could tell that the late Tilly's adventure was being translated through DM Chuck's gamemastering, and so you'd get strong female adventurers filtered through the male gaze ... and it was delightful. (And funny.)

The staging of the play by by KCP was really excellent. There was a lot of great '80s (and '90s?) music set between scenes that really underlined the storytelling, and there was great use of lighting, such as when they strobed the level-boss fights. I couldn't tell which of the staging was in the original play and which was chosen by the folks at KCP, but I'm pretty sure some of that was KCP, and I guess we'll learn more about their style as as we see more of their plays (spoiler there!).

But what as really amazing was the choreography. No, not the hilarious dance off (though that was amazing too), but the fight choreography, which was just stunning. I mean, I literally don't think I've ever seen such well choreographed fights in live theatre. They were swinging around swords and axes in pretty real-time (except in the strobe-lighted slo-mo fights) and there were kicks and hits and people being thrown violently to the ground. I dunno how they did it and made it look so real.

Kimberly has been having new problems with her foot, so we had a front-row seat (so that she didn't have to climb steps), and when no one else sat in the front row at first, I joked to Kimberly that we were in the "splash zone" ... and it turned out that we were really in the splash zone. The fighting was pretty naerly on top of us, and both Kimberly and I wondered at various times if we were going to get hit (but we weren't: the actors were very good at what they were doing).

And beyond that, it was really an inclusive play. I won't spoil it except to say: if it's ever put on near you, see it. I was soooo lucky that this was put on just a few months after we moved here.

And I also appreciate the fact that a few of the actors in the play are gamers over at Eight Moves Ahead. I haven't done much more than say "hi" to them a few times ... because they've been getting in late most Thursdays because they were putting on the play until 9pm or so. But they're folks I'll know better in the future, having seen them play a hilarious DM Chuck and an even more hilarious Orcus.

After the play, Kimberly and I detoured into Koloa for some ice cream, really having a nice, proper date night. Even if I did have to drive down the windy, poorly striped, poorly lit Tree Tunnel Road.

And we decided to definitely become members of the KCP. In fact we'll sign up for one of the higher patronage levels, because we feel we can make more of a difference for such a small theatre than we could have for one of the big theatres back in Berkeley (even the semi-pro ones like the Berkeley Playhouse).

Alrighty, here's my last delayed journal entry while I've been trying to catch up with life. It's not actually important, but I always write about the plays we see, so I should write about our last play!

It was Pippin, which we saw on at its last showing, 13 days ago. We've fallen into the habit of seeing our musicals at their final performance in large part because we're often waiting for something to improve. It's been a rough several years ... . So we wait. But I've actually come to really enjoy seeing a play's final performance, because it's a performance that has meaning to the cast: it's not just another show. There was a proposal at one of the final performances we saw, and this time, the actor who was making the announcements at the end of the show was choking up.

(Actually, I was very confused to then see signs for the show on May 11th-19th, after it had really definitively closed on May 5th when we saw it, but looking around I now see that was for their teen stage.)

Anyway, Pippin. It's a play-within-a-play. Or, it's somewhat more complex than that. It's about a weird traveling carnival troupe putting on a play about Charlemagne's son, Pippin, but there's a lot of fourth wall breaking throughout, with the carnival barker narrating and commenting, and then the lines get quite blurry late on where Pippin actually seems to be facing off against the carnival members, and it's not entirely clear what's happening at which level of reality. I was quite surprise to find that Pippin was a play from 1972, as the concepts feel a lot more modern.

The play was pretty heavily focused on messaging, because the whole thing was about Pippin trying to have an extraordinary life, and basically never being happy with what he has. I thought it was good messaging, but I really didn't know if I was going to be thrilled with the ending or want to throw it against the wall, because I could see them coming down on the wrong side. (Spoiler: they didn't. Pippin recognized his quest for an extraordinary life was a will-o-the-wisp that was just leaving him unhappy with what he had, which is good messaging. But then his son got dragged in, showing the attraction of these false promises to us when we're young. A great ending, even though it turns out that last bit wasn't in the original play.)

Pippin was much more about story and message than most musicals, but there was music too. I appreciated the rock sensibilities of several songs. A few times they tried to use music and dancing to represent other actions (first fighting, then fu**ing) and that was a modern dance failure. There were also some memorable songs. Well, kinda memorable. Two weeks later I have trouble picking them out from the song list. But "No Time At All" was the best, as it set up the final messaging, by talking about how you have to appreciate what's around you. And it was sung by Berthe, the kick-ass grandma. I know there was at least one other that moved me, but ... not sure what it was now.

Overall, a good play, and a bit unusual.

Dreamgirls opened our final full season with the Berkeley Playhouse. We saw it yesterday, its last day showing.

I knew that Dreamgirls was about the emergence of a female music group in the 60s and 70s, but I'd been expecting a kind of feel good musical about women making their mark on their world and finding success. Instead, we got something much deeper.

For one, I was surprised to find out that it was really about the black experience in the music world, and the extreme compromises that required. We also got a great tour through the influence of black music on the mainstream in this time period, focusing on R&B and soul, but also touching upon doo-wop, taking a large detour through funk, then ending with disco. There was even a pretty terrific showdown between soul and disco versions of the same song toward the end. (Soul won, suggesting that compromise wasn't always needed.)

I was also surprised to discover how closely the story of the "Dreams" in the musical followed the career of the very-real Supremes. This meant there was a lot less of the feel-good and much more of the very real portrayal of the problems implicit in a touring band, as an early member is thrust out despite her superior voice and others rise up, as affairs and payola complicate everything, as varying dreams lead to heartbreak and bold new directions.

The songs were generally strong. There was also a great conceit early in the musical where songs would develop out of conversation into musical numbers and then would be repeated as musical numbers sung by Jimmy Early and the Dreamettes. "Cadillac Car" and "Steppin' to the Bad Side" both developed like this; the latter was my favorite song in the play. I also adored the Jimmy and the Dreamette song sung in Miami where they try very hard to sing to a white audience, but eventually move back to their natural sound. (Jimmy similarly descends into full funk in a late song.)

Overall, a strong musical with lots of good songs that were also different from what we usually hear.

A nice article about the musical trend: The Real Dreamgirls.

Today, we saw James and the Giant Peach at the Berkeley Playhouse.

Unfortunately, it was one of the most disappointing musicals that we've seen at the Playhouse, and almost certainly the one with the least ambition. There have been musicals that I didn't love because of stylistic disconnects (e.g., they were old and dated), but this was one that I found almost entirely superficial, in a way that even the Disney musicals aren't.

One problem was the plot, which is nonexistent. Almost nothing happens in the first act, until the giant peach rolls free of the tree and drops into the sea. And even the second act is just a meandering journey with very little actually going on. You could put all the major plot points on a postcard and have plenty of room for an actual letter.

The other major problem was the music, and that's of course how musicals live and die. A good song in a musical needs to (1) move along the plot; (2) reveal depths of the characters; (3) surprise the viewers with revelations about plot or character; and (4) provide subtext that makes the song's words about more than the obvious. The best songs in the best musicals simultaneously and constantly do all of these things. The Giant Peach songs? A few of them gave a tiny bit of character insight, and that was about it.

There were a few songs that I kind of liked, even though none were earworms. But even those were very pedestrian. Take a song about James losing his family (though I can't even figure out its name, looking at the song list, because they're all so generic). It was moving. I shed tears. But it also seemed super-cliched with messages like "when you find something it's never lost again" and "they'll always be there in your heart".

Generally, there was some good messaging, like: your family aren't family if they hurt you; and you choose your family; and if your family sucks you should cheer when they're killed by a giant peach; and we should appreciate everyone's diversity. But what a dull vehicle for those messages.

The only particularly lively thing of the musical was the various bugs in the peach, who only show up toward the end of Act I. That's when the show came alive as it ever was. Grasshopper and Spider were particularly good. Gloworm would have been if she'd gotten any attention. (She was even the one member of the Peach crew who didn't get a postscript.)

A few other good things:

• A great 30-second interlude at a chocolate factory where a snippet of the oompa-loompa song is sung.
  
• A hilarious/terrifying intro where James' parents are eaten by an angry rhino.
  
• A fun reveal about the nature of the narrator.
  

Meanwhile, the villains were over-the-top and awful. I particularly hated the depiction of the villain who was portrayed as overweight and constantly talking about how she wanted to eat something. It was cringe-worthy.

This was one of the very few Playhouse plays that I seriously considered leaving at intermission. But it had been such work getting up there with K's broken foot and damaged hand that it seemed like we should at least repay that investment. And the second half was better than the worst (first).

Skimming the Wikipedia article, I find that the musical didn't even make it to Broadway, due to mixed reviews. No surprise. More surprising that Berkeley Playhouse is lauding it as the "centerpiece" of their 10th anniversary season, and the sort of thing they created the Playhouse for. Which apparently means musicals for 5-6 year-old-ones, who would have probably loved it.

K. and I were both pretty surprised when we saw that Berkeley Playhouse was doing Annie again, because we'd just seen it there a year or two ago.

Except it turns out it was six years again. I decided that repeating such a popular kid-oriented play at the Playhouse six years later was probably OK.

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And, it was fun to see all the songs performed again. However, K. pointed out that one of the show's problems is that its best song is the second one.

I agree.

That's "Hard Knock Life", by the way, a song that usually has great choreography involving mops and buckets and usually has great percussive undertones to the song. And it's high energy and clever.

(Nowadays, I'd expect to see "Hard Knock Life" as an 11 o'clock number, but I don't think Annie has one.)

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I liked the five-years ago Annie better because I thought the choreography was better; K. liked this one better because she though the directing was better, creating an improved throughline for the story.

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The most amusing change this time around was that they had a live Sandy on stage this time (as opposed to a stuffed animal last time).

Oh, managing an animal on a live stage was clearly challenging though. That dog was constantly bribed with treats to run to Annie here and to stay on a chair there. He's going to be a fat doggie by the end of the show.

He also became obsessed with the orchestra during "Tomorrow" and started barking crazily. I think it was intentional, because I've seen Sandy barking uproariously in counterpart to "Tomorrow" before, but it was still hilarious to see the dark getting more and more obsessed with what going on understage, before the barking started.

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I noticed that all the orphans (including Annie) were older this time around too.

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Anyway a fun play. It's showing at the Berkeley Playhouse until the 23rd. Great entertainment for the Friday or Saturday before Christmas if you've already burned through The Last Jedi (which instead, we'll probably see on Friday or Saturday).

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Here's what I wrote about Annie six years ago.

We closed out the season at Berkeley Playhouse this afternoon with Tarzan: The Stage Musical. It was entirely meh.

I can't totally blame the Playhouse, because it was a real dog of a show. The problem starts with its plot, which is all over the place. It's a story about a boy avenging his parents death! (And oh boy, the start of the play is gruesome with the killing of said parents by a leopard on stage and later the killing of that leopard.) No, it's about an outsider finding his own family. No, it's about an abusive adoptive parent. No, suddenly at the end of Act I, it realizes that it's a Disney play and it rather quickly introduces an insipid romance. No, it's about bad guys destroying nature. Then the big finale is about Tarzan finding out who he was, which was literally only an issue for one song, far far earlier in the play. There is no through line, and the rapid-fire introduction of all these various elements meant there was no real characterization and no real plot development along the way. (OK, a little bit, mostly about Tarzan and his ape mom.)

And the messaging is often troublesome as well. I mean, we know that Disney romances are going to be utterly unrealistic and offer bad modeling for young adults, but Jane falling in love with someone she can't even communicate with, mainly because he's mostly naked all the time ... that's horrifying. And then after a play that was mostly about finding family, Tarzan and Jane are totally OK with Tarzan abandoning that family, until he's guilted into staying by his abusive adopted father's death. And then Jane leaves her family, and that's totally OK and not even commented on, because she's the woman. Meanwhile, the ape-murderer is just wheeled away in a cage like it's no big deal (which turns out to be a [BAD] change from the movie.)

And the music, it's almost totally soulless and unmemorable. (I kind of liked "I Need to Know", which was the one thing that tied to Tarzan's who-I-am finale, but mainly because its tune reminded me of Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower")

SIGH.

The actors actually weren't great either, though that might have been the poor source material. The young Tark was superb: gymnastic, emotive, and enthusiastic. But she appears in one scene. The older Tark was pretty good too, but his relationship with Tarzan was one of the things that notably suffered in this horribly truncated script. Jane was the third best, but beyond that we're getting into "OK" land. (There wasn't anyone bad, because this is the Berkeley Playhouse, but just a lot of "fine".)

The best performers in the play? Actually the back-up dancers, who did many awesome, acrobatic dances. And when the backup dancers are the best thing about the play, that's a bad sign.

The Playhouse was trying to figure out how to make their Tarzan as "immersive" as the Broadway experience, and they did so by making heavy use of their center aisle and their side aisles. At one point we had a snarling leopard swinging mere feet from us. Kimberly wasn't doing entirely well during the play and was not pleased when apes, having looted the Porter camp, ran up our aisle and tried to encourage her to bang on a metal mixing bowl. No amount of frantic shaking of her head deterred the apes. I finally had to rescue her by leaning over and giving the bowl a ba-bam.

And that was Tarzan.

Next up Sister Act, which I'll have to see early on, before life becomes some amount of busy in October.

PS: The most memorable song of the day was actually Schoolhouse Rock's "Three Ring Government", which we listened to while walking to the Playhouse after talking about how Trump doesn't play well with others and thinks he's the boss of the whole gov't. I thought it kind of sad that a cartoon song overshadowed a whole Broadway play until I learned that it (and many other Schoolhouse Rock songs) was written by Lynn Ahrens, who went on to become the broadway composer of Seussical (our first, excellent Berkeley Playhouse play) and Ragtime (which is showing next year and I'm now enthusiastic about).

K. and I saw our newest musical at the Berkeley Playhouse today, Billy Elliot: The Musical. It was most excellent, and a good panacea to mediocre plays of late.

The well-known story (based on the film) is of a boy who wants to become a ballet dancer, in a '80s mining town, where it was even more taboo. However that '80s date is also key, because it's right at the heart of Margaret Thatcher's dismemberment of England and in fact the story is set during a mining strike.

And personally, it was that historical story that really touched me. Of people losing their way of life*. But it wasn't just about livelihood, it was about community. This mining village was truly a family, and many of the songs that touched me most ("The Stars Look Down", "Solidarity", "Once We Were Kings") focused on that.

However, it was also hard not to be touched by the pathos at the heart of many of these peoples' lives, and their stern determination to forge on (for example: "Grandma's Song", "Mum's Letter", and "Deep into the Ground").

It was really a beautiful distillation of a whole way of life.

Yes, Billy's story was touching too. Yes, the dancing was beautiful.

Oh, and I loved some of the staging too (which I expect comes right from the script). Billy learning to dance as police and miners play hide and seek, sometimes dancing on their own (that's in "Solidarity") and Billy dancing with his older self ("Swan Lake"). Beautiful.

Overall, my favorite Berkeley Playhouse play in a while. And 20 days left if you're in Berkeley and want to see it.

* Your political assignment for the week is to compare and contrast the miners of Durham with the blue collar workers of the Rust Belt, both losing their way of life, one turning to each other, the others to Donald Trump.

We saw Beauty & The Beast at the Berkeley Playhouse today, the 1993 musical based on the 1991 film, and I found it pretty meh.

Let's be honest, the plot is problematic. Beast imprisons Belle and holds her in his castle until she loves him. Meanwhile, her other suitor Gaston tries to win her over with sexual harassment and trickery. At least Belle's "I Want" song is about wanting to see the world ... though she pretty quickly forgets about that.

It also felt a little cookie cutter when compared to The Little Mermaid, out just a few years earlier. "Part of Your World" could have described Belle's desire to live beyond her provincial French village and the animated objects could have sung "Kiss the Girl" when they were trying to help Beast and Belle to fall in love, to end their curse.

Meanwhile, the actual music in Beauty & The Beast just wasn't nearly as good. The eponymous "Beauty & The Beast" is quite memorable and original, and the rest ... ? Not so much. In fact, I was shocked that the leads don't really have any good songs. "Beauty & The Beast" is sung by Mrs. Potts, while other songs that are pretty decent, such as "Gaston" and "The Mob Song" are ensembles. Belle and the Beast do have several songs of their own, but none of them stand out.

I think the musical is also hurt by the whole enchanted castle motif. The gothic elements can carry very well (and Berkeley Playhouse did so), but the animated objects: not so much.

The first Act was the most troublesome. Very little happens. Various people are mean or creepy. Beast is a jerk and Beauty hates him. The second Act was much better, and is the only thing that redeems the play. The heel turn toward Belle and Beauty loving each other is so sudden that it's a little hard to swallow, but seeing them together works better and we get lots of action.

Overall, I wasn't that happy when Berkeley Playhouse suddenly went heavy into Disney last year with Peter Pan and The Little Mermaid and this year with Beauty & The Beast and Tarzan. But, I liked Peter Pan and really enjoyed The Little Mermaid. The Beauty & The Beast was more what I expected: shallow and unmemorable.

(Ironically, I'd been looking forward to this one after the success of the last few and how catchy the theme song is; I just didn't know that was it.)

PS: Despite the fact that this musical didn't really strike me, Berkeley Playhouse's production was good. Belle was great, and thank god we live in a community where a very accomplished actress and singer can take the role without comment or complaint even when she isn't white. The staging was quite nice. The beast's costuming was very strong. But they weren't working with the best material.

Today K. and I saw The Little Mermaid at the Berkeley Playhouse. I was surprised to read that the stage adaptation was a relatively recent thing, dating back to just 2007 or 2008. Which I suppose explains what Aladdin was still showing in New York when I was there.

Anywho, as far as I can tell I've never actually seen the Disney movie. However I was familiar with several of the songs from my Broadway channels on Pandora (particularly "Part of Your World" and "Under the Sea").

Overall, the music was quite nice. My favorite two were Sebastian's songs, "Under the Sea" and "Kiss the Girl" which are both obviously calypso. I think that unique style is what really makes them shine. (And I was unsurprised to discover that they were the two up for awards.) But I also loved the songs by the Daughters of Triton, particularly "Daughters of Triton" (which to me felt reminiscent of "So Long, Farewell" from The Sound of Music) and "She's in Love" (which sounded like it came right out of Hairspray). I know some of the songs are purposefully references to older songs, but if any of those was intended, I don't see any discussions of that.

As for the story: it's good enough. A typical Disney princess. Ariel's 'I want' song, "Part of Your World" almost feels like it could be swapped with "A Whole New World" from Aladdin. But I appreciate the fact that the few times in which it looks like Ariel is going to entirely give up her agency, she draws back: she ultimately saves herself from Ursula and after Triton and Erek both try, then Triton says she can decide for herself ("speak for herself", K. points out) when Erek asks to marry her.

Overall, an enjoyable play. I'd like to see more other stuff, not more Disney, but they have a few more coming up next season.

PS: Gotta guess that the lesbian unrequited love subtext between Flounder and Ariel was totally not in the movie ... but obviously in the musical.