London Theatre In Your Hometown: Part 2

I wanted to follow up on developments since I first posted about the National Theatre's production of Frankenstein, and Digital Theatre's online downloads.

Frankenstein recently opened in London, and the reviews have been generally positive (and the show has sold out), receiving strongest marks for atmosphere and memorable stage pictures. The biggest complaint was that the script is a bit lopsided, with the well-fleshed out character of the Creature leaving the underwritten role of Victor Frankenstein left looking even thinner by comparison.

My roommate and I decided that we were just too poor to see the production on both screening nights, and agonized over which version of the cast to see. Eventually, my roommate made an executive decision, and we will be seeing Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Frankenstein and Jonny Lee Miller as The Creature. This was before reviews were posted, and (at least according to the NY Times) they are better suited in those roles. I also found out that British electronic music group Underworld wrote the music for the show, so that should be exciting, as well.



I also checked out the website for Digital Theatre, and they offer some exciting stuff. You can download shows with British stars like The Walking Dead's Andrew Lincoln, and a production of Into The Woods which caught my eye when they published dramatic production stills on Playbill.com last summer caught my attention. Unfortunately, the latter is listed as "coming soon", and they haven't posted a trailer yet. But there is an fun-looking, stripped-down production of Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors, which you can purchase alone, or bundled with a making-of documentary. Downloads are offered for less than $10, so I'll probably get Comedy of Errors first, and let you know how I like it.

You can't embed the trailer, but you can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hie-ks6gD8

I'll update this post with some related media later; I've been sick lately, so I keep half-writing posts, then forgetting why they were interesting in the first place and abandoning them, so I wanted to get something out there before the cough syrup wins out again!

London Theatre In Your Hometown

I've talked a lot before about going to the Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD screenings, but they're not the only ones doing them. The National Theatre in London is doing broadcasts of their shows as well to movie theaters across the country. Their season thus far has included a production of Hamlet which was well-reviewed, but there's lots of good Hamlets around, so I decided to hold out for some unusual fare.

Luckily, NT will be delivering next month with the debut of a new production of Frankenstein, directed by Danny Boyle (best known as a filmmaker, his works include Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire, and 127 Hours).

If that's not exciting enough, they're doing something really interesting with the casting of the leads. Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller are starring in the title roles of the Creature and Victor Frankenstein. Yes, both of them. As in they are alternating the roles. Miller is pretty well known to US audiences for his roles in Trainspotting and the TV show Dexter; Cumberbatch is not exactly a household name (yet), so do yourself a favor and track down the BBC miniseries Sherlock he did this past year with future Hobbit Martin Freeman. Cumberbatch played a modern-day version of the detective--I think the show ran on PBS Mystery in the US, and it also has a cool online element which ties into the use of blogging in the show's plot.

Frankenstein opens in London in a few weeks and runs through April. The live screening will be in March, and I was very excited and curious to see how they would handle the issue of which cast to run. Well, prayers answered, they're screening it twice, so you can see either one you prefer, or (if you're a giant nerd like me) both.

The screening schedule is:
17 March: Benedict Cumberbatch (Creature), Jonny Lee Miller (Victor)

24 March: Jonny Lee Miller (Creature), Benedict Cumberbatch (Victor)

And full details are available at: http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/62808/productions/frankenstein.html


Now, if you'd like to watch some British theatre without even leaving your house, I found this article on Playbill.com today about downloading productions from www.digitaltheatre.com. I unfortunately can't check the link out on this computer, but I'm very keen on seeing their production of Into The Woods, as Playbill.com had posted a gallery of photos when the production was running, and it looked like there was some interesting stuff going on. So I'll see for myself later, and let you know how it works!

Missed The Point Much?

Today I was reading the LA Weekly's Theatre Review pages, and I stumbled upon a review of a production of Into The Woods. I'm not going to discuss the review of the production itself, although the company has apparently made some bold and unusual concept decisions, instead my concern is the following comment on Into The Woods itself:

"The good show would be kid-friendly if it didn't clock in at close to three hours, somewhat tortured by the almost superfluous (though psychologically darker) sluggish Act 2."

Part of this is true; if you wanted to do a short & sweet family musical, just perform the first act, and eliminate the final line, "to be continued." It stands on it's own just fine. But it seems to me that this critic has missed the entire point of the second act of the show! As I already discussed in a previous article, the second act takes the neatly wrapped up fairy tale endings of the first act, and shows that "Happily Ever After" does not come with out it's consequences, and the story does not end when the prince marries his princess. It's also not that good for kids, because they spend much of the time arguing, and half the cast dies.

The second act of Into The Woods, while deftly written, is not exactly subtle. And, frankly, it worries me that a critic for a fairly major Los Angeles publication just doesn't seem to undertand an entire half or a fairly mainstream show.

Shows that knock you on your a$$

When I was about 11 years old, my town's high school put on its first musical in several years. My sister is a bassist and was playing in the orchestra, and a couple of her friends who I knew were in the cast. I think someone may have told me that Into the Woods was about fairytales before I went, but that's all I knew.

I laughed hysterically through the playful first act that shows Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Jack and the Beanstalk intersecting in various amusing ways. But then in the second act, something terrible happened. Actions began having consequences, characters started having disagreements; mistakes were made, impasses were reached, and everything did not work out the best for everyone in the end.

I remember clapping through the curtain call, trying to dry my tears and wondering, "What just happened to me?"

I had never done something like this before, but the next night I gathered up my allowance, came back to the theater on my own (sans parents), and I saw the show again.

This will come as no surprise to those who know me, but even as a kid I was drawn to stories that had an element of darkness to them; a twinge of complicated, adult emotions. Especially as an adult, I'm bored by stories about moustache-twirling villians who get their comeuppance, and innocent lovers who end up together in the end because, well, that's how things are supposed to work out.

While working on this article I realized that my other two favorite Sondheim musicals, Company and  Sweeney Todd had the same effect on me. I hate when writers play it safe--do you ever get the feeling that they're afraid to see their characters get hurt?--and in Sweeney Todd the characters pay a HUGE price for their actions. Company very intentionally takes the problems that middle class, middle age Americans attend the theatre to run away from, and throw them back in their (our?) faces.

There's a DVD available of the recent Broadway revivial of Company starring Raul Esparza. The plot largely deals with his character's 35th birthday, and I think it really affected me because most of my friends are in their mid-twenties to late thirties, so it really reflects where we are in our lives right now. And similar to my reaction to Into the Woods, after finishing the DVD, I had to go back and start it again...