HADESTOWN at Olivier, National Theatre - Fire Down Below....

Every so often the ominous words "prior to it's Broadway opening" appear on a National Theatre production which always strikes me as slightly irksome: should the National Theatre stages and resources be used for a production's out-of-town tryout when there is a whole canon of drama that it is the National's remit to stage as no one else will?

The latest to get this treatment is a new musical written by Anáis Mitchell, a folk singer who is hitherto unknown to me,  The really bizarre thing is that the show has already played Off-Broadway in 2016 so it is being road-tested here before transferring to Broadway (allegedly).  It is a very convoluted journey and I am not sure what the National is getting out of the deal - although it does fill the Olivier repertoire which has frequently been a béte noire for Rufus Norris.  However, with no preconceptions on what I was about to see, I was very impressed with a lot of what I saw and heard.

Mitchell released the original concept album in 2010, retelling the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a pair of young lovers in the Great Depression played out in a hybrid of blues, New Orleans jazz, country and rhythm 'n' blues.  She met director Rachel Chavkin in 2012 and after several years of working on it, the stage show debuted in 2016 in New York, it was again staged Off-Broadway last year where it was nominated for and won several fringe awards.  And now it's here...

Hermes, our narrator, introduces us to Orpheus, a down-and-out singer with his guitar slung over his back. One day he meets the homeless Eurydice, they fall instantly in love and attempt to set up home together but things go awry as Eurydice struggles to find work while Orpheus spends all his time writing songs.  In the meantime, summer arrives with the appearance of the exuberant goddess Persephone who is visiting for her allotted six months on earth bringing warm weather, joy and prosperity.  When her time is up she sadly returns back to her husband Hades in his underworld factory, but this time she is followed by Eurydice in search of a better life.  Orpheus is broken-hearted at her departure and follows her down to the underworld to bring her back, which no mortal has ever done before.

The lovers are reunited but Hades refuses to let Eurydice leave, however Persephone intercedes on the couple's behalf and Hades allows Orpheus to sing for him.  Moved by the song, Hades dances with Persephone and let's the couple leave the underworld but with conditions attached: Orpheus must lead the way with Eurydice following but if he turns to look at her, she will vanish into the underworld forever...

 I had deliberately not read any of the reviews as I wanted to experience the show with no preconceived ideas and I am glad I did, as I said there was a lot to enjoy.  Anáis Mitchell's score is an intriguingly dense affair, at no time can you guess where the show is going to go musically.  Her combination of country blues, New Orleans jazz, Southern rhythm 'n' blues and pop is a heady mix, the only thing it is missing is a memorable song.  They sound great in the auditorium but by the time I had got home I couldn't remember one of them.  It would also have been possibly better to have a separate lyricist, her's are the weakest part of the score.

Rachel Chavkin's production is big and bold with all energy focused on the performers however as the show reached it's double climax - first with Hades and Orpheus and then with Orpheus and Eurydice's flight from the underworld - the tension slackened and no real crescendo was reached, it all felt played at the same pace; indeed when the show ended, it felt to have been a long time coming.

In case anyone was wondering, there is life after the Broadway debacle SPIDERMAN: TURN OFF THE DARK as two of it's leads Reeve Carney and Patrick Page have turned up here: Carney is an impassioned though not terribly charismatic Orpheus and Patrick Page is a marvellous Hades, with a deep bass voice echoing out like coming from the underworld itself.

As Eurydice, Eva Noblezada - the star of the recent revival of MISS SAIGON - has a powerful voice and a nice stage presence, while Amber Gray was a wild and rollicking Persephone - as indeed she should be as she has played the role since 2016 in all the previous productions.  With her crazy hair and bright green dress she was huge fun.

Musicals veteran André De Shields was an elegant, sinister, slippery Hermes and there was fine support from the three sassy, mean Fates: Carly Mercedes Dyer, Rosie Fletcher and Gloria Onitiri, and a special mention too for the excellent, hardworking ensemble.

David Neumann's choreography is inventive and striking, Rachel Hauck's large wooden set design is impressive but ultimately one wishes for something more striking for the underworld, and Bradley King's lighting is atmospheric and suits the ominous tone of the work.  The seven onstage musicians are excellent and fully deserved the large ovation at the curtain.

Owen and I agreed that it might be good to see the show again before it finishes it's run in January to see how they have settled into the Olivier and hopefully ironed out some of the longueurs of the second act.

It certainly deserves to be seen...

 

 

So, how do you follow up seeing Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in the wistful DRIVING MISS DAISY? By seeing SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK! Needless to say, it was a real flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants experience (pun intended).
When deciding what to see SPIDER-MAN was a given - we wanted to see this alleged theatrical car-crash with it's never-ending preview perfs, cancelled press nights and injured performers. If I could survive such theatrical Ground Zeros as BERNADETTE ("The People's Musical"), WHICH WITCH (aka DEATH BY HAIRDRYER) or LEONARDO - whose chief backer was the Republic of Nauru, a country whose main income is the sale of Guano aka bird shit - surely I could get through this.

Thanks to a cheap tickets website we had fairly good central Dress Circle seats and two big thumbs up go to the Foxwoods Theatre, a rare Broadway theatre which has a large foyer and bar area for mingling in - the front-of-house was so big in fact that the foyer boasted a walk-in merch shop. I guess they got to make the money back!But we couldn't linger front-of-house... eventually the show had to be faced! I knew we were in for trouble when two guitarists walked out OP and stood there with a lineup of guitars - and there they stayed for the entire show, twanging loudly. Why the guitarists? There was thumpy drums too - why must the drummers ALWAYS lose out? Isn't there a Triangle players union?

Oh Julie Taymor, Julie Taymor... while undoubtedly an imaginative director (her films of TITUS and FRIDA demonstrate this) sadly most of what is wrong with the show can be laid at her door. Her schizophrenic book is no help - co-written with Glen Burger the first half is mostly a stage version of Sam Raimi's 2002 film showing how Peter Parker became Spider-Man and battling the mutated scientist The Green Goblin.

But as if guilty at telling such a populist tale, they have mixed in the Greek myth of Arachne and then added the further layer of having a "Geek Chorus" - sigh - who are four Spiderman fans who appear to be our narrators. So we are getting a story within a story within a story - and there is just not enough meat on the show's eight legs to sustain this device.

Taymor and Berger can't even sustain these ideas: the Geeks vanish after the interval, the Green Goblin - killed off in the first act - returns with a Sinister Six of villains to wreck havoc on both Spidey and New York and - most stupid of them all - the Arachne character who has hovered (literally and figuratively) above the action during the first act suddenly turns into an avenging Femme Fatale, all 8 legs, sneers, lust and death threats. It was quite jaw-droppingly awful.A couple of other things pertaining to Julie Taymor - she would no doubt say that theatre can be made with a rag, a bone & a hank of hair so why is this show's budget a mindblowing $61 million? Even more baffling is Taymor's acceptance of Daniel Ezralow's demeaning choreography for the female chorus - their two numbers are as dumb secretaries in a typing pool scooting all over the stage on their office chairs or as sexy spider-women mutants with 8 suspender & stocking legs. Keepin' it real for the sisters there Julie.

The other component for the show's naffness is the score by Bono and The Edge. It's hard to believe they actually sat down and wrote this with a stage show in mind - I suspect they went through their trunk songs and just pulled out ones that hadn't made the cut for their albums. When Boy George wrote the score for TABOO he wrote a proper Musical score - ballads, dance numbers, point numbers, patter songs - but here, as monolithic anthem-rock song follows monolithic anthem-rock song, you are bludgeoned into your seat. No varying of tone, no heed to the plot's needs, just another big slab of music. As to the show's much vaunted flying sequences, well I guess it's fun to watch the stunt flyers whizzing around the auditorium but when they are attached to industrial hawsers it robs it of any grace or magic and will incur no sense of surprise to anyone who has seen any Cirque du Soleil show. I will admit that it is used sparingly - maybe to the show's detriment as more often than not Spidey's antics are described to the audience as they happen offstage!

Needless to say, just before the final big flying-around-the-auditorium battle betwixt Spidey and Arachne, a voice boomed out that they would have to stop the show for a while to adjust a Flying Mechanism Malfunction - RESULT! So we sat there, looking at two actors in silly costumes staring at each other 'in character' while the peanut gallery catcalled, slow-handclapped or just chatted amongst themselves. Like, you've only had since November to sort this stuff!

The show's main saving graces are the stage design of George Tsypin and costumes of Eiko Ishioka. Tsypin's designs seem to fold out of the stage and mostly hold the attention while the performers get in the way and Ishioka's costume designs for the Sinister Six bring some sense of a comic book's sense of style. The video projections of Kyle Cooper are also entertaining but the second act's over-use of them soon palls and one feels like one is watching just a series of long animated pop videos.The performances by the cast unsurprisingly are fairly anonymous - Reeve Carney as Peter / Spidey has been hired as he is a Bono soundalike and his acting style too has the air of karaoke about it. By far the best vocal performance was from Jennifer Damiano as Mary Jane - and no one was more surprised than me as she was so punchable as the whiny daughter in last year's borefest NEXT TO NORMAL. Ameríca Olivio as Arachne seemed ok in the first act but by the second act she was hitting some seriously bum notes.

The performances by Patrick Page as Norman Osborn / The Green Goblin and Michael Mulheren as J. Jonah Jameson were utterly shite. Looking down the cast list during the interval I was gobsmacked to see Luther Creek was playing one of the school bullies and a play-as-cast performer. Last year Creek was a delightfully whacked-out "Woof" in the London transfer of Diane Paulus' revival of HAIR and while it's good that he's employed, it's a shame that he is not given something to match his talent.

Oddly enough when we arrived, the Dress Circle (or Flying Circle as it's renamed) audience was primarily loud teen boys and huge fat girls which had my heart sinking but surprisingly as soon as the lights went down they were remarkably quiet - the DRIVING MISS DAISY oldie crowd were louder!

Unlike shows such as BERNADETTE or WHICH WITCH that were bad but hilariously entertaining to watch, SPIDER-MAN is a show so off the artistic rails that you simply stare at it and wonder why no one involved could see the train crash coming that even a superhero could save.