‘Falsettos’ – Darlinghurst Theatre Company

FALSETTOS – BY WILLIAM FINN
DIRECTED BY STEPHEN COLYER
DARLINGHURST THEATRE COMPANY– ETERNITY THEATRE
7 FEBRUARY – 16 MARCH 2014

MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS – INTERVAL
Lea: It’s interval… but technically this is two shows so we can sum up March of the Falsettos now and then Falsettoland at the end.
Sybil: Yep. So I knew ‘Four Jews in a Room Bitching’ but I didn’t know the rest of it. Beautiful, beautiful songs.
Lea: Amazing music.
Sybil: And the voices… I thought that Mendel was fantastic. Oh my god. Outstanding. And I thought Marvin was incredible. And Katrina Retallick (Trina) was just so versatile and pure and sweet, and oh my gosh, beautiful.
Lea: And Wizzer, whilst still a nice voice…
Sybil: It’s just not strong.
Lea: Not as completely developed. I think my feeling overall is that the show was over directed. I understand, in theory, by using stylised movements that are not connected to the emotion of the story, that you can enable feelings and meanings to come out more strongly, but I just think some of those songs were songs that should be sung from the heart and not affected.
Sybil: I actually would have liked to have seen – at least in places – a more naturalistic approach.
Lea: I mean, in some places the stylisation worked beautifully.
Sybil: But I don’t think it needed it all the way through.
Lea: I have to remember which song it was… towards the end when the three of them were in the background kind of almost doing a tap routine…
Sybil: Oh that was fantastic.
Lea: And that should have been showy. The song demanded it. And I liked the idea – because there are repeated themes in the songs – but when Jason is singing “My Father Says That Love” and was repeating all of those sculptural hand gestures – I felt that the musical theme was strong enough, and with him so quietly with the piano behind him, that you didn’t need to re-emphasise it with all ‘that’.
Sybil: It’s almost a bit distracting. It’s making it feel quite constructed – it stops the flow.
Lea: You know it’s almost a technique that works really well on a big stage with a big chorus. A chorus of people all doing those amazing hand gestures and choreography. But on that intimate stage you just… lose it.
Sybil: Yep.
Lea: You know that scene with Wizzer – it’s the only one in March of the Falsettos where it’s his solo – and he mimes taking a shower?
Sybil: Yeah, I didn’t understand that. It’s a beautiful song.
Lea: It is a beautiful song. And I get the vulnerability of being naked, but everything else has been literal up ‘til then – I mean, they’ve taken their shirts off. So why would you mime taking your clothes off and mime going into a shower in a moment where you’re vulnerable and you’ve stopped being the player and said ‘I actually do love him’. But he put the gloves on and mimes. It was just odd and disconnected.
Sybil: I agree. I didn’t feel like a lot of what they did served the story. So there were things that I was just enjoying for the spectacle but I wanted more connection. But I actually don’t think it’s the performers’ fault. I think the set is very bleak, stark and I think all that repetitive chorey… would you call it choreography when it’s just hand movements?
Lea: Yes it is.
Sybil: All that repetitive stuff, I think it was almost disassociating and made you… break…
Lea: It does – it disassociates you from the emotion they’re going though.
Sybil: Well the voices are sensational. And they’re good performers so…
Lea: It’s a stylistic choice.
Sybil: It is a stylistic choice.
Lea: And I think that it’s a valid one – but not for this show. There are certain shows I really like that idea of breaking you away so you’re not so emotionally connected, but I don’t think it works here.
Sybil: Yeah.
Lea: To be honest, if it’s going to be like this for the next show, I’m not sure I want to watch it.
Sybil: Oh really? Do you want to go home?
Lea: No, I want to watch it because some of my favourite songs are in Falsettoland.
Sybil: So you’re feeling a bit apprehensive?
Lea: I think it’s just that I don’t feel like I’m being allowed to engage – to emotionally go there. Their personal stories are heartbreaking and I’ve had my heart broken listening to them on CD, but not watching this show tonight. So I’m wondering if they might change the style.
Sybil: I’m going to guess no, but it will be interesting to see. I was thinking that song that Wizzer sung in the shower, would make a great song for a woman to sing.
Lea: Absolutely. Yes, definitely. “These Are The Games I Play”.
Sybil: Yes.
Lea: So anyway, you were introduced to the music and…
Sybil: And I loved it.
Lea: I’ll lend you the CD. I can’t think off the top of my head what amazing people were in that cast recording. But tonight the voices absolutely do stand up.

FALSETTOLAND – POST SHOW
Sybil: So are you glad you stayed for the second half?
Lea: So glad.
Sybil: So much better wasn’t it?
Lea: I could cry right now. It was amazing. It was so much more connected. And they were given the space to explore – I mean, obviously the emotions were bigger. The first show wasn’t really as full on – the revelation of sexuality, a change in a marriage and a son’s confusion – but, still really big themes.
Sybil: It should’ve been… but it…
Lea: … didn’t really come across. But – oh the balance here was just beautiful. So good, and it’s almost everything we loved in the first half being better, and the interaction of the lesbian couple next door was the extra dimension we needed.
Sybil: Yep.
Lea: It helped them to reflect – to look in on what was going on without being as involved in it. Because everyone in March of the Falsettos was so involved in everything they couldn’t observe with any kind of perspective because they were too emotionally invested.
Sybil: Was this before or after Rent?
Lea: Before…. I’m going to say Rent was early 90s but I don’t know.
Sybil: We’ll research that, because that scene – the deathbed scene – just reminded me of Angel.
[NOTE: Falsettos premiered in 1992 and Rent in 1994.]
Lea: The second half connected so much more clearly.
Sybil: So do you think it was a choice to make the first one less accessible?
Lea: It’s going to have to have been.
Sybil: There were some people who didn’t come back.
Lea: Yes I saw that too – a few seats in front of us, and we were only in the second row. Goodness me. And do you know, actually, what I meant to mention in March of the Falsettos – and I understand that there would have been a theatrical point and a directorial choice and a costume design choice to have them all in white shirts and grey pants – but once there was costume in the second half…
Sybil: It lifted it.
Lea: It really was quite astounding to have that comparison right in front of you so clearly. To kind of be saying initially they are all of one person and then actually let them have their own personalities in the second half was just so powerful. As soon as they came onto the stage and Trina had that purple blouse on – maybe they had found their identities in the intervening few years.
Sybil: Well they certainly did a really good job – especially Mendel and Jason – of showing their relationship had grown and developed over the last two years.
Lea: It was gorgeous wasn’t it? That Jason had really turned to Mendel as someone who could provide reason as opposed to his parents. And I loved too how Marvin and Trina actually came together over the whole Bar Mitzvah thing against Mendel, against their son – “What do you mean you don’t want a Bar Mitzvah?”
Sybil: Can you imagine being in a situation where there’s this mystery virus. And then being told that it’s contagious… and your lover has just died or is dying and you’re like… what does that mean?
Lea: I remember being floored when I first heard that.
Sybil: Oh look – there’s Nigel! Shall we go and say hello?
Lea: Just a quick pause there to go and see Nigel Ubrihien.
Sybil: Who was the ‘very small band’ for the show.
Lea: And co-incidentally, Sybil’s Musical Director and Accompanist for her show.
Sybil: My show!
Lea: You know what’s interesting, is that I started off going – ‘Wow, fabulous, I love this idea of a musical with just a piano’, and then I FORGOT that it was just a piano. Totally forgot. He was just so good and the only times I noticed, where when I knew that he was just vamping until they singers came in.
Sybil: He was amazing. It was such a great show. Two shows even!
Lea: Yeah, I just wanted a little bit more of that emotional honesty in the first show.
Sybil: Yeah I agree.
Lea: So what did you think – the lady who we saw in Carrie – who played Carrie’s mum…
Sybil: Margi de Ferranti.
Lea: Yeah, she did a gorgeous job. I loved her in this.
Sybil: Yeah, I did too. I thought her girlfriend – at first I wasn’t sure about her voice but the further we got into the show, the better she was.
Lea: And didn’t they blend well.
Sybil: Oh my goodness, all of them. They sounded like they’d been singing together for 10 years!
Lea: That section where they were singing – “Who would have thought the four of us would end up as lovers” – the whole thing – just delicious.
Sybil: They were all very musical in the way they…
Lea: Now the only thing that I didn’t quite love – and I understood the theatrical reason for it – was when they were holding the scores as they were trying to say the right things to Wizzer.
Sybil: Yeah, why was that?
Lea: I think they were trying to find the right things to say to someone who’s dying, almost like a script. It didn’t work for me at all.
Sybil: And the link was of course to the “Four Jews” song at the beginning.
Lea: Which was fine at the beginning.
Sybil: But even then, I didn’t love it.
Lea: I didn’t love it either.
Sybil: I didn’t really see the point of it. And to be honest, ok, so “Four Jews in a Room Bitching” – there’s no connection to the rest of the story – whereas this one was connected.
Lea: And they were really over-doing it – like, counting the rests and everything – it actually – considering the rest of Falsettoland was so emotionally true, and this was one of the first times that they acknowledged that Wizzer wasn’t going to recover…
Sybil: Yes, I didn’t love it.
Lea: But that was really one of the only faults in that second half.
Sybil: Yes, you’re right. It was much, much better.
Lea: I wasn’t sure about the use of the boxes when Wizzer died. When he was brought down from the top of the box and then he walked off? I didn’t know how that connected then to the real world. It disturbed me, visually. I did quite like at the end when they put all the boxes down and they all sat on the edges except for Wizzer who lay down. Even though I saw it coming.
Sybil: But it worked.
Lea: Yeah.
Sybil: And those boxes – there were times when they worked, and times when they just – I felt like they were just carrying around boxes for no apparent reason.
Lea: It’s like – ‘We’ve got them now so…’
Sybil: So we’d better use them. It was a bit clunky.
Lea: I love a simple set, I always have. So I don’t know why this didn’t gel.
Sybil: I think for a simple set, it was too complex.
Lea: Maybe they were too heavy? You know, the kind of labour it took to move them.
Sybil: So what do you reckon?
Lea: Oh goodness. I haven’t really even thought about a score. At interval I would have said 2 and a half or three.
Sybil: Oh really?
Lea: I really thought it was overworked. But I was so emotionally connected and moved in the second half that it kind of pushes it to three and a half.
Sybil: That’s where I was going to sit. Three and a half, maybe a four. Probably three and a half. I would have scored the first half probably a three. Because I didn’t hate it as much as you did and I think that’s because the music was new to me so I was enjoying that.
Lea: Yeah, I was too invested already!
Sybil: But the second half was fantastic. But it wasn’t a four and a half.
Lea: It edges towards a four
Sybil: Edges, but I think it’s a three and a half from me.
Lea: It just shows sometimes it’s worth sticking with something because perhaps the director is going to take you somewhere.
Sybil: I would love to see that show again with the same actors but re-directed to be performed more naturalistically. Because I think that would be a four and a half. So for me it was the direction that lost it. And on that note…
Lea: Good night!

IN SUMMARY

Sybil: For me this show was a reminder of how important the director’s job is. If the direction is getting in the way of the story and the connection and the emotion, in my view that’s a problem. However, the music is glorious and the voices were sublime. And the second half, released from the weight of all the excess business – just soared.  I gave it a three and a half, and that really belongs to the show and the performers. I wouldn’t go to see that production again, but I’d go see those performers and can’t wait until the show is produced again – just, please, more naturalistic next time??
Lea: I came in with a few too many pre-conceived ideas of what I thought Falsettos should be, but the first half – March of the Falsettos – really was just too contrived and over-worked for me. However I was totally won over by Falsettoland in the second half. The pain, honesty and counterpoints of comedy were spot on.  I must also mention that the Eternity Theatre itself is a glorious new space for Sydney’s theatre scene and I think that Darlinghurst Theatre Company is going to take their productions to the next level here.
Question: Have you ever walked out of a play or musical?

PRE & POST SHOW DRINKS: We had a lovely pre-show special dinner at The Commons, just a block and a half from the theatre. Post show was in the Eternity Theatre foyer which is quite a gorgeous space.