Saturday 19 September
New York, August Wilson Theatre • Paranormal Activity would probably not have been at the top of my list were it not for the dearth of alternatives. This stage adaptation of the successful film franchise aimed at manipulating audiences into jumpiness by combining situational drama with visual and aural effects. There’s no doubt that goal was achieved, and I particularly enjoyed those moments when the collective nerves of the audience were so highly strung that an implicit feeling of solidarity, sometimes paradoxically bordering on merriment, circulated through the auditorium. At some point, one of the characters asked “Where the f*** are my slippers?” I couldn’t help wondering whether this was meant, at least unconsciously, as a wink to My Fair Lady.
New York, The York Theatre at The Theatre at St. Jean’s • The new musical Truly, Howard Hughes felt like it had been designed by a Marketing Department: Big feelings, starting with a mother/son scene? Check. A big, luscious score with catchy orchestrations? Check. Intimate scenes and big production numbers with a tap-dancing frenzy? Check. But, in the end, the show was considerably less than the sum of its components, lacking as it did a convincing dramatic arc, or even a satisfactory journey into the heart and mind of that very peculiar man, Howard Hughes, a cinema mogul and aviation innovator whose out-of-joint life could have provided ample dramatic material. After all, he spent his life defying fate by getting up from countless physical and psychological crashes.
Tuesday 22 September
Paris, Théâtre du Lido • Robert Carsen had already designed a memorable though slightly bleak production of Singin’ in the Rain in 2015 for Le Châtelet, then helmed by Jean-Luc Choplin, who has since moved on to Le Lido, reïmagined as a full-fledged theatre after being a cabaret for most of its existence. This production was advertised as new, but it was at best an adaptation of the Châtelet staging to the constraints of Le Lido — relying heavily on projections to compensate for the absence of flies or significant wing space. The solid cast was a tad short on charisma and, as with all Choplin productions, the star of the evening turned out to be the fabulous orchestra. The opening credits strangely co-credited the libretto to one “Adolph Greenby” — I wonder who that might be.
Wednesday 23 September
Paris, Théâtre de l’Athénée – Louis Jouvet • I don’t think I’d ever seen Jean Genet’s Les Bonnes, a landmark of absurdist playwriting. The Comédie-Française mounted this revival in the very theatre where the play originated in 1947, L’Athénée. Carme Portaceli’s staging, set in a bathroom, shed a crude light — both physical and metaphorical — on the complex and often cruel interactions between the three characters, whose identities get blurred to the point of absurdity. Genet’s plays never made it to Broadway, despite a substantial Off-Broadway life in New York — a curious fate for a playwright whose work shows affinities to that of such Broadway royalty as Edward Albee.
Thursday 24 September
Paris, UGC Maillot • Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster (2015) tells the exquisitely absurdist story of a society in which, for reasons unspecified, being single is against the law. The premise sounds somewhat familiar — nonconformity in a dystopian universe is almost a genre in itself — but I found the low-tech, character-driven treatment of the film full of gleeful incongruity. The soundtrack, consisting mostly of classical music excerpts, artfully added to the surrealist mood. The cast was fantastic, with special mentions to the always fabulous Olivia Colman and John C. Reilly.