{"id":1036,"date":"2015-01-04T22:59:04","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T22:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1036"},"modified":"2015-01-04T22:59:04","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T22:59:04","slug":"my-american-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2015\/01\/my-american-dreams.html","title":{"rendered":"My American dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Assassins\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some people plunge into pantomime for their festive entertainment. I went to America. Not real America, but pretend, demi-dystopian America, courtesy of two musicals \u2013 Assassins<\/em><\/a> and City of Angels<\/em><\/a> \u2013 and a scintillating reboot of The Merchant of Venice<\/em><\/a> set in Las Vegas. Three versions of damaged, damaging America \u2013 its greed and desperation, its delusional entitlement and self-making desire. Happy holidays!<\/p>\n

Just as Broadway will often drop a cringe in our direction, British theatre has long been fascinated by the blood and brains of American drama. Sixty years ago, Williams and Miller gave us sweat-smeared desire and democratic angst \u2013 the passion and politics that in Britain often had to swerve around censorship and sensibility. In the 1980s, Mamet dazzled us with swears and provocation. Britain has also been pretty good to Sondheim, Wilson and Kushner. Nowadays, it seems, we respond to America gone wrong.<\/p>\n

Industrial smoke and mirrors<\/strong><\/p>\n

Each of these London productions showed Americans unmoored \u2013 heading west to graft a new beginning in Hollywood, to win big in Vegas, to bag themselves a President and magic away their grievances. Three terrific scores yelped with nervous, unrequited self-love. The key number in City of Angels<\/em> (Donmar) is a man duetting with his own recalcitrant creation \u2013 \u2018You\u2019re nothing without me\u2019 \u2013 while the Elvis impersonator crooning \u2018Are you lonesome tonight\u2019 in Merchant<\/em> (Almeida) conjures a slump of misery in the wee small hours. As for Assassins<\/em> (Menier), Sondheim\u2019s 1990 historical revue about high hoping no-hopers who tried to kill presidents from Lincoln to Reagan, that is bookended by a doomed chorus, \u2018Everybody has the right to be happy\u2019, steeped in the bristling, competing entitlement that has currently mired the country in stasis.<\/p>\n

\"City<\/a>

City of Angels Photo: Donmar Warehouse<\/p><\/div>\n

Each this smart trio of holiday outings throws a side-eye on rubes, ranters and rascals operating far beyond New York. City of Angels<\/em> (1989) has a book by Larry Gelbart, who had recently been fired from the movie Tootsie.<\/em> Licking his wounds, and lacerating Hollywood, he imagined a New York novelist lured by movieland in the blacklist era to write a screenplay from his own Chandleresque novel, finding himself and his hard boiled shamus both screwed by the prevailing deviousness.<\/p>\n

All three shows inhabit knowing popular culture, the arts of industrial smoke and mirrors. The set designs are all tiptop: Robert Jones\u2019 Hollywood in City of Angels<\/em>; Soutra Gilmour\u2019s abandoned funfair for Assassins,<\/em> its red white and blue paint weathered by neglect, its clown a gaping head in the dust; Tom Scutt\u2019s adoringly blinged pillars in Merchant,<\/em> where Venice is on the Vegas casino strip and Belmont not a fairy tale but a reality-tv studios, its cameras always ready to roll out a fake smile.<\/p>\n

‘Get off your backside, shine those shoes!’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a highlight from each show. In Assassins,<\/em> it has to be the execution cakewalk<\/a> from Charles Guiteau<\/a>, who shot President Garfield. Andy Nyman<\/a> played him as a manic hamster, scampering in wide circles, eyes and gnashers gleaming as he barked \u2018Look on the bright side<\/a>, not on the black side, get off your backside, shine those shoes!\u2019 Anything is possible in \u2018the land of opportunity\u2019, so you\u2019re cheated if it doesn\u2019t work out. Jamie Lloyd<\/a>\u2019s production gets the longing and lunacy of all of these characters \u2013 all so easily pushed to the margins \u2013 and Guiteau\u2019s number is perforated by Jamie Parker\u2019s balladeer, plucking provokingly at the banjo before he emerges as Lee Harvey Oswald, wound up and pointed at the cavalcade in Dallas.<\/p>\n

In City,<\/em> I\u2019ve always yelped at \u2018You can count on me\u2019<\/a>, the sardonic lament of an overlooked girl Friday. \u2018My kind of dame will surely die out like the dinosaurs\u2019 she sings, which rhymes with \u2018I\u2019ve got quite a name with hotel detectives who break down doors\u2019 (\u2018guess who they expect to see\u2019). Rebecca Trehearn<\/a> offers all manner of droll, but what I\u2019m taking away from Josie Rourke\u2019s fabulous production is the dream factory conjured by lighting that bisects the stage between sunny technicolor and sneering noir and genius projection work by Duncan McLean<\/a>. Typewritten dialogue clacking forward and instantly retracted; backward lettering breathing over on frosted office glass. It\u2019s a city of shadows and more importantly of fabrications \u2013 where truth can be instantly produced, and more quickly traduced.<\/p>\n

As for The <\/em>Merchant of Venice<\/em>, relocated to a Sin City of wealth and speculation, Rupert Goold\u2019s production is aces \u2013 nails each character, rethinks each scene. Antonio\u2019s sin is snobbery \u2013 he\u2019s a trust fund patrician who can barely endure setting foot in Shylock\u2019s eazy-loan cubbyhole. No wonder Ian McDiarmid\u2019s Shylock seems maddened enough to plunge a knife into Antonio despite the judgement against him. But the most radical revision is Susannah Fielding\u2019s Portia. It\u2019s such a tricky role \u2013 is she a smug victim or accidental feminist, daddy\u2019s little princess or legal eagle? Fielding doesn\u2019t try to fill the gaps \u2013 her Portia is<\/em> the gaps. The casket test to find her a husband becomes a tv game show of silicone desperation \u2013 Portia playing the Texan ditz in blonde wig and transparent stilettos. She plays legally blonde in court, but is pitiless against Shylock \u2013 there are winners and losers in this unsparing America. Back home with her vapid new hubby and his thuggish pals, she\u2019s lost \u2013 a confection melting into a sugary puddle. The wig falls askew, one heel is lost \u2013 marriage and inheritance have been bad speculations and she\u2019s crashing.<\/p>\n

\"Vinta<\/a>

Vinta Morgan, Emily Plumtree, Susannah Fielding in The Merchant of Venice. Photo: Ellie Kurttz<\/p><\/div>\n

Funhouse nightmares<\/strong><\/p>\n

They may not be festive but all three shows have a rancid gusto: their energy comes from cupidity, greed, misbegotten obsession. You can\u2019t look away, you can\u2019t feel squeaky clean. For Brits, there\u2019s comfort in knowing that, for all our own plastic dreams and tainted democracy, we don\u2019t share these particular funhouse nightmares. If British stages once looked to American drama to fill the gaps in its emotional repertoire \u2013 swagger, political fury and sexual heat \u2013 now that we can do these for ourselves, we look at it like the culturally colonised watching the empire crumble.<\/p>\n

Follow David at @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some people plunge into pantomime for their festive entertainment. I went to America. Not real America, but pretend, demi-dystopian America, courtesy of two musicals \u2013 Assassins and City of Angels \u2013 and a scintillating reboot of The Merchant of Venice set in Las Vegas. Three versions of damaged, damaging America \u2013 its greed and desperation, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[104,143,145,32,46,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-almeida","9":"tag-donmar","10":"tag-rupert-goold","11":"tag-shakespeare","12":"tag-sondheim","13":"tag-theatre","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1040,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1036\/revisions\/1040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}