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She Loves Me Live: What Worked, What Didn’t, and Where to Go From Here

She Loves Me debuted live on the televisions, mobile screens, and hearts of aspiring theatergoers everywhere last week. And despite a few initial technical difficulties, we stalwart viewers trudged on, stuck on our couches in pajamas, with cartons of vanilla ice cream on hand for Act 2, because we really had nothing better to do on a Thursday night than see Laura Benanti hit that high B.

But as interest in live-streamed theater expands from the few pioneering theater companies in England to the Broadway stage, and as major television networks keep adding live musicals to their annual lineup, it’s important to discuss how a successful live performance translates to a successful film, and what that says about each medium’s ability to create engaging narratives. I’ve been working on this question for over a year now, and it would take a couple of subsequent posts to give the topic its due exploration. So for now, let’s talk about She Loves Me Live specifically, what worked and what didn’t, and what the BroadwayHD experiment can show us about the theater experience.

What Worked: The Ballads and Solos

Close-ups were made for moments like Amalia’s somber ballad “Will He Like Me?,” a song which didn’t move me much when I saw it on stage but gained power with a camera framing Laura Benanti’s hopeful, yet troubled expressions. It’s the first solo in the show sung by a character alone, and an intensely personal moment for Amalia, whose fantasies about her dear friend are starting to become real. Film can be the best medium for this: bringing out nuances of emotion, making the imaginative become real.

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Same goes for Amalia’s other solo reflections on her love life, “Dear Friend” and “Vanilla Ice Cream,” and Ilona’s “I Resolve.” The camera served to intensify the soul-searching power of these songs and make these women’s journey’s feel so much more intimate

What Didn’t: The Ensemble Pieces and Dances

Large ensemble songs and dances serve a different storytelling purpose. Rather than closing in on intimate character-centric moments, they tend to broaden the brush of the plot with spectacle, environment, relationships, and sometimes pure silliness. The only way for a camera to capture the hugeness of these moments is to cut to different angles of the stage. A wide shot of the entire stage just doesn’t work on film: it’s almost too overwhelming, too theatrical. Thus dance-heavy songs like “Romantic Atmosphere” and even Kodaly’s “Ilona” lose their punch (even if “Romantic Atmosphere” didn’t quite have much punch to begin with) in sacrifice to quick camera changes and ineffective angling. Somehow the human eye works differently watching a live performance in person than the camera’s eye. In person, we resist direction and close-ups, absorbing the entirety of the scene even if it’s a little at a time.

What Worked: The Realistic Performances

Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi are no strangers to television, and it certainly showed by how friendly the camera was to their performances. Benanti’s delivery always struck me as realistic and natural, which is really the preferred modus operandi for great film acting (you could argue that it’s also great for stage acting, but more on that later). Levi’s performance is more animated, but no less perfect for the camera. I’m sure you could find at least ten gif-able Zachary Levi expressions; he’s mastered the art of the manically uncomfortable smile.

Another performance that translated well to camera was Tom McGowan’s understated everyman Cipos. McGowan is a veteran television actor, and his lovable oafish just-trying-to-make-a-buck character feels like a the kind of small gem that needs the close-up framing of a tv screen to help him not be overshadowed by the larger personalities on stage.

What Didn’t: The Unrealistic Performances

Just to clarify: I don’t mean to separate the show’s performers into good or bad actors. Everyone in this cast does a fine job to be honest. But I think more theatrical styles of performance are better for the stage as opposed to film. Take Peter Bartlett’s hilarious turn as the Maître D’. Bartlett uses a lot of clown-like mannerisms and delivers his lines in exaggerated, breathy fashion. It’s fun to watch his meltdown on stage as he dramatically staggers across the stage in anxious anger and scowls for several seconds before recovering his volatile composure. But this extreme theatricality requires a suspension of disbelief, which is never something that translates well on camera.

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The same, I’d say, goes for Jane Krakowski as Ilona. Even though her performance isn’t as exaggerated as Bartlett, her deadpan delivery has a vaudevillian streak to it that emphasizes presence and charm over nuance of character. On stage, it’s thrilling. On camera, boring.

What Worked: Set Changes

David Rockwell won a Tony for Maraczek’s Faberge-egg of a set, and the video recording did a great job of framing each set change with the high-definition detail and beauty it deserves.

What Didn’t: Seasons Change

That cute bit where the passing of time is indicated by a stagehand throwing autumn leaves (and then winter snow) on the audience? Seemed sort of lame on television. Again, theatrics don’t translate well.

What Worked: It’s LIVE, People!

I loved seeing the shadows of the back of people’s heads as they watched the performance. It was a great reminder that this whole show was performed live in real time, interrupting the visual determination a camera can produce. It’s also a bit like the moments when cast members on Saturday Night Live slip up during a skit. We love those bits so much because they reveal a bit the reality behind the show. Seeing behind the process of how something is created helps us appreciate the craft that goes into it.

Speaking of slip ups, Laura Benanti dropping ice cream on her bed sheets should be instituted into every performance of the show from now on.

What Didn’t: Misuse of Pre-show, Post-show, and Intermission

Before the show, we got a nice, little interview with Jane Krakowski and the significance of the show on her career and family life. It was worth a soundbite or two. But really? We had a whole 15-minute intermission that could have been spent with more artist interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, discussion on the history of the show, maybe even a special guest or two. Instead we got Justin Guarini counting down the ways Broadway HD is better than seeing the real show. First off, I disagreed with nearly every single point. Second, for an organization who claims to supplement live theater attendance and not replace it, that was definitely not the way to express it. Let’s get a bit more creative with the way we use this precious, precious time, BroadwayHD. I can interview Laura Benanti for you if you want.

What Worked: People all around the country got to see a great work of theater. Broadway became accessible. A stunning show was preserved through technology. And I got to write about this stage-to-screen trend. Let’s do this again sometime, eh? Vanilla ice cream for all!

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‘She Loves Me,’ True Love, and the Workplace

We saw the new (new) Roundabout revival of She Loves Me, a classic romantic musical regarded by many as one of the best in the genre. But I’m not going to sit here and gush about its perfect songs (Harnick and Bock might be my favorite songwriting duo), its fantastic cast (Benanti? Levi? Krakowski? Y’all come back now, ya hear?), and its inspired direction (Scott Ellis proving that second chances are not to be wasted). No, you can go read just about any other review of the show for that.

Instead, let’s get deep into this musical’s central questions: What is love? baby don’t hurt me How do we know when we find it? And why can’t we see it even when it is right in front of our faces. There’s a reason why this story has been adapted so many times, why it has gained such a popular fan following despite its short Broadway runs. These are questions we all ask ourselves at some point or another, and our answers can greatly impact how we perceive ourselves in relationship to others as well as to society.

This is part 1 of my 2-part analysis of true love in She Loves Me and how the characters’ workplace impacts their relationships and identities. Here we go, dear friend!

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Amalia Bosch is confident that her date tonight will be the love of her life. The only issue is she’s never met the guy. She doesn’t even know his name. She and her ‘dear friend’ have been corresponding anonymously in letters for months, and are finally meeting for the first time. When Ms. Ritter, her colleague at a local perfume shop, questions Amalia’s hasty judgment of the man, Amalia assures her in song, “I don’t know his name or what he looks like/ but I have a much more certain guide:/ I can tell exactly what he looks like inside.” Amalia and her mystery man bond over their views, their reading interests (Amalia includes a long list of authors they both admire including Flaubert, Dumas, Swift, and Tolstoy) and she insists they are perfect for each other.

Ms. Ritter, on the other hand, has the opposite approach towards love. She seems to fall for men on first sight without knowing much about their personalities. This includes Kodaly, a wily salesman who abuses all of Ritter’s second chances. This relationship ends with Ritter vowing never to trust a man so blindly again.

Are we supposed to believe that Amalia’s approach to finding love is better? That her feelings for ‘dear friend’ are more genuine than Ritter’s naïve love for Kodaly? Perhaps when the show was first performed in 1963, this question could have been answered with a more confident ‘yes.’ Amalia faithfully persists in corresponding with dear friend and seems to be rewarded. She puts aside all doubts about his looks or status, and ends up with a great match: Georg, a co-worker she despises in person, but whose true self comes out through his anonymous writing. At the shop, Amalia and Georg are too burdened by their worries, their job status, and their pride to actually connect as real people. But when they write, they can let their true selves shine forth.

We’ve come a long way from the Lonely Heart’s Club, though. Today, our postmodern experience with social media might have us doubt the whole idea of a ‘true self.’ It is apparent now more than ever how people portray different selves in different situations. Our avatars on Facebook or OkCupid or Linkedin are manipulated to display the best possible versions of ourselves to appeal to a certain type of friend, partner, or employer. What books I list on my dating profile might lead viewers to dismiss me as too conventional, too intellectual, or too avant-garde. And does a shared interest in Flaubert ever really equate true romance? If that were the case, online dating would have solved all our romantic issues a decade ago.

And how is it that two people who claim to know each other so well hate each other upon meeting? Are the characters’ personas obliterated in the workplace because of their anxieties and pride? Or does Amalia not really know her ‘dear friend’ as well as she’d like to think?

Take the musical’s most famous number, “Vanilla Ice Cream.” Amalia, who still does not know the identity of her date, calls in sick after being stood up. She decides to send him a letter to clear up any animosity between them. Georg, meanwhile, knows her identity and guiltily brings a pint of ice cream to her home. Amalia’s song starts with her writing voice: an elegant, prosaic, and romanticized tone as if she were writing in the lofty voice of poet. It’s even typically sung with a bit of a lilting accent (in both Benanti’s and Barbara Cook’s versions).

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Laura Benanti and Zachary Levi in ‘She Loves Me’. Photo: Joan Marcus

Then her writing is interrupted by her new surprising interest in Georg. When she thinks about Georg, the lyrics become more genuine, more accessible (‘That Georg…/is not like this Georg,/ This is a new Georg/That I don’t know!”). The tempo picks up, reflecting the unpolished, rambling thoughts bouncing happily in her mind. This is the purest version of Amalia we see.

It is in this song that we see how starkly different love-letter Amalia is from the real Amalia. Love-letter Amalia is a cosmetic, manicured version of herself. She edits herself to become like the romantic heroines of her books. Georg, similarly confesses to Sipos that he lies in his letters to make himself more appealing. In order to find love with each other, Amalia and Georg have to disassemble these pretenses and approach each other as they truly are—an amalgam of all their different selves, even if they contradict each other.

 

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Families and WWI: The Snow Geese and The Winslow Boy

Two of Broadway’s most anticipated plays feature families dealing with difficult events on the brink of World War I.  The Snow Geese, written by Sharr White, depicts the struggles of a floundering family matriarch (Mary Louise Parker) shortly after the sudden death of her husband. The death means that her two sons must settle the Gaesling family’s affairs, though both do so in extremely different ways. On the one hand, the rambunctious and idealistic Duncan (Evan Jonigkeit) returns from university and enlists in the war effort. His more serious-minded brother Arnold (Brian Cross), however, uncovers a history of financial mishaps while sorting his father’s estate, and must break his brother’s and mother’s idealism with the cold, hard facts of their situation. Meanwhile, their aunt (Victoria Clark) and German-born uncle (Danny Burstein) face discrimination as the anti-German sentiment rises.

The Snow Geese’s Mary Louise Parker

The other play is a revival of The Winslow Boy, by Terrence Rattigan. This play does not deal directly with the war itself (it is mentioned in conversation a few times), but more so on the disruptive changes occurring in the British family structure in the years leading up to it. The Winslow boy in question is Arthur Winslow (Spencer Davis Milford) who is expelled from his prestigious military academy for allegedly stealing another student’s mail package. That’s the British army for you. His father (Roger Rees) decides to dispute the charges, resulting in a more than two-year long court case that holds unexpected consequences for the rest of the Winslow family, especially his suffragette daughter (Charlotte Parry).

The cast of The Winslow Boy

The decade preceding the start of World War I is a really fascinating one because of all the changes British society is undergoing. Women’s Rights, class and political upheaval, revolution in Ireland, and changing views on art and tradition are all brewing controversy and change in these few years; and if these are the volatile gunpowder in a societal keg, the upcoming war explodes it.

That’s why the two plays’ focus on families trying to hold on to the last remaining vestiges of their pasts makes absolute sense for the time period. For the Gaesling family, the past has a far more ephemeral quality. It comes in drug-induced dreams about the dead, a soiled legacy, and doubts about how the family has come to their current situation. Arnold is the hard realist who must break the family’s ties with the past, first by seeing it for what is really is.

With the Winslow family, the past is altogether far more tangible. The production makes a point of demonstrating objects, costumes, and scenery with great realism. There’s even a photograph taken (by one-scene actor extraordinaire Stephen Pilkington, also the pita guy in One Man, Two Guvnors) with a antique camera. The Snow Geese also features extraordinarily realistic sets, but it is far more dreamlike in its lightning and movement.

The endings of both plays are happy, yet slightly somber. Duncan Gaesling is off to home, a little down-trodden but optimistic nonetheless. Arthur Winslow’s case ends and it is not clear whether he is to be reinstituted at the academy. Regardless, both boys will be plunged into the  trenches, and odds are they’re not going to come out. Nearly a million British soldiers died, a fact that would more readily come to mind for British audiences than American. I was hoping that The Winslow Boy would make mention of this; perhaps Arthur’s expulsion from the military has a bright side in that he won’t have to, well, be in the military. Still, he may have volunteered, as did many patriotic young boys and their friends, or conscripted depending on his age in 1916. Either son could have survived the war, but returned home disabled or shell-shocked. The real-life Arthur Winslow, George Archer-Shee, was killed, aged 19, at the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914. Rattigan doesn’t ruin his happy ending with that tidbit of information, though I would have liked to see how a play like this would have dealt with that reveal. This is only the cusp of the Gaesling and Winslow family struggles.

On a lighter note, can I just mention that Roger Rees, who played the Sheriff of Rottingham in Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who played Maid Marian in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, are playing husband and wife in this show? It’s like a terrible, wonderful dream land.

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Drood Times Two @ Studio 54

The ladies of LMezz were so intent on solving The Mystery of Edwin Drood they went on two different nights. Here are our reports, including alternate endings, crazy amazing belting, and much much more!

Kate

I saw Drood on a cold Thursday night. While the energy in the cast (and audience) was under the weather (ha!) it was a jolly good show. The audience elected Princess Puffer as the killer and set up Helena Landless with Durdles: their duet was simply hilarious. I absolutely loved the Clue-esque ending, with the murder outcomes illustrated by the shadows of actors behind a scrim. Another delight included the 19th century costumes, designed by William Ivey Long. (Seriously. I’ve never gotten so much shoe/stocking envy until I saw the women ensemble’s color coded boots. So pretty!)

Finally, I am all about the female performances of this cast. I got to see Chita Rivera. Singing. On a Broadway stage. Betsy Wolfe’s performance as Rosa Bud was plucky and such fun. And Drood has made me obsessed with Stephanie J. Block. Obsessed!


Sara

Drood sounds like my kind of show. A Victorian-set comedy with a play-within-a-play structure with enormous amounts of audience participation. Sounds like my theater dream come true. The actual show though is less thrilling. While the performances were great (Who knew Smash’s Will Chase was such a ham?) and the costumes and scenery were extreme eye candy, it never really amounts to much more than cute. There’s a plot and a lot of fun, weird characters, but they remain stock characters without much motivation or dilemma. I actually enjoyed the songs, but they all felt out of place– either much darker or much too complex than their surroundings. The songs would have worked perfectly in a much more nuanced show or under better direction. And I have never seen an audience more mellow during intermission.

When it came time to pick the murderer, my sister (who came with me) and I really couldn’t care less. We picked the parson because we thought he’d have the most complicated motivation in killing Drood. The rest of the audience probably had the same idea because the parson won the vote. Too bad there wasn’t any more motivation than we might have guessed using the scant information we already had on him.

On our way home, my sister asked me, Maybe it would have worked if it wasn’t a play within a play? If they weren’t introducing each actor’s entrance and so on…? I said, But those were the best parts! It was all the murky, mucky stuff in between that bored me!

Maybe Drood’s lack of energy comes from the show trying to be two things at the same time. On the one hand, it’s trying to be self-aware and meta-theatrical. If a show goes that route, it’s entering into an agreement to abandon realism. The comedy of the show also stems from it’s awareness of theatrical conventions. It’s why the comedy in other self-aware shows like Peter and the Starcatcher or The 39 Steps work so spectacularly well. If you’re going to expose the show’s artificiality, you can’t really expect audiences to get swept up in plot and characters so instead, you work with wit, conventions, and perhaps a complexity of ideas.

Drood, however tries to be both this AND realist. It’s play within a play has both a fake play (Drood) and a real one (Music Hall). The cast tries to make its Music Hall Venue as realist as possible, even having the 1895-minded actors mingle with the audience before the show. At the same time, the fake play, Drood, also tries to be too realist, with its hyper-sets and costumes, its misplaced, darkly emotional songs, all of which are supposed to sweep us away into the story. Thing is, we can’t be in the London Music Hall and Cloisterham at the same time. Well, maybe we can, given a funnier, better production?

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