Theatre Review: The Woman in Black, McKittirick Hotel, New York City

I first read Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black (1983) as a child when I came across the book in my local library. I’d recently “discovered” Victorian literature and had been reading lots of Brontë and Dickens. The cover first attracted me (I was already drawn to a Gothic aesthetic!) and, funny enough for someone who would go on to become a historical novelist, I was little disappointed when I realised this wasn’t a “real” nineteenth-century novel but a work from the previous decade.

Since then, I’ve experienced the story several times in different media. There was a touring production of the popular stage adaptation, which I attended at Belfast Opera House with giggling teenage classmates. We screamed at the jump scares and I marvelled at the stage effects (I’d never seen a Broadway or West End show before and loved the lighting and use of translucent curtains). When I was at university, I saw the 2012 film adaptation starring Daniel Radcliffe. A friend’s girlfriend covered her eyes for most of the movie and deemed it a horror film.

Each time, varied as these experiences were, my response has been the same. The Woman in Black has more style than substance. It’s Victoriana for those who don’t know much about the Victorians. But it’s all in good fun and can be visually compelling—just as the novel’s cover was to me many years ago.

This week I attended another production of the stage play, this time at the McKittirick Hotel in Manhattan. The McKittirick isn’t a real hotel but a performance space with drinking and dining venues. It’s also home to Sleep No More, the most popular immersive theatre experience in the city. I was excited to see what they would do with The Woman in Black.

What I didn’t expect was that, while Brits revel in how Victorian The Woman in Black is (from creepy music boxes, to face-obscuring fashions to ponies and traps), Americans really respond to the story’s Britishness. Prior to the show, attendees can dine in booths designed to resemble those of an English pub. We ate pies and drank ale. There was even HP Sauce on the table, which seemed pretty un-Victorian, until I read up on it and realised that the brand dates from 1895. The performance space also includes a bar, hence the billing of this The Woman in Black as a “ghost play in a pub.”

Slightly disappointingly, these pre-show bells and whistles, reminiscent of the pie dinner I enjoyed prior to the Barrow Street Theatre’s production of Sweeney Todd a couple of years ago, were the most innovative part of the production. Otherwise the play will be familiar to those who’ve seen it at other venues, despite the McKittirick’s fabled reputation.

There are only three actors (and one is the unspeaking ghost). Some props and even a dog are make-believe, with the script rhapsodising on the power of audiences’ imaginations. It’s all very meta and the Gothic tropes (empty rocking chairs, abandoned toys, descending mist) are so hackneyed they verge on cliché.

I ended the night with the same feeling The Woman in Black has always left me with—disappointment that I didn’t enjoy it more, given my love of Victorian Gothic, but also some satisfaction that the period of literature I’m most fascinated by continues to have such mass appeal. There’s something about the preoccupations, fashions, and stories of the nineteenth century that audiences keep coming back to—and that’s great news for a historical novelist like me.

If you’re looking for a fun night out and like your pie, consider checking out the production at the McKittirick. But at $100+ for the whole experience, I’d caution against breaking the bank to attend.

What NYC-based theatre production would you like to see the Secret Victorianist review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

If you want to learn more about my debut novel, Brontë’s Mistress, check out my website here. Historical novelist Jeanne Mackin writes, “Anyone who has ever thrilled to a Brontë novel needs to read this glorious historical novel about the Brontë sisters and their brother, Branwell, and his affair with the outrageous, scandalous woman who broke all conventions.”

Theatre Review: Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, Imperial Theatre, NYC

“No single English novel attains the universality of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace,”

Encyclopedia Brittanica

Reading Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 War and Peace is a mammoth undertaking. The story of love, death and philosophy against the backdrop of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia sprawls across four volumes, encompassing nearly 600 characters, and you soon feel immersed in its detailed and vibrant world.

Josh Groban with the cast of The Great Comet

New Broadway musical, Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (hereafter The Great Comet), achieves a similar feat, even with its much more limited scope. New York’s Imperial Theatre has been transformed from a traditional proscenium arch into an interactive space, with many spectators sat on the stage, gangways for the performers to cavort through the audience and red velvet hangings and paintings over the walls, allowing you to feel like you have really stepped into a nineteenth-century drawing room.

Dave Malloy’s play dramatises a few chapters of Tolstoy’s novel — the period just prior to the appearance of the comet, including Pierre’s duel and Natasha’s seduction and thwarted abduction. The focus is helpful in terms of improving accessibility (during the first song the chorus even tells you that you should be looking at your programme and consulting the family tree) and creating emotional payoff in a short space of time, although the production was most affecting for me during Pierre (Josh Groban)’s solos, which touched most explicitly on the novel’s broader existential themes.

Denee Benton and Brittain Ashford

There is little dialogue and the music ranges from traditional Russian tunes to old school Broadway ballads to rave and electronica, whatever will best convey the plot and mood, to which the play strives to be loyal. Many of the chorus members play instruments as they move through the crowd and Pierre often frequents the central orchestra pit, taking over at times from the musicians. Groban, along with Denee Benton’s Natasha, Brittain Ashford’s Sonya and Gelsey Bell’s Mary, really is the emotional heart of the drama, but the audience also responds well to the eccentric caricatures – mad Prince Bolonsky (Nicholas Belton), proud Muscovite matriarch Marya (Grace McLean) and ‘hot’ Anatole (Lucas Steele).

If you’re in NYC and up for a riotous night, The Great Comet is definitely a show to watch. Plus it might even help you bluff your way through a conversation about War and Peace…

Do you know of any other shows you think the Secret Victorianist should see next? Let me know – here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Opera Review: L’Elisir d’Amore, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City

Gaetano Donizetti’s comic opera in two acts premiered in Milan in 1832, but L’Elisir d’Amore remains as crowd-pleasing and entertaining today, especially in the Met’s beautiful production.

Grigolo and Kurzak

Italian peasant Nemorino (Vittorio Grigolo) is desperately in love with well-read landowner Adina (Aleksandra Kurzak), but she’s a perpetual flirt, currently taken by visiting soldier Belcore (Adam Plachetka).

The love triangle plays out against Michael Yeargan’s gorgeous sets, reminiscent of nineteenth-century landscape paintings in their composition. It’s a sort of comedic Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), minus the death and heartache. The only death here is offstage and brings Nemorino wealth and, subsequently, ridiculous levels of female attention, prompting Adina’s jealousy. The chemistry between the leads and the usual comedic misunderstandings keep the audience constantly engaged. It’s easy to follow without the usual rustling of programmes and whispered explanations.

‘Udite, udite, o rustici’

But the comedic heart of Donizetti’s opera, and this production, is Dulcamara (Alessandro Corbelli)—the travelling salesman whose miraculous elixir is fabled to cure all ills, even unrequited love. His aria, ‘Udite, udite, o rustici’, is a highly entertaining operatic sales pitch, and surely the inspiration for Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Pirelli's Miracle Elixir’ in 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Unusually for a comedy not all the misunderstandings are set right, not all the mysteries are unravelled. Dulcamara is never revealed as a fraud and his elixir is heralded as a miracle cure to the end, when young love’s trials have concluded satisfactorily.

Corbelli and Kurzak

Grigolo’s performance was probably the standout in the matinee I saw, but Kurzak was also charming and the chorus made this a true ensemble piece, as Enrique Mazzola conducted.

Adorable child actors, beautiful costuming, fine performances all around and settings that made you feel immersed in Italian landscapes: what more could you ask for in the middle of New York City?

The cast of the Met's production

What productions would you like to see the Secret Victorianist review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Theatre Review: Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility: A New Musical, Shakespeare Theater, Chicago

Last weekend, the Secret Victorianist was in Chicago, and caught a production of a new musical adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811) at the Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier.

McGinnis and Rietkerk as Marianne and Elinor

Paul Gordon’s musical retains the wit and charm of the source text but strips back the novel to concentrate on the two sisters, with two very different personalities, at its heart – Elinor (played by Sharon Rietkerk) and Marianne (Megan McGinnis). Their mother and younger sister are absent here, and Austen purists will find some other differences of plot, but the intention is clear - by making the siblings’ relationship the focus of the play, the piece has a dramatic singularity of vision that serves it well.

Kevin Depinet's set design

This choice, with the sisters’ similarities and differences highlighted by mirrored staging, emotional duets, and (a little heavy-handedly) symbolic costume colours, means at times the production comes off as Jane Austen for the Frozen generation. The romantic interests are almost incidental to what even the welcome note in the programme tells us is the real love story – ‘the safe harbour of unconditional love’ between the two sisters. As Marianne and Elinor advance hand in hand at the show’s finale, Colonel Brandon and Edward Ferrars left to the side, the sincerity is a real contrast to the more sardonic note of the novel’s conclusion:

‘Among the merits and the happiness of Elinor and Marianne, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands.’

But, as in Frozen, a simple story leads to a strong musical and it’s easy to get swept along in the fun.

Rietkerk and McGinnis do a great job with a strong cast of actors in support. Sean Allan Krill, as Brandon, nearly steals the show at times and his simultaneously funny and moving ‘Wrong Side of Five & Thirty’ proves one of the most memorable and hummable musical numbers. Emily Berman is also strong as Lucy Steele, managing to come off as simultaneously naïve and threatening. Tiffany Scott is a bit too pantomime villain for me as Fanny Dashwood, but David Schlumpf is very believable as her weak-minded husband John.

Anna and Elsa in Disney's Frozen

McGinnis as Marianne was at her best when singing – ‘Rain’ and its reprise were her strongest numbers. Rietkerk as Elinor was strong when singing too but also had beautiful reactions, conveying the most emotion in a play that was largely lighthearted and often comedic and Wayne Wilcox as Edward was a perfect counterpoint to her pathos, engendering sympathy from the audience as well as laughs at his awkwardness. It would have been nice to see more obvious differentiation between Brandon and Willoughby (Peter Saide), as the two seemed similar in age, bearing, and physicality. Kevin Depinet’s set is beautiful – suggesting place and period without hindering the fast pace and fluidity of the space.

Sean Allan Krill as Colonel Brandon

Overall, BarbaraGaines’s production is a great entertainment. What it offers is a night of escapism – high romance, beautiful costumes, and satisfyingly soaring music. Yet its loyalty lies with the ‘rules’ of theatrical storytelling - if you’re looking for textual fidelity, return to reading or a cinematic adaptation.

Do you know of any theatre productions (in New York) set in the nineteenth century you think the Secret Victorianist should review? Let me know - here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist!

Theatre Review: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Walter Kerr Theatre, New York City

Last week the Secret Victorianist caught a show on Broadway – A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at the Walter Kerr Theatre. Although it’s set in 1907-9, I wanted to write about the play because of how much it owes dramaturgically to nineteenth-century melodrama.

The premise is simple – after his mother’s death, Monty Navarro finds there are only eight members of the D’Ysquith family between him and an earldom and so sets out on a murderous rampage, removing them one by one. Along the way he must also juggle his fiancée and mistress. The story is told retrospectively through a confession written in his prison cell prior to his execution for the one murder he did not commit.

The Secret Victorianist at A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder

The staging of the production demonstrates a self-conscious interplay with the conventions of the Victorian theatre. The scenes of Monty’s confession are played out on a stage within the stage – an ornately decorated proscenium arch, similar to those I saw in miniature at Pollock’s Toy Shop. Different locales, such as the frozen lake where one relative meets his demise, are suggested by 2D scenery, a nod to the painted backdrops which conveyed place in plays such as Wilkie Collins’s and Dickens’s The Frozen Deep (1856).

Portraits in Victorian and earlier dress come alive to deliver old-fashioned views on the purity of the bloodline and the prudence of rigidly enforced class distinctions, making Monty’s bloody ascent seem to stand for a new era of improved social mobility.

The set for A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder

What’s most Victorian about the play, however, is the co-conspiratorial relationship between the audience and the murderer (here more hero than villain). As in so many melodramas, the suspense doesn’t come from doubting what will occur, so much as waiting for actions we’ve already anticipated to happen. Instead, surprise comes from the innovative staging and comedic delivery – it’s like watching a magician at work.

Another layer of audience awareness is added by the use of one actor (on the night I went, Greg Jackson) to play the entire D’Ysquith family. The dramatic play is doubled as the audience enjoys each murderous plot devised by Monty (Jeff Kready), along with each new character assumed by Jackson.

The lack or ‘moral’ resolution may set the play apart from its historical models, but the opportunity to identify with a wrongdoer and revel in his societally disruptive behaviours (undermining marriage, class, inheritance) is distinctly familiar.

If you have the opportunity to watch the musical, I’d take it – it’s a riotously fun production, and an imaginative reworking of some staple dramatic traditions. Find out more here.

Do you know of any other theatre in New York you think the Secret Victorianist would enjoy? Let me know – here, on Facebook or by tweeting @SVictorianist.