Applause!

I saw Applause! tonight done by REPRISE, which does week-long productions of old musicals with short rehearsal periods. Tonight was a free preview for which the professor for my class this quarter gave me a free ticket. The show was fun in that the audience was mostly full of really enthusiastic high school students who were an incredibly responsive crowd. Otherwise, the production was a little bit off, but interesting.

For me, the high point was totally John Fleck, one of the NEA 4 and in general a fabulous local gay performance artist. He played the gay hairdresser, including looking absolutely wonderful in leather in a gay bar scene. He had a fabulous gravelly voice and in was in general quite queeny and entertaining.

And Applause! definitely justifies playing to the stereotype; it's a show that revels in the campiness of Broadway and of All About Eve including a whole song devoted to "Hold on, it's going to be a bumpy night." There was also a whole scene in a gay bar/disco, which was weird in that the play was set in 1968 (ie pre-Stonewall), so the whole number was rather anachronistic but fun. There were even guys dressed as leather men, but they then acted totally fey and that was a bit odd.

The notable thing about this production was its interracial-ness. The Margo Channing/Bette Davis role was played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, who is most famous for performing in Dreamgirls on Broadway. She was totally a diva, and every song she peformed was a sort of abrupt break-out number. The actress playing Eve was a forgettable and mousy girl who totally couldn't compare with Ralph at all. It was a fascinating casting decision, though. I'm not sure how I feel about it. The moment where Margo's boyfriend accidentally embraces Eve because she's wearing one of Margo's old dresses is completely ridiculous, but more signigicantly, what does it mean to have a young white woman moving in and taking over for an older African-American actress? It felt rather creepy and disingenuous the way everyone kept claiming it was so nice to see someone "young" in the part. What I'm alluding to is how much this is a manifestation of the reassuring usurpation of African-American culture and power by bland white performers. Of course the original text is creepy enough. The whole play resolves with Margo learning that she doesn't really want fame or success, but really just wants to get married to her boyfriend and maybe even have a child. Sigh.