in

They Were Hits in London. Then They Got Smacked in New York.

They Were Hits in London. Then They Got Smacked in New York.


“Praise the lord for ‘Tammy Faye,’” Matt Wolf cheered in The New York Times when the Elton John musical opened in London in 2022. The present, Wolf added, “has a coronary heart as large because the title character’s bouffant hairdo.”

Two years later, reviewing the Broadway switch, Elisabeth Vincentelli begged to vary. “Disjointed, surprisingly bland,” she wrote, additionally in The Times. Trying to go “behind the masks of this sophisticated, outsize lady,” she argued, had made her “smaller than life.”

Critics, even those that are colleagues, disagree, generally diametrically. That’s a part of the pleasure of criticism — and of theatergoing. But pans of English transfers have been too pervasive of late to be random. The new musicals “Tammy Faye” and “Back to the Future,” in addition to current revivals of “Cabaret” and “Sunset Boulevard,” are only a few of the exhibits warmly reviewed in London to be greeted on Broadway by a chilly New York slap.

I’m usually one of many slappers. Take “Back to the Future.” The Telegraph gave the London manufacturing 5 stars and known as it “a feelgood triumph.” I gave the Broadway model a tough time: “Less a full-scale new work than a semi-operable memento.”

Or take, please, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Cinderella.” “It provides as much as not a lot a ball as a blast,” Chris Wiegand wrote in The Guardian of the 2021 London premiere. My take when it crossed the Atlantic after altering its identify, daringly, to “Bad Cinderella”? “Surprisingly vulgar, sexed-up and dumbed-down.” And that was delicate. In “Time Out,” Adam Feldman described the brand new title as “a minor victory for fact in advertising and marketing.”

More than the adjective was added when the present moved to Broadway, however I doubt a number of contemporary songs and a revised script had been components within the nearly common crucial brickbats. Nor does a distaste for hand-me-downs clarify the distinction; the identical sample applies no matter the place a manufacturing begins. Last month The Guardian known as “The Lightning Thief,” an American musical that transferred to London, “cute, boutique, unique”; once I noticed it on Broadway in 2019, it had “all of the attraction of a pressure headache.”

So what does clarify the distinction? Are American critics simply grumpier than their English counterparts?

Perhaps there’s slightly of that. West End productions was the gold normal for high-class dramas and occasion musicals. In some circumstances, they nonetheless are: “The Lehman Trilogy,” “The Hills of California,” “Six” and “& Juliet” had been all greeted on Broadway with reward that appeared to justify their transfers. But recalling many years by which London imports flooded the market — Broadway within the Nineteen Eighties was stated to be struggling a “British invasion” — critics not hesitate, and generally even appear keen, to refute the concept that no matter comes from the land of Shakespeare should be worthy.

That’s very true when London exhibits sort out stateside topics. “Back to the Future,” although constructed by Americans and based mostly on one in all Hollywood’s most profitable franchises, had a distinctly English accent on Broadway, as if put by a number of mistranslation bots. “Tammy Faye,” in regards to the closely made-up Minnesota-born televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, missed the Midwestern boat completely, with its cool, flat satire of an overheated character.

Both exhibits had been revamped for New York, apparently not for the higher — and with out the advantage of intervening productions to stress-test the modifications of content material.

Changes of scale matter too. Moving “Tammy Faye,” which had performed the 325-seat Almeida Theater in London, to the 1,650-seat Palace in New York, was “madness,” Wolf advised me. “Within the intimacy of the Almeida, it actually landed, however I believe everybody knew it was nonetheless a piece in progress and wanted nurturing. Why, then, catapult it to an enormous Broadway home all weapons blazing?”

Perhaps not all weapons. Andrew Rannells, who performed Tammy Faye’s husband Jim Bakker within the London manufacturing, incomes an Olivier award nomination, dropped out earlier than Broadway, citing contract disputes. (Christian Borle took over, trying slightly sheepish.) “Bad Cinderella” was utterly recast, principally unconvincingly. Yet importing the West End stars may import issues. “Back to the Future” retained Roger Bart as Doc Brown and Hugh Coles as George McFly, each giving massively overstated performances. The remainder of the corporate, all new, performed it higher by enjoying it straighter.

Straighter for Broadway, anyway. American critics, if not at all times audiences, have typically most well-liked naturalistic interpretations. Whether in performs or in musicals, we — OK, I — wish to see how “bigger than life” characters acquired that approach, in response to particulars of circumstance and soul. I’m within the drama of recognizably human conduct, not in goofy, pratfalling ciphers or unmediated, born-that-way monsters.

London theater, with its longer and fairly completely different historical past, seems to have a higher tolerance for stylistic extremes. The West End “Cinderella,” Wolf stated, was “clearly a part of the thriving panto custom right here, and seen as a enjoyable and frivolous addition to it.”

Likewise, expressionistic interpretations of naturalistically conceived characters are extremely praised in London. As the light silent-movie star Norma Desmond in Jamie Lloyd’s filmic staging of “Sunset Boulevard,” Nicole Scherzinger spent more often than not trying comatose in a slip. In Rebecca Frecknall’s environmental “Cabaret,” Jessie Buckley did a lot the identical. Yet each gained Oliviers, and so did the intentionally alienating productions, designed within the Brechtian method to maintain you at an emotional distance.

Goal achieved. When “Sunset Boulevard” and “Cabaret” got here to Broadway, with Gayle Rankin changing Buckley, critics had been extremely divided. I used to be not. I spent much less time at every present feeling related emotions than questioning which genius lingerie firm had snagged the underwear concession.

Wolf, a New Yorker who has lived his whole skilled life in London, favored each. Again, he sees the distinction in crucial response as an artifact of nationwide character, expressed in most well-liked theatrical types. “Brechtian distance is actually not a problem for U.Okay. observers, who usually tend to chafe at overt emotionalism,” he advised me. In truth, he added, “I’ve heard many a U.S. hit play derided in London for sentimentality and so-called particular pleading.”

Point taken. The Times of New York might have given “Slave Play” raves however The Times of London discovered it indulgent. Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning works by Paula Vogel, Wendy Wasserstein, Terrence McNally and Donald Margulies have all been dismissed overseas.

And but I’ve to ask myself how a lot of “nationwide character” is basically simply private style. There are loads of “honest” English exhibits, and loads of expressionistic American ones. For that matter, most critics are aesthetic chameleons. Their reactions to exhibits recommend no sample in any respect, or a sample too sophisticated to be discerned with the bare eye. Taste is a fingerprint.

It can be a scar. (In school, the place I directed performs and Wolf reviewed them, he as soon as gave me a combined discover.) There’s no fact to criticism past loving what we love and licking our wounds. That London exhibits are sometimes panned in New York is, past that, inexplicable. Think of it as a supranational marital spat: Everyone’s proper and nobody is aware of why.

Report

Comments

Express your views here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Disqus Shortname not set. Please check settings

Written by EGN NEWS DESK

How Unauthorized Immigrants Help Finance Social Security Benefits

How Unauthorized Immigrants Help Finance Social Security Benefits

Wie Merz endlich im Wahlkampf ankommen will