Poor Yella Rednecks (2023) (Manhattan Theatre Club)

Qui Nguyen's play Poor Yella Rednecks is something of a sequel to his 2016 play Vietgone. It's independent enough that you don't have to have seen the earlier play but there is one direct reference in the dialogue, and many of the actors actually reprise their earlier roles in this play. Nguyen writes himself into this play about his mother's struggles and raising him in rural Arkansas after fleeing Vietnam as refugees. Though specific to the Vietnamese American experience, the themes will resonate with any immigrant audience. It's not exactly haha funny but there is some clever writing. Nguyen plays with the stage play as a form, writing his mother speaking Vietnamese in perfect English while writing the white characters speaking nonsense, the way his mother hears them. It's a clever inversion that works on stage where there are no subtitles. The play is actually delivered with several "songs" that are really more like slam poetry. The beats are somewhat generic, and the lyrics are kind of cheesy and don't all really rhyme, but the awkwardness is sort of endearing. I thought that it was maybe a one-off experiment, but apparently Nguyen played with this style before. It's only the closing song that has melody, the rest is pure spoken word rap, which you don't typically associate with Vietnamese refugees. The lead Maureen Sebastian is fantastic as the mother. She plays a romantic lead and a poor single mother at once and nails both tones. I also loved the set featuring the letters YELLA, the Americana signs framing the stage, and comic book style. There are two cool stage combat kung fu scenes. And the playwright as a child is played by a puppet who emotes and fights pretty realistically. I quite enjoyed the play, and would like to see Vietgone. More different Asian American stories and innovative storytelling on stage please.

Here Lies Love (Broadway) (2023)

After seeing the immersive staging of Guys and Dolls on the West End, I was very excited to see the transformation of the Broadway Theatre for Here Lies Love. I unfortunately came down with Covid for the second time just the August weekend I had bought tickets for. Morgan went in my place and saw Lea Salonga. Luckily I was able to see it still before the show closes at the end of the month. 

The marketing for this show has seemingly not reached the general public. Any time I tell someone I'm going to see Here Lies Love, they ask what's that and then give a dumbfounded stare when I say "the David Byrne immersive disco musical about Imelda Marcos". Yes, this show's very existence is kind of bizarre. The premise is that reportedly Imelda was known to have partied it up at Studio 54, and so they recreate the atmosphere of a discotheque. The music is by David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, and I'll say it is recognizably in the weird/cool/kind-of-catchy style of The Talking Heads (American Troglodyte especially). None of the music, save for the title song, is especially memorable/hummable but it works. The immersion is cool, but I think not quite as well executed as Guys and Dolls. The stage doesn't rise and fall, rather it rotates and so the audience moves around clockwise with it. And it's quite crowded like a nightclub such that you can't move around as much. And there is actually a proper front where the stage would normally be since the balcony still has seats. It's not actually in the round. I did like the use of live footage though. The all-Filipino cast is beautiful--a wonderful Broadway first. The dance parts were fun too, maybe less so in a seat but I had a grand ole time. 

There is a valid question to ask about whether the show glorifies Imelda. I think it starts in a way that kind of does. The crowd cheers at the election of Ferdinand Marcos and decries Ninoy Acquino's dismissal of Imelda as being too tall (Also, I need a fact check on that because it's unbelievable that Imelda was courted by both Acquino and Marcos). But the show certainly ends on the right side of history. Ninoy Acquino dies a martyr and calls out the rampant corruption and horrors of martial law. And the show ends with two poignant songs: an elegy sung for Ninoy by his mother and an acoustic sung by the DJ to lyrics set to real accounts from the People Power Revolution. I think it's also interesting to note that the concept album dates back to 2010, predating the ascensions of Bong Bong Marcos and Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump. The show takes on a different urgency in 2023. It urges us to learn from history because we keep on forgetting.

How To with John Wilson (2020-3)

How To with John Wilson defies categorization. I struggle to explain to people what exactly the show is, let alone what makes it so great. But this show was consistently one of the most interesting on TV. So let me try here. Each episode is a video essay in the form of a how-to. It begins with one topic, but it inevitable meanders into something wholly unexpected. It is narrated by John Wilson, an anxious New Yorker who really seems to understand New York. His camera captures all sorts of random found footage. It makes you wonder whether the words are made to match the images or the vice versa. The matching is hilarious. The images are often independently funny but put to words they take on a whole different meaning that makes you chuckle. And somehow the essays always turn out to be poignant, even profound. He interviews the strangest people who let him into their homes. They'll say something wild nonchalantly and he'll say "wait, what?" and then they can expound upon some crazy tangent that becomes the new focus of the essay. He loves to attend niche conventions and travel to remote corners of the country. With that HBO money, he lets the wind take him where it will and he just runs with it. And in the end, in the final episode, he came to a similar conclusion as Executive Producer Nathan Fielder did in The Rehearsal Season 1...a childless middle-aged man contemplating fatherhood. 

Barry (2018-23)

Barry ushered in the era of the black comedy.  How do you pitch a comedy about a marine-with-PTSD-turned-hitman-turned-aspiring-actor? The premise is ridiculous but it works. Bill Hader is a tour de force. He is a good actor, playing a character who is a bad actor, improving as an actor. Yes, the Bill Hader from SNL known for Stefon. He does some serious acting. And as showrunner, he created a poignant existentialist story. And as a burgeoning director, he directed some of the series's best episodes. There are some masterful shots Hader directs himself. He's not just a sketch comedian. Henry Winkler is fabulous as the acting teacher Gene Cousineau. And my personal favorite is Anthony Carrigan who plays the gay Chechen mobster Noho Hank. His viciousness and sarcasm is matched with a heart of gold.

Ted Lasso (2020-23)

Between CODA and Ted Lasso, Apple TV+ took over Hollywood. Ted Lasso became a reason to get Apple, at a time of death and destruction in COVID, people actively sought out the positive feel-good show about being kind and belonging amidst a sport Americans couldn't care less about. That's actually its other success--Ted Lasso has made soccer fans out of Americans who knew as little as Coach Lasso when he first arrived at Richmond. I suppose the other reason people flocked to Ted Lasso is because people were really invested at the time in Jason Sudeikis's divorce from Olivia Wilde. Ted Lasso has also made stars of its cast that was virtually unknown in the US, Hannah Waddingham and Bret Goldstein now in high demand. Amazingly, Goldstein was originally hired as a writer on the show and lucked his way into the role. 

Season 1 is really strong and funny. Season 2 takes the show in an entirely different direction. It does a decent job at pivoting from the relentless optimism to the depression hidden underneath the facade. It's a bit of a downer but it's an important message to normalize therapy and show an admirable non-toxic masculine figure. It is quite bold though to go against precisely what made the show so popular in Season 1. Season 3 I thought was just OK.  My biggest problem with the series is its treatment of Nate, played by Nick Mohammed. He is the only Asian character, and is portrayed stereotypically timid. He is the hidden genius who can't ask out the hostess at his favorite restaurant. But what you see in those restaurant scenes has nothing to do with sweet Nate's characterization because you're so distracted by the hostess's blatant racism. She refuses to seat Nate and his family at the table in the window. It has nothing to do with him being timid and everything to do with blatant prejudice. And yet he still wants her! Despite the disdain with which she treats him. And eventually he gets her. He also has this story arc where he becomes evil. Or maybe was always evil deep down. Either way, I didn't like making the only Asian character evil.The show otherwise does well to recognize homophobia and racism towards Black characters.

Romeo and Juliet (American Ballet Theater)

As far as story ballets go, the story can't be too complicated otherwise the plot has to be very well known. Dance just can't convey complex plot clearly. Fortunately, Romeo and Juliet is well known. I was able to follow this a lot better than Like Water For Chocolate. It runs nearly three hours, and I recognized only the five minutes of Prokofiev's Montagues and Capulets. That's one of the best sequences of the ballet. There were probably 40 dancers up on stage. I think that's the most impressive thing...synchronization. Kind of odd to me though is that the corp doesn't get to bow. The leads get their applause at the end. You would think that the company would get to come out together and bow like in a play, but they did not. Personally, I don't like that. They should all get their moment of recognition. Special shoutout to Mercutio.

Hamlet (The Public Theater) (2023)

In 2019, Kenny Leon staged a brilliant production of Much Ado About Nothing in the park. This year, he returns to the Delacorte (for one final season before it closes for 18 months of renovations) with Hamlet. Though the plays have nothing to do with each other, he stages it in the same affluent black suburb of alternate Atlanta, one in which Stacey Abrams ran for president in 2020. But this time, the Abrams banner is broken, the palatial estate is crooked, the American flag is at an angle, the car in a puddle, and at center stage a casket draped in an American flag. The set and costumes are fabulous. The Queen Gertrude is dressed in African regalia.  Like in "Much Ado", the cast is predominantly black and they infuse the play with hip-hop and gospel music. 

Ato Blankson-Wood is very good as the eponymous Hamlet. His "To Be or Not To Be" was breathtaking. I don't feel like he really got across though that he was faking insanity. The production definitely suggests that he's actually gone mad following the murder of his father. The father's ghost appears as an ominous voice who possesses Hamlet, and there are some spooky lights. In this way, Hamlet is portrayed as more of an anti-hero. But I remembered Hamlet being more justified in his anger. 

Shakespeare's longest play, Hamlet usually runs more than 4 hours but this production is an abbreviated 2 hours 45 minutes. There are subplots removed which has the effect of accelerating the main plot. It makes the pacing kind of weird. And by the time everyone dies at the end, it feels sort of unearned. In conclusion, not as good as Much Ado About Nothing, but maybe I also am just not a big fan of the tragedies.