Big River @ Encores

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 2/8/17 at 11:11pm

I looked for a thread, so forgive me if one was already started. I saw the performance tonight and although this production has a lot going for it, ultimately the show just didn't sit well for me.

The musical begins with the same warning Twain gives his readers in the novel: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. The musical takes this to heart and almost uses it at a get out of jail free card to be as episodic and unevenly paced as it pleases. 

The score is fun and catchy; I sometimes found myself waiting for the next book scene to be over with in order to get to the next song. 

The cast is total dynamite. Nicholas Barasch follows up his scene stealing role in She Loves Me with another joyful performance as Huck Finn. This kid is going places for sure. Kyle Scatliffe also impresses again as Jim after delighting as Harpo for the past year. Absolutely everyone is off book and fully committed to their roles. This is a true full production.

So what's holding this back from being a wonderful evening? It's the kind of icky feeling parts of the show leave you with. Almost everyone introduced as comic relief turns out to be a big ole racist and it's hard to keep the laughs and warm atmosphere the show tries to sustain coming in the face of what's going on in our country today. 

For example: During one scene Jim (a runaway slave) has been captured and sold to a man for $40. He's chained up in a shed when Huck and Tom Sawyer decide to break him out. Sounds good so far, right? Well, Huck comes up with a quick and easy plan to get him out and Tom instantly rejects it because it's "too easy." Where's the sense of adventure? Let's dig a tunnel with spoons under the shed to get him out. It may take a week, but it will be a lot more fun! (Fun exactly for whom? The slave shackled in the shed???) The Black characters never get to save themselves either- it's always up to a white guy to come to the rescue. Jim does get moments of dignity and is three dimensional character, but it wasn't enough for me. 

Look, I'm sure it's all meant as "harmless fun," but it left a bad taste in my mouth and as much as the performances and music tried to win the battle, the bad taste is what stuck with me. 

[musikman]

Posted: 2/8/17 at 11:22pm

Whizzer, you'll have to take up your issue with that plot point about freeing Jim with Mark Twain as that is essentially lifted straight from the book.  Of course it doesn't sit well.  There's an absurdity about making an adventure of someone's life.  

 

Anywhos, I thought this was an absolutely terrific production.  Yea the show some problems here or there, but they do a really lovely job with it.  The cast is uniformly fantastic.  

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 2/8/17 at 11:23pm

I haven't seen the show in about 12 years (whenever the revival of the Deaf West production was in Sacramento), and I sort of felt the same way. I don't know if it's this production or just the show itself, since it was my first time seeing a more traditional staging. I'd forgotten about how the cast of characters rotates in and out like a big carousel of racism where no one quite gets their comeuppance. 

I'm not sure how much current/future productions of Big River will be able to apologize for their own material. How much can you shrug and say, "That's just the source material"?

(Or, should they be at all apologetic or self-aware? I don't know. For what it's worth, I'm not white [but I'm not black, either].)

It's certainly a notable time in history to be seeing Big River, for sure.

Updated On: 2/8/17 at 11:23 PM

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 2/8/17 at 11:39pm

musikman, I get that almost all the little subplots in the show are lifted directly from the novel, but if the source material itself is so flawed I think the creators (adapters) could have done a better job making the material palatable for a modern audience. Perhaps it was completely palatable back in 1985, but it made me cringe too much today. 

I think LizzieCurry hits it on the head when she remarked that few of the characters receive any comeuppance for their racist actions. Even Huck, when debating whether or not to free Jim from the shed, first decides to the "right, saintly" thing and turn in him back in to his rightful owner in Missouri. Of course he rips up the letter he starts to write to Miss Watson and chooses to help Jim escape instead, but he does it more out of rebellion than wanting to do the moral, just thing. In fact, he believes "stealing" a slave will send him to hell, but he figures that's already where he's heading, so why not? Even our hero isn't woke! 

 

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 2/8/17 at 11:48pm

I think a natural response to the King, the Duke, Silas, Huck, Tom Sawyer, etc... not really learning from what they did is a variation or combination of "Well, what do you expect," "that's accurate to the time period," and "that's what Twain wrote."

So I guess you're stuck -- do you not do the show and hope that your audience sees you as being fine with going along with this adaptation of Twain's story as-is, or do you do the show while providing lots and lots of context in some way (either in a director's note, or if you can, make alterations to the material)? 

You don't expect the protagonist in a story like this to be 2017-era woke (or even 2016 at this point), but the discomfort is also not really something to shrug off either.

(That said, I wanted to also comment on the cast: they are all incredible, as is the band. Although I felt the band drowned them out a little too often.)

[Owen22]

Posted: 2/8/17 at 11:49pm

Dear God, Whizzer.  "Harmless fun"?  No. No, Not only is "Huckleberry Finn" one of the most ironic novels ever written, it's a dangerous book.  For it's irony AND it's edge.  Though he had some ambivalence on race relations at times, Twain was an abolitionist and an advanced thinker.

Not only that, but because of (or maybe in spite of) it's strange alchemy of creation, "Big River" is possibly the greatest musical theatre translation of a source material ever. The book's distillation of the novel is brilliant and the way the songs attack the story, sometimes head on, sometime from around the corner, gives one the awe and feeling of what it was like to read that book for the first time. 

I was there tonight also, and wept precisely because I thought, THIS is what we need in the age of Trump. This is how we fight. Through irony and art. Through tricking the other side with our intelligence, not drowning them with our anger.  That's what Twain did and that's what the writers of "Big River" were able to keep and bring alive. I'm sorry you missed that.

Updated On: 2/8/17 at 11:49 PM

[yfs]

Posted: 2/8/17 at 11:51pm

"Look, I'm sure it's all meant as "harmless fun," but it left a bad taste in my mouth"...

One thing BIG RIVER was never meant to be was "harmless fun". It's based on the most famous scabrous American satire ever written, and was always intended to be a confounding picture of a racist society in which the bad don't necessarily get punished, and cruelty and childish or hateful misunderstandings and prejudices abound. That's the whole point of it. Tom Sawyer's not a hero, and, for most of the story, Huck Finn doesn't want to be one either. The King and the Duke are vicious, heartless villains and the "pious" people are all slaveholders. What makes you think it was intended to be harmless fun? 

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 2/8/17 at 11:53pm

I appreciate these most recent two comments (truly!).

[WhizzerMarvin]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 12:00am

I appreciate the comments too. For the record, when I made the "harmless fun" comment I was referring directly to the scene discussing freeing Jim by using the spoons to tunnel under the shed I mentioned in the paragraph above. 

I hear what you're saying, Owen and yfs, but I still can't help how I felt during the show. Your comments have both given me something to reflect on though, and I thank you for that. 

[A Director]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 1:08am

I have always like the score; the book is the problem.  For some odd reason, they don't go together. Miller captured the tone and feel of Twain; the book writer did not.  When the show first opened on Broadway, there was a long article in the NY Times about the novel and the show.  After I read it, I was confused because the tone  was too intellectual.  The show was first done at Yale Rep.

The Twain novel has confused and outraged people and critics from the time it was first published to now. Some group always wants to ban it.  Some claim the book is for children, it's not.  Some claim Twain was a racist; he was not. The novel was published in 1885, but it is set pre-Civil War.

Some scholars and critics think the last section of the novel, when Huck and Jim are back where they started, is weak and Twain drags out the end.  I haven't read the novel in years, so might not remember they way things happen.  At the beginning, life for Tom and Huck is fun and games.  Huck doesn't give much thought about the lives of Negros.  Things begin to change when Pap kidnaps him and once Huck and Jim set off down the river Huck begins to learn about life.  He also gets to know Jim as a person. By the final section, Huck has changed, but Tom is still in the fun and games world.

If you haven't read the novel, do.  It's worth your time.

[Comden Green]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 6:27am

Yes.  The events in the book are an indictment of that society with the most powerful scene in all of American literature (IMHO) being hucks acceptance of the consequences for helping jim.   We, as distant observers can finally realize how thoroughly each individual had been indoctrinated in the beliefs of that time.  Those beliefs were nearly impossible to question even in your own mind.  Certainly no educated person would question since all of academia was devoted to rationalizing the system.  It took an illiterate kid without any education to see through the "rules" all the way to the humanity even though he knew the rules (even gods rules) well enough to see that he himself was doomed.  

I haven't seen the musical so I certainly can't speak on how well the messages are communicated.  

There was a pbs adaptation many years ago where the scene was really profound.  Almost like a garden of gethsemane struggle by huck as he works toward a decision on what to do.  

[SmoothLover]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 8:48am

I saw the dress and I thought as a whole it was a solid rendering. The set design worked very well and it was supported nicely by the lights and costumes. The way the boats were represented was clever.

The performances were uniformly strong although I was having some trouble hearing and understanding the two leads particularly Huck, but to be fair I think there were the usual dress rehearsal sound issues that I am sure have been worked out.

I thought the actor playing Huck could have used a little more charisma and spontaneity. Many of the supporting performances were crisp with some nice vocals in the Gospel numbers.

I think I was hoping for something more thrilling and even though the show has adult themes it played a bit like musical children's theatre (the convention of Huck stepping out of scenes to talk to the audience for one) which isn't a dig, just not necessarily my cup of tea. The music served the script but many of the numbers did not further the plot and I did not walk away humming any of the tunes for they started blending together. I also thought it could have been 15 minutes shorter which has nothing to do with Encores given they present material closely to its original form.

[Owen22]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 11:00am

Sometimes when great pieces of literature are translated to stage or screen, the first person direct address"story theatre" approach is used to get across the author's direct POV and also help cutting through pages of plot. "Ragtime" used this approach to the max.

I really enjoyed Nich Barasch's very naturalistic take on Huck. It was almost surprising as his Arpad in She Loves Me was extreme musical comedy acting (appropriately so). It shows what a truly talented young man he is.

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 1:21pm

The music served the script but many of the numbers did not further the plot and I did not walk away humming any of the tunes for they started blending together.

 

For what it's worth, this is one of my favorite scores and I am STILL humming the songs a day later.

 

I thought the two leads were wonderful, as was the whole cast. There are parts where you are supposed to be uncomfortable. That is the point.

 

My only complaint was that, from the balcony, the sound seemed somehow muted or muffled the whole time, it just translated as low energy, and as I said, this is one of my favorite scores. I wanted it to be more exciting, but I really think that was the sound design, not the performances.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 1:28pm

I was also in the balcony, and between the muffled sound and the accents, I sometimes found myself having to dig into my memories of the Deaf West revival to figure out what was being said.

[newintown]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 1:41pm

Wow, it's hard to know where to start on these comments, but:

If some audience members are finding it hard to accept the literary and social invention of Mark Twain, one of America's greatest writers, I would have to venture a guess that it's due to one or both of these reasons:

1) This production fails to capture the tone of Twain's work (very probable; I've never found the acting of any Encores production to be what anyone would call particularly adept), or

2) A lack of sufficient sophistication, humor, or just education among those viewers, to "get" Twain (I wouldn't suspect this of Whizzer).

Criticize the production or the adaptation, sure; but to blame Twain smacks of a startling Trumpy-middle-American small-mindedness. Many people sadly mistake a lack of intellectual breadth for some sort of historical pinnacle of moral sophistication.

[Comden Green]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 5:58pm

Criticize the production or the adaptation, sure; but to blame Twain smacks of a startling Trumpy-middle-American small-mindedness. Many people sadly mistake a lack of intellectual breadth for some sort of historical pinnacle of moral sophistication.

 

"

Contributors here would hardly be the first to not get the book. Particularly since it often is assumed to be a sequel to Tom Sawyer, a fun children's story.  

And attempts to ban the book as racist have been regular for generations. Many people just don't get it, taking the story at face value.   

 

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 6:01pm

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/theater/big-river-review-encores.html?smid=tw-nyttheater&smtyp=cur

[Owen22]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 9:40pm

I actually didn't think I'd miss Isherwood so quickly. But this misshapen, confusing and contradictory review by this Hughes critic sure makes me rethink my hallelujahs at his firing.

This is how she ends the review: " I’m not arguing for rewriting Twain or for consigning “Big River” to the scrap heap. But especially right now, with the United States plumbing its own soul over questions of privilege and belonging, the show doesn’t seem to have a great deal to add." Add?  Add to what? It's an Encores revival of a Tony winning Broadway musical!! All it needs to add is joy to the lives of those who love these songs and story.   

What kind of politically correct bull is this?  Is it because this very funny show at times makes one feel a little uncomfortable?  I'm sure we are all for new plays and musicals not appropriating slave stories and placing them in a white's perspective. (You could possibly list a lesser reason for that being Huckleberry Finn did it so well a hundred plus years ago.)

Jesse Green's review at Vulture is better written but as useless.

I'm sorry I got mad at Whizzer for his initial review. If paid professionals get it so wrong who am I to call out someone on a theatre chat board?  Argh. It's PC crap like this that makes the right think we are bleeding heart elitists.  And crazy.  I'm guessing Hughes and Green would join those groups that, over the years, have tried to have Huckleberry Finn banned from school libraries because the N word.

Updated On: 2/9/17 at 09:40 PM

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 2/9/17 at 11:04pm

I saw the show tonight, and totally see both sides. It's meant as satire, it's meant as a product of the time in which it's set, and it's meant as a reminder of how completely awful slavery was in every way. I didn't find myself offended at all, because of exactly what it is, but I did viscerally cringe several times. Not to say that it should be rewritten, or that it was gratuitously uncomfortable, it's just hard to hear some of those lines and not wince, at least for me. That's probably a good thing.

Either way, I went for the music and it did not disappoint! I will listen to those singers sing that score all day long. The leads were all as excellent as expected, but I was really impressed by the ensemble, especially the female gospel soloists and the guy who adorably sang "Arkansas." I still can't believe that Nicholas Barasch is as young as he is - his presence and command of the stage were really remarkable!

[SmoothLover]

Posted: 2/10/17 at 5:22am

I could not quite figure out the root of the sound issues. At times I had no idea what the lead actors were singing for I could not understand the words, Huck was hard to hear at times so it felt like he was not playing to the entire house and some of Jim's vocals sounded a little mushy mouthed. I felt like the supporting actors were easier to understand and I chalked it up to them having more stage experience.

But it sounds like most of you felt like the sound issues were technical so I am willing to go along with your assessments.

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 2/10/17 at 9:46am

Why is it useless to discuss the contradictions and context in a musical? I loved Laura's review. Much better than the plot summary Isherwood would have given us. Please.

[AC126748]

Posted: 2/10/17 at 9:50am

I've come to realize that it's useless to try and reach anyone who pulls out "PC" and thinks it's some kind of trump card. But it's worth repeating--ad nauseam, since many always seem to miss this point--that one essential function of a critic's job is to place works within a cultural context. Which is exactly what Laura does.

[Owen22]

Posted: 2/10/17 at 11:41am

I have no problem with a critic placing works within a cultural context. The problem is SHE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT CULTURAL CONTEXT IS!!

Oh, and aren't we a progressive anti-progressive for condemning those progressives who find that the PC culture has worn out it's once useful welcome. Or to the point, the PC Police allow liberals to wail against minor, stupid, narrow "injustices", feel good about themselves for doing "something" and ignore that the real fight is much bigger than using the term "tranny".

And I certainly hope you used the term "trump card" pejoratively.

Updated On: 2/10/17 at 11:41 AM

[wonkit]

Posted: 2/10/17 at 11:53am

A critic "puts a work in a cultural context"? I guess I don't really see that as a critic's role. I thought a critic was supposed to describe whether a particular production is dramatically, musically and physically successful and if not, why not? A relevant discussion of Twain's book and whether it is accurately translated into another medium. I see no reason to turn a theater review into a political commentary.