[title of show] at the Grand Theatre

Last night I went to see [title of show] at the Grand Theatre and, once again, I was really happy to have the chance to see a show with which I was unfamiliar!  This musical about the writing of a musical is clever and funny (especially if you are a fan of Broadway) and I really enjoyed it.  Jeff (Jacob Barnes) and Hunter (Brian Cota) are two struggling writers living and working temp jobs in New York.  They hear about a new musical theatre festival and, even though the deadline for submissions is only three weeks away, they decide to enter with the help of their friends Susan (Ashley Coombs) and Heidi (Michelle Lynn Thompson) and a pianist named Larry (Jonathan McDonald).  As they struggle to write material for an entirely original musical, they realize that their conversations about writing the musical are more interesting than what they are writing and that becomes the show.  Once it is accepted by the festival, the show's subject becomes the process of mounting a show Off-Broadway and then transferring it to Broadway (including videos on YouTube called The [title of show] Show that you can actually find on YouTube).  It is so meta because Jeff Bowen (music and lyrics) and Hunter Bell (book) really wrote the show about their experiences with their friends Susan Blackwell and Heidi Blickenstaff and the four of them actually starred in productions both on and off Broadway with Larry Pressgrove as musical director!  It is so fun!  My favorite songs are "An Original Musical," about how hard it is to come up with an original idea (I loved the lyric that makes fun of turning movies into musicals), "Die, Vampire, Die," about refusing to listen to the doubts inside your head about your art, "Change It/Don't Change It," about refusing to abandon your original idea to make it more commercial, and "Nine People's Favorite Thing," about being proud of your work no matter what.  The song "Secondary Characters" also made me laugh (this show explores a lot of the tropes found in Broadway musicals).  All of the actors do a great job with the material and give energetic performances but I was especially impressed with McDonald because he plays the piano on stage.  Speaking of which, the audience is also located on the stage (it is a so-called Backstage Production) so it really feels like you are observing the writing process inside Jeff's loft apartment.  I was very pleasantly surprised by this show and I would definitely recommend it, especially to fans of musical theatre.  It runs at the Grand Theatre through September 9 with shows Thursday - Saturday (go here for tickets).

Note:  This show does contain a lot of profanity (in fact, there is a running bit about the need to clean up the language for families, tourists, and the ladies who see matinees).

Clue at HCTO

The hilarious slapstick comedy Clue was my favorite show at the Utah Shakespeare Festival last year (my sister, who is very reserved, laughed out loud multiple times) so I was really excited to see it again at HCTO last night. I wondered how they would be able to manage all of the complicated hi-jinks in the their small and intimate space but what they did is so clever it just might be my favorite staging of this show!  Six guests, including Colonel Mustard (David Knight), Mrs. Peacock (Lizzy Bean), Professor Plum (Spencer Bean), Mrs. White (Bonnie Wilson Whitlock), Mr. Green (Bryson Smellie), and Miss Scarlet (Laurel Asay Lowe), are invited by Mr. Boddy (Langi Tuifua) to his manor on a dark and stormy night under unusual circumstances.  Mr. Boddy has been blackmailing each of them and, after providing them with weapons, he informs them that he will return the evidence he has against them if they kill his butler Mr. Wadsworth (Blake Barlow).  Murder and mayhem ensue!  As I mentioned, the staging of this show is so clever!  The entire space has been transformed into Boddy Manor with parquet floors, mahogany wainscoting, and gold leaf wallpaper all around and a large chandelier in the center.  The actors use elaborate (and highly amusing) choreography to move from room to room as minimal set pieces are seamlessly configured on stage to become the hall, the lounge, the dining room, the study, the kitchen, the billiards room, and the conservatory.  I particularly enjoyed the use of a set of moving doors as the characters search the manor and a revolving bookcase.  This show is so funny because it is filled with witty dialogue (although the joke about Republicans didn't get the same response in Utah county as it has in other productions I've seen), sight gags, and physical comedy and it all happens at lightning speed!  The entire cast is outstanding with brilliant comedic timing but the standouts for me are Whitlock (one of my favorites at HCT and HCTO), because her facial expressions are priceless, Smellie, because his physicality throughout the entire show is commendable (particularly when he is trapped under two different bodies), and Barlow, because his high energy performance (especially when Wadsworth reenacts every murder in detail) is definitely the highlight of the show.  The costumes are a lot of fun (I liked that each character's costume features just a bit of their signature color) and the lighting is very effective at creating a mood.  I loved this production so much and, if you are looking for some laughs, I highly recommend getting a ticket (go here).  It runs at HCTO through September 23 but tickets are going fast!

Passages

I am a big fan of Franz Rogowski (he gives a haunting performance in Transit that I still think about) so I was really excited to see his latest movie, Passages, last night at the Broadway.  Even though he plays a thoroughly unlikable character, Rogowski is absolutely captivating as a man who initiates an emotionally damaging love triangle.  Tomas (Rogowski) is a demanding and controlling director living in Paris with his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw).  At the wrap party for his latest film Tomas has a sexual encounter with Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos) but immediately confesses to Martin who is upset but excuses his behavior.  Tomas continues the affair with Agathe because he finds it exciting to be with a woman but soon falls in love with her and leaves Martin.  However, Tomas becomes irrationally jealous when Martin begins a relationship with an author named Ahmad (Erwan Kepoa Fale) and tries to win him back.  Complications ensue when Tomas attempts to keep both Martin and Agathe in his life only to lose them both.  Rogowski's performance is brilliant because, even though his character does so many reprehensible things, you are still drawn to him and I did feel a tiny bit of sympathy for him in a devastating final close-up shot of his eyes filled with tears (despite the fact that I silently cheered when he is forced to face the consequences of his actions).  Whishaw and Exarchopoulos also give outstanding, but highly restrained, performances as smart and successful people who make terrible decisions when it comes to the heart (we've all been there), especially in a powerful scene between Martin and Agathe that serves as a major turning point.  It is fascinating to watch the shifting power dynamics between the three characters.  There are lots of explicit sex scenes (it certainly earns its NC-17 rating) so this might not be for everyone but I found it riveting.

Note:  This also includes one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a long time.  Tomas meets Agathe's parents wearing a fishnet crop top and the look her mother (Caroline Chaniolleau) gives her father (Olivier Rabourdin) had everyone in my theater laughing out loud!

Blue Beetle

My nephew Sean and I went to see Blue Beetle last night (it was one of his most anticipated movies of the year) and we both loved it!  Jaime Reyes (Xolo Mariduena) is a recent college graduate who has returned to his hometown looking for a job.  He ends up at Kord Industries, run by the ruthless Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) who wants to use an alien artifact known as the Scarab to create cyborg assassins known as One Man Army Corps (OMACs).  Her niece Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine) objects to this and steals the Scarab but she ends up giving it to an unsuspecting Jaime.  When the Scarab chooses Jaime to be its host and fuses with him to create a powerful armored suit, he reaches out to Jenny to learn about its origins.  However, Victoria wants it back and sends her bodyguard Ignacio Carapax (Raoul Max Trujillo), an OMAC prototype, to attack his family, including his father Alberto (Damian Alcazar), mother Rocio (Elpidia Carrillo), sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), uncle Rudy (George Lopez), and grandmother Nana (Adriana Barraza), forcing an epic confrontation.  There have been a lot of superhero origin stories over the years so it is inevitable that tropes have developed and, while this movie does employ many of them, I think the story is a lot of fun.  The emphasis on the importance of family provides a lot of comedy (Nana is my favorite) but also a lot of heart with several incredibly poignant moments that brought tears to my eyes.  The action sequences, which involve mostly practical effects and real-life locations, look fantastic, particularly the final battle between Blue Beetle and Carapax, and I especially loved the design of the suit. Mariduena is incredibly appealing and charismatic in the title role and, even though I was not very familiar with the character, my nephew (who is a huge fan) tells me that his portrayal is very true to the comics.  I ended up really liking the character, especially his humanity, and I am happy that Blue Beetle will be a part of the new DCU under James Gunn (a mid-credits scene sets up the second movie in a possible trilogy).  This has had a disappointing opening weekend at the box office so I highly encourage everyone to go see it because, in my opinion, it is one of the better CBMs in recent memory and both Sean and I had so much fun watching it!

None of This Is True

My August Book of the Month selection was None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell (the other options were Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo, The Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin, Happiness Falls by Angie Kim, Shark Heart by Emily Habeck, and Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Canas). I am a big fan of Jewell so I was already anticipating her latest release and it did not disappoint! Josie Fair is celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at a popular pub with her husband Walter, a rare outing for the two of them, when she notices that another woman is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday with her husband and a large group of friends. Josie is captivated, maybe even obsessed, by her so-called "birthday twin" and learns that she is Alix Summers and that she has a popular podcast about women who have overcome tremendous odds to create new lives for themselves. She contrives to meet Alix again and convinces her that she would be a good subject for her podcast because she says that she is on the verge of making big changes in her life. At first Alix is wary but she is soon drawn in to the story of Josie's complicated life with her much older husband and her troubled daughters. As Josie insinuates herself into her life, Alix begins to suspect that she is hiding some incredibly dark secrets about her family and that her own family might be in danger. The narrative alternates between the POVs of Alix and Josie and also includes transcripts of the interviews conducted with other characters for Alix's podcast and scenes from a Netflix documentary filmed after the events described (which is extremely effective at creating suspense because it implies that something terrible has happened and I wanted to keep reading to find out what it was). What I loved most about this novel is that Josie is an incredibly unreliable narrator and I kept changing my mind about her as snippets of her past are revealed little by little. As with most of Jewell's other psychological thrillers, there are lots of twists and turns, including a final one that absolutely blew my mind and made me rethink everything I thought I knew about Josie. I still haven't made up my mind about her and I love it when a book does that to me. I also really enjoyed the character of Alix, especially in juxtaposition with Josie, because, even though it appears that she has a perfect life that Josie envies, there are also secrets about her family hiding under the surface. As I previously mentioned I could not put this book down because there is an atmosphere of foreboding on every page and I had to know what happened. Fans of the author are sure to love this but I recommend it to everyone who loves a good domestic thriller!