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| Photo: Sara Krulwich |
Immersive theater is hot in New York
right now, but that doesn't mean you should always believe the hype. I've seen
a bunch of shows that employ immersive techniques over the past two seasons,
and some of them really worked for me, while others just...didn't. Murder
Ballad was good fun and well directed, and it was sort of thrilling to be so
close to the actors that you could tell which ones were wearing contact lenses.
Matilda and Pippin were hardly immersive, but both of them worked the
relationship between the audience and performer in interesting and creative
ways that are atypical for Broadway shows. Last fall, Ivo Van Hove's Roman
Tragedies plunged the audience into--and around, and sometimes even directly in
the way of--the action, and also actively relied on it to drive home a series
of increasingly complex messages about global politics and the media. I haven't
seen Natasha, Pierre, and the Great
Comet of 1812, but I understand you can drink vodka and nibble caviar while
watching the performers, who occasionally come and sit at your table with you
or steal something off your plate. Then there's Here Lies Love, the critically
lauded, immersive collaboration between David Byrne, Fatboy Slim, and Alex
Timbers, which is currently at the Public. Oh, reader, I so wanted to like it.
Can you blame me? David Byrne is awesome. Fatboy Slim is
awesome. I had something akin to a religious experience when I saw Bloody
Bloody Andrew Jackson, and thus think that Alex Timbers is awesome. And in
truth, the concept of Here Lies Love is awesome, the cast was awesome, and the
choreography was awesome. The sum of all these parts, however, was not, alas,
an overload of awesomeness. For all the adoration of the press, all the ravings
about the immersive environment, all the demand for tickets, all the hip
innovations, Here Lies Love is a rather conventional show--even a maddeningly
apathetic one--that doesn't say much or use its audience in particularly
interesting ways.
Here Lies Love has been compared a lot with Evita, for obvious reasons: Both are
"poperas" about the wives of famous 20th century dictators. Both
women lived in former Spanish colonies and found glamour and prestige on the
arms of their powerful husbands. That's a lot of similarity right there. But there's more:
both women have been musicalized by creative teams built almost entirely of
men, who seem, in both cases, to want spectators to view their depictions with
a mix of pity, adulation, and scorn. Which is all well and good, but all I'm
seeing in the press is that while the two shows beg comparison, Here Lies Love
holds its own (how? I'm not sure), isn't as openly derisive of its central
character (which is supposed to be a good thing, I think), and is radically
different because it is immersive and Evita is not.
I'm not here to bash Evita, which I certainly have problems with--just not the
same ones that I have with Here Lies Love. Sure, fine, no one would argue that
Lloyd Webber and Rice depicted Evita Peron accurately, or even in a way that
might possibly, on any planet, be considered nuanced. As far as I know, for
example, the real Eva Peron was never followed around by a heroic, utterly
uncomplicated, deeply soulful (and typically quite hunky) version of Che
Guevara. Also, while she might not have been a very nice person, maybe--and I
might be going out on a limb, here--she was not quite the conniving, wheedling,
money-hungry, social-climbing whore that Rice and Lloyd Webber feverishly
envisioned her to be. Then again, their Evita is big. She is meaty, and
alluring, and almost cartoonishly emotive--so much so that when she dies at the
end of Evita, the show collapses in on itself and dies, too. The Evita of Evita
is larger than life. She is the reason for Patti LuPone, for goodness' sakes.
Imelda is played by Ruthie Ann Miles, who is not comparable
in style to Patti LuPone, but who is clearly enormously talented in her own
right. She does a fine job portraying Marcos from youth on up, in a storyline
that's treated awfully conventionally for all the gimmickry: As a child, Imelda
wishes her family had more money and status than they do (she is depicted as
poor in the musical; she was not in real life). She is very pretty. She wins
beauty pageants. She dates Benigno Aquino, and then marries Ferdinand Marcos
after a whirlwind courtship. She takes pills. She parties a lot and spends a
lot of money. She is sad when her husband has an affair. She is also sad when
her country rejects her and Ferdinand after they've kept themselves in power
for over twenty years, stolen countless billions, and committed all kinds of
corruptions and human rights violations. The US
helps the Marcos family evacuate and settle safely in Hawaii
when their government falls, peacefully, to Corazon Aquino, wife of the
assassinated Benigno.
The title of the show is apparently what Imelda Marcos wants
on her gravestone when she dies: "Here Lies Love." Really? On a
gravestone? That's pretty arrogant, huh? And also pretty trite, no? Yes. Exactly.
And herein lies the problem: The Imelda Marcos that is central to Here Lies
Love is never much more interesting than this gravestone platitude is.
There's no real character, here--just a sort of two-dimensional list of events
that Byrne, Timbers and--um---Slim don't seem entirely comfortable with or even
clear on. Is this woman a self-aggrandizing asshole? A victim of circumstances?
A materialistic narcissist? Or is she just astoundingly shallow and not very
bright or interesting? I wish they had made up their minds and run with
whatever Imelda they wanted to develop. But as it was, I never felt any spark
of--well, of anything for this flimsy stage version of the fallen first lady:
No pity, no hatred, no attraction, no repulsion. There is scant mention of
shoes in Here Lies Love. Everyone who has written about the musical thus far
feels compelled to mention this fact. I am starting to wonder if it's because
no one is quite certain what else there is to say about Imelda Marcos'
depiction without them.
And yes, I get it, the show was about her, not about him.
But the fact that Ferdinand is--like all the other characters, really--even
more frustratingly, thinly developed than Imelda is makes Here Lies Love seem
more sexist than I would have expected and that I am sure its (almost entirely
male) creative team would have liked. I don't fling the term around lightly.
But the fact that a famous, affluent woman who likes to party and wear nice
shoes is held up for scrutiny and easy passing judgment when it is, after all,
her husband who was the person in power--greedy, grossly mishandled,
dangerously corrupt power--irked me. So too did the decision to make
Imelda poor in Here Lies Love, which somehow strikes me as a cheap ploy for
some kind of sympathy she didn't deserve, and a plot device that doesn't
jibe with her later assertions that it's poor peoples' fault that they are
poor.
The ending, too, fell flat for me, especially since it traded on some old rock
and roll cliches that I've come to loathe at this point in my life. The People
Power Revolution was depicted in song, the lyrics of which were drawn from
transcripts of interviews with people involved in the event. Nice touch. But
the piece was initially performed by a single guy on acoustic guitar, which I
suppose was meant to resonate after an hour and a half of electronic,
bootie-shaking disco, but which just reeked to me of folkie old-guard Bob Dylan
worship, whether it was meant to or not. The single guitar-playing guy was
slowly joined by another guy on snare and then, in the last stanza, a woman on
bass drum. It was nice of them to put a woman up there for some of the protest,
I guess; I suspect there were plenty of women who were involved during the
original uprising, too.
But the end was doubly irksome in how it used the audience
in its reenactment of the PPR: it didn't. Not at all. And here's the thing:
Here Lies Love has been touted as immersive. I think I've used the term about
three-hundred times here, and it's one of the most applied adjectives I've seen
when it comes to writing about this show. It's what has helped sell it--its
immersiveness.
Which is all well and good, except that the show ultimately doesn't actually do
anything interesting with the audience. Spectators are, in fact, kept on a very
short leash. Dancing ushers in bright orange jumpsuits keep people moving one
way or the other so that the large platforms can be moved all over the floor.
There are a few moments during which the audience is directed to do a line
dance or form a conga line or shout "yeah" when the DJ asks
them to. But otherwise, spectators are instructed to stand around watching the
action, or move a little to the left, or a little to the right, out of the
way of a passing actor, some moving scenery, or a rotating platform. Until the
end, that is, when all spectators are instructed to clear the floor and sit on
bleachers, thereby allowing the imagined fourth wall to lower during what might
otherwise have been a truly immersive restaging of the PPR.
Why the choice to drive a wedge between the audience and spectator at this
point? Why not involve the audience in the reenactment of a mass movement? Come
to think of it, why was this piece immersive at all? Why are we all in a disco?
Are we all supposed to be Imelda Marcos? Are we all Filipinos? Are we all
Americans? And if so, are we being judged for dancing and having fun while the
Marcos's abuse their power and then get escorted out of their country by our
military and taken safely to ours? We are in some way complicit, right? And if
so, couldn't that be made more clear, somehow? Or is the audience genuinely
meant to feel absolutely nothing at all, except that it was cool to boogie down
with Imelda Marcos? And if so, what is the point of any of this?
I don't think all theater has to say something deep and meaningful, but a show
about the Marcos regime--at the Public, no less--that seems so hesitant to
say anything at all confuses me. So too do all the accolades. Believe me when I
say that it feels unpleasant to be the sourpuss off in the corner, wondering
what the fuss is all about, and ruining the party for everyone else.
