I won Broadway tix with my body
Winning the Charleston contest on Governors Island
Charleston: Part I
Allow me to channel my inner Sally O’Malley from Saturday Night Live! I am almost 50. And I won a solo Charleston contest a few weeks ago. … Fifty years old! Fifty years old.
A friend later asked, “Did you practice?
No. Not at all. Unless you count decades of dance lessons and musical theater shows that make vintage dance steps as natural as swatting flies.
The event was the season’s first Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island. I’ve attended this event for years. I’m sure I’ve competed before, with more politeness than abandonment. Certainly, I’ve watched from the sides.
This year, when the host announced the prize — two free tickets to The Great Gatsby on Broadway — my brain sizzled. “I’m going to win,” I said.
“This is like an audition,” the host said as “Sweet Georgia Brown” started thumping. “Eyes up. Let me see your face.”
And that was that. I decided I wasn’t going to strain my muscles by trying to fit into a frame. Boring’s for the birds. So I just flapped my way into free dance floor sky. When the trombone slid, I became the trombone. Then I was a trumpet lick. Had I been a little girl, I would have thrown my dress up, caught in that magical space when the stupid gender rules don’t matter. When I glanced at my boyfriend — who was recording me on his phone — he looked happily shocked. Was that a tear?
I hope you can enjoy these pics with me. I’d like to share the feeling to keep it circulating through the populace.
The host caught my eye. I knew the tickets were mine.
***
Charleston: Part II
Last night, I claimed my prize tickets with my friend and Charleston accomplice.
“I bought these tickets with my body,” I told the woman at the box office. She laughed. Attagirl.
And I’m glad I saw the show now because I don’t know if it will remain on Broadway long.
Of course, I loved it, with caveats. How could I not have caveats, people? The Great Gatsby is a literary masterpiece about terrible people who commit a triple-murder-suicide. The author is none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald, a man who makes narcissism and addiction look jazzy rather than grotesque.
Trying it as a musical is ambitious. So hats off to Kait Kerrigan, who wrote the book, Jason Howland for music, and Nathan Tysen for the poignant lyrics that included rhyming “shiny new thing” with “wedding ring” in Myrtle’s last song.
That song is called “One-Way Road,” and those of you who know the book know how that song ends.
Yes.
Imagine a very real crash here.
It’s triggering, friends, especially in a musical. Up until that final splat of Gatsby’s car into Myrtle’s pregnant body, the ensemble had been combining hip-hop dance moves and pop vocals in ways that were sometimes effective.
I appreciate needing to be edgy. We’ve seen the flapper tropes so many times. But my friend and I remarked that we were being screamed at for two hours. Our nervous systems were exhausted. Our imaginations were never allowed to play among the moving digital imagery in the background.
I was disappointed with the chorus that rarely had more to do or say than a really good swing choir. I felt like they were being held back, dressed in gold Amazon-looking costumes that won the Tony but really didn’t provide anything new. A few times, I saw a crooked ankle, suggesting drunkenness and a sinister machine. I wanted more of that danger.
Instead, there was a lot of tableau and trite posing without going full flapper or full hip hop. The tap number in the second act — finally there was a tap number — showed off the superb artistry of four dancers called the Sugars. I was just so relieved.
I loved Daisy’s song about hoping her daughter will be a beautiful little fool. Oh, what a wonderful way to bring in the novel and semi-autobiographical thoughts of Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda.
But I am concerned that live entertainment has just gotten so loud, both in volume and in overstimulation. Storytelling drowns with the cinematic experience.
When George appears at the end to deal with Gatsby, I had the horrible realization that the edge of the stage was set up to look like a pool. Oh, no. Gatsby’s going to fall in there right in front of us. He did. And the gun going off, when George took his own life, was dramatic in the wrong way. It was awful.
The best part were the actors. Noah J. Ricketts is a lovely, earnest Nick Carraway. Samantha Pauly was an earthy Jordan Baker with a whole wardrobe of cool pants. Jeremy Jordan was a sweet and also manipulative Gatsby.
Oddly, I also liked John Zdrojeski as Tom Buchanon because he did such a good job playing such a hideous character. He was imposing and beautiful, and I kept wondering how he would justify his actions in every scene. He just plays his brute part so straight that I felt I were observing a predatory animal in a documentary. It’s just a scientific and well-fleshed portrayal.
In this theatrical version of Gatsby, the writing brought out details in the novel that I missed in reading. (I did read over the novel online today, a treat since it entered the public domain in 2021.) For instance, Tom most likely broke a chambermaid’s arm in Santa Barbara. That is in the book and easily missed. They were in a car crash together, an allusion to his abusive affair with Myrtle, whose nose he breaks in the first act. Huh. That’s why he and Daisy keep moving, to keep Tom’s indiscretions, and now hers, out of the papers.
In this version, I understood why Tom and Daisy were together.
But it didn’t make me want to sing.
