Theater News

Our Shows Overseas

Preparing for his trip to Barcelona, Filichia recalls the shows he’s seen on past journeys overseas.

"Where you going?""Barcelona.""Oh."
"Where you going?"
"Barcelona."
"Oh."

I’m about to take a short vacation. Ask me my destination. Please! I want you to! Because if you ask me “Where you going?” I’ll answer truthfully: “Barcelona.” Honest! And Madrid, but only because the plane is stopping there en route.

I hope I get to see a play or a musical in Barcelona; if I don’t, I won’t have nearly as good a time. In the past, I’ve been pretty lucky to catch several of our shows overseas. Whether or not I speak the language is very much beside the point, as long as it’s a show I know. I have to admit that seeing De Verlossing in Amsterdam didn’t mean much to me, for all I could glean is that it was a kitchen sink drama. But, oh, the others I’ve seen overseas! My girlfriend, who’s also a writer, once penned a magazine article about my zest for theater; she used as Exhibit A the fact that, when I was in Jerusalem in 1991 and saw A View from the Bridge in Hebrew, I returned to the hotel room and told her, “I had a helluva time!”

In 1982, when I was in Dusseldorf, I went to the theater’s leading repertory theater to buy a ticket. Lord knows, we have a number of troupes in our country that call themselves repertory companies, but the ones in Europe really mean it. One night they do one play, the next night another, and yet another the night after that. So I bought an advance ticket for I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road. But two days later, when I approached the theater, I saw three words on the marquee instead of 11. I checked my ticket, which did have a long title printed on it, and the date. I asked the ticket taker if he spoke English, and when he shook his head sadly from side to side, I showed him my ticket. He shook his head even more sadly, took his two hands, made wavy motions that suggested a woman’s figure, then slapped his shoulder and pretended to cry out in pain. I surmised that the actress playing Heather had injured her shoulder and I went in to see what turned out to be The Bald Soprano. Not knowing the language of this absurdist farce didn’t make a whit of difference, for Mr. and Mrs. Smith beautifully conveyed their frustration with Mr. and Mrs. Martin, and their frenzied reactions made for a fun evening.

Rome, 1985: Taxi a due Piazze, which, a native told me, translates as Taxi for Two, Please. That title was totally unfamiliar to me but I had heard of the playwright, Britain’s Ray Cooney. The moment the curtain rose, I knew I was in for a strange time, because the set was bizarre. It was divided into the two apartments, but not side by side; instead, one wall with floral wallpaper was placed next to another wall with striped wallpaper, followed by the floral and then the striped and back again. I was thoroughly confused, though not as much as I was when I got home, looked up the works of Ray Cooney, and found no play that had a title remotely like Taxi for Two, Please. Four years later, I went to the Virginia Theatre on Broadway to see Run for Your Wife. As soon as the curtain went up and I saw the floral wallpaper flat next to the striped wallpaper one, I knew I was seeing the English version of Taxi for Two, Please — which isn’t a bad title, given that the play deals with bigamy.

Paris, 1988: L’Homme de la Mancha. Faithful readers know how I feel about this show — that, of all Broadway musicals with a smash-hit pedigree, this is the one to which I respond the least. But the Paris production ranks as my all-time favorite La Mancha. Granted, some of that is because I don’t know French, so I didn’t have to bear the mawkish dialogue and lyrics. But this is a score that lends itself well to the French language, as anyone who’s heard the original Paris cast album with Jacques Brel will agree. Best of all was something genuinely wonderful that happened at the end of the show, something I’ve never seen in any other production of La Mancha: Just as Cervantes was making his final exit, one of his fellow prisoners called him back because he’d left behind his novel Don Quixote. The prisoner picked up the enormous book, if you can call it that; it was a big, rag-tag affair with papers spilling out of it, tied with rope, rather than the manicured, leather-bound volume you usually see in productions of this show. Then he gave the tome an underhand toss across the stage and Cervantes deftly caught it. Dazzling!

Tokyo, 1989: The King and I in Japanese. Well, almost always in Japanese. Three words — yes, three words! — were in English. They occurred after Anna had finished the verse of her 11 o’clock number and then sang the words “shall we dance?” in English. By the way, while the actress appeared to be Japanese, she had Western features, as did the lad playing her son Louis. So after a while, despite the language, I tended to forget that I was seeing a foreign production of The King and I because the rest of the cast was Asian and, at least to my eyes, everyone passed for Siamese. That all came to an end in Act II, Scene One with the entrance of Sir Edward Ramsay, who was a dead ringer for Sessue Hayakawa.

Utrecht, 1999: Chicago, which turned out to be a Dutch treat. It was a photocopy of what’s on 49th Street, for the cast perfectly replicated what Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking remembered of Fosse’s work. If I’d been shown a silent movie of the production that had been filmed from a row where I couldn’t lip-read, I’d swear I was seeing the Broadway version. Simone Kleinsma’s Roxie seemed to acknowledge a European operetta tradition in the way she trilled a bit in “Knuffelbertje” (“Funny Honey”), but when the time came to say “I can’t stand that sap,” she growled it with a maniacal fervor. Velma was Pia Douwes, who must be a bigger star than Kleinsma because she got top-billing (which even Neuwirth couldn’t snag after Reinking left). Douwes earned it, though; she could do incredibly high kicks, and this Velma could also take a stand. She shared “Mijn Beste Vriend” with Kleinsma, leaving Liza Minnelli as still the only Roxie who felt that she could do it alone. But then Douwes stole the act by singing a good dozen notes more than we’re used to on the last “jazz” note that ends the first act. What a glorious melisma!

Tony Neef’s Billy was too boyish, and the fact that he was a recent replacement made me wonder if the Dutch aren’t too careful with successive casts (just as we sometimes aren’t over here). Marjolijn Touw was fine as Mama Morton, though surprisingly trim. P. Rombout’s Mary Sunshine laid on a few too many fluttery gestures in “Er Schuilt Iets Goed in Leder Mens” but was very convincing at portraying a woman — so much so that, when my fellow theatergoers learned in the second act that “things are not always as they seem to be,” many of them were genuinely surprised. (So were Broadway audiences during the run of the original 1975 production, but those who’ve seen the Broadway revival never have been. Why? Because drag wasn’t mainstream in the ’70s but it certainly has been for a while now in America.)

Sergi-Henri Valcke, as Amos, was the performer who ultimately received the most applause. That’s right: Amos. When he loped on to do “Cellofaan,” he’d already made such an impression on the audience that they immediately started chuckling in commiseration with his predicament. Valcke didn’t start the song but was smart enough to wait out the chuckles, making them linger longer and louder by just standing there. Finally, when he began his tale of woe, he even managed to get a laugh on the hoary joke about his parents relocating and not telling him where they went. And, in what was the evening’s ultimate ironic comment, Amos’s exit got a bigger hand than Billy’s had.

The audience loved it all — “The Tralie Tango,” “Ik En Mijn Baby,” and “Ze Grepen Naar Het Pistol.” “Razzle-Dazzle” was renamed “Hocus-Pocus” and Velma and Mama wondered whatever happened to “Stijl.” As for “Roxie” and “Hot Honey Rag,” those titles went untranslated. Some English names were retained — Alvin Lipschitz, Al Capelli, and Uncle Sam — but Sophie Tucker’s predicted defecation was instead attributed to Marlene Dietrich. English, too, was the language for all geographical locations mentioned in the show, from Cicero to Cook County to Salt Lake City. Dropped, of course, was Velma’s (and Veronica’s) joke about Chicago being in the state of Ill. Every now and then, another English word or phrase would sneak through: “five, six, seven, eight,” “jazz,” “pop,” “journalist,” “show-biz,” “boys, “Three Musketeers,” “okay,” and Velma’s four-letter response to Roxie’s announcement to the press that she’s with child. Still, it was clear that music is the universal language — and that dance is the universal sign language. And that’s what I expect to find again in Barcelona, 2004.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@aol.com]