What's most jarring to me about the show is the logic they're asking us to buy into in the midst of the ridiculous and contradictory narrative.
We were clearly supposed to feel sorry for Ivy when she was told they were going with a star this week, but why? She had her chance to lead the show and she completely cracked under the pressure. She stopped a rehearsal (and eventually stormed out of it) to insult the director in front of the entire cast and crew, she complained that other actors in the ensemble were upstaging her, and she stomped around the rehearsal room huffing and puffing about how she should have gotten another actor fired for daring to rub her the wrong way, as if she had the power to do so. Sure, she's talented. Sure, her mother has been hard on her. But she's also an adult, not a child. Get over it. She'd graduated from the chorus for the first time in ten years and, in ten seconds, was acting like the biggest star (with the biggest accompanying ego) in the entire world. Each week, Karen is nothing but professional and encouraging to Ivy, and each week, Ivy acts like a sociopath, claiming Karen is constantly threatening her when we've seen nothing even close to resembling that. This is someone we're supposed to get behind? Someone needs to remind Ivy that Karen cannot, in fact, take her part away. Only the creative team can do that, so she should redirect her maniacal paranoia in the appropriate direction. For someone who's been in the industry for ten years, according to the script, she sure has no clue how the business works.
Karen is equally problematic. The members of the creative team are tiptoeing around like she's some musical theater savant, and yet we've yet to see her step up to the plate and show us that she has "it." She's knocked some numbers out of the park in a karaoke bar, yes, but when are they going to show us she really
wants it? I've yet to be convinced. The "Touch Me" number this week was the first time I've felt like she really had an opportunity to wow us with genuine star quality, which she did (for me,) but then it was diminished by that horrible scene with Ivy afterward where she just let herself be insulted yet again. I get that she's supposed to be green, but is she also supposed to be completely devoid of a spine? I'd like to see a moment like the scene with the Savannah Wise character at the beginning of the workshop where she points out just how full of crap Ivy is, because the audience sure sees it. I have a feeling we may just get that moment next week, but it's too little too late.
I elect to just throw both women into the Hunger Games and use Savannah Wise for Marilyn. We've seen our options, and I like neither. Bring on Uma Thurman.
Tonya Pinkins: Then we had a "Lot's Wife" last June that was my personal favorite. I'm still trying to get them to let me sing it at some performance where we get to sing an excerpt that's gone.
Tony Kushner: You can sing it at my funeral.
Updated On: 3/27/12 at 10:21 AM
and a lotta love)
