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Opined October 20, 2005
Opined (Did you hear GWB say use this word the other day. Oh, rapture!)
SEE WHAT I WANNA SEE - Words and Music by Michael John LaChiusa
Directed by Ted Sperling
With Marc Kudisch, Morito / The Husband / A CPA, Aaron Lohr, The Thief / A Reporter, Idina Menzel, Kesa / The Wife / An Actress, Henry
Stram, The Janitor / A Priest, Mary Testa, The Medium / Aunt Monica
Suggested by the stories of RYUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA / As translated by TAKASHI KOJIMA
Tom Lynch, Scenic Designer, Elizabeth Caitlin Ward, Costume Designer, Christopher Akerlind, Lighting Designer, Bruce Coughlin,
Orchestrations
At the Public Theatre through December 4th.
For my money, the theatre is up there in the ten top reasons to be human. I leave my home and to sit in a dark room with complete strangers and watch
actors do their stuff because I want to be inspired. I’m asking to be involved. I’m volunteering to be lead down any old path they choose as long as they
don’t let go of my hand.
And if I see a show, and it is NOT so very good - I will try to divert you, because I don’t want you to come to the temple when the preaching isn’t up to
snuff. I will bar the door, I will swing from rafters, I will yell FIRE just to set your feet on a path that does not lead to disappointment. Do something
different with your evening I will say. Save your money for dinner with a friend you haven’t seen in months because you are too frigging busy. Go take a
walk with your dog or your child or your significant other. Go to bed early, I will say. Don’t come to the theatre when it is less than it can be.
I’m an usher snob, and that’s all there is to it.
Now, let’s say you did want to go to the theatre and have a sort of an adventure. You can, and save money at the same time. Buy one ticket, to See What I
Wanna See, watch the first half of the show and give your ticket to a chum who will see the second half of this show. Then go out for a drink and try and
convince each other you didn’t somehow end up in different theatres watching two different shows.
The first act of See What I Wanna See begins with a sad love song in Medieval Japan, then jumps to New York City, 1951. A murder. A couple leaves the
movies after seeing Roshamon, and heads to a nightclub where the woman, a veritable vixen I tell you, sings. Exit nightclub and the guy is murdered. Then
we see five versions of what really happened (just the way it happens in Roshamon, get it?) – all fairly interesting and with some fab fab singing. End of Act
One. What really happened? Perhaps we will find out in Act Two?
Not so fast. In Act Two we start with that old Medieval Japanese love thing again only this time the two characters are in the reverse situation. Then
Whammo! We are in present day New York where a renegade priest puts up fliers proclaiming that there will be a miracle in the park on such and such a
Thursday at 2PM. The Roshamon thing happens in reverse as we see five different people approaching an event instead of walking away from it. That’s
all. The day comes, something happens in the Park, the people react, and everybody goes home, including us. There is some excellent singi! ng and
orchestration only I don’t remember what they were singing about because there was no story on which the music could hang its hat. So it’s an evening of
little bubbles that pop, occasionally please, and then disappear. Too bad.
A word of warning – when you open a program and there is an interview with the creators of the show explaining what it’s about – the article is there for a
reason. This program has such an article. It still didn’t help. This creative team was too abstract by half. Trying to create a cubism-based musical that
addressed the idea of what is truth, and is it found in the eye of the beholder. Cute idea – except that they forgot the part where their beholding characters
became our beheld.
At one point in the second act when everyone was singing his or her story I flashed on the musical Hair. On the way home I also read that this was the
theatre where Hair opened. Imagine beholding that.