Wanted: The Musical

Content warning: use of prop guns, assult with a deadly weapon, racism, intimations of attempted sexual assault. 

"Gun and Powder" was one of the last shows I saw in 2020 before COVID halted theater for a while. I kept an eye out, hoping it was still percolating. It's also worth noting that the original Martha Clarke I saw, passed away. 

I was so excited when I saw the move to Broadway announcement, and, as we can see, booked tickets for previews. The show has evolved, more than the title. Obviously I have the misty memories of the original in my head. But I will attempt to review the current version before discussing changes.

Mary and Martha Clarke are the biracial twins of Tallulah Clarke, who is Black. She says their father ran away when he realized she was pregnant. 

They grew up on a cotton plantation, that now post-slavery, they still work as sharecroppers. With some hard work and side hustles they have saved enough to buy the land. But when presented with the money, Mr. Billingsley claims he has just tripled the rent.

Fed up, the twins suggest earning money by going somewhere they can pass as white, since they can earn higher wages. Their mother gives them a gun to keep them safe. They soon discover that two young white women travelling alone are still in danger and pull the gun on their would be assaulters. One tosses his money at them and well, the idea of stripping white people, especially former slave owning white people of their money becomes their new plan. 

Mary wants to make one more stop before they go home, have a little fun in a saloon. There they discover Jesse, who knows about the gun toting sisters. Only he's been waiting since the Wanted poster of Mary appealed to him. And so he offers to treat them to some finer things, clothes, jewels, fancy food. Mary loves it. Martha wants to go home.

Tensions rise from there, particularly as Martha finds herself attracted to Elijah, Jesse's Black assistant. And Jesse says things that make it clear he himself is not into interracial love. 

There are kinfolk throughout acting as a sort of Greek chorus. And I do have to mention the maids Cissy and Flo who immediately recognize Mary and Martha as Black. 

The songs are amazing and this cast kills them. I walked out of the theater dying to call the friend I saw "Gun and Powder" with to talk through the changes. 

And so now the changes. It's hard when you see a work you saw in another version not to focus on the changes. All the changes I saw raised the stakes and also gave a few more characters agency. The themes are still there of biracial identity, and the challenge of an era where being biracial meant either passing as white or being Black, no in between.

I do think that Elijah suffered a little, because they made him a little milder, quieter, he even has a song about being invisible. But that made him seem less of an obvious match for Martha. 

I do like that he dreams of California now, rather than Boston. 

I also can't tell if Jesse is more obviously evil, or if it's just hard to redeem a dude who says your Wanted poster reminded him of his mom. 

But these are quibbles. I still love the show. The audience I saw it with was delightfully reactive, laughing, gasping, even mm-hmming in parts. 

I need a cast album of this show. I may also need a shirt that says Legend. 

The prior version I saw featured Solea Pfeiffer, Awa Sal Secka, and Rayshun Lamarr, who are all part of this cast. Liisi Fontaine had been in the original workshop.  

Heritage

I'm lucky enough to know a language professor who talks about heritage languages. How the languages that were spoken in your household become a little easier for you to pick up later, even if you yourself never spoke them because there are bits you absorbed even if you didn't fully understand all the grammar reasons. 

I was visiting family a had a chance to play mahjong. I took to it immediately and eventually showed up at a library mahjong event where I had the great fortune of being picked up by a threesome whose fourth had gotten stuck at work. They were less new than me, but not playing for points, and very patient with my missteps. I loved it. Did it help that I won once? For sure. 

I went back and played at an instructor table which was helpful if slower. And then I found an event with tea and Mahjong and a friend and I went and played for hours. 

Now I would love to tell you I plugged into the ancient heritage of my family's mahjong history. But honestly, the thing that helped us my immediate family used to play hours and hours of gin rummy. Every summer we'd sit around the table and play. It helped that we'd be in a house with minimal TV reception and no cable. It helped that we had no bedtime if we kept playing cards. 

We were ruthless, we learned how to observe what cards the others were picking up and discarding. We trash talked. 

And so mahjong feels like an extension of that. Members of my family do play mahjong. And maybe I am also tapping into that heritage in some way. 

I am having a lot of fun. Even when I don't win. Though winning is a lot of fun. 

Happy Banned Book Week

Happy Banned Books Week, I got you a rant. 

Yesterday I was at a book event and a person got up, walked over to one of the authors, took their mic and then spoke for several minutes without stopping. The gist of what he said was, he wanted more kids books for Filipino kids. 

Now this is a delightful wish. And not about banning. But the energy of taking the mic from the person speaking and then declaring there are no kids books for Filipino kids and that these five on the panel should personally fix this is the same kind of energy we get from book banners. Yes, I'm being a little mean about someone who wanted to help kids. But here's the thing. There are kids books for Filipino kids. This panel (which was not about kids books, to be clear) had two authors who have also written YA. This person could have asked the panel if they knew any kids books, and maybe learned about Newberry Award Winner Erin Entrada Kelly. A librarian (did I mention we were in a library) could have told home about the Asian Pacific American Librarian's Association awards given to books about Asian Pacific characters. 

Where I'm going is that librarians are trained to be aware of a wide range of books, be aware of the needs of their community, and to balance those with the funds available to them. 

Book banning interrupts this process. Especially because book banners these days are just copying lists they've found online. (You can tell when titles from 20 years ago, that probably no kid has asked for because it's so dated, what were texting minutes? keep showing up on the lists.) And of course when they keep banning picture books. 

I do think that parents can make choices for their children about the books they bring home. But I get mad when the book banners try to take the books out of the library altogether. Your kids may not get to read it, but what if I want to. 

Support the freedom to read. Tell your electeds you like books. Want libraries funded and able to serve the entirety of their community. Happy reading.

Non-Smoking

There's an essay floating around that is probably bait, but here we are. It speaks fondly of smoking. The thing is, I lived through the same period the author did and it, in the way nostalgia often does, leaves out some things. Smoking was allowed many places. Not schools, but that was kind of it. Restaurants had sections. There were fans or ventilation to try to keep the smoke contained. 

If you went somewhere like a concert, you had to plan for your clothes, your hair, your coat, your pores to reek of smoke. They sold basically hair Febreeze that you could spritz in your hair. Sure you could wash your hair. But sometimes, arriving home at 3am, I wanted to sleep first, but the smoke smell of my hair would be distracting while I was trying to fall asleep. I had a washable coat I wore to concerts, because I didn't want to go to work smelling like smoke all winter. 

Sure I had friends and coworkers who smoked. Sure, sometimes it was nice to dip outside with them and chat while they smoked. Unless it was rainy, or windy, or cold. 

And here's the thing. I didn't smoke. But smoking was so pervasive, that I had to plan my life around it. 

So the indoor smoking bans changed my life completely. My asthma got better. I didn't have to buy scent neutralizer for my hair. I didn't have to shower more often just because I'd been to see a concert.

Now, I assume most people are familiar with the possible dangers of smoking, to themselves and others. But it is worth noting that smoking can help with ADHD. 

But honestly, the thing I really miss from those days is not smoking. It's going to concerts for $20. Nowadays that's the surcharge tacked onto your concert ticket. 

And if what you really miss, is having an excuse to step outside of work or parties, I have great news. You can just do that. 

7 Things About the Kennedy Center

First,  disclaimer. I am not related to anyone the theater is named after.

1. Like many theaters, it is really multiple theaters. There's an opera house, concert hall, millennium stage, the terrace theater, the theater lab, a family theater, and a jazz club, all with different capacities from small to large.

2. I have had the chance to be backstage in the rehearsal areas too, and there is so much behind where the average visitor goes. 

3. Some things there are quite fancy, and some are very much not. Also some things are quite pricey, and some things are free and or cheap. 

4. Having grown up in the area, my first memory of going there I think I was about five. My aunt and uncle took me and my cousin to see "Peter Pan". 

5. "Shear Madness" was the second longest running non-musical in the US, until it recently had to close. (The longest was also "Shear Madness" in Boston. DC could have overtaken it since the Boston one closed, if recent events hadn't forced the closure of the DC run. I had every intention of dragging people to it, because I have a new group of friends I have not yet dragged to it. (In my defense, the last person I dragged to it, came with me to see it like three more times.)

6. The rooftop has a truly gorgeous view of both the city and the river.

7. DC has a lot of theaters compared to some other locales. But the loss of any is still a loss. Not every venue is suited for every kind of show. They put on things that won't all easily fit somewhere else. And the ecosystem is better and healthier with more options, not less.