See What I Wanna See has
quite the pedigree. From composer Michael John LaChiusa (best known for his Tony
Award winning Broadway hits The Wild
Party, Marie Christine and Chronicle
of a Death Foretold), the show premiered at New York’s Public Theatre in
2005 and starred Idinza Menzel in her first role since creating the part of
Elphaba in Wicked. This production marks its European premiere.
It’s a musical all about perspective, about points of view,
about how our experiences affect how we see things. LaChiusa has paralleled
three different stories from Japanese writer Ryu Akutagawa. Together, there are
thematic links on the nature of truth that pose some intriguing questions.
Individually, though, they’re flawed.
The first story is a tale about two lovers set in Feudal
Japan that’s deliciously sensual, establishing an almost dreamlike and
provocative mood – it’s immediately apparent this is no jazz hands musical.
However, it’s used merely as a framing device to open each act, so is too
slight to make a further impression.
The second is set in 1950s New York and plays out like a
noir thriller as we hear different testimonies in a murder case. It’s perhaps
an obvious set-up to explore perspective and it relies on clichéd noir tropes –
the jazz singing femme fatale, the sleazy nightclub, the dodgy dealings of shady male
characters. It’s little more than a murder mystery that structurally is
overlong and becomes tedious re-treading the same story on repeat.
The final tale, set in post-9/11 New York, is an exploration
of religion – perhaps the ultimate form of perspective and a very literal
interpretation of the show’s title. Here, a priest who has lost faith sets up a
hoax miracle in New York’s Central Park, playing on the gullible nature of
humanity and the mass hysteria that faith can cause. In miracles, we really do
see what we want to see. Thematically, this is the most loaded of the stories but
it feels too shallow and relies on stock characters – it surely deserves a more
thorough study in a standalone piece.
Above all, though, there’s one perspective that is ignored:
that of the audience. See What I Wanna
See lacks ambiguity in its storytelling, robbing the show of a potential
extra dimension by inviting the audience in so that we too can see what we want
to see. Instead, we merely watch a multi-stranded story play out before us.
Musically, too, the show does little to draw us in. There
are some moments of sumptuous vocal harmonies and some beautifully soaring
melodies. Yet for the most part this is an abstract and experimental score that
merges styles from the different periods – jazz and orientalism especially –
but any musical links between the three narrative strands are too subtle. It
lacks the fiery tunes that made, say, The
Wild Party so popular. Sure, this is a different type of musical: it’s
striving for Sondheim but doesn’t quite make it.
Director Adam Lenson’s production is sadly a slave to the
limitations of the venue. Using simple staging may have been intentional to
allow the narrative complexities to take the fore, but it feels stilted and
static. The lighting, too, is simplistic, with down lighting often leaving the
cast in shadow – again this could be intentional to evoke mystery, but it doesn’t
have the stylish mood required.
The ensemble is excellent throughout, but two performances
stand out: Cassie Compton’s powerful vocal cuts across the band without amplification,
able to soulfully and lithely interpret some difficult melodic material; and Sarah
Ingram delivers a performance of both comedy and truth in a variety of roles.
See What I Wanna See is
certainly an interesting piece of theatre, attempting to tackle a complex subject
in both form and content. It’s just not as clever as it could be.
3/5
Watch: See What I
Wanna See runs at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 3rd October.
Photos: Jamie Scott-Smith
