Oh what a show. What a fabulous, FABULOUS show. Damn Yankees was a delight from beginning to end. We saw the Saturday matinee, and I wish we could have gone again to see the evening show. Unfortunately with needing to catch a 7 am flight the next morning, we really couldn’t swing seeing the show again, but it was tempting to ask the box office if there were any seats left! This is going to be chock full of SPOILERS, so just be warned!
I was so excited to see Nehal Joshi, my forever Broadway crush, but even without him, I was still excited about this show. All the little tidbits and sneak peeks I saw on the theatre’s social media looked amazing.
The show was at ArenaStage in the Fichandler theatre which is a square with seating all around it. Having never been to a theater like that before, I was excited to experience such an immersive show. Of course I got us front row seats after I saw the layout of the theater, and that was 100% the right choice.
The stage was bare except for four line drawings of ball players cut out of plastic and suspended from wires at the three corners of the stage. They were lit so brightly that the reflective plastic almost gave the impression that they were made of neon tubing. Once the show started, those were pulled up into the rigging, but they came down again for intermission.
There is a barrier between the first row and the stage, and the inside of that barrier is lined with LCD screens. They used these very cleverly to act as the tv that Joe’s watching when the show starts. Because they went all around the perimeter of the stage, that meant that no matter where you were sitting, you could see what he was watching. Very clever. The opening set consisted of a small kitchen island on wheels for Meg, and a rollable easy chair for Joe. Such simple set pieces, but combined with the monitors, you could totally “see” them in a living room, with her angrily watching him through the doorway in the kitchen. I LOVE clever use of space like that, and setting a scene with very little set dressing. It’s just great when your imagination is allowed to fill in the blanks, it’s the magic of theatre!
The show opens with Bryohna Marie as Meg singing Six Months Out of Every Year, and she has a fantastic voice. Soon she’s joined by a bunch of members of the ensemble, all in similar circumstances, with one partner stubbornly watching the game, and ignoring their singing spouse. It was nice to see that some women were the game watchers, and there was a dad holding a baby being ignored by his wife, AND a same sex couple with two guys in the corner opposite to us. Yay for diversity! One couple was DIRECTLY in front of me, and the guy pretending to watch baseball on TV was staring awkwardly through me for most of the scene, it was pretty funny.
After that, Rob McClure as Applegate (AKA the devil) shows up after Joe jokingly says he’d sell his soul for the Orioles to win. They did a really good job with having it look like Applegate was popping up here and there magically. He did a lot of goofy tricks like collapsing a bottle into a napkin, pulling cards out of thin air, etc. Nehal is the understudy for Applegate, but my manifesting that he’d get to play the part didn’t work out! But I was just glad that he was there at all, because it’s always a risk when you travel to see someone in a show. You never know when they’re going to get sick, or be out on vacation. Rob McClure was fine, and fun as Applegate, but I think that Nehal would have been even better. It’s weird because in the Playbill, there’s all these photos of Rob without facial hair posing with the other cast members, but in the show he has a goatee and it literally makes him look like a completely different person. So weird how a beard can alter someone’s looks so much.
A part of the modernization for this new revival is that Joe and Meg are both Black, and Joe talks about how his dad wanted to be a ball player too, but unless you were Willie Mays, no Black player had a chance of being drafted into the major leagues back then. It was a nice way to give the show a bit more meaning and punch, while also allowing for some diversity in a show that was originally cast with completely white actors. Also apparently the show is set specifically in the year 2000, which I managed to somehow completely miss. I knew it was obviously a modernized interpretation, but I didn’t clock that it was supposed to be that specific year.
Old Joe writing his letter to Meg and singing Goodbye Old Girl was very sweet and poignant. Quentin Earl Darrington who played Old Joe had a very nice, soulful voice. The quick change they do to “transform” him into younger Joe was done very well, and almost seamless, especially if you didn’t know to expect it. I imagine these special effects were even more incredible for someone who had never seen the show or the movie before and wasn’t anticipating them.
Jordan Donica was cast as younger Joe, and boy does he have a set of pipes on him. After he sang the first few notes, my mother leaned over to me and said, “That voice!” I already knew of him because he was in Phantom on Broadway as Raoul for a few years, AND he played Lancelot in the revival of Camelot that I was supposed to take her to a couple of years ago, before they closed the show early. Most recently, he was supposed to make his debut as the Phantom in the West End, but he decided to take a job playing a part in The Guilded Age instead. What a loss for the West End, because man does he have a PERFECT voice for the Phantom. So deep and sonorous, and sensual. He will make so many people absolutely feral if he ever does play the Phantom. My mother was absolutely smitten with him. I appreciated his voice, but he’s only thirty-one, AND very young looking when he’s clean shaven with short hair, which he was for this show. He just looked like a kid to me, albeit a very talented and handsome kid.
After the scene with Joe and Applegate, I was on pins and needles because I knew my guy Nehal would be coming out in the next scene as the coach. My heart was thumping away in my chest when he came out. Silly crushes are so fun. He has a hilarious opening scene where he’s angry at his pitcher for getting hand signals wrong, and he keeps rapidly running through a long series of goofy gestures that culminates in a dance move not unlike the macarena. He got a lot of laughs.
I was glad he had a featured song where he started off singing Heart all by himself. I hadn’t been able to hear him sing live since Phantom, because The Cottage wasn’t a musical. And even in Phantom, he almost always was singing in tandem with someone else, so you didn’t get to hear him so well. He has a lovely tenor voice.
After Heart finishes, Young Joe comes out with Applegate to get him on the team. They get Joe to hit for the coach, and everybody did a great job of miming following the “ball”. So much so that everyone in the audience kept following the balls too, even though there was nothing to see. Nehal did some of his high pitched shrieking, a la “The ballet!” which made me squeal with delight. He’s just so frickin’ funny. He’s always my favorite part of any show he’s in.
After Heart was Shoeless Joe from Hannibal MO, which is so catchy and had a lot of great dancing from the ball players who were all incredible as the ensemble. It’s funny, but with a more diverse cast my eyes were automatically drawn more to the non-white ball players. I found myself mostly watching them, and kind of ignoring all the other white guys who seemed to blend together. Sorry white guys, you were all great too. They do a lot of stuff with bats, jumping over them and swinging, and I was very happy no bats accidentally flew into the audience. At one point a dancer was swinging the bat right in front of me, and there are no crash guards at this theatre!
Shoeless Joe goes on for quite a while, and it skips through a fair amount of time and shows Joe playing at different games, making the Orioles win every time, and winning over legions of fans. They had some of the women ensemble members sneak into the aisles with Orioles gear, screaming and cheering for Joe. It was very cute. After that they come down to the “field” and are of course all salivating over Joe. One older woman said, “I just wanna breathe the same air as him,” and she got a big laugh with that one. Jordan Donica did a fabulous job embodying the faithful older man with a wife stuck inside a younger man’s body. He also did a very good job emulating the speech patterns and vocals of Quentin Earl Darrington. It was very easy to buy that he was actually the same guy, just in a younger body.
Applegate, frustrated with Joe’s reluctance to get pulled into the seedier side of Fame with corporate sponsors, gambling, drinking and womanizing, decides to enlist the help of Lola, his best seductress. Ana Villafañe who played Lola was great, but she wasn’t Gwen Verdon, and she was so petite and athletic that I personally didn’t find her particularly sexy, but she was an excellent dancer and singer. She was just lacking that weirdly sexy, otherworldly spark that Gwen Verdon brought to the role. But trying to follow in Gwen Verdon’s footsteps, would be difficult for anyone to do. I’m sure many people in the audience disagreed, but she just didn’t ooze sex appeal for me. I just find people sexier when they’re a little bit softer.
I was happy any time the baseball team was on stage, because it meant that Nehal would be there. It wasn’t one of the biggest roles in the show, but it was nice when I could gaze at him out of the corner of my eye. I hadn’t seen my crush in two years, I had to get my fill of him while I could!
The women who played Joe’s crazy fans also doubled for Meg’s friends who try to pull her out of her funk over her disappearing husband, who’s now been gone for months. Then Young Joe shows up and offers to fix her fence. He’s been missing her, and apparently the fence was something he promised to fix, but never got around to. In the movie he rents out a spare room and actually lives with her, but in this version he’s renting a place just up the road and passes himself off as a new neighbor just trying to be friendly and offering to help out with things. Their chemistry was very clear, and once again Jordan Donica did a fantastic job with the emotional side of the role, it’s a complicated thing to portray a man trapped in a younger body, fulfilling a lifelong dream, but also yearning for the woman he left behind, but not being able to reveal himself to her. It’s such a layered performance, and he’s a very mature performer. I’m not surprised that he was hired to play one of the leads on Phantom of the Opera when he was fresh out of college. Their duet of A Man Doesn’t Know was full of heart.
Applegate sends Lola into the locker room, presenting her as a new fan who’s DYING to meet Joe. Thankfully they dropped making her pretend she’s a sexy senorita called Senorita Lolita Banana, and all the faux accent nonsense that came with it. I was disappointed to see that there was zero Fosse influence in the choreography of What Lola Wants, but it’s honestly probably for the best, because nobody could dance his goofy dances better than Gwen Verdon. Instead she did more of a tango with poor Joe being her hapless dance partner while she gradually liberates him of his outer layers. It was quite something to see Jordan Donica stripped down to his boxers and a t-shirt, literally a few feet from my face. I was also pleased to see that he isn’t in ridiculously good shape. Through his t-shirt, I could see that he had the tiniest bit of a belly poking out a miniscule amount over the top of his shorts. Nowadays it seems like so many men on stage and film push their bodies to ridiculous standards, and it was refreshing to see that this Broadway hunk has a fairly normal physique. Fuck abs, men look a million times hotter with at least some fat on them.
After Joe ignores Lola’s attempt at seduction and takes off to fix Meg’s fence as he promised, Lola is threatened by Applegate in a very impressive quick change sequence. A menacing group of demons surround her. Applegate threatens to take away the youth and beauty that she sold her soul for, and then after a flash of lightning the stage grows dark for maybe two seconds, and in the middle, instead of sexy Lola, we see a haggard, elderly crone, grimacing in pain as she looks at her own withered arms. Another flash, and Lola’s back as she was, and thoroughly chastened. The quick change was clearly managed by one of the demons in a cloak, quickly pulling on a mask and taking Lola’s place, then swapping them back again, but the rapidness of how they managed the switch was SO impressive. God I love theatre.
There was a woman sitting next to my mother who would cry out, “Oh wow,” during SO many parts of the show, and that moment got an especially big, “Oh wow!” from her. It was a hoot to hear her through the whole show.
After intermission, the Orioles mascot came out! I was wondering whether it was a man or a woman in the costume because they were fairly short. They ran around the stage posing along with all the cutouts, then encouraged everyone to do the wave. Then Take Me Out to the Ball Game started to play, complete with lyrics on those monitors around the edge of the stage. Everyone gamely sang along. Then after we were done and everyone was cheering and applauding for the mascot, they pulled off their head to reveal it was… Applegate! I was not expecting it at all! What a funny reveal, and a great way to start off Act II with a ton of energy and laughs, and a little bit of subterfuge.
The first number after intermission is Who’s Got the Pain, and it happens at some sort of baseball awards ceremony because all the ball players and Nehal were in swanky suits. Lola comes out all done up in a chiquita banana style headdress, but she quickly takes it off and strips down to a revealing Carnivale style outfit that had Nehal covering his eyes, blowing his whistle, and eventually falling off his chair. Once again, she’s trying to seduce Joe, but her efforts are all for naught, and she spends most of her time dancing with the other ball players, including a funny bit where they do a sort of conga line, firmly pushed together butt to crotch and hunched over one another.
I Thought About the Game, another ensemble number with the baseball team, was one of the songs that went through A LOT OF revisions. Originally it was just various team members lamenting about women they were trying to sleep with, one even described one woman as, “dumb but pretty.” But then after thinking about the game, they decide to abstain. This much needed update instead had them lamenting about wanting to eat big meals, drink a lot of booze, do a lot of gambling, and a couple of them lamented about abstaining from sex, but it thankfully wasn’t ALL about not having sex with “girls”.
The scene where young Joe is fixing Meg’s fence for her was another touching and poignant moment between the two of them as they sang Near To You. Both Bryohna and Jordan had very clear chemistry together on stage. The chemistry was more hilarious when she told me later at the stage door that they had played mother and son in another production! Honestly she doesn’t look anywhere near old enough to be his mother, but that’s theatre for you.
I think the least memorable number for me was Applegate’s Those Were the Good Old Days, I had a hard time remembering where exactly it fell during the show, and I had to look it up in the program. The thing I remember the most was his office set with a billiard table in the middle, some of those chairs that look like hands, and a large ottoman thing with an ensemble member stowed away in it with their arm done up in golden sequins who kept passing him things like a hat and a cane from out of a door that opened on top. He sang a line about Napoleon and was wearing a Napoleon style hat, and at one point was trying to toss it up in the air and catch it on the way down, but he actually dropped it while he was on the billiard table and he had to snatch it off the stage when the song ended.
Two Lost Souls was a fun, slow, jazzy duet with Lola and Joe that let the ensemble really cut loose and show off their dancing skills. Apparently Jordan Donica isn’t a trained dancer, but the choreographer worked with him so he could do some dancing in this show, and I must say he held his own, especially during this nightclub number.
The show seemed to wrap up so quickly after intermission, as second acts often do. Applegate tries to get the Orioles to lose by changing Joe back to his old self just when he’s about to make the winning catch, but of course Old Joe makes it and the Orioles beat the Yankees. Meg’s love for Joe winds up saving his soul, leaving Applegate to start smoking from underneath his purple suit, an effect I’m still curious to know how they did! Poor Lola kind of gets the shaft as she’s banished back to hell even after she’s learned that she’s worthy of love. I kind of wish she got more of a redemption arc, because it seems unfair that Joe gets his soul back, but she’s still damned. Quit punishing women and letting men get off the hook!
But what a great show! The cast came out for their bows and of course we immediately gave them all a standing ovation. Jordan Donica DEFINITELY got the most whoops and cheers, even though they had Rob McClure come out last. The whole cast all sang a few refrains of Heart together with the audience clapping and singing along before they finally left the stage. After a slow exit (like with most matinees, the audience was full of a LOT of old folks), we asked how to get to the stage door. Doing the stage door at a matinee is always a gamble, but we lucked out because folks started coming out shortly after we got there.
I was so relieved when Nehal was one of the first ones to come out. With matinees, you really never know if cast members are going to come out or not because some of them just stay in and rest until the evening show. There was no defined line or barrier at this stage door, so he came right up to me and asked me how I was doing. I told him it had been a while since I’d seen him, so he asked what I’d been up to. Again, he wound up chatting to me and my mother for at least ten minutes straight. I told him that we flew in, and how it was my first time in D.C., and he wanted to know where we’d gone, and told me that he was from the area, which I of course already knew from interviews and such.
I had anticipated that he was going to ask me about Masquerade, and I was not wrong! In case you haven’t heard, Masquerade is this immersive Phantom of the Opera theatre experience that opened in NYC a couple of months ago. Tickets are stupidly expensive, you’re required to wear evening wear, AND a mask, and it’s the sort of thing where you walk through a building with escalators and little scenes and vignettes performed here and there in different rooms. I’m not against immersive theatre, but the whole thing sounded hokey and just so not anything that I’m interested in. So I told him that I wasn’t really interested, especially after I’d started hearing some spoilers from people who had gone. It sounds like the whole experience was crafted to appeal to the Phantom/Christine shippers, and that is 100% not me. He said he hadn’t seen it either, and also mentioned the crazy expense, and I added that he wasn’t playing Monsieur Andre either, so that’s another reason for me not to bother. I told him if Phantom ever came back properly, I’d probably see it then, but even the new US tour isn’t coming to Boston.
I told him that he should talk to his agent about getting him in some of the shows at the Ogunquit Playhouse, he said he’d heard good things about it, but had never been himself. I mentioned that Greg Mills (former Phantom swing extraordinaire) is currently doing Titanic there, and how we’re going to see that too in a couple of weeks. We’ll see if he takes the bait, I’d love to get to see him at a theatre that’s more local.
Somehow we got on the subject of Parade, and I mentioned to him how I didn’t think I could make it through Parade because I’m such a crier. I mentioned that I cry at Jersey Boys, but I really should have told him that I cry at Mamma Mia, because that’s even more ridiculous. I tend to go for musicals which are light and fun, because anything heavy handed will just leave me a mess.
We’d been chatting for a while before he noticed my hair clip, and he said, “What’s this? Did you make this?” So I replied, “Of COURSE I made it, I always make things.” He asked if he could take a picture of it, and I said, “Of course!” So he’s got a photo on his phone of my silly Damn Yankees hair clip. Then he said, “Oh Bree would love this!” So I asked, “Who’s Bree?” He was talking about Bryohna Marie who played Meg! I thought he would have been talking about one of the costuming people or something! He called her over from where she was chatting with some other audience members and had her look at it. She was very sweet, but I don’t think she was nearly as excited about it as he was. ~laughs~ He asked me what I did (profession speaking), and I told him that I was a graphic designer, and how I sit in front of a computer all day and live a very mundane life, so seeing musicals is my happy escape. He responded, “Well you make cool things!” So at least there’s that, my life may be mundane, but Nehal thinks my hair clips are cool.
Jordan Donica came out and I said, “Oh, my mom is Jordan’s newest fan,” and he was very funny being jokingly down on him. “Oh yeah we all just put up with him, that guy. I guess he’s fine… whatever.” Jordan is tall, young, inarguably pretty, but I only have eyes for Nehal. Jordan did seem very sweet and friendly although I didn’t have a chance to talk to him. I was preoccupied with my man! Apparently my mother said something to him about him having the voice of an angel, which I thought was adorable, I was bummed I missed it because I’m sure his reaction was priceless!
Nehal was quite literally not talking to anyone else, but thankfully there weren’t a ton of people waiting at the stage door. I swear people must have thought he was a friend of mine that I’d come to see. I finally told him that I didn’t want to monopolize him, and he said he was just going to go take a nap before the evening show. I gave him a hug, but we wound up chatting for a few more minutes, and then I got ANOTHER hug before he was finally going to set off for his nap, until an old guy who showed up with the original novel Damn Yankees is based on started chatting with him. My mother had to pee though, so we headed back into the theatre where they were nice enough to let her back in. While I waited for her, I surreptitiously watched Nehal as he walked away down the block, off for his nap. I had to get my fill of him since it might be another TWO YEARS before I get to see him again! It was lovely to get so much time with him, and he was just as delightful as always. He’s so kind, so personable, and just so damned handsome. I could gaze into those big brown eyes of his forever. ~dreamy sigh~
So that was Damn Yankees, an amazing show, and an amazing time, and my mother absolutely loved it too. It was well worth the plane tickets, the hotel, the parking, taxis, and the show tickets combined. Honestly, if you’re anywhere near to D.C. and you like musical theatre, GO AND SEE IT!
Loading comments...