In the wake of September 11, a couple of shows opened on Broadway, very very September 10th kind of shows. “Mamma Mia“, the musical written around the songs of ABBA, and a revival “Noises Off“, the show by Michael Frayn, the door-slamming farce
Completely incongruous (I felt, originally) with the mood in New York at the time.
Mood. What anineffective word. There was no “mood” in Manhattan. We weren’t in a bad “mood”, or a sad “mood”. What was going on for us had nothing to do with emotions at all. An entire city of millions of people was walking around in shock. For months. People cried openly in public, women, men, on the bus, on the sidewalk. Sometimes someone would approach and say, “Are you okay?”, but usually not. Because everybody else was also staggering down the sidewalk with that same look of terror, grief, and shock … And the smoke never seemed to stop rising from downtown. In my memory, lower Manhattan kept burning well into November.
So these two wacky shows opened … and an amazing thing happened: They both became massive hits.
Anyone with a sense of history and human nature will not be surprised by this. People wanted to escape, yes, but the successes of these shows went deeper than that.
People, in their trauma, needed to be reminded that there were still good things on the planet. Things like joy, and hope, and the possibility of human connection. People (myself included) clung to moments of softness, of man’s humanity to man.
The spectacle of the selflessness, courage, and love for humanity displayed by the NY fire department (and all of the other firemen, from around the country, who raced to Manhattan to help), and the NYPD and the rescue workers was overwhelming. Overwhelming evidence of man’s essential goodness. At the exact same moment of the display of carnage and hatred, we also were witness to some of the most moving displays of GOODNESS the world has ever seen.
I remember in the week directly following September 11, before the adrenaline had stopped racing through my heart, before anything outside of the events of that terrible day started taking up space in my brain again, I was standing in line at a CVS in Hoboken, and a fireman was in line behind me. In his full firemen get-up. His boots were caked with grey dust. The grey dust of the rubble at the WTC.
In the weeks after September 11, the months, firemen were treated like the biggest rockstars in the world. Mick Jagger and a fireman could be walking down 6th Avenue together, and the crowds would mob the fireman.
Again, this, to me, in those desperate dark days, was evidence of man’s essential goodness. It was evidence of Americans’ goodness as well. People around the world think of us as shallow, light, soft. People around the world don’t know us at all.
The vibe at the CVS, with this dusty fireman standing there, buying some bottled water and a snack, was one of hushed stillness. We were in the presence of “it”. There he was. He was one of those guys. One of those amazing people who run INTO a burning building as everybody else runs OUT. If I were trapped in a burning room, he would race in, scoop me up in his arms as though I were a little girl, and pull me out to safety. Or, he at least would do his damnedest to pull me out to safety. And he might DIE, he might lose his OWN life, in the attempt to save mine.
There is enough distance between September 11 and now that my ruminations may seem … simplistic, or overly obvious. But directly in the wake of that awful day, all of this had a vibrant pulsing reality. I read every single tale I could about the heroism of the firemen that day, every last stinking word, because, piled up, it continued to give me hope. I continued to force myself to believe that, in the words of Anne Frank, “people are really good at heart”.
The firemen, the men in the dusty grey boots, were the ones who gave that to me. To all of us.
And that’s what I felt, in line at the CVS. I felt all of us having those thoughts, those emotions towards this stranger, this man with the grey dusty boots.
I wanted to say something to him. I didn’t know what to say. “Thank you”?? That seemed so … inadequate. After September 11, we had to find a whole new language, to express gratitude. Love. Hope. Humanity.
As is probably obvious, as I stood there in line, my consciousness bombarded with the awareness of the firefighter nearby, I was in tears. But I was holding back, too … I was trying to keep it together.
If I had done what I felt like doing, I would have turned to this stranger, burst into sobs, taken his dirty hands in mine, and kissed the dusty palms, the fingers. Held his hands against my face. That’s what I wanted to do. Instead, I just looked over at him.
He saw my tears, he took it all in, and then he just nodded. Calmly. He nodded, accepting the … what should I call it … I guess it would be the “love” that I was throwing at him. He just accepted it. No emotion. Just a calm nod.
The thing with firemen, the thing that makes them so extraordinary, is that they really don’t think that what they do is a big deal. Or if they do, then it doesn’t manifest itself as arrogance. They respect the foe of Fire too strongly to have big heads about it. They are logical men. Men who stay calm in the face of chaos, men who maintain their reasoning abilities as the walls burn down around them. In a very strong sense, despite their immense humanity, these men have ice water running in their veins. They better! How could they do such a job otherwise?
I don’t want a soft gushy sentimental type who weeps when he sees a sunset breaking in my door with an axe. Or if he does well up at the beauty of the sunset, I want him to do that on his day off. When he’s in charge of saving my ass, I want a cold logical big man stomping through the flames, with a cool head. A guy who can successfully IGNORE his emotions (of terror, panic) long enough to get me the hell out of there.
And that’s how this fireman nodded at me. Other people around him were swirling masses of emotions, and feelings. Not just me. He stayed calm. It is in his blood to do so. But there was kindness in the way he looked at me, in how he nodded.
Afterwards, I went into the park across the street, sat on a bench, put my head in my hands, and wept. It was like a prayer, that crying, those tears. I was so full of rage and grief, but I also was bombarded by the goodness of people … the goodness of people seemed so bright to me in those days (perhaps because everything else was so dark) that I felt like I needed protective goggles at times. I was thanking that dusty fireman, I was thanking God for him, and for all the other men like him, I was mourning what had happened … I was a wreck.
This is an unbelievably long tangent. I began this post wanting to talk about humor and joy, and those two random Broadway shows that opened in the wake of 9/11 … I just wanted to describe how it was, here in New York … during that terrible autumn.
When “Mamma Mia” opened, on October 18, 2001, Ben Brantley, one of the main reviewers for The New York Times was there. Ben Brantley is not an idiot. He is able to call a spade a spade. In general, I find that he uses his position of immense power wisely and well. He can make or break a show (sidenote: that is WAY too much power for one reviewer!!). But he is a very good writer, a very good reviewer. He’s fair.
I kept the review he wrote for “Mamma Mia” (and I know I kept the one for “Noises Off”, too, but I can’t find it at the moment).
I just read the review right now, right before I began writing this post, and that is why I had to tell the story of the fireman in the CVS.
The tone of the review completely brings back those surreal traumatized “post” days. Ben Brantley is a human being, a New Yorker. His position as a theatre critic didn’t separate him from the masses THAT much. Yes, he must try to be objective, but NOBODY could be objective then.
And actually, I don’t know if “Mamma Mia” would have become such a smash hit if it had opened before September 11.
Listen to Ben Brantley’s criticisms, the flaws he was willing to overlook:
The choreography is mostly stuff you could try, accident-free, in your own backyard. And the score consists entirely of songs made famous in the disco era by the Swedish pop group Abba, music that people seldom admit to having danced to, much less sung in their showers.
…If you take apart “Mamma Mia”, ingredient by ingredient, you can only wince. It has a sitcom script about generations in conflict that might as well be called “My Three Dads”. The matching acting, perky and italicized, often brings to mind the house style of “The Brady Bunch”.
OUCH.
At any other time, Brantley may have taken these embarrassing elements, these critiques, and based his entire review on them. The whole show might have been painted in that bad-review brush.
But the review is glowing. There’s a reason that I kept it. Listen to what else Brantley says:
It is a widely known if seldom spoken truth that when the going gets tough, the tough want cupcakes. Preferably the spongy, cream-filled kind made by Hostess. Actually, instant pudding will do almost as well; so will peanut butter straight from the jar. As long as what’s consumed is smooth, sticky and slightly synthetic-tasting, it should have the right calming effect, transporting the eater to a safe, happy yesterday that probably never existed. Those in need of such solace — and who doesn’t that include in New York these days?– will be glad to learn that a giant singing Hostess cupcake opened at the Winter Garden Theatre last night. It is called “Mamma Mia”.
Brantley describes the clumsy stupid plot, the “lurid” costumes, the “smirkiness” of it all, but none of that seems to matter to him. The show made him laugh, made him tap his feet, made him forget his troubles … and that was enough for him. He recognized a necessary catharsis when he saw it, and he needed nothing else to give the play a glowing review. I guess I am so used to tired cynical reviewers, reviewers who have forgotten what exactly it means to be an AUDIENCE. For FUN.
Here’s where he starts to really talk about what this clearly GOOFY show made him feel, how it really was all about identification:
“Mamma Mia” often suggests a world in which everyone is the star of his or her own music video, the kind you can create at those small karaoke sound stages at amusement parks.
Crucial to the emotional punch and appeal of these moments is that the singers are not the hothouse exotics of MTV in their overblown sci-fi settings. Every character in the show, as presented here, could pass for normal at a suburban cookout. Which makes the return of Donna and the Dynamos, in finned and ruffled disco drag for Sophie’s pre-wedding party, a rousing apotheosis.
They’re what they were and what they are at the same time, with acknowledgements of joints that now creak and backs that catch in pain. But the hedonistic spirit is still defiantly present in their voices. And I remembered a middle-aged friend describing the cathartic value of lip-synching to the disco standard “I will Survive” shortly after she broke up with her husband.
Although many of the performers in “Mamma Mia” have voices of considerable power, the show still creates the beguiling illusion that you could jump onstage and start singing and fit right in.
Similarly, Anthony Van Laast’s choreography, which includes a fantasy sequence in scuba gear, never looks studied, though of course it is. In the party numbers, you have the impression of the kind of synchronized exuberance that sometimes spontaneously settles onto a dance floor shared by the same people for a long time. It is also reassuring to see an ensemble of so many varied body types. Again, the idea is that they could be you or me.
Brantley closes his review with the following anecdote, which still brings tears to my eyes today.
Reading over it, I realize why I have held onto this, a review of a show I have not seen, for two years now.
[Ms. Kaye’s] courtship bid to the adamantly single Bill (Mr. Marks), in which she sings “Take a Chance On me”, is the most charming number in the show.
Unbidden, the audience starts clapping along happily with that one. By that point, you’ve surely realized that whether you’re conscious of it or not, you’ve been listening to Abba music all your life. Mr. Andersson’s and Mr. Ulvaeus’s hook-driven, addictively tuneful melodies have been heard, in some form, in many an elevator, dentist’s office, and supermarket aisle.
They’re the sort of songs that seem to belong to some hazy collective memory. And it’s amazing how much cumulative emotional clout they acquire here…
“Mamma Mia” manipulates you, for sure, but it creates the feeling that you’re somehow a part of the manipulative process. And while it may be widely described as a hoot by theatergoers embarrassed at having enjoyed it, it gives off a moist-eyed sincerity that is beyond camp.
The woman who accompanied me to “Mamma Mia” wore hard-edged black and an air of weary skepticism. At one point, she hissed irritably at me, “I hate the 70s.” That was early, though. When the curtain calls came, she was openly weeping and laughing at herself for doing so.
My whole being responds to that; Yes. Yes. Yes. That is why we go to the theatre, that is why we care about theatre, and movies. For that reason. Because sometimes, randomly, you get to connect. You, through a play or a movie, CONNECT. To the rest of the earth, to every other person on the planet. Like E.M. Forster commanded: Only connect.
I can’t describe how that occurs, and Ben Brantley was obviously pleasantly surprised that it had occurred for him during “Mamma Mia” of all things – but that’s the thing. You never know when such a miracle will occur.
What interests me, what I am noticing right now … is the strangeness, the apt-ness, of me remembering the man in the dusty grey boots as I read that theatre review from two years ago. How strange.
For me, he is the subtext of every damn line in Brantley’s review.
And who can describe why that might be … I don’t know. I just know it’s so.
