If you want to Rent a Guvnor....

Ok so the title of this post makes no real sense....but I saw two shows this weekend!  Apparently after several months of being stressed out and not able to go see shows I'm making up for it now.

It starts off because my friend Laura's friend really wanted to come to NY.  I guess it's been his dream for a long time.  So she asked me if it would possibly be alright for him to crash on our couch for a couple of days.  He came with rave reviews and after a discussion with my roommates we decided that would be alright.  Turns out he was really fun!  He basically went off and just did stuff all day on his own so not only was he a fun person to get to know, but was a very low maintenance house guest.  Monica has really been wanting to see Rent before it closes (next week) and they were having a discount on tickets so we all ended up going to see it on Thursday.

I really like the musical Rent.  I've seen it several times both on stage, the movie movie version, and the filmed live on stage movie version.  I knew that they had done a revival off broadway, but when I saw clips and reviews from it, it seemed like it was lacking something.  So I went into the show with very low expectations.  It was actually a fairly good show.  The stage is much smaller than the original and so they played well with the space which was fun to see.  Also the actress who played Maureen was fantastic.  She had an amazing voice and really seemed to have a lot of fun with the character.  It also really stood out to me after seeing it why it's closing.  I think they tried to revive an extremely popular show too soon after it had closed on Broadway.  They changed and updated some things about the show (like Angel's costumes) but other things remained exactly the same.  The actors were okay, but some were definitely better than others.  For example, the soloist in Seasons of Love just did not have a strong enough voice to sing that part.  It sounded weak when that song is supposed to be the highlight of the show.  The actress who played Mimi had a beautiful voice..but sometimes made really odd choices, especially in the song "Out Tonight" making her not as fun to watch as I would have wanted.  So basically while I enjoyed it and I thought it was a decent production, it was definitely a ghost of its former self.

Anyway, last night Kari and I got rush tickets to see One Man Two Guvnors. I am so so so glad I got to see this show as it closes today and was one I had been wanting to see since it opened.  It stars James Corden who is a British actor and the only reason I know who he is is that he was in a couple episodes of Doctor Who.  This show was running on the West End and they brought it to Broadway for the summer.

The rush line at One Man Two Guvnors

It's really hard to explain what the show is about because it's one of the most ridiculous plays I think I've ever seen.  It's extremely silly, characters kept breaking the fourth wall and interacting with the audience, a musical act would come up and play during scene changes, and it involved a lot of slapstick humor.  Basically I thought it was hysterical.  I guess if I had to describe the plot, there's this girl who is supposed to marry a guy named Roscoe, but Roscoe was killed by his twin sister Rachel's boyfriend.  But Rachel still loves her boyfriend, but since he's wanted by the police she comes up with this plan to dress as her twin brother in order to marry the girl in order to get a lot of money (part of the marriage deal) so that they can flee to Australia.  But the girl wants to marry her love Alan (Alan the actor who struts about the stage).  And then James Corden's character is that he ends up employed separately by both Rachel and her boyfriend and then gets very confused as to which Govnor (Govnor means boss in British speak) he's supposed to be doing stuff for.

I found videos which are pretty fun.  The first one just the general clips of the show, which should give you a little of an idea how crazy and ridiculous this play actually is.  And then the second one is James Corden performing at the Tony Awards.







After the show I did manage to get James Corden's autograph, which was fun.  I can now say I've finally met someone who's been on Doctor Who!