What to Wear to Watch a Marx Brothers Stage Show

Something Just a Little Bit Zany--Saturday, 12/5/15

To celebrate my birthday, we got tickets to see The Cocoanuts, a live musical based on the Marx Brothers musical and movie, for the 7:30 showing.  Wheeeeeeee!

I wasn't really sure how to dress for the occasion, but I figured this was a good chance to wear the kind of fancy skirt I bought as a backup plan for Robert's mom's wedding...

Red and black scroll cardigan (thrifted, JCP), $2.50/wear+
Red and black scroll sweater (thrifted, JCP), $2.50/wear+
*Black scalloped skirt (thrifted, Dress Barn), $9.89/wear+
*Black/gold polka dot tights (JCP)+
Red/black paisley flats (Ivanka Trump), $2.00/wear
Gold tassel necklace (Kohls), $1.67/wear

Outfit total: $18.56/wear

And I always like to wear this twin set around the holidays.

My little bit of zany came in the form of these polka dot tights, giving my outfit a 3 pattern mix of scroll print, paisley, and polka dots.  I added the gold necklace to match the gold on the tights and shoes.

But obviously I didn't sit around all day in this semi-fancy outfit.  I decided that the Alice + striped cardigan combination was such a success that I should try the rabbit version.  The lapin looks disapproving but I think it's cute.  (Here's a hanger photo for you.)

So now that we're done with the outfit recap, how was the show???

I was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was, considering it is being compared to the actual Marx Brothers (though The Cocoanuts is one of their weakest movies).  Fortunately, I tend to be very open to different spins on my classic favorites.

The most striking difference was that this play is very much like a modern musical, rather than a story interspersed with (kind of pathetic overall) vaudeville singing/dancing acts.  Well, like a movie musical, with a modest cast--not a full on Broadway musical.  They performed a number of original pieces, and the songs were much more integrated with the storyline.  (At one point, while the detective is wanting to interrogate everyone about the stolen necklace, Groucho keeps getting the entire cast started singing different songs and the detective begs then demands that they stop it at once.  I liked this because I've always thought it funny that no one in a musical ever is like, Cut that shit out, we have stuff to do here.)  The singing and dancing was also of an appreciably higher quality than in the movie.  They included the song "Always," which Irving Berlin wrote for The Cocoanuts but was rejected from the movie as too sappy and implausible.  Later in the play, Groucho references this history by singing "I'll be loving you Thursday," a lyric that had been suggested to Berlin as a more realistic one.  They did not perform "Monkey Doodle Doo," a ludicrous song from the movie that is accompanied by a bunch of dancers dressed up as...well, the best Robert and I could come up with is jungle chickens, although Robert pointed out to me that they did play an instrumental of it during a scene change.

I thought the Groucho and Harpo actors were pretty solid (though more on Groucho later).  Almost anyone can look like Groucho with the appropriate costuming/makeup if they have the right basic build, and the actor captured Groucho's characteristic movements and his zany side well.  Harpo is more difficult but if you get the primary (clownish) facial expressions right, you're well on track.  The Zeppo character (Bob) is nothing like Zeppo or the love interest from the film--they played him as a sort of shy/nerdy character, which worked well for most purposes, especially the love story (though I felt that the scene where Harpo keeps stealing Bob and Groucho's stuff out of their pockets lost a lot of its oomph--the actor in the movie was a lot funnier).  Chico...well, I think Chico's a tough one.  Playing him well requires both mastery of the ridiculous but fluent Italian immigrant patter and the ability to capture Chico's subtle facial expressions.  (There is something with Chico's sparkling eyes and sly smile that feels difficult if not impossible to replicate.)  Chico does do a musical number, though not the piano piece from the movie--he and the cast do a song while...I'm not sure what it's called when you do that rhythmic slapping/clapping/moving glasses around on a table thing, but they did that thing and it was fun.

In addition to the changed-up musical aspect, they also included new material...a combination of material taken from the original Cocoanuts stage play, bits from other Marx Brothers movies (nothing major, mostly some of Groucho's lines, as far as I could tell), and original material.  They had some stuff that was clearly written for the Snow City audience (e.g., Zeppo/Bob scoffs at the idea of sushi in Snow City, declaring it lutefisk).  Other stuff referenced recent pop culture.  For example, when Zeppo/Bob tells Groucho that "there's a man outside wants to see you with a black mustache," Groucho replies (as in the film), "Tell him I already have one."  But he goes on to say "Is it Bruno Mars?" and to do a little Bruno Mars thing.  I about died when Harpo, pulling a bunch of shit out of his pockets-of-holding, came up with two light sabres.

There were also several times the actors addressed the audience (at least a couple times this was in response to something somebody did--for example, when one women stood up to leave, Groucho was like, Oh, she didn't like that joke....yeah, she's not coming back) or otherwise referenced the fact that they were in a play.  During the "why a duck" scene, in which Chico is to explain how there is no such thing as a little lot, Chico claims that someone in the audience distracted him, and he now has to confer with Groucho about his lines.  Referencing the fact that Chico is played by a Shakespearean actor, Chico tries out some of the most recognizable Shakespearean lines ("To be or not to be" etc.) as he's working this through with Groucho.  When Groucho is contemplating a future when his hotel is successful, he says he'll hire a dozen bellhops, "all female, just like in the movie."  When one guy in the audience laughed particularly hard at that, Groucho turned and said, "So, there's one fan of the movie here tonight."  At one point, two of the actors (ghosts) from A Christmas Carol (the play on other stage in the theater) do a walk-through across the stage.  Groucho is like, Hey, what happened to the Ghost of Christmas Future? He's supposed to be here too.

I'm not sure how much of this was the live performance aspect (vs. film) and how much was the sensibility of the actors/producer, but it was sometimes a little disconcerting to feel the actors waiting for the audience response, and Groucho in particular seemed a bit...I don't know, overly self-aware?  I enjoyed him for the most part, but there were disappointments.  For example, what I consider the very best line of the movie didn't really work for me in the play:  Groucho asks the rich widow he's courting whether her husband is really dead and when she says yes, he responds: "A 'yes' like that was once responsible for me jumping out of a window, and I'm not the jumper I used to be."  In the film, Groucho says this in an absolutely perfect way--matter of fact, a hair reproachful but also a bit wistful.  The play's Groucho is too one-note, not subtle enough, too eager with the audience somehow...too something or not enough something else to capture the complexity in Groucho's delivery.  It's like, Groucho kind of throws a million excellent lines away because there are a zillion more where those came from.  Here, the actor is a little bit too much "See what I'm doing? I'm doing Groucho!  Is this awesome or what?"  And it is pretty great but...you know.  Oh well, I mean, to be fair, we are comparing a mere human actor to Groucho Marx.  There can be only one Groucho, and I ain't ever going to see a live performance of his unless somebody gets busy on that time machine idea.  To see an actor channeling one aspect of Groucho pretty successfully is still worth quite a bit to me.

They also made subtle changes to some of Groucho's lines that really stood out to me, having just watched the movie the previous night.  For example, in the movie, Groucho comments about one of the thieves, "Yates is gone? And I gave him a check this morning for a thousand dollars!  It's a good thing it was my personal check."  But in the play, he said he gave him a thousand dollars, it's a good thing it was counterfeit.  I'm not sure why they changed it, but I thought "personal check" was a lot stronger than "counterfeit."

The play is significantly longer than the film, and the extra time between Bob being arrested and the end of the movie was not always used to great effect, in my view.  Maybe I was just too adjusted to the movie's pacing but it felt a little slow in the section before the engagement party. 

As for the engagement party, I was hoping that Groucho's Spanish costume would be the MC Hammer delight of the film, but his costume in the play is actually much more tame, though his response to Polly telling him she likes the costume's color scheme--"That isn't a scheme, that's a conspiracy"--does make more sense when you're not watching it in black and white.  (This quibble aside, I enjoyed the set and costumes a lot overall.)  However, one change in this scene I loved: Harpo, drunk as a skunk after several trips to the punch bowl as he fortifies himself against boring speeches, is told by Groucho that it's non-alcoholic punch.  He immediately straightens himself, walks to his chair, sits down, and looks out at the crowd with a level of stone-cold sobriety never before seen on Harpo's face.

From startribute.com

So...yeah, it wasn't perfect, but overall, I say two thumbs up.

The theater was pretty full and it seemed that people really enjoyed it.  This is good news because the Groucho/Chico/Harpo triumvirate also was in a production of Animal Crackers at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (where this version of The Cocoanuts debuted).  So perhaps if The Cocoanuts does well enough, they will bring Animal Crackers to town at some point.  Hurray for Captain Spaulding!