Theatre Trip: The Starry Messenger

THE STARRY MESSENGER

Wyndhams Theatre

Date: 4 July (Thursday), 7:30pm

Seats: Grand Circle, Row A 17-18

(Seen with Jess!)

Notes: There were two reasons we booked this show. One was that it has Matthew Broderick in it, who is of course very famous for many things (my favourite of these being The Producers) and the fact that tickets went on sale at £15 on TodayTix! We were up in the Grand Circle, which is higher than we usually sit, but we were front row center up there, so actually the view was pretty good! Certainly no complaints for £15.

This is potentially the longest gap for me between seeing a show and writing my review, and that is simply because I don’t really know how I felt about it. The show is about Mark who teaches astronomy (you find out later that he missed out on having a career in astronomy) and his life. Except that his life isn’t very interesting, at least for most of the show. He is just living his life, with his wife Anne and son Adam, and teaching at a planetarium in New York. He then meets a woman called Angela who comes to the planetarium looking for a class for her young son, and Mark begins an affair with her. However, this doesn’t happen until almost the end of Act 1, which made for a not very engaging first act. In the second there is a catastrophic event which affects Angela, and by extension Mark, and he reassesses his relationships, his behaviour, and his place in the world.

Weirdly enough, my two favourite perfomances from this play didn’t come from either of the ‘names’ in this show. Rosalind Eleazar (Angela) was fantastic, conveying the awkwardness in the situations and feeling really like a full, real character. We saw almost more of her than Mark during the show, and as she worked as a nurse, she looked after Norman (played by Jim Norton) who was funny and cynical and honest in the way that only the critically ill can be. Together especially, they were the highlight for me.

Elizabeth McGovern played Anne, the wife. She is best known for playing Lady Cora in Downton Abbey, and actually, I think her character in this had more agency than Anne did. She was just portrayed as the slightly annoying, but loving wife when they’ve been married for many years. The scenes she did get she was great in, but despite being married to the main character she really didn’t seem like a main character during the play. I would have liked to see more of her.

Matthew Broderick... Having grown up mostly knowing him from The Producers, it was a bit strange to see Matthew being in a romantic relationship (I know that he’s married with kids in real life, but I guess that’s just my bias coming out) and I actually found it quite weird to watch him kissing Angela on stage. In terms of his acting he was great, but he really has a type with such a distinctive voice and boyish face that he really wouldn’t translate to many other plays. I think you’d have to really get the right role, and I’m not 100% sure this was it.

I came out of this show feeling very... confused. I still am a bit, I have to confess. I don’t know what I was supposed to take away from The Starry Messenger, and that worries me. I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t think it was amazing either. I wouldn’t recommend it as I think you can get better for your money, but it wasn’t a disappointment. So... I guess it was fine? And unlike a lot of the shows I’ve seen (musicals and plays), it disappeared from my head almost as soon as I got home from the theatre. So yeah. Go and see it, I guess? Maybe it just wasn’t for me.