Dated Show?  Weak Story?  Cue The Acrobats…!

                                                                                                    April 25, 2013

Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt….Coined by the Roman poet Juvenal in the first Century

Sometimes I think God wants there to be a circus so we can show there's another way to respond….Tony Dungy

Sometimes, though not too often, more is more.

In the new revival of PIPPIN at the Music Box, director Diane Paulus (HAIR, PORGY AND BESS) takes the Stephan Schwartz idea of making the players clowns, adopts Fosse’s changing the clowns to a professional acting troupe, and expands it all into an often frenetic circus. 

It’s a hell of a spectacle.  And it’s great fun.  Go see it!

It is, I felt, a trite and uninteresting story with aspirations to a seriousness it never for one moment fulfills….Clive Barnes in the Times review of the original production

Sometimes PIPPIN can get a bit too frenetic, but the trite and uninteresting story isn’t allowed to take center stage until the very end, when Paulus uses it to give the story the seriousness Barnes didn’t experience.

Okay, first the clichéd story: Pippin is the son of Charlemagne, but – it being 1972 when the show debuted – he’s driven not to conquer the world, but to find fulfillment in his life by doing extraordinary things.  He goes through a series of quests, only to find in the end that fulfillment comes from living a simple life.

Uh, yes, as in CANDIDE and THE FANTASTICS, and undoubtedly other shows I’m not thinking of.

Bob Fosse saved PIPPIN, and he had to bar Schwartz from rehearsals to do it….Ethan Mordden in “One More Kiss, The Broadway Musical in the 1970s”

So what do you do to overcome a trite and clichéd story?  What Jerry Zaks did with the dated book in the Lincoln Center production of ANYTHING GOES: whenever a scene looked like it would fall flat, Zaks brought the entire cast onstage and overcame the weak scene with movement.

Fosse did a variation of this in the original PIPPIN, staging it in a highly stylized way that mocked the show itself.  Composer/lyricist Schwartz, who had written the original book in college, protested, but Fosse prevailed, and the show ran on Broadway for nearly 2,000 performances.

Diane Paulus is perfectly in tune with our times, when attention spans are short, impactful wins the day, and wanting fulfillment loses out to smart-phone apps.  When’s the last time you heard someone say he wanted fulfillment, other than an order from Amazon?

And, most importantly, Paulus makes the show enormous fun.

Several in the cast come from circuses or the world of gymnastics, so we get juggling – of torches at one point, apparently with Fire Department approval – and trapeze artistry, without safety lines, apparently with Equity approval.

In fact, nearly all the principals, including the fabulous Andrea Martin, work above the stage, which is a feat in itself.

Chet Walker (FOSSE) choreographs PIPPIN “in the style of Bob Fosse”, but whoever did what, the choreography is more fun than a barrel of Matilda’s salamanders.

We also get brilliant (in both senses) costumes by Dominique Lemieux, who comes to Broadway from the Cirque du Soleil; a wonderful set in the form of the interior of a circus tent by Scott Pask (BOOK OF MORMON); complicated and effective lighting by Kenneth Posner; and illusions from the ever-busy Paul Kieve, who’s also represented on Broadway currently by MATILDA.

And we get the fabulous Andrea Martin.  She plays Pippin’s Granny, and has only one number in the show, though she appears at a few other points as a kind of extra ensemble member. 

When  a character’s only got one number, and you get Andrea Martin to take the role, the number must be truly great.  Her “No Time At All” is that and more, though to say more would be to spoil several surprises I wouldn’t for the world spoil. 

I’ll restrict myself to saying Martin’s number is the high point in a show loaded with high points.  I’m playing the song – sung in the original cast album by Irene Ryan – as I type this, grinning like a fool, and thoroughly enjoying myself.

Terrance Mann shines as Charlemagne, as does Charlotte d’Amboise as his sorta evil – but definitely sexy, which can never be amiss – queen.  Rachel Bay Jones also exudes sexiness, but with a maternal edge, as Catherine, the widow Pippin elects to spend his life with.

All of this is meant as great praise, but…well…aren’t there always a few buts? 

Despite what the 1972 critics said in dismissing the score, it’s a fine one, with several beautiful ballads, at least one of which was ruined by the circus going on behind it.  Less would have been more there.

And when you consider the decades of Broadway experience brought to the show by Mann, d’Amboise, Jones, and Martin, you wonder why Paulus went with relatively inexperienced actors when casting the two most important parts.

Patina Miller, a favorite of mine in SISTER ACT, will not make you forget Ben Vereen in her interpretation of the Leading Player.  Miller has a wonderful smile, but it wears out from constant use, and she’s never otherwise convincing.  The Leading Player is a domineering figure, often barking out orders to the others, but I never believed her when she barked.

And I’m afraid I must say Matthew James Thomas hasn’t a clue how to play Pippin.  His voice is variable, his manner dull. Forget about fulfillment, what this Pippin needs to seek is a spark of something interesting.

Thomas’s only Broadway credit, per his Playbill bio, is Peter Parker in SPIDERMAN, which mostly called for dodging set pieces.  Miller’s only Broadway credit is SISTER ACT, where I now see her smile did much of the work.

Curious.

At the top of the show, when the curtain went up to disclose the dazzling array of circus performers and they went into action, doing stunts and tricks as they joined the Leading Player in “Magic To Do”, I thought it just might be the best opening of any Broadway show ever, not excluding FORUM or RAGTIME.  PIPPIN doesn’t always play on such a high note, but it often does, which made for a most enjoyable way to end the season.

Rating (5 stars possible):  ****

The bottom line:  An unforgettable spectacle

Who should go?  All but die-hard fans who insist on the original version

Do I recommend it?  Yes, yes, and yes!

Bringing New Depth To The Meaning Of Bitch…!

                  April 24, 2013

Warning

This play contains profanity,

smoking, alcohol consumption

drug use, and gossip….

(Message on the play’s curtain as the audience enters the house)

 

Once, walking into a hotel event-space for a party, Sue surveyed the packed room, leaned into her companion and whispered out of the corner of her mouth: “Shindler’s B-List”….from Graydon Carter’s Playbill intro to the play

First, look at the Playbill cover.  Bette Midler’s name doesn’t appear, she has a different ‘do and wears glasses, but the toothy grin is pure Bette.  The ad agency must have been aiming for the Bette Midler fans, not surprisingly.

I point at this because the face on the cover bears no relationship to Bette’s face in the play, and I say that with the greatest admiration.  If you came into the theater knowing nothing about I’LL EAT YOU LAST, you’d never in a million years know it was Bette Midler on the stage.

Her smile has changed from crinkly perky to mocking, her voice has dropped at least an octave and become sardonic, her laugh has become hacking…in short she’s created a persona entirely different – almost – from her own.

I’ve never understood the desire to cast a famous person with an actor who looks like him or her.  Frank Langella didn’t look like Richard Nixon, but he seemed like Richard Nixon, which should be but isn’t always the point.

And Bette Midler seems like Sue Mengers, or at least her look, posture, voice, and all the rest seem like someone who would be saying and doing what Mengers said and did in her life. 

It’s a bravura performance, not perfect, but worth the Tony nomination she’s sure to get, and would get even if her appearing on the Tonys wouldn’t please the network so much.

Mengers came from nowhere to become one of the first female Hollywood agents, and then the most important Hollywood agent, and then her career fell apart (see below).  At the top of her career, she repped many of the biggest stars to be repped, from Barbra Streisand to Gene Hackman to Faye Dunaway to Burt Reynolds. 

Much of the play is made up of anecdotes about these stars, and other Hollywood luminaries, and many of the anecdotes are hilarious.  Many are also unprintable, even by me – email me and I’ll tell you the one about Elton John – but I’ll do the best I can.

One day, in a momentary fit of enthusiasm for exercise, Sue decided to a get a running machine. As she was trying one out in the store, Jean-Claude [Tramont, Mengers’ husband] turned from his wife, who was dressed in a caftan and scarf and puffing on the treadmill, to the salesman and asked, not too quietly, if the store carried “the Isadora Duncan model”….Graydon Carter

Mr. Carter is the show’s lead producer, lending some additional glamour for the cognoscenti.  And a bit of irony, since Bette herself was the nominal lead producer for PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT, and was brought in for the same purpose.

I’LL EAT YOU LAST, A chat with Sue Mengers, is a very, very funny 85 minutes.  It has to be, really, because director Joe Mantello’s staging consists entirely of having Bette move from the very end of the ten-foot couch upon which she lounges, way over to almost halfway down the couch, and back again. 

To hold an audience, even for only 85 minutes, with nearly no movement on the stage is no small feat, but Mantello clearly thought Mengers didn’t need to move whilst chatting, and he was right.

If you can’t say anything nice about someone, come sit by me….

I’LL EAT YOU LAST was written by John Logan, best known for RED.  Though his script sometimes slips into the …and then I did this…. mode, its crackling wit and fast pace more than makes up for it.  Again, it has to, and it does.

The single set – you can’t change the set if she doesn’t leave the couch – is the living room of Mengers’ Beverly Hills house, with the trunks of two palm trees seen through glass, a truly beautiful living room that almost made me long for L.A.  Almost.  It’s the set the Palm Springs living room in OTHER DESERT CITIES (also at the Booth) wanted to be. 

The other two designers – Ann Roth for costumes and Hugh Vanstone for lighting – didn’t have much to do for the play.  The lighting stays steady, and there was only one costume, a beautiful turquoise blue caftan that suggests that Sue has indeed connected with her inner zaftig, as she says at one point while munching on a caramel.

I just don’t get the appeal of children….

Bette is fab when she’s dishing, which is most of the time, but to be really good, a bio-show needs to delve into the subject, which I’LL EAT YOU LAST does several times, and this is where Bette is less than fab.  She tries to cry each time, but is awkward in transitioning from caustic to crying and out again.  I think she tries for too much, and it hurts an otherwise wonderful performance.

One long anecdote is about Sue’s favorite client, Ali McGraw, described in the show as the nicest person possible.  Ali was a star, married to Robert Evans, made a movie with Steve McQueen, fell in love with him, got divorced to marry McQueen, and stopped acting. 

Sue tried desperately to get her to take roles, but she wouldn’t do it.  Instead she was happy being a good wife to McQueen, whom Sue describes with a venom seldom heard out loud.

Which brings us to the reason Sue Mengers’ career died. 

Jean-Claude Tramont was a B-List director.  He wanted to make a movie called All Night Long, but needed stars to get the movie financed. 

Throwing caution – and her clients – to the wind, Sue helped her husband by convincing clients Gene Hackman and Barbra Streisand to star in the movie, though the role played by Streisand was totally unsuited to her.  (Click the link and try to imagine the cartoon girl sliding down the pole as La Streisand.)

The movie bombed, Hackman, Streisand and Sue’s other clients fired her, and she was out of the agent business.

Ali McGraw, anyone?

Rating (5 stars possible):  ****

The bottom line:  A terrific performance, a hilarious script

Who should go?  Anyone who doesn’t mind profanity and dirty anecdotes

Do I recommend it?  You betcha

But You Have To Take Its Unique Journey…!

                      April 11, 2013

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us….John Steinbeck

 

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost….Dante Alighieri

I adore MATILDA.  I want you to love it, too.  Whether you do depends on whether you’ll let the show take you where it wants you to go.

Matthew Marchus’s direction, Dennis Kelly’s book, and Tim Minchin’s music/lyrics, have been combined to creat a unique style for MATILDA, so much so I can’t think of another show that’s similar to it. 

Some have said the show’s in the panto style, pointing at the cross-dressed headmistress, and to the over-the-top silliness.  All true, but what of the deeply emotional scenes, the fantastical story, the moments of traditional musical comedy, the absolutely gorgeous scenes that unexpectedly pop up?

My mummy says I'm a miracle.

My daddy says I'm his special little guy.

I am a princess,

And I am a prince.

Mum says I'm an angel sent down from the sky....

Matilda the girl is a genius at six, reader of “The Divine Comedy”, “Lord of the Rings”, “The Brothers Karamazov”, and several other such books, all in the same week.  She can do complicated math calculations in her head.  She’s a wonderful story teller, she’s eventually revealed to be a psychokinetic seer, she has taught herself to speak—

But all of this is not so much lost on her horrid parents as it is anathema to them.  Reading’s a waste of time, they say, everything worth knowing can be learned from watching telly.  They abuse her verbally and psychologically to an extent I would have had trouble imagining. 

As does her headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, who so hates Matilda she abuses – again verbally, though she’s physically brutal as well to some of her other students– abuses Matilda even more than the horrid parents did.

And here’s the first obstacle some will find to giving themselves over to the show.  Children being abused?  Not for me.  I wonder how quickly I can escape this….  But the sting is taken out of this abuse, both because it’s so far over the top of the top, and because the brilliant Matilda wins every battle with her wits.

Well, nearly every battle, anyway.

Awful things may happen to our girl, but she can give as good as she gets, and – spoiler alert – she’s going to win in the end!

And then she died, and then things got worse….

Matilda imagines a wonderful/terrible story she tells to the librarian, about a pair of acrobats who want more than anything to have a child.  The wife gets pregnant, then falls during a performance, breaking every bone in her body, yet somehow living long enough to give birth to a girl.

Matilda’s fantasy.

Or is it?

And this brings us to the second obstacle.  How does one stay with a story that jumps around so much at the start, that seems so bleak yet promises so much, that’s sometimes difficult to understand through the accents?

Hang on, Sloopy, just go with it.  You won’t be having these problems by the second act.

I saw MATILDA twice in London, at the Cambridge Theatre, and was surprised that it fits the Shubert even better.  The quirky set, designed along with the costumes by Rob Howell, covers the ceiling and walls with children’s blocks, some with letters that spell words like “Matilda” and “Joy” and “dynamite”, and with tall stacks of title-less books.

Lighting designer Hugh Vanstone does impeccable work, and at one point uses green laser beams that create an incredible cross-hatched ceiling for us and the kids.  Illusions are by Paul Kieve, who earlier provided the only memorable moments in GHOST, both in the West End and last season on Broadway.

MATILDA started as a story by Roald Dahl, who’s hugely popular in the U.K. (besides “Matilda”, he wrote “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, “The BFG”, and many more).  Dahl is perhaps less beloved here.  His stories tend to have dark centers – the Brits like dark, as we like cheery – but kids love to read them.

Yet this MATILDA is really a show for adults.  I’d guess less than 10% of the audience were kids at the performance I attended.  Some parents might find the show strong for, say, an 8-year-old.

Four girls rotate the part of Matilda, and – just as with the three boys in BILLY ELLIOT – the show will change a bit depending on which girl you draw.  Oona Laurence, a native New Yorker, played Matilda Tuesday night.  She had all the intelligence and strength called for, but was too uniformly stern for my taste.

As he was in London, Bertie Carvel is marvelous as Miss Trunchbull, meaner than someone out of Dickens.  He won an Olivier Award, as did MATILDA itself.  Lauren Ward charms as Miss Honey, the only sane person we see at the school, while Gabriel Ebert and Lesli Margherita are true stinkers as Matilda’s over-the-top parents.

In one special second-act scene, the children and some of the adults ride swings in the softly lit afternoon, and sing

When I grow up,

I will be brave enough

To fight the creatures

You have to fight beneath the bed

To be grown up…..

Go see MATILDA and just let it all happen.

You won’t be sorry.

Rating (5 stars possible):  *****

The bottom line:  One of the top three musicals I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing

Who should go?  Anyone who can open his heart and mind to the show

Do I recommend it?  By now you can answer this one by yourself.

Perhaps More Odd Than Kinky, But You’ll Like It

 April 4, 2013

(From a real estate negotiation) I’m going to make you happy! I’m not going to make you delirious, but you’ll be happy….Harry Jaffe, RIP

Harpo Marx looks like a musical comedy….Walter Kerr

I find it hard to imagine anyone not liking KINKY BOOTS.  Loving KINKY BOOTS, though, will depend on your ability to suspend disbelief and ignore logic.

KB is a throwback to what we theater mavens like to call the Golden Age of musical comedy, which many considered to have come to a halt in 1964.  That musicals then were referred to as comedies – and no longer are – tells a lot about the evolution of musicals.  Few of the musicals in the Golden Age bothered about anything but what the audiences were sure to enjoy.

Fun, sparkling, upbeat?  Yeah.

A statue coming to life, a gutter-snipe becoming a lady, a would-do-anything-to-marry-the tout getting off at Saratoga for the fourteenth time?  Well, why not?

Believable?  Oh, come on.

Angst, bi-polarism, anything else that isn’t happy?  Naw.

Still, a story that combines a shoe factory – the second song, “The Most Beautiful Thing” is about the wonder of shoes – with cross-dressers in the North of England is certainly unexpected, and the resulting oddness makes the show what the Brits call a slow-boiler, meaning it takes awhile to get you sucked in.

Here’s the story, at least the start of it: Charlie (Stark Sands) comes from a long line of shoemakers.  Not cobblers, owner-operators of a top shoe factory in Northhamption that specializes in men’s shoes of a plain design, brown ones.  

Dad wants Charlie to come into the family business; Charlie has no interest.  Instead he goes with his fiancée to London, where they intend to begin careers in real estate.  But Dad immediately dies, and Charlie immediately throws over the fiancée and the real estate idea to return to the factory, which is broke and itself dying. 

Along the way, he meets Lola (Billy Porter), a cross-dressing entertainer in a club that also features a chorus line of men who dress like women, sexy ones.  Lola was once Simon, the son a prize fighter, and has had a dozen amateur fights of his own! (Told you)

Charlie gets the idea of converting the factory to manufacture thigh-high boots that look like they’re for women, but are really for cross-dressing men, since women’s boots don’t have a heel strong enough to support a man’s weight – never mind the chorus line are all men wearing boots with stiletto heels as they perform their vigorous dances – and wants Lola to design the line, which will be called “Lola’s Kinky Boots”.

The show isn’t kinky.  Cross-dressers are so much a part of today’s theatrical pattern they don’t even qualify as racy, and KB is squeaky clean from start to finish.  I wondered before seeing it if it would have the “Priscilla problem” of turning off conservative men, but I don’t think it will.  PRISCILLA was a lot more verbally graphic, for one thing, and was greatly about transvestites, while KB uses the cross-dressers to make a point about accepting people as they are, which is what KINKY BOOTS is about.

Though the KB story isn’t Hamlet, it’s fun throughout, and colorful: Costume designer Gregg Barnes will be a big factor in the Tony race.  The set by David Rockwell reminded me a little of the ONCE set, in that it’s used most often as the show factory, but other elements are trucked in to make it serve as a club, bar, and various other locations.

Jerry Mitchell is the director/choreographer, and has done his best choreographic work to date in KINKY BOOTS. 

No one will be surprised that Harvey Fierstein’s book sparkles; he even throws in an Oscar Wilde line: Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.

All the actors are good – their carefully crafted English accents slip away as the performance goes on, but don’t they always? – especially the leads and Annaleigh Ashford, a Cindi Lauper look- and (somewhat) sound-alike who sings the most memorable song in the show, “The History of Wrong Guys”.

Daniel Stewart Sherman makes the most of his role as the burly Brit working stiff, Don.  He even does the cell phone announcement from the stage in a highly innovative way.

I found Cindi Lauper’s music tame most of the time, though the up-tempo numbers worked well with the wild dancing.  Her constant use of rock, no surprise, fought with the more personal songs, like Charlie’s “The Soul of a Man” near the end of the show.  The music is solid rather than brilliant.

Summing up, KINKY BOOTS is the old-fashioned sort of show many have said was needed on Broadway again, but with a strong contemporary twist.  It’s a likeable, upbeat, feel good show, idealistic, sometimes overly sentimental, but impossible not to have fun watching.

And it has a great title and logo – possibly the best since PHANTOM’s mask – that will attract a large audience.

I liked it, wished I’d loved it, but am glad KINKY BOOTS opened in this nearly barren theatrical season.

Rating (5 stars possible):  ***½

The bottom line:  A happy show you’ll like, or possibly love 

Who should go?  Anyone 

Do I recommend it?  Yes

Gotta, Gotta, Gotta Win That Big Red Truck…!

       March 21, 2013

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves…?  Friedrich Nietzsche

Heroism is endurance for one moment more….George Kennan

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, 

but that's how the smart money bets….Damon Runyon

HANDS ON A HARD BODY kept reminding me of the little engine that could: The show tries so hard, fights back from so many misses, several times almost gets to the top of the hill, only to slide backwards….

As endearing as it occasionally is, HARD BODY is the little show that ultimately couldn’t.

Reading the show’s premise had to make veteran Broadway-ers wince: There’s an annual contest, see, the prize a brand new shiny red truck, and the winner will be he or she who can longest keep a hand on the truck’s hard body. 

Sort of marathon dancing for the “Car and Driver” set.

Somebody had to be kidding, but no, that’s the true premise.  Yeah, and how do you keep the show from being static, boring?  In the case of HARD BODY, try as the creators might to avoid static and boring, the hill was simply too high.

The idea brought to mind 1997’s STEEL PIER, which was in fact about marathon dancing, but had the advantage of being able to use the entire stage in various ways, since the dancers were required only to keep their hands on their partners.  In that one, they even worked in a dream sequence featuring chorines dancing on the wings of a bi-plane.

I would have killed for a bi-plane in HARD BODY.  The set is practically non-existent, the stage dominated by the very real truck at its center.  Ten contestants of various ages, sexes, races, and body shapes stand around the truck, each with one hand touching it.  If they lose contact with the truck, even for an instant, they’re out.

Last one standing gets the truck.

Not surprisingly, each of them has a story to tell, usually a sad story, usually in a song.  One after another they join in the serial soul-baring.  When each contestant finishes his song, on we go to the next, until the show starts to feel like a ten-minute play contest.  Just when one of the characters creates a spark of interest, which occasionally happens, he or she gets forgotten as we move on to the next.

The problem with this – I’d say the obvious problem, but evidently it wasn’t obvious to the show’s creators or producers – the problem is that while a few of the songs might be fleetingly touching, you can’t really care about a character from one song.  In all, the show has ten contestants, two watching spouses, and two sponsors from the car dealership, every one of them flat broke and needing to win the truck, or sell a bunch of trucks, or do something quick, and you don’t care a damn about a single one of them.

How much better HARD BODY might have been if one of the contestants had been chosen for a main story that would have continued for the course of the show, sustaining interest and thickening the thin, thin plot.

The songs, themselves, are generic of music (Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green) and lyrics (Green) – But if you live in Texas and don’t have a truck, buddy you’re stuck! – with an occasional winner thrown in to see if the audience is paying attention, which a good deal of the time it probably isn’t.

God forgives us, but forgiving Him can take a very long time….

The book by Doug Wright was generic, too, most of the time.  (The above quote was the best line in the play.)   I imagine coming up with all those sad story-songs, and making them interesting, would have tested Shakespeare.

Let’s see now:

·      Benny (Hunter Foster) won last year’s (blue) truck and so is the expert on hard-body touching.  His sadness’s, which unfortunately never translate into the slightest show of vulnerability, include his wife’s driving off forever in the blue truck, which he now needs to replace;

·      JD (Keith Carradine) is an old fellow whose body is rapidly breaking down, and whose wife, Virginia (Mary Gordon Murray) tries in vain to get him to pay it some attention before it completely falls apart while he keeps a hand on the truck;

·      Jesus (Jon Rua), who wants the truck so he can sell it and go to Veterinary School;

·      Chris (David Larsen), just back from Iraq, who needs to succeed at something so his wife and kids will respect him;

·      Heather (Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone), a blonde with a good if not entirely hard body, who is tired of going everywhere on her bicycle;

And that many more again.  I wish I could remember their stories, but they kind of blended together, which might indicate I sometimes lost focus.

To me, the top actor in the show is Keala Settle (Norma, a woman of great spirituality who gets the show’s best song going, Joy of the Lord, that rocks the theater).  As is said of her in the show, Keala is a full-bodied woman, which undoubtedly limits her casting possibilities, but she’s terrific here, as she was as the bar owner, Shirley, in PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT.

Directing is good, cast is good, costumes/sound/lighting are good, premise makes it all impossible.

The contest lasts into the fifth day, which seemed like the time I’d spent watching it.  Actually, HARD BODY runs 2 hours and 20 minutes, but feels much, much longer.  At the end of that time, I didn’t feel I really knew any of the characters, and I won’t be sorry never to see them again.

Rating (5 stars possible):  **

The bottom line:  Drink coffee before you go, if you go

Who should go?  Hard to say

Do I recommend it?  No