A real star shines in a walk on the moon
Katie Brayben was on stage, playing a woman who said she felt like she had disappeared. the emotion clearly resonated because from my seat in the stalls at the american Conservatory theatre (ACT) in San Francisco, i could discern murmurs of recognition from those around me.
Brayben, who won an Olivier award for her portrait of Carole King in Beautiful, is playing Pearl, a housewife from Flatbush, new york, in a gem of a musical based on the 1999 film a Walk On the Moon.
Pearl (played by Diane Lane in the film) is cornered in a Jewish resort up in the Catskill mountains with her two children and her mother-in-law.
Pregnant at 16, married at 17 to Marty, a TV repairman with scientific leanings, she feels trapped as the world spins forward to 1969, with man about to make an historic lunar landing and Woodstock about to kick off not far from where she’s spending her stifling summer.
Husbands remain in the city to work and visit at weekends. the only men seen during weekdays are salesmen, like the knish man, the dress man, or the blouse man.
Pearl ends up schtupping the dashing blouse man.
‘it’s messy and complicated and not so easy for some people to deal with,’ Brayben told me backstage in San Francisco.
She said Pearl had seen ‘all these different people behaving in a completely different way from how she was told to behave. She sees hippies and “free” people and it’s a whirlwind for her’.
She thinks many members of the audience may question Pearl’s actions. ‘She’s a woman of her time, and the reason she does what she does is it’s just her wanting to walk on the moon, needing to experience something else.’
She added: ‘i feel we live in such a blackand-white world. it’s really nice to be doing a piece that’s about a grey area.’
Brayben gives a phenomenal performance as Pearl. Of course, she’s a commanding singer, and there were a good three or four numbers that she soared with.
But as an actress, too, she certainly doesn’t disappear (even though her character may feel that way). She’s front and centre in the show, which has a book and some lyrics by Pamela Gray (who wrote the screenplay for the film) and music and lyrics by transplanted Glaswegian Paul Scott Goodman, who has resided in new york for years.
Jonah Platt gives a beautifully nuanced performance as the betrayed husband (he has a wonderfully magnanimous moment in act 2).
Zak resnick is good as the blouse man. and Brigid O’Brien is a find as the daughter who dishes the Sixties onto her mother’s lap.
a Walk On the Moon is playing a short season at the ACT, but producers Stephen and ruth Hendel hope to develop it further with the creative team — which includes choreographer Josh Prince, who worked with Brayben in London. the desire is to take it to Broadway, and beyond.
it’s a big leap from screen to stage. But the show doesn’t feel like a period piece — which is both good, and a little sad, in terms of how far women have, or haven’t, come.
AS SHERYL Kaller, the show’s director, observed: ‘i think we still haven’t been told, as women, that we can be mothers and housewives and feel vital, too. ‘i think we have to celebrate the women who stay at home, and the women who go out to work, and the women who choose to have children.
‘Someone tells Pearl that she has no beliefs “because you’re just a housewife”. and we still judge women like that. Whereas the men who choose to stay at home and raise their children are celebrated.’