| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | LegitOnce 01:15 am EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - AlanScott 08:14 pm EDT 09/10/14 |
|
| |
| I might like the song a little better if it occurred earlier in the show, though don't ask me where that possibly might be. And I think you are on the right track with the age complaint; I would go farther and say that there's no particular indication that Petra is old enough to have the "life experience" necessary. I could almost see Charlotte singing this song instead -- though obviously it would take some kind of major setting up. Has there ever been a production of ALNM that used "Silly People" instead of/in addition to "The Miller's Son?" Honestly I think it's superior both as a stand-alone song and in context. I'll go out on a limb and say the song even could be given to Petra... | |
| reply to this message | | |
| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 07:45 am EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - LegitOnce 01:15 am EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| One of my typically long answers is below. One of the things that I like about "The Miller's Son" is that it reveals unexpected depths in Petra, and yet the thoughts don't sound altogether beyond what someone her age and with her life experience might feel and perceive. Having said that, the darker side of the song does elude many actresses. It seems to me that a working-class girl in that time would have seen what happens to other women of her class. Perhaps the problem that actresses playing the role have really getting the song has less to do with age than with class and modern life generally. A couple of productions have restored "Silly People" with permission (and perhaps some others have restored it without permission). I find it a fairly lackluster song, but lots of people, like you, like it a lot. I have a theory that what happened with it was that when the show opened out of town it worked pretty well, but mostly because the audience was desperate for a full song by that point. "It Would Have Been Wonderful" was added during the Boston run. As soon as that song went in, "SIlly People" stopped working. "It Would Have Been Wonderful" always strikes me as a kind of unnecessary song. Perfectly well written, even fun and entertaining, but not a song that adds anything interesting to our knowledge of either character. My big problem with the show is my feeling that so many of the characters are undermusicalized. I do think that both Fredrik and Carl-Magnus need something in Act Two. Just not necessarily that. I feel that so many good possible moments for musicalizing were missed for other characters, perhaps because Sondheim was so far behind schedule. A bit more about "The Miller's Son": To me, it acts as the show's equivalent of Frid's great speeches in Smiles of a Summer Night that sum up everything and cause Petra to say to him, "Just think, you're a poet, too." I can understand why they may have felt it was more important for Petra to get an equivalent of Frid's poetic little speeches about humanity and the smiles of the summer night in the movie. They are so much more richly expressed than what Madame Armfeldt is given to say about the smiles of the summer night in the musical. I do actually like giving those thoughts to her, and changing for whom the third smile smiles. I like how the show is about the life cycle in ways that the movie is not. But I feel that Frid is made bland and colorless in the musical. And that would be true even if his song were to be restored. I think it might have been more effective if his song about the smiles had been closer to what Frid in the film says about them. The song could have been more boisterous and uptempo, just as Frid in the movie is a boisterous and fun character. Perhaps it it had been, his song would still be in the show. | |
| reply to this message | | |
| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | larry13 11:41 am EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - AlanScott 07:45 am EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| God knows it's been years since I saw Bergman's film but my memory of it is that it is a truly adult sophisticated comedy, what the musical may have aimed for but, in my opinion, never truly achieves beyond moments. Yes, in comparison to other B'way. fare--especially of recent vintage--ALNM appears the height of sophistication. Much of the film's distinction is, obviously, due to Bergman's superior screenplay(and direction!); much to the incomparable cast he assembled. Maybe if I ever saw a singing actress on the order of Harriet Andersson play Petra I might like "The Miller's Son" more than I ever have. I fully agree with Legit Once--not something I often do!--that the song, as sung by this character(as written by Wheeler)and, especially, as the 11:00 number, is pretentious and out of place. Anyway, thank you both for a fascinating discussion. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 03:01 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - larry13 11:41 am EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| I think Wheeler did some very smart things, although some of them may not have been his idea and they were certainly, ultimately, group decisions. For example, making Desiree's child a 13-year-old girl rather than a 3-year-old boy, making Desiree older than in the film, and making the whole thing more about the life cycle, but I agree that the actual writing too often strives for an elegance that it does not achieve. Unfortunately no one seems to have thought about what making Desiree and Fredrik's child 13 years old does in terms of dating Desiree and Fredrik's affair. Fortunately, audiences don't seem to think about it either. The odd thing is that Wheeler could be a very elegant writer. His writing for the low comedy of Candide is sometimes very elegantly phrased. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| the lack of elegance... | |
| Posted by: | Chazwaza 08:05 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - AlanScott 03:01 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| I'm not quite sure what you (and some others) are referring to about the elegance that the show wants to have but never quite does. What about it is inelegant? Where does it seem like it might be elegant or wants us to think it is, but it really isn't? And what is an example of something like this that DOES achieve elegance? Because to my ears, the show does achieve elegance very much so. It's also a sex farce to a degree so there's only so much it can do in that sense... but I'm not sure I can think of a more elegant musical actually. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: the lack of elegance... | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 03:53 pm EDT 09/12/14 |
| In reply to: | the lack of elegance... - Chazwaza 08:05 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| I started writing an answer for you last night, and perhaps I'll finish it and post it later, but there's just so much. I would agree with the two examples cited by LegitOnce. Since one of those is in the first scene, and I was starting with the first scene, it was in the post I started (but didn't finish) writing last night. For something similar that is much better written, you can look to the play that they originally wanted to adapt for their waltz musical set at a country house, Ring Round the Moon, adapted and translated by Christopher Fry from Anouilh's Invitation to the Chateau. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: the lack of elegance... | |
| Posted by: | LegitOnce 01:27 am EDT 09/12/14 |
| In reply to: | the lack of elegance... - Chazwaza 08:05 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| Desiree: "A dragoon. A very handsome, very married dragoon with, I'm afraid, the vanity of a peacock, and the brain of a pea, but the physical proportions…" Fredrik: "Don’t specify the vegetable, please." That is, quite simply, a dick joke. Not a clever dick joke or an original dick joke, just a plain ordinary bad 1960s drag show dick joke. Don't get me wrong, I love dick jokes, and I think you could even work a dick joke into A Little Night Music in an elegant and witty manner. This, though, isn't that dick joke. "Don't squeeze your bosoms against the chair, dear! It'll stunt their growth, and then where would you be?" isn't much better. It's a very ordinary sniggering bazoom joke, and ungrammatical besides. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 03:31 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - AlanScott 03:01 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| Could you elaborate on the issue you see with the child being 13 years old, rather than 3? | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 03:45 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - JereNYC 03:31 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| It suggests that the affair Fredrik and Desiree had was when his wife was still alive. Though we are never told when Fredrik's wife died, I get the feeling from other things in the script that it was somewhat more recently than 14 years ago. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 03:58 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - AlanScott 03:45 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| Oh, I see...I guess I've never seen that as an issue, probably because none of these characters are being held up as models of virtue and decorum. Quite the opposite, actually. And your theory would certainly explain why Desiree and Fredrik couldn't work it out the first time around when they seem so obviously suited for one another. On a related note, I've wondered if Henrik's melencholy and strive for perfection is a result of growing up without a mother and with a father who could offer little in the way of emotional support due to his own issues. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 04:16 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - JereNYC 03:58 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| Interesting. While it's true that none of these characters are held up as models of virtue (and Desiree is having an affair with another married man), I kind of prefer to think of Fredrik as a man who would not cheat on his wife, although your point about his marriage having been why they would not have been able to get together is a good one. But when I think of Anne talking about how lonely and sad he was the summer after his wife died (which comes pretty directly from Bergman), I prefer to think of him as having been truly choked up over his wife's death. Of course, he could have had an affair with Desiree and still have been devastated by his wife's death. Some years back, D'Jamin Bartlett was interviewed in the Sondheim Review. One of the things she talked about was that she had never fully appreciated Glynis Johns's performance till she got to play Desiree herself some years later. She specifically said that Desiree could easily be viewed by the audience as a rather unpleasant woman — one who is having an affair with another woman's husband and simultaneously plotting to steal another woman's husband. Johns made the audience like her and root for her despite that. So, yeah, as you say, Desiree (much as audiences may tend to like her) is hardly a model of virtue. Fredrik does have the line to Henrik about Anne being too young for him to reasonably expect her to take his mother's place. Of course, if "Two Fairy Tales" hadn't been cut, we'd have the image of his mother having repeatedly read him this rather sad and gloomy story. Well, the lyric doesn't actually say that she read it to him repeatedly, but one does get the image of Henrik saying to her, "Read it again! Read it again!" ;) | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: To try to answer you a bit more fully | |
| Posted by: | JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 04:58 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - AlanScott 04:16 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| Perhaps Desiree has a type and that type is men who are unavailable. And that would probably work out fine for a woman who is dedicated almost solely to her career. One of my favorite aspects of this story is watching two characters, who are very entrenched in their well-established lives and patterns, let go of who they thought they were and what they thought they wanted. Desiree comes to this rather quickly, but Fredrik hangs onto his outdated sense of himself almost until the very end. These are deeply unhappy people, but, because their unhappiness is a result of making choices and choosing what they thought they wanted, they don't even realize how unhappy they are until the events of the story push them together again. So much of the Sondheim canon is about making choices and the consequence of those choices once they're made. This show is just one more example. I'm glad that Fredrik and Desiree get the second chance at happiness that many Sondheim characters do not. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| Very eloquent (nm) | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 05:19 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - JereNYC 04:58 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| nm | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| I have to correct myself | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 04:42 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - AlanScott 04:16 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| While some of the scene between Fredrik and Anne at home, after they've returned from the play, is very similar in the Bergman screenplay and the musical, there is not the suggestion that he told her fairy tales during one particular summer. Of course, the musical does not explicitly state that the summer was the summer after his wife died, but I've always understood it to mean that. ("You were so lonely and sad that summer. I felt terribly sorry for you, so I said: Poor thing, I'll marry him.") Perhaps this was added to try to make it clear that Fredrik's wife did die long ago. But since Fredrika's age is given as 13, and Anne is 18, that would mean that she was four or five when she was thinking, "Poor thing. I'll marry him." Which seems to make it an awfully long time for her to have thought about it before it happened. There is some darker Bergman stuff in the Fredrik-Anne scene that did not make it into the musical. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: I have to correct myself | |
| Posted by: | MarkBearSF 02:01 am EDT 09/12/14 |
| In reply to: | I have to correct myself - AlanScott 04:42 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| I had always thought that his wife died recently and married Anne on the rebound. Also that the tryst with Desiree was before his first marriage. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| re: I have to correct myself | |
| Posted by: | AlanScott 02:29 am EDT 09/12/14 |
| In reply to: | re: I have to correct myself - MarkBearSF 02:01 am EDT 09/12/14 |
|
| |
| His affair with Desiree can't have before his first marriage. Fredrika is 13. Henrik is 19. And there are other things in the script that argue against that scenario. I do agree that the script seems to imply that his wife died fairly recently. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| Two things about Petra/Miller's Son | |
| Posted by: | counterweight 02:45 pm EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - larry13 11:41 am EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| I remember reading the original actress playing Petra was let go in Boston because she couldn't handle the vocals for Miller's Son, but that many of the cast thought the original was a better actor. Also, I remember reading on this board that the song was originally titled "Meanwhile." Learning that, it clicked for me that this song balances the Now/Soon/Later sequence. That help mitigate some of my concerns that others here have mentioned. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
| Just want to add | |
| Posted by: | larry13 11:50 am EDT 09/11/14 |
| In reply to: | re: To try to answer you a bit more fully - larry13 11:41 am EDT 09/11/14 |
|
| |
| Re AlanScott's wish that there were more songs for the major characters: I fully agree. WHY are there so many songs for the anonymous Greek(or Swedish)chorus(or ensemble)members? They're beautiful songs but at the expense of not having the characters in the story sing?? I understand about Glynis Johns' vocal limits but the other original cast members were fine singers. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
All That Chat is intended for the discussion of
theatre news and opinion
subject to the terms and conditions of the Terms of Service. (Please take all off-topic discussion to private email.)
Please direct technical questions/comments to webmaster@talkinbroadway.com and policy questions to TBAdmin@talkinbroadway.com.
[ Home | On the Rialto | The Siegel Column | Cabaret | Tony Awards | Book Reviews | Great White Wayback Machine ]
[ Broadway Reviews | Barbara and Scott: The Two of Clubs | Sound Advice | Restaurant Revue | Off Broadway | Funding Talkin' Broadway ]
[ Broadway 101 | Spotlight On | Talkin' Broadway | On the Boards | Regional | Talk to Us! | Search Talkin' Broadway ]
Terms of Service
[ © 1997 - 2014 www.TalkinBroadway.com, Inc. ]
Time to render: 0.169791 seconds.