| 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 |
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| 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. | |
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| 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 |
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| 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!" ;) | |
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| 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 |
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| 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. | |
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| 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 |
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| nm | |
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| 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 |
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| 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. | |
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| 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 |
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| 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. | |
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| 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 |
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| 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. | |
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