All That Chat - A disagreement on the director's role.

HOME ALL THAT CHAT ATC WEST COAST SHOPPIN' RUSH BOARD FAQS

LOGIN REGISTER SEARCH FLAT MODE

not logged in

A disagreement on the director's role.

Posted by:	Delvino 03:56 pm EDT 05/03/15
In reply to:	The Direction of FINDING NEVERLAND - DOTD 11:24 am EDT 05/03/15

Yes, another director might've found more to excavate in the source material, might've tried to encourage the writing team to explore other aspects of the story. But the trajectory and even the tone are fundamentally the work of the first tier creators. They wrote the show they wished to write. Those are the scenes they conceived. Those are the songs they shaped and heard to amplify the emotions in this situation. And the real problem with this show precedes the arrival and imput of Paulus: does Barrie's creation of this beloved story really "sing"? Does he have an active enough role to drive an entire evening? Too much of NEVERLAND requires our knowledge of PAN to make the action seem like ... well, dramatic action. Barrie's inherent passivity means: the musical has been built on at best a challenging premise. Nothing in the original film suggests a powerful story that begs for a collection of songs to tell it well. Peter Pan may be an active character, Barrie is not. Befriending a woman and her children is nice, it's humane. But it has been presented as heroic, and the show tries to make a dubious act of heroism something we can root for, and for 2 1/2 hours. We enjoy watching a larger than life fictional character named Peter Pan. But he is here a puppet, and we are asked to invest in the puppeteer. That remains the core and to my thinking unfixable problem with the show, and there's nothing that Paulus could do to change that.

reply \|

Previous:	The Direction of FINDING NEVERLAND - DOTD 11:24 am EDT 05/03/15
Next:	re: A disagreement on the director's role. - sf 07:57 pm EDT 05/03/15

Thread:	re: A disagreement on the director's role. - sf 07:57 pm EDT 05/03/15 (2) re: A disagreement on the director's role. - Delvino 08:06 pm EDT 05/03/15 (1) re: A disagreement on the director's role. - sf 08:32 pm EDT 05/03/15 The Cervantes/Quixote model. - Delvino 04:15 pm EDT 05/03/15

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.)