| To your point about not being saccharine. | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 01:19 pm EDT 07/09/17 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 01:17 pm EDT 07/09/17 | |
| In reply to: re: What surprises me is the number of posts for bandstand - lowwriter 11:06 am EDT 07/09/17 | |
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| The show consciously, and with great calculation (admitted by all authors) works with the MGM (often post-war) musical construct. Let's put on a show. Boy meets widow. Vets are to be thanked as heroes. And then turns each trope inside out. Some more than others, but everything re-visited with a new depth, even if shorthanded. By working with the known conventions, even cliches, they give us access. Re-invention. It's subversive, and to my thinking, much harder to do -- all emotion that spills forth in "Bandstand" is earnest, not cynical or arch. What fascinates me are the critics who think they are schooling Andy Blankenbuehler -- at this late date -- on the show's use of these conceits and plot and character archetypes. As if he (and, say, designer Korins) -- people who spent years on a little show called "Hamilton" -- went into this project unaware that they are working on a show that strategically mirrors the MGM or old school musical romance. After seeing the matinee yesterday I revisited many of the reviews, that had no awareness of the show's stylistic ambitions, beyond adding PTSD. Again, that the creative team daringly asks us to feel something from the very first image strikes me as the real risk-taking here. To create a period show that wants us to get deeper inside the familiar. And finally, it's that insistence that heart will drive this show, a beating but broken one, is what deeply moves so many of us. |
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| Next: | re: To your point about not being saccharine. - AlanScott 03:30 pm EDT 07/09/17 |
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