"It's weird to me knowing that the NT production includes that moment but still apparently has Sally playing the breakdown in Losing My Mind literally, or whatever it specifically is that people have been chatting about/objecting to..."
Only sort of. Staunton doesn't sob and hyperventilate through it the way Peters does on the 2011 cast album. She *also* doesn't just stand there and sing it, the way Dorothy Collins and Julia McKenzie (more or less) did. I wouldn't even quite call it "playing the breakdown", but she isn't simply *performing the song* either.
I found much of the NT revival thrilling when I saw it in (very) late previews (the day before it opened), and I'm seeing it twice more before it closes, but that particular moment, for me, is the least successful thing in it. The trouble is, while she *is* (as far as I'm concerned) giving a wonderful acting performance, casting Staunton as Sally involves a compromise: she has more voice than you might expect, but she's no Collins or McKenzie or Cook. If your Sally can't raise goosebumps in "Losing My Mind" simply by standing still and singing the hell out of it, you've got to find some other way to stage the song. I don't think the result is a complete disaster, but it's (very) far from ideal - and when so much elsewhere in the production is *so* good, that's a shame. |
