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| re: Jagged Little Pill - Amazing!! - Dissenting Opinion with Spoiler | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 09:13 pm EDT 06/03/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Jagged Little Pill - Amazing!! - Dissenting Opinion with Spoiler - BostonTheatre 08:39 pm EDT 06/03/18 | |
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| Based on the audience reaction the day I saw it, the show doesn't need to be saved. It doesn't work for you, but it clearly was working for a lot of people, and will almost certainly continue to do so. I hear your critique of how full the show is, and I went it afraid that it would be overstuffed, but I felt that Diablo Cody did a masterful job of having all of those big issues running through one well-drawn family and their community. I would say the show has a consistent thread, which is what does it take for us to understand each other's humanity and build community? That's why the ending is so powerful: we watch a family begin in a place of superficial perfection that masks a deep dishonesty with themselves and each other, and we see the difficult steps they must take to drop those masks and live as their honest selves, which is a form of healing. All of the plot threads stem from this basic conflict that they are living through, and it's one of the aspects of the book that show how brilliant Diablo Cody is. One of the things that I love about the show is that it winds up being a far more traditional and conservative story than the progressive aggression of the first 10 minutes would suggest. This is a show that ultimately affirms the family and affirms happy endings (but not easy endings), which is what the Great American Musicals tend to do. Why do you want the mother to die? How would that actually help the story that Cody, Paulus, and Morisette are telling? |
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| re: Jagged Little Pill - Amazing!! - Dissenting Opinion with Spoiler | |
| Posted by: BostonTheatre 09:31 pm EDT 06/03/18 | |
| In reply to: re: Jagged Little Pill - Amazing!! - Dissenting Opinion with Spoiler - Singapore/Fling 09:13 pm EDT 06/03/18 | |
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| I generally agree with your opinions on the shows that you like, ie, Passing Strange, Hedwig, The Light in the Piazza (3 of my favorites), but I disagree with you on this one. You're right, I should have clarified that it probably doesn't need to be "saved" to make money. I mean, just look at the shows mentioned above, how many of them have been "successful"? Since when does populist approval equal artistic success? I hadn't read reviews prior to going in and it's not surprising that the NY Times agrees with me. It felt like Paulus was trying to remake her version of Hair, but how about a little subtlety in addressing rape and the #metoo movement? Everything about it was shoved in our faces. I found the ending predictable, not powerful at all. At least N2N had sort of the right idea with Diana walking out on at the end. The mother dying would show that people actually die from opioid use, something that is happening every day in America, and many people don't know until it's too late. |
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