| Choir Boy questions (spoilers) | |
| Last Edit: mikem 01:06 pm EST 02/24/19 | |
| Posted by: mikem 01:04 pm EST 02/24/19 | |
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| I saw Choir Boy last night, the second-to-last performance by Jeremy Pope before he leaves to play one of the Temptations in Ain't Too Proud. He has been doing double duty for over a month, rehearsing Ain't Too Proud during the day and still performing in Choir Boy. He (and we) are fortunate that the lead producers for Ain't Too Proud are involved in Choir Boy as well. Apparently, he hasn't missed a performance in about 6 weeks, which means that they're excusing him so he can perform in the Choir Boy matinees. Pope is very charismatic and a star in the making. I'm excited to see what he does in Ain't Too Proud. Of the nine actors playing the choirboys, six are making their Broadway debut. I was surprised on reading the Playbill that this is Austin Pendleton's first Broadway show since The Diary of Anne Frank with Natalie Portman in 1998. He's appeared in 9 Off-Broadway shows since then. I enjoyed the show, but I found some of the plot confusing. In particular, I found the issue of Bobby's mother's death to be unclear. Pharus has Barack and Michelle Obama's official portraits on his bedroom wall, which were unveiled in Feb 2018. That would mean that the show takes place during the 2018 - 2019 school year. That would mean that the seniors were probably born around 2001, and Bobby (who I think is a junior, because he leads the choir at graduation) around 2002. Bobby's mother's song from her childhood is Boys to Men by New Edition, which Pharus correctly states came out in 1988, 14 years before Bobby was born. But then Pharus says that would make Bobby's mother 16 or 17 when she had him, which doesn't make sense by the years. Childhood could extend up to the teen years. There's no reason why Bobby's mother couldn't have been 13 in 1988 and 27 in 2002, when Bobby was born. Even if she had been 8 in 1988, she would have been 22 when Bobby was born. (The math would have made a little more sense in 2012, when the show premiered, but even then, it's not a slam dunk. It seems a bit sloppy not to have updated that portion.) The years thing is a quibble, but I was also confused when Pharus then says that he didn't know that Bobby's mother had died. They sang Motherless Child together in the locker room, and apparently, that was not a fantasy sequence because someone makes a comment to Pharus about how they did that "for Bobby" when Pharus starts showing off during the song. So why does Pharus genuinely not seem to know that Bobby's mother had died? When he says that, no one calls him on it so I think we are supposed to believe that he is telling the truth that he did not know. Besides, if her death happened recently, wouldn't EVERYONE in a small boarding school like that know about it? Or did I misinterpret that section, and Pharus knew about Bobby's mother all along? I was also confused why Pharus genuinely seemed to think that he and the other students could vote Bobby out of the choir, which is a school-sponsored extracurricular activity, without any faculty input. The editor can't just vote the kids he or she doesn't like off the yearbook committee or any other school-sponsored activity. I don't think that would go over well in any school, let alone one with a headmaster like the one Chuck Cooper is portraying, especially when the kid in question is the headmaster's nephew. I also found Pharus to be somewhat inconsistent in what he wants, but that can be chalked up to being a teenager who is still trying to figure out those answers for himself. On an unrelated note, I think McCraney is very talented, but I wish he hadn't made Bobby, the villain of the piece, the spoiled nephew of the boss who thinks he can do whatever he wants. It was a cliche when Bud Frump behaved that way, and that was over 50 years ago. |
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