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| re: Could Sweet Charity be done as a gay version? | |
| Last Edit: lordofspeech 07:28 pm EST 02/25/19 | |
| Posted by: lordofspeech 07:27 pm EST 02/25/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Could Sweet Charity be done as a gay version? - JereNYC 04:08 pm EST 02/25/19 | |
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| I saw an excellent shortened version at the Yale Cabaret in 1989 or so. The conceit was that Oscar, squaresville as he is in the original, wasn’t on to the fact that Sweet Charity and her chums were drag queens. Charity had to confess to being a man. It must’ve been seriously shortened, but the stakes were very high, and it worked. Charity was diminutive and oh-so-sweet (believably), and Malcolm Gets was thrilling in the Helen Gallagher role. (Chita played it in the movie). | |
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| re: Could Sweet Charity be done as a gay version? | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 09:38 am EST 02/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Could Sweet Charity be done as a gay version? - lordofspeech 07:27 pm EST 02/25/19 | |
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| So, in this version, was Charity aware that Oscar didn't know that she was a drag queen? If so, that really changes the character in the sense that she's now lying to him throughout. If she was not, that's an interesting thing to try to play and I wonder how such a thing would never have come up in conversation between them...is their relationship just THAT superficial? And it also begs the question about whether Charity and Oscar are having sex or not. I've always just kind of assumed that they were (in more traditional productions), because Charity is clearly not a virgin and the stakes for her in having sex are pretty non-existent, unlike for a "good" girl of the period. (And I use that word "good" purely as shorthand, not a value judgement...I'm sure that by the mid-to-late 60's, lots of "good" girls were also having sex outside of marriage.) And, for Oscar, even if he's a completely socially deficient nerd, there's not really any stakes at all regarding sex...the difference between being a man and being a woman. But that idea puts an entirely different spin on the ending and one that would seem to justify Oscar's complete 180 degree turn around, that, in a traditional production, comes out of nowhere. We haven't seen anything in the writing, from the scene in which Charity and Oscar meet to the scene in which he abruptly leaves her, that indicates that he has any issues with her at all and they seem to have a rather sweet, traditional relationship where each one's baggage complements the other's. If it suddenly hits Oscar that his fiancée is actually a man in drag, that's a pretty good justification for his departure. And, if all that can be played by the actors without actually rewriting the script, that would be a really interesting thing to see. |
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| re: Could Sweet Charity be done as a gay version? | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 04:55 pm EST 02/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Could Sweet Charity be done as a gay version? - JereNYC 09:38 am EST 02/26/19 | |
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| "But that idea puts an entirely different spin on the ending and one that would seem to justify Oscar's complete 180 degree turn around, that, in a traditional production, comes out of nowhere. We haven't seen anything in the writing, from the scene in which Charity and Oscar meet to the scene in which he abruptly leaves her, that indicates that he has any issues with her at all and they seem to have a rather sweet, traditional relationship where each one's baggage complements the other's." With all due respect, I don't think you're remembering the original clearly. In the show as originally written, Oscar doesn't find out until VERY late in the proceedings that Charity is actually a dance hall girl -- with all that implies. She had told him she worked in a bank, and we learn that he found out the truth when he followed her to work one day. (Creepy, I know -- but then he seems to be a guy with a lot of "issues.") Yes, when Oscar finds out the truth, he at first tells her he has no problem with it. But I think it's meant to be clear that he's just TELLING himself he has no problem with it, when in fact he has a HUGE problem with it. Which is why he freaks out and abruptly leaves her in the last scene. |
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| re: Could Sweet Charity be done as a gay version? | |
| Last Edit: Chromolume 11:52 pm EST 02/25/19 | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 11:51 pm EST 02/25/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Could Sweet Charity be done as a gay version? - lordofspeech 07:27 pm EST 02/25/19 | |
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| It must’ve been seriously shortened, but the stakes were very high. I'm sure the stakes were very very high, considering this must have been an illegal production. I truly doubt Tams would have granted all those changes. |
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