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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 11:55 pm EST 03/08/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - showtunetrivia 06:53 pm EST 03/08/19 | |
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| I always thought the police didn't question Jeff till he got back to New York. Wouldn't that be when people would start to wonder what had happened to Tommy? Anyway, that was Clive Barnes's idea when he reviewed the 1967 City Center revival. I sort of think that Tommy and Jeff don't even bother checking in anywhere when they get to Scotland. Tommy insists they go right to where Brigadoon was, which is why they get there in the middle of the night (perhaps with backpacks). But this does start to make me wonder about the specifics, which is probably not a good idea with this show. :) | |
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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: showtunetrivia 11:55 am EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - AlanScott 11:55 pm EST 03/08/19 | |
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| The Scottish Highlands, even today, are rugged and sparsely populated, and for good reason. They're not easily accessible; I suspect it was even worse in 1947. I would find it hard to believe (yeah, this whole thread is hard to believe!) that you could take a rental car and conveniently drive to Brigadoon. I figured Tommy and Jeff, on their first visit, had made some village their base for hunting/hiking, and stumbled upon the even more remote Brigadoon while trekking about. I'd forgotten it's nighttime when they go back ("Laddie, you woke me up!"), and that itself strains credulity. Sure, let's go looking for an invisible village in the pitchblack dark. "I just want to see where it was!" Tommy cries. How can he see where it was if it's the middle of the night? Okay, I revise my earlier ending. Somehow, for dramatic license, they find Brigadoon in the dark, and Mr. Lundie escorts Tommy into the mist. Jeff gets lost trying to find his way back to wherever they parked the car, miles and miles away, falls down a steep incline, and is killed. D.I. John Orr: Och, the puir fool of an American, he hit his haid on a stone. D.S. MacLellan: But where's t'other one???? Curtain. |
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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 01:22 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - showtunetrivia 11:55 am EST 03/09/19 | |
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| "I'd forgotten it's nighttime when they go back ("Laddie, you woke me up!"), and that itself strains credulity. Sure, let's go looking for an invisible village in the pitchblack dark. "I just want to see where it was!" Tommy cries. How can he see where it was if it's the middle of the night?" Are we sure the script indicates that it's nighttime in Jeff and Tommy's world when they are actually back on the old site of the village? After all, we're told that the villagers go to sleep for 100 years every "night," so that would certainly include 100 years worth of daytimes in the real world :-) |
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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 01:32 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - Michael_Portantiere 01:22 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| The published script says, "Three nights later." I suppose it could be played in the daytime, in which case Mr. Lundie could say, "Och, when you've been sleeping for even just a month or two, the light really hurts your eyes when you get up." :) | |
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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 01:35 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - AlanScott 01:32 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| :-) | |
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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 12:08 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - showtunetrivia 11:55 am EST 03/09/19 | |
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| "(yeah, this whole thread is hard to believe!)" LOL "Jeff gets lost trying to find his way back to wherever they parked the car, miles and miles away, falls down a steep incline, and is killed." Double LOL :) When I was writing my previous post, I was thinking, "They manage to find where Brigadoon was in the middle of the night? I never thought about this before." Since they don't seem to be carrying suitcases (or at least the script doesn't they are), you're probably right that they did check in somewhere. :) Or they left them in the car they parked . . . somewhere. Poor AJL. What would he think of this discussion? |
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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: showtunetrivia 01:43 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - AlanScott 12:08 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| He'd say, "You're a bunch of obsessed, detailed-oriented nerds, but you helped pay all my alimony bills for years, so I'll keep quiet while you over-analyze the ending to my innocent little fantasy musical." Laura |
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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 01:55 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - showtunetrivia 01:43 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| Or - I'm sure I've told this story out here before...a friend of mine who was a director and theatre professor used to have fun talking about lyrics that he felt made no sense - one of his favorites was in "To Life," where the men sing "May all your futures be pleasant ones, not like our present ones" - which is a bit of a logical mess if you really think about it. The inference is clear, but the idea of "present futures" is a bit out there lol (though I can see how it does make some sort of sense in a way - but the lyric goes by too fast to really think it through. I think what we pick up in the moment in "present lives" as opposed to "what we think our futures are from our present perspective.") Anyway, he had a chance to talk with Harnick once (who is, from my own short chance to meet him, one of the more gracious men I've ever met) - and he dared to ask him about that lyric. Harnick's response - "I wrote that??" ;-) ;-) |
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| re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 12:22 am EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - AlanScott 11:55 pm EST 03/08/19 | |
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| "This does start to make me wonder about the specifics, which is probably not a good idea with this show. :) " Yes, :-) Like, for example, the inbreeding issue I mentioned, which is honestly something I didn't really focus on till recently. I would say that's a BIG issue -- unless we're supposed to think all of these strangers keep wandering into Brigadoon on the one day it exists each century, and a lot of them fall so much in love with someone in the town that they're all willing and able to stay in the town. When you think about it, which I agree is a bad idea if you want to keep liking the show, it's all quite ridiculous even for audience people who are really good about suspending disbelief. |
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| re: Inbreeding | |
| Posted by: stevemr 09:50 am EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: BRIGADOON on TCM; I figured out its weak spot - Michael_Portantiere 12:22 am EST 03/09/19 | |
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| It would take 27,000 years (non-Brigadoon time) for the first baby to gestate. Inbreeding for multiple generations would be the least of their problems. | |
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| re: Inbreeding | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 11:47 am EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - stevemr 09:50 am EST 03/09/19 | |
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| You beat me to it, although I'm glad you got there first because I was going to write 27 million. Which would have been wrong. Of course, this is presuming that no one in Brigadoon is currently pregnant. :) Anyway, even at 27,000, there's some possibility that the earth wouldn't even exist any longer. I do sometimes wonder if Brigadoon might have the misfortune to come back on some day when an atomic bomb is dropped on Scotland. That would not be good. Really, this one day every 100 years thing was a very bad idea. And will God remember to make sure that no housing developments or factories are built where Brigadoon is/was? |
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| re: Inbreeding | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 12:25 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - AlanScott 11:47 am EST 03/09/19 | |
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| I suspect that when the village reappears in 2047, many of the inhabitants will want to leave, especially those under the age of 40 Brigadoon years. They will have had a full 3 (very long) days to ponder their future and realize it's pretty bleak. It would probably make sense for the entire village to pack up and get out. The way things are going with climate change if they wait another day, the Scottish highlands may be completely uninhabitable by 2147. | |
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| re: Inbreeding | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 01:27 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - BroadwayTonyJ 12:25 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| "I suspect that when the village reappears in 2047, many of the inhabitants will want to leave, especially those under the age of 40 Brigadoon years. They will have had a full 3 (very long) days to ponder their future and realize it's pretty bleak. It would probably make sense for the entire village to pack up and get out. The way things are going with climate change if they wait another day, the Scottish highlands may be completely uninhabitable by 2147." You may be partly joking, but that's an excellent point. I suppose everyone in the village could decide to leave en masse in 2047, and from then on, they would go back to living life in real time. According to the "rules" of the miracle, as I understand them, anyone who wanted to stay in the village would also have to leave regardless, because if they DO stay, that night they will disappear forever along with the entire village and anyone else who wishes to stay. |
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| re: Inbreeding | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 12:10 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - AlanScott 11:47 am EST 03/09/19 | |
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| I love all this! :-) Of course, plenty of stories (in musicals and otherwise) have similar unexplainable gaffes. One infamous one is - where did Cain and Abel find wives? The Bible never explains that. I tend to think that we can always just come back to the fact that Brigadoon is entirely fantasy - maybe not the best-constructed fantasy lol, but even so, it's not meant to make perfect sense in reality. For 1947, when musicals were really still beginning to become a more "mature" art form, I think it's still pretty good. Not perfect, but pretty good. |
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| Cain and Abel | |
| Posted by: showtunetrivia 01:47 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - Chromolume 12:10 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| Obviously, they ordered spare ribs. Lauar, ducking and running |
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| re: Cain and Abel | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 01:57 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: Cain and Abel - showtunetrivia 01:47 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| VERY good! ;-) | |
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| Reality in 1947 | |
| Posted by: stevemr 01:41 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - Chromolume 12:10 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| Of course, in 1947, you also had the option of a leprechaun turning human while a white bigot turned black. You takes your fantasies where you finds 'em. | |
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| re: Inbreeding | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 01:31 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - Chromolume 12:10 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| "Of course, plenty of stories (in musicals and otherwise) have similar unexplainable gaffes." There are so many other examples, including several plot elements in the story of THE LITTLE MERMAID -- especially the Disney version. That doesn't mean people shouldn't love it (I sort of do), but in order to do so, you have to TOTALLY suspend disbelief about much of the plot. |
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| re: Inbreeding | |
| Posted by: Ned3301 01:19 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - Chromolume 12:10 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| It may be that posters are overthinking a tale meant as a parable: a man of a deeply spiritual nature that he scarcely comprehends himself stumbles upon something that both reveals that he has a problem and offers a solution to it. The specifics of the story are really neither here nor there, because instead of Brigadoon he might have found the church, or a cult of some kind, or bowling, or one of those obsessive hobbies like mountain climbing. The point is that he has, as they used to put it, "found himself." It's probably an autobiographical story from AJL, who was so busy searching for he didn't know what that he ended up marrying far too many times, and suddenly taking off for vacations in the middle of work, and getting hooked on feel-good drug candies. As for the show itself, it has been so fiddled with in the movie and various stagings that we no longer know what it was like originally. When the City Center used to put on replica revivals of shows in the 1950s and 1960s, Brigadoon could still be seen in its proper form, and in my opinion it played beautifully. Others may disagree; that's their right. But I think it's one of the great shows if only because of its score and the bizarrely interesting story beneath the story. And it gives wonderful opportunities to the performers. Sally Anne Howes got a Tony nomination (I think) for her Fiona in one of those City Center showings. |
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| re: Inbreeding | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 01:34 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - Ned3301 01:19 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| "It may be that posters are overthinking a tale meant as a parable: a man of a deeply spiritual nature that he scarcely comprehends himself stumbles upon something that both reveals that he has a problem and offers a solution to it. The specifics of the story are really neither here nor there, because instead of Brigadoon he might have found the church, or a cult of some kind, or bowling, or one of those obsessive hobbies like mountain climbing." I completely agree, but I do think it helps tremendously if a story remains logical based on the precepts of its own reality, and BRIGADOON strays very, very far from that. I think this is often a danger when stories veer into the supernatural; TUCK EVERLASTING is just one more example of many. |
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| Speculative fiction and suspension of disbelief | |
| Posted by: showtunetrivia 02:31 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Inbreeding - Michael_Portantiere 01:34 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| This is an issue that my husband (Harry Turtledove) and I deal with in writing speculative fiction (science fiction--including the subgenre of alternate history--and fantasy). We're already asking readers to suspend disbelief in accepting whatever incredible premise we've devised. It can be aliens invading in World War II, Shakespeare surviving in Spanish-occupied England, a global conflict fought with magic, or a guy stealing a time machine to cure George Gershwin's brain tumor. To maintain our narrative authority, we want to be as rigorous as possible in all the details. Because you can write exciting plots with engaging characters, but the more the reader goes "What? That can't happen." Or "That doesn't make sense in this world." the more likely that you've lost that reader. The goal is to immerse the reader with accurate world-building, even if that world is highly improbable and/or fantastical in nature. In many ways, modern musical librettists have to cope with the same issue, even if they're not writing BRIGADOON or FINIAN'S RAINBOW. They have to convey a story in which the characters often relate plot points and information about themselves in a nonrealistic fashion: by singing and dancing. The audience knows, expects, and accepts this: they're at a musical. Just as the reader of a fantasy knows the setting is a world with magic. But the more the librettist fails to maintain internal consistency in his/her premise, the harder for the audience to suspend disbelief. One can argue that all fiction (and that goes for plays as well as non-speculative novels and stories) should hold to such standards, and I'd say you were right. But by their very nature of the genre, I think writers of sf and fantasy have even higher standards to maintain. This explains why there's so much bad fantasy out there, folks. Laura |
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| re: Speculative fiction and suspension of disbelief | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 04:09 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: Speculative fiction and suspension of disbelief - showtunetrivia 02:31 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| "In many ways, modern musical librettists have to cope with the same issue, even if they're not writing BRIGADOON or FINIAN'S RAINBOW. They have to convey a story in which the characters often relate plot points and information about themselves in a nonrealistic fashion: by singing and dancing. The audience knows, expects, and accepts this: they're at a musical. Just as the reader of a fantasy knows the setting is a world with magic. But the more the librettist fails to maintain internal consistency in his/her premise, the harder for the audience to suspend disbelief." I agree completely, but I would make a big distinction between BRIGADOON and FINIAN'S RAINBOW in terms of the internal logic and credibility of the story. In the case of FINIAN'S, once you accept the fact that there are such things as leprechauns and magical pots of gold that grant three wishes, I don't believe there's anything in the plot that doesn't make sense within that world -- whereas BRIGADOON'S story really doesn't make much sense at all, as noted. |
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| re: Speculative fiction and suspension of disbelief | |
| Last Edit: Chromolume 04:40 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 04:39 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Speculative fiction and suspension of disbelief - Michael_Portantiere 04:09 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| I would also make a distinction in the tone of the 2 shows. Even with the socio/political edge, Finian's mostly presents its fantasy element with a knowing wink (something certainly aided by Harburg's whimsical lyrics), but to me, Brigadoon attempts to take itself more seriously as a more dramatic form of "musical comedy." (Which perhaps makes the problems in Brigadoon even odder lol.) Even though, perhaps ironically, Brigadoon has the more tour-de-force comic song in "My Mother's Wedding Day" - as fun and charming and funny as "When I'm Not Near The Girl I Love" is, it, um, can't hold a candle to the razzle-dazzle of "Wedding Day." ;-) |
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| re: Speculative fiction and suspension of disbelief | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 05:33 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Speculative fiction and suspension of disbelief - Chromolume 04:39 pm EST 03/09/19 | |
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| ***I would also make a distinction in the tone of the 2 shows. Even with the socio/political edge, Finian's mostly presents its fantasy element with a knowing wink (something certainly aided by Harburg's whimsical lyrics), but to me, Brigadoon attempts to take itself more seriously as a more dramatic form of "musical comedy." (Which perhaps makes the problems in Brigadoon even odder lol.)*** Excellent point. |
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