Go to the 48:45 minute mark and prepare to be astonished, enchanted and even a bit turned on.
This is one of the best musical theater performances I've ever seen anyone perform... of anything. Ever.
I know that lyric does a lot of the work for anyone who tries to tackle this song, but the lyric does SO MUCH that most performers can't begin to keep up with it. The only way the song really works is if we know how Petra really FEELS about what she's envisioning.
I've never seen any performer reveal as much depth of feeling in this song as what Elizabeth Stanley did here.
So many performers both overdo and oversimplify this song; they play it as simply a balancing act between lusty abandon and obedient duty. What elevates Ms. Stanley's performance and makes it STUNNING is that she let us see a Petra who is equally ambivalent and conflicted about both her fantasies of marital duty AND her fantasies of wan abandon.
A performer in a close up on video certainly gains some capacity for subtlety that is harder to communicate onstage, but give this video a look if you haven't seen it yet. I've linked it below.
Watch the whole thing; she handles the pivots effortlessly. As Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted, "YES Elizabeth Stanley! This song is has three quadruple lutzes, holy sh*t."
The true WOW of her performance is what comes in final moments.
Watch how she delivers "and there's many a bed" at 53:02. That's her window into the soul; she reveals that even a phase of promiscuity has its own monotonous downsides. It's freaking brilliant. Just to make sure that we got the point, she shows us what she means with her final delivery on "passing by."
Yes. Sondheim is ever the master of ambivalence, and it's all right there in the song. She's just honoring what Sondheim himself wrote and composed. But I've never seen any musical theater actress capture it within "The Miller's Son" so perfectly. You could teach musical theater performance classes with this.
Absolutely stunning.
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