| Bartlett Sher's production at Lincoln Center | |
| Last Edit: singleticket 01:48 pm EST 02/13/21 | |
| Posted by: singleticket 01:42 pm EST 02/13/21 | |
| In reply to: Who is this version of the movie for? - Singapore/Fling 12:50 am EST 02/13/21 | |
|
|
|
| There's absolutely no way that East Asia wants to hear what Americans thinks about its cultural values, and it's hard to see Western BIPOC and their allies enjoying a show in which a White lady teaches an Asia man that slavery is bad by showing him "Uncle Tom's Cabin". The royal family of Thailand certainly doesn't care about what Americans think about its cultural values, you can still get 20 years in jail there for insulting the king. But of course there's a difference between Westerners telling governments what to do and backing it up with imperial might and supporting the human rights struggles of Thai activists against a still oppresive power structure. That struggle has recently been in the news in the last couple of days. Anna's abolitionism in the musical is apparently an invention by either the original memoirist Anna Leonowens or her many adaptors. But Leonowens' feminism and her fight for women's suffrage was not and it was apparently a lifelong commitment. It's also possible that Leonowen was of mixed Asian-Anglo race. Like a lot of R&H musicals there are layers of original material with material from adaptations and then history itself which makes intelligent new rethinkings of these musicals not only worthwhile but important. Important because they're still in the dna of American culture... at least until the day when they're not which may happen. I really liked Bartlett Sher's production at Lincoln Center. I thought it did an excellent job at bringing out surprising conflicts that were grounded in the material itself. I loved Anna singing "Whistle a Happy Tune" on the deck of a Western steamship with its prow pointing at the audience like a gun. It seemed to ask whether the court and the King were the ones who should really be afraid of this cultural invasion. I also loved the way Sher and Michael Yeargan his production designer contrasted that intrusive imperial ship with the statue of Buddha which appears later in the act. |
|
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | Who is this version of the movie for? - Singapore/Fling 12:50 am EST 02/13/21 |
| Next: | re: Who is this version of the movie for? - Pokernight 01:11 am EST 02/13/21 |
| Thread: | |
Time to render: 0.008044 seconds.