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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Last Edit: Singapore/Fling 10:41 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 10:40 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - peter3053 04:15 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| That's a great take on "Merrily", but I think it only really works if you listen to a few of the songs and ignore the actual book of the show and the characters as written - which people have tried to do for 40 years without cracking the code. Your take also presumes that the kind of things young 20 year olds say - "we're brilliant, unique, and going to change the world!" - have any real weight. My biggest disappointment in finally seeing Merrily was discovering that it *wasn't* the story you describe, and which I expected, because none of the characters rise to that level of greatness for even a moment - but that greatness is generally an illusion (or delusion) of youth to begin with. Instead, we have three people with high hopes who discover that in the act of living and making choices, they disappoint themselves and each other. And most of all, your version of the story is told forwards, but the show is told backwards. And that backwards telling really mucks things up without having a strong enough pay-off. The show only seems to work as an album, where we can dig into the arcana of the songs once we already know the story - or have the freedom to fill in the blanks and tell our own. |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: peter3053 05:46 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Singapore/Fling 10:40 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| Fair points, but I think youthful idealism is a beautiful thing, and the tragedy of life - captured powerfully because of Merrily's reverse structure - is that the world, which is "us" and all our weaknesses we bring - plays havoc with our best intentions. The truly bold, who shed the shackles of human compromise, are usually arrested, removed, or lionised much later as saints. I recall the line from Anyone Can Whistle in which Hapgood says he is not only an idealist, but a "practising" one. They're very rare, which is the tragedy of the human condition. I think Merrily, told backwards, makes us especially aware of the tragedy. Personally, I don't mind sitting in a theatre studying unlikeable people when there is a moral purpose to it; I'm not all that fond of Oedipus, that arrogant sod; or that hormone-crazed Romeo, the fool; or Henry-bloody-Higgins, that egotistical power-hungry creep; and as for that narrow-minded Nellie Forbush, who grows more dislikeable as the show goes on, rather than the reverse (until the end....) - mind you, as for that overbearing lover she's got ........ or that Cable character .... or - or - Bloody Mary, a mother who does that !!! Sorry, where was I? As I say, better to study the unlikeable in a purposeful, artificial space - it's slightly better than having to put up with them in real life! |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: dbdbdb 01:55 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Singapore/Fling 10:40 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| This is exactly right. One of the show's biggest problems is that you're seeing the divorce before you know anything about the marriage, and you have no idea why you should care. Michael Porttantiere also alludes to the other big problem in his comments about Charley's hysterical overreaction to Frank's choices: The show seems to suggest that writing Broadway musicals is a beautiful, noble pure calling while making films is morally ruinous. Well, I guess that's true. Sometimes. Maybe. Under certain circumstances... | |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 03:12 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - dbdbdb 01:55 pm EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| "The show seems to suggest that writing Broadway musicals is a beautiful, noble pure calling while making films is morally ruinous. Well, I guess that's true. Sometimes. Maybe. Under certain circumstances..." Ha! Exactly. But also, seriously: How believable is it that Charley would become enraged at the information that Frank has worked a deal so that the musical that Frank and Charley wrote TOGETHER will be made into a Hollywood film -- so enraged that he then utterly humiliates his longtime friend and writing partner during an interview on live television? I mean, I know that musical is not his passion project, but........seriously?? I was sad when I very belatedly realized some years ago that, while "Franklin Shepard, Inc." is a brilliant song and a tour-de-force in and of itself, it actually does great damage to the show as a whole and to the character of Charley in particular, because it portrays him as emotionally reckless and childish in his big moment, and I don't THINK that's how the authors wanted us to view him. |
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| re: Sondheim's Broadway career | |
| Last Edit: Quicheo 11:00 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| Posted by: Quicheo 10:59 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Sondheim's Broadway career - Singapore/Fling 10:40 am EDT 04/10/21 | |
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| I can speak only having seen the Kennedy Center production, which worked for me because in each scene, it showed the results of a choice made in the recent past, leading one step closer to the characters' eventual unhappiness and disappointment. I wondered, how could they be so foolish to have made that choice? Then we go back in time a bit and see exactly why, and even understand exactly why. And each time, the lead character makes a choice we know isn't good, he is influenced by a different set of people often with good intentions. There is no one set of people who would have guided him right, only small choices against his internal sense that chipped another piece off his integrity and moved him one more step off course. I have no idea if he is as talented as his friends think he is. I do know, he was happier when he made time to indulge that talent. I think, like Follies, it captures the regret of the late middle aged people of its time, in this case, wealthy 80s people, and allows them to wonder how they ended up so unhappy. |
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