A friend of mine, who watched the show but lives in California and knows nothing about this season other than what he saw on the broadcast, summed up Frost's speech by saying, "He's very young, isn't he?" The whole focus on the effect he was having on the audience, epitomized by the business with the sunglasses, is a young person's approach. And Frost IS very young. According to Playbill, at age 22, he's the youngest person ever to win in this category. (Previous record holder was Ben Platt at age 23.)
Much of the narrative of the marketing for A Strange Loop, similarly to that for Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, revolved around the lead being a newly-minted college graduate, plucked from obscurity. Frost is even younger than Jaquel Spivey, and he was still a junior in college when he got the part. But MJ didn't really go that route as strongly as A Strange Loop did. I don't know if they were shying away from emphasizing how young people are or what. |
