#marie antoinette the musical

[doyouknowthismusical]

[ethanfreemanappreciation]

In 2009 Ethan performed the award winning role of time travelling court magician Cagliostro in Marie Antoinette.

[margridarnauds]

Despite considering myself to be rather knowleadgeable about Marie Antoinette and her various endeavours and portrayals in media, I have to admit that i never heard of the Musical. Would you enlighten me about it and maybe advise where to watch it? 😁😁😁

Of course!

So, Marie Antoinette das Musical.

Based on a book by Shusaku Endom, premiered in Japan in 2006, as a collaboration between Michael Kunze and Szilvester Levay, known for Elisabeth das Musical, Mozart das Musical, and Rebecca das Musical, and went on to premiere in Germany in 2009. Both productions didn't do particularly well, even though they did have cast albums released. (I...still have to translate the German libretto, if only for the sake of keeping up my German skills.) There were some major structural flaws -- Marie Antoinette was too bitchy (throwing an actual temper tantrum, like a child, so that Louis would dismiss Necker; tossing champagne at a poor woman's head because she interrupted her ball and Marie thought it would be funny), her sympathetic qualities were either downplayed or erased in favor of her love affair with Fersen, which was reduced to "Good Man In Love With Bitchy Woman Who Knows She Isn't Good Enough For Him, But Don't Worry, He Loves Her Anyway", but the justifiable reasons for the Revolution were reduced to "Bitter poor people want Revenge and Go Against God", it had a bloated plot with too many characters, etc. etc. etc. It was, and I'm saying this as someone who ADORES messy musicals, one of the single biggest disasters I've ever forced myself to sit through, in the sense that it wasn't even particularly *entertaining.*

But, in 2014, an international crew got together to do the Korean production, and they essentially rewrote the whole thing. Not a shallow rewrite either, they TOTALLY REWROTE IT FROM THE GROUND UP. Songs were cut and added as needed, sometimes being given to different characters or put in different scenes, superfluous characters were removed, the plot was tightened to focus on the characters involved, Marie was rewritten into a flawed, but understandable character, not a sexist caricature. This was the version of the plot that would premiere in Hungary in 2016 and back to Japan in 2018 and 2021, becoming an international success.

The musical follows two women -- Marie Antoinette and Margrid Arnaud, two women with the same initials who lead very different lives. While Marie lives a life of oblivious privilege, Margrid lives on the streets. She was educated in a convent as a child, as the result of a mysterious benefactor (her mother having committed suicide) but was tossed out on the streets when the money ran out, and she's had to live by her wits since then. The two of them meet when Margrid interrupts a ball being held at Palais Royal to celebrate Marie's return to society. Margrid calls for the aristocrats to pay attention to the plight of the poor, who are starving, but all Marie can do is offer her a glass of champagne, which Margrid, furious at the lack of understanding, tosses in her face, swearing revenge. She joins up with the Duc d'Orléans, who is running a smear campaign in order to convince the public that he should be the rightful king, and things go downhill from there...

Some of the strongest points in the musical's favor:

Strong female characters. A term that's often thrown around casually, but, honestly, I love the musical for how it deals with the rivalry between Margrid and Marie, because neither one is fully wrong or fully right. We understand why both of them make the decisions they do and how it leads them to where they are by the end, and they go through an entire arc together. Margrid in particular is one of my characters of all time for being a woman who is brilliant, an absolute gremlin, strikingly vulnerable, and evasive. She's flawed, she's aggressive, vindictive, and spiteful, but we're also allowed to see WHY she's that way and how thoroughly fucked up she is by what's happened to her in the past. She is someone who truly doesn't believe that she's capable of being loved or of loving someone else -- platonically or romantically, because every experience she's had of love ended in betrayal, even when she desperately wants it. Meanwhile, Marie is both trapped in a life of fame and fortune while also believing, firmly, that that is her god-given right. She never believes that her position is anything other than her right by God, even when it involves spilling French military secrets to the other European powers when the Revolution goes a little crazy. She adores her family, she adores her husband, but she's also in love with Fersen (which...I don't like historical Fersen, but musical!Fersen, I tolerate.) You feel sympathetic for her by the end, but she doesn't demand sympathy.

Great villain. I love the Duc d'Orléans in this musical so much. Louis Philippe Joseph was a complicated man historically, and, depending on the actor, he's a complicated man in the musical. He's been simplified, but you can still SEE at times that he isn't a monster -- he genuinely ENJOYS working with Margrid, he's a good boss, he isn't necessarily WRONG about certain things, even when he's selfish in the way he goes about it (there's a great moment in the 2018 Japanese production where he sees Marie reject a peace offering from Cardinal de Rohan, and you can just SEE him dying inside, like "oh, God, she actually DID that." Margrid's eventual break with him isn't even that he betrayed HER or that HE changed his goals...she did. Which makes for a much more interesting dynamic than "evil man manipulates woman and then betrays her."

There's also a masquerade scene where they go undercover together. And yes, I went batshit over this and have still not recovered. (Please note that they are being used to contrast Fersen/Marie here, to make the ship bait worse.)

They're just. Like this. With one another. In one of the Korean productions, you can clearly hear her call him "Philippe" which murdered me.

I don't have any gifs of this scene without text on it, but the look on both of their faces by the end is...

Anyway, semi-canonical (depending on the production/actors) villainfucking angst, who is doing it like them?

The costumes are great (with the exception of the Hungarian, sorry Hungary.)

(The same dress from the same scene in both Japan and Korea)

It is bizarrely accurate in some ridiculously minute ways, like the Toho production actually DOING A RECREATION OF THE HISTORICAL MARIE'S BED.

Historically accurate pamphlet, shown in a projection while Orléans is singing about his strategy to turn the people against her. I legitimately had to pause the screen the first time I saw it because I couldn't believe my eyes. (Yes, I now pause it on each stream.)

Like, don't get me wrong, it still gets a LOT wrong, or changes details around to make 9 years of someone's life fit into a two hour musical, but both the Korean and the Japanese productions DO care about details in ways that higher budget films and TV series often don't.

And, of course, some killer songs. (Orléans' villain song, Marie's song, Act 1 finale -- all from the Korean, since they are slightly better at putting songs out, with the Japanese trailer.)

The Korean and Japanese bootleg environments tend to be...stricter than Broadway -- there have been proshots released for both at various times (the Toho production is actually available to buy if you have a Japanese proxy who can send it to you), to the point where I can't *say* if I have access to the Korean, but I have bought both DVDs of the two Japanese casts and have been known to stream it. If you're interested, I'm always willing to schedule something, especially since it's been ages since I've done anything like it.

[perioddramagif]

PERIOD DRAMA + WEDDING DRESSES

The Age of Innocence (1993) The Sound of Music (1965) Sense and Sensibility (1995) Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) The Duchess (2008) Marie Antoinette (2006)

[bubblegumbeaches]

oh if only I was a wealthy socialite in an unrealistic period piece

[iridessence]

miss looking at this cake-like ceiling

[popculturebaby]

On set of Marie Antoinette, 2006 🎀

[v1rginsu1cidal]

Let them girlblog*｡⁠*ﾟ⁠+

[coolerinsummer]

[wizzard890]

One of my biggest pet peeves is when books or movies are like "what if it’s the past but with things like selfies and shutter shades and yas queen" and don't....have anything to say with that. I’m not talking about comedies, I’m talking about historical anachronisms that get deployed in dramas. 

Like, this is a stylistic choice, and thanks to things like Hamilton, it’s one that’s becoming more and more common, so I get all sorts of opportunities to think about why some examples are so shallow and annoying, and why others work so well. 

I think of it as the difference between Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette - an enormously sensitive and successful example! - and the Broadway musical Six, which is the poster child for “doing an anachronism to make the Notorious RBG crowd cheer”. 

In Six, Anne Boleyn is portrayed as a ditzy party girl who didn’t think anything could touch her until something manifestly did. She’s not into politics or long-term plots, she just wants to fuck around and have a good time. The creators cast her as a dumb popular chick in way over her head. 

Now, do I find that an enormously boring take on Anne Boleyn? Obviously. But the real question is why have they chosen these specific anachronisms? The phone, describing her letters with King Henry as “texting” and “replies”. It’s a sort of SNL take on history, lazily swapping courtier with influencer; her “lol”s and “sorry not sorry”s don’t bring you any closer to the emotional truth of her situation. 

(And before you say “but Six is a comedy!” it’s a: not really, and b: a musical that contains a harrowing song* about a woman’s experience of being sexually assaulted as a child, and then again at multiple points throughout her life**, so I do feel they had the range, had they chosen to reach for it.)

Dramatic anachronism, when employed well, gives us touch points to recognize. It renders a world that may feel alien as legible to a modern audience, who come in with their own associations and biases. And so the best anachronisms are specific.

“Wouldn’t it be kind of funny if Anne Boleyn was a party girl because she was a big deal in court and everyone had hard opinions on her?” That’s a sketch idea, not a thoughtful deployment of anachronism to deepen an audience’s understanding of what’s happening in front of them. 

Contrast with this famous shot from Sophia Coppola’s 2006 movie Marie Antoinette. 

Now, what is the point of those Chuck Taylors? What do they communicate to an audience, especially in the mid-aughts? What do they think of when they think of out of touch rich girls who spend all their time shopping and drinking and spoiling their little dogs and wearing pastel colored high tops? Oh right:

The movie is not asking: what if Anne Boleyn was sort of like a girl who shops at Revolve? It’s not even asking: what if Marie Antoinette was a girl like you, who probably owns high tops?

It’s asking, directly: what if Paris Hilton, someone you all already hate, with her baggage and inadequacy and shallowness and mean-spiritedness and humanity and probably genuine unhappiness -- what if she had an angry, starving, justified mob at her door, who blame her for something that is, in part, her fault. Would you feel sorry for her? I mean, people chase her around all the time in real life, and make her miserable, and she’s starving herself to death in front of us and everyone calls her a slut and an idiot. And maybe she, Paris Hilton, is an idiot. Anyway, focus on the screen: should this gluttonous, unprepared, wasteful, shallow Austrian woman be tormented unto her ultimate demise for being an idiot? 

That’s what successful, thoughtful anachronism does. It asks you to make connections between yourself and the past, your social impulses and the things that governed people long dead. It wants to help you recognize the ways that we are different and how in others we never change. 

It’s a powerful tool when employed directly, and I think it’s a huge bummer that writers rarely seem to understand that. 

--

*All You Wanna Do is the only number in the show that actually works, because they use the tee-hee pop princess conceit to pull the rug out from under you and reveal something genuinely horrible.

**Six has a tone problem. 

[midwestmunster]

Madonna performing ‘Vogue’ with her back up dancers, live at the MTV Awards (1990)

[ethanfreemanappreciation]

Ethan as Cagliostro Court magician extraordinaire!!

(Marie Antoinette)

[slvtforconcertoing]

i love sandy liang she gets it

[antoin-ette]

𓏲 ࣪₊𓂃 🍰

[frenchnewwaves]

Sofia Coppola’s favorite albums, from Far Out Magazine:

Loveless (My Bloody Valentine):

United (Phoenix):

Entertainment (Gang of Four):

Power, Corruption, and lies (New Order):

Avalon (Roxy Music):

In Search Of… (N.E.R.D:):

Living in a magazine (Zoot Woman):

From Left, to Right (Bill Evans):

MTV Unplugged in New York (Nirvana):

[sassisleepshigh]

Hope Sandoval

Mazzy star