#partway through writing this I did the math to get SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO and just bad a minor breakdown

[nanasalt]

YES give me literally ALL the salty opinions on Anastasia the Broadway Musical

I feel like when I watched it I liked it, not loved it, but then the more I thought about it/ESPECIALLY the more I saw the fandom praise decisions that were made, the worse the whole thing got

I wish I could remember which post this was in reference to, but I do have an entire salt tag! Showing here.

The weirdest bit, to me, was watching people act as if film!Dimitri and musical!Dmitry have literally anything in common. Film!Dimitri is a great character who I love, and people used their warm memories of him to justify Klena's stage Dmitry who was, frankly, an asshole. He threatens her, he doesn't put in half the work she or Vlad does in the con, and is just ... awful. I love asshole characters, and honestly have a soft spot for asshole stage Dmitry, but as a romantic option? Absolutely the fuck not.

Anya at least has a similar amnesia backstory to her film counterpart, but that's where the similarities end. Film!Anya is 18, self-assured, and kills the bad guy. Musical Anya is nearly 26, a terrified waif, and simply lies down and waits to be killed. These characters have nothing in common. It frustrates me to no end because we've had more than one version of the story with a good, strong Anna/Anya/Anastasia, and instead we get this absolute void where a character should be.

You could literally replace Anya with the music box, making it a plot about two conmen getting Maria's favorite trinket to her while Gleb tries to stop them for some reason, and nothing would change. Gleb can still choose not to stop this all on his own, because Anya did nothing to change his mind in canon.

The biggest issue in my eyes, and the one we kept coming back to, is that Anya isn't Anastasia. She might be, but so much of the fandom takes it as gospel that she is and it makes the story boring -- and problematic, which is why people don't like it.

Morally, if she's not Anastasia, this is a story of two conmen who gaslight a mentally ill woman into thinking she's someone she's not. One of them falls in love with her because he's carried a torch for this a child he saw one time seventeen year ago. This is a deeply unsettling thing to think about, and given we never see Anya display much fire and personality (outside of the one fight scene) I'm not confident she'll hold her own when Dmitry next yells at her. In fact, I'm pretty sure she'll do what she does throughout the show; go along with being the person he says she is, pretending to be his dream girl.

And here's the thing: the Romanovs were killed in July. Anya talks about being found in the snow by the road. These things are pretty incompatible, since Yekaterinburg is a pretty pleasantly warm temperature around that time of year. So either Anya got shot and dumped twice, or she's not Anastasia.

Then we have a 'villain' who's saying saying "Hey, maybe don't take the identity of someone who's already been condemned to death. Maybe just stay Anya and also out of trouble, please."

That said, I don't like Karimloo as Gleb, so there's that. All his choices are awful and weaken a role that already isn't getting much support from the text.

Honestly, the whole fandom made me feel like I was taking crazy pills. Anastasia is a fun musical, and one with potential, but it is - critically - not good. Feel free to send me your salt as well, I've got LOTS to commiserate about.

Assorted minor complaints!

Dmitry's father was sent to a labor camp when Dmitry was young. Given Dmitry is 27 now, that means that his father was sent to (and died in) a labor camp under the Tsar's regime. Oops. Good thing he was so into that 8 year old he saw back then!

Gleb is consistently cast older when that just doesn't work. If he's any older than Anya, he would've been sent to fight in WWI, which to me would justify anti-monarchy sentiments. Since he's still living at home and considers himself 'a boy' when the Romanovs were killed, he would be Anya's age or younger -- so under eighteen at the time, and under 26 now.

The scene where they call Dmitry 'Dima', as if to establish they know how nicknames work, @ everyone who complained about the '97 film using "Anya". Except that film never said"Anya" was short for "Anastasia", and in the play it's short for "Anna". So.

The ballet that parallels Dmitry to Siegfried and Gleb to Rothbart. You know, Rothbart being the man who dresses a girl up like a princess, and Siegfried being the one to almost shoot her. But sure.

Also, "Odette" does Odile's fouettes there, so you could argue that that is Odile, the fake, the whole time. Interesting choice.

I really cannot stress enough that Anya and Dmitry have no shared backstory at all yet the show pretends they do. "Crowd of Thousands" took place almost two decades ago.

I'm realizing a lot of these complaints are just, nobody looked at the timeline at all. And it seems nitpicky, but it also seems like the bare minimum they could've done, you know?