#theatre critique

[meerawrites]

Beyond the Barricade

Les Misérables: the musical is one of the most popular musicals of all time, and with good reason. The music is well composed, the story is streamlined from its novel counterpart, and its messages like the Victor Hugo 1862 novel of the same name of social progress, empathy to the downtrodden “Miserables” largely progressive (in modern terms) message and text and subtext of social change via the June Rebellion with allusions to at even in its day, politically contentious and ‘radical’ French revolution (1789–1799 or 1800), still holds up today.

[froggtogs]

actually got to have a (visual) art class for the first time in maybe a year! i’ve also come to the conclusion that i still dislike acrylics!!

[valenteal]

Fun fact about me: I am a rare breed of theater nerd who doesn’t like musicals.

I find that while they do a great job showcasing the actor’s musical talents and dancing abilities musicals tend to leave storytelling and character depth by the wayside. Everything becomes a Production not just in that it is a thing that has been produced but in that it’s all over the top and kinda shallow. As a writer I think the medium of storytelling is extremely delicate, and while musicals can have good storytelling it’s very easy to get caught in the many pitfalls. Weather it’s overuse of musical numbers, formulaic songs that all sound the same, or neglecting proper character development or forgetting to showcase it with normal non-musical conversations, there are a lot of ways to go wrong with a musical.

Now, sometimes it’s done well, and people are going to hate me for this, but Disney has a pretty good track record with making musicals. And I mean Disney, not Disney channel. Encanto was flawless. I love the live action remakes of Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. But that isn’t musical theater. That’s movies. The medium is easier to work with for deeper storytelling. Stage performances have the constraints of limited space and a fixed audience who can’t see them up close. But that doesn’t mean you give up on good storytelling! It means you work to overcome those obstacles with talented and dedicated people! You can make a truly moving production on a stage but modern musical theatre just… doesn’t.

For me, a great example of this is Heathers the musical. I watched it back to back with the movie (and I plan on reading the book at some point though I’ve yet to do so) and I was able to really pin down what I dislike about musicals with that comparison. Heathers is a deep story that touches on the very real and very dark truths of being an American teenager and going to public school. It’s a story about imperfect teens who are all under pressure and who all have their own reasons. The characters are realistic and relatable, and anyone who’s been to public high school can probably recognize themselves or people they know in the characters. It tackles the very real issues of teen violence and the mental health crisis that our country is facing. The musical failed to capture any of that. The whole thing was weirdly sanitized and all the characters were turned into caricatures (wow that’s hard to spell). Heathers the musical was not deep or moving and it didn’t take itself half as seriously as it should’ve. The topics it was dealing with were too serious and close to home for them to make light of it. It’s dark. It’s heavy. The characters are kids who made mistakes, were victims of circumstance and none of them deserved to be vilified or victimized. But the musical took all of their depth away and made the whole thing more detached from reality and less serious than it is. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of storytelling, but at least write your own story instead of taking someone else’s and twisting it to suit your needs.

While Heathers is a very specific example it made some general mistakes common in musical theatre. The music itself, while catchy, is fairly unoriginal and simplistic. I don’t mean lyrically, that’s very original, though in my opinion distasteful. Meaningful conversations that showcase character depth were replaced with song and dance routines that failed to convey the same meaning. I found it to be pretty tedious in all honesty, the songs were so repetitive and they didn’t even move the story forward all that quickly, just got stuck in one moment way longer than necessary and sacrificed valuable time that could be used for real dialogue.

Anyway, that’s my informal essay on why musicals are an inferior form of storytelling, with only one example for evidence since this is just me doing this for fun and I am not going to subject myself to more musicals for no reason.

[that-was-anticlimactic]

hottake but r.enee r.app actually wasn't that good in the new m.ean girls movie musical - y'all are just attracted to her

[ftmtftm]

Gender is performance and I dropped out of acting school babey

[clementime3]

Costume thumbnail sketches for Rhinoceros ensemble cast (everyone except Jean, Berenger, and Daisy). Uhhhh so this took forever and I'm just glad it wasn't due Wednesday like it was supposed to be (Thanks Cabaret hahaha)

[thefabelmans2022]

as someone who unironically adores the great gatsby everything i've heard about ART gatsby makes me want to fly to new york immediately while everything i've heard about the current broadway production makes me want to light a theatre on fire.

[thrashntreasure]

Ep104 The Vampire Bat in the Hat w/ Andrew Keenan-Bolger! (Broadway!)

Extra-Extra! We caught ourselves a Newsie! *Fangirls-out* And it's who, Sir? It's all who, Sir? It's Mr. Andrew Keenan-Bolger! (Say what?! *faints*) And he's here to take a bite out of some Heavy Metal with Faith No More's Angel Dust, before reliving the wubbulous world of Seussical the Meussical after it's floppulous run in 2000! Plus, we chat Andrew's latest play- Dracula: a Comedy of Terrors; Puppetry; Success; Fansies; Night of a Thousand Chips; Playing multiple characters in one scene, plus HEAPS more in this hilariously charming episode!

Andrew on Socials: https://twitter.com/KeenanBlogger -- https://instagram.com/KeenanBlogger -- https://www.andrewkeenanbolger.com

Dracula: a Comedy of Terror Tickets: https://draculacomedy.com/#tickets

[the-cat-at-the-theatre-door]

I totally get what ur saying about the vibes of modern Cats prods being different, and its right. But also like I'm glad Cats is still going 4 decades on and its not like one of the forgotten ALW shows that barely tours and hasnt seen modern day successes. Idk there's good and bad to Cats being on this long and being everchanging but I see it as a positive thing.

And that's totally within your right to see it as a positive thing, anon. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I'm not glad that CATS has continued to have the legacy it's had for this long, nor am I going to say that modern day productions are inherently bad things or look down my nose at them, because that isn't what I mean. They're not bad things. I love this musical - it has been a core part of my personality for decades and will continue to be for however long I'm around. I like the fact that it is (somewhat) accessible to me still if I wish to see it live here and now.

What I mean is CATS has become so same-same and "safe" in the past, maybe, ten years or so, where every production (non-replicas notwithstanding) now looks like a copy of itself (like...an entire chunk of its visual palette for over 33 years was scrubbed clean from existence), or a watered down version of a concept, or an evolution of something in a way that producers feel is a "necessary" change to push modernization (that often ends up being *un*necessary), because money (and yes it's always been about money, I'm aware). It's not really everchanging anymore - it's ever on the quest to become one standardized, polished across the board product that can be mass produced. And it's disheartening to think on from time to time because one of the best things about CATS, in my opinion, was always that you were going to get something visually different wherever you went, and the show was free to be more or less polished and more or less disturbing and weird and different and raw and audiences could consume it in several different ways and that was fun!

I'm not saying CATS shouldn't still be running - I'm saying that it's lost a touch of its sparkle in its recent modernity. Jacob Brent was already saying something to this effect way back in 2012/2013 - it's not really a new thing. It's further become the very thing that Gus the Theatre Cat laments about in regards to theatre back in *his* day just having a feeling and atmosphere about it that is missing nowadays - which was in turn written by a man in the 30s who was critiquing the theatre of *even earlier*. That line delivered in his poem/song where he glances around the theatre and breaks the fourth wall saying: "these modern productions are all very well/but they're nothing to equal from what I here tell" was already the musical taking an indirect tongue in cheek dig at itself back in the day when CATS was considered a "mega musical" and not real theatre. Now it almost feels like a *direct* stab at itself.

Tl;dr - I am not unhappy with CATS still being a large part of the theatrical industry or it still running - but I miss old CATS. Productions nowadays don't have the same feeling they used to. These points can and should be able to co-exist. And this is not inherently a bad or good thing - it's just something that needs to be accepted.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

the most recognized as comedic song being the best part of the movie musical because the conventions that serve as a mode of communicating ideas, for example "people just bursting into song" or "choreography" or "'noticeably stylized' cinematography" that accentuates nonliteral nonrealism-invoking choices, are regarded as Silly or Frivolous. and the effort to shove everything else that's more "serious" into what is expected to be read as dramatic cinema that's not stylized in any ways that seem too "Genre" which only makes [but someone's singing?] underwhelming and out of place because no other elements are supporting it

[smol5824]

making a post cause my sister won’t let me rant about this :(

the mario movie is overrated. Don’t get me wrong, I love the animation, I love the fight scenes and all the little dramatic bits. But i feel like they focused too much on the drama and didn’t give enough exposition. Why is the mushroom kingdom at war with bowser? Why is bowser so obsessive over peach? Also, mario and luigi have no context for the entire movie. Mario sees the mushrooms, is given the most brief rundown i’ve ever heard and then just accepts it. Like i would react a bit more to finding out eating a mushroom makes you super big (or super tiny). And luigi, he’s in a prison the entire movie and it doesn’t seem like anyone told him what was going on. And then when he gets out he questions nothing, just grabs a star and thinks “well this all makes sense!” and starts beating up koopas. And literally, at the beginning when mario meets peach she says “you can only join me if you can beat this obstacle course” and then he doesn’t but she still lets him tag along? And is so supportive and “oh, you can do it!” to a guy she just met? Like she’s putting her entire kingdoms fate in the hands of this guy who can’t even do this fucking obstacle course. Overall, I think just more dialogue between characters would have done wonders for the mario movie.

[spectroscopes]

Something I keep thinking about regarding Avatar is how much received wisdom about the original movie, what it’s about, and its legacy people have been operating on for over a decade without actually engaging with the movie itself. I keep thinking about the response to The Way of Water, the fact that there’s apparently a whole generation of people who were raised on the DVD of the original movie and are absolutely sick to death of people saying it doesn’t hold up to home viewing and “had no impact”, and that there’s at least three more of these things coming out. It feels like the cultural conversation is going to have to change and honestly a lot of things people say and have said about that first movie are deeply embarrassing and they kind of only got away with it because of the lack of a sequel validating its success, since seemingly the only measure by which a science fiction epic is deemed worth engagement is if it spawned a franchise and a bunch of merchandise. That, and the fact that people think movies are interchangeable with their plot summaries and trope breakdowns and not worthy of deeper analysis regarding themes and ideas.

Anyway I’m just going to say that personally I have always thought these movies are great, I think the stories are good and people need to stop capitulating to the idea that they’re “bad” especially when these movies get singled out for that particular criticism against a backdrop of unprecedented blockbuster storytelling garbage from Star Wars and the MCU, I think the characters are likeable and their relationships complex and interesting, I think it’s sad that fear of being made fun of for thinking that prevents people from engaging with those elements of the movies, I think Sam Worthington is a good actor and the perception that he’s not has more to do with the fact that he struggled in Hollywood after the first movie than with his performance, I think these movies are great prisms for the way people often construct their opinions about things based on a lot of outside factors and preconceptions about what those factors imply, and I think the critical reassessment that’s going to come in a few decades is going to be kind of embarrassing for the cultural impact brigade and frankly a lot of other people as well.

[pumpkinpaix]

alskdkddkf okay actually now that I’m thinking about it again it is absolutely insane that I went to audition for a musical in undergrad, sang 绿岛小夜曲 and the director’s feedback, 100% genuine and not being mean, was “so is it a cultural style to sing with no emotion, or?”

I’m. Like I wasn’t even offended at that point alskdskdjdkd

similar to the time one of the dance professors said to me after our performance of Godot that he was waiting for me to truly commit to the character’s movement and that I “almost got it but never quite managed” ALSJDKLDDKD

[rmbunnie]

As good as the original Hadestown concept album is I simply cannot agree with the people who insist the Broadway version was created solely to lessen the impact of the original and every lyric change that went down only worsened the experience the because like. Come on, the workers?? You're mad at the addition of a larger group of people that serves perfectly to reflect the power of Orpheus's love and hope, and by extension the power of human love in general, on a broader scale? You're mad that the way Hades's fear is expressed harms people tangibly in a beautiful metaphor for how capitalism and the relentless pursuit of economic progress isolates you? Could not be me. That single worker going "and i am not alone" along with Orpheus in the original Wait For Me, before he has ANY reason to hope that things could ever improve, gets me everytime.

[unissonmag]

MUSICAL // JUST FOR ONE DAY – UNIQUE DANS SON GENRE

Au Old Vic, théâtre bicentenaire, Just For One Day sera en représentation jusqu’au 30 mars. Retour sur un spectacle marquant sur… un spectacle encore plus marquant. Continue reading MUSICAL // JUST FOR ONE DAY – UNIQUE DANS SON GENRE

[vifetoile]

sooo... young fry looking forward to the wicked movie, first of all, great, second of all, do you understand the broader context and the show's place as a response to the jingoism, imperialism, and paranoia of the post-9/11, post-truth world of Dubya Bush? Or do we need to have that discussion?