Ha, yeah, I guess I'm atypical in this fandom for Wilhelmine's memoirs being one of the first texts I tackled (even before any secondary texts). (Meanwhile... I'm going to finish Voltaire's biography before I finish Fritz's, unless mildred tells me she wants to stop so we can do it together or something. Though I imagine Voltaire would think this perfectly right and proper :P :) ) And yes, the actress is really great in that argument scene with Fritz! She could totally have handled it :)
If Katte and Fritz aren't believable good friends (even without the slightest bit of subtext), then Katte's actions make no sense, and Fritz still being haunted by him years later in both senses of the word does not resonate in the way it needs to.
Yes this!!
Of course, it also helps that Chris Murray is now playing Fritz and he, as we agree, is the superior singer (and actor). But seriously, much as the rest of the script is workmanlike as is the music, here it deserves credit for having found a way to fuse various complicated historical developments into a stage-friendly shorthand for a two hour musical which nonetheless is layered and really, really effective.
YES. Like you, (a) I wondered whether acting against Murray helped her acting skills as well -- he was scary! -- though (b) I also thought they were both helped by the script here, which yes, I thought did a great job of this scene.
Indeed. You can imagine how when reading "Grind" for the first time and arrived at Amalie deeply curtseying in front of Heinrich, I thought "ohhhhh, did someone watch the musical after all?"
Haha, no, as mildred says, I just wanted it :) Physical gestures of loyalty: my jam. Physical gestures of complex loyalty relationships where the gesture itself gets across something about the complex nature of the loyalty and the relationship? I will go ANYWHERE for that, even to the extent of pestering the person for whom I'm betaing to put it in :D
(What I was actually thinking of is one of the last scenes in The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Pope (which won the Newbery Honor) -- I don't know if you've read it, but it's a YA-ish about a young lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) who gets exiled to a rural manor and has adventures there with a version of the Fairy Folk that I loved so much that it's forever ruined me for most other depictions of it -- I love the book very much, though it's out of print at present.)
Re: Friedrich: Mythos und Tragödie
If Katte and Fritz aren't believable good friends (even without the slightest bit of subtext), then Katte's actions make no sense, and Fritz still being haunted by him years later in both senses of the word does not resonate in the way it needs to.
Yes this!!
Of course, it also helps that Chris Murray is now playing Fritz and he, as we agree, is the superior singer (and actor). But seriously, much as the rest of the script is workmanlike as is the music, here it deserves credit for having found a way to fuse various complicated historical developments into a stage-friendly shorthand for a two hour musical which nonetheless is layered and really, really effective.
YES. Like you, (a) I wondered whether acting against Murray helped her acting skills as well -- he was scary! -- though (b) I also thought they were both helped by the script here, which yes, I thought did a great job of this scene.
Indeed. You can imagine how when reading "Grind" for the first time and arrived at Amalie deeply curtseying in front of Heinrich, I thought "ohhhhh, did someone watch the musical after all?"
Haha, no, as mildred says, I just wanted it :) Physical gestures of loyalty: my jam. Physical gestures of complex loyalty relationships where the gesture itself gets across something about the complex nature of the loyalty and the relationship? I will go ANYWHERE for that, even to the extent of pestering the person for whom I'm betaing to put it in :D
(What I was actually thinking of is one of the last scenes in The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Pope (which won the Newbery Honor) -- I don't know if you've read it, but it's a YA-ish about a young lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth I) who gets exiled to a rural manor and has adventures there with a version of the Fairy Folk that I loved so much that it's forever ruined me for most other depictions of it -- I love the book very much, though it's out of print at present.)