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After spending the first thirteen and a half years of her life not really noticing or caring what her peers were doing, E is now on a discord with kids from math camp and has suddenly started being quite invested in what her math-camp peers are chatting about. (This works out quite well because as a whole they all seem to be both very nice kids and good discord moderators!) One of these things is that a lot of them, being teenagers, are fans of Phantom of the Opera. This is the first time she has ever been noticeably interested in a musical at all, so it was very exciting to me when she asked to listen to Phantom of the Opera!!

I may have posted this before about Les Mis -- I read an abridged version of Les Miserables one summer where I had literally nothing else to read, and then I became aware of the musical Les Miserables the next year when the mom we did carpool with was listening to it in the car and I started catching words like "Jean Valjean" and "Javert." I asked her about it and she very kindly made me a cassette tape (remember those?) of the musical, and she threw in Phantom of the Opera too, because of course you'd want both! And I loved both those tapes -- I remember that you had to write a letter (and I think enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope and maybe a little money?) and they would send you the libretto -- and I did that for both. (Les Mis only sent you the songs, but Phantom sent the entire libretto.) I have both of those musicals committed to memory in deep corners of my brain, except for some of the very repetitive parts (hello, Masquerade). I then was able to watch both and loved both, but Les Mis was the one I returned to again and again -- I think I've only seen Phantom that once, when I was a teenager -- oh, and I saw the movie which was so forgettable that I'd half forgotten there was a movie -- and I've seen Les Mis... uh, well, more times than that. (Five, maybe? Six? And the movie too, of course, which I thought was less forgettable than Phantom's movie :) )

So we cued up Spotify and listened to a bunch of the songs, and yep, those songs are still burned into my brain. But when E started asking about the storyline, it turned out that there were big gaps of that missing from my memory, because it's the songs I know, not the story! And then I found the 25th anniversary Royal Albert production and was super excited to find out, which I didn't know before, that it was an actual staged production (I was very disappointed by the Les Mis 25th anniversary being a concert version), so we have also watched that!

Some various thoughts: cut for length )

Falsettos

Apr. 4th, 2019 06:22 pm
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Hey, I'm kind of catching up -- this is only two months late :)

So after falling in love with Book of Mormon of course my next step was to go look at what else Andrew Rannells has ever done (I also found that he's an excellent and witty interviewee, and writing this up reminded me to put his book on hold at the library), and when I found out he was in a musical with Christian Borle, whom I have been following ever since I found out about Legally Blonde lo these many years ago, I was going to be watching it despite its name (I'm sorry, but the name did not exactly evoke confidence in me), and I probably would have enjoyed it no matter how bad it was.

It was brilliant. (I watched an upload of a professionally filmed version -- I think they filmed it for PBS -- here, with the usual caveats about how they go down and back up again frequently, and if this link breaks let me know and I'll try to replace it if possible.)

I mean. It is set in the 80's, and originally produced in the 90's, and there's this sort of era where it feels like every story produced in the 90's and set in the 80's and involving gay men has to involve at least one of them dying tragically of AIDS. (And there's a distinct implication that his partner is going to die tragically of AIDS after the end of the musical.) But while that's the ending of the plot, it's not what the musical is about.

It's about family, and what that means, and how you make a family when you've intentionally fractured your own family, and how you recover from that, and it's about having a kid (Anthony Rosenthal is freaking brilliant in this, the whole cast is amazing but he's especially amazing) and how that kid relates to life and you and everything, and it's about being Jewish.

Borle and Rannells, as Marvin and his lover Whizzer, are both their usual great acting selves. I honestly think Borle's voice isn't that amazing, but his voice acting/acting can't be beat. He also is very convincing as a Marvin who is... very not-perfect, who is very flawed. I had never heard of Brandon Uranowitz before, but he's absolutely wonderful as the psychologist who marries Marvin's ex-wife Trina (and is often the voice of sanity when Marvin and Trina have conflicts). Stephanie J. Block I'd heard of before, but never really seen in action, and she is just amazing as the neurotic ex-wife. And just when I was starting to question why the only woman we saw was kind of neurotic, in Act 2, Tracie Thoms and Betsy Wolfe are just so great as the lesbian neighbors. (Can we have more lesbian doctor characters please? Thoms/Dr. Charlotte was so great!)

I was looking at a copy of the libretto for The Usual Reasons, and it struck me how much (and how well) it is written for stage; the dialogue doesn't seem like anything special written down on the page, but the actors make it come alive.

(I don't really have much to say about it, not because it was bad, but because it was so well done that I don't have much to say except "yup, that was brilliant.")
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In November, I fell headfirst into falling desperately in love with the Book of Mormon musical.

I really wasn't expecting it to work in quite that way? I hadn't even ever watched it, although I've listened to the cast recording about a billion times, and am kind of desperately in love with parts of that, and I'd watched clips on YouTube. Cut for length. Lots of discussion of religion, at least tangentially. )
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So, I will probably have to write a loooooong post about this later, but in the meantime:

1. While watching the opera Norma, I really felt like the librettist meant to write Norma and Adalgisa running off together and got told by the censors or someone that they couldn't do that and hastily pasted on an ending with the requisite dead soprano. (but only one!) I realize this is probably not the case, but it sure seemed like it.

2. Why didn't anyone, before my recip this year, tell me that Book of Mormon, in addition to being wildly and hilariously offensive and also tapping into a deep psychological truth in giving me the mental image of singing and dancing happy shiny missionaries (all of which I did already know), was also about a thoughtful and coherent character arc dealing with faith and crises of faith and faith vs. religion and the problematic nature of God answering prayers? Why didn't I know it was so directly relevant to my interests, particularly this year? IT IS SO GOOD. I HAVE BEEN CONVERTED.

Hamilton!

Apr. 13th, 2018 09:18 pm
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I saw Hamilton last week with my sister!! I am probably the only person who has ever flown to the Midwest to see Hamilton, but there you have it. (Okay, we went to see D's parents and do Holy Week with them, which we have never done with them before -- and we went to see my new nephew (who is super cute) -- but really we went so I could go see Hamilton with her.)

...It was AWESOME. I had seen clips, but it hadn't really prepared me for how -- perfect and perfectly integrated the whole thing was. The singing, the dancing, the use of the chorus, the choreography, the lighting (and I don't usually even notice lighting, though lately with all the opera I've been mainlining I've been paying more attention)... all of it was just really amazing.

C. and I represented two extremes of Hamilton consumption. I have listened to the cast recording I don't know how many times, actively searched out all kinds of information about the production, etc. C. had purposely (on the recommendation of friends) not listened to the recording as much as possible. Mixed results on both sides. C. was overwhelmed by amazingness but suffered particularly in the first act not being able to understand all the words. I found in general that knowing the words and the story let me concentrate on details of the production, which I really like, but was probably not quite as immersive, and in particular I think I wish I hadn't known quite so many little details of how the production worked, because I was watching for them instead of being surprised by them Production detail )

Various random comments: Cut for length )

Production spoiler. )
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I have not forgotten I was going to post about Wicked, which I FINALLY saw in person (touring company) last time we went to see my sister C. (The year before we saw West Side Story, which was also fabulous, although the women were way better than the men and we didn't bother to spring for orchestra section.) We almost ended up not seeing it, because all of us had gotten deathly ill a couple of days before, but fortunately we had recovered enough by then that we were up to spending three hours out of the house without collapsing.

It was amazing. I'd "watched" it a while back, but it didn't compare at all to seeing it live. I think a lot of the spectacle needs the full canvas of a live theater, as well as the contrast between the extravagance of the stage and the darkness of the theater. The big group numbers were totally amazing visually in a way I hadn't appreciated before.

It helped that the Elphaba (Emily Koch) was quite excellent. I'm not sure she had the belting volume of some, but more importantly, she managed to emotionally sell us on all the twists and turns of Elphaba's character (some of which really honestly don't make a whole lot of sense). She played Elphaba as a bit of an awkward idealistic nerd, which a) really resonated with C. and me, ha; b) works really well as a way of differentiating her (not just by skin color) from the rest of the [school] cast, both in terms of showing her as divorced from them and in terms of emotionally explaining the continuing rift between her and them (and emotionally showing the consequences of the skin-color rift; it goes both ways); and c) is a good foundation for the emotional twists the character has to take. E.g., it makes sense that sometimes Elphaba's awkwardness and frustration with being awkward manifests as anger occasionally in the first act and more generally in the second act. And the idealism makes a lot more sense to me coupled with the awkward nerdiness; that sense of self-righteousness (sometimes justified, sometimes over-the-top) seems to be underscored by not ever fitting in socially-emotionally as well.

A lot of this, of course, is in the musical itself (I mean, Elphaba is supposed to be idealistic and angry, and the awkwardness is definitely strongly implied), but my previous Elphaba experiences, Katie Rose Clarke (the Elphaba I "watched") and Idina Menzel (clips of whom I've watched) both played Elphaba much more straight in terms of emotional character. Their versions of the character seemed to be much more normal and well-adjusted and hardly awkward at all early on, which made her forays into angry idealism later on make much less sense to me.

The Galinda was fine; she sang well (probably better than the Elphaba, actually), but she was not exceptional the way both C. and I thought the Elphaba was exceptional. Afterwards we went and watched a bunch of Menzel/Chenoweth Wicked Youtube videos, and we agreed that Chenoweth was exceptional (and Menzel was not).

Fiyero was also fine. I've seen some clips of rather wooden Fiyeros, and this one was pretty good. I hadn't realized how important dancing is for his character, and he was an excellent dancer.

The Wizard (Stuart Zagnit) was the surprising one; I'd always found his songs super boring (and they are), but the comic acting really sells those songs. I was impressed.

I had warned my sister beforehand that the plot is sort of… nonsensical. She turned to me after Act I and said, "It really seems to all be hanging together pretty well right now!" After Act II she said, "Well… you were right about the plot."
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Yup, I'm officially obsessed. The NPR streaming link is still up. It is also available to Amazon Prime members (free) and is on Spotify. It is possible to get a pdf of the official lyrics here.

Okay, now that I've had a chance to listen a second and third time, I… just want to talk about this ALL THE TIME. So! Things I Love About Hamilton:

There are a lot of things I love: cut for length of incoherent squee. And, I guess, mild spoilers for history. )

Ways in which Hamilton is currently annoying me:
-I have King George's da-da-da-da-da refrain in my head as an earworm now. And, I mean, Britpop as a genre is not really something I want to have in my head as an earworm.
-I have these meetings at work and I keep trying to force whatever anyone says into rap meter. BAH.

Also: Alexander Hamilton is TOTALLY the plebe immigrant good-looking Miles Vorkosigan. I mean, forward momentum was basically his life, can't you just see Miles doing basically every single thing Hamilton does, the fighting and the politics and the wrecking his life in his drive for forward momentum… Now I think Miles' voice will always be Miranda's voice in my head (although Miles looks nothing like Miranda, I guess). Also, now I kind of want someone to write Miles having the equivalent of the Reynolds scandal! (I guess Memory was… kind of… that, only with it transmuted to the mercenary army domain. And it turned out much better for Miles. It must be nice to have the author on your side :) )
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You guys, I've been listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton cast recording basically nonstop today and it is AMAZING. I don't even understand how a hip-hop rap musical about Alexander Hamilton even got MADE, but it DID and I don't even known anything about either hip-hop or Hamilton and it is completely awesome and I have been tearing up a little over it (though maybe that is breastfeeding hormones), and I just went and reserved the Chernow biography from the library. (Miranda apparently read the Chernow biography on vacation and thought, wow, that would make a great hip-hop musical! AND THEN HE WROTE IT. How cool is that?!)

Link here, I suspect it's only good until Sept 25, when the recording becomes available. ETA: Link is still good. Also, Amazon Prime is streaming it free for Prime members.

I want to see this so badly!

ETA: CABINET DEBATES AS RAP BATTLES. GREATEST THING EVER.
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So it turns out that the easiest way of motivating myself to do household chores / cleaning up, which I pretty much loathe, is to put on music really loudly in the background. And then [personal profile] scaramouche told me that they had not cut Max and the Baroness's song in the recent NBC production of the Sound of Music Live! and then J, when informed of the same, sent me a clip. I blame you both!

Because it turns out that I have FEELINGS about this production. They are both good and bad feelings, but mostly it just turns out that I love the Sound of Music very very much and that I would be willing to watch it and love it even if they cast Carrie Underwood as Maria. ...wait. Anyway, I loved it a lot. Because SOUND OF MUSIC. (hrrrrmph. It appears not to be available on NBC anymore, so I cannot link you.)

Cut for flailing about about everything. Short version: like everyone else, I loved the Abbess and Max and the Baroness. Unlike everyone else, I loved Captain von Trapp. Like everyone else, I didn't think Underwood was very good. )
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So as one does, I was listening to the recent Force Over Distance chapters, and got to the discussion here about the use of pitch arcs in speaking to designate a certain kind of seductive fascination, particularly in male characters. Think Robert Carlyle as Mr. Gold in OUAT... or Claudia Black in anything ...or Michael Crawford, in basically anything but in particular POTO. (Though the fact that he kind of tries to do it in everything -- I seriously think he doesn't know how to turn it off-- means that I can't listen to him try to do non-threatening characters. Like Jean Valjean *shudder*)

And then there's the Canadian recording of Phantom.

So on [personal profile] zopyrus's recommendation, I listened to the Canadian recording of POTO on Spotify, and despite my saying up and down that I wouldn't like any other recording because I imprinted on the London recording at a young age, I liked it a lot. I wasn't particularly taken by Canadian!Raoul (sorry, Steve Barton really did imprint me), but Rebecca Caine as Christine was lovely, and then the Phantom -- well, so, I listened not knowing who the Phantom was at first (thanks Spotify!), which was great, because now that I know it's a little creepy -- but anyway, it is a very, very different interpretation than Crawford's. Canadian!Phantom has a sort of disjointed, flat way of speaking/singing that brings forth a character who isn't used to socializing, isn't used to normal human discourse, writes self-insert Don Juan operas, is desperately in love with a girl way out of his league: is really a bit pathetic.

I sort of adore this interpretation. "Past the Point of No Return", for instance, is quite frankly incredibly fascinating to me for how different it is from Crawford's interpretation. Crawford, to me, is all about sweeping Christine off her feet, in an incredibly creepy and emotionally controlling way. Canadian!Phantom is -- well, yeah, he's still incredibly creepy and emotionally controlling, but in a much sadder and pathetic way, and in "No Return" I feel like it comes across much more as a "Hey, I finally get to star as Don Juan... and it's actually a little nervewracking."

But now it's very clear to me why a whole generation of fangirls has woobified the Phantom. Because Crawford's interpretation is very sexy, very darkly fascinating... And it's also wildly interesting to me that Crawford essentially does this by very controlled use of the way he varies both his pitch and his nasality in speech and singing; and Canadian!Phantom is able to achieve a very different effect by flattening that out quite a lot.
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So the 25th Anniversary edition of Phantom of the Opera came up on Spotify Radio, and I ended listening to about half an hour of it (the last half hour, so I could get the revised ending) and then giving it up and going back to the original Broadway recording. And then I felt the need to write a lot about it.

Is it my imagination, or has Broadway, at least big-production Broadway, gotten a lot more… emotional… in the last twenty-five years? There was just so much aaaaaangst in the 25th-anniversary recordings of both POTO and Les Mis that I feel wasn’t in the original (and which I wasn’t really a fan of). It’s almost like they feel that if they don’t shriek and wail that we won’t actually believe that they’re feeling any real emotion.

Anyway, it’s interesting to me that in terms of the musical itself, I’ve only gotten more rabid about Les Miserables, while POTO has not aged well in my reaction to it. POTO is kind of a terrible story, boring narratively (oh hey love triangle, never seen that one before!) and thematically incoherent, and full of Relationship Fail. (Even when we were kids, my sister and I used to make fun of “I must go! …Order your fine horses!” It never, I think, even occurred to us to take Christine/Phantom seriously.) And worst of all where I’m concerned, the music is just so boring (because let’s face it, I will still listen to your musical if it has terrible plot and no themes and horrible messages about relationships). I present to you Music of the Night… Masquerade… need I say more?

And yet the original Broadway recording is still special to me. Some of that, I’m sure, is early childhood imprinting. But also — also the triumvirate of Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, and Steve Barton transcends the poor material they were given to work with.

In which, among other things, Music of the Night has a crappy chord progression. )

Anyway, I still love this recording, but I don't think I can deal with anyone else singing POTO. (Though I would welcome recommendations!)

Also, note to self: do not listen to Phantom/Webber’s Don Juan Triumphant in close proximity to Don Giovanni like this time, because, um. Yeah. Webber? Not even close.
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I know, I know! This may be my last Les Mis post for a while, though. I think. Maybe? Aaaaanyway, listened to it on Spotify and now have Opinions!

(Also, before I forget: for those of you who like such things, [livejournal.com profile] rarewomen is starting up and you should all do it! My wibbling thoughts on nominations are here.)

-Iiiiiinterestingly, I thought I would laugh at Crowe's songs (and I did, when I listened before watching the movie), but listening to the recording after watching the movie, I didn't laugh, and it has actually reconciled me somewhat to Crowe's Javert. It's not the book Javert I imprinted hard on as a child, nor is it Terrence Mann's Javert (which closely follows book!Javert), but I'm coming to terms with the fact that it's just different and it's okay that way. Fine.

-"I dreamed a dream" I skipped right past because I could not take the raw pain in Hathaway's rendition. The other song I skipped halfway through was "Bring Him Home," which was okay in the theater because Jackman can act like whoa, but in the recording it's painfully obvious that he was stretching his voice to do it.

-"Suddenly" made me cry. I think listening to Hugh Jackman's performance of this song will always make me cry. I still think it's kind of a weird song, musically, but the words are so book!canon, and Hugh Jackman -- he -- I JUST -- maybe it's because I have a kid now myself, maybe it's because this part of the book where Valjean's heart is changed (again) by Cosette has always spoken to me so strongly, maybe it's because I spent the last year so angry at Once Upon a Time at its kid!storyline, maybe it's that Jackman has children himself (and adopted, for that matter) and all that just came through in the acting, I just do not know, but to me this has become the heart and soul of the movie and is very possibly the one part of the recording I think is worth owning for sure -- not for the music, but for all the emotion in Jackman's voice. (Well, that and "Empty Chairs." And Hathaway. And... oh, crap, what's happened to me?)

-I forgot to mention this in my movie notes, but the choice to start "Empty Chairs" a capella totally made my heart stop. Both watching the movie and listening to the recording. (Although Eddie Redmayne's voice, which I loved in the theater, distracted me a little in the recording -- though not in this song -- because it sounds a bit like his mouth is full of marbles.)

-The orchestration is very interesting to me. I especially loved their use of the -- is it cannons? Instead of timpani? Anyway, I love it. I love the orchestration. I love that they used the fact that it's not a musical to bring in a huge orchestra that wasn't limited to a pit, and occasionally random sound effects, and re-orchestrated the whole darn thing. LOVED.
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I still haven't finished part 4. The thing is LONG! But I am getting there! In the meantime, have moooore thoughts than you ever wanted to know about me and the book and the musical.

The abridged book, the Broadway recording, the musical, the book, the Complete Symphonic Recording )

Rambly incoherent FEELS on the Broadway vs. CSR recordings )
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The Secret Garden (musical) - Original London Cast: 4/5. Very different from the Broadway version; much more true to the book. And here is where I get all out-of-character for me, because I usually a) hate adaptations that don't stay true to the book, and b) I usually get imprinted by the first thing I see/hear and hate the second one... so I would have expected to either hate the Broadway version or the London one, or possibly both. But nope. I suppose the two factors cancel one another out? I adore the Broadway version (I feel it does something new and exciting with the story while still staying true to the book -- and I am a sucker for works that transform what they build on), but I really like this one too.

Philip Quast is freaking amazing in this one and basically sells the whole thing to me. I love Mandy Patinkin like mad, don't get me wrong, but... PHILIP QUAST. I didn't even like Quast in the Les Mis symphonic recording (having been imprinted by Terrence Mann, of course, which in retrospect I'm pretty sure made me not agree with some of Quast's acting/musical choices even though they're perfectly valid ones), but Quast is really, really good as Archie Craven, just spot on and richly emotional and... wow.

I have a personal preference for Rebecca Luker (Lily) in the Broadway recording to Meredith Braun in the London recording; Braun has a much younger, less ethereal sound -- which is in keeping with the London interpretation, and blends better with Colin, but I just like Luker better. The Broadway Dickon is much better than the London Dickon (who has some weird voice tics); the London Colin is much better than the Broadway Colin (it was a treat not to have to cringe through a super-breathy "Round-Shouldered Man" like I always have to do whenever I listen to the Broadway recording); I like the Broadway Martha better than the London one (who is a bit melodramatic). Natalie Morgan as the London Mary, although she's not bad, unfortunately cannot hold a candle to Daisy Eagan on Broadway, which is too bad because Mary is such an integral part of the recording.
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3/5. Do we really need another recording of Les Miserables? WHY YES. YES WE DO. Um. Okay. Really we don't. But quite frankly if they recorded it every month I'd probably listen to it, as long as I could listen to it for free. (Hi, Spotify!)

Lots of little bits that were cut from the original to, I guess, make the whole thing shorter -- mostly snippets of dialogue that would presumably not be missed by anyone by me (as a result of listening to the Complete Symphonic Recording (CSR) constantly as a child, I did notice all of them), although I feel like the Javert-Valjean dialogue cut right before "Who am I" makes it likely no one can understand what's going on unless she's read the book -- and I laughed when I found "Little People" had mostly been cut -- and why would you cut the intro to Valjean's confession to Marius? This way it makes no sense!

Although I definitely like the Broadway and CSR actors better in general (Terrence Mann will always be Javert to me, and Anthony Warlow will always always be Enjolras, and Michael Ball will always and forever be Marius), I felt that in general the actors were just fine here. Eponine might even have been better (I must confess that none of the previous Eponines have really gelled with me). Although Cosette and Marius seem to be in a battle to make this as OMG DRAMATIC as humanly possible, perhaps they wish they'd been cast in the Ring cycle or something, and drag down as many of their fellow actors as possible (Valjean seems totally fine -- both his Bring Him Home and the reprise are pretty fantastic -- until either Cosette and Marius shows up, at which point he suddenly BECOMES ALL DRAMATIC; same with Eponine).

So, not worth buying I'd say, but worth listening to once on Spotify if you're batty about Les Miz like I am, just to see a different interpretation (and in the case of Cosette and Marius, ZOMG HOW DRAMATIC can it get), and maybe as preparation for the movie ;)

trip report

Jul. 4th, 2012 12:31 pm
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Just got back from epic almost-two-week trip to Boston, Washington D.C. (this part was unintentional -- thanks United for the surprise overnight stay, sigh), St. Louis, and Omaha, involving six airplanes, four hotels, one brand-new just-built humongous 4000-sq-ft house, both D's and my full complement of family at differing times (including two dogs and five children), one wedding, and approximately two billion times E. was asked to say "cheese" (mostly by her grandparents), scattered among those places.

Various random things:including small-child meanderings, the musical Chicago, crazy family reunion )
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So, I might have watched it. I quite enjoyed it -- it's sort of this last decade's Les Mis, isn't it? with the smoke and the dancing and special effects and big chorus numbers and pop wholesome faux-deep message? And I'm a total sucker for friendships, so there's that. (It is hilarious to me that the love interest seems really rather like an afterthought tacked on.) Also, was Elphaba supposed to be the heroine? Because it seemed quite clear that Galinda was way more interesting, even though she got no solos. Elphaba really didn't have nearly as much of a character arc. (But hey, I also find "Thank Goodness" a much more interesting song, character-wise, than "Defying Gravity" -- it's so interesting to hear Galinda sing "I couldn't be happier!" with the layers of, well, unhappiness -- so there's that.)

But... is it just me, or does this whole musical make no sense? That is, huge sections of the plot seem to have been shoehorned into place in ways that are just... incoherent and random. Spoilers, obviously, for Wicked )
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Mary Poppins (Musical soundtrack: 2/5): Way to stomp on an icon of my childhood, there. OW. Okay, so, I adore the original movie. I am aware that much of this love has to do with having watched it over and over again when I was, oh, four, but also the movie is another of those high-energy absurdity-filled things that succeeds through not ever taking itself seriously. (Though again, the characters are often taken seriously.) And the musical does Take Itself Seriously, which I hate. (One of the low points for me is when Mrs. Banks has to sing a Moving Song about How Being Mrs. Banks Is So Hard Because She Is, Like, An Oppressed Woman, where she is apparently trying to channel Ragtime and it Does Not Work. Now, I adore Ragtime, too, but Ragtime turns high over-the-top angst into an art form by Always Taking Everything Seriously, and never hinting, even for a moment, that the super-angst could possibly be ridiculous -- you can't have it both ways.) AND it took out all the actually good songs from the movie ("Sister Suffragette," "The Life I Lead," "Stay Awake," "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank") (K and I had this hilarious conversation recently where it turned out neither of us had the faintest idea what a suffragette was when we watched this movie as children) and replaces them with stultifyingly obvious super-sugary-Disneyfied songs. (Occasionally it keeps a song in, and does its best to ruin it by disneyfying the accompanying instrumental, but you can still hear how much better the original songs were, even so.)

The Little Mermaid (Musical soundtrack: 3+/5): In contrast, Little Mermaid started its movie life as a super-sugary-Disneyfied confection, so there wasn't much more they could do to it. Some of the new songs are simply filler, but some aren't bad. I'm always a fan of songs that have more than two singers, so of course I enjoyed the quartet "If Only" even if it is a trifle indulgent. On the other hand, Ursula's voice character is far more compelling in the movie version.

Beauty and the Beast (Musical soundtrack: 3+/5): The musical soundtrack, happily, has Terrence Mann, whom I have been in love with since, uh, sixth grade (that being when I first heard the cast recording of Les Miz). (Except, um, a little creepy because the fact I remember him from my childhood means he must have been in his 40's when doing this, and then Belle is supposed to be high school-age... erk. Although, actually, I guess the way the fairy tale goes, the Beast is probably supposed to be really old, huh? Hm. I may just have ruined a perfectly nice fairy tale for myself. And to be sure, Mann is a good enough actor that he comes across in this character as having a mental age of 15, so there's that.) Sadly, it does not have Angela Lansbury. That's about all I have to say about that.
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(Book: 2/5, Movie: 3/5, Musical: 3+/5, Broadway cast album: 3/5, London cast album: 3+/5, Musical broadcast performance: 4/5) Yeah. So. Um. Some time ago, I watched Legally Blonde, the movie, mostly because I actually saw part of it being filmed (they used my campus for a couple of the shots, and so I'd be walking to class and see movie cameras everywhere). It was a fun movie -- not least the novelty of seeing my staid, geeky campus being used as a party school. Then through Pandora I started listening to the songs of the musical.

I finally sat down and listened to all the songs, and was intrigued enough to watch the whole thing on a youtube copy of the MTV airing of the musical with Laura Bell Bundy and Christian Borle and... um... really liked it. I'd go so far as to say I'm a little obsessed, if you couldn't tell from the plethora of rankings at the beginning... It's, well, like the movie: pink and fashionable sorority girl Elle (Bundy) isn't taken seriously by her boyfriend Warner, so she follows him to Harvard Law School to win him back... and then it turns out to be a riff on finding one's own place and voice in the world on one's own terms, and not letting a guy dictate one's terms.

The musical's big strength, I think (which it mostly shares with the movie), is that it never really takes itself seriously. (Indeed, "Seriously," one of the early songs, is also one of the best ones for how it very much pokes fun at the generic love ballad.) I mean, let's face it, this is a musical where the heroine gets into Harvard Law by doing a dance number accompanied by a huge poster of her and her ex-boyfriend, after which the old stodgy professors on the admissions committee join in the dance number. Yeah. It's a delicate structure of bouncy absurdities that, if it ever tried to take itself seriously, would fall down catastrophically, but it doesn't. (There are frequent parts where the characters are taken seriously, which is all to the good -- it wouldn't have any emotional depth otherwise -- but never where the musical takes itself as a musical seriously.)

Cut mostly for length, because it turns out I want to pontificate more about <i>Legally Blonde: The Musical</i> than you could have imagined, or than you want to read: energy, analysis of the music, singing vs. acting, album vs. performance, character development, compassion, feminism, and stereotypes. Shut up. I had to get this out, and now I'm all right and sane again, I think. Mostly. )

I also thought about it some and realized that I think my obsession with this musical is my version of the Twilight phenomenon. By which I mean: I understand why teenage girls love Twilight, but I also know a surprising number of middle-aged women with husbands and children who love it, including level-headed women who would be the last people I'd think would enjoy vampire love. After reading it, I decided it was because it took you back to when you were giddy-crushing/falling-in-love with someone, and I guess it is, for these people, a wonderfully nostalgic time to remember. Well. Twilight didn't do it for me, at all, but apparently, even though I have nothing in common with a sorority girl who goes to law school, I love being taken back to a time where I got to be really good friends with a guy, that later turned into romantic interest (Hi, D! And, for that matter, S!) And in the context of learning one can grow in directions one never really thought about, or thought one could grow in. Huh. How about that.

(Also. Um. Er. Would any of you be willing to, um, beta? I KNOW. Shut up.)
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It's getting near the end of February, so I thought I'd do another overheard-in-our-household quiz thingie -- some version of all of these quotes were spoken in our household during the month of February. Books and movies both are fair game, with one from a musical. Frighteningly enough, more of the quotations are not from books than are, which is really Just Wrong, but oh well. I'll do an update to this post on Monday with the answers.

1. 'You're altogether too full of bobance and bounce and high spirits. You've got to learn that life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie.'

2. "Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life."

3. "He lay there like a slug. It was his only defense."

4. "Well, I'm back."

5. Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
If you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
Till she cry “Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
I must have you!”

6. Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.

7. Don't squeeze your bosoms against the chair, dear! It'll stunt their growth, and then where would you be?

ETA: Answers here. )

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