| re: Related question: what exactly was wrong with Merrily that was so bad in the first place? | |
| Posted by: emmemmkay 03:55 pm EDT 06/23/24 | |
| In reply to: re: Related question: what exactly was wrong with Merrily that was so bad in the first place? - Singapore/Fling 01:21 pm EDT 06/23/24 | |
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| I saw the original Broadway production 3x, including the closing performance, with a dear "old friend" of 55 years, and have very strong feelings about this. I don't think the problem is the reverse chronology per se - Betrayal did the same thing a year earlier on Broadway and no one said they couldn't follow it. A huge problem is exactly what Singapore/Fling says - we meet the characters at their most unlikeable. This is because Sondheim and Furth (I am not a fan of Furth and assume Sondheim deferred to him) made a major error in removing The Hills of Tomorrow and its reprise, which originally opened the show (after the Overture) and ended it. The Hills of Tomorrow provided a buffer before we were subjected to the ugliness of the [spoiler alert] iodine-throwing scene. Moreover, it was quintessential Sondheim Sorry/Grateful-type ambivalence: as the graduation speaker, Frank, drones on, the graduates chime in: "Where's the exit?" "The old Tell-It-Like-It-Is speech!" "Compromise? I haven't even started yet!" And the rewrite robs us of the hopeful moment when [spoiler alert] Franklin chokes on the name "Charles Kringas," as we hear on the OBCR. It also robs us of the true theme of the show, "To thine own self be true," replacing it with the decidedly less elegant comment by Frank about saying yes when he should have said no. | |
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| Previous: | re: Related question: what exactly was wrong with Merrily that was so bad in the first place? - Singapore/Fling 01:21 pm EDT 06/23/24 |
| Next: | re: Related question: what exactly was wrong with Merrily that was so bad in the first place? - comedywest 11:59 am EDT 06/23/24 |
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