#A TWO-SENTENCE MONOLOGUE SIMPLY DOES NOT HOLD A CANDLE TO THE RICH CHARACTERIZATION THAT EXISTS IN THE SPACE OF THE UNSAID

[obstinaterixatrix]

ok I need to go to sleep. but first. I need to do a close reading of ‘next to you’ from wise guys.

so ‘next to you’ happens pretty early in the show. plot-wise, addison and wilson mizner went to alaska to pan for gold, actually got rich, then lost it all in a game of poker. in second vaudeville, addison and wilson part ways, addison returning home to their mother, wilson going off because he refuses to go home empty-handed.

this song still exists in bounce, but was cut from road show. which is a huge shame—not only is it a wonderful tune with some really stand-out lyrics, it does a fantastic job establishing/reinforcing characterization and family dynamics. it’s also weaker in bounce because it ends up cramming ‘my two young men’ in the middle instead of being a reprise of it, which means ‘I don’t know which one I love more’ gets dropped in the middle and not just at the end, which cuts the impact of the line, and I’m getting off track. ok back to wise guys

with competition between the brothers being emphasized, I think sondheim did a REALLY good job showing addison being overshadowed by wilson and modifying his approach as a result. he knows mama mizner like adventure, so he opens with a straightforward (embellished) description—it’s wilson that hijacks the song and turns it around to being about mama mizner. that’s one of the fundamental differences between addison and wilson; addison’s tailoring to what (he thinks) she asks for, and wilson’s tailoring to what she wants. or, rather than tailoring, wilson and mama mizner just operate on the same wavelength, and it’s not one that comes naturally to addison.

so after wilson thoroughly hijacks the song, addison tries to cut in with a new approach, he goes from describing the aurora borealis and the “fairyland” of alaska to: “every moment I was digging, frozen to the bone, digging all alone, all that I could do was think of being—” and it’s him trying to emphasize adventure still but he’s obviously trying to follow wilson’s lead in making this about mama mizner now; he worked and suffered and was thinking about her. but he doesn’t even get to finish his sentence before willie cuts in again (lol). side note, my favorite line in this song is wilson’s “next to you/moonlight on the snow is unexciting/next to you/the moon is just an accident of lighting” like man. phenomenal.

anyway, in the next part (after mama mizner starts incorporating ‘my two young men’ into the song) addison completely abandons using his own methods and just ends up parroting wilson, and then they diverge again; addison’s “I will come and live with you” and wilson’s “I’ll leave you alone”. and in this divergence, there’s the ONLY time wilson echoes addison instead of addison echoing wilson, the line “anything you want”, but then addison diverges from wilson with “tell me what you want”. and after THAT line is when mama mizner drops “I don’t know which one I love more”. and that’s the pattern. wilson’s secure, addison’s insecure, and mama mizner reinforces the dynamic by providing no *meaningful* assurance; she’ll say reasons she loves them both, but her favoritism is obvious. and this thread is continued on through ‘isn’t he something’, not only through the subject of the song but the interaction that happens in the middle (WHICH GETS CUT. COMPLETELY. WHICH WAS A HUGE MISTAKE!!) like I consider it very important for mama mizner to double down when *directly faced* with addison’s inferiority complex. actually while you’re here listen to ‘isn’t he something’