#did people ever find a proshot?

[amor3volous]

i saw a video on youtube covering spring awakening and i was just so shocked that it had any sort of traction so i watched it, fell down the rabbit hole, logged onto tumblr for the first time in a while, and JEEZ, someone give me back 2020-2021 spring awakening tumblr

[emotionalmotionsicknessxx]

So you want to see the 1988 Phantom of the Opera proshot at the New York Public Library...

If you know one thing about me on this internet it's that I love when things are spelled out and easy. This weekend my friends and I went to the New York Public Library (NYPL) Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT) located at Lincoln Center to watch the Phantom of the Opera proshot. I saw some how-tos and asked friends who have already seen it, but it was still a little confusing and I wanted to clarify how my experience went:

Bottom line: if you can make your way to NYC, you too can see the Phantom proshot from 1988 starring Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman, and Steve Barton and lose your mind :)

Here's how I did it:

I showed up to the New York Public Library Library of the Performing Arts located at Lincoln Center with my two (2) also phanatical friends. We were vibrating. We went when the archive opened at noon. Hours can be found here.

We were directed to the third floor where the archive is. We had to check our bags (but were able to bring whatever in - I brought my phone, a pen, and a notebook for notes)

We met the sweetest librarian who was so helpful - he got us on computers to apply for NYPL library cards AND special collections cards. If you live in NY, you can get a regular NYPL card. If you are from out of town, they will give you a NYPL visitor card (good for 3 months!) We filled out applications you can find here and here if you are curious about the questions asked. Many questions are optional! Note: there was some scuttlebutt about needing to be a student or researcher or even an expert in the field - you don't need to say why you're there unless you want to! I kept it brief: said I was an independent researcher and there for personal interest. They are just happy people are using our libraries! Sign the letter here to stop the mayor from closing our libraries

Once we had our cards (NYPL Card AND a special collections card/number) we were told to head to the archive, where we met a second, lovely librarian who was excited we were there. You can ask for any show that isn't currently running (sorry Hadestown nation). You can find a list of what they have here. All titles available at TOFT begin with the call number NCOV, NCOX, or NCOW. Note: we did not make an appt ahead of time, and luckily no one was watching Phantom but our friend wanted to watch Great Comet and someone already had it. To avoid this, make an appt. To make an appointment, call (212) 870-1642 or email toft@nypl.org.

We signed off to use the archive and were off to the races! That's it! We were put on three monitors and I controlled the pausing and replaying of the tapes. You can replay as much as you want, and can even ask for other plays/musicals that you want to watch during your session there. I took notes in a notebook, I saw other people taking notes on their phone. There are cameras to make sure you aren't doing any recording or photo taking. Note that you can only see this proshot once without special permission, so if you want to come back you'll need to look into what that permission is.

If you're interested in what was actually IN the beautiful, spectacular, amazing, never before been done proshot (it's from May 25, 1988 by the way) listen to my/our podcast, Leroux Less Travelled!

My inbox is open if you have more questions! I hope this clarifies how easy it is if you're ever in NYC!! We will get through phantom-drought together :)

[glassprism]

Hii!! I found out about trading an hour ago and am a bit confused. Like, how do you even find the bootlegs if not on youtube? Also, why trade instead of posting publicly?

I have a YouTube page where I post slime tutorials and the like of shows I have watched or proshots I have downloaded. Why gatekeep? I'm literally just curious, I don't mean to offend.

So, the thing that I really, really want to emphasize, because I feel like it'll make everything make more sense, is that bootlegging is illegal. It is against the law, people can and do get arrested for it, and there have been many recorders (mostly filmers) in the past who have been caught and simply disappeared, taking with them any unreleased boots and all potential boots they could have filmed in the future.

And I say that because I REALLY want to emphasize that when people, especially filmers, say, "Hey, can you not post these on YouTube or anywhere else publicly?" it's NOT because they are trying to "gatekeep". Many of them are making their bootlegs as accessible as possible by making it available for purchase and/or trade down the line. They are doing it for their own safety. They are risking legal repercussions getting these bootlegs to you and are asking you not to get them into trouble by blatantly posting their stuff on the most accessible video-sharing site out there. THEY ARE TRYING NOT TO GET FINED, ARRESTED, OR WORSE.

Okay, got all that? Great! Now I can answer your questions.

First - many traders, myself included, have trading sites where we post everything we have available to trade. That is a great place to find bootlegs, and even better, people who have those bootlegs and might be willing to trade or (if you're polite) gift them to you! Here's mine. How do you find these sites? Honestly, a lot of times I just stumble on them by Googling something like "[name of show] bootleg trade". What I also personally do is start bookmarking sites of traders that have large collections of shows I'm interested in (like Phantom) or the sites of people who record bootlegs, so that I can easily check up on them every week or so.

There are also many areas where traders congregate! Musical Exchange on LiveJournal is one of the easiest to find. There was a Yahoo board back in the day that has not turned into a Groups io thing. There's Encora Reprise (I don't use it and I feel like it keeps going down but some swear by it). There are also several Discord servers devoted to trading or set up by filmers. Those are also great places to find other traders and newly released boots.

Second, I partially answered your question about posting publicly with the safety issue, but the other answer is, simply, that trading is decentralized because it's illegal. I don't think there's any one person who has every bootleg ever recorded, it's all spread out amongst us, and it's going to be extremely difficult to get everyone to pool it all together because, well, this is also a hobby, not a job, and we just don't have time for that. And even if we did, there probably is no person with enough space and money and time to upload every bootleg in the world and maintain it, because they will not get enough benefit out of it because musicals are a relatively niche interest.

Here's another way of thinking about it. I'm at the point of trading almost exclusively Phantom. I don't have every bootleg in the world, but my collection of Phantom boots alone is 2.7 TB. That is Phantom alone, I haven't even considered every other musical in the world and all their bootlegs. If you want me to have all these available publicly, I would basically need to get my own server. If I want my own server, I'm probably going to pay money. Hundreds of dollars of money. And I will have to maintain this, which will also cost money, with possibly the only way I get money back being to use, I don't know, ads or making users pay money for accounts, and unless I finagle things legally I could also be responsible if the site gets found and taken down, and you want me to do this, constantly, for bootlegs that 99% of people won't download? (You really think some people are raring to get the blurry 1992 video of Jun Sawaki, for example?) Yeah, that looks like a lot of work and trouble for me to do something that probably won't save others a lot of trouble either.

Anyway, I know you don't mean to be rude and I hope the above didn't come off as aggressive, it's just that, well, I've seen these arguments time and again and it never really seems to cross people's minds that, at the end of the day, this is a hobby that is technically illegal, that just about all the rules and limitations around are done for the safety of the bootlegger and not because they enjoy waving the boot out of your reach, and that trading is done because it's the safest, most anonymous way of, well, getting theatre bootlegs, that people have come up with. At any rate, I hope that answers your questions!

[king-of-colors]

happy birthday jeremy jordan!!

because it's his birthday, i drew jay gatsby climbing back over the fence after only tea. because i thought it was funny and it turned out better than i expected. colored version and uncolored.

also this. rip the quality (i traced the set pieces on the side and his silhouette guys, no i'm not that good at drawing)

now i'm going to yap about jeremy for far too many paragraphs, feel free to scroll past lmao

some of this may be inaccurate or out of order (or incoherent) because, honestly, i don't remember all the details of my jeremy journey (instinctively went to type 'jordan'-)

okay, so, although i've only known who he is for about seven months, i guarantee that watching hazbin hotel is one of the best decisions i could've ever made. because then i learned about jeremy, fell in love with his voice, then watched newsies. and so my love for musical theater was born and now i'm a complete and utter theater nerd (as many people who know me can tell you lmao).

because i have far too much free time, i will now construct a vague timeline of when i watched/discovered things jeremy's in. like i said, far too much free time.

i watched hazbin on april 1st and 2nd, binged it pretty fast lmao. completely didn't know beforehand that it was a musical, so that was a nice surprise. and, yeah, this lucifer guy, love him to death (haha). then this video popped up on my youtube home page, and i really like hazbin, so sure why not.

fast forward a bit, i looked at jeremy's imdb or wiki page and wait- huh? he's in tangled the series?? (which is actually a really funny coincidence, because a few years back, early on during the pandemic, i watched the first episode of tts. which is indeed the one with varian. so i'd actually heard him before). so i figured, why not watch that, i know jeremy jordan has a great voice.

sometime around here, i start watching yt vids of jeremy's performances. she used to be mine, it's all coming back to me now, all those. also gave the english concept album of death note a listen, since i'd seen it on jeremy's wiki page.

it's the end of april now, and i'm going somewhere with no wifi for a little over a week, so i download tts. (funny story, i accidentally didn't download the last two episodes, so i started s2, and was just confused. like huh?? i didn't see that happen.. my dumbass didn't realize that i was missing episodes until i was like a bit into s2. tragic)

few days in, i remember that i actually have newsies downloaded somewhere, and hey isn't jeremy jordan in that? (recognized it from aforementioned yt vid on hazbin actors) so i watch it and fuck yeah that was pretty good, loved the set especially.

(here's when i added santa fe to my playlist. before i watched newsies, actually.)

fast forward through may (honestly, may was a blur lmao). i finished tts, was briefly obsessed with wicked, discovered a few more projects jeremy was in (lsoh, b&c), found out he could've been in the greatest showman, watched la la land, finally gave chappell roan a listen. stuff like that.

june (and also july)! and, what's this? the great gatsby? (the first three releases) loved past is catching up to me, didn't realize roaring on was noah ricketts, etc. then the bonnie & clyde proshot (i managed to find a slime on yt, unfortunately it got deleted. i do have it downloaded if anyone wants it)

august. watched the last five years (i didn't know it was told backwards from her perspective and forward from his because i didn't read the summary. do you know how confused i was 💀)

september! one of the best months of my life ngl. saw the great gatsby on the 13th (and hamilton on the 25th). saw the whole cast except for noah ricketts (dan rosales was brilliant though). it was amazing bro, no other notes really. when i first saw him on stage, i nearly died, and then he started singing and i actually did /pos. everyone was so good, i can't even

and, yeah, here we are.

i don't know why i decided to make this post help 😭

if you read all this, thank you? i guess?

have a nice day and, idk, stop scrolling tumblr, take a break

[les-gnossiennes-fantomatiques]

Fanfiction Author Interview Game

Thanks for the tag, @wheel-of-fish ! I’ll do my best not to sound silly here, but I am trying to get back in the saddle of writing again and this felt nice to do as encouragement.

How many works do you have on AO3?

A mere seven stories! I am absolutely pretending the FFN account I had twenty years ago does not exist anymore. (It does.)

What's your total AO3 word count?

161, 882

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes:

The Fly Agaric

Between the Lines

All Imaginable Pangs

Le Phénomène

All That is Solid Melts Into Air (this fic will haunt me until I die.)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try as much as I can to; I’ve honestly fallen behind this year, since I’ve been on hiatus for medical/mental health issues, but if you see me replying to your comment from a while back in the near future… I am so so sorry, but please know that I am SO deeply appreciative of every single comment that gets left on my stories.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Between the Lines! This one is a Leroux-canon insert that happens during the two weeks Christine is trapped in Erik’s house, and within the context of the fic, it ends badly, and within the greater context of the book… well! You know how it ends. It’s funny, because that was the first fan fic I wrote as an adult trying to get back into fandom after 15+ years of pretending I had moved on from it (spoiler: i did not.) and now I cannot bring myself to write dark endings.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Most likely Le Phénomène. This was written for fluff week and was a massive excuse to have Leroux E/C have sex during a rainstorm without having to worry too much about the plot lol. What can more i say.

Do you write crossovers?

I have! It’s The Follies! And I’m quite proud of it, but it gets zero hits haha, because it’s a Venn diagram of an already small fandom (Phantom) and an incredibly niche one (my favorite musical, Sunday in the Park with George, which is also set in early 1880s Paris and about a troubled artist/muse affair—which, if you’ve never seen it, GO NOW! The proshot is widely available and it’s life changing.). If you’ve ever wanted to see Erik get drunk with Bernadette Peters, then have I got a story for you.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

For the most part, no. I have had a couple of random people who don’t like what I’ll call “hate sex” blast me for writing Erik and Christine having it because, idk their love is pure or something, but that’s mostly it.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes! I don’t know if I write smut for the sake of smut (save for the one fluff piece), but I love writing emotional, atmospheric sex into my stories—sex that deepens how characters relate to each other and who they are as a person; people are allowed to have their own interpretations, but for me, sex is such a massive underpinning of most versions of the story and also a big part of my own life’s journey, and I just find it fascinating to write. I don’t know if people find my writing hot though, because things tend to inevitably get a little weird.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of?

Have you ever had a fic translated?

See above.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not since high school, and most of it was written to troll lol. I think now I’m just too picky and slow and set in my ways for anyone to want to collaborate with me, hahah.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Erik and Christine forever. It just is what it is, folks. Their dynamic is so specific and strange and fascinating and I will never get tired of exploring it/reading it/drawing it/writing it etc. Every other ship I love is basically just another iteration of them.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

There’s this Kay!verse horror story (with a happy ending because I’m me) that I started writing; it’s inspired by the myth of La Llorona and takes place during the weekend adult Erik returns to Boscherville to burn his mother’s house down. I really WANT to write it, but I have a story I need to finish first. I also seldom write horror and had to put it on pause because the particular subject matter of this one did not help my mental state lol.

What are your writing strengths?

I feel so silly writing this out about myself, hahah. If I have to say, I am particularly proud of my characterizations, my prose, and the thematic arcs I try to put into every story I write.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot. Oh, god. Plot. Like anything that isn’t angsting, fucking, or fighting is SO hard for me to write. (Hint: call everything a “character piece” and you never have to explain why nothing happens in your writing lmao). Looooong ass sentences. I’m incredibly slow at writing, terrible at outlining, and I second guess myself with every sentence. Someone once told me to my face that my fic writing was purple prose and I guess that still haunts me a bit.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

For the most part, I think it’s a bad idea. Unless you have a genuine handle on the other language, I think you’re better off implying that said language is being spoken through other means. It otherwise usually just reads as really cringey to me, like “Woohoo I ran this through google translate”—especially in smut. A couple of words here and there are fine, especially if there is a word that doesn’t have a 1:1 in the primary language, but something about a bunch of Google translate sentences being pasted into the middle of a story takes me out entirely. Just my preference though, especially when it comes to my own writing; I’m not Tolstoy. I’m not Nabokov. I’m not gonna try. Anyway, end tangent.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I’d say Pharoga, but my current WIP leans into that ship on and off. I really, really want to writeErik and Meg. One day. Or Raoul/Madame Giry

What's your favorite fic you've written?

It’s really hard to say tbh—the process of writing every one of my stories (including Tubeman Rik) has taught me so much about myself as a writer and person. But it’s a split between The Fly Agaric and All Imaginable Pangs. The former was basically the fic I’d been wanting to read and struggling to write for twenty years, and I put so much of myself and my own life experiences into it that it feels incredible to have finally laid it all out and gotten it on paper, even if I worry that I now have nothing else to say about Christine and Erik, haha. But there is something about All Imaginable Pangs that made it so fun to write—I love the challenge of crafting an OC who makes sense in Erik’s past, I LOOOOOVE thinking about the period of Erik’s life where he was trying to live as normal person, before he was jaded enough to become a mole person, and I love that period of time in art and history. It’s been so fun to sit in that world. I expected no one to read it, because I realize that OCs are a very hard sell in this fandom, but I just wanted to create a POV character who was closer in age to me, who’d been dealt a lot of luxury and a lot of shit thrown her way, who also has gray hair and soft thighs lol. That it has gotten any comments, let alone some of the seriously incredible feedback I’ve received across platforms, surprises and delights me. I can’t say whether or not Augustine is a success in terms of a believable original love interest, let alone person, but I like her enough that I’m (slowly) re-writing the whole story from Erik’s point of view.

Well. That was a lot of chatter. I apologize if any of this comes off as pretentious, but I’ve taken such a long hiatus from writing fic and this was a nice little jab in the arm to finish. I’ve had to take a lot of time away from fandom for health reasons, but I’m doing so much better and (i think) finally getting back in the swing of things. If you’ve ever so much as read one of my fics, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Tagging @box5intern @ladystormcrow @flora-gray @muirin007 @antiquarianne . My apologies if you’ve already been tagged.

[fitzrove]

Musical questions! 28, 29, 30?

[To celebrate 400 followers I'm finally answering all these from my drafts :D]

28. What's a musical that you saw ages ago that you're still not over? What about it made you love it so much?

If watching a video counts as "seeing": Tanz der Vampire. I saw posters and ads on the street for the Helsinki 2016 production... but that was after it was already over, in April/May!!!!! I was so curious about it but forgot after the initial wondering. Then that summer I went to a two-week language camp/course in the UK (my first time abroad without parents!) where we were singing Total Eclipse in the music room and an older "camp counsellor" girl from Germany told us it's actually from a musical, and that night I took it as my sign to look it up and ended up watching sooo many clips on YouTube over and over for the rest of my time at that course, and eventually the whole 2005 proshot with English subs.

Something about it spoke to me in a way no other musical had before - I mean, I had liked POTO for years, that summer I also started listening to Hamilton, but neither of those rattled in my head to the same obsessive degree as TdV did <3

It came into my life at a special time, has come and gone since, and whenever I get back to it, it still hits the hardest out of any show I've ever watched. Whether it be the epic orchestral rock score (I'm not like an über Steinman fan but I like his stuff), the level of emotion (some would say melodrama <3) and the way the show itself has come to symbolise a lot of things to me over the years (freedom to leave an environment you're not happy in and remaking your life elsewhere; freedom to be yourself and go after what you want even if it goes against what's conventional or societally acceptable; the world belonging "to the shameless and the wicked" and the rest of us just having to roll with it). So yeah >:)

I've now seen TdV live three times: once in Stuttgart in autumn 2021, and twice in Hamburg this summer (2024). It wasn't perfect but it meant a lot :') I've also met Aris Sas and he liked my headcanons and hot takes, and wished me the best in my life and my studies 😭🙏

29. What's a musical that you used to really like but don't anymore? What made you fall out of love with it?

I think I'm falling out of love with Wicked!! It was one of the first shows I saw live (back in Finland) and that production left a lasting impression on me, but after seeing it in London twice (heheh) I think I'm satiated :') I will still want to see the movie though! I probably just won't have the energy to engage that much with the hot takes it will probably spawn kslsls. Plus I hate the discourse that the movie is stirring up about how the book is better and that should've been a movie instead dkkdldls. I think the book is kind of terrible and takes itself too seriously. Plus the sex scenes are bad bad bad bad....

Anyway - still like the musical, I think I have just overlistened to it and I don't usually find too much to "chew on" in the fandom space :D Especially since I don't know/care about Wizard of Oz lore 😭

30. What's a musical that's grown on you since you first saw it or listened to it? What made you appreciate it more?

Rudolf: Affaire Mayerling.......... I still think it's terrible but I keep making friends with people who know that it's inaccurate (and don't really care about defending its honor skkskd) and still love it for being camp 😭 I used to have a very negative view of it but now I can just listen to Du bleibst bei mir on repeat, enjoy wholeheartedly and pretend it's the whole show 😌 obligatory mention that I met and took a pic with Wietske at the Les Mis München stagedoor this year 😭😭😭😭🙏🙏

[andrewlloydwebber]

hello Sweeney Todd enjoyer andrewlloydwebber, I have a question for your ponderment:

did Sweeney and/or Lovett eat the human pies themselves

hmmm, i have thought about this and this is my opinion for the major characters

sweeney: maybe once or twice but after years of prison gruel, he finds them too fatty and rich and prefers simple food when he remembers to eat

mrs. lovett: has eaten many but eventually gets sick of them. my mom worked at mcdonalds when she was in high school and still doesn't care for it decades later because she ate way too much of it and was exposed to the smell so much.

toby: canon #1 enjoyer and never recovers

johanna: doesn't get the chance to but would be pescatarian in modern au

anthony: through a series of comedic and very fortunate events, if this were a sitcom, any time he visits fleet street, he is milliseconds away from biting into one before something happens to prevent him or sweeney (who has a major soft spot for him and i truly believe would never consider killing anthony except maybe briefly during epiphany) distracts him because he feels bad

judge turpin: it doesn't fit in the musical timeline but i believe he would try them and mrs lovett would be sure to offer him beadle pie in particular

beadle: yes, he fully intended on eating some pies during his visit to the bakehouse and my headcanon is that he planned on finding some sort of infraction down there, real or imagined, and would blackmail mrs. lovett for a portion of the profits

pirelli: canonically becomes the first pie so can't eat himself

mrs. mooney: definitely has someone else bring her some so she can see what the fuss is about and try to copy the recipe. in the inevitable fallout where all the residents of fleet street are having a mental breakdown, she pretends she never did and lords it over people

bird seller: i was always creeped out by the way spain logue in the 1982 proshot says "take pleasure of the bird" so i think he does and probably doesn't even feel bad when he learns the truth

beggar woman: toby doesn't understand why mrs. lovett hates this random homeless woman so much, so he sneaks behind her back and will give her food. but she always refuses to eat the pies, and is actually the one sow doubt in toby's mind about the tonsorial parlor, "did you ever notice they go up but never come down?"

[notebookmusical]

Hi! I'm glad to hear you're doing better and listening to music you enjoy. The last dinner party is on my list and 23 but Jimmy Eat World is the best song ever. I hope you loved it! I will add the last album to my list too. I was listening to some Grammy nominees this week like Janelle Monae.

Oh that sounds so good. I hope I love it and will try not to compare it to The Night Circus so much lol. I'm sure I will love both! They seem pretty different to me so that makes sense. Maybe I will read part of it this month taking my time with it so that's cool. But idk how much time I will have this month again, but I think things will be settled by next month. There's also the if he had been with me sequel I think out this week! I have not done my reread yet unfortunately though. that was my plan for February and focusing on two books to finish each month but I always read parts of other ones too so we will see.

The musical on Broadway was kinda bad mostly or that's what most people thought. I heard the London cast and show was actually way better but I never watched or listened to it. But Christian Borle was def the best part and I'm not even sure what you were referring to lol. The only song I remember is it must be believed to be seen. I wish Schmicago didn't get cancelled and I would have liked seeing what season 3 ended up as. I just think the show was kinda fun and understood paying respects and parodying musical theater..not unlike what I saw of Crazy exgf. The show was for theater people but didn't have to be only for theater people either to enjoy it. I just read that Hazbin Hotel, the new show, was one of the most watched shows though and I am interested in the show and how it could be a musical lol. I will definitely check it out soon since all the episodes are out now and let you know! I honestly forgot what musical albums were nominated for the Grammys. What ended up winning?

I hope so too! Actually I think the Wiz is here until the end of the month before going to Broadway and unfortunately I won't be able to go. Then next is Mean Girls but I also already saw the movie so idk when I will see a show again! I hope you can see one soon though! I still wanna watch the Waitress proshot too.

I partly agree that Cardigan deserved it for sure but I also enjoy Antihero and thought it could win but it didn't. I am so happy about most of the Grammy wins. Paramore won every award they were nominated for and Billie won for What Was I Made For, but I was sad for Olivia and Noah. I didn't love Taylors dress honestly and preferred the Globes look, but that's not important. I can't believe she made history last night which was only one big shock of the night! Lol I will send all of my thoughts about the brand NEW album in another ask!

hi hi friend!! 🤍 i have to go back and finish listening to the rest of the grammy noms; i had every intention of doing so and then ... just never did. i hope things are more settled for you soon; you'll have to keep me posted on what you think of all the things!

i loved crazy ex-girlfriend when it was airing, but i very rarely find myself going back to relisten to their soundtracks — but i do go back and listen to SMASH's songs all the time! some like it hot ended up winning, which is fine with me — i don't know much about that show, but there was one show in particular i didn't really care for and didn't reallllly want to win haha! tickets for the company tour actually just went on presale here in seattle, and i'm trying to figure out if i want to go or not, which is crazy because i loveeee company and it was one of the only things i was looking forward to last season but now i'm like :/ i do not know if i care enough to go :/ for the prices they're selling tickets at. i might try my hand at lotto, but ...

i also didn't love taylor's look last night! i think her hair + the styling of it all was just ... a little odd. but i haven't really liked a lot of taylor's looks lately :( 🤍

[flyingthesky]

Before I get into, like, specific proshots, I feel like I should mention BroadwayHD, where you can watch a slightly rotating number of professionally filmed productions. Many of them are PBS Great Performances filmings, but others are not. There's also Broadway On Demand, but I find their ticketing system annoying. YMMV.

Shoving aside everything recent and readily available on streaming (Come From Away, Hamilton, Miss Saigon, Falsettos, Spongebob, Heathers, etc), here's a selection of professional filmings of theatre productions you can purchase for legal tender or stream in English:

The Sweeney Todd concert was mentioned, but there is also a filmed version of the cast with Angela Lansbury. It aired as a Great Performances thing, but was technically not filmed for that, which is why you can find it on DVD.

Have you ever wanted to watch David Hasselhoff struggle to sing a Frank Wildhorn musical? Great news! You should watch Jekyll & Hyde: Direct from Broadway.

Did you watch Greatest Showman and get extremely flabbergasted with its tenuous grasp on history? Have I got a musical for you: Barnum! It's on Freevee right now, apparently. It's even got Michael Crawford in it.

Please watch Pippin. The filmed version is, frankly, the best way to experience it besides going to see it live, as every cast recording sounds like hot garbage.

Were you obsessed with Adam Lambert in 2008 when he was on American Idol and also Prince of Egypt? Yeah, you should watch The Ten Commandments: The Musical.

Also there's this ministry called Sight&Sound that does incredible musicals based on Bible stories if you, like me, have the incredibly niche special interest of "musicals based on religious texts."

If you want to know why Tom Holland dances like that and why Zendaya's face falls when she remembers he's a classically trained dancer, watch Billy Elliot. The filmed version doesn't have him in it (he left the cast before then) but you'll understand what it would take for that to be your first professional role.

Are you wondering why people get really annoyed when Hugh Jackman getting cast in The Music Man is called "stunt casting"? Go watch the 1999 Oklahoma! proshot.

Do you want to get familiar with Merrily We Roll Along before that version the director will probably die before releasing starring Ben Platt gets made? You're in luck! There's a 2013 filming of it.

You guys mentioned the Phantom concert, but like. Love Never Dies has a proshot. Torture all your friends! Watch as the blood pack doesn't go off at the final climax! Also the 25th Anniversary "concert" is just the regular show slightly adapted to Royal Albert Hall rather than people standing at microphones like the Les Mis concerts (1995, 2010, or 2019), if you've never seen it.

Watch Allegiance. Watch it. I'm not asking. It's available on both BroadwayHD and Broadway On Demand.

"Yes, but why did you say 'English' up there?" Well, because I'm about to tell you something that may hurt your wallet but enrich your life: English speaking countries are actively the worst at filming their productions, but other places (Japan) are way better. Do you like anime? Chances are, that anime has a 2.5D musical and for the sweet, sweet price of around $80USD you can import that 2.5D musical and force all your friends to watch it in the original Japanese.

Don't speak Japanese and/or don't have hundreds of dollars to drop on blu-rays? That's okay! Europe's filming their musicals too. You can get a copy of Mozart l'opera rock for like. $30USD and most of that i shipping. There's also Mozart! das musical, which is pretty easy to find. "I want one that's not about Mozart!" Fine, fine. Everyone's doing Dracula Daily, right? Dracula: L'amour plus fort que la mort has a proshot. There's also Dracula: Entre l'amour et la mort, if you're Canadian and don't want to watch a musical in French-French. There's also a proshot of the Vienna Elisabeth, but last I checked it was kind of difficult to obtain because it's from 2005 and super popular because Elisabeth is THE European musical.

After all the talk of slime tutorials on here, I have been reminded of the general consensus that there should be more professional recordings of shows. So I would like to ask what shows actually do have proshots?

As for proshots that come to my mind now, I know Hamilton and Legally Blonde have somewhat well known proshots, Heathers got one not too long ago, and quite a few classics have recordings that were aired on PBS way back when (PBS ought to do that more often these days). I also think Cats has one and Les Mis and Phantom have those staged concerts that kind of fit the bill.

Hmm, good question! First, what counts as a proshot? 🤔 Are we only talking films of staged shows, and not movies/adaptations? So, for example, the Producers movie wouldn't be considered a proshot even though it's got the two Broadway stars and was overall quite faithful to the show? And are we not talking something like Encanto Live?

The ones I can think of offhand not on your list are Spongebob Squarepants, Newsies, By Jeeves, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolored Dreamcoat, whatever else ALW released during the pandemic to watch that I don't recall, and Into the Woods. If we're talking concerts, there's Sweeney Todd and Chess.

After that, I'd have to start cheating by looking up PBS's Great Performances episode list or things like Live from Lincoln Center.

Anyone got any other recs?

Note: As a personal ask, as y'all answer this please don't get too in depth on where you might find these to watch these days. This blog is meant to be about musical recommendations, not piracy recs. And it's nice to support theater with actual money when you can.

[nothingunrealistic]

Opinions about the deh movie?

not jared enough!

you did say opinions plural, though. first, personal context: i’ve never been in the “who needs a movie, why can’t they just give us a proshot and call it a day” camp, because i’ve never been in the “dear evan hansen is a unique beautiful wonderful brilliant piece of art” camp. i’ve always found the stage show to be frustrating and unsatisfying and contradictory and incomplete. (compels me, though!) so when the movie was announced way back in 2018, i was excited. i didn’t expect it to be good, necessarily — the movie was announced less than two months after the deh novel was released, and the novel was, overall, less than satisfying — but the novel made changes to the story and characters, and some of them were changes i liked or at least found interesting, and i hoped the movie would do the same.

and… the movie sure did change things! it’s clear from the movie itself and from many, many interviews done about it that the creative team and cast saw it as a chance to fix the stage show, even beyond adjusting it to make it work on film. but their approach to Fixing the show seems to be “throw out or modify everything we can that made people go ‘this is a show about people who say and do bad things, how could you write this’ and lean as far as we can into the Mental Health Awareness themes.” which i don’t think is great! this show started out as an attempt to ask the question “why do people make tragedies about themselves?” and answer it. it’s drifted further and further from that over time (even just through the various iterations of the stage show) as more audiences saw that the central characters were anxious / depressed / in therapy / taking psychiatric medication / suicidal and went “oh! this is A Show About Mental Illness!” and the writers and marketing team scrambled to catch up.

this movie is the apex of that. evan lies, sure, but cynthia practically invents the whole lie for him, so how culpable is he, really? evan doesn’t start the connor project or plan the memorial service, alana does all of that, and he’s just helping her out! no one’s selling connor-themed wristbands or buttons, alana’s just giving them away for free, and we’ll never comment on it! evan doesn’t kiss zoe until she’s told him she likes him For Him, so their relationship is fine and no other characters will ever criticize it! evan doesn’t go off his meds, instead he has a nice chat with alana about how they both take meds, and when evan complains to heidi about his meds she says that there’s nothing wrong with needing help, so you know we’re not saying that being medicated is bad or unnecessary! evan confesses his lie to the whole world and finds the people who Really Knew connor and learns more about him, so he’s redeemed himself! and because everything evan does is fine now, jared will no longer criticize him or point out the selfishness of his actions! see our partnerships with mental health foundations and our messaging about how this movie will heal and uplift people In These Troubled Times and ignore that the core of it is still the story of a person who did a terrible thing, and please, no matter what, don’t get upset about this disconnect on twitter!

this probably sounds like i hated the movie. i didn’t hate it! i came in expecting to like some aspects of it and dislike other aspects and be basically indifferent to most of it, and that’s about how i felt. (that’s how i felt about the novel, too.) really, i was just disappointed that all the promises of the movie fixing flaws in the show led up to that particular angle on Fixing The Show. i want a version of the story that truly grapples with evan making awful choices, and with everyone making or having made awful choices, and why they do that, and how they can repair the damage of those choices. and a movie that opens up the stage musical to show the wider community these characters live in would be the perfect venue for that. but the writers don’t seem interested in that version of the story anymore. (this is also how it comes across when stephen chbosky, who signed on to direct the movie adaptation of a musical, insists that this isn’t a big-M Musical, it’s a Drama With Songs, as if it’s somehow worse for a movie musical to feel like a musical than for it to feel like a movie where ben platt sings sometimes.)

these are all very general opinions, aren’t they. more specific opinions under a cut, as they may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience.

characters

evan: the writers really, truly want us to believe that evan has never done anything wrong, ever, in his life, and to prove it, they will hand off many of the Things He Did Wrong to other people so they’re no longer on his list of misdeeds. and yet. he no longer tells jared about being a Tree Expert, which means that his line in sincerely me about “forest expertise” (and also, uh, everything about the orchard being a Place Of Significance for connor) seems as if it stems solely from him climbing a tree and falling. (remember in arena stage when other characters brought up evan’s Love Of Trees every ten minutes? we’ve done a full 180 from that.) funnily enough, even as the writers have made the effort to have evan lie as little as possible, they’ve also started evan lying even sooner than in the stage show — telling heidi that he changed his shirt because there was a stain on the old one, that he already had dinner, that jared’s just So Nice. so surely he could have done some lying to the murphys for himself, even without jared’s advice of “just nod and confirm” to guide him in the thirty seconds before the murphys’ questions veered out of yes-or-no territory.

heidi: oh, heidi. a nurse now, because “nurse’s aide” is too many words for a script! no longer in classes to be a paralegal! missing out on taco tuesday with evan, even when it’s not her fault! no longer allowed to speak to the murphys without evan in the room to witness the conversation! has a parking ticket to pay! (that moment did make me laugh, though, just for the delay between the setup and the payoff.)

jared: what we did get of jared, i loved. stephen chbosky is spared my undivided resentment thanks to his decision to make jared gay. nik dodani is fantastic, even if the tone of the movie forced him to play things less comical / closer to the ground than he could have. the reaction shots / brief moments of jared during only us and in reaction to evan’s letter being posted online were brilliant. but… so much of jared’s character and role in the story was cut away, and it's a disservice both to him and to the show. to quote michael greif: “The audience sees Evan through Jared’s eyes. Just when the audience is feeling very cynical about what Evan’s up to, Jared gets to state it so we’re all comfortable. So Jared’s constant critique of Evan also stands in for an audience’s critique of Evan.” but jared no longer gets to criticize evan. after sincerely me, he doesn’t say a word about all the time evan is spending with his fake family, or how happy zoe must be that evan’s gotten his cast off, or how connor’s death is the best thing ever to happen to evan, or how evan should remember who his friends are and he could tell everyone everything about what evan’s done. and without jared’s critique of evan, the audience is naturally left to wonder if the writers know that everything evan is doing (or, everything evan used to do that has since been reassigned to other characters) is Bad. and we never get to hear evan argue for why it’s okay for him to do these things, that he didn’t lie just to get with zoe, that he’s helping the murphys, that being popular isn’t what matters to him. (also: 1) are we just not supposed to wonder how jared came to be involved in the connor project in this version of the story? is it that unimportant? 2) having jared tell everyone to read evan & connor’s emails is a bad choice! the person doing that needs to be someone who thinks the emails are real!)

alana: love alana. love that she now happens to see connor sign evan’s cast in the library but without hearing their argument, perfectly positioning her to believe evan’s story of friendship from very early on. love that the movie expands her character and shows us the anxiety that underlies her quest for achievement and the depression that looms over it. love that she connects with evan over that very thing and that doing so raises the stakes when they’re at odds in act 2. love that we get more insight into why she felt compelled to post evan’s letter, and what she did afterward. don’t love that the expansion of alana’s character seemingly came at the cost of erasing some of her awkwardness and her anger at evan and her Earnest To A Fault, Prone To Melodrama tendencies, all things that i really liked about her. don’t love that her expanded backstory / role mentioned nothing whatsoever about her grandmother, which was one of the clearest seeds of Something Below The Surface planted for her in the stage show. don’t love that founding the connor project (which evan originally did) and making connor merch (which jared, and various other students, originally did) are now things that she does but with all questions about the morality of those actions stripped away. don’t love that we still don’t know what happened to her after words fail, other than getting a flash drive from evan in the mail. baffled by her wearing glasses but only to do homework in the library for two minutes and nothing else, not even reading / watching things on her phone or laptop. that doesn’t make sense with her being farsighted or nearsighted.

connor: my condolences to connor stans who are mourning the lack of long hair for him in the movie. but i’m more interested in the lack of posthumous connor (meaning, the version of connor that is an extension of evan and appears to him to convince him to carry on the lie — technically, sincerely me connor is also posthumous connor, but i’m not talking about that connor here.) posthumous connor serves to clarify evan’s state of mind and explain to the audience (as well as evan himself) why he carries on with / expands the lie at two key points — disappear / the founding of the connor project, and after good for you / before the posting of the letter. posthumous connor is a counterpart to jared — they’re evan’s shoulder devil & angel, so to speak — and having evan simply barrel through the story without input or criticism from either of them makes his thought process totally opaque. without evan being told, aloud, by another version of himself, that he has to keep going because he can’t let anyone forget connor (because then they’ll forget him too,) or that he can’t give up the lie because everyone will hate him, or that he’s been lying to himself about his fall from the tree being an accident, it’s harder to see why evan continues the lie so long, and when he might consider turning back if not for that ultimate fear of being seen and being hated.

zoe: the first time i watched the movie, i commented that zoe seemed meaner (which i approve of! she’s having a very hard time and she deserves the chance to be mean!) but after a second viewing and some thought, i don’t think it’s entirely true. zoe, like all the characters, had a lot of her less kind lines cut — she no longer calls evan weird or a loser, for instance, even if she now complains about him showing up early to dinner — but she does have more to say about connor, about family day at rehab and the stories about him that surely aren’t in the emails. (and now, i guess, she’ll show up to evan’s house unannounced to tell him she likes him and wants to date him.)

cynthia: cynthia now builds evan’s entire lie for him — the secret email accounts, the insistence that evan remembers something good about connor, the hiking trails behind the old orchard where he and connor surely went. when she gives evan connor’s tie, she even ties it around his neck for him, rather than evan tying it himself as in the stage show. amy adams mentioned in a q&a that there are moments when cynthia suspects the truth, or wants to ask more, but simply doesn’t because she needs the story so badly. it paints a tragic picture of cynthia and how desperate she is to believe that her son had a friend. as does cynthia being the last person to leave in words fail, telling evan through a smile that it’s time for him to go and holding off her breakdown until he’s gone. the stage show is clear about evan initially going with the lie for cynthia's benefit; the movie is even clearer. (i wish, as i do for the stage version, that we got to see cynthia and evan spending time together as a Parent And Son like we do with larry and evan. i guess the tie scene is the closest we get to that, but let’s see them make chicken milanese together!)

larry: i get why evan would see this version of larry as the dad he’s always wanted. he’s There for his family, he cracks the same jokes he’s made a million times, he tried to connect with connor based on what connor cared about rather than on his own interests, he doesn’t make sexist comments about his daughter as soon as she leaves the room. but he’s still the guy who read his son’s emails and dismissed his son’s first suicide attempt as attention-seeking. (note that cynthia’s line is no longer “the first time he threatened to kill himself” but “the first time he tried to kill himself.”) making him zoe and connor’s stepfather positions him both in contrast to evan’s father (he walked into a family and stayed there, rather than walking out of his family and staying out) and as a parallel to evan (he joined a grieving family and essentially took the place of the family member who’d died.) but using that to open him up to cynthia’s criticism of “you NEVER understood him because he wasn’t YOURS” seemed unnecessary. (also, if he’d raised these kids for over a decade after their father’s death, and was really the only father they knew, would he not legally adopt them and just call himself their dad? why not?)

zoe & cynthia & larry as a family unit: the new scene of the three of them after iicth, getting along and liking each other, helps explain why evan actually enjoys being part of this family. i also liked the increased emphasis on zoe being closer to larry than to cynthia (the two of them flashing peace signs at one another when zoe walks into the house just before requiem, larry being the one to go after zoe in the middle of words fail) and how cynthia, by contrast, was closest to connor and thus most motivated to latch onto evan as connor’s best friend and a second son.

the assorted high school students whose names you would only know if you checked imdb: the source of all remaining “isn’t it fucked up how people make tragedies about themselves” content, which again suggests that the writers wanted as little to do with that idea as they could possibly get away with. the Rude Jocks mess with connor while he’s alive (one of them even gets the “school shooter chic” line now) and take a selfie with his locker when he’s dead, laugh at evan when his speech is going off the rails and tell everyone how inspired they are after it goes viral. as for zoe’s friends, i didn’t expect much but i did expect them to, uh, talk. (i’m thinking of this interview with demarius copes, who plays zoe’s friend oliver, in which he talks about oliver being gay. this doesn’t come across when oliver’s name is never said and he never speaks outside of singing five words in you will be found.)

songs in the movie

waving through a window: the audacity of stephen chbosky to make this the opening number and then refuse to make it A Musical Number whatsoever. it’s made clear that this entire sequence is happening in evan’s head, but the actions of everyone around him still have to be as realistic as possible, for some reason, even though everyone else moving in sync with one another and in time with the music (as they do on stage!) would do far more to put evan visibly On The Outside than having everyone wander around aimlessly with evan in their midst does. also, the choice to 1) place this number Before evan talks to anyone / tries and fails to talk to anyone other than heidi 2) end it with a smash cut to jared, who’s sitting right next to evan, trying to get his attention, does even more than the stage musical to suggest that a lot of evan’s Total Isolation exists only from his perspective and he’s seen & cared about more than he realizes. not sure if that was intentional, but it sure was there!

for forever: ben platt has two volumes in this song. they are “whispering” and “belting.” the sound mixing did nothing to counteract this. maybe it’s fine in the theater, but watching this movie on a laptop and having to repeatedly change the volume to listen to one song comfortably is a pain. i expected more scenes of evan & connor’s imagined day together, but i guess they wanted to limit it to evan’s fall from the tree and that particular True Story being rewritten to feature connor.

sincerely me: a delight. loved it. visuals / editing / choreography were 10/10 (and, not coincidentally, the part of the movie that felt most like A Musical. someone check on stephen!) i wish they’d kept jared’s first line of “i’m just trying to tell the truth” (it says so much!) and “there is nothing unrealistic about the love one man feels for another, in fact some would say there’s something quite beautiful,” but otherwise i was fine with the dialogue & lyrics. also, big fan of the new brass in the orchestrations. thank you mark graham.

requiem: the individual performances were fine. the editing of zoe, larry, and cynthia’s faces over one another was strange. the paralleling of zoe walking down the hall at school / larry walking through the cubicles at work / cynthia walking down the aisle at the grocery store wasn’t bad, but i have to wonder how complete strangers are recognizing cynthia as “that woman whose son died” as readily as zoe’s classmates / larry’s coworkers would recognize the same about them. i liked the driving sequence with zoe. i did not like that the song ended with us outside the house hearing everyone singing inside.

if i could tell her: weird place to put the one ���fuck” permitted in this movie. i don’t like this song / scene in general, but it is more tolerable knowing evan won’t actually kiss zoe at the end.

the anonymous ones: a good exploration of alana’s perspective and struggles, if a bit vague (it is a pasek & paul song), and using it to revisit the first day of school / the pep rally from alana’s point of view is a smart choice. but the broader choice to have alana plan the memorial service and start the connor project and rope evan into it, rather than evan starting it all and asking alana and jared to help him, is another change that takes agency / culpability away from evan, and lessens the impact of him leaving the connor project behind to spend time with the murphys — that’s a much more inconsiderate move if the connor project was his idea in the first place and he’s now abandoning the work to be done by the people he asked to help him, rather than him losing interest in something he had to be persuaded to do anyway.

you will be found: the one song that made me tear up when i saw the stage musical in person, because the display of people with #YouWillBeFound signs across every single screen really did something. the movie did not successfully replicate that with its attempts at a Social Media Montage. however, larry’s breakdown works much better in the movie. it helps that in this version, he gets staging / physical direction other than “bend over with your hands on your knees like you’re out of breath from running a 5k, but also, cry.” (also, why take away jared’s solo entirely? is he no longer moved at all by the virtual community? i know nik dodani doesn’t sing but you gave him a new solo line in sincerely me!)

only us: another song and scene i already don’t care for. having the scene be about Starting a relationship between zoe and evan, rather than clarifying their relationship, makes it feel kind of abrupt / out of place. however, pairing this song with the scenes of heidi being blown off for taco tuesday / jared seeing zoe and evan dancing at homecoming / alana finding inconsistencies in the emails? (keep that sequence in mind.) and a scene of the connor project having to meet without evan? showing exactly who and what falls away when it’s Us And Only Us? DELICIOUS. makes it work for evan and zoe to go right from only us to the scene with heidi at the murphys’ house.

words fail: worked really well split into two parts. the staging of the section after the murphys have left, transitioning into evan’s conversation with heidi, is fairly abstract on stage anyway, so setting that in ellison state park / having evan return to the site of the deepest darkest secret that he thinks everyone will hate him for, as he’s verbally confronting the thought of being known and hated, was smart. (plus, without posthumous connor, we had to find out somehow that evan’s fall wasn’t an accident before he told heidi.)

so big / so small: basically exactly the same as it is on stage. julianne moore’s singing voice isn’t polished, but it is heartfelt, and that combination works well here. (and i did, unfortunately, laugh when heidi told evan “it’s gonna get better” after she finished singing. if evan is straight then why inadvertent invocation of the it gets better project.)

a little closer: when ben platt said that the movie had a “third act” focused on evan redeeming himself, i was expecting more than a confession on instagram and a five-minute montage inserted in the act 2 timeskip. the song itself is perfectly fine, i’m just a bit let down by what was done with it. (it does work nicely as the song to be reprised for the finale, though.)

songs not in the movie

anybody have a map?: taking away this song has the effect of putting us more firmly in evan’s head (which weirdly seems to be the goal of every adaptation of this show, as if we weren’t already in evan’s head enough) at the cost of less focus on heidi and cynthia. it also means we never see connor interact with his parents and barely see him interact with zoe, so until the very end of the movie, our own view of connor is filtered entirely through his interactions with evan and other people’s memories of him. (and occasional shots of him in the bleachers during the pep rally, i suppose.) i don’t think that’s a terrible thing — it better makes the point that evan didn’t and now can’t know The Real Connor.

disappear: the anonymous ones made all the same points, except that as i said, evan no longer initiates anything related to Remembering Connor. the movie seems to have entirely removed evan’s fear of Being Forgotten About, which is kind of the point of disappear.

to break in a glove: the glove scene works fine without a song! and i will admit, i prefer a version of larry who doesn’t insist that he was absolutely right about everything he did in raising connor, even if he still defends some of the awful things he did do. (also, intriguing choice to have evan lie to larry about his father being proud of him, but no longer reveal the lie. and “evan texts his father about what larry shared with him, one of a string of many unanswered texts” was about the right level of Delving Into Evan’s Issues With His Dad. the novel’s choice to have evan’s relationship with his dad be one of the Most Important Factors in his depression and his suicide attempts was not a choice i thought made sense.)

good for you: removing good for you and just giving us a series of evan’s interactions with heidi & alana & jared that drove him to nearly tell the truth could have worked fine. but the writers only got halfway there. we got (most of) evan and heidi’s argument after dinner with the murphys, and we got evan’s two arguments with alana (during gfy and after gfy) synthesized into one scene, but no confrontation with jared and no fleeting resolution on evan’s part to tell the truth. these things are connected! in the stage show, jared is the last person to argue with evan, the one who knows the truth and reminds evan that he could tell everyone everything, and that’s the straw that breaks evan’s resolve to keep up the lie — until posthumous connor reminds him that if he tells the truth, he’ll be hated, which spurs evan to go to alana and double down on the lie. even if the structure of the sequence with alana no longer allows evan to go to jared afterward and say We Need More Emails, or to briefly decide to tell the truth until being convinced otherwise, there could easily have been a scene between the heidi argument and the alana argument in which evan crosses paths with jared, they argue about how connor’s death is the best thing ever to happen to evan, and jared brings up evan’s relationship with zoe and his own ability to Tell Everyone Everything. (which would complete a heidi-jared-alana sequence to exactly mirror the heidi-jared-alana sequence from only us: heidi’s mad about evan choosing cynthia and larry over her, jared’s mad about evan and zoe, alana’s mad about the emails and evan blowing off the connor project! we were so close!)

you will be found reprise: none of the reprises from the stage show made it into the movie; this is the one that really should have. half of what works about you will be found is the reprise showing how the hyperconnectivity of the internet can quickly sour from community and acceptance into mobs and hate campaigns. (“you will be found” and “you are not alone” become threats!) and we do get a second Social Media Montage of people online getting outraged about evan’s letter and the characters reacting to this outrage, so the opportunity for a reprise was right there. they just didn’t take it.

stuff that clearly changed from the stage show to the movie because people complained about it in the stage show

the “school shooter chic” line: i guess steven levenson decided it was fine to take that line out of jared’s mouth as long as A Teenage Boy, Any Teenage Boy said it? just to show that people are generally shitty to connor, rather than saying anything about jared in particular? (also, i know they’ve used the “manicure” version of the line in the stage musical occasionally, but it still strikes me as odd to have connor’s nail polish be the focus. might have made more sense to go back to it being about his jacket like it was in arena stage.)

ninety percent of jared’s comments about gay people existing before and during sincerely me: you make jared gay and you won’t even let him explain what he knows about relationships Seeming Gay (since evan, ostensible heterosexual, needs these things explained to him, and jared is now the most qualified person to do it) or insist that being gay and loving men is normal and beautiful?? what’s the point!!

evan kissing zoe murphy on her BROTHER’S BED after he DIED: well, he no longer does that, both because he and zoe never hang out in connor’s room anymore and because they don’t kiss until only us. i don’t think it’s a terrible idea to swap out the kiss in iicth for a mutual Almost Kiss, but cutting the kiss entirely from ywbf seems to be trying too hard to make evan and his relationship with zoe as blameless and unobjectionable as possible. (which, judging by the reviews, has not worked, so why try?)

the meds plotline: my opinion on evan going off his meds in the stage musical is that 1) it’s wholly in character for him to do that. he resents having to take meds because they feed into his idea of himself as broken / his idea of heidi as Thinking he’s broken, and in act two he’s trying to convince himself that he’s Fine and Normal because he’s having such a nice time having relationships with the murphys and being famous online, so surely he doesn’t need them, right? and 2) we’re not supposed to believe him when he says he’s fine and not anxious and no longer needs his meds. both of these points were what the writers intended all along! but evidently they didn’t get that across well enough, hence the complaints of “why are you suggesting that if you get a girlfriend you can just go off your anxiety meds and you’ll be fine” that followed the stage show for years, and that plot point being entirely cut from the movie. evan’s talk with alana about what meds they’re both taking, and heidi telling evan that she knows he’s been skipping therapy appointments, do the job of setting evan up to complain that “i have to go to therapy, i have to take drugs," but i think the writers could have made the original plot point work if they’d tried.

stuff that people complained about in the movie specifically

ben platt’s age: i didn’t find his age that distracting in the trailer and wouldn’t have thought about it that much if not for the endless “ben platt is too old for this role he’s a middle-aged father of three and he’s about to crumble into dust!!!” discourse. as is, in watching the movie, the only times when his age did throw me off were 1) his first conversation with zoe (also the only moment that made me go “do these two people know they’re in the same movie?”) and 2) the climax of words fail when he’s crying his eyes out while belting for his life and every muscle, vein, and tendon in his face and neck is standing out. he looks older when wearing The Blue Polo amidst a sea of people dressed like actual teenagers. when he’s in a t-shirt, or a t-shirt and hoodie, it’s less obvious.

ben platt’s hair: it’s not a wig. it’s his actual hair. it’s literally fine. who cares. discuss anything else.

ben platt’s acting: he did not do as good a job Toning It Down for the camera as he and stephen would like us to think. usually that’s fine; sometimes it’s jarring compared to the actors around him. but it is the one thing that makes me think agree should have tried to film a proshot instead. if your goal is to immortalize ben platt’s performance on stage as evan hansen… maybe you should film ben platt ON STAGE as evan hansen!

stephen chbosky’s direction: i’ve already complained about his refusal to let this musical be A Musical, but also: too much shaky cam. we know evan’s anxious, you don’t need to shake the camera all around while it’s pointed at two people standing still in a school hallway to remind us of that.

other things

so many lines of dialogue in this movie were either unintelligible because they were mumbled or inaudible because the music over them was too loud. or both! if you’re dead set on making your movie musical a Drama With Songs, make the dialogue understandable!

it’s not clear what year this movie is set in, and most clues (of which there aren’t many) point to it being set in 2021. which is weird, both because evan’s speech in you will be found happens at the end of september — meaning about half of this movie is set in the future relative to its theatrical release date — and because there’s no acknowledgement of covid whatsoever.

if i were jared? and i spent most of this movie 1) trying to be closer to my one friend by helping him lie about being friends with our dead classmate 2) getting mad when that friend didn’t show up for our dead-classmate-related group project and i had to see him dancing with his girlfriend on instagram? and then after graduation (and the graduation pics we took together) he sent me a flash drive in the mail and it contained a video of said classmate singing a song in group therapy? i would be murderous.

did the shot of the orchard that ended the movie really need to be twenty seconds long???

[unpopularwiththepopulace]

A retrospective on some of Broadway’s most important female costume designers across the last century

How much is our memory or perception of a production influenced by the manner in which we visually comprehend the characters for their physical appearance and attire? A lot.

How much attention in memory is often dedicated to celebrating the costume designers who create the visual forms we remember? Comparatively, not much.

Delving through the New York Public Library archives of late, I found I was able to zoom into pictures of productions like Sunday in the Park with George at a magnitude greater than before.

In doing so, I noticed myself marvelling at finer details on the costumes that simply aren’t visible from grainy 1985 proshots, or other lower resolution images.

And marvel I did.

At first, I began to set out to address the contributions made to the show by designer Patricia Zipprodt in collaboration with Ann Hould-Ward. Quickly I fell into a (rather substantial) tangent rabbit hole – concerning over a century’s worth of interconnected designers who are responsible for hundreds of some of the most memorable Broadway shows between them.

It is impossible to look at the work of just one or two of these women without also discussing the others that came before them or were inspired by them.

Journey with me then if you will on this retrospective endeavour to explore the work and legacy that some of these designers have created, and some of the contexts in which they did so.

A set of podcasts featuring Ann Hould-Ward, including Behind the Curtain (Ep. 229) and Broadway Nation (Eps. 17 and 18), invaluably introduce some of the information discussed here and, most crucially, provide a first-hand, verbal link back to this history. The latter show sets out the case for a “succession of dynamic women that goes back to the earliest days of the Broadway musical and continues right up to today”, all of whom “were mentored by one or more of the great [designers] before them, [all] became Tony award-winning [stars] in their own right, and [all] have passed on the [craft] to the next generation.”

A chronological, linear descendancy links these designers across multiple centuries, starting in 1880 with Aline Bernstein, then moving to Irene Sharaff, then to Patricia Zipprodt, then to the present day with Ann Hould-Ward. Other designers branch from or interact with this linear chronology in different ways, such as Florence Klotz and Ann Roth – who, like Patricia Zipprodt, were also mentored by Aline Bernstein – or Theoni V. Aldredge, who stands apart from this connected tree, but whose career closely parallels the chronology of its central portion. There were, of course, many other designers and women also working within this era that provided even further momentous contributions to the world of costume design, but in this piece, the focus will remain primarily on these seven figures.

As the main creditor of the designs for Sunday in the Park with George, let’s start with Patricia (Pat) Zipprodt.

Born in 1925, Pat studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York after winning a scholarship there in 1951. Through teaching herself “all of costume history by studying materials at the New York Public Library”, she passed her entrance exam to the United Scenic Artists Union in 1954. This itself was a feat only possible through Aline Bernstein’s pioneering steps in demanding and starting female acceptance into this same union for the first time just under 30 years previously.

Pat made her individual costume design debut a year after assisting Irene Sharaff on Happy Hunting in 1956 – Ethel Merman’s last new Broadway credit. Of the more than 50 shows she subsequently designed, some of Pat’s most significant musicals include: She Loves Me (1963) Fiddler on the Roof (1964) Cabaret (1966) Zorba (1968) 1776 (1969) Pippin (1972) Mack & Mabel (1974) Chicago (1975) Alice in Wonderland (1983) Sunday in the Park with George (1984) Sweet Charity (1986) Into the Woods (1987) - preliminary work

Other notable play credits included: The Little Foxes (1967) The Glass Menagerie (1983) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1990)

Yes. One person designed all of those shows. Many of the most beloved pieces in modern musical theatre history. Somewhat baffling.

Her work notably earned her 11 Tony nominations, 3 wins, an induction into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1992, and the Irene Sharaff award for lifetime achievement in costume design in 1997.

By 1983, Pat was one of the most well-respected designers of her era. When the offer for Sunday in the Park with George came in, she was less than enamoured by being confined to the ill-suited basements at Playwright’s Horizons all day, designing full costumes for a story not even yet in existence. From-the-ground-up workshops are common now, but at the time, Sunday was one of the first of its kind.

Rather than flatly declining, she asked Ann Hould-Ward, previously her assistant and intern who had now been designing for 2-3 years on her own, if she was interested in collaborating. She was. The two divided the designing between them, like Pat creating Bernadette’s opening pink and white dress, and Ann her final red and purple dress.

Which indeed leads to the question of the infamous creation worn in the opening number. No attemptedly comprehensive look at the costumes in Sunday would be complete without addressing it or its masterful mechanics.

To enable Bernadette to spring miraculously and seemingly effortlessly from her outer confines, Ann and Pat enlisted the help of a man with a “Theatre Magics” company in Ohio. Dubbed ‘The Iron Dress’, the gasp-inducing motion required a wire frame embedded into the material, entities called ‘moonwalker legs and feet’, and two garage door openers coming up through the stage to lever the two halves apart. The mechanism – highly impressive in its periods of functionality – wasn’t without its flaws. Ann recalls “there were nights during previews where [Bernadette] couldn’t get out of the dress”. Or worse, a night where “the dress closed up completely. And it wouldn’t open up again!”. As Bernadette finished her number, there was nothing else within her power she could do, so she simply “grabbed it under her arm and carried it off stage.”

What visuals. Evidently, the course of costume design is not always plain sailing.

This sentiment is exhibited in the fact design work is a physical materialisation of other creators’ visions, thus foregrounding the tricky need for collaboration and compromise. This is at once a skill, very much part of the job description, and not always pleasant – in navigating any divides between one’s own ideas and those of other people.

Sunday in the Park with George was no exception in requiring such a moment of compromise and revision. With the show already on Broadway in previews, Stephen Sondheim decreed the little girl Louise’s dress “needs to be white” – not the “turquoisey blue” undertone Pat and Ann had already created it with. White, to better spotlight the painting’s centre.

Requests for alterations are easier to comprehend when they are done with equanimity and have justification. Sondheim said he would pay for the new dress himself, and in Seurat’s original painting, the little girl is very brightly the focal centre point of the piece. On this occasion, all agreed that Sondheim was “absolutely right”. A new dress was made.

Other artistic differences aren’t always as amicable.

In Pat Zipprodt’s first show, Happy Hunting with Ethel Merman in 1956, some creatives and directors were getting in vociferous, progress-stopping arguments over a dress and a scene in which Ethel was to jump over a fence. Then magically, the dress went missing. Pat was working at the time as an assistant to the senior Irene Sharaff, and Pat herself was the one to find the dress the next morning. It was in the basement. Covered in black and wholly unwearable. Sharaff had spray painted the dress black in protest against the “bickering”. Indeed, Sharaff disappeared, not to be seen again until the show arrived on Broadway.

Those that worked with her soon found that Sharaff was one to be listened to and respected – as Hal Prince did during West Side Story. After the show opened in 1957, Hal replaced her 40 pairs of meticulously created and individually dyed, battered, and re-dyed jeans with off-the-rack copies. His reasoning was this: “How foolish to be wasting money when we can make a promotional arrangement with Levi Strauss to supply blue jeans free for program credit?” A year later, he looked at their show, and wondered “What’s happened?”

What had happened was that the production had lost its spark and noticeable portions of its beauty, vibrancy, and subtle individuality. Sharaff’s unique creations quickly returned, and Hal had learned his lesson. By the time Sharaff’s mentee, Pat, had “designed the most expensive rags for the company to wear” with this same idiosyncratic dyeing process for Fiddler on the Roof in 1964, Hal recognised the value of this particularity and the disproportionately large payoff even ostensibly simple garments can bring.

Irene Sharaff is remembered as one of the greatest designers ever. Born in 1910, she was mentored by Aline Bernstein, first assisting her on 1928’s original staging of Hedda Gabler.

Throughout her 56 year career, she designed more than 52 Broadway musicals. Some particularly memorable entities include: The Boys from Syracuse (1938) Lady in the Dark (1943) Candide (1956) Happy Hunting (1956) Sweet Charity (1966) The King and I (1951, 1956) West Side Story (1957, 1961) Funny Girl (1964, 1968)

For the last three productions, she would reprise her work on Broadway in the subsequent and indelibly enduring film adaptations of the same shows. 

Her work in the theatre earned her 6 Tony nominations and 1 win, though her work in Hollywood was perhaps even more well rewarded – earning 5 Academy Awards from a total of 15 nominations.

Some of Sharaff’s additional film credits included: Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) Ziegfeld Follies (1946) An American in Paris (1951) Call Me Madam (1953) A Star is Born (1954) – partial Guys and Dolls (1955) Cleopatra (1963) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Hello Dolly! (1969) Mommie Dearest (1981)

It’s a remarkable list. But it is too more than just a list.

Famously, Judy’s red scarlet ballgown in Meet Me in St. Louis was termed the “most sophisticated costume [she’d] yet worn on the screen.”

It has been written that Sharaff’s “last film was probably the only bad one on which she worked,” – the infamous pillar of camp culture, Mommie Dearest, in 1981 – ��but its perpetrators knew that to recreate the Hollywood of Joan Crawford, it required an artist who understood the particular glamour of the Crawford era.” And at the time, there were very few – if any – who could fill that requirement better than Irene Sharaff. 

The 1963 production of Cleopatra is perhaps an even more infamous endeavour. Notoriously fraught with problems, the film was at that point the most expensive ever made. It nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox, in light of varying issues like long production delays, a revolving carousel of directors, the beginning of the infamous Burton/Taylor affair and resulting media storm, and bouts of Elizabeth’s ill-health that “nearly killed her”. In that turbulent environment, Sharaff is highlighted as one of the figures instrumental in the film’s eventual completion – “adjusting Elizabeth Taylor’s costumes when her weight fluctuated overnight” so the world finally received the visual spectacle they were all ardently anticipating.

But even beyond that, Sharaff’s work had impacts more significantly and extensively than the immediate products of the shows or films themselves. Within a few years of her “vibrant Thai silk costumes for ‘The King and I’ in 1951, …silk became Thailand’s best-known export.” Her designs changed the entire economic landscape of the country. 

It’s little wonder that in that era, Sharaff was known as “one of the most sought-after and highest-paid people in her profession.” With discussions and favourable comparisions alongside none other than Old Hollywood’s most beloved designer, Edith Head, Irene deserves her place in history to be recognised as one of the foremost significant pillars of the design world.

In this respected position, Irene Sharaff was able to pass on her knowledge by mentoring others too as well as Patricia Zipprodt, like Ann Roth and Florence Klotz, who have in turn gone on to further have their own highly commendable successes in the industry.

Florence “Flossie” Klotz, born in 1920, is the only Broadway costume designer to have won six Tony awards. She did so, all of them for musicals, and all of them directed by Hal Prince, in a marker of their long and meaningful collaboration.

Indeed, Flossie’s life partner was Ruth Mitchell – Hal’s long-time assistant, and herself legendary stage manager, associate director and producer of over 43 shows. Together, Flossie and Ruth were dubbed a “power couple of Broadway”.

Flossie’s shows with Hal included: Follies (1971) A Little Night Music (1973) Pacific Overtures (1976) Grind (1985) Kiss of the Spiderwoman (1993) Show Boat (1995)

And additional shows amongst her credits extend to: Side by Side by Sondheim (1977) On the Twentieth Century (1978) The Little Foxes (1981) A Doll’s Life (1982) Jerry’s Girls (1985)

Earlier in her career, she would first find her footing as an assistant designer on some of the Golden Age’s most pivotal shows like: The King and I (1951) Pal Joey (1952) Silk Stockings (1955) Carousel (1957) The Sound of Music (1959)

The original production of Follies marked the first time Florence was seriously recognised for her work. Before this point, she was not yet anywhere close to being considered as having broken into the ranks of Broadway’s “reigning designers” of that era. Follies changed matters, providing both an indication of the talent of her work to come, and creating history in being commended for producing some of the “best costumes to be seen on Broadway” in recent memory – as Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times. Fuller discussion is merited given that the costumes of Follies are always one of the show’s central points of debate and have been crucial to the reception of the original production as well as every single revival that has followed in the 50 years since.

In this instance, Ted Chapin would record from his book ‘Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical ‘Follies’ how “the costumes were so opulent, they put the show over-budget.” Moreover, that “talking about the show years later, [Florence] said the costumes could not be made today. ‘Not only would they cost upwards of $2 million, but we used fabrics from England that aren’t even made anymore.’” Broadway then does indeed no longer look like Broadway now.

This “surreal tableau” Flossie created, including “three-foot-high ostrich feather headdresses, Marie Antoinette wigs adorned with musical instruments and birdcages, and gowns embellished with translucent butterfly wings”, remains arguably one of the most impressive and jaw-dropping spectacles to have ever graced a Broadway stage even to this day.

As for Ann Roth, born in 1931, she is still to this day making her own history – recently becoming the joint eldest nominee at 89 for an Oscar (her 5th), for her work on 2020′s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Now as of April 26th, Ann has just made history even further by becoming the oldest woman to win a competitive Academy Award ever. She has an impressive array of Hollywood credits to her name in addition to a roster of Broadway design projects, which have earned her 12 Tony nominations.

Some of her work in the theatre includes: The Women (1973) The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1978) They're Playing Our Song (1979) Singin' in the Rain (1985) Present Laughter (1996) Hedda Gabler (2009) A Raisin in the Sun (2014) Shuffle Along (2016) The Prom (2018)

Making her way over to Hollywood in the ‘70s, she has left an indelible and lasting visual impact on the arts through films like: Klute (1971) The Goodbye Girl (1977) Hair (1979) 9 to 5 (1980) Silkwood (1983) Postcards from the Edge (1990) The Birdcage (1996) The Hours (2002) Mamma Mia! (2008) Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)

It’s clear from this branching 'tree' to see how far the impact of just one woman passing on her time and knowledge to others who are starting out can spread.

This art of acting as a conduit for valuable insights was something Irene Sharaff had learned from her own mentor and predecessor, Aline Bernstein. Aline was viewed as “the first woman in the [US] to gain prominence in the male-dominated field of set and costume design,” and was too a strong proponent of passing on the unique knowledge she had acquired as a pioneer and forerunner in the field. 

Born in 1880, Bernstein is recognised as “one of the first theatrical designers in New York to make sets and costumes entirely from scratch and craft moving sets” while Broadway was still very much in its infancy of taking shape as the world we know today. This she did for more than one hundred shows over decades of her work in the theatre. These shows included the spectacular Grand Street Follies (1924-27), and original premier productions of plays like some of the following: Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1928) J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan (1928) Grand Hotel (1930) Phillip Barry’s Animal Kingdom (1932) Chekov’s The Seagull (1937) Both Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour (1934) and The Little Foxes (1939)

Beyond direct design work, Bernstein founded what was to become the Neighbourhood Playhouse (the notable New York acting school) and was influential in the “Little Theatre movement that sprung up across America in 1910”. These were the “forerunners of the non-profit theatres we see today” and she continued to work in this realm even after moving into commercial theatre.

Bernstein also established the Museum of Costume Art, which later became the Costume Institute of the Met Museum of Art, where she served as president from 1944 to her death in 1955. This is what the Met Gala raises money for every year. So for long as you have the world’s biggest celebrities parading up and down red carpets in high fashion pieces, you have Aline Bernstein to remember – as none of that would be happening without her.

During the last fifteen years of her life, Bernstein taught and served as a consultant in theatre programs at academic institutions including Yale, Harvard, and Vassar – keen to connect the community and facilitate an exchange of wisdom and information to new descendants and the next generation.

Many designers came somewhere out of this linear descendancy. One notable exception, with no American mentor, was Theoni V. Aldredge. Born in 1922 and trained in Greece, Theoni emigrated to the US, met her husband, Tom Aldredge – himself of Into the Woods and theatre notoriety – and went on to design more than 100 Broadway shows. For her work, she earned 3 Tony wins from 11 nominations from projects such as: Anyone Can Whistle (1964) A Chorus Line (1975) Annie (1977) Barnum (1980) 42nd Street (1980) Woman of the Year (1981) Dreamgirls (1981) La Cage aux Folles (1983) The Rink (1984)

One of the main features that typify Theoni’s design style and could be attributed to a certain unique and distinctive “European flair” is her strong use of vibrant colour. This is a sentiment instantly apparent in looking longitudinally at some of her work.

In Ann Hould-Ward’s words, Theoni speaks to the “great generosity” of this profession. Theoni went out of her way to call Ann apropos of nothing early in the morning at some unknown hotel just after Ann won her first Tony for Beauty and the Beast in 1994, purring “Dahhling, I told you so!” These were women that had their disagreements, yes, but ultimately shared their knowledge and congratulated each other for their successes.

Similar anecdotal goodwill can be found in Pat Zipprodt’s call to Ann on the night of the 1987 Tony’s – where Ann was nominated for Into the Woods – with Pat singing “Have wonderful night! You’re not gonna win! …[laugh] but I love you anyway!”

This well-wishing phone call is all the more poignant considering Pat was originally involved with doing the costumes for Into the Woods, in reprise of their previous collaboration on Sunday in the Park with George.

If, for example, Theoni instinctively is remembered for bright colour, one of the features that Pat is first remembered for is her dedicated approach to research for her designs. Indeed, the New York Public Library archives document how the remaining physical evidence of this research she conducted is “particularly thorough” in the section on Into the Woods. Before the show finally hit Broadway in 1987 with Ann Hould-Ward’s designs, records show Pat had done extensive investigation herself into materials, ideas and prospective creations all through 1986.

Both Ann and Pat worked on the show out of town in try-outs at the Old Globe theatre in San Diego. But when it came to negotiating Broadway contracts, the situation became “tricky” and later “untenable” with Pat and the producers. Ann was “allowed to step in and design” the show alone instead.

The lack of harboured resentment on Patricia’s behalf speaks to her character and the pair’s relationship, such that Ann still considered her “my dear and beloved friend” for over 25 years, and was “at [Pat’s] bed when she died”.

Though they parted ways ultimately for Into the Woods, you can very much feel a continuation between their work on Sunday in the Park with George a few years previously, especially considering how tactile the designs appear in both shows. This tactility is something the shows’ book writer and director, James Lapine, was specific about. Lapine would remark in his initial ideas and inspirations that he wanted a graphic quality to the costumes on this occasion, like “so many sketches of the fairy-tales do”.

Ann fed that sentiment through her final creations, with a wide variety of materials and textures being used across the whole show – like “ribbons with ribbons seamed through them”, “all sorts of applique”, “frothy organzas and rembriodered organzas”. A specific example documents how Joanna Gleason’s shawl as the Baker’s Wife was pieced together, cut apart, and put back together again before resembling its final form.

This highly involved principle demonstrates another manner of inventive design that uses a different method but maintains the aim of particularity as discussed previously with Patricia and Irene’s complex dyeing and re-dyeing process. Pushing the confines of what is possible with the materials at hand to create a variety of colours, shades, and textures ultimately produces visual entities that are complex to look at. Confusing the eye like this “holds attention longer”, Ann maintains, which makes viewers look more intricately at individual segments of the production, and enables the costume design to guide specific focus by not immediately ceding attention elsewhere.

Understanding the methods behind the resultant impacts of a show can be as, if not more, important and interesting than the final product of the show itself sometimes. A phone call Ann had last August with James Lapine reminds us this is a notion we may be treated more to in the imminent future, when he called to enquire as to the location of some design sketches for the book he is working on (Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created 'Sunday in the Park with George') to document more thoroughly the genesis of the pair’s landmark and beloved musical.

In continuation of the notion that origin stories contain their own intrinsic value beyond any final product, Ann first became Pat’s intern through a heart-warming and tenacious tale. Ann sent letters to three notable designers when finishing graduate school. Only Patricia Zipprodt replied, with a message to say she “didn’t have anything now but let me think about it and maybe in the future.” It got to the future, and Ann took the encouragement of her previous response to try and contact Pat again. Upon being told she was out of town with a show, Ann proceeded to chase Pat through various phone books and telephone wires across different states and theatres until she finally found her. She was bolstered by the specifics of their call and ran off the phone to write an imploring note – hinging on the premise of a shared connection to Montana. She took an arrow, stabbed it through a cowboy hat, put it in a box with the note that was written on raw hide, and mailed it to New York with bated breath and all of her hopes and wishes.

Pat was knife-edgingly close to missing the box, through a matter of circumstance and timing. Importantly, she didn’t. Ann got a response, and it boded well: “Alright alright alright! You can come to New York!”

Subsequently, Ann’s long career in the design world of the theatre has included notable credits such as: Sunday in the Park with George (1984) Into the Woods (1987, 1997) Falsettos (1992) Beauty and the Beast (1994, 1997) Little Me (1998) Company (2006) Road Show (2008) The People in the Picture (2011) Merrily We Roll Along (1985, 1990, 2012, segment in Six by Sondheim 2013) Passion (2013) The Visit (2015) The Color Purple (2015) The Prince of Egypt (2021)

From early days in the city sleeping on a piece of foam on a friend’s floor, to working collaboratively alongside Pat, to using what she’d learnt from her mentor in designing whole shows herself, and going on to win prestigious awards for her work – the cycle of the theatre and the importance of handing down wisdom from those who possess it is never more evident.

As Ann summarises it meaningfully, “the theatre is a continuing, changing, evolving, emotional ball”. It’s raw, it’s alive, it needs people, it needs stories, it needs documentation of history to remember all that came before.

In periods where there can physically be no new theatre, it’s made ever the more clear for the need not to forget what value there is in the tales to be told from the past.

Through this retrospective, we’ve seen the tour de force influence of a relatively small handful of women shaping a relatively large portion of the visual scape of some of Broadway’s brightest moments.

But it’s significant to consider how disproportionate this female impact was, in contrast with how massively male dominated the rest of the creative theatre industry has been across the last century.

Assessing variations in attitudes and approaches to relationships and families in these women in the context of their professional careers over this time period presents interesting observations. And indeed, manners in which things have changed over the past hundred years.

As Ann Hould-Ward speaks of her experiences, one of her reflections is how much this was a “very male dominated world”. And one that didn’t accommodate for women with families who also wanted careers. As an intern, she didn’t even feel she could tell Patricia Zipprodt about the existence of her own young child until after 6 months of working with her. With all of these male figures around them, it would be often questioned “How are you going to do the work? How are you going to manage [with a family]?”, and that it was “harder to convince people that you were going to be able to do out-of-towns, to be able to go places.” Simply put, the industry “didn't have many designers who were married with children.”

Patricia herself in the previous generation demonstrates this restricting ethos. “In 1993, Zipprodt married a man whose proposal she had refused some 43 years earlier.” She had just newly graduated college and “she declined [his proposal] and instead moved to New York.” Faced with the family or career conundrum, she chose the latter. By the 1950s, it then wasn’t seen as uncommon to have both, it was seen as impossible.

Her husband died just five years after the pair were married in 1998, as did Patricia herself the following year. One has to wonder if alternative decisions would’ve been made and lives lived differently if she’d experienced a different context for working women in her younger life.

But occupying any space in the theatre at all was only possible because of the efforts of and strides made by women in previous generations.

When Aline Bernstein first started designing for Broadway theatre in 1916, women couldn’t even vote. She became the first female member of the United Scenic Artists of America union in 1926, but only because she was sworn in under the false and male moniker of brother Bernstein. In fact, biographies often centralise on her involvement in a “passionate” extramarital love affair with novelist Thomas Wolfe – disproportionately so for all of her remarkable contributions to the theatrical, charitable and academic worlds, and instead having her life defined through her interactions with men.

As such, it is apparent how any significant interactions with men often had direct implications over a woman’s career, especially in this earlier half of the century. Only in their absence was there comparative capacity to flourish professionally.

Irene Sharaff had no notable relationships with men. She did however have a significant partnership with Chinese-American painter and writer Mai-mai Sze from “the mid-1930s until her death”. Though this was not (nor could not be) publicly recognised or documented at the time, later by close acquaintances the pair would be described as a “devoted couple”, “inseparable”, and as holding “love and admiration for one another [that] was apparent to everyone who knew them.” This manner of relationship for Irene in the context of her career can be theorised as having allowed her the capacity to “reach a level of professional success that would have been unthinkable for most straight women of [her] generation”.

Moving forwards in time, Irene and Mai-mai presently rest where their ashes are buried under “two halves of the same rock” at the entrance to the Music and Meditation Pavilion at Lucy Cavendish College in Cambridge, which was “built following a donation by Sharaff and Sze”. I postulate that this site would make for an interesting slice of history and a perhaps more thought-provoking deviation for tourists away from being shepherded up and down past King’s College on King’s Parade as more usually upon a visit to Cambridge.

In this more modern society at the other end of this linear tree of remarkable designers, options for women to be more open and in control of their personal and professional lives have increased somewhat.

Ann Hould-Ward later in her career would no longer “hide that [she] was a mother”, in fear of not being taken seriously. Rather, she “made a concerted effort to talk about [her] child”, saying “because at that point I had a modicum of success. And I thought it was supportive for other women that I could do this.”

If one aspect passed down between these women in history are details of the craft and knowledge accrued along the way, this statement by Ann represents an alternative facet and direction that teaching of the future can take. Namely, that by showing through example, newer generations will be able to comprehend the feasibility of occupying different options and spaces as professional women. Existing not just as designers, or wives, or mothers, or all, or one – but as people, who possess an immense talent and skill. And that it is now not just possible, but common, to be multifaceted and live the way you want to live while working.

This is not to say all of the restrictions and barriers faced by women in previous generations have been removed, but rather that as we build a larger wealth of history of women acting with autonomy and control to refer back to, things can only get easier to build upon for the future.

Who knows what Broadway and theatre in general will look like when it returns – both on the surface with respect to this facet of costume design, and also more deeply as to the inner machinations of how shows are put together and presented. The largely male environment and the need to tick corporate and commercial boxes will not have vanished. One can only hope that this long period of stasis will have foregrounded the need and, most importantly, provided the time to revaluate the ethos in which shows are often staged, and the ways in which minority groups – like women – are able to work and be successful within the theatre in all of the many shows to come. 

Notable sources:

Photographs – predominantly from the New York Public Library digital archives. IBDB – the Internet Broadway Database. Broadway Nation Podcast (Eps. #17 and #18), David Armstrong, featuring Ann Hould-Ward, 2020. Behind the Curtain: Broadway’s Living Legends Podcast (Ep. #229), Robert W Schneider and Kevin David Thomas, featuring Ann Hould-Ward, 2020. Sense of Occasion, Harold Prince, 2017. Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical ‘Follies’, Ted Chapin, 2003. Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954–1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes, Stephen Sondheim, 2010. The Complete Book of 1970s Broadway Musicals, Dan Deitz, 2015. The Complete Book of 1980s Broadway Musicals, Dan Dietz, 2016. Inventory of the Patricia Zipprodt Papers and Designs at the New York Public Library, 2004 – https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollections/pdf/thezippr.pdf Extravagant Crowd’s Carl Van Vecten’s Portraits of Women, Aline Bernstein – http://brbl-archive.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/cvvpw/gallery/bernstein.html Jewish Heroes & Heroines of America: 150 True Stories of American Jewish Heroism – Aline Bernstein, Seymour Brody, 1996 – https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/aline-bernstein Ann Hould-Ward Talks Original “Into the Woods” Costume Designs, 2016 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EPe77c6xzo&ab_channel=Playbill American Theatre Wing’s Working in the Theatre series, The Design Panel, 1993 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sp-aMQHf-U&t=2167s&ab_channel=AmericanTheatreWing Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, Mai-mai Sze and Irene Sharaff in Public and in Private, Erin McGuirl, 2016 – https://jhiblog.org/2016/05/16/mai-mai-sze-and-irene-sharaff-in-public-and-in-private/ Irene Sharaff’s obituary, The New York Times, Marvine Howe, 1993 – https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/17/obituaries/irene-sharaff-designer-83-dies-costumes-won-tony-and-oscars.html Obituary: Irene Sharaff, The Independent, David Shipman, 2011 – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-irene-sharaff-1463219.html Broadway Design Exchange – Florence Klotz – https://www.broadwaydesignexchange.com/collections/florence-klotz Obituary: Florence Klotz, The New York Times, 2006 – https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/obituaries/03klotz.html

[barrygeuse]

come from away: my retrospective

now that come from away has ended, i've decided to collect my thoughts and put them all together in one (not-so) little post for myself and anyone else who wants to to read.

lots of emotions below the cut and a long story about how this thing came to mean so much to me!

if you stick around and read, i really do appreciate it. this is my favorite musical (my second favorite piece of theater!) and my second biggest special interest.

tl;dr — come from away is a beautiful show about the best of human nature, about people healing from a collective trauma. it will be a part of me for as long as i live, and i couldn't be happier to have it nestled right next to my heart, keeping me warm.

i first saw the show when it visited my local theater on tour in 2019. despite being a musical theater kid, i managed to skip over it entirely—i feel like that wasn't uncommon—it wasn't exactly targeted toward the middle school crowd! my mom and i went to see it (we went in knowing literally nothing at all, and i mean nothing besides the title!), and we left that theater crying and absolutely gushing about how beautiful it was.

it became a pretty common staple to play over bluetooth when we were in the car together for the years to come.

at that point, besides having seen it and loved it immensely, i moved on. it was another piece of media to add to an ever-growing list of adorations, and it wasn't until december of two years later that it grabbed my attention for a lasting period of time.

in september of 2021, the proshot released, a day before the 20th anniversary of 9/11. i didn't end up hearing about this myself until later in the season—i was busy with college and had a lot of other things on my mind—but i was ecstatic nonetheless when i did find out.

i got my hands on the recording and watched it. something changed that day, even if i hadn't realized it yet. i showed it to my friends, new ones every time, over and over again. when i was home for that holiday break, i showed it to my parents, and put it on in the background in my free time.

as i got back to school and february came to an end, come from away became the thing that i watched whenever i felt poorly. it was a feel-good show about wonderful people. i've always loved stories, especially stories about the beautiful nature of humanity, and it got me through some pretty rough times. over the winter months i started to learn the dialogue, since i already knew the numbers.

for spring break, i took a trip to florida, and watched the proshot probably over seven times during the course of travel alone. i fell in love with the characters, their mannerisms, the stories, the reality of people coming together to heal from trauma. it was a beautiful thing to make a part of myself.

time pressed forward. sharon wheatley released her second book, which i bought, and then had the honor over the summer to send to her and have her sign for me (not to mention read my annotations and write alongside them!).

the news that the show was closing devastated me. at that point, i had no hope of going to see it, which didn't upset me too badly. i was happy to just have the professional recording to watch and to celebrate the show from afar!

summer flew by. i got back to school, settled in, and started going to classes. at the beginning of september, my parents called me and surprised me with the news that we would be going to new york city at the end of the month to see the show. i was absolutely floored. my pupils genuinely grew two sizes (it was funny, i looked like i was on drugs but it was just concentrated autism in the bloodstream) and i made a countdown for the trip as soon as we got off the phone.

telling you the details of my time in NYC could be a whole post on its own. with the broadway flea happening at the same time, i got to buy some things that i really wanted (hello, beetlejuice obc signed playbill!) and i had the insane opportunity to meet sharon, who actually recognized me and my book when i went to the table and gave me the sweetest hug.

we had front row seats, which i could never thank my parents enough for, and i silently mouthed along to the show the entire time. the actors smiled at me, i was ecstatic, i was flying, i was there and a part of the show. it was more than anything i could've ever dreamt of. i laughed, i cried, i had the time of my life.

i was lucky enough to meet jim, astrid, and jenn at the stage door, alongside seeing sharon again, who spoke to me briefly and gave me another hug before leaving. it is an experience i will never, ever forget.

come from away is something that means so much to me. more that i could ever describe, really. today, the day of the final performance, i watched along to the proshot at 3pm while the matinee played in new york. i cried nearly the entire time.

i am so proud of everyone who was a part of this amazing, amazing production. it changed lives, it put newfoundland on the map, it told real life stories about real people and did everything endless justice. i could not thank everyone involved enough.

"you are here at the end of a moment," and "you found your heart but left a part of you behind," and "you're gonna be okay," and a dozen other lines that would make this already long post too much longer.

come from away: thank you for telling stories. thank you for doing something beautiful. thank you for the tears, the laughter, and the endless joy. thank you for everything you did for me and for millions of others.

this is not the end. it is only the beginning of a tale that will be told for years to come, one that will live on in my heart and in so many others.

thank you.

[miserablesme]

The Les Miserables Changelog Part 1: Barbican Previews

Hello everyone! I'm starting out a blog which will look at my favorite musical, Les Miserables, and will discuss the various changes it has gone through over time (musically and lyrically). As it turns out, a LOT of edits have been made over the years so this will doubtless be a series with several parts.

This first part may well be the most difficult and will almost certainly be the most incomplete, as previews can be a time of extensive editing and experimentation. At least for the first few weeks or so, it's perfectly possible any one day of previews will be slightly different than any other day. However, I only have access to two audios from the Barbican Theatre previews of Les Miserables, meaning it's likely that lyrical variants exist which I have no way of hearing.

I am aware of the existence of a third audio which is fairly early in the run of previews, as the tape's master has told me that Gavroche's death scene is in its original form (I'll clarify that later). However, that tape has never been traded, and has sadly only been listened to by its master. I am also aware of a video proshot of the Barbican era that exists in the Royal Shakespeare Company library, but currently have no access to it. I plan to inquire about whether I can look at it sometime (though I'm not sure a blog like this is "official" enough to warrant it for research purposes). As such, this comparison only entails the two widely circulated audios from the Barbican run.

Now that we've gotten that cleared up, let's get started!

First, let's look at the opening "Work Song". In the earlier recording I have (let's call it R1), the beginning music (the same tune used, for instance, at the opening of "At the End of the Day" and "One Day More" and for Marius and Cosette's meeting in "The Robbery") stops. Then, a few moments later, the more familiar opening that leads directly into the prologue begins. By the time of the later recording I have (let's call it R2), the scores have been combined so that the first tune directly transitions into the second one.

Meanwhile, in R1 there is a sequence of lines that goes as follows:

I've done no wrong

Sweet Jesus, hear my prayer

Look down, look down

Sweet Jesus doesn't care

I killed a man

He tried to steal my wife

Look down, look down

She wasn't worth your life

I know she'll wait

I know that she'll be true

Look down, look down

She's long forgotten you

Most fans of the musical recognize the middle sequence of lines ("I killed a man" through "She wasn't worth your life") as no longer being lines in the show (for good reason, as we'll get into in a later edition of this blog). However, R2 keeps the lines. Instead, it deletes the third sequence ("I know she'll wait" through "She's long forgotten you"). I have no idea if this lasted only a few performances or made it all the way to the end of the Barbican run, or somewhere in between.

During "On Parole", specifically after Valjean is underpaid for his labor and sings about his frustration, R1 uses a variation of the "Work Song" theme which, to my recollection, is heard nowhere else in the musical. It can be heard here. By R2, it was switched to an in-tune version of the number with a unique opening. The musical retains that version to this day, but in case you can't recall it you can hear it here.

Minus an unintentional line flub in "At the End of the Day" in R2, the two Barbican recordings seem to use the same libretto and score from this point until "The Runaway Cart". At this point, R1 has a rather extensive scene leading up to Valjean saving Fauchelevent, which goes approximately as follows (the dialog is difficult to make out):

(VALJEAN)

Is there anyone here who will rescue the man?

Who will help me to shoulder the weight of the cart?

I will pay any man thirty louis d’or more

I will do it myself if there’s no one who will

We can’t let him die like that down in the street

Can you all watch him die and do nothing at all?

(FAUCHELEVENT)

Don’t approach me, Monsieur Mayor

The cart’s not gonna be holding

Not my poor mother would care if I should die

(TOWNSPEOPLE)

Don't go near him, Monsieur Mayor

There's nothing at all you can do

The old man's a goner for sure

Leave him alone

Most of that dialog is deleted in R2, so that it goes directly from "Who will help me to shoulder the weight of the cart" to "Don't go near him, Monsieur Mayor". I really like the idea of the original version; it seems reasonable that Valjean, having become a more trusted man, would expect the townspeople to help him. It's more meaningful that Valjean is good enough to do what's right when there's more time to establish that no one else is. Having said that, the original version did take quite a while and didn't really contain any relevant information that wasn't in the final version. I think the cut version as heard in R2 is a good compromise and retains the general mood and pacing to make Valjean's ultimate action satisfying (something that can't be said of later cuts, as will be discussed in a future edition of this blog).

Additionally, at the end of the number Javert refers to "the mark upon his skin" in R1 and "the brand upon his skin in R2 (as well as literally every subsequent performance since then to my knowledge). I have no idea if the "mark" line was a minor flub or was actually the original lyric.

"Who Am I?" is an interesting one. The musical content is identical in R1 and R2, but in R1 after his high note, Valjean shouts "You know where to find me!" with emotion so dramatic it sits right on the border between awesome and campy. By contrast, Valjean is totally silent after his high note in R2. Neither version would see its final day just yet, although the latter certainly has become more traditional over time. More on that in future editions.

From this point until "Master of the House" everything is the same between the two recordings. Roger Allam even comes in slightly late in both "Confrontation" scenes (making his line "-jean, at last...")! However, in the opening to "Master of the House" the following lines occur in R1:

(THENARDIER)

My band of soaks, my den of dissolutes

My dirty jokes, my always pissed as newts

My sons of whores

Spend their lives in my inn

Homing pigeons flying in

They fly through my doors

And their money's good as yours

(CUSTOMERS)

Ain't got a clue what he put into his stew

Must've scraped it off the street

Hell, what a wine

Châteauneuf de Turpentine

Must've pressed it with his feet

Landlord over here

Where's the bloody man

One more for the road

One more slug of gin

Just one more or my old man is gonna do me in

All of those lines would be scrapped in R2. Personally I prefer this shortened variant than the one that would occur much later. Sure, some fun moments get lost, but nothing that actually adds any substance or characterization to the musical (unlike the later cut, which I'll discuss in a later edition of this blog). Some have speculated that this is simply lost dialog due to a tape flip of degrading, given that future performances would retain those lines. However, there is firsthand confirmation that the cuts were in fact part of the performance. To quote Trevor Nunn on page 87 of 1990's The Complete Book of Les Miserables (a page which elaborates that "the cost of overtime incurred after three hours could be crippling at a time when Les Miserables was still trying to find an audience"):

"Cameron wanted major cuts, which would have reduced its length to two and a half hours. I resisted, refusing to discuss things on those terms... Some of the other proposed cuts - like the removal of the "Master of the House" scene-setting preamble - were tried out in previews and then restored as the scenes would not work without them."

From a historical perspective that quote is invaluable. As will be brought up in a later blog post (notice a pattern today?) the musical would in fact be cut much later to avoid overtime charges. When people like myself have expressed the opinion that these cuts come at the expense of artistic integrity, I've seen others defend them by claiming that the overtime costs never were relevant to Cameron and the gang until Broadway sales began to go down, and that if they were taken into account the musical may well be in its shortened form from the beginning. However, this quote proves that argument to be false. Right from day one, the crew was aware that retaining a >3 hour runtime would come with severe financial costs, but this was deemed a worthy sacrifice in order to tell the story they wanted told. Indeed, it sounds like Cameron Mackintosh was waiting quite some time to enact his infamous cuts! (Cameron Mackintosh valuing profit above art?! Crazy, right??)

But I digress. Going back to the musical, the "Waltz of Treachery" number is mostly the same. However, after Valjean's "It won't take you too long to forget" line, R1 has over a minute of wordless vamping which leads right into the rather awkwardly-placed "Stars" song. By contrast, in R2 this vamping (which is still a minute long, mind you) leads into a humming duet between Little Cosette and Valjean, similar to the duet right before the number. A nice little bookend that makes the scene feel all the more resolved. (Much later this duet reprise would ironically be scrapped again, though!) The remaining segment of R1's vamping now plays after this sequence in R2.

Minus some unintentional missed lines at the beginning of "Stars" in R1, the recordings seem to follow the same libretto right up until "One Day More". Here, R1 uses the following lines:

(EPONINE)

One more day with him not caring

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

Was there ever love so true?

(EPONINE)

What a life I might have known

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

I was born to be with you

However, by R2 this scene is in its current form:

(EPONINE)

One more day with him not caring

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

I was born to be with you

(EPONINE)

What a life I might have known

(MARIUS and COSETTE)

And I swear I will be true

And that closes act one! Going on to the second act, the opening barricade scene has a few changes. First off, following the opening notes, R1 features a rather odd tune bearing resemblance to "Do You Hear the People Sing" (which can be heard here) before transitioning to a more true-to-form instrumental reprise of "Do You Hear the People Sing?" By contrast, R2 goes straight from the opening notes to the true-to-form reprise.

Next, Enjolras proclaims "Have faith in yourself and do not be afraid" in R1, while in R2 he instead states "Every man to his duty and don't be afraid". It's unknown if this was an intentional libretto change or if it simply reflects a flub during R1. A later sequence uses the "Have faith in yourself" line, meaning he may have just sung the wrong line for that particular scene.

Finally, R1 includes the following sequence (at least I think this is how it goes, since the lyrics are a little hard to hear):

(PROUVAIRE)

And the people will fight

(GRANTAIRE)

And join with you

Who gives a speech in the square

Fortunately, R2 uses a much less clunky (though still somewhat so) sequence:

(PROUVAIRE)

And the people will fight

(GRANTAIRE)

And so they might

Some will bark, some will bite

This isn't quite its current form ("dogs" and "fleas" will soon respectively replace the two usages of "some"), but it's pretty darn close.

I've heard that the very first Barbican preview(s?) didn't have a finalized opening to "On My Own". Sadly there is no known audio record of this, so I cannot comment on what exactly it began as. As such, the next major change takes place during Gavroche's death scene. This honestly is probably the biggest of all the changes between the two recordings. R1 uses the following death scene (in the tune of "Look Down" right up until the "So never kick a dog" verse, which is in the tune of "Little People"):

How do you do, my name’s Gavroche

These are my people, here’s my patch

Not much to look at, nothing posh

Nothing that you’d call up to scratch

Some fool, I bet, whose brains are made of fat

Picks up a gun and shoots me down

Nobody told him who he’s shooting at

He doesn’t know who runs this town

Life’s like that

There’s some folk

Missed the joke

That’s three, that’s three

That one has done for me

Too fast, too fast

They’ve got Gavroche at last

So never kick a dog

Because he’s just a pup

You better run for cover when the pup grows...

By contrast, R2 uses a much shorter variant which is set entirely to the tune of "Little People":

And little people know

When little people fight

We may look easy picking but we've got some bite

So never kick a dog

Because he's just a pup

You'd better run for cover when the pup grows up

And we'll fight like twenty armies and we won't give...

This is much closer to its current form, although the last two lines are inverted (we'll get to that in a later edition).

We now fast-forward to "Dog Eats Dog", which while recognizable is very different from the number we know today. The chorus of R1 claims that "It's a dirty great sewer that's crawling with rats", which R2 changes it to "stinking great sewer" instead. I'd definitely say the revised lyric better captures Thenardier's and the sewer's grossness.

Additionally, regarding Marius' ring, Thenardier originally exclaims that he "didn't mean to waste it, that would really be a crime". By R2, the line changes to "wouldn't want to waste it", which I'd say makes a lot more sense.

"Javert's Suicide" has changed a lot. R1 features the following remarks following "Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life":

Damned if I live in this caper of grace

Damned if I live in the debt of Valjean

I'll spit his pity right back in his face

Is this the law or has sanity gone?

(I'm a little unsure as to how accurate the final line is.)

By R2, the lines have been replaced with the current ones:

Damned if I live in the debt of a thief

Damned if I yield at the end of the chase

I am the law and the law is not mocked

I'll spit his pity right back in his face

In R1, the "Where's the new world, now the fighting's done" line is absent, and there is nothing but instrumentals in the segment where it is usually sung. By contrast, it is sung as usual in R2. My guess is that an actress simply forgot her line in R1 and it was always supposed to be there, though I can't say for sure.

The final change occurs at the wedding scene. The singing which opens the number is repeated in R1. By contrast, R2 has it sung once and then done with, as it currently is (and as it should be in my opinion, since the music isn't particularly pretty and contributes nothing to the plot).

Later in the same scene, R1 includes approximately this exchange (again, it's quite hard to make out the exact lyrics):

(THENARDIER)

I was there

Never fear

Even got me this fine souvenir

He was there

Her old dad

*indecipherable* and fleecing this lad

Robbed the dead

That's his way

(MME. THENARDIER)

That's worth five hundred any old day

(MARIUS)

I know this...

By R2, everything between "He was there" and "Any old day" were removed, which makes sense given that they essentially just rehash what was already said.

Finally, there's a subtle difference in the epilogue, specifically during the "Do You Hear the People Sing?" reprise. In R1, the ensemble sings "They will live again in glory in the garden of the Lord". R2 replaces the word "glory" with "freedom", and that word remains the one used to this day. I suppose "freedom" is more appropriate for the context of peace and prosperity. To many, I'd guess that "glory" conjures imagery of knights, battles, and the like; just the kind of violence that the characters wish to move away from! I have no idea if this was why the writers changed the lyric, but it's my hypothesis.

Towards the end of the show, the chorus in R1 sings "Even the darkest moon will end and the sun will rise". By R2, this is changed to "the darkest night". Makes more sense to me, since moons aren't known for being particularly dark!

And that just about sums this part up! If I missed anything feel free to let me know, as my goal is to create a changelog as thorough and complete as possible. I plan on making more parts in the near future covering all the changes that have been made in the show up until this day (discounting concerts). Any feedback and constructive criticism is very much appreciated.

As a side note, both for this project and my own enjoyment, I want as complete a collection of Les Miserables audios as possible. I already have most of what's commonly circulated, but if you have any audios or videos you know are rare, I'd love it if you DMed me!

Until the turntable puts me at the forefront again, good-bye...

[notafraidofstopping876]

Just some random thoughts on the Dear Evan Hansen movie...

Below the cut for anyone who cares to read....

So I’ve listened to the cast album several times and watched a slime tutorial but have yet to see it onstage....and I have a very long history of mental health problems both within myself and within my family, so that’s where I was coming in...

Overall I was pretty happy with it and definitely cried, this is just literally a random thought dump 

*Seeing Evan at the beginning with his twitching and racing thoughts and nervousness made me feel SO SEEN.(I have severe anxiety and depression myself)

*Was Ben Platt probably too old for this role? Probably. But his performance was truly incredible and I’m glad it was preserved in this way.

*Honestly I did not feel as bad for Evan as I thought I would....really and truly after the lies began I didn’t feel hardly any sympathy for him at all. I didn’t even cry during “Words Fail” just because I felt zero sympathy for him after the lying and manipulating.

*Sincerely Me was very well filmed.

*Alana was a lot more sympathetic. I loved her new song, Amanda did a killer job. And I understand more now why Alana posted Connor’s letter, but it still doesn’t excuse it.

*Acting was good all around. Best performance I’ve ever seen Amy Adams or Julianne Moore give. Singing was also good all around, usually once Hollywood casting takes hold of a musical there’s one “singer” who sticks out like a sore thumb (looking at you Russel Crowe and Pierce Bronson) but everybody sounded good.

*I cried for the first time during “Requiem” just because that song always hits way too close to home. Long story short a family member was in and out of the hospital after multiple suicide attempts in a two year period so....yeah 

*LOVED seeing Demarius Copes, even briefly. I’d met him several times because of Newsies on tour and I loved getting to see him on the big screen. 

*Second cry was “You Will Be Found” just seeing how many people were bonded together and uplifted

*When Cynthia said to Larry “Because he wasn’t yours” I audibly gasped. Like, shit. 

*Third and biggest cry was “So Big So Small” because of course it was. May have reminded me too much of my Mom caring for me during my episodes. 

*The resolution of the movie was SO WELL EXECUTED. It solved my biggest problem with the stage show: that Evan never faced consequences for what he did. The fact that he openly admitted what he did and was shunned for it, and then the fact that he actively tried to make things right as best he could by getting to know who Conner really made him a lot more redeemable to me.

*THE VIDEO OF CONNER AND THE GUITAR I LITERALLY GASPED. THAT WRECKED ME. 

Overall I was pretty happy with it....but I will say that while I think it’s great that Dear Evan Hansen is bringing up conversations about suicide and mental health, and I think it’s great that so many people find hope/catharsis in it....I don’t know if it necessarily does that for me.

That’s just me personally, I’m not saying it’s bad. But even when the musical came out, even in that Tony season, there were shows that I found even more cathartic and beautiful (like Come From Away) and shows that I also felt dealt with trauma and mental illness in a meaningful way (Bandstand and even to an extent Anastasia) and it irritates me that so many of those shows were brushed aside because of Dear Evan Hansen’s popularity.

So while I don’t think I’ll ever go out of my way to see the musical onstage, I’m glad the movie exists and I’m glad I watched it. But I don’t think I’ll ever rewatch it multiple times like with the Come From Away proshot.(For the record that musical made me UGLY CRY and belly laugh and made me feel every human emotion that is possible in a ninety minute time span)

[emptymasks]

Do you know of any recordings (be it video or audio) of Drew Sarich and/or Uwe Kröger in Ein Wenig Farbe exist?

I had heard of Ein Wenig Farbe but I thought it only had one character in it, played by Pia Douwes? I didn't know it was by Rory Six though, if that's the same Rory Six who's been in musicals like Elisabeth.

I also had no idea what this musical was about, but after reading some things and also hearing Rory Six talk about it omg?? It's about a trans character??

But yes so I didn't realise there were more characters than just Pia's character? Unless there is just one character and these are other people who have played the main role instead of Pia? musicalzentrale says". For the German premiere, Uwe Kröger slips into the role of Klaus/Helena". I had no idea Drew had ever been in it, which is interesting considering I'm part of his official Facebook fan group and literally a couple of days ago did see "2020 A touch of colour (Helena) - Vienna" listed on there but I didn't realise it was just the English name for Ein Wenig Farbe.

Okay so this is me typing live as I discover things and omg I discovered the proshot with English subtitles on VK do I'm downloading that and it'll be added to the list of musicals we can stream. Klaus is played by Wenzel Witura here though. The official soundtrack only lists Pia Douwes as a singer. There seems to have also been a demo/ep released by Rory Six, I don't know who's singing on it. Which are both for sale on soundofmusic-shop

I looked in general VK, and in the Drew Sarich and Uwe Kroger fangroups. I couldn't find anything. The Drew Sarich fangroup has loads of stuff and they're so up to date, but they didn't even find the video below that I found on Youtube. It's likely Uwe put something on his instagram story at the time, but there's no archive of that.

Oh fuck! I found a clip/trailer on Youtube. So they also did an English reading of the show?

Searching the English name comes up with more for Drew

Another little clip https://www.facebook.com/watch/?extid=SEO----&v=1505312739661244

Oh! So the entire thing was live streamed with Drew on July 1st 2020. I have no idea if anyone recorded the live stream to save it, I hope someone did. Trying to follow the link in this facebook posts takes you to a page that asks for a password. I do not know the password. Uwe's facebook fangroups didn't have any photos or audios or vides I could find.

Oh god... the things you guys cause me to do... I may have contacted theatrecouch asking if the livestream was preserved and if there are any plans to release it so anon if you would like to know if they ever get back to me about that feel free to reveal yourself in my dms.

[hhuta]

every day i think about how they changed the le bien qui fait mal and l'assasinphonie choreography so salieri wasn't dancing close with sexy half naked men. do we know why. i have tried and failed to pinpoint an exact time. i feel like im going insane. they no homoed a dance

anon.. i think about that daily too... im so happy someone else loves the original choreos like i do 😭 it took me a while to reply cuz i was on a mission to answer ur questions as best as i could. so... finally... here is what i found out:

first of all if u wanna read my rant about the changes, in general, here are the posts about le bien qui fait mal and l'assasymphonie

second of all "do we know why" is a good question. meaning i dont have an answer dlkjaskl i just now started to learn french so if they ever talked about it in a video, or something... i missed it. so right away im telling u that i can only offer my guesses.

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starting with LE BIEN QUI FAIT MAL, as i said in that post i linked, i tried to figure out whether they only degayed it for the 2011 proshot or not and i found out that no, the changes were also present in live performances.

then an anon told me massimiliano (the dancer who manhandles salieri) couldnt be at the 2011 proshot recording. i checked the video and he really wasnt there at all, but that still doesnt fully explain things, bc as u will see from my extensive, very professional research, unlike in the 2011 proshot, in live 2011 shows massimiliano was there, performing, in other parts of the musical. just not during lbqfm. i know he is an irreplaceable icon, so much that i couldnt find a single video where he wasnt the one manhandling salieri (even tho other dancers, from other parts of the choreo, kept switching), but to me its now clear that that was not the case. they really just decided to change the choreo.

so now lets see how it all progressed

for that its helpful to know the dates of mor performances. based on that i was insane enough to watch as many videos as i could to try to pinpoint when the choreo changed. except it wasnt that simple. i quickly found out that a loootttttt of other changes happened before that major one, before massimiliano left. so here it is

THE LBQFM CHOREO CHANGES I NOTICED

03.01.2010 last PDS performance, still the original

6, 26 february 2010 original

11 march 2010 original (massimiliano's skirt fell off 😭)

20 march 2010 original

8 may 2010 original

9 may 2010 not so much the original anymore. this is the first change i've noticed. @1:28 originally its a male dancer who bends back salieri and then there are 2 men and 2 women who .. idk how to describe it, but do that push and pull motion. here one of the guys is not there

(10, 11, 12 no performances)

13, 15, 16 may 2010 now the other guy is gone too, only women left (but the dancer is not really gone. im pretty sure hes there, doing another thing next to them)

(cannot find a video from the 17th, that was the last performance in lyon)

performances at zenith de saint etienne begin at the 21st but i couldnt find a video from it

22 may 2010 original again (sidenote salieri is really unhinged here)

27 may 2010 change. female dancer who's usually interacting with salieri during the first verses isnt there, just massimiliano. not sure if its the same woman who calls him during the bridge and moves him thru the dancers but anyways shes also not there, he walks around alone. so when the Climax happens, again, only massimiliano is there grabbing him

31 may 2010 and 6, 10, 13 and 19 june 2010 another change. the female dancer is back, but during "j'adore l'avoir dans la peau" usually there are two dancers next to him mimicking playing a harp with their bodies but not this time

now the dates that matter the most i cant find a single videeooo 🤡 which are the performances in limoges (25, 26 and 27 june 2010) so all i can say is that

3 july 2010 is the first time i could find that massimiliano wasnt there. aka the degayed choreo. but i cant say if it is the first. also the original choreo for the "j'adore..." part is back again. thats the only performance they did in nancy and its also the last tour performance from 2010. a bunch of people were at the curtain call, even albert cohen was there, so its very weird that massimiliano was absent. im so mad i couldnt find those videos from late june bc all i got is just one video of him not being there, which makes me think he just couldnt be there so they had to change the choreo

9 november 2010 they are back in PDS and its the original again (also this is just for me but he still has the original cravat here. im trying to kill two birds with one stone)

2 december 2010 original (salieris beautiful cravat is gone 😔but this is one of my fave videos)

5, 11 december 2010 still the original

12 december 2010 changes again 😭 "j'adore..." harp dancers are gone again

14 december 2010 they are back <3 (funny video bc mikelangelo forgets to give florent the score)

18 december 2010 NOW HERE ITS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING. a little change. massimiliano is there at the beginning, he drags salieri around but then hes gone before the first verse starts! and he doesnt come back !!! harp dancers are still there tho lmao

19 december 2010 massimiliano is fully gone 🎻 yamin even replaced him during la mascarade, like it happens in the 2011 proshot. i think since this date this change became the standard for a while, before they went back to the original. in the meantime, im guessing its when they shot the 2011 proshot

26 december 2010 still just the female dancer

4, 8 january 2011 still just the female dancer

9 january 2011 still just the female dancer but because it was the last performance in paris, before going on tour again, she has a whip for funsies. also they added, at the end, 2 female dancers sorta removing and quickly putting back salieris coat

28 january 2011 first tour performance, still just the female dancers. and i was not paying attention to this before, but i noticed for the first time in this video the 2 women dancing together, like they show for 2 seconds in the 2011 proshot. lesbian rights <3 i dont think it was part of the original choreo? its hard to tell exactly when they added that bc people usually record salieri, not the dancers, and hes not next to them when it happens (its before the bridge)

4, 5, 6 february 2011 still just the female dancer. but unlike before, this time (but idk exactly when it began) massimiliano was there for other parts of the show; yamin and other people didnt replace him (on the 4th: im pretty sure hes present in l'assasymphonie) (on the 5th: hes in la mascarade, le trublion, etc)

so. they really just changed it. massimiliano not being able to perform wasnt the case. we have to accept that they made a mistake <333 ldkajslk

19, 20, 27 february 2011 the original is back

19, also 19, 20, 23, 26 march 2011 it changed a little again but massimiliano is still there. no one bends salieri back and just one guy and one woman do the push and pull motion. also i think around here they removed the two women dancing together? maybe i just cant see it

20 mai 2011 original back once again

01 april 2011 .................... clearly an aprils fools joke bc massimiliano is gone again. i randomly picked this date cuz i knew it would be cursed dlkjaslk.. also again salieri doesnt get bent back and just 2 dancers do the push and pull... u knOW IT !!! WE GET IT !!!!! ok but i love him dramatically sighing and falling on the floor at @2:58 hes doing the most to make up for the flavour that got lost

03.06.2011 original again

12.06.2011 just massimiliano, no female dancer. im obsessseedddd with this video fully bc of the things massimiliano does!! obsessed with his evil smile @0:48, obsessed with salieri forgetting to throw the score on the floor, so massimiliano grabs it from his hand and forces him to kneel and stand up again. can u tell im a massimilianator and the choreo without him has no chance to please me?

17.06.2011 back to the original again

now im gonna skip to the very last performance from this production bc im honestly tired lkdajskl

10 july 2011 its the original thank god

TL;DR: 19 december 2010 is when the degayed choreo became the standard for a bit and on 19 february 2011 the original returns.

im confident that watching all those videos in a short period of time gave me brain damage but .. anything for science <3

ANYWAYS i started to do this to figure out why they changed It only to realise they changed A Lot of other things throughout performances (some things i didnt even mention, like the dance the woman does next to salieri during the first verse changes a lot) and they kept going back and forth to the original choreo. i think i can safely say not a single part (involving salieri) remained the same throughout the whole thing (not even the bending him back part was always there. i could swear it would be but!! no!). my guess is maybe because a certain dancer took a break or maybe they just wanted to do something different

in conclusion i figured out the exact dates but i cant tell u why massimiliano wasnt part of lbqfm for a while. i couldnt even find people talking about it on forums but, again, maybe bc im not fluent in french. to me it was a big loss, the whole thing loses its spice, i obviously prefer the original by miles. no idea why they simply didnt chose someone to replace him bc the other dancers changed all the time.

maybe it was in florents contract that only massimiliano was allowed to manhandle him <3 dlkjaslk im half kidding bc who knows? maybe it was a legal thing, maybe massimiliano invented this part of the choreo and only He could do it 😭 but honestly. my real final guess is that they simply wanted to change things to make it New and Fresh. as we saw, massimiliano leaving wasnt the only lbqfm choreo change.

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moving on to L'ASSASYMPHONIE thank god bc it will be a lot easier to pinpoint when they changed the choreo. i believe they changed it and never went back to the original </3 god knows why </333 so when i find the new one ill stop looking

03.01.2010 last performance from "season one", at PDS (before going on tour) and also the last time they used the original choreo bUT ! THERES A BONUS! MORE MEN !!! LKDJALKS they said we will degay it later but u can have more naked men as a goodbye gift <3 really caught me by surprise, its the first time i watched it. but u wanna know whats really weird? this blurry shaky video is the only one i can find?! i even had to scroll a lot on youtube to get to it... conspiracy theory dove is trying to hide the original choreo. but honestly it makes no sense bc it was a Special day..... i cant find it anywhereee not even outside youtube... this is a hate crime. this is offensive. this is the heresy salieri sings about in the song.

the only thing i found was another performance from the same day but i think its the morning or afternoon performance and not the very last one. its for sure different than the one i linked first. i dont think there are 100 men onstage but at least we can see he had black nails 🥰 anyways... if anyone knows a better shot video of the very last performance... let me know... im really upsetklfdjalsjdal I FEEL SOOOO ROBBED...

and im even more mad now, remembering that from now on we get this new choreo. it began on their first tour

04.02.2010 2010 tour begins, first time we see the new choreo

and i have absolutely no idea why they changed it. again, i never saw an explanation and i dont have a single guess. i cannot imagine why they thought the new one was better. if i have to say one nice thing about it is that i like the background, the moving curtain that kinda looks like flames. they should absolutely drop the stupid flashing lights and just leave that background for the Cool effect and bRING BACK..... THE HALF NAKED BLINDFOLDED MEN (HNBM) ...........  THEY CAN REPRESENT SO MUCCHHHHHH... I LOVE THEM....

thats all i got to say otherwise ill start repeating myself.. if u wanna read more about my opinions on the hnbm and why i prefer the original l'assasymphonie choreo its all in the second link of this post..

anyways big thanks to anyone who read this, hope u enjoy all those videos. even with the dagayed choreos, florent and the dancers always deliver amazing performances. so, regardless, its a good time to watch them. lastly if anything is wrong, if i put down the wrong date or something, my bad, but it was .. a lot.. to go through, so if anyone sees a mistake let me know !