(no subject)

[skygiants]

A couple weeks ago, genarti, aquamirage, aamalie and I went to go see Anastasia the musical on Broadway. This was, overall, a thoroughly delightful experience full of singing and dancing and fancy dresses and at least half a dozen reprises of "Once Upon A December," which is great because "Once Upon A December" is one of two songs from my childhood that can always make even my reliably-dry eyes tear up regardless of the context. Sad waltz music! My only weakness!

(The other song is "Somewhere Out There;" I could not watch An American Tail as a child because it would make me too sad and I couldn't cope. ANYWAY.)

I have attempted to explain the plot of Anastasia The Musical several times since, and, somewhat to my surprise, the conversation always goes like this:

BECCA: So it's basically just the cartoon Anastasia except they took out Rasputin --
CONVERSATION PARTNER: They took out Rasputin?!
BECCA: Yes, OK, but listen, instead they added a sad Communist agent named Gleb --
CONVERSATION PARTNER: I can't believe they thought they could do cartoon Anastasia without nonsense zombie Rasputin! What even is the point!
BECCA: And poor Gleb is trying really hard to make a love triangle happen, but it's just not happening, and instead he just sings sadly about his feelings in the office while all his politburo coworkers give him the side-eye --
CONVERSATION PARTNER: AND WHAT ABOUT THE ZOMBIE BAT?

So: I'm sorry, zombie Rasputin fans. I did not know that you were out here in such force, but I understand that you are all disappointed.


The plot is essentially the same: a couple of lovable con artists find an amnesiac girl who is really the long-lost Anastasia Romanov, they train her up, she travels to Paris, she convinces her grandmother that she really is Anastasia, and then has a change of heart and runs off with the younger, cuter con artist to some kind of happily ever after.

There were a bunch of changes that the production made, often towards enhancing historical realism that really worked extremely well for me quite well, including:

- the fact that every time Flashback Alexandra Romanov walked into one of Anastasia's rosy memories, she served as an IMMEDIATE downer to everyone's good time by intoning something somber about God
- a flashback of joyous baby Alexei dancing that ends with him falling down and everyone silently but very visibly FREAKING OUT because, you know, hemophilia
- the heightened tension of the escape from St. Petersburg on the refugee train, which is now a rundown open carriage where all the other passengers quietly and visibly resent Our Protagonists for their insistence on taking up more than their fair share of seat space for dramatic dance moves, and also where a nobleman in disguise gets shot by the police halfway through the trip
- some very clear gestures towards Anastasia's PTSD about watching her entire family get shot before her eyes
- the willfully empty decadence and nostalgia of Sophie Lily and the other aristocratic Russian émigrés in 1920s Paris; Land of Yesterday is probably my favorite of the new songs in the score
- this has nothing to do with historical realism but my other favorite new song was a number called Quartet at the Ballet in which various of our protagonists have Feelings in their Signature Themes literally around the edges of a production of Swan Lake; great musical mashup with solid ballet dancing. I kept waiting for Drosselmeyer ROTHBART (thank you sovay) to rip off his bird mask and turn out to be Gleb about to assassinate Anastasia which ALAS did not happen, but it was very cool anyways.

Relatedly: THE GLEB PLOT

Gleb DOES pursue Anastasia all across Europe (instead of Rasputin), having Feelings about it all the way, related to a.) the fact that HIS FATHER was one of the people who was involved in the shooting of the Tsar's family to begin with and b.) our Anya's just so cute, come on! and c.) COMMUNISM.

Finally, he catches up to her, and is about to shoot her because Russia Must Move Forward Not Back Into The Past, and then has a Personal Growth moment and decides he's not the guy who can shoot a cute girl who technically has not done any crimes for the Cause, and ... goes home again?

Honestly, we were not expecting this ending. "That's nice!" we said, in polite approval. "He's going to get shot as soon as he walks in the politboro door! But he's a nice boy!"

And then Anastasia decides to run off with Dmitri instead of being Princess Anastasia, and we're at the end, which is where we hit the biggest gap that I felt in the production: there's a lot of things hinted at throughout the show that could lead to this decision, but we never actually see Anastasia internalizing any of them.

Here's a list of good reasons that the show almost presents for our heroine to ditch the grandmother she's been desperately seeking and the identity of Anastasia Romanov:

- over the ten in-between years she's grown into a different person and she can't reconnect with Grand Duchess Anastasia
- the pointlessness of a life lived in empty nostalgia as exemplified by the aristocratic gloss of the other Russian émigrés
- the Romanovs were in fact very bad for Russia

And if the show had actually leaned a little more into any or all of those, it would have, I think, actually added the substance that I suspect the writers were attempting when they replaced Zombie Rasputin with Sad Communist Gleb, and did not quite reach.

Instead it is, like the movie, a fairytale: true love has prevailed, Anastasia turns up to tell Dmitri she's running away with him at the end --

skygiants: STILL IN HER GRAND IMPERIAL RUSSIAN PRINCESS DRESS?
genarti: She's going to be kind of conspicuous as they flee across Paris...
aquamirage: No, come on, they'll sell it! Where else are they going to get money from?

-- and they're all going to live happily ever after. (Except, presumably, for poor Gleb.)

Comments

[sovay]

And if the show had actually leaned a little more into any or all of those, it would have, I think, actually added the substance that the changes to the storyline that I suspect were trying for when they replaced Zombie Rasputin with Sad Communist Gleb, and did not quite reach.

Is this inflexibly textual or do you think a different production could lean more? If the latter, I'll be interested to see what happens once it gets away from the Broadway production.

P.S. I kept waiting for Drosselmeyer to rip off his bird mask and turn out to be Gleb about to assassinate Anastasia which ALAS did not happen, but it was very cool anyways.

Drosselmeyer in Swan Lake would not actually surprise me, since he is the kind of character who can turn up anywhere, including anime, but pedantically speaking the magician character in Swan Lake is Rothbart; Drosselmeyer is from The Nutcracker. As far as I can tell they are both part-time owls, so the confusion is understandable.

[skygiants]

Some of the difficulty is textual; part of the problem is that during the Gleb Confrontation she leans VERY HARD into "I AM Anastasia and I'm NOT ASHAMED" and then IMMEDIATELY after he leaves is like "also, I'm running away with Dmitri to be Anya" with no break in the middle for any transition from one attitude to the other. But I think you could probably do quite a lot with staging and facial expressions and Anya having reactions to things that currently don't register.

PS: ah yes thank you for the correction! The confusion comes in, of course, via Princess Tutu, from whence also derives my primary attachment to Swan Lake

[sovay]

But I think you could probably do quite a lot with staging and facial expressions and Anya having reactions to things that currently don't register.

Yeah: the kind of about-face you describe might be more believable if you could tell that her facing-down of Gleb was the last showing of the Anastasia mask, and now that it's kept her alive and broken the last link with her past, she can let it go. (I do not assume this is how it functions in the show, I'm just thinking of excuses for plausible emotional continuity.)

The confusion comes in, of course, via Princess Tutu, from whence also derives my primary attachment to Swan Lake

Legit!

Using Swan Lake as an inset for the Anastasia story is brilliant, however, since it concerns the impersonation of one woman by another—well, what if Odette is also impersonating Odette? What if there's no White Swan?

[genarti]

You could probably also fix it with very minimal textual edits -- a sentence here or there would do a whole lot to connect the slightly floating pieces. (And it's not through-sung, so you could add a sentence here or there without having to rewrite songs to do it.)

[sovay]

(And it's not through-sung, so you could add a sentence here or there without having to rewrite songs to do it.)

Musical! Not opera! Right.

[skygiants]

Swan Lake was a perfect choice and I spent the entire scene leaning forward and forcibly restraining myself from clapping my hands with glee where it would not be appropriate.

'What if there's no White Swan' is a really good writing prompt that someone should definitely go with. (I think Mercedes Lackey sort of tried it once, but, you know, Mercedes Lackey.)

[sovay]

'What if there's no White Swan' is a really good writing prompt that someone should definitely go with. (I think Mercedes Lackey sort of tried it once, but, you know, Mercedes Lackey.)

I do not think I can promise to do anything with it, but if you find that someone who is not Mercedes Lackey has, please let me know.

[rachelmanija]

I always and forever feel that this is a very strange premise for a cheery musical. If you're going to do something about the Romanovs it should be along the tonal lines of Assassins. And should definitely involve Rasputin. The show-stopper should be a horrifyingly funny tour de force where everyone tries to kill him (or is that in the original?)

[evewithanapple]

Distressingly, it is not. Rasputin is a zombie for the entirety of the original, and his extremities keep falling off while he tries to formulate an evil plot.

[rachelmanija]

WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

[evewithanapple]

Enjoy!

[conuly]

To be fair, not that different from real, historical Rasputin, right?

[skygiants]

In defense of Anastasia: it's a significantly less weird choice for a cheery children's musical than Hunchback of Notre Dame!

I think what you have possibly described is the musical version of The Death of Stalin (2018) (at least as it has been described to me by others, I haven't seen it yet.)

[rachelmanija]

I actually also wondered that about Death of Stalin but I am refusing to see it as I already live in a hideous real-life political dystopia and refuse to deliberately inflict it on myself in my moviegoing.

Re: cheerful child-appropriateness: But does Hunchback primarily center around child-murder? That maxes out my child-inappropriateness meter.

[skygiants]

So I've just consulted my child-inappropriateness murder and it turns out that I find stories that primarily center around sexual obsession and attempted rape by sinister religious figures and end with everyone dying to rate higher on the scale than stories that primarily center around child-murder and end with everyone dying. I'm not saying this is correct, just that that's what my gut believes.

On the other hand, the original version of Hunchback does VERY DEFINITELY end with everyone dying as a result of the sexual obsession by a sinister religious figure, whereas in 1997 when the cartoon musical was made it was still possible that the story of the Romanovs did not, in fact, end with everyone dying (DNA evidence didn't disprove the beloved Anastasia-and-possibly-Alexei-escaped conspiracy theory until like 2008).

[rachelmanija]

My absolute favorite thing about this comment was the Freudian typo or possibly autocorrect of "murder" for "meter."

[skygiants]

well now I've just got Jekyll & Hyde's Murder! Murder! stuck in my head

[aella_irene]

Yup, that's the Death of Stalin (which is great)

[lizbee]

It's funny, because as I read that comment, I was like, "I wonder if The Death of Stalin would work as a musical? I bet it would."

[evewithanapple]

So in this version, Anastasia was actually present for her family's execution? Because from what I recall of the movie, she was separated from them long before the revolution got to that point. But on the other hand, if the story takes place ten years after the executions, she would be in her mid/late twenties, and I always thought movie!Anastasia was meant to be twenty-one, at most. On the OTHER hand, the timeline of the Russian Revolution is so confusing and convoluted*, putting together a plot that adheres in any real way to the historical record is basically a lost cause before you even start.

*a podcast I listen to is doing a series on Rasputin, and every time they run up against the Revolution(s), it devolves into them randomly shouting "PEASANTS! NOVEMBER! AGRARIAN!"

[genarti]

They're definitely very vague about the timeline and ages. But yeah, Anastasia was there for it in this, or at least was in the very close vicinity or something -- I don't remember the show ever explaining exactly how she escaped, and her memories of and flashbacks to the night are much bigger on the THEATRICAL IMPRESSIONISTIC SPIRALING TRAUMA than on the details. (More than reasonable, in a family-friendly show, but I do feel it might have been nice to have some idea how she's supposed to have escaped. Oh well!)

[aquamirage]

She escaped with the help of her Older Future Self who may or may not be a hallucination Gen duh

[genarti]

OH RIGHT of course

I mean to be fair that is genuinely the best explanation and I am all for it.

[skygiants]

Ten years might not be pinpoint accurate, but it's definitely in the 1920s when all this goes down. Hemingway! Josephine Baker! And also the LAST OF THE ROMANOVS.

I think the escape of one daughter is meant to be a kind of a sort of plot point involving Gleb's Father's Failure, but that's also never reeeeeeally made clear.

[genarti]

Whereas for me, the conversation has gone:

GEN: So it's a lot like the cartoon Anastasia except they took out zombie Rasputin and the talking bat--
CONVERSATION PARTNER: Well, duh, those were the worst parts anyway!

For the Gleb plotline, I like how Gleb exits offstage, straight to what we were convinced was the Never Mentioned Again, I'm Sure He Went To A Nice Farm In Florida fate of certain death or gulag for completely failing his mission by choosing not to shoot the last Romanov(a)* when he had her at point-blank range because he just couldn't bear to shoot a nice girl... and then pops up at the end anyway! To explain to his bored coworkers... I don't even remember what. Something about THE FUTURE? You're a nice boy, Gleb, but I am still not totally convinced you survived this experience.

(Side note: I realize this is standard English-speaking phrasing and it's not as if I even know a ton about Russian names, but it threw me EVERY TIME she or anyone else talked about Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov; if you're going to put the patronymic in there it's not that hard to do the last name Russian-style too okay I'm done sorry.)

(Other side note: am I forgetting a character named Sophie, or do you mean Lily?)

Anyway, it did not tooootally hang together, no, and Anastasia was very committed to 100% INGENUE AT ALL TIMES IN ALL MOODS (as was Dmitri The Most Wholesome Con Man), but it was great frothy fun and I enjoyed the experience enormously!

[skygiants]

That was the reaction I expected! But apparently the script of my life follows a different track from yours. :O

Yes, I appreciated that nice narrative sop to Gleb Will Also Be Fine, like, Gleb's proooobably not going to be fine, but we can absolutely pretend if it makes us all feel better, which it does. Something something THE FUTURE!

(Oh, good catch, I mean Lily! She's Sophie in the movie. I'm not doing very good on accurate names in this review at all.)

[kate_nepveu]

Oh my gosh he DOES pop up again at the end, I honestly thought they'd taken it out for the tour version but I just remembered that he's opposite stage from the Dowager during the scene which holds on Anastasia and Dmitri frozen in the doorway!

(I think anyone who wants to headcanon Gleb living elsewhere could do so from that, since maybe he hasn't left yet?)

[genarti]

Oh interesting! In the version we saw, it's definitely a full scene (though IIRC a short one) where he shows back up at his office in Leningrad/St Petersburg.

But yes, if they've cut that for the tour version, it makes it significantly easier to headcanon that Gleb is now living elsewhere too, one way or another, instead of going back home to report on how he did not in fact kill the last surviving Romanov. I'm not sure that would be an ending that would make him happier, tbh, but I suspect his odds of survival without gulag time are higher that way...

[kate_nepveu]

I do not remember a separate scene; but I think I already recycled the program, alas.

[aquamirage]

Anya Club was such a blast

I can't remember if I said this but the stuff with Gleb in addition to him being so much less of a potato, visually, was changed a fair amount from Hartford, there is actually MORE GLEB CONTENT in Hartford but it is less meaningful and more boring and that's the main thing that works so much better in the changes they made. He is more consistently around, but also more effectively around in that he does less that is just standing there and basically all his big songs/reprises are new. IF MY FATHER ASKED QUESTIONS WHERE WOULD WE BEEEEE

This post is missing info about how weirdly aggressive New Dmitry is so I will add it. Don't forget to check out his tumblr!!!!!!!

[skygiants]

Anya club!! Yeah, I did basically feel like Gleb had a consistent if slightly endearingly potato-ish emotional arc! There was a Central Question of the core of his character and in the end The Question Was Resolved, he learned a very valuable lesson on his big European field trip.

Did he not have any songs in Hartford, or were they just different songs?

New Dmitry! Remember when Anya punched out a whole bunch of New Dmitry's friends because she somehow learned martial arts skills on the road to Petersburg?

[aquamirage]

He did have songs, most of the stuff in his office is the same, The Neva Flows as like a big solo thing with reprises for him, Still (ballad before Journey to the Past), the weird little reprise he gets at the Neva Club and some dialogue were new, and I think his part in the finale was slightly different but don't quote me on that

OH GLEB

also I want to mention that I'm still amazed they repurposed zombie Rasputin's In The Dark of the Night into a lovely and sad song about exile, that was a truly incredible makeover

[skygiants]

OH MY GOD I FORGOT THAT WAS IN THE DARK OF THE NIGHT

(that's the song that made me want to write the Fiddler crossover! though really what I want is just a mashup with 'Far From The Home I Love')

[aella_irene]

As a person with a plot file entitled Anastasia WITH LESBIANS this all sounds amaxingly relevant to my interests.

[skygiants]

That plot file sounds amazingly relevant to MY interests!

[rushthatspeaks]

I've never seen the Anastasia movie, but you have almost gotten me to seek it out simply by mentioning the presence of ZOMBIE RASPUTIN, so I completely understand the conversation you wound up having repeatedly. I am not all that interested in the Romanovs qua Romanovs, but ZOMBIE RASPUTIN I have a lot of time for.

[skygiants]

Oh PLEASE watch the video evewithanapple linked above, featuring Zombie Rasputin and the Boys.

(the boys are a motley collection of worms, maggots and insects, because every zombie needs a cute animated backup band of some sort or another I guess)

Admittedly it's no 'Rah Rah Rasputin', but then, what could be?

[lilysea]

Thank you for sharing! ^_^

[aella_irene]

I know this post is a year old, but I must tell you that I have been listening to the sound track, and shipping the hell out of Anya/Gleb.

[skygiants]

I wish Anya onstage had ever given any indications of being interested, because "amnesiac princess/angsty politburo agent" is a HECK of a romance plot.

[aella_irene]

Not unexpectedly, AO3 is here for us in our time of trial.

[sovay]

I wish Anya onstage had ever given any indications of being interested, because "amnesiac princess/angsty politburo agent" is a HECK of a romance plot.

I'd read it.