(no subject)
Apr. 14th, 2018 11:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsA 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 ofSophie 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 forDrosselmeyer 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.)
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
- 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
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.)
no subject
Date: 2018-04-14 10:18 pm (UTC)