Profile for MrsSallyAdams

Lady Chablis' establishing song has been posted on line. It sums up one of my issues with the libretto. She starts out fully formed. She doesn't go on any sort of emotional journey. When she sings her 11 o'clock number it's the same sort of self-affirmative "I'm fabulous" number as this opening.

Video: J. Harrison Ghee Performs 'Let There Be Light' from MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL (broadwayworld.com)

 

I’m surprised by the pushback to the daughter and niece’s songs. I felt they were the only characters with any stakes. Maybe they could cast a confident singer as the husband and build up his role. He was a great source of menace in the documentary. 

Anastasia had enough fairy tale elements to get by with it's cursory nods to Russian history. Pocahontas was an abused and enslaved Native American child who was aged up and whitewashed into a Disney princess. People mocked it in the 90's and would excoriate it today.

Whoopi Goldberg: What color is my wind?

That cast album makes the show seem like a one-joke affair. Though the actors themselves clearly commit 100%. 

I like "Candy Store," "Fight for Me" and "Dead Girl Walking (reprise)." I find the comedy songs "Blue" and "Dead Gay Son" absolutely vile. The latter completely misses the point of the films' original, cruel joke. Most of all I like Barrett Wilbert Weed's voice on the Off-Broadway cast album. No one in the London broadcast at the pizazz that original cast did. 

People who abuse minorities want them silent. Activism is less likely to make things worse than to bring attention to the problems that are already there. This is true of every minority group. We've got a whole musical, Suffs, on Broadway right now outlining this historical pattern. 

Do Black people feel unsafe going to the theatre? If so, why?

Possibly a history of microaggressions from audiences and staff? I don't know the statistics for London theater, but I recall how black audiences at the recent Cannes Festival were being wrongly told they're "in the wrong seat" or "need their bags checked again" for the simple reason that they were black. Black Deadline Critic Valerie Complex Cannes Festival Microaggressions

Perhaps when black audiences are invited to a play and white audiences angrily complain they're being "banned or excluded" when every fact says otherwise, that would suggest to some black audiences that they're being told they aren't welcome. 

I just remembered how this team used to wear Pride armbands during games to show support as allies. Then came the World Cup 2022, hosted in Qatar. The armbands went into the trash can.

The play acknowledges this in a brief argument between the captain and managers. The organizers tell them that if they keep the armbands on, they won't be allowed to play. They choose, for better or worse, to play.

Third Coast Review: [F]ails to cohere as a unified theatrical narrative, instead dissipating its energy and dramatic force in a series of increasingly tangential misfires until, by the musical's end, it collapses under its own weight as plot resolution and character development are almost scooted off the stage in a bum's-rush. The incongruous 11 o'clock number seems to be tacked on from a completely different show.

Review: Goodman Theatre's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil Needs Pruning | Third Coast Review

Chicago Sun-Times: It needs some work…  the musical feels more like a series of sharply drawn character sketches than a complete, compelling, coherent narrative. 

The main characters could use some nuance. Hansford is a camped-up cartoon rendition of James Dean, scowling and snarling in a “Partridge Family” T-shirt (Toni-Leslie James’ costumes are an absolute delight throughout). Williams is largely defined by his molasses-thick drawl. There’s little chemistry between the two, rendering a supposedly volatile, passionate relationship bland.

Re Bogess: Playing white supremacy for yuks, even in song, is a choice. So is peppering the storyline with running gags about Nazi memorabilia. “The Producers” got away with it in 2001. But that was then.

 

https://chicago.suntimes.com/theater/2024/07/09/midnight-in-the-garden-of-good-and-evil-review-goodman-theatre-chicago

Chicago Reader: I don’t remember the book or the movie being this funny. There are so many laughs throughout the production that the almost three-hour running time feels swift.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil brings a funny, juicy spin to the story - Chicago Reader

Variety: [I]t seems as if The Lady Chablis, Jim, and possibly Danny, are the only actual characters in a story that became so popular because of its population of eccentrics... for a story that aspires to some depth, the racism of the decaying southern aristocracy shouldn’t be dismissed as just comic relief.
'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' Review: New Musical Version (variety.com)

REVIEW: Broadwayworld.com

And while Ghee is the embodiment of a classic musical theater star, I was much less taken with Tom Hewitt’s portrayal of Jim. Hewitt has a raspy vocal tone that sounded unpolished next to his fellow cast members.... I thought his performance was sadly lackluster, and it lacked the dimension and theatrical flair of some of his co-stars.

Review: MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL at Goodman Theatre (broadwayworld.com)

The cast album did nothing for me. It’s all exposition and grating character voices. But then I found the album for Gutenberg an unpleasant listen as well. I assume for farces like these the songs are not the point.

Review: ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ at the Goodman Theatre is gutsy but needs a conflict worthy of its star

This show, evocatively designed by Christopher Oram, is something new, weird and gutsy enough to jettison most conventional expectations. Like many pre-Broadway tryouts, it has its strengths and weaknesses and a wildly uneven second half of a second act that suggests everyone simply ran out of enough time to fashion an ending that really satisfies...

The show’s fundamental weakness? It has taken a book written from an ironic, outsider perspective with all characters treated equally and so stacked the deck in favor of the anti-establishment outsiders, most notably The Lady Chablis, that A), the Southern white women of Savannah become unexplained, overwrought stereotypes good for only a couple of jokes and B), the transgressive characters thus have nothing credible to struggle against....

[I]t is as if the show were afeared of really revealing the darker side of Savannah culture, which is surprising, frankly, given that Mac does not typically shy away from humans struggling with control. The show really needs to add that tension

Review: 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' should let in the tension (chicagotribune.com)

I'm eager to hear how they've written Miranda. And which of the new songs are for her. Andy's abusive relationship with Miranda needs to be the heart of the show. In Chicago Miranda took a back seat to Andy's love interests and her tedious hipster friends. 

How does this compare to the Queer as Folk reboot from 2022? That series began with a shooting at a gay club. Then mostly forgot it to focus on a series of love triangles. Occasionally the show would remind us that the shooter's trial was happening in the background. Eventually a social media star got called out for capitalizing on the event when they weren't present. 

I saw a regional production. The leading men were smug and the leading lady underwritten. There were two fun songs, "Number One with a Bullet" and "Ready to Settle." But I wasn't invested in the story of an entitled jerk harassing his ex-girlfriend.