Posted: 6/1/15 at 12:49am
Sara Ramirez did the role in the Ravinia concert. She delivers the song vocally and gets every ounce of meaning out of the lyrics.
Posted: 6/1/15 at 2:15am
"And if The Miller's Son makes so much sense in the show as is, why do you make excuses for the song? For the show that is licensed now does not include Silly People. I'm not saying the number was bad, but rather it needlessly protracted the show's length."
Because theatrical truth is different than what we think it to be. West Side Story works better with Cool in the first act and Officer Krupke in the second, although thematically it makes sense for them to switch.
The Miller's Son must be where it is so the show does not become monotonous - after Send in the Clowns there are no new songs, only reprises (excluding Miler's Son). Without The Miller's Son, the ending would feel rushed. It might not mean anything to you and you might believe it could be cut without much effect, but theatrically, it is necessary for the piece. Silly People is not.
Posted: 6/1/15 at 4:01am
The Miller's Son being the (sort of) 11 o'clock number totally makes sense. The whole show is about people who are fooling themselves and each other into a big game of pretend, and then along comes a "lowly" character who can have a nice pastoral screw in the haystack and think about her life and take the moment as it comes, even with knowledge of the inevitable. The way she sees her life with clarity is the opposite of all the other characters, maybe because she has nothing to lose and they have potentially everything. Or so they think, I suppose - they stand to lose their standing, but their standing is only upheld by the collective fantasies of everyone around them. Petra, in The Miller's Son, acknowledges that whatever mental games we play, life is still really short and pretty quickly we're going to be dead.
I think it's a totally thrilling and scary and exciting number.
Posted: 6/1/15 at 4:26am
I wish I could see the LA Opera production again. Judith Ivey, Victor Garber, Laura Benanti, Zoe Caldwell, Marc Kudisch, Michelle Pawk, Kristen Bell. What a cast.
Posted: 6/1/15 at 7:03am
"Could have been something that happened when they were twenty, and now they're close to 30. Could have been something that happened when they were 23 and now they're 26."
Except they are remembering a very specific affair that happened 15 years ago (exactly, since they mention that in the script), which resulted in their daughter Fredrika, who is now 14 or 15 years old.
So the quintet isn't "remembering" a tryst from 3 years ago or 30 years ago. It's 15, exactly.
I also dislike the quintet dressed like refugees from the Kit Kat Club in Cabaret. It takes the class and insight right out of the proceedings, even if they are about affairs of the bedroom and affairs of the heart. There is a sense of style to it all (that Madame Armfeldt laments about it not being up to her standards of kings and dukes), but it's still not a backroom romp in a public toilet either.
Way to bring it down a notch.
Posted: 6/1/15 at 10:10am
Exactly. And the last time best12bars and I agreed was back during the Ford administration.
Posted: 6/1/15 at 1:42pm
I don't think the quartet necessarily has to be middle-aged. To assume that they have to be at least fifteen years older than the trysts they're singing about is to also assume that they have to necessarily follow the regular order of time when they're clearly not a) a part of the narrative or b) real at all. Costumes aside, they've always worked best for me as a set of Cheshire cats, provocative but luminous, always the ideal form, a kind of impish spirit of love.
Posted: 6/1/15 at 4:11pm
Best12bars, if you had read the post you were quoting a little more closely, you would recall that "Remember" is NOT a song about Frederick's and Desiree's affair...it adresses their feelings on a thematic level rather than a literal depiction of them. Sondheim is quite explicit about that in his book, so Frederika's age has nothing to do with it.
Updated On: 6/1/15 at 04:11 PM
Posted: 6/1/15 at 4:39pm
They had an interview with the director in the program, and he said that he cast them as young because everyone is young in memory. I liked it, but there you are.
