Am I the only one excited about Merrily????? — Page 5

One other quibble: Did anyone else notice that in the first song, and in random places in the rest of the show, that the sound was not synched correctly?

I noticed it during some of the group transitions in the second act.

So,

casting the international production...

Hollande as Charley, Obama as Frank and Merkel as Mary?

I love your point about the close-ups fracturing the scene. I knew the close-ups bothered me but I didn't know why. Not seeing Frank during Beth's rant really does take away from the power of that scene.
On the other hand, the close-ups of Frank during the early part of the show really help capture his anguish over losing his friends and how dissatisfied he is with his life. I had more empathy for him at the beginning of the show than I had when I've seen the show before.
In general I'd have to have to say that I had more empathy for every character. However, some of that may have had to do with meeting the actors ahead of time, although as I stated before I thought the documentary thing was unnecessary, misplaced, and contained too many spoilers. But it did help me like the characters more I think.
When you saw it on stage, you obviously didn't get the backstage stuff before the show. How did you feel about each character at the beginning?

How did you feel about each character at the beginning?

Pretty much the way I think you're supposed to. :) I do agree with you, however, and think that Frank's character really gains in the film (as does Gussie's). Being able to get right in close to him when he drops his facade and confesses that his life is crap is very powerful. Otherwise, you might think "What's this guy's problem? He's got it made." Like I said, sometimes the close-ups giveth....

Surprisingly, I had less empathy/sympathy for Charlie this go-round -- although I think that had more to do with my increasing familiarity with MERRILY and was not directly related to the differences between the LIVE and the FILM experiences. (No slight on Damian Humbley's performance, either. He was pretty perfect -- and definitely stopped the show with "Franklin Shepard, Inc.")

Regarding that Behind-the-scenes thing: I will add my voice to the chorus of disapproval. I didn't mind the interviews with the cast & director -- but showing scene after scene (after scene) from the show was an horrendous idea. I honestly wanted to scream at a few of the shots. Who's bright idea was it to ruin half the plot points in the preview?

Rumpelstiltskin, this was also my first time seeing the show and I have to agree with you regarding your thoughts on Beth. She was actually one of the characters I felt the most sympathetic toward, because I honestly feel like she completely gets the short end of the stick in where her story arc is concerned?

So this is mostly just stream of consciousness stuff now that I've had a day to digest it.

Gaveston, I didn't think the masks were to clue the audience into who they all were. I thought it was just a staging choice. I laughed when they pulled the the second chart out.

I liked reading your thoughts on it, Rumpelstiltskin. I totally disagree about the transitions, but I get what you're saying about the secondary actors.It's that kind of stuff that makes me wish I could have seen it live, because I think that the ensemble probably worked better that way. There was one that looked some much like Charlie Day it was crazy. My friends and I were trying to come up with celebrity doppelgangers for the entire cast afterwards. The blonde one looked like Goldie Hawn or Kate Hudson in the Blob scene.

No one show should have to be studied before seeing it for the first time, but I do think Merrily probably provides a richer experience for the people who have loved it, warts and all, for decades. At least for me, and at least last night, it was less about the story itself and how the story is told. Not just the moving backward in time, but the snapshot/not snapshot depictions of the lives of these people who grew up to he so unhappy and lost and broken.

Except for Charley. I've always felt that he was probably the healthiest of the bunch, once all their relationships had finally dissolved. But I really and truly had more compassion for Frank in this one that I ever would have expected to have. And I thought Jenna Russell really played Mary ruthlessly unsympathetically, which is not a bad thing.

More in general, as much as I liked it, I really wish I could have seen it live. I wasn't bothered by the extreme closeups most of the time, and I liked how the fact that it was shot in a theatre became almost secondary. And it has that British musical thing (that PalJoey hates!) where it's directed to not give the audience much time to applaud, but I kind of liked how it worked for this.

I really liked Gussie, except I wasn't wild about the Musical Husbands number. I kept hearing Michelle Pawk and Emily Skinner, two actresses who had the voices that really help to sell that number.

The talk of the different versions makes me wonder how many there actually are. I'm just spit-balling, so anyone who knows more should feel free to correct anything I get wrong. The ones I know in some form are the 1981 original, the La Jolla version (which I think is the one that was broadcast is closest, to. I know it's same version I saw at a college in 1995, which would have been two years I think since the one Maria Friedman was in). There's the Donmar version (which seems to be a gold standard for a lot of people), which brought back elements from the 1981 version. And the Encores version is a kind of reworking of the version we saw last night, right? But Gussie doesn't throw the iodine in the Encores version, right? And which version was done in DC?

This version felt a little dated to me, oddly enough. It had those weird but mostly harmless gay jokes (something about going home to a lover followed by "he'll wait" and Mary's crack about getting her dress from the guy upstairs). They aren't even gay jokes, they're fruit jokes. They were inoffensive, but I just felt like they said more about the time the show was written than the times it takes place in.

As much as I love this show and have loved it since I was young, I'm not immune to its flaws. I'm not a hardliner like some of you who think it flat out can't and won't ever work, but, like my beloved Follies, I think the charms of different incarnations are in the eye of the beholder. I'm just a little younger now than the main characters are the beginning, and I was more or less the ages they are at the end when I first fell in love with it, which doesn't really mean anything, but does make me examine the show not only through its depiction of time by through the prism of all the time that's passed in my own life. I mean, my dear departed dog was named Kringas! There are levels to this show for me that Sondheim never could have predicted!

All that rambling said, I hope digital theatre winds up streaming this at the very least, although I'd rather have a blu ray. I'd definitely like to see it again. I think it probably would play better on a smaller screen, especially in relation to the way it was filmed.

Obsessed with the song that was offered at the intermission on the screen - its this cast doing Old Friends. I don't know when they'll take down the free song page, but it is still up for me at merrilyonscreen.com ... It took a while for the email to come through after I'd put my details in though.
There's a lot of background noise at the start of it which makes me think maybe it's from the cinema recording. Does anyone know if they're releasing a soundtrack recording?

I was at the filming- no adjustments to lighting were made.

Gaveston, I agree with you. This show becomes more resonant as the years go by! Especially when I hear the younger generation of theatre-makers talking like they are changing the world and I think, "God I sounded like that 20 years ago!"

Updated On: 10/25/13 at 12:56 PM

The Doyle revival film of Company. My impression is that it looked like film. But it has been a few years since I watched it. I could be misremembering.

The soap opera comparison is a good one. Old sitcoms too. They all have that too brightly lit, flat feel. And all the colors look muted...nothing vivid, rich or warm.
I even wondered while watching Merrily if they intentionally used tape to give it a 60s/70s/80s retro look to fit the actual time frame of the story.

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I haven't actually seen this broadcast but it's almost assuredly digital video, just like the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and the Doyle and Philharmonic Company videos and pretty much everything else like this ever. They don't actually "film" these in the usual sense, what's happening is that there's several cameras broadcasting to a recording booth, much like a news program, and the editing that occurs is simply switching between the camera inputs, and this switching is recorded to a master tape, which is what you then see. This is all rehearsed beforehand.

Two days later I find myself reflecting more on the book scenes and dialogue than the music and lyrics. Anyone else?

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Mary's journey is just heartbreaking, when you see in the rooftop scene, that a chance remark from Frank that he won't remember dominates her life for the next twenty five years.

Frank's not the only one who's forgotten! Please remind me what he said.

So we all think the script he is holding at the end is "Take a Left" and he's back in present day rethinking where he's at?

Updated On: 10/25/13 at 05:33 PM