Jerry Herman Meets Conceptual theater conceit:
Everyone crawls around on all fours throughout the entire show until the very end when the pigs rise up and do a rousing tap ballet. Showgirls come from the wings demonstrating the pig's full assimilation into the (musical theater) world.
Disney Version:
Wearing enormous, back problem inducing costumes, actors twitter about the stage singing inane songs. Entire show is directed to look at the world from the animal's point of view. The barn becomes an enormous place where animals, for some reason, conduct impressive acrobatics. Plot is reworked. No longer fascist parable, but rather story of one pig who dreamed of equality with humans, and leads the animal race to it. Children flock.
John Doyle version:
Actors sit in chairs on levels. Their clothing only barely suggests what animals they might be. They play their own instruments. They mostly talk without looking at each other in thinly veiled metaphors. At the end, the pigs get the other actors to play their instruments for them and haughtily ascend to a higher level. The whole thing is possibly a drug induced fantasy. Nobody really understands why. Lauded as genius.
I heard the John Doyle version premieres next year in the UK.
yr ronin,
joey