Casting for John Doyle's MERRILY- Page 2

[hyperbole_and_a_half]

Posted: 12/15/11 at 11:53am

You're seriously taking this conceit as if it were actually happening on the stage? I suppose Mary shouldn't sing a note, then, if she "doesn't have musical talent." And it's really unrealistic in other musicals to have a bunch of people huddled together in a group, either on, off, or under the stage, playing along with the story while the rest of the people in the show ignore them. I just don't get it!!!

You can be dismissive if you want. I'll readily accept that farmers and cowhands in turn of the century Oklahoma probably can't sing in perfect six part harmony or dance like Agnes de Mille, and that Aunt Eller and Laurie probably haven't actually buried a sixty piece orchestra in a dugout immediately adjacent to their farmhouse. It's the artiface of theatre; whatever, I get it.

What is hard to swallow is that this is a show about show folk, where musical ability of the characters is not only discussed, but of central importance to the story. Sondheim took into account each character's musicality while writing the score; it's why Charlie sings in mad rushes of words, why Mary's moments are low and almost talky, and why Frank sings less and less as he gets older and distances himself from the music. This isn't Company, where the musicality of the characters is never addressed, or Sweeney, where the actor-musician conceit serves to further the off-beat melodrama; the actor-musician concept in Merrily is like setting She Loves Me during the rape of Nanking, or casting Shaquille O'Neal as Elle Woods: it's a directorial choice that demonstrates that the director either doesn't understand what the authors have written, or simply doesn't care.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/15/11 at 1:13pm

You're seriously taking this conceit as if it were actually happening on the stage?

Are you suggesting that we're not supposed to? We were supposed to with Company. I didn't see Sweeney, but I thought the characters were aware of the conceit in that, too.