rattleNwoolypenguin said: "People make arguments for the morally grey perspective of this show and I think what hits me is that- the creative team did not have the deft hand to explore that truly. Cause somewhere in this show maybe there's a brilliant story about performative activism in social media and that hollow reality and where that comes from. The kinda story Sondheim might tackle in this day and age.
But they want the "You Will Be Found" show. They want that anthemic heartwarming teen pop cake and eat it too show. And that's where this all falls apart. This show is not brave enough to really understand the darkness beneath the platitudes. In their push to have us REALLY empathize with Evan and stay on his side it distances us.
The writers are in a sense, the character of Alana (In the show). Well meaning but naive to the emotional reality and humanity in front of them."
You see, I'm not sure that I agree with that entirely. The writers have said that the original idea of the show came from an experience one of them had losing a high school classmate and noticing all these people pretending to have been close friends with a kid they never knew, only after his death. The original idea was to write a dark satire about the ways people co-opt other people's grief. But as they wrote the show, they realized that they needed to take the characters' pain and grief more seriously while exploring these topics. In the context of the show, "You Will Be Found" is not about finding a place where you belong, but an ironic moment about Evan watching his situation spiral out of control. I think the problem is not in the writers' intent, but rather in the marketing of the show--playing this song out of context in the commercials, making it the hashtag, etc. leading audiences to think they would be seeing a heartwarming musical about overcoming depression when in fact the piece was something very different. And audiences who listened to the cast album before seeing the show I think must have received a similarly limited perspective of what the show actually is (which is not their fault, of course).
I'm reminded of the story from Everything Was Possible when Sondheim first sees Bennett's staging of "Who's That Woman"--Sondheim wrote the song with the intention of the dance featuring a hole in the formation, implying that one of the women has passed away in the time since they performed it 30 years prior. Bennett found that this concept wouldn't read with the six dancers he had (he would need 12 at least) so he scrapped it and came up with something else. Eventually Sondheim recognized what a genius piece of choreography Michael Bennett had come up with, but initially he yelled at Bennett, saying he never would have written such a simple, one-note little song if there weren't some distancing piece of irony to go with it. I see "You Will Be Found" the same way--I find it strange when I see it performed on tv and featured in commercials unironically because I think that negates the whole reason for the piece's existence. But I understand that many audiences are moved by that song on its most surface level, and I recognize that there can be value in that.
I'm not disagreeing with your general idea, though, I think the show ultimately drops the ball and rushes through its conclusion, ultimately not sure what it wants to say about its central premise. I think there are a lot of craft issues, from the premise which relies on at least five giant coincidences in the first ten minutes, to the abrupt finale that leaves so many threads hanging. But I honestly think that the morally grey musical is the one that they intended to write, and the morally grey moments are the ones that I find the most compelling about the piece. And I often get frustrated with (and I'm not saying that you are doing this, but in general) formal and structural critiques turning into moralizing.
