Fun Home Transfer? — Page 5

It's actually not too difficult to find Book of Mormon demos. They've been posted around the internet.

Basically, it took the mini reprise of "Hasa Diga Ebowai" and said: "Thank you for sending us your prophet to die; he has done us so much good, we will kill him and eat him like the book says we should!"

Not a great way to end the show. Leaves a nasty taste in your mouth.

---

Yes, thank you, MB, for allowing us to savor the brilliant lyrics to the greatest song, moment - and hell, why not go the whole nine yards --- show in musical theatre history. I hope you won't mind my wondering, though, if a ten year old would even know the meaning of such words as "swagger" or "bearing," much less use them in everyday speech. It's laughable, actually.

"Not every 10-year-old thinks of tea and jam." Well, it's comforting to know that at least some do. Let's see these in our musicals. And don't be so dismissive of such small pleasures. They can have potent effects. There was a very fine author whose remembrance of a boyhood taste of a madeleine in tea helped trigger a wondrous, magical memoryscape at once beautiful, poetic, moving, profound and universal. THAT is the kind of epiphany worth being presented before the public, and that the public deserves to be presented with.

"Not every 10-year-old thinks of tea and jam." Well, it's comforting to know that at least some do. Let's see these in our musicals.

Kk, I'll go tell everyone who is in the process of writing a musical with a small child in it. Only wide-eyed, cheeky innocence. Got it.

It's laughable, actually.

Yeah, like every post you make on here.

Updated On: 11/22/13 at 12:11 AM

"If a child is going to sing in a musical, let it be about about tea with jam and bread or a cuckoo in a clock."

How old are you, sir? I'm actually serious.

That song was the most beautiful song of the entire show. People around me, young and old, gave Ms. Lucas thunderous applause which seemed to last forever. It's a beautiful, modern piece of music that people of all ages can identify with. There's nothing sinful or wrong about it.

Let's just say that the fire department is on call when those birthday cake candles are lit.

Michael Cerveris posted something on Facebook yesterday in response to a question that seemed to suggest a recording would happen in a few weeks.

Updated On: 11/22/13 at 06:27 AM

After Eight, I have a vivid mental picture of you looking sort of like a cross between Quentin Crisp and Leona Helmsley in her later years. Is this fairly accurate?

there are shows that should not be on Broadway and there are shows like fun home

Eric - After Eight is talking about Proust's remembrance of a madeleine:

"No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. ... Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea."

I don't see the words "swagger" and "bearing" as being completely off-limits for a 10 year old, particularly one of such a literate and slightly precocious background as Alison in Fun Home. I would choose to focus on the interestingly childlike structure of the rest of the song as Alison struggles to articulate whatever it is she is feeling, rather than a couple of words like that.

But then I like Ring Of Keys, so I'm coming at it from a more positive perspective.

Updated On: 11/23/13 at 02:33 AM

In terms of the song being discussed, I heard nothing in it that was overtly sexual. But I do hear a girl who sees someone with whom she identifies. And as for "swagger" and "bearing," they did stick out for me. But I reminded myself that she's precocious and everything in the show is filtered through adult Alison. Regardless, the fantastic performance just made me happy to bear witness to a showstopper.

^

I know this will come as a surprise to you, but Proust was appreciated long before the Fun Home memoir was written. It will also no doubt shock you to find out that it is not necessary to savor or assess his work through the filter of Fun Home! Why, I bet there are people who love Proust who have never even heard of Fun Home, much less read it. Imagine that!

Perhaps you should have read him yourself somewhere along the line. Then you wouldn't have needed someone to explain to you a reference to one of the most famous passages in literature. You would have also known beautiful writing of far finer cloth than things like The Hunger Games or Game of Thrones. But to each his Dulcinea, I suppose.

As for the lyrics to this song, one thing is clear: apologists will always come up with some rationalization to protect their pets from any and all criticism. Perhaps the ten year old girls at Miss Smith's finishing school for girls bandy about words like "bearing" while demurely raising their pinkies drinking tea. They also don't have ten-on-the-Richter-scale-sized temper tantrums at the prospect of wearing a party dress, as does this little darling.

This girl obviously didn't attend that school.

Updated On: 11/24/13 at 08:07 AM

Uh... if Young Alison's refusal to wear a party dress registers as a "10 on the Richter scale" temper tantrum, I have no idea how you even bear to even look at a child.

New strike against shows from After Eight's rubric: children that express emotion rather than smiling sweetly and singing about cookies.

---

Updated On: 11/24/13 at 10:43 AM

"Don't you read all of his posts as remarks from the most pretentious prick?"

*I* don't, I blocked his ass as soon as the block button became a thing.

---