How would Ivo van Hove ruin your favorite show? (Twttter thread) — Page 2

(I'm the one who tweeted this, so no one accuse me of stealing)

Evan Hansen sings the final song dangling from a tree branch, he lets go as the lights go black.

Also, it's not that Van Hove is sexist, it's that he's removing a lot of the material that belonged to the female characters in WSS. He's cutting "I Feel Pretty", the "Somewhere" Ballet, and there's talks of doing the film version of "America", a back-and-forth between the Shark men and women, rather than the stage version which is a number just for the Shark women.

Also, hiring a sexual harasser isn't helping his case...

bwayobsessed said: "The fact that people are claiming he’s ruined it when they haven’t seen it is absurd"


The reaction is based on his, shall we say, patchy track record, and the details that have already been announced for WSS.

Simple really.

But we don't really need to see the show to know that altering the structure to remove I Feel Pretty is a massive change. I'd say it was destructive. The dramatic irony of this young woman celebrating her love and how it is making her giddy is undercut by the knowledge that she's about to get her life blown apart by the news of her brother's murder...BY THE MAN SHE IS SINGING ABOUT. I think a lot of people are so used to the placement of the song in the movie that they forget that, even though it's a peppy, upbeat song, we are literally seeing the last truly happy moment Maria will have for a very long time.

It's like when they removed Geraniums/Stonecutter sequence from Carousel. Without that lead-in, What's the Use of Wond'rin becomes Julie wallowing in feelings about Billy. But if you leave the structure alone, that song becomes the really f-ed up advice Julie is giving to the other women about how to deal with men. She's not drowning in self-pity. She's playing an action, telling these other women how to approach their relationships and it's profoundly disturbing, even though the music is beautiful.

Bernstein, Sondheim, Rogers and Hammerstein were not unsophisticated rubes who created these songs for willy nilly. They are brilliant storytellers who knew what they were doing.

SonofRobbieJ said: "But we don't really need to see the show to know that altering the structure to remove I Feel Pretty is a massive change. I'd say it was destructive. The dramatic irony of this young woman celebrating her love and how it is making her giddy is undercut by the knowledge that she's about to get her life blown apart by the news of her brother's murder...BY THE MAN SHE IS SINGING ABOUT. I think a lot of people are so used to the placement of the song in the movie that they forget that, even though it's a peppy, upbeat song, we are literally seeing the last truly happy moment Maria will have for a very long time.

It's like when they removed Geraniums/Stonecutter sequence from Carousel. Without that lead-in, What's the Use of Wond'rin becomes Julie wallowing in feelings about Billy. But if you leave the structure alone, that song becomes the really f-ed up advice Julie is giving to the other women about how to deal with men. She's not drowning in self-pity. She's playing an action, telling these other women how to approach their relationships and it's profoundly disturbing, even though the music is beautiful.

Bernstein, Sondheim, Rogers and Hammerstein were not unsophisticated rubes who created these songs for willy nilly. They are brilliant storytellers who knew what they were doing..

AND Mike Drop. 'Nuff (well) Said.

With all due respect to PalJoey, the answer is that he couldn't. The worst he could do is create a production of my favorite show that I didn't care for.

A thought I had while listening to the new Off-Broadway recording: Little Shop of Horrors is presented as if the plant's sentience is completely in Seymour's head. He's lonely and obsessed with Audrey (who's in a healthy BDSM relationship with a dentist), so he uses the plant talking to him to justify killing Orin.

Titanic: He would change the name of the show to Lusitania: The Musical and not have the ship sink. Oh, and the captain would sing "I Feel Pretty".

Fiddler On the Roof: He would change the setting to Amish country in Pennsylvania during the late '70's. Oh, and Yenta would sing "I Feel Pretty" to a disco beat.

He would combine revivals of A Streetcar Named Desire and My Fair Lady and call it On the Streetcar Where You Live. Oh, Stanley would sing "I Feel Pretty".

West Side Story: He would revive this show again, only tell it backwards and have the show end with the Jets and the Sharks singing "Our Time" on video screens. Oh, and Officer Krupke would sing "I Feel Pretty" starting with the last verse.