Isn't it about time for a major revival of FALSETTOS?- Page 2

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 2:00pm

I would actually be ok going gently into the sweet night after getting a chance to play Gordon. There's something so amazingly beautiful about the show...for all its oddness. Actually, I'm willing to say that it's the oddness that attracts me. It's the passage at the end of the show, just after the Homeless Lady leaves, that speaks to me on such a deeply personal level. The whole 'Everything's changed. And nothing's changed' cuts me to the quick in its simplicity and emotional honesty.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/13/11 at 3:52pm

I realize you guys have moved on to talking about New Brain, but here's a great clip of "What More Can I Say?" from the LA production (with the original NY cast):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMojJW8u9XI


Eric, I don't know what John Clum (he wrote Acting Gay and it sounds like a complaint he would make) thinks they "toned down" for middle-class audiences when they made Falsettos. I thought the latter was still pretty hot for a play in which one of the characters is dying of a contagious disease.

And the plays were always about a middle-class family. As in most musicals and operas, they sing about having sex rather than acting it out on stage.

As I said above, I did think March of the Falsettos had a fierceness when done alone that was missing when it became Act I. Maybe the actors were saving themselves or maybe the simple knowledge that these characters have another act changes how actors approach them. Or maybe, as others have suggested here, it was just a bigger theater.

I hope you get to see Act I of Falsettos on its own or in combination some day. Despite the power of Whizzer's death, which haunts Falsettoland, I do think the middle play is the strongest of the three.

[HistoryBoy2]

Posted: 12/29/11 at 7:30pm

Did anyone see the production of Falsettos at Hartford in 1991?
I've been watching a bootleg recording and the quality is great except for the ending - I can't clearly make out what was shown on the back wall of the stage. Frank Rich called it a 'coup de theatre' and I'd love to understand what I'm seeing.

[mallardo]

Posted: 12/30/11 at 8:07am

I saw the same recent LA production someone else here saw and thought that the second act - Falsettoland - came off as much stronger than March of the Falsettos, perhaps for the reasons offered by Gaveston2. I can definitely see that March would be a stronger piece on its own.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 12/30/11 at 10:34am

Thanks Galveston and that was the book.

[somethingwicked]

Posted: 12/30/11 at 10:57am

HistoryBoy2, what was shown on the back wall at the end of the Hartford production was a massive AIDS Memorial Quilt. It began with just Wizzer's patch on the quilt, and then expands until it has enveloped the entire stage. It was an absolutely breathtaking moment.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 12/30/11 at 1:06pm

Eric, I find John Clum's view on pandering to straight audiences to be overly literal.

Personally, I find intimacy and strong emotional bonds between gay characters to be just as challenging as simulated sexual intercourse.