LaChiusa Wild Party — Page 3

Although the Bernarda music is thrilling and those stomps and beats extremely intricate, it is the strength of The Wild Party's score and the reflection of the time it is set in that do it for me. It is haunting, powerful and boasted a just as great, if not better, cast than Bernarda.

---

Can anyne give me a brief sypnosis as to what this play and plot is about?

You guys wanna talk about young LaChiusa fans, I picked up (at 13) the recording of Hello Again at a Barnes and Noble because of the CD cover (and Donna Murphy...!) Since then I've progressed into Marie Christine, The Wild Party, See What I Wanna See, and Bernarda Alba. My family is spanish and my mother loves that CD to death, even with all the WHORES Rashad sings every now and then.

I'm just gonna revive this thread by saying that all of the flaws of this show came from George C. Wolfe, who is an extremely talented man, but not the right one for this show. There is a full recording of the show available that I will not link to, but will say it is quite easy to find. The real Tony rob of the show was Bruce Coughlin's for orchestrations. They are so lively and vibrant and brilliant that it was a crime that they weren't even nominated.

---

I totally agree with you, devonian.t. He is one of the best composers and certainly the best lyricist currently working on Broadway (if you consider Sondheim to be in quasi-retirement). It's a shame that most of his shows have weak books, which is no fault of his own.

---

Two Words: Eartha Kitt.

---

I don’t think he’s an untalented storyteller so much as his narratives deliberately don’t adhere to tried-and-true structuring. I often compare him to PT Anderson because they both seem aware enough of the strange dramatic arcs of their narratives for me to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re consciously breaking rules/traditions rather than writing willy-nilly, oblivious to them.

Now, whether or not that “works” for you as an audience member is a different story.

QUEEN OF THE MIST was herky-jerky in its pacing and felt slow in spots, and I do attribute at least some of that to its unconventional structure. I also thought Andrew Samonsky was boring and miscast, which was especially problematic when he was basically the co-lead with Mary Testa, who was giving a hurricane of a performance. And despite all that, as you say, I’ve played that cast recording more times than I’d care to admit, and my memory of the show has remained rich and fond.

I didn’t see THE WILD PARTY live, but I’ve enjoyed it cough cough secondhand, so I can’t really say how it functioned in the theater. Some of the staging looks a little clumsy, but it also has lots of songs, most of them playlets in and of themselves, which may help make up for any present overall “slowness.”

The Public’s production of GIANT enthralled me with no qualifications. My only regret is that I saw it only once.

But those are the only ones I’ve seen, and of course just those three examples do not a complete experience of his work make, even though I love the recordings of everything. I hope to see great or at least very good productions of all of his shows someday, though. A problematic LaChiusa musical is infinitely more interesting to me than well-structured Lippa musical.

---

Every show has its fans, and no statement about any art is universal; however, it can't be denied that LaChiusa's shows haven't found much favor with a large audience.

Expounding upon what I mentioned above, about LaChiusa not bringing anything new to familiar narratives (although that, too, is subjective - many people may not have even heard of Medea, Rashomon, Giant, or The Wild Party) - when I saw Hello Again in previews, not knowing anything about it, I realized in the second scene that it was yet another take on La Ronde, and wondered what LaChiusa would bring to this old chestnut that hadn't been brought before. And other than setting each scene in a different decade, I didn't really see much. I thought some parts were fun, but was mostly overcome by what I found to be rather bland lyrics and the repetitive structure of 2-character scenes where one character wants more than the other wants to give.

With Marie Christine, as noted in an recent thread, one waited for her to sing through her hysteria for a few ours before killing the kids. Because, really - who doesn't know that Medea kills her kids?

R shomon, I felt, didn't add anything substantive to the basic narrative of Rashomon, merely resetting it in New York on the night of the movie's premier.

And I think that may be what I see as his shortcomings in the storytelling department - he feels that it's enough to merely change the setting of a familiar story and then add music. And to some, it might be - but he has yet to speak to a larger audience.

I'm always dramaturgically fascinated by the difference between the two shows. Lippa's was truer to the story's plot and characters in terms of book and lyrics and tone, but divorced from the era in terms of music. LaChiusa's music was more accomplished and of a piece with the era, but used the plot and characters as merely a jumping-off point to discuss the impact of systemic racism in the 1920s.

In Lippa's play, like March's poem-novel, the characters are all mostly perverse, nasty, vaguely predatory cartoon characters. In LaChiusa's, they're victims, one and all, black, white, gay, straight or other, of the racism inherent, almost subconscious, in American society.

Speaking of problems with LaChiusa cast recordings, if you want to get totes outraged over the cuts made to Giant, the post linked below provides details towards the end. To be exact, I think many/most of the cuts were made to the show itself rather than to the recording per se.

I didn't even see the show so don't really know what I'm missing, but really wish I could have heard more of the music on the recording.

(Edited to add the word 'totes' above, to make it clearer that I'm not really advocating getting outraged over this.)

Finishing the Chat post

Updated On: 5/29/14 at 06:22 AM

All I ask of life is that I'm sent a handsome man who likes LaChiusa as much as I do. Cause dating someone who doesn't like his music just ain't gonna work.

---

You make your points very clear. As noted elsewhere, there are no universal agreements in art, and you and I seem to disagree on how much constitutes a "significant" contribution to an adaptation. What I see in LaChiusa's storytelling is merely cosmetic application to the essential narrative he adapts. You see more than that.

"I mean, the 2-person structure and central theme is inherent in La Ronde, so I'm not sure how this show is at fault for that..."

My point is that LaChiusa basically wrote the same thing La Ronde (and its many imitators) did ages ago, but didn't bring any substantive idea to the source that transformed it into something new. I understand that you feel otherwise about the piece.

I think we also disagree about where Medea and Marie Christine intersect, but the show was so long ago, and left so little impact on me, I can't really explore that.

Well, yes, as I said, we have differing opinions here. About Medea, of course the story starts long before the play does (the same can be said for Oedipus and the other Greek plays, which is how we learned the difference between "story" and "plot" back in our university days.). But when I refer to the Medea upon which Marie Christine is based, I'm referring to the entire myth, not Euripides' work alone.

"What would you like to see in an adaptation of La Ronde? It sounds as though you may have some idea of what you were hoping to find."

Oh, no, I have no expectations of an adaptation of La Ronde. I like the original (or rather, the translations I've seen/read) fine. And, although I have no particular examples at hand (nor do I have the interest or time to consider it further), La Ronde has been adapted many times already. All I can do is reiterate what I've already written - to me, a good adaptation is one that departs from and adds to the source in substantive rather than cosmetic ways - look at how The Matchmaker and Hello Dolly depart radically from The Miser, for instance. Even My Fair Lady, adhering rather closely to Pygmalion, still has a very different feel, adapting Shaw's Anglo-Irish Socialist sensibility through an American lens. But, as we've noted, we perceive "substantive" differently, at least when it comes to LaChiusa's work

I think - and here's a new thought - one problem with LaChiusa's work is that he doesn't seem to like dialogue much, and dialogue is the best way to communicate a lot of ideas to an audience. Most folks simply can't process lyrics quickly enough to take in more than parts of a through-sung show, unless (as in most opera and shows like Les Miserable) the lyrics are repetitive and simplistic.