Elegance101 said: "qolbinau said: "I find that almost every Broadway 'star' of this generation isparticularly boring/vanilla/plain. At one stage Broadway had people like Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, Betty Buckley, Donna Murphy, Marin Mazzie, Victoria Clark, Christine Ebersole, Alice Ripley, Bebe Neuwirth, Chita Rivera, Kristin Chenoweth, perhaps even Idina Menzel. All very unique in personality and style.It doesn't feel like we have a cohort of very unique talent waiting in the wings to replace. There are always some exceptions, especially by 'women of colour' (e.g., Karen Olivo, Cynthia Erivo, Patina Miller). But I don't find generic light soprano voices or the homogenous pop 'Wicked' style of vocalist that seems so common today the kind of thing that could lead to a very unique 'star'. I don't quite understand why this has happened. Are quirky girls no longer cast?"
Honestly, yes. There's a mold that girls are taught to fit nowadays. I actually Laura does a great job with taking classical ingenues and still being interesting with it, but most young women who find success fit a mold that they were taught to fill."
YEPYEPYEPYEPYEPYEPYEPYEP. And the irony is that yet we must "stand out" to get any attention or get jobs. You either have to be this perfect mold of a perfect ingenue or be a total/obvious character type.There's nothing in between or those in between these types have a harder time. I'll reiterate that I love Laura but you can't get get more "perfect, sweet faced, cookie cutter" performer than her. She's the the epitome of cookie cutter fairy tale princess and I'll be honest in saying if she didn't win the Grease show back then, there's no way she'd be on the level she is right now. She doesn't stand out in any way, there's nothing she does that another ingenue type can't do the same way. Christy is in that ingenue mold, and while I still find her too much on the fairy princess side for my taste as Anya, there's slightest shadow of spunk and grit in there, but I blame bad writing for that. They absolutely could have written more of that AND cast someone with way more quirk and grit along Meg Ryan lines, but sh'e just "imperfect" enough for me to able to like her.
