so i cry way too often for my own good at the theatre. really any great emotional moment will have me in tears. i cry at joy, pain, saddness. yes, i'm a loser. but what takes the cake for the thing that had me the most bawling i will ever be in a theatre is at the end of ragtime at tateh's monologue about 'a gang of children' and little coalhouse runs out. well if a boy was ever going to lose it in a theatre that just did me in. it was the most incredible feeling i've ever had in a theatre. EVER.
oh yes. some straight dramas i just don't want to move or breathe or anything because they are just so gripping. among them were my friends' productions of the goat (stevie's breakdown) and the shape of things (during evelyn's final monologue). there are so many others too but i thought i would mention those because they were recent productions by friends! but the title of this thread was musical moments. so the end of ragtime it is. i just died. even though i knew exactly what was going to happen every time i've seen it.
i should say that right now i'm in a show called 'shakespeare on love' depicting differetn visions and types of love in shakespeare's plays and the scene that really has me so caught up is between cleopatra and the messenger when he tells her that antony is married to someone else. she is so off of it that i am totally taken aback. and guess who's playing the messenger? well needless to say it is one of the biggest acting challenges of my life!
Suddenly Seymour gets me every time, Somewhere Green can do it too I saw a tour production of Miss Saigon this weekend and a number of songs hit me pretty hard even though overall the production was lacking.
Elaborate Lives - I reacted much more with Will Chase singing than with er.. what's his name?
The first time I saw Rent I cried through most of it.
Normal Heart, I stopped breathing a few times. I was too overwhelmed by it to cry.
And if I see a well performed dance number I will tear up.
"They said the war by now would all be over They said one day our land would be reborn But looking now at all that we have sacrificed There's nothing left but a world forever torn"
Justin Murphy
Kiss Me and Ladies in Their Sensitivities (Sweeney Todd) - Expecially during the last part of the second song, with the quartet and the orchestra. Wow! I find this the best musical theatre scene, [I]ever[/I]
Finale B (Rent) - The different melodies are both energetic and hopeful, and meaningful to what happened in the past.
Finale (A Little Night Music) - Not the whole song, but the beginning, when they kiss and the woman dies. Oh!
papabear, you're right. Will's Elaborate Lives was to die for. so was Jeremy Kushnier's. hell, so was Adam's...all three sang it so differently.
As far as my crying moments, I'll name only a few since I cry all the time -"Tell me its not True" Blood Brothers...the first time I ever cried in a theater, and I was pretty inconsolable...sooo good! -Ragtime finale when little Coalhouse runs out and they start singing "Wheels of a Dream" -Saigon Finale "What have you done Kim? Why?..." ripped my heart out. -Secret Garden "Lily? Is that you?" into How I could I ever know? -Aida: from Mereb's death "Aida, take me home" to the end. -Little Women "Some things are meant to be" and "Days of Plenty" -The first time I saw Rent on Bway, I cried thru the whole thing, cause I was sitting in the lotto seats and was so completely overwhelmed. Now, Mark Richard Ford never ceases to make me cry with his I'll cover you Reprise -The End of Last Five Years: the complete joy in Sherie's "Goodbye until Tomorrow" and the devastation in Norbert's "I could never Rescue You" was heart wrenching.
Many more...but those stand out in my mind the most
The first time that I saw LES MISERABLES in London from the third mezzanine watching through binoculars that I paid 50p to use. The binoculars were soaking wet by the end of the show.
Ohh man Shivers and crying at shows lets me know the show was GREAT! there have been many. I'm surprised more people didn't put this with all the Ragtime talk
Ragtime ACT I finale: Till we reach that day is heart wrenching
Caroline or Change: Lots Wife, Salty Teardrops, Epilogue
Passion: Loving you and the End
Wicked: I hate to say this but For Good. I was so pissed that I knew what Schwartz was trying to get me to do and it WORKED. I was like damn it I am NOT crying...where's my tissue.
Sunday in the Park: Act I finale, Lesson #8 and Move On
Night Music: Everyday a Little Death (that's weird)
The ending of Phantom: I saw it first when I was 15 and was so impacted! I saw it again many times after that but could never muster the tears like it did the first time.
I saw Rent in San Francisco. I cried hard during I'll Cover You. Oh my gosh ~so many people in the theater where crying. You could hear the heavybreath and sniffling everywhere!
And last, Les Miz: when the Gavroche got killed, it set me up for a cry when a few moments later they showed the entire barricade filled with the fallen.
God, I love theater!!!!!!!
Updated On: 2/15/05 at 07:26 PM
The whole finale of "Les Mis," starting with Valjean slipping out of Marius and Cosette's wedding to be alone through the curtain call. And after I saw CATS at the Winter Garden, I spent a good part of the next day in tears, I guess because I was so thrilled to have actually seen it on Broadway before it closed.
"All the Wasted Time" from Parade made me cry this past weekend when I saw it at NYU.
"There are mouths to be kissed before mouths to be fed, and there's many a tryst and there's many a bed. There's a lot I'll have missed, but I'll not have been dead when I die! And a person should celebrate everything passing by."