Parts of A Show That I Never Got- Page 5

[matineeidol2013]

Posted: 12/26/09 at 1:31am

okay, ill try and explain my interpretation of "fable" with as little confusion as possible...

first, i think its important to understand that margaret is involved in an unhappy mariage with roy, but nothing is being done about it. things are bad but the issue is not being addressed.

next, clara has the mind of a 12 year old girl trapped in a much more mature body. her mother still tells her fairy tales (remember the scene after hysteria?)

margaret realizes many things in this song.

A.) love is hard to find. in "fairy tale" form, she talks about searching through forests seaking princes, magic apples ect.

B.) love can disapoint. when she sings the lyric "while you look you are changing...youre a fallen apple...loves a fake" i think this lyric is a referance to her mariage. margaret searched for love once, and thought she found it in roy, but ultimatly she realized "this wasnt my true love". then she goes on to sing...

C.)"look for the eyes on the bridge in the pouring rain...the arms you can fall into forever...here at last away you go to a man who looks for you". notice margaret has stopped talking in "fairy tale" form. she see's that "fairy tale" love is fake and nothing can really amount of it, but finding TRUE love can be possible, and she recognizes that Clara and Fabrizios love is true. (hence why she has ceased singing in "fairy tale" form; the story book lyrics represented "fake" love) the lyric "...a man who looks for you" is the first time she metions the MAN searching for love the entire song. this also shows her realization that love is mutual (in her phone conversations with roy, it always does seem that margaret tries harder than he does to make things right, showing that she may care for him more than he cares for her). margaret sees that clara AND fabrizio love eachother equally and both want to be with eachother.

D.) once you find this true love keep it, and dont let go. if you want to dig REALLY deep into this meaning, is it possible that margaret may have found true love herself once upon a time, but ultimatly had to let him go because she was married to roy?(the very first lines of the show: Clara="mother what happened here?" Margaret="i played a tricky game in a foreign country...what did i do...") is margaret refering to her true love that she may have found when she vacationed to italy, but had to let him go because she was already married to roy? this would actually make sense because she would see much of her and this old flame's relationship in clara and fabrizios relationship, which is one reason letting clara go could be so hard for her; she doesnt want to face the fact that she went through something similar because she recalls the hurt it may have caused her, and she doesnt want clara to be hurt. margaret sings "love, love if you can my clara, love if you can and be loved! may it last forever..." she wants clara to recognize she HAS FOUND true love, and to hold on to it!

E.) in the final lines "love if you can, may it last ect" margaret has finally let her daughter go. she realizes the mistakes she made in her life with her marriage and such, and doesnt want clara to suffer a similar fate. the final line of the song: "clara, the light in the piazza...". when clara sings "the light in the piazza" at the begining of act 2, she is refering to fabrizio, he is her "light". when margaret sings it, she admits that clara is finally finding her light (aka marrying fabrizio), and she is thrilled for her daughter.

this is my interpretation of the song. hope it makes sense (if something doesnt, please let me know!)

[rmusic11322]

Posted: 12/26/09 at 7:38pm

In West Side Story, I don't know why Kiddo is there at all.
Updated On: 12/26/09 at 07:38 PM

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 12/26/09 at 8:40pm

Arthur likes 'em young.

[LiveUnscripted]

Posted: 12/26/09 at 9:39pm

I've never seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels but I like the cast recording. And I have no idea what Norbert Leo Butz's character is talking about in "Nothing Is Too Wonderful To Be True" when he says "They held up that midget with Krazy Glue"
You can laugh, my best guess is he's talking about Humpty Dumpty.

[darquegk]

Posted: 12/26/09 at 10:30pm

THe song is about wonderful things that seem too good to be true, but Freddie's "character" is excessively simple and mundane. He recalls a fairly typical prank/stunt, that of using glue and tape to stick a person to a wall after standing them on a chair. When the chair is removed, the person remains immobile and stuck to the wall.

With a midget, their size adn weight would be small enough to do it solely with Krazy Glue, or so it is implied.

[Radioactiveduck]

Posted: 12/27/09 at 6:29am

CHICAGO:
"Rouge my knees and roll my stockings down"...Did people in the 20's find red knees particularly attractive?

N2N
The reprise of "I Am The One." I almost get it, but it's like the song is trying to say two contradictory things at once.


To Address the WICKED talk:
I get it that everyone hates stupid fan girls and the shows that enable them (except S.A. for some reason), but come on guys, the lyrics aren't THAT bad. Just because he invented some words doesn't mean he couldn't find real words to fill their places.

[Weez]

Posted: 12/27/09 at 8:08am

matineeidol, LOVE your explanation of 'Fable'. :) Although while we're here, I just want to chuck a bit of alternative interpretation in. When Margaret says "I played a tricky game in a foreign country", I sometimes think it means the whole story is being told in flashback and that's Margaret's way of setting things up.

As for parts of a show we never got, some of the names in West Side Story make me think there's a story behind them and I just can't work it out. Anybody's is the one that bothers me most. Anyone have an explanation there?

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 12/27/09 at 10:58am

Weez: One of the reasons WEST SIDE STORY was so groundbreaking when it was first written is that Robbins and Laurents, et. al. gave each of the ensemble members names. For the first time, each member of the ensemble was an individual character, not just nameless chorus members.

[rmusic11322]

Posted: 12/27/09 at 11:17am

I do like the fact that everyone has a name. But they are just some weird ones. Haha!

[WishingOnlyWounds2]

Posted: 12/27/09 at 11:23am

In Legally Blonde I never got Paulette's line: "This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me, bar none." The bar one part in particular. Now it's probably the simplest thing but I have never got it.

[Yero my Hero]

Posted: 12/27/09 at 11:29am

It's an expression. "Bar none" means "with no exception." It's just a way of emphasizing that no one has ever done anything that nice, ever.

[Weez]

Posted: 12/27/09 at 3:01pm

Well, I get that they all have names, and that helps the whole thing comes to life, but the question was what do some of the names mean? I mean, Baby John is self-explanatory; he's a little wee guy and his name is John. One presumes Ice is renowned for his coolness. But where might the name Anybody's have come from? (Should it even have that apostrophe?)

[chewy5000]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 5:04am

In Night Music, is the 'smile for the young' Anne and Henrik running off together, because I'd put them in the 'fools' category, really.

[HistoryBoy2]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 6:21am

Young = Anne and Henrik
Fools = Desiree and Frederik
Old = Mme Armfeldt

Was that not clear?

[Smaxie]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 8:47am

>I've never seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels but I like the cast recording. And I have no idea what Norbert Leo Butz's character is talking about in "Nothing Is Too Wonderful To Be True" when he says "They held up that midget with Krazy Glue"
You can laugh, my best guess is he's talking about Humpty Dumpty.<

>THe song is about wonderful things that seem too good to be true, but Freddie's "character" is excessively simple and mundane. He recalls a fairly typical prank/stunt, that of using glue and tape to stick a person to a wall after standing them on a chair. When the chair is removed, the person remains immobile and stuck to the wall.

With a midget, their size adn weight would be small enough to do it solely with Krazy Glue, or so it is implied.<


It's not that complicated - Krazy Glue had a TV commercial in the 1980s where a guy wearing a hard hat was glued to a beam using Krazy Glue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXZv2KZKCCo

[Elphie3]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 8:47am

"Buying Gravity" is not a lyric in "Wicked"....

[givesmevoice]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 8:50am

I thought that Fredrika was the only one who is really in the "young" category, all of those lovers are in the "fools" category, and Madame Armfeldt is, obviously, "old."

[kchenofan]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 8:51am

The line is "I'd sooner buy defying gravity". To understand the line, you have to listen to the line before it, "Well if that's love it comes at much too high a cost" meaning 'I would rather invest in defying gravity instead of love.'

[Smaxie]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 8:56am

>CHICAGO:
"Rouge my knees and roll my stockings down"...Did people in the 20's find red knees particularly attractive?<

As hemlines got shorter in the 20s exposing parts of the leg hitherto unseen in public, women took to rouging their knees - but I believe the color of preference was pink, not red.

[Q]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 9:15am

"When Margaret says 'I played a tricky game in a foreign country', I sometimes think it means the whole story is being told in flashback and that's Margaret's way of setting things up."

That's always been my interpretation.

[mikem]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 9:41am

Smaxie, I agree with you that the Krazy Glue reference is to the TV commercial. Freddy sings, "They held up THAT midget" rather than "A midget," implying that he's referring to a specific situation. Yazbek and Freddy are both in that age group where holding someone up with Krazy Glue would refer to that commercial.

But the guy in the commercial isn't a midget (and having a midget would be counter to the idea that Krazy Glue is so powerful -- that's why they have a construction worker). So I still find the lyric confusing.

[newintown]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 11:29am

I'm not going to go looking for it, but there was a Krazy Glue commercial in which the elevated person wearing a hard hat was a midget. Ah, yes, I remember it well.

[Smaxie]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 11:40am

Yes - couldn't find that version on YouTube. But there was a midget variation.

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 11:40am

The "I played a tricky game in a foreign country" is an adaptation of one of the closing lines from the original novella (IIRC I think it's "She had played a tricky game in a foreign country, and she had won.") It refers to how Margaret had a difficult situation with Clara wanting to marry Fabrizio and got through it successfully.

In the musical, yeah, it just sets up the flashback.

[landryjames2]

Posted: 9/16/10 at 11:45am

As stated by a couple of people above--I do think that people are a bit too hard on Wicked's lyrics...I don't really have a problem with them as Schwartz was trying to write in the world of "Oz" as has been stated.

I have more of a problem with some of the plot points. For example--Elphaba spends the entire show trying to overthrow the Wizard, but is unsuccessful. At the end, all Glinda has to do is command for the Wizard to leave and Morrible to be thrown in prison, and everything is made right. How did she become so powerful? I guess we just have to take it on faith that she had all the citizens and guards on her side at that point.

Okay, I'll "buy" it.