Posted: 3/10/22 at 6:28pm
g.d.e.l.g.i. said: "True as that may be, it's not like that problem doesn't exist with the show in its conventional order. There's no dramatic justification forwhywe're experiencing the show backwards and why we're seeing specific events happen at specific points;it often seems to move at random, with no real story justification for why we move from scene to scene and a lot of "this happens and then this happens" plotting.
(Having said that, for all the love the original 1981 book gets in this thread, it was especially awful attryingto justify why certain events happened when; a good example is the script at one point essentially having Charlie go "after that terrible TV interview he'll never forgive me!" aaaaaand cue the next scene being the terrible interview. I can only imagine that was the result of frantic revisions based on audience reaction in previews.)
I feel like that graduation scene is the key, which is why it's a shame it was cut in revision. Older Frank has a line regarding the valedictorian (played by Younger Frank) where he says something to the effect of "You remind me a lot of myself." In my opinion,thisis the central point of the show, and what they were trying (and failing, alas) to do originally. On a metatextual level, Old Frank is taking this valedictorian backward through his own life to show exactly how he got to this point -- and, most importantly, why Younger Frank shouldn't make the same mistake.
The show is fundamentally about youth, and specifically about the current generation not making the same mistakes as the older. But instead of emphasizing that element when they set about revising the show, they stripped the youth out of it entirely. They got caught up in the puzzle because that's what they were most concerned about (shades of Sondheim struggling with strictly defining exactly when people were meant to figure out the Beggar Woman's true identity in Sweeney). And so we're stuck with the current version, which, even if it's still flawed after so doing, would work better (IMO) chronologically than backward when answering the question of how Mr. Shepard got "here" from "there.""
The issue with playing it forwards is that so much of the show itself is predicated on the reverse chronological element. IMHO it would be like making Follies a two-act, where the first act is set in the past, and the second act is set in the present. You could do it, but you've just removed the core concept.
It's a shame, because the roots of the show are so appealingly odd and spiky. What I'd like to see more from it is a better understanding of why these people hang around Frank, and what it is about him that makes him sell out. It really should be the major question that hangs over the audience at intermission and compels them to return.
Instead, these questions are rebuffed, and the rewrite is particularly bad about this, with things like the new song for Gussie in the first act, where she basically just sings "your problems are thorny, but I am so horny", which feels like such a cop-out. In the original version of the show she was essentially a caricature, and was sort of whittled up into a slightly more real person, but she's not quite there enough for her to be more than a cartoonish threat.
I've talked about this before, but there's a great moment in the earliest iteration where Frank is talking about how his father died penniless, and this scares him, because he "can't be nobody, with nothing", which is an excellent glimpse into the actual psychological element of Frank and his soul-sucking descent. I wish there was more of that, of how people deal with security, or lack of security, in the face of a finite lifetime, and what that means in terms of consumerism, relationships, and values.
It probably sounds like I'm reaching in that regard, but these are all essential elements that I feel could be brought beautifully to the foreground. In many ways, it's a highly political show, both in the satirical elements (I don't love Bobby and Jackie and Jack, but it's only become more darkly funny as time has gone on) and the examination of Frank's slide into neoconservative ultraconsumerism, and the way the show's broad satire gives way to these sudden hard jabs is so exciting. I think that's a big part of why it's so often revived, and why everyone wants to fix it, because it has those thrilling, grim elements that make it feel so daring.
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