purity queens
as part of our xmas holiday/anniversary, mikey and i decided to celebrate this weekend with a weekend at the theater! yes, on saturday we attended a matinee of signature theater’s new staging of Les Miserables.
what’s that you ask? a new staging? yes, while i have not seen Les Miz before, i do know that most of this giant show takes place on a rotating stage with a cast roughly the size of the beijing olympics opening ceremony. this interpretation, however, took a behemoth and made a little baby out of it, without losing any of the grandeur or heart or emotion of the original.
tucked away in Signature’s tiny little Max theater, no seat was more than five rows back from the stage with the audience surrounding the stage on three sides and actor passages cutting diagonally in the corners. the audience was truly part of the show. the actors were literally right there in front of you, and you could see every quivering lip, every proud smirk, every tearful eye. i’m sure those theater purists are up in arms about some changes: javert’s death, no big red flag waving atop the barricade (an iconic image of the show i hear), the heavy metal/matrix-ish set design and costuming.but i was impressed.
then, last night we took in West Side Story’s pre-broadway preview at the national theater. and while in the beginning, i thought oh shit, this is too faggy for me. i’m sorry, it’s supposed to be about gangs and those were the gayest gangs i have ever seen. it was like one group of bitchy friends got in a fight with another group of bitchy friends at chaos on a thursday night.
but i got over it. i really enjoyed it and i feel privileged to see the broadway cast perform. karen oliva as anita was outstanding! actually, they were all excellent. young, but excellent. although i guess that’s the point. now, the buzz online is not great and i’ve been buzzing around reading it: people are just horrified that most of the second act and some iconic songs are now in spanish (for thematic and cultural reasons) where as the original was not. i do not feel that i missed anything by not understanding the language. emotions are emotions english or not.
but let’s be honest: while the movie and original are icons of both cinema and musical theater, they both basically raped puerto rican culture by one, not casting any or few latino actors and by two, basically putting white actors in brown face! i think the changes made to this new version are timely and justified. i imagine that these bitter old queens and dowagers mooing about madly online are racist imbeciles and/or their bratty spoiled offspring and grandkids.
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