Am I the only one excited about Merrily?????- Page 5

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 4:49pm

One other quibble: Did anyone else notice that in the first song, and in random places in the rest of the show, that the sound was not synched correctly?

I noticed it during some of the group transitions in the second act.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 6:03pm

"Was he having a revelation in 70's Hollywood after remembering how it all started in '58?"

What came across to me in the theatre, and to a lesser extent in the broadcast, was that Frank morphed from 1958 back to 1981 in a fraction of a second. For me this was quite stunning and a worthy substitute for the removal of the graduation scenes.

I agree with the praise for Josefina Gabrielle as Gussie; I did pick up on Mary's unspoken love for Frank (notice her go tense when Beth arrives at the audition); and I do feel the writing is way too nuanced to see this show as Charley = good and Frank = bad.

So a good production, like the Kennedy Centre production and many others, but not in the (genuflects) Donmar league.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 6:06pm

So,

casting the international production...

Hollande as Charley, Obama as Frank and Merkel as Mary?

[PepperedShepherd]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 6:59pm

Full disclosure: Not only did I see this production in London, I'm undoubtedly one of the people you can hear clapping (as they filmed the performance I attended).

I'd seen one previous, small-theater production of MERRILY (which was quite good) -- but I was not prepared for how much this production affected me. I left the theater feeling intoxicated: heady from the music, the performances, the emotions, the seemingly simple, yet spot-on, direction. It was truly one of the great theatrical experiences of my life.

So, needless to say, I'm ecstatic that this production has been immortalized. That doesn't mean that there aren't a few problems with the translation and that some things weren't lost in the process. Primarily, I agree with the comments above regarding the over-abundance of close-ups. There were times I really wanted the integrity of the theatrical space to be honored.

I'll give just two instances, both featuring "Not a Day Goes By": As powerfully as Beth sings the angry version, I felt that the over-reliance on the close-up of her somewhat undermined the song because we didn't see Frank or his reactions. If the object of the singer's wrath is not shown, it's almost like they are singing into the Void. (Compare the far better editing on "Franklin Shepard, Inc.", with its multitude of two-shots showing both Charlie AND Frank.)

The wedding "Not a Day Goes By" was also mishandled in the editing, imo. The power of that scene lies in the happiness of Frank & Beth contrasted with Mary's unrequited love. On stage, you can see the 3 of them at the same time -- as the same words & phrases sung by Beth & Frank bounce back & forth and are bittersweetly echoed by Mary. But in the editing, the constant cutting away to Mary fractures the scene. It "visually isolates" her from Frank & Beth -- which is certainly thematically appropriate -- but it also causes her to sing into a Void (like Beth above).

Since so far I've highlighted the negative, let me balance with something positive. My appreciation for the actors grew even more after seeing the film. And the biggest beneficiary of that was Josefina Gabrielle. On stage, she creates such a striking IMAGE that's it's difficult to get beyond that. But on film, mostly because close-ups could focus and isolate her from the entourage & party-goers swirling around her, she became a much more interesting and (dare I say?) sympathetic character.

So, I guess the close-up giveth and the close-up taketh away....

Bottom line: I'd rate the stage performance a 10; the film an 8; and I will merrily & happily buy any DVD/Blu-ray/download incarnation yet to come. It's about the best "souvenir" possible!



Updated On: 10/24/13 at 06:59 PM

[Jud Faginsky]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 7:48pm

I love your point about the close-ups fracturing the scene. I knew the close-ups bothered me but I didn't know why. Not seeing Frank during Beth's rant really does take away from the power of that scene.
On the other hand, the close-ups of Frank during the early part of the show really help capture his anguish over losing his friends and how dissatisfied he is with his life. I had more empathy for him at the beginning of the show than I had when I've seen the show before.
In general I'd have to have to say that I had more empathy for every character. However, some of that may have had to do with meeting the actors ahead of time, although as I stated before I thought the documentary thing was unnecessary, misplaced, and contained too many spoilers. But it did help me like the characters more I think.
When you saw it on stage, you obviously didn't get the backstage stuff before the show. How did you feel about each character at the beginning?

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 9:38pm

"My biggest disappointment was that the best parts are in Act 1, and Act 2 just sort of glides along with the backwards inevitability that makes the show a little dull."

I definitely think MERRILY is a show that needs to lose the intermission. As the person above implies, the major "mistakes" have been made by intermission and Act 2 is mostly a series of insider jabs at critics and producers. These might be amusing at the beginning (if the show were in chronological order), but seem gratuitous so late in the evening. (The final scene is, of course, the exception.)

(And while I'm bitching, I thought fiddling with the "masks" really upstaged, "Bobby and Jackie and Jack". If the Brits don't know who those people were (doubtful) then find another solution.)

And I still say the show is 2-plus hours of irony with little real drama.

THAT BEING SAID, I must admit I find the piece much more haunting now that I am 59, relative to when I first saw it at age 27.

And I loved the actress playing Mary. I usually think that character is sacrificed for Beth in the rewritten version (I despise Beth in all versions), but through sheer clarity of acting the actress kept Mary at the center of the show.

[PepperedShepherd]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 10:12pm

How did you feel about each character at the beginning?

Pretty much the way I think you're supposed to. :) I do agree with you, however, and think that Frank's character really gains in the film (as does Gussie's). Being able to get right in close to him when he drops his facade and confesses that his life is crap is very powerful. Otherwise, you might think "What's this guy's problem? He's got it made." Like I said, sometimes the close-ups giveth....

Surprisingly, I had less empathy/sympathy for Charlie this go-round -- although I think that had more to do with my increasing familiarity with MERRILY and was not directly related to the differences between the LIVE and the FILM experiences. (No slight on Damian Humbley's performance, either. He was pretty perfect -- and definitely stopped the show with "Franklin Shepard, Inc.")

Regarding that Behind-the-scenes thing: I will add my voice to the chorus of disapproval. I didn't mind the interviews with the cast & director -- but showing scene after scene (after scene) from the show was an horrendous idea. I honestly wanted to scream at a few of the shots. Who's bright idea was it to ruin half the plot points in the preview?

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 11:49pm

The perspective of someone seeing the show for the first time . . .

I enjoyed all the actors in the major roles. I don't know if they transcended the material or lived up to it, but I thought they were strong, nuanced, multi-dimensional, funny, and heartbreaking performances.

I loved the major characters. I felt like I knew them. Their joys and pains felt very real to me.

I was confused with a couple of plot points. For example, we meet Gussie's ex-husband when he is begging her for a couple of hundred bucks, then later (actually earlier) we learn that he had been a top Broadway producer. Where did all his money go? Did he stop working because his wife left him?

I thought the transitions between the scenes were awkward and unnecessary. I would have been perfectly happy if they had some small plot device where a secondary character wrote the year corresponding to each scene on a blackboard. The song and dance transitions ate up chunks of valuable time and didn't add anything, except perhaps to give the stage crew the chance to change the barely-existent scenery.

Like everyone else here, I was annoyed by the pre-show chatter. I resented the spoilers, especially relating to the structure of the show. I didn't know beforehand that the story is told in reverse order. (Yes, I live under a rock.) I would have appreciated experiencing that in the context of the show.

Did I mention how much I enjoyed the major actors? Every one of them. It was thrilling to hear them interpret songs in different ways at different points in the characters' lives; the reverse story-telling device worked especially well in this regard.

GavestonPS - you wrote that you "despise Beth in all versions". Including this one? I was quite taken with her. I felt her pain. I wanted to hold her hand.

I wasn't as taken with the secondary actors, but I blame the script. The parents from Houston, the gay party-goer, the TV anchors etc. were all written/played over the top. It would have served the story better if the secondary roles were all played straight so as not to steal focus from the primary conflicts.

In the end, I loved it despite its faults. And I love the fact that great musicals are being filmed and preserved and shown at the same time all over the country so we can all experience it simultaneously like one big ginormous group hug.

[thespian geek]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 12:26am

Rumpelstiltskin, this was also my first time seeing the show and I have to agree with you regarding your thoughts on Beth. She was actually one of the characters I felt the most sympathetic toward, because I honestly feel like she completely gets the short end of the stick in where her story arc is concerned?

[ljay889]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 12:31am

I honestly feel like she completely gets the short end of the stick in where her story arc is concerned?

Absolutely. Like I said earlier, Gussie is the much better supporting role, and can easily steal the show. If Beth didn't have "Not a Day Goes By," the role would be even more thankless. Elizabeth Stanley (Gussie) basically stole the show in the Encores! production. While Betsy Wolfe delivered a very powerful "Not a Day Goes By," the role still proved to be poorly written.



Updated On: 10/25/13 at 12:31 AM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 1:00am

So this is mostly just stream of consciousness stuff now that I've had a day to digest it.

Gaveston, I didn't think the masks were to clue the audience into who they all were. I thought it was just a staging choice. I laughed when they pulled the the second chart out.

I liked reading your thoughts on it, Rumpelstiltskin. I totally disagree about the transitions, but I get what you're saying about the secondary actors.It's that kind of stuff that makes me wish I could have seen it live, because I think that the ensemble probably worked better that way. There was one that looked some much like Charlie Day it was crazy. My friends and I were trying to come up with celebrity doppelgangers for the entire cast afterwards. The blonde one looked like Goldie Hawn or Kate Hudson in the Blob scene.

No one show should have to be studied before seeing it for the first time, but I do think Merrily probably provides a richer experience for the people who have loved it, warts and all, for decades. At least for me, and at least last night, it was less about the story itself and how the story is told. Not just the moving backward in time, but the snapshot/not snapshot depictions of the lives of these people who grew up to he so unhappy and lost and broken.

Except for Charley. I've always felt that he was probably the healthiest of the bunch, once all their relationships had finally dissolved. But I really and truly had more compassion for Frank in this one that I ever would have expected to have. And I thought Jenna Russell really played Mary ruthlessly unsympathetically, which is not a bad thing.

More in general, as much as I liked it, I really wish I could have seen it live. I wasn't bothered by the extreme closeups most of the time, and I liked how the fact that it was shot in a theatre became almost secondary. And it has that British musical thing (that PalJoey hates!) where it's directed to not give the audience much time to applaud, but I kind of liked how it worked for this.

I really liked Gussie, except I wasn't wild about the Musical Husbands number. I kept hearing Michelle Pawk and Emily Skinner, two actresses who had the voices that really help to sell that number.

The talk of the different versions makes me wonder how many there actually are. I'm just spit-balling, so anyone who knows more should feel free to correct anything I get wrong. The ones I know in some form are the 1981 original, the La Jolla version (which I think is the one that was broadcast is closest, to. I know it's same version I saw at a college in 1995, which would have been two years I think since the one Maria Friedman was in). There's the Donmar version (which seems to be a gold standard for a lot of people), which brought back elements from the 1981 version. And the Encores version is a kind of reworking of the version we saw last night, right? But Gussie doesn't throw the iodine in the Encores version, right? And which version was done in DC?

This version felt a little dated to me, oddly enough. It had those weird but mostly harmless gay jokes (something about going home to a lover followed by "he'll wait" and Mary's crack about getting her dress from the guy upstairs). They aren't even gay jokes, they're fruit jokes. They were inoffensive, but I just felt like they said more about the time the show was written than the times it takes place in.

As much as I love this show and have loved it since I was young, I'm not immune to its flaws. I'm not a hardliner like some of you who think it flat out can't and won't ever work, but, like my beloved Follies, I think the charms of different incarnations are in the eye of the beholder. I'm just a little younger now than the main characters are the beginning, and I was more or less the ages they are at the end when I first fell in love with it, which doesn't really mean anything, but does make me examine the show not only through its depiction of time by through the prism of all the time that's passed in my own life. I mean, my dear departed dog was named Kringas! There are levels to this show for me that Sondheim never could have predicted!

All that rambling said, I hope digital theatre winds up streaming this at the very least, although I'd rather have a blu ray. I'd definitely like to see it again. I think it probably would play better on a smaller screen, especially in relation to the way it was filmed.

[artscallion]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 7:18am

speaking of "the way it was filmed", did anyone else have the feeling that it was on tape rather than film? It really had the look of those of old taped TV shows. Or maybe it was just the stage lighting. The filmed version of Into the Woods felt like film, but maybe they adjusted the lighting to suit filming. I know for a fact that they adjusted the lighting for the filmed Company because I was there.

[boyfromoz2]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 12:30pm

Obsessed with the song that was offered at the intermission on the screen - its this cast doing Old Friends. I don't know when they'll take down the free song page, but it is still up for me at merrilyonscreen.com ... It took a while for the email to come through after I'd put my details in though.
There's a lot of background noise at the start of it which makes me think maybe it's from the cinema recording. Does anyone know if they're releasing a soundtrack recording?

[Hest882]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 12:37pm

I also did feel less sympathetic to Charley this time around. Maybe I'm just older, or maybe the guy who did Frank acted more sympathetically.

I'm glad you mentioned the extreme closeups. They really were ultra extreme but I couldn't articulate why I found them so jarring. The NT Live production's closeups are never quite like this.

[devonian.t]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 12:56pm

I was at the filming- no adjustments to lighting were made.

Gaveston, I agree with you. This show becomes more resonant as the years go by! Especially when I hear the younger generation of theatre-makers talking like they are changing the world and I think, "God I sounded like that 20 years ago!"

Updated On: 10/25/13 at 12:56 PM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 1:02pm

speaking of "the way it was filmed", did anyone else have the feeling that it was on tape rather than film? It really had the look of those of old taped TV shows. Or maybe it was just the stage lighting. The filmed version of Into the Woods felt like film, but maybe they adjusted the lighting to suit filming. I know for a fact that they adjusted the lighting for the filmed Company because I was there

It's weird how people eye's register film and tape differently (my sister can barely tell the difference, which I've always thought was so weird!). I thought it looked mostly like tape (or video, whatever it's called nowadays0, throughout. Some scenes, like "Not a Day Goes By" in Act One, looked almost like a soap opera. Does Company look like film to you? To me that looks like HD video, not film. Wait - which Company do you mean? The revival or the concert?

[artscallion]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 1:12pm

The Doyle revival film of Company. My impression is that it looked like film. But it has been a few years since I watched it. I could be misremembering.

The soap opera comparison is a good one. Old sitcoms too. They all have that too brightly lit, flat feel. And all the colors look muted...nothing vivid, rich or warm.
I even wondered while watching Merrily if they intentionally used tape to give it a 60s/70s/80s retro look to fit the actual time frame of the story.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 1:38pm

I even wondered while watching Merrily if they intentionally used tape to give it a 60s/70s/80s retro look to fit the actual time frame of the story.

I swear that one of my friends commented that they thought it looked like the quality of the film/tape/whatever was degrading as the show progressed and I said, "Well, duh, the further back in time you go, the worse the technology was."

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 2:57pm

I haven't actually seen this broadcast but it's almost assuredly digital video, just like the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and the Doyle and Philharmonic Company videos and pretty much everything else like this ever. They don't actually "film" these in the usual sense, what's happening is that there's several cameras broadcasting to a recording booth, much like a news program, and the editing that occurs is simply switching between the camera inputs, and this switching is recorded to a master tape, which is what you then see. This is all rehearsed beforehand.

[artscallion]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 3:05pm

Thanks for that explanation, Charley. That makes sense considering it's coming from company called "Digital Theatre"

[Playbilly]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 3:07pm

Two days later I find myself reflecting more on the book scenes and dialogue than the music and lyrics. Anyone else?

[karloskar2]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 3:42pm

The screening that I attended in the UK didn't have any of the backstage interviews or spoilers, but i did think the 15 minute interval was quite unnecessary in that setting.
On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed the performances and this version of the script, although nobody quite touched me in the way that the Donmar cast did a decade or so ago. Other versions have been clearer about Joe's bad investments after Gussie leaves him, but this production highlighted the way that Joe didn't recognise a good opportunity when he saw it (the answerphone), and how his decline mirrors Frank's rise. Also Frank doesn't end up miserable (and successful) because of decisions he makes, but because he is persuaded to follow a certain path by others (Joe, Gussie, Beth) rather than being true to himself. Mary's journey is just heartbreaking, when you see in the rooftop scene, that a chance remark from Frank that he won't remember dominates her life for the next twenty five years. Charlie's success as a writer does not depend on Frank being there to work with him, (most playwrights/lyricists will work with a number of other artists in their career), so maybe it is this sense of personal abandonment/betrayal with all the women who come between them that causes the rift in their partnership. There are so many possibilities in this material...
I liked the way that the people on the rooftop were actual characters from later in his life rather than just random neighbours, but I still haven't figured out why little Frankie features in the final transition when he hasn't even been born yet! Any ideas?

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 5:08pm

Mary's journey is just heartbreaking, when you see in the rooftop scene, that a chance remark from Frank that he won't remember dominates her life for the next twenty five years.

Frank's not the only one who's forgotten! Please remind me what he said.

[thespian geek]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 5:32pm

"I believe I've just met the girl I should marry" .....or something very close to that.

[SayitSomehow]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 5:33pm

So we all think the script he is holding at the end is "Take a Left" and he's back in present day rethinking where he's at?

Updated On: 10/25/13 at 05:33 PM