A goodbye party in helll
Apr. 30th, 2008 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeKatie Stodd and the Mickster have been helping me lay down vocal tracks for my website and I was thinking about taping "I Still Believe" (Ellen's verse) from Miss Saigon. I ended up vetoing that, because although I *can* belt, I'm definitely a soprano-who-can-belt, not a belter, and that song just doesn't really showcase my voice. But I was talking about the show to Katie, and saying how much I preferred it to Lez Miz--she said "well, for one thing, the heroine's not a wuss." It's interesting to me that Miss Saigon gets such flak for being stereotypical--to me, it's clearly examining the stereotypes, upending and subverting them. Yes, it starts off with the "Me love you long time" hookers but they're clearly forced into it, and saddened, and have dreams--they're very sympathetic. And let's not kid ourselves--there were plenty of women like that in Saigon in 1975. Sure, the Engineer's a sleazy pimp who doesn't respect women--and then he sings about his childhood where he pimped for his own mother and you see how damaged he's been. (And for all that, he's one of the 2-3 most interesting characters in the show--I love that his version of the American Dream is so sleazy! Adam Smith would get a kick out of it.) Even Kim's final sacrifice is done from strength--she's forcing Chris and Ellen to take Tam with them and not abandon their (well, his) responsibility. Two of the three American lead characters are just not that interesting or even sympathetic--Ellen makes me grit her teeth when Kim sings "He said he'd come to get me" and she responds "he said he tried to reach you but what could he do?" What an insensitive, glib thing to say! What could he do? Argh. And it irritates me beyond measure when she just shuts down the possibility of Tam's coming with them--that is a joint decision that should be made with your husband, woman! That's his son, not yours.
I said to how much more I enjoyed what I called the "passing" songs--not the big anthems like "Sun and Moon" (vomit) or "Last Night of the World" (VOMIT) but "Please" or "The Telephone Song." I freakin' LOVE those numbers! "Thieu has resigned, the new regime may not hold/People at the palace think we're sending the Marines/We are sending nothing, from what I've been told/Buddy, are you there, do you know what that means?/Sure! Time to fall in love!" I love the ragged scansion of the line and the simple rhymes--with the colloquialisms it makes it all sound very authentic. And the way the line rises, and rises--it builds the tension so effectively. And "Please," with John's careful lines ("Chris knows all about you, I have shown him all this/But I think that it's time you know all/About Chris") set against Kim's perfect, untrammeled faith ("Oh Tam, he's here!/He's here, he's so near, we might breathe the same air tonight!")--what a terrific number. I also like that during these "passing" numbers, something actually HAPPENS. "Sun and Moon" and "Last Night" are so boring because they're static--nothing changes, there's no emotional journey. One of the anthem numbers that does work, "My Life for You," works because Kim's emotions go all over the place, from tenderness, to fierce protectiveness, to remembrance of an adult love, to doubt, to affirmation--she's re-experiencing her life with Chris. "Was he a dream? Was he a lie?/That made my body laugh and cry?...Gods of the sun, bring him to me!"
It also occurred to me how much better a role John is than Chris. John grows so much more than Chris--he starts off as a cynical, exploitative jerk, buying chicks for his buddy, then is forced to deal with a horrible situation, and make Chris realize the danger, punches him to force him onto the helicopter. Then we see him as this really decent guy who's evolved so much as the head of the aid organizaion, and then is genuinely kind and empathetic ("they don't say in the files there's a woman in love...). And, as Carlos said, he gets a kickass song!
The thing is, even in the source opera, Madama Butterfly, Butterfly is a much more sympathetic character than Pinkerton who is HORRIBLE. (BTW, Pinkerton is a signature role of Bart's.) He's really awful, just openly uses and discards a 15-year-old girl and then shies away from the consequences. I can definitely see that there are racial issues with the opera but it's pretty anti-American as well (especially since the actual events in real life involved a Scottish man, not an American). I'd say nobody gets off easy with the opera!
Oh, I found this on YouTube:
How young and adorable is she?!
I said to how much more I enjoyed what I called the "passing" songs--not the big anthems like "Sun and Moon" (vomit) or "Last Night of the World" (VOMIT) but "Please" or "The Telephone Song." I freakin' LOVE those numbers! "Thieu has resigned, the new regime may not hold/People at the palace think we're sending the Marines/We are sending nothing, from what I've been told/Buddy, are you there, do you know what that means?/Sure! Time to fall in love!" I love the ragged scansion of the line and the simple rhymes--with the colloquialisms it makes it all sound very authentic. And the way the line rises, and rises--it builds the tension so effectively. And "Please," with John's careful lines ("Chris knows all about you, I have shown him all this/But I think that it's time you know all/About Chris") set against Kim's perfect, untrammeled faith ("Oh Tam, he's here!/He's here, he's so near, we might breathe the same air tonight!")--what a terrific number. I also like that during these "passing" numbers, something actually HAPPENS. "Sun and Moon" and "Last Night" are so boring because they're static--nothing changes, there's no emotional journey. One of the anthem numbers that does work, "My Life for You," works because Kim's emotions go all over the place, from tenderness, to fierce protectiveness, to remembrance of an adult love, to doubt, to affirmation--she's re-experiencing her life with Chris. "Was he a dream? Was he a lie?/That made my body laugh and cry?...Gods of the sun, bring him to me!"
It also occurred to me how much better a role John is than Chris. John grows so much more than Chris--he starts off as a cynical, exploitative jerk, buying chicks for his buddy, then is forced to deal with a horrible situation, and make Chris realize the danger, punches him to force him onto the helicopter. Then we see him as this really decent guy who's evolved so much as the head of the aid organizaion, and then is genuinely kind and empathetic ("they don't say in the files there's a woman in love...). And, as Carlos said, he gets a kickass song!
The thing is, even in the source opera, Madama Butterfly, Butterfly is a much more sympathetic character than Pinkerton who is HORRIBLE. (BTW, Pinkerton is a signature role of Bart's.) He's really awful, just openly uses and discards a 15-year-old girl and then shies away from the consequences. I can definitely see that there are racial issues with the opera but it's pretty anti-American as well (especially since the actual events in real life involved a Scottish man, not an American). I'd say nobody gets off easy with the opera!
Oh, I found this on YouTube:
How young and adorable is she?!
