General Theatre Discussion

[Doldod]

Well, let me think. I like Gogol’s The Government Inspector. It is his most famous play and probably his best work in general. I like The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters by Chekhov, those are worth looking into. Leo Tolstoy’s The living Corpse and The Power of Darkness are pretty good. And I actually really like Mikhail Bulgakov’s writing and his plays are not an exception. A lot of his work was banned in USSR, but now he is considered one of the greatest writers of 20th century. I saw his play Flight when I was in St. Petersburg a year or so ago and was not disappointed. It’s a play set during Russian Civil War and it was banned for a long time because it depicted both sides of the conflict. Also, he wrote a play called Ivan Vasilievich which was adapted into an absolutely great Soviet movie called Ivan Vasilievich Changes His Profession commonly translated as Ivan Vasilievich: Back to the Future. It’s a comedy in which a Soviet citizen Ivan Vasilievich and Russian Tsar Ivan IV Vasilievich, more commonly known as Ivan The Terrible, switch places and have to survive in a different time period. Both the play and the movie are great, but I don’t think the play was translated into English.

Edit: To answer Pandora’s question, I like musicals, but I, unfortunately, didn’t get a chance to see many of them. Basically, I think that musicals can bring something extra and different to the table. Some of them are great, some are not so great, but overall I’m happy that they exist as a form of expression.

[U4ea]

Here’s my thing with musicals. I feel like for a musical to work, you have to have a good singer. Too many times have I seen a movie adaptation of a musical that has its actors sing, and the actors fall flat. I don’t blame the actors at all for this, because who expects someone to be good at acting and also have an academy award winning voice? Lately Hollywood has been autotuning the actors/actresses that are singing (like in the Beauty and the Beast remake), which is ok, but I think I liked it better when actors were just dubbed over by singers (old disney movies do this a lot). Dunno though, a bad dub is just as distracting as having the actors sing.

The best example of this I can think of is Phantom of the Opera… It’s one of those musicals that’s been around forever and has had multitudes of movies made from it. My favorite version of this is the original with Michael Crawford as the phantom. While he’s not the best of actors, the man’s got a good set of pipes. Anyway, in the 2004 remake they replaced him with Gerard Butler, who you may know as Leonidas in 300. Butler’s a great actor, but he’s not the best of singers.

Another example of this is Russell Crowe in Les Misérables. He’s a great actor, but cannot seem to carry much of a tune. I’d argue the same for Anne Hathaway actually, but for some reason I found her performance a bit less distracting. Still, I would have loved it if she was dubbed over. I would have really loved if she were dubbed over by Susan Boyle… I love Boyle’s cover of “I Dreamed A Dream” so much!

Anyway, I’m not really sure what my answer is to this is. Because as I said earlier, bad dubbing can be just as distracting as having the actors sing. Autotuning them helps a little bit, but it can be rather distracting too. Maybe the answer is to get someone who can act and sing, like Idina Menzel?

What do you all think on the matter? Do you like the autotuning? Do you like the actors trying to sing, or do you prefer dubbing? Or do you just think I’m crazy, and that I’m way too easily distracted by the singing in the musicals that have turned into movies?

[Doldod]

I think it’s much better to dub than to autotune, autotuning is a little bit distracting to me. But I would say that in some situations actors who are not great at singing should still keep their voice without dub or autotune. It all comes down to what that scene needs if it has to sound professional, it’s better to dub if it’s more emotional, then the professional actor might do a better job than the singer. Anne Hathaway, for example, is not the best at singing, but the performance she gives in Les Miserables is very emotional and extremely memorable and dub could have taken away from that. I agree that Russel Crowe should have been dubbed though.

[Pandora]

Personally, I love musicals. Y’know how its often said that music is one of the most powerful forms of self-expression and communication there is? Well infuse that with great vocals and story/character driven lyrics and you get to what the heart of musicals are.
My top three favorite musicals all have something that really sets them apart from the averages. Heathers for one, has tracks that are pretty good at giving the listener an examination of the complexity of the characters or at least their mental/emotional state.

Freeze Your Brain illustrates a very good portrait of J.D. In this song, we learn that Jason is a person who’s lost a lot in life, has zero social skills, doesn’t believe in having dreams, is anti-society, and numbs his pain by consuming slushies and getting into fights or cutting if the line “fight pain with more pain,” is any indication. We also learn that despite his preferred way of coping being to numb himself the point where self reflection, expressing himself, and connecting with others are incredibly difficult for him to do-Jason still longs for an identity of his own and for someone to validate his existence, which is what he gets in the form of being a bully hunter and Veronica-a girl who he see’s a bit of himself in, becomes obsessed with and over time wants to corrupt due to being love starved and stuff as seen in the track, Our Love is God.
Unlike Heathers, I would say Hamilton excels more at story based songs. Stay Alive Reprise basically covers the death of Philip Hamilton-the son of Alexander Hamilton-after he loses a duel against another kid who insulted his father. The way that the music imitates Philip’s fading heartbeat is really impressive, I have to say. And the vocals that are in this song aren’t forced and actually not only mix well with the beat, convey the despair of his parents and the moment that ended up killing Philip. There is also The World Turned Upside Down-which is an amazing overview of the battle of Yorktown and is genuinely a pretty good history lesson. The rapping is also 10/10 too.

The Lion King on the other hand, focuses a bit more on atmosphere than character or story to me. This is represented by the very first track-The Circle of Life-which is a mix of several indigenous African languages and English. The musical itself almost feels like an ancient African fable brought to life, which is partly why I like it so much aside from the songs that really convey a sense of myth and wonder. Another track I really is They Live in You which is very mysterious and haunting. This 1997 NYTimes review explains why its one of my favorites.

Here’s my thing with musicals. I feel like for a musical to work, you have to have a good singer. Too many times have I seen a movie adaptation of a musical that has its actors sing, and the actors fall flat. I don’t blame the actors at all for this, because who expects someone to be good at acting and also have an academy award winning voice?

Tbh I hate live action movie musicals. The only movie musicals that work are the animated ones.

[Sapphire]

@Doldod Ah, I thought you would talk about more obscure Russian playwrights that you were hesitant to discuss at first, but these are pretty popular ones, so maybe everybody can join us too. I like Chekhov a lot, his writing is so wonderful. Always precise and it feels like it’s raw, coming from his gut but always artistic. I have yet to read The Cherry Orchard though, but it should be interesting, considering it’s one of his most popular plays. As for Tolstoy, I’m not into him, I don’t like him in general.

@Pandora Musicals are… well, they’re just fine to me. I mean, they are fun to watch once in a while, but I find them a bit too… over the top, frivolous maybe, in lack of a better word? They are just too lively for me, I find it that plays overall have a more serious tone. Not to say that musicals are bad, of course, as I said, I enjoy going to one once in a while, they’re good for a change of pace.

Also, @U4ea, you’re a little bit of topic, I think, as we’re discussing theatre and theatre musicals rather than musicals in general…