IGNORANCE, INNOCENCE AND LOST OPPORTUNITY

Tags

Barnum, film, Hollywood, Hugh Jackman, Jenny Lind, movie review, movies, musical, opera, oratorio, soprano, stage, The Greatest Showman

In some ways it’s understandable that the film producers of the LA studios thought that a flick about the best hype man who ever lived would make a good movie. Perhaps it would have been, if done with accuracy, class, and a modicum of understanding of what is entailed in the musical genre. The Greatest Showman has too many glaring problems.

I suspect that the creators of this fiasco hoped to appeal to a younger crowd, and probably sold the treatment as High School Musical- goes-to-the-circus. Uh, check out the aging cast, which means they missed their targeted demographic and are left with baby boomers weaned in the glory daze of Broadway musicals. If asked their opinion, the post-war babies would most likely say with a pained smile that it was merely entertaining. Ow, the dreaded E-word.

Glaring problems are overwhelming in this silly film, especially the cramped choreography better served on a proscenium stage. Costuming was a mess. The gowns from no era in particular. Then there was the alarming shock of no chest and armpit hair for the neatly hirsute bearded lady. (Apologies to Miss Keala Settle, who other than Jackman, did the best singing.)

That’s another thing. These are recording artists, not true vocalists, and there is a huge difference. Other than Settle and Jackman, they have voices ill-equipped for the stage unless a mic is taped to their heads. Many recording artists today share the annoying asthmatic style made popular by Michael Jackson. The problem with that has to do with Jackson being a genius in the industry and others trying to use a style he (IMHO) had to fall back on when his voice started to give out. I learned the inside story about that when I studied with Mia Phoebus in LA in the 70s. Jackson took lessons from her competitor, Seth Riggs, whom Jackson went to see about singing the pharyngeal style. (It’s the reason babies can scream for hours and not get hoarse.) It must not have worked for him because he went on to a breathy style and used a mic.

Then we have my biggest gripe, the bashing of Jenny Lind, who during her time was the most famed and respected singer in the world. Think on that. Engaging the entire world without any form of today’s technology and media coverage. Famous composers and performers drooled over her but she never veered from asserting her prim reputation. There was no reason to smear her legacy and too much delight in the doing of it on the screen. This is another example of Hollywood’s cultural ignorance and lost opportunity. Lind had listeners in tears and swooning in their seats. Tickets to hear her scalped for huge prices. Entire portions of cities needed to be blocked off when she came to town.

I’m not sure if the writers can be faulted. Often what they put on the page is different when producers meddle. Take the otherwise perfection of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing. The opening song is The Last Rose of Summer, one of Lind’s signature pieces, which was sung by Fleming’s heavy dramatic soprano style. It’s a song meant for a lyric or coloratura, to be light and haunting. The song is supposed to evoke the pain of grief and isolation, which would have set up the film perfectly, but Fleming’s rendition had all the light, airiness of sludge.

Coming back to the original point. There is a reason the High School Musical films work. They aren’t movies that hold my attention but they are perfect for their targeted audience and great fun for them. Watching the brilliant Hugh Jackman in The Greatest Showman slog through and do his very best with material that is mediocre at best was painful, but it proves that he is a great showman.

For some info about Lind:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=jenny+lind&view=detail&mid=3A6D4BF115313B7F863D3A6D4BF115313B7F863D&FORM=VIRE

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)
Follow on Twitter @RigdonML
Blog: https://historyfanforever.wordpress.com/
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Shakespeare and Me

Tags

costumes, crew, embarrassment, humiliation, malfunction, period costumes, stage, theater

Embarrassing moments. We all suffer them. My most excruciating ones get written into a plot. Some poor, schmuck character gets hit upside the head with one of my humiliating life experiences and poof, I forget about it—a sort of emotional enema. Hey, it works, but I have one experience left that is so pathetic and ridiculous and hysterically funny that it’s a keeper for one of my characters. I think kick-butt heroine Phil Hafeldt is getting the honors in her next adventure. She’s quirky and tough enough to get through it. I still can’t think about it without laughing and cringing at the same time.

A less devastating but funny occurrence happened on stage at Racine Theatre Guild—and thanks to all the Powers that be everywhere in the universe—it happened during rehearsal and not during an actual performance. But the discomfort lingers.

Eons ago, I did a lot of comedy, so got somewhat accustomed to unexpected wrenches sabotaging the works. Audiences rarely know the mayhem that happens behind the scenes, horrible accidents, broken bones and sprains, costumes that come apart, props that disappear, sets that collapse, an endless set of catastrophes that marvelous crews save, correct, stitch, and paste back together so the performers can be shoved back out in front of the audience. I can’t imagine the trauma if my calamity had played out in front of patrons. Actors, crew and the director (Norman McPhee) got the brunt of it.

Tech reheasal, two nights before full dress, and our first night on the actual set, Petruccio (Jim Iaquinta) drags me by one arm, a violently resisting shrew, Kate, up the balcony steps. He gets a foot on the balcony and the entire staircase collapses. I’m swinging in the air, worrying about the crew, running with arms outstretched. In period costume, I’m also hoping I haven’t worn skimpy underwear, while praying Petruccio can hold on, so I don’t fall and crush the nice carpenters. (I’ve never been a lightweight.)

Petruccio hauls me up, asks me if I’m OK, takes my numb-brained nod as a yes, and goes on with his lines. His next blocking move is to throw me over his shoulder. Now it’s an even longer drop to the stage floor. He isn’t afraid of heights, so he stands with the tips of his toes off the edge of a balcony with no railing. I screamed so horribly people came running from everywhere in building. Meanwhile, Petruccio’s still delivering his lines and the director is gleefully shouting: Now, that’s how I want you to scream! (To be honest, I did use a rendition of that scream every performance.)

That was the set up for the impending humiliation, but not the first warning. That came when the costume lady takes me into the bathroom—which had me wondering why not the wardrobe room—and tells me all of my costumes have to be altered. The director wants to make use of the rack I downplayed with minimizer bras my entire life. I dutifully get into the wedding costume. She takes a scissors and hacks out a chunk of the bodice. I shriek, horrified and gob-struck. (Think da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine but much lower.)

Next night is dress rehearsal. The staircase has been tacked back together and now, thankyouthankyou, has a railing. We get up to the balcony, lines and timing are going great, Petruccio slings me over his shoulders. I inhale to scream with appropriate gusto, and my boobs fall out of the gown. Wardrobe malfunction? Uh-no. More like wardrobe catastrophe.

The director can’t see what’s happening beyond my butt in the air and me furiously wriggling to reinsert my bosoms. He knows something is going on because the two actors to one side of the balcony are now rolling on the floor with laughter. There’s just so damn much of me that it takes FOREVER to get them back in place and hold them there. In comparison, it wasn’t quite as humiliating as the debacle I’m saving for Phil, but maybe now I can forget those guys, holding their sides, laughing their heads off.

Solution/moral of the story: Every night I surgical-glued my tatas into a cut down bra and ripped it off after performances. I lost a lot of skin but saved a lot of face.

I could caption this What We Do For Our Art or Was I Ever That Young?