part 367 bears and wolves oh my

[aphanon_meme]

YOU DID IT, I'M SO PROUD OF YOU. Well, it's been a year. I hope it was a good one for you--and that 2018 is even better! And maybe we'll finally get that fansub of even one of the musicals... just maybe.

Enjoy part 367!

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Comments

Re: NOT OPTIONAL AT ALL

[(Anonymous)]

(also just want to say i watched another version of the musical last night, too--it was good except for more technical mic issues than there should've been--and even between that and the first one there were several differences. some i liked better than the other and some where i preferred the other. like how you'd mentioned in your version about the pyjama song, in this one, after the cart rolled by, while it was still silent one of the upperclass guys who'd been refusing to wear a lifebelt came up to the maid and snatched it. then the song started up again more frenzied but you can tell they had just been trying to convince themselves at that point because when they dispersed, there was screaming like, "okay, time to panic." but it also didn't have the whole "i heard a rumor" amongst the passengers beforehand? the lifeboat lowering was more intense than the other. and then at the end, all the guys' faces are just seen through portholes for their conversation, each group, and there's an empty one in between the Captain and Murdoch's to show Ismay should've been there. But the captain's aside to the bellboy wasn't made to be emotional like in other one.)

re: murdoc's death, oof. in both of the versions i saw, his last words and departure really carried with it a sense that he was maybe going to take his own life, just leaving it up to interpretation. although i understand the confliction with the moment taking liberties, and understand why his family wouldn't want it depicted that he possibly committed suicide, i also don't think it's something people should've been concerned with seeming shameful in that moment, if it did happen to him or any officer (and lightoller did eventually admit say one of them had committed suicide in that moment.) certainly not comparable to how he was besmirched in the 1997 version.

About halfway through the song, they added some new orchestrations, which were a cue for captain Smith and the crew to enter. Ismay is horrified--the ghosts, the ghosts! And he backs away... then when he turns around, he has his proper hat on, and he too has been transported to the past. He continues and finishes the song in a boastful manner.

aw mannn well done on the melding of fast forward to flashback.

this is probably also the only portrayal of ismay in titanic works that i've heard of, too? everything rests on his selfishness but not how it affected him later. by all accounts, it really fucked him up. it's good there was something out there that didn't just want to present him as a villain like everyone wants to see and rest on that.

it reminds me of how workers at the titanic museum reported that his portrait once started shaking on the wall and flew off, landing facedown. everyone likes to say it's because those who died and the other survivors wouldn't have wanted anything to do with him after that, but i felt like if anything, it'd be due to himself and his own guilt

I WILL THROW SOME RECOMMENDATIONS AT YOU SHORTLY THEN

yay! and yeah definitely if you ever get a hold of that titanic stuff, lemme know.

re: behind every fortune & some more tidbits

[(Anonymous)]

SORRY FOR SO LATE

Which other version did you watch? I finally watched the Australian version, I enjoyed it! What an interesting touch with the portholes, especially with Ismay not being there, ahh it sounds like a great visual.

Re: Murdoch. I feel like it would have been just as unsettling if they had him take the pistol out but left it up to us... although you're right, it's not anywhere near as bad as what Cameron did in the '97 film movie.

this is probably also the only portrayal of ismay in titanic works that i've heard of, too? everything rests on his selfishness but not how it affected him later. by all accounts, it really fucked him up. it's good there was something out there that didn't just want to present him as a villain like everyone wants to see and rest on that.

I think so too. And even though the book of the show takes some liberties with Ismay's interaction with Smith, the fact that they focused on how it broke him was memorable. And oh, I've never heard about that incident at the museum... I agree with your interpretation fully. I've actually never found any accounts from passengers who were pissed at Ismay for surviving. It seems mostly to be the press. I could be wrong or just missed some accounts, though.


OKAY SO, the behind the scenes book about the Titanic musical came in and I found the passage about Behind Every Fortune. Turns out it wasn't an emotional song but a rather biting one!

"We had, the day before, made another one of the four major preview changes in the show, this one the deletion of one of the strongest songs Maury had written. Late in Act TWo, on the severely slanting Main Deck, four millionaires--Astor, Guggenheim, Thayer, and Widener--were discovered standing at the rail, dressed in their finest evening clothes, each with a silver flask of brandy, stoically awaiting death. In a short scene which had them searching for justice in their hopeless situation, Guggenheim recalled a passage from Balzac novel: "Behind every fortune lies a great crime."

Months before, when Maury and I were discussing song ideas, I had given him this quote and it inspired him to write a song ("Behind Every Fortune") which had the millionaires, about to die, confessing their crimes. our director thought it was the finest song in the score and yet, he saw when played before an audience, that it was an intellectual lyric coming at a time when an emotional one was needed. And, since the highly emotional duet song by the elderly Strauses ("Still") came immediately after, the millionaires song not only set the wrong tone, but lessened the the impact of the subsequent moment. To everyone's sorrow, the brilliant but unwelcome millionaire's song was cut. "

----

Another interesting bit from the book... up until 2 weeks before it opened on Broadway previews, the ending involved Robert Ballard. Whaaat.

"I had earlier written a scene that presented some 16 survivors, following their rescue by the steamer Carpathia, appearing in a line, on a bare stage, in front of a black curtain, expressing, one by one, their memories and innermost feelings followed by the sinking, speaking as much to the audience as to each other. Then, appearing at the end of the line, dressed in a modern, bright, anachronistic orange jumpsuit, a contemporary character would enter: Robert D. Ballard, a scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who, on September 1, 1985 ... had been the first human being in 73 years to cast eyes on R.M.S Titanic.

After describing his remarkable discovery, the curtain would rise on the vent itself--a tableau of Ballard's submersible, in miniature of course, descending to the wreck of the great ship on the ocean's bottom. As stated earlier, this effect had turned out to be unsuccessful. But even if it had worked to our satisfaction, the moment itself was too dark, too impersonal and most of all, too thematically inconclusive to serve as our ending."

Now that would have been strange!

and some recs!

[(Anonymous)]

Some German recs, with English subtitles!

Rudolf: Affaire Mayerling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoAln45mjgo&list=PLwM59-io0-BCoBtoJfT_TzTmapE7JpTRl

The Count of Monte Cristo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_IQRRZmZlI [Rest should pop up in the sidebar] it's kind of like the 2002 movie and has a happy ending but I do love the music

AhhHh most of the stuff I like isn't on Youtube anymore because of getting taken down for copyright. But if you haven't already watched it, the DVD of Elisabeth: das musical is great too!

FOUND THE EXPENSIVE PROSHOT... WELL WILL HAVE IT SOON

[(Anonymous)]

the person replied and they have to reupload the links so it'll probably be a few days. Will share once I get it! I'm really excited, the set-piece sounds so elaborate.

From a contemporary review about the set

The design makes it appear that Titanic's riveted steel skin is being peeled away, whole or in sections, to reveal its compartmentalized interior. Soaring two and three levels high, the settings codify the ship's rigid class structure, with first-class passengers on upper decks and in large, grandly decorated spaces, while third-class passengers are relegated to the stage floor in smaller, more sparely appointed areas.

Some of the painstakingly detailed sets are used for just a few minutes, never to be seen again. These include a two-story-high, hungry-mouthed boiler as well as a re-creation of the Grand Salon, with its rich, wood-paneled walls and sweeping staircase, capped by a glass dome.