time and relative dimension in space

This is a quick post because I'm in the middle of an exhausting work week, but I wanted to note how pleased I am with the Tony nominations, especially but not only the recognition for Hadestown and The Prom. Excited for the awards!

I had to work tonight and therefore missed a good chunk of the Tonys, but here are a few highlights from what I did see:

▪ The Parkland tribute ♡
▪ John Tiffany getting everyone to sing Happy Birthday to his boyfriend
▪ That arrangement of For Forever was gorgeous and moving. If mildly inappropriate, given the original context of the song.
▪ The Once On This Island performance was fabulous.
▪ Literally everything to do with The Band's Visit, I love that show so much. Katrina Lenk, omg. And Best Musical. Obviously

So my copy of the Hamiltome arrived yesterday; I got it after work and promptly sat down and started reading. I read it cover-to-cover in two sittings.

First of all, the book as a physical object is gorgeous. It's substantially lighter than you'd expect a book that size to be, beautifully printed, and full of photos both black-and-white and full-color -- a mix of shots that everyone in Hamilton fandom has probably seen (though I'm always up for seeing that picture of Lin in full costume sitting at his laptop during a tech rehearsal!) and new photos (special love to all the dressing room shots).

The content is a mix of things: the full libretto (extensively annotated by Lin), a few cut songs/lyrics (the full Adams Administration takedown, the Cabinet battle over slavery), and essays about the cast, the development of the show, the influence and work of various people (the chapter before Hurricane is primarily about the lighting design and it's fantastic), Lin's writing process, and the impact of the show, with a particularly moving section on the student matinees.

Some things that particularly hit me: Lin's description of Leslie and why he's perfect for the role of Burr ("He is cool, his blood runs cool, he is elegant. It sounds like I'm reverse-describing myself as feral monster. Anyway he's my opposite."); every single description of Phillipa Soo (Pippa and her performance of Eliza means everything to me); Vanessa Nadal-Miranda's favorite line in the show is "I'm a trust fund, baby, you can trust me"; everything about the description of recording the cast album; there is quite a bit of confusion over when Lin-Manuel actually got the idea for a hip-hop musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton; in early workshops Lin sold Chernow on the idea that he had Hamilton, Laurens, Lafayette, and Mulligan meeting in 1776 out of dramatic necessity, but admits that he actually just forgot they hadn't met yet (lol).

And as for the essay immediately preceeding It's Quiet Uptown and the fact that it's the only song in the book completely unannotated . . . I needed to take a breather after that part, let's put it that way.

Another quote: "Keep it in mind the next time you go to the theater: Some gifted men and women have built a community in that room, and the immigrant is you."

Five stars out of five. I'd rank it higher if it wouldn't break the ranking system.

In other news, I'm spending the evening tracking old Chess audios, and it's reminding me how much I still want that fic where a couple years after the events of the show, all the main characters meet up in a bar but they each come from a different script. And confusion and grudges that don't make sense in context ensue.

I suspect eventually I'm going to have to actually write it.

"People Like Us", as sung by Kendra Kassebaum and Jessica Phillips, from the 2012 Broadway musical Leap Of Faith, and as a bonus an earlier version of the song, sung by Kendra Kassebaum, from the original demo recording.

People like us are lucky
People like us are tough
Like it or not, we're all that we've got
And that's got to be enough
People like us have no one
No one but us, that's who
People like us have to stick to each other like glue
And that's what we do

Leap Of Faith is the story of a con man who calls himself Jonas Nightingale; he goes from town to town as a tent revival preacher and fleeces the locals for all he can get before moving on to the next one, with the help of his sister Sam and his choir of Angels. When the revival's bus breaks down in Sweetwater, KS, Jonas attempts to pull the same con once again, but finds complications in the form of local woman Marla and her son Jake.

Leap Of Faith is also a show that, like Wonderland, I have complicated feelings about. It flopped on Broadway, and not undeservedly; while the cast was insanely great (Raúl Esparza! Kendra Kassebaum! Jessica Phillips! Kecia Lewis-Evans! Leslie Odom, Jr.!), the book was a mess. Leap Of Faith had previously had a run at Los Angeles' Ahmanson Theatre with a completely different book, and while opinions are mixed on that production, I think it was a better one. (Though Jessica Phillips is a better Marla than Brooke Shields. Sorry, Brooke.) It's a show that had a lot of potential, and sadly most of that potential wasn't utilized in New York.

"People Like Us" was a number in both the Ahmanson and Broadway productions, and though it had markedly different lyrics in each production, it served the same plot purpose: Sam (Kassebaum) explains to Marla (Phillips) why she and Jonas are the people they are, and the two women find some common ground at last.

(I've offered both versions because they offer substantially different backstories for Jonas and Sam, and I like them both.)

This is another in a string of "I'm not dead, just deprived of time and dependable Internet" posts. I'm sorry for that.

And yesterday I dealt with one of the most terrifying things in the universe -- a group of opera singers waving around lit torches on a mostly-wooden set. I swear I kept thinking "WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE BEFORE THIS SHOW CLOSES". So that might happen.

Got the chance to listen to the "Now. Here. This." CR in its entirety today, and it's fantastic. Everybody sounds great, the production quality is high, and seriously, I love the music from this show; "Golden Palace" made me cry a little.

I'm also super glad they decided to include the Jeff version of "That'll Never Be Me"; that might be my favorite track.

"One More Opponent / You & I", from the 2001 Danish tour of Chess, as sung by Stig Rossen and Emma Kershaw.

Each day we get through
Means one less mistake
Left for the making

Admit it, you were waiting to see how long it would take me to get around to a song from Chess.

Chess is my favorite musical, period, end of sentence, no qualifiers. Through all the rewrites and all the changes and all the flaws no one's quite managed to fix, I love it. Every version has something to recommend it, even the bizarre Australian and Off-Broadway rewrites.

The 2001 Danish Tour is my favorite cast recording, and "You & I" is one of the greatest love songs in musical theatre canon.

Florence (Kershaw) and Anatoly (Rossen) deal with a number of external factors that threaten their relationship, key among them the stress of the upcoming chess match and the arrival of Anatoly's wife, Svetlana. And as they do, they also confront the fact that they already know how their relationship is going to play out; it's the same story they've already gone through in previous relationships. But they can't stop trying to convince each other and themselves that this time the ending will be different; this time, things will work out.

You and I, we've seen it all
Been down this road before
Yet we go on believing...

Can I just tell you how happy it makes me that the Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots musical is actually happening? So happy.

These rehearsal pictures are glorious.

"Rosamund's Dream", from the 1976 Broadway musical The Robber Bridegroom, as sung by Rhonda Coullet.

Then a finer king on a finer horse
Will come the selfsame day
And he will bring his crown, of course
To tempt my love away
Rosamund, Rosamund, he will say
Rosamund, Rosamund, Rosamund, come away

"Rosamund's Dream" is a very simple song that does a fantastic job at character definition. It takes up very little space -- under two minutes long, with two short verses and a two-line chorus repeated twice -- and the orchestration is very basic, very stripped-down, and it makes use of every inch of what it's got to define Rosamund.

She's a dreamer. She's naive. She believes in fairytales, and love, and that one day her prince will come. And she's got a very naive, childish, endearing kind of self-centeredness. And all that is established in this less-than-two-minute song, whether you've got any of the context of the rest of the show or not.

And it's just a really pretty lullaby. That, too.