Welcome to Commuter Musicals, a weekly blog about musicals you may or may not have heard of.
Why musicals? Because I like them. They're one of my favorite storytelling mediums--everything great about a play or film, along with a soundtrack I can sing to. What’s not to like? Plus, I have a long commute, and my favorite podcasts don’t update nearly often enough for me to listen to them all week. That being said, I’m not planning on covering the mainstream musical hits--Frozen, Hamilton, Wicked, Rent, Lion King... you know, all the ones that people have raved over and talked about endlessly, with ear worms that keep you awake at 10pm when you’re supposed to be sleeping. Not that I don’t love mainstream musicals (I do), but lots of good (and bad) things have already been written about them, and I don’t really have any new insights to offer.
Instead, I want to review and analyze a few less mainstream works of art to give you something new to listen to, and maybe find a few that are new to me too. Hopefully it’ll be a win-win.
A few things to be aware of though:
- I'm not watching these musicals on stage, I'm listening to them in my car as I commute to and from work. So my critique won't involve stage directions, choreography, or singing quality (I'm not qualified to judge those things anyway). I'm just looking at songs and story. If you feel like I’ve missed something vital by not seeing it live, I probably have.
- Spoilers are part of the territory. If you don't want to know how it turns out before you listen, go listen first and come back. This is the internet, it's not like it won't be waiting for you when you get done.
- I'm unabashedly feminist. My critique will involve discussions about objectification, damseling, and other problematic tropes in storytelling media. Please note, I’m not trying to limit your enjoyment of works that have problematic elements or tell you that you’re awful for enjoying them. This is just the lens through which I analyze works of art. Your milage may vary.
Blog structure! Yeah, I could ramble on about each musical as the muse takes me, but I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be able to keep that up for more than a few CDs. Then you’d be sad that I never got to anything interesting, I’d be sad that I didn’t manage to share anything cool, and we’d all be sad that we didn’t get to hear any new music. So I’m going to stick to a structure and a schedule so that we all get what we want (plus, this way you can just skip to the bits you find interesting).
Overview: a quick blurb about the musical and what it’s about.
Highlights: songs I liked, songs I didn’t, and songs I’m still singing while I do the dishes.
Plot Specifics: a more detailed plot review. This is the spoiler zone. I’ll be discussing major plot events, how they play out in song, and some general commentary.
Adaptation Corner: musicals don’t exist in a vacuum. Many (sooo many) are based on novels (Le Miz, Phantom, Wicked, I could go on for a while), a few have earlier iterations that inform the final product (Chess, Hairspray, Hair…), and at least a few have a creative history that affect how we see it today (Rent, Tick Tick Boom, Love Never Dies...). This is where I talk about those things that are technically outside the work, but also shape our understanding.
Themes: did I miss something? This is where you’ll find it. This is also where I’ll put the bulk of my analytical commentary.
Final Score: an arbitrary measure of how much I enjoyed it.
Next Week: Chess, or What the Heck Happened to Florence in the Second Half?
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