Two Sides of Teen Melodrama!
Dec. 12th, 2019 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearOn Tuesday evening, I took the offer of unexpectedly available tickets from a friend of a friend, and went to see Dear Evan Hansen. MINOR SPOILERS BELOW.
I didn't know that much about it going in, other than it's a new musical that's had rave reviews, and that it's about social media. I was keen to see what all the fuss was about, but I'm still at a bit of a loss.
The Guardian review opens with the sentence: "This musical arrives from the US laden with honours – including six Tony awards and a Grammy – and you can see why."
Can you? I can't!. The rest of the review doesn't pile unequivocal praise on the show. But it's still more enthusiastic than I was.
Don't get me wrong - I didn't think the show was *bad*. The cast all gave excellent performances, the quality of the songs was high, it was an assured and professional production, with good staging and some interesting things to say.
But I wanted more. I wanted more diversity, I wanted more risky choices, I wanted something that wasn't just 'lonely straight white boy digs himself into a hole by lying and basically suffers no consequences'. I wanted to be surprised and delighted, and for my emotions to be fully engaged. And I didn't get that from this show.
There was one song in the first half that I loved - Evan and his friend, Jared, create a string of fake emails to support the idea that Evan was friends with a boy at his school who committed suicide, and the actor playing the dead boy reappears on stage so they can put fake words in his mouth. It's very cleverly done, both funny and sad, and by far the best bit, in my view.
But most of it, both in terms of the painful awkwardness of some of the scenes, and the deeply troubling moral considerations, made me really uncomfortable. Near the end, someone tells Evan that what he's done has had a really good outcome in some respects. And he says, "But that doesn't make it right." I'm glad this was acknowledged, but it felt like a very throwaway line in an otherwise postive/uplifting conclusion.
But my friend and I were very much in a minority. It was one of those occasions where I felt as if I was at a different show than everyone else. People were sobbing and cheering, and there was a standing ovation. And I just don't get it.
At the other end of the expectations scale, this week I listened to the audio version of The Selection by Kiera Cass, which is kind of The Hunger Games crossed with The Bachelor. It's the final book of the year on the Novel Predictions podcast and I never would have read it otherwise. But I actually really enjoyed it! In a relatively near future, in which the US has become a monarchy with very a strict societal hierarchy, 35 young women are selected to go to the palace to compete to become consort to the crown prince.
Our heroine and first person POV character, is America Singer, who is the only one selected who has no interest in either the prince or the throne. But, of course, things get more complicated as time goes on and her relationship with both the prince and her childhood sweetheart from back home come into conflict.
The premise sounded terrible, and the setup of the world is a bit shaky in terms of believability and consistency. But I found America to be an appealing protagonist and the story took some interesting turns I wasn't expecting. I liked her interactions with the prince a lot. There were some disappointing aspects in how the love triangle developed later on (surprise kisses are still apparently very much a thing...) but I liked the stance America took at the end. And, even though, it was annoying to discover this first volume wasn't a complete story, I enjoyed it enough to want to carry on with the rest of the series.
I didn't know that much about it going in, other than it's a new musical that's had rave reviews, and that it's about social media. I was keen to see what all the fuss was about, but I'm still at a bit of a loss.
The Guardian review opens with the sentence: "This musical arrives from the US laden with honours – including six Tony awards and a Grammy – and you can see why."
Can you? I can't!. The rest of the review doesn't pile unequivocal praise on the show. But it's still more enthusiastic than I was.
Don't get me wrong - I didn't think the show was *bad*. The cast all gave excellent performances, the quality of the songs was high, it was an assured and professional production, with good staging and some interesting things to say.
But I wanted more. I wanted more diversity, I wanted more risky choices, I wanted something that wasn't just 'lonely straight white boy digs himself into a hole by lying and basically suffers no consequences'. I wanted to be surprised and delighted, and for my emotions to be fully engaged. And I didn't get that from this show.
There was one song in the first half that I loved - Evan and his friend, Jared, create a string of fake emails to support the idea that Evan was friends with a boy at his school who committed suicide, and the actor playing the dead boy reappears on stage so they can put fake words in his mouth. It's very cleverly done, both funny and sad, and by far the best bit, in my view.
But most of it, both in terms of the painful awkwardness of some of the scenes, and the deeply troubling moral considerations, made me really uncomfortable. Near the end, someone tells Evan that what he's done has had a really good outcome in some respects. And he says, "But that doesn't make it right." I'm glad this was acknowledged, but it felt like a very throwaway line in an otherwise postive/uplifting conclusion.
But my friend and I were very much in a minority. It was one of those occasions where I felt as if I was at a different show than everyone else. People were sobbing and cheering, and there was a standing ovation. And I just don't get it.
At the other end of the expectations scale, this week I listened to the audio version of The Selection by Kiera Cass, which is kind of The Hunger Games crossed with The Bachelor. It's the final book of the year on the Novel Predictions podcast and I never would have read it otherwise. But I actually really enjoyed it! In a relatively near future, in which the US has become a monarchy with very a strict societal hierarchy, 35 young women are selected to go to the palace to compete to become consort to the crown prince.
Our heroine and first person POV character, is America Singer, who is the only one selected who has no interest in either the prince or the throne. But, of course, things get more complicated as time goes on and her relationship with both the prince and her childhood sweetheart from back home come into conflict.
The premise sounded terrible, and the setup of the world is a bit shaky in terms of believability and consistency. But I found America to be an appealing protagonist and the story took some interesting turns I wasn't expecting. I liked her interactions with the prince a lot. There were some disappointing aspects in how the love triangle developed later on (surprise kisses are still apparently very much a thing...) but I liked the stance America took at the end. And, even though, it was annoying to discover this first volume wasn't a complete story, I enjoyed it enough to want to carry on with the rest of the series.
