A Fan's Playground

I have watched just SO many bad movie musicals in the months since March. After everyone started staying home, each weekend I now spend time with a group of friends watching a bad movie musical in sync and chatting about it on a group chat. We started with the 2019 Cats and have actually managed to go downhill from there. (I think Love Never Dies is the worst one so far but there are options. There are strong cases to be made for multiple other movies.)

Anyway as part of this experience, we watched all three of Disney's Descendants movies. And I must say, they're actually.....fun? Like. Terrible in many ways, but they manage to be enjoyable in a way that, say, the 1967 Dr Dolittle could never hope to achieve. That one is INTERMINABLE.

Descendants is a franchise about the kids of the various classic Disney characters, with focus on the kids of the villains. All the villains and their kids have been imprisoned on an island that has been enchanted to prevent the use of evil magic, but over in the good kingdom of Auradon, King Beast and Queen Belle and their son Ben decide to invite 4 teens from the evil island to come to high school in Auradon to see if they are redeemable!

So the four invited VK's (or Villain Kids, and yes, they do frequently use the term "VK" within the movies, it's weird) are our main characters. We've got Evie (daughter of the Evil Queen), Mal (daughter of Maleficent), Jay (son of Jafar), and Carlos (son of Cruella de Vil). Every single character in the younger generation has a name that starts with the same letter as whatever their most famous parent is known as and it's weird. Oh, except for Lonnie, who's Mulan's daughter, and honestly that name choice is even worse than Evie for the Evil Queen's daughter.

Anyway. Over the course of the series, we discover that EVERYONE no matter their parentage can have GOOD OR EVIL within them, and you can make your own choices about what to do! A surprising moral, I'm sure.

We also discover that the lead VK, Mal, has more sexual tension with literally every single other female character than she does with her designated love interest Ben, and honestly everyone in this movie comes across as extremely queer. Despite the series being textually Very Heterosexual. Prime ship options include Mal/Evie (vibe: BEST FRIENDS), Mal/Uma (vibe: EXES WHO ARE MAD AT EACH OTHER BUT STILL INTO EACH OTHER), Jay/Harry or possibly Jay/Gil (look I kept getting Harry and Gil confused with each other and I still don't remember which is which, I'm sorry!) (vibe: JUST REALLY CUTE), and so much more. Every time a new ship option came up in one of the movies I would hop over to AO3 to look at what the fandom's doing and report the stats back to the group. I was impressed with the sheer variety AO3 has on offer for this fandom, I didn't think it would be as big as it is.

Mostly the songs in the Descendants movies are boring and forgettable, but a couple of them are bops. The best song though is Kristin Chenoweth as Maleficent having an absolute blast hamming it up in "Evil Like Me", and it's AMAZING. Kristin Chenoweth living her best life!

The movies as a whole are overly simplistic, with fairly bad writing and cheap special effects and some fairly uncreative decision making. But I found myself invested despite myself. I haven't read any of the fic yet because I don't know how to winnow the good stuff out of the chaff in this particular fandom, but I wanna. I'm here for this collection of delightful weirdos!

A touring production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella came through my neck of the woods recently, and of course I had to go see it, since I grew up rewatching the 90's movie version over and over and over again.

My sister and I, in the lead-up to going to see the live theatre performance, watched all three of the made-for-tv movies of this musical. They all had their charms, but I don't think I'm biased in saying that the 90's version is the best of the three.

All three also had very different books, and rearranged the songs, and so forth. There isn't one canonical way that this musical must be told. The current live-theatre production of the musical, which has been touring for a few years now, is no exception. The book is totally rewritten yet again, adding new characters and even adding in an entire plot beyond just the romance aspect of the story.

And although I can see what they were going for with it.....I'm overall not a fan of the new book. There were some changes I really appreciated, like how Cinderella has multiple actual friends, but the added plot is just so over-simplistic that it seems silly.

The plot: the prince's parents have died, and a dude named Sebastien has been helping the prince rule until he is old enough to become king (he's never called a regent but that seems to be what he is). Sebastien is clearly taking advantage of the prince's ignorance and his trusting nature, and is doing some stuff that's not great for the people.

The people are upset that the country isn't doing as well as it was in the prince's parents' time! Poor people's land is being taken away from them!

Cinderella's friend Jean-Michel is a revolutionary trying to bring the prince's attention to the plight of the people. At the ball, Cinderella raises the issue with the prince, and after that he tries to pay more attention and figure things out. Eventually a solution is determined: they'll add a role of prime minister to the government, an elected official who acts as advisor to the ruler. The prince chooses two candidates to run for prime minister: Sebastien and Jean-Michel. Jean-Michel wins the election, and Sebastien cedes! Yay! Everything is fixed!

My questions: How malicious is Sebastien? What was he trying to do? Was he the one taking land away from the poor people, and to what purpose? Why does he just seem to give up and give in when he loses the election? What else is going on amongst the common people beyond the single oft-mentioned complaint of land being taken? Why is it seen as totally reasonable and not at all just a further extension of the ruler's power that the prince gets to choose who runs for election? Does anyone recognize that this "solution" only works so long as the king/prince in charge is generally a good person, which is no guarantee in a hereditary leadership position? ET CETERA. The princess fantasy only works if you don't draw attention to the ways in which hereditary monarchy is an imperfect method of governance, and once you bring that up you need to do a lot more to do right by it!

Moving on.

Cinderella straight-up forgives her awful stepmother with no indication of contrition from the stepmother, and forgiveness seems to be portrayed by the simplistic understanding that it means all of the past can just be swept under the rug. Um. That's...not actually the healthiest approach to the relationship between someone and their abuser.

Each updated version of this musical is made to speak to its cultural zeitgeist, and this is no exception, but the prince as an awkward disaffected millennial who doesn't know who he is or how to adult is clearly supposed to be relatable and instead is just offputting. And honestly the romance as a whole is suuuuuuuuper awkward.

A character is just plain named "Crazy Marie" which.....cool. Yup. Ableist slurs are great, right?

I liked some of the song order rearrangement (the placement of There Is Music In You was great), and some I really didn't (Do I love You Because You're Wonderful is put AFTER enough has happened that Cinderella has directly shown her wonderfulness and it came across like the prince was just dismissing her accomplishments!)

Overall though despite my complaints I still thoroughly enjoyed watching it, I critique 100% from a place of love. I had a grin on my face throughout.

Some of the things I particularly enjoyed about this production included:

- all the dancing, especially by the people in tight pants so you can admire the athletic accuracy of what their legs do, and most especially by the transformed fox and raccoon

- the music and the singing and all that, like, hard to go wrong I know, but it was great

- Cinderella's costume changes! Impressively-done stage magic!

- The bad stepsister. She was honestly great and possibly my favourite character in this production, just so very straightforward and unapologetic.

- Sebastien's long flowy coat looked glorious

- Seeing it with my sister!

So the entire internet has been falling over in praise for the new Broadway musical "Hamilton", and the soundtrack is up for free streaming on the npr website so tonight I was like, fiiiiine, I guess I'll give in and listen even though my interest in the US's story of itself is pretty minimal. And okay, I admit it, everyone's right, this musical is GREAT. It took me a few songs to get into the groove but once I was there I was SO THERE. Gosh.

( spoiler cut? Do I need to cut for spoilers for history?? )

I've listened to the Concept Album and the Original Broadway Cast recordings of the Scarlet Pimpernel multiple times each and I am ready to have some preliminary opinions - keeping in mind, of course, that at this point I am not capable of hazarding which character is singing most songs.

And my opinions are mostly that there are some things I like better about the concept album and some things I like better about the OBC, and some things I rather strongly dislike about each, and does another cast recording exist please?

The OBC has much better ordering and pacing and choice of songs than the concept album, so listening to the album as a whole is a much better listening experience. I find myself skipping a bunch of the concept album when I listen to it, whereas the OBC I listen to straight through.

But on the other hand, I am REALLY UPSET about the change of words for the titular song "The Scarlet Pimpernel" between the two because the concept album's lyrics for that song are OBVIOUSLY SUPERIOR (in my not so humble opinion). That's the song where the changes are most marked, but even for, say, "The Creation of Man" the way it's done changes between the two and I like the concept album's version better. There are a few minor changes that I do like in the OBC bust mostly I prefer the concept album's versions of lyrics and spoken interjections.

So for most individual songs I'm happier with the concept album, but for the overall musical I'm happier with the OBC.

And in minor nitpicky opinions, there are a few lines in the OBC sung by bit parts where the choices of the voice actor REALLY BUG ME so it makes me frustrated to listen to the OBC. And is it just me or does Marguerite's french accent come and go? And Marguerite at least attempts a French accent, but Chauvelin doesn't even bother and is just half-American half-British? CONSISTENCY YOU GUYS.

Anyways no but seriously do other cast recordings exist? These were the only two I could find! And as far as I can tell neither of them accurately represents the musical as it is generally staged today?



Relatedly! I started watching the takarazuka production of The Scarlet Pimpernel! (Star troupe, 2008) and within the first ten minutes I was already like OKAY THIS IS THE PERCIEST PERCY TO EVER PERCY, EVERYONE ELSE CAN GO HOME NOW. I'm no longer 100% convinced of that (mostly because wowwwwww that is a really terrible disguise) but I still utterly adore this Percy. Also everything else about this production. Really all you need to know is in this picspam/reaction/summary by skygiants. So far I'm up to Percy in tiger-print.

What other versions of the Scarlet Pimpernel should I watch?

Over the last two days I rewatched Romeo e Giulietta, this time with subtitles! I liveblogged my thoughts about it on tumblr because it was the only way I was going to successfully get myself to rewatch the whole thing. (I am so bad at watching things.) So! You can read my thoughts at the tag sophia-rewatches r e g at my tumblr, if that is something that interests you.