Two Minds: The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo, A New Musical
BYU
January 22-14; 27-31, 2015
Music by Frank Wildhorn
Book and lyrics by Jack Murphy
Directed by Tim Threlfall
Musical direction by Gayle Lockwood
Choreography by Nathan Balser
Creative producer: Jeffrey Martin

Long before my brief stint as a resident of Las Vegas, I was a fan of big spectacle.  Raised on opera, I learned as a child to put my inner playwright on the back shelf and just enjoy the overblown drama, the unearned emotion, and, most of all, the music.  This is also the reason I love large cast musicals.  No judgment about how they got from Point A to Point B; let's just listen to them sing.  Especially when the heroine's songs all fall within my range!  Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you.

It was in that vein that I enjoyed this new musical adaptation of the classic novel The Count of Monte Cristo.  Folks, they had a body double for two of the main characters so they could fly them across an ocean themed screen and have the characters actually swim across the stage to the hidden cavern.  This was Spectacle (note the capital S!).  I love stuff like that!  I also loved the graphic design of the opening slides, even though I'm not a huge fan of slides-as-exposition.  The drawings of waves moved like waves.  It was supercool.

It was about a third of the way through that my inner playwright started bugging me.  We had just had a beautiful duet between the True Love in a church praying for Our Hero's safe return and Our Hero in the prison, sustained by the mere thought of his True Love.  Great song.  Then Our Hero leaves and the Weaselly Bad Guy attempts to woo True Love.  In time Our Hero returns to the prison part of the scene, but with substantial beard growth.  True Love and the Weasel continue as before.  So are we to suppose that the Weasel persisted over the course of many years before turning True Love's heart to his?  A major plot point refutes that explanation and I once again must say, "Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you!"

When condensing a lengthy novel for the stage, significant emotional journeys are sometimes (ok, often) reduced to the barest brushstrokes so that we can more easily move from one song to the next.  Sometimes I have to tell myself that surely this is more fleshed out in the novel.  I had to do that at several points in the musical and now I can't decide if I want to ever read the novel.  What if it doesn't give us reason not to hate True Love? I'm holding on to that last thread (remember, all of her songs are in my range so I am inclined at the gut level to like her), because based only on what we see in the musical this is a girl I want to smack.  Hard.

First, she spends a high percentage of her stage time half-raised from the floor, in emotional turmoil.  I can forgive that because I love emotional turmoil songs, but the complexity that I am really hoping is in the novel does not come across in this script.  I am hoping that she married the Weasel because she knew that as a woman in this time period her options were limited and she wanted her unborn child to have the advantages of a male protector.  On stage, she is too dumb to see how bald the Weasel's romantic machinations are, takes his lies at face value, and only requires a couple of awkward, forced hugs to break her will.  Looks like the Weasel really did know best when it comes to True Love.

There are two types of women in this play: those who exist within the patriarchy and those who do not.  Both are somewhat off-putting.  There's True Love (whose whole life is controlled by the actions and decisions of men), Apprentice True Love (who is in love with True Love's son), and the Pirate Queens (who keep a surly, all male pirate crew in line with the power of their cleavage and their propensity for random violence).  I know I'm supposed to like the Pirate Queens because they are so sassy but the whole scenario seemed terribly unlikely.  Honestly, when they first came on stage I wondered if I was still watching the same musical I had been watching.  So the only female character who can say things and be heard and make decisions for herself is pretty much a joke.  And she, too, is helpless when it comes to Our Hero.  He runs the place, folks (with the help of his body double).  Within 5 minutes of meeting Our Hero, the Pirate Queen changes her policy on how a fight to the death ends, changes her destination (by hundreds of leagues), and changes her pirate instincts (did she get even one coin of the treasure?  Did she even try?). The worst was when Our Hero and Mini Me sing about those silly women they love (True Love and Apprentice True Love, respectively).  The women end up looking like porcelain dolls instead of living, breathing human beings and their portrayal throughout the show does pretty much the same thing.

The other time my inner playwright wept was when True Love reveals that Mini Me is actually Our Hero's son (gasp!).  I did not believe their joyous reactions.  Ok, I can believe that Our Hero is joyous about having a son despite being in prison during his prime family-making years.  But Mini Me, who not only just lost the only father he has ever known but was the person who did the killing, is surely not going to have a first reaction of unadulterated joy.  "You mean the alcoholic, abusive man I just killed isn't my father?  It's actually the lying, angry man who ruined my family's good name and who, earlier today, I tried to kill?  Sweet!  And my mom had a secret life she never told me about?  Could this day get any better?"  Shut up, inner playwright!  No one was talking to you!

Based on the standing ovation all around me, though, and the raucous cheering of the four busloads of appreciative high schoolers, nobody else had a pesky inner playwright casting a pall on what was, really, a very fun afternoon of Spectacle and Song.

The moon expanded as they sang louder as a graphic representation of all of their dreams coming true.  If you can't have fun with a magical expanding moon then you, my friend, won't ever have fun.

What Movies Do Best: Thoughts on _Selma_

On hot button issues I tend to follow the example of Mary: "But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart" (Luke 2:19).  It's a matter of self preservation.  In most issues you are damned if you do or damned if you don't.  I used to find a good flame war invigorating, but now I can't stand the taste of bile.  Aware of what I don't know, I hesitate to draw a line in the sand.  It seems, too, that there is a deep chasm between the two sides of any issue.  Knowledge and understanding are not acknowledged as malleable and progressive.  You choose a side and view everything through that lens.  The word "ignorant" is hurled back and forth like it was a cardinal sin rather than a universal fact.  I am ignorant.  Love me anyways (as I love you, in your ignorance).  Educate me without rancor (and I will try to return the favor).

With that preamble, I will uncharacteristically share my thoughts on a one such issue (with fear and trembling for the personal ignorance I am sure to reveal).  I didn't really learn any big new facts from the movie Selma.  I am somewhat educated and know my history.  The power of the movie for me was the power of the medium: perspective, empathy, emotion.  Watching the movie with my father I was struck with the realization that he, too, was in his 30's in the 60's--living in the same world and yet in a very different world.  If this struggle was in my immediate background, as close as the man sitting next to me, how would that affect my initial response to the death of a young black man at the hands of a policeman? 

I know this all sounds like Empathy 101 or Things You Learn When You Are Twelve but there is a difference between knowing something intellectually and having it really land emotionally.  The struggle depicted on the screen was not far away at all.  It was right here, within the scope of my immediate family, nearly within the scope of my lifetime.

And as I think of my family's history unfolding alongside these seminal events and yet not seemingly touched by them, I don't have to wonder what it would have been like to experience that.  I'm currently experiencing that.  How much pain is outside the scope of my daily influence?  How many moments are there where I would stand up and be counted if I had any real awareness of them?  This is not to say that my sphere of influence does not contain pain or moments of truth and courage.  But, oh, how I would like to take a stand for truth in all instances.  How I would like to view life from all perspectives, even if only briefly.  How I hope to keep being emotionally educated.  And how I hope we can always do this for each other with love.

[And, yes, I know I promised some musings on a current hot button issue but that mostly got the ax.  That's not my bag, folks.]

Here is a poem I wrote a week or two ago that seems particularly relevant to my musings tonight:

Maps

I’ve been high on life, drunk on love, and addicted to soap operas, but I couldn’t tell you what alcohol tastes like or how random pills you haven’t been prescribed feel when they slip into your brain.

That’s not my path.

No judgment.

It just isn’t mine.

That’s on Main Street; I’m on Center.

If you want a tour guide, I can’t help you with that street.

It isn’t a personal failing not to have first hand, intimate knowledge of every street in town.

That’s what maps are for.  Guidebooks.  Blogs.

Because I’ve been beaten down but never beaten.

I’ve begged for seconds but never for rent.

But I have listened to enough travelers to know that no roads are without rocks.

We all have bloodied feet, even if it isn’t apparent when observed from a distance.

So instead of throwing stones between the blocks, perhaps we should work together on a more comprehensive and detailed atlas.