let me preface this with i'm not up to date with bsd still and only vaguely know what's going on via osmosis. but listen. one thought i have about the whole 'what ada character is going to end up in the mafia' thing? the tanizakis.
like we all know a popular theory is big brother tanizaki ending up in the mafia because he's just the right amount of unhinged, plus his stealth ability could be useful (and imagine how that could be used under verlaine's assassin training.)
but more scary to me than jun'ichiro ending up in the mafia is naomi following him there. naomi scares me. i've only talked about here briefly here but naomi is crafty and conniving and all of that. and... remember, gin is ability-less too, and with verlaine's training they're one of the top assassins. naomi has already been trained a little on manipulation by dazai. combine that with verlaine's assassin training? she'd be scary. the thing about mori choosing one of them is that the other will follow, hands down, and the two of them with the right training and the threat of the other getting harmed should they act against their agreement? it would be really, really fun (read: terrifying). mafia naomi is such a scary thought and I kind of want to see it happen.
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k so yall voted to see my 2023 final essay for a class called london in performance. which wasnt too serious. basically i compared the national theatre's phaedra [which i did not like that much tbh. one of the lines in my paper is "to truly send the criticism home, compared to the white critics who praised the play with four stars, Polish editor Andrzej Lukowski and Pakistani critic Arifa Akbar are the ones to only give two stars on the story that centers an illegal immigrant (The Stage)." just saying] as an adaptation of a classic greek play to the west end's general cash-in commercialization. and then my argument was that the center of that pendulum is somehow fucking newsies @ the troub im so sorry.
HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS:
first of all i got to cite myself as like. an expert which was SO funny
"To preface, because of my five years of close knowledge about this subject matter, its multiple stagings, scripts, and casts, I am well aware that this musical as a whole is quite average."
importantly, my definition of a revival in this paper is "creating something accessible to a modern audience for the sake of improving and adapting an original source material into a performance". if it doesnt improve and/or adapt it then it fails imo
"Lines [in the script] that hold weight are sort of dropped, in favor of keeping the show hopeful at all times. The reflection lies in the younger generation taking hold of a new age, rather than in workers rights, child poverty and abuse, and unification. Newsies at Wembley Park, the first professional revival and first iteration of the musical outside of the United States, flips this as a performance."
i called newsies 2012/livesies staging "left-right up-down" like a video game combo lmfao
"Wembley Park’s revival inserts viewers into the action of the city by default, but also the events that befall the newsboys.... Two police officers stalk in front of the audience as a scene with a new sense of impending doom plays out on the stage. The strikebreaking battle is... level with many of the audience’s seats, and boys escape officers and grown men through the aisles helping each other stand upright while shouts of “Move, move!” are called out .... as a pair hurry away up a ladder behind my aisle seat."
"The expansive take on staging (since as I said before, the musical itself is average) almost takes the place of design. ... Pulitzer’s desk resides on top of a platform of newspaper stacks, emphasizing his position in the hierarchy over the children selling those papers especially as the newsboys push it on with much effort. The towers are made to look like black metal with rust and peels. The lighting is white and natural during scenes. The ensemble’s costumes look more similar to each other, making them appear more unified visually compared to Broadway. The design is in the ensemble’s interactions, dance, and fluid movement through the city of the show, letting the performance and the dancers speak for themselves."
then mandatory michael section:
"What struck me the most watching it had to be Jack’s casting, and new character positionality within the context of the story. Never before has Jack Kelly been a Black newsboy union leader, not in any professional production. Played by Michael Ahomka-Lindsay, Jack’s role was much more electric. His fear of leading the strike became more personal, his baggage with the reform center gained more onstage intersectionality, his relationship with Katherine became even more complex and out of reach. It changes many of those past dropped lines, it made me hear lines differently than I had used to. It’s a more effective reflection that makes the events in the story a bit more tangible to an audience that could have initially been caught up in the grandiose dance numbers- not to mention the performance opening amidst strikes nationwide."
best part:
jack-kellys. "Welcome to..." Jack-Kellys, 23 Jan 2023, 3:46AM, this-is-what-i-mean-by-five-years-of-close-experience.
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poyt 5 is such a fucking rollercoaster, y’all! like i feel like people may not like it bc it’s so all over the place and it reads more like a book than a chapter 😭😭 in the sense that there isn’t just a beginning - middle - climax - end. It’s more like, a bazillion ups and downs, about three climaxes, three very emotional and poignant scenes (although I guess the main heart-wrenching scene is the big one in the middle, and then there’s a lot of mini heart-wrenches) and then there’s also a bit of comedic stuff which we haven’t seen in the other poyt parts, and some heavy romance stuff and revelation stuff, of course the main biggest climax, and then the ending and then the epilogue…
I guess I’m saying all this bc I feel like people will get bored halfway through bc it’s so super long 😭😭😭😭 I’m so so so anxious about people losing interest bc poyt 5 is very different structure wise 😭😭 I just threw EVERYTHING in without caution and now I’m editing and it’s like… some scenes are way too long but then I don’t want to cut anything, I feel like everything is so important to the story!!! And I keep thinking back to poyt 4 to reassure myself, bc it was 22k words long but I remember some of you saying that it didn’t FEEL like 22k words bc it went by quickly! I JUST HOPE y’all feel the same way about poyt 5😭
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