Pittsburgh in the Round: It’s difficult to be close friends with both halves of a couple, because you become the ultimate Third Wheel; you are, in fact, the Third Wheel incarnate. The best case scenario for the Third Wheel is that your friends develop a rewarding, long term relationship, in which case you either lose two friends simultaneously or at least re-contextualizing both friendships forever; ‘let’s all go out’ replaces ‘wanna grab a drink’ in the buddy lexicon.
4 comments:
My friend Leorah is absolutely in love with The Last Five Years. I heard about the show all the time throughout most of high school. She was particularly enamoured with the story structure and how the events are framed in an out of order way. Personally I love this type of story telling where it gives you more information as you go along. I don’t like knowing everything about all the characters from page one. It’s more satisfying to learn as we progress through the story to keep it interesting. One show that I watched recently, Dark, did this very well by having 3 generations of characters in a small town where they all grew up and telling you more about the parents interactions as teenagers, and the grandparents interactions as the parents. It ends up giving characters motivations that are very present, but not apparent until later. The Last Five Years looks to be a wonderful telling of very human interactions.
I love The Last Five Years. I had the chance to meet Jason Robert Brown a couple of years ago, when my school hosted an Art Speak. He definitely came off as a man who knew he was a talented writer and performer, and knew exactly how much he could get away with because of it. That being said, every male character that he's written that was supposed to be a "neutral" or "positive" (in terms of net impact on the world) character, to me, seemed like a dick. The kind of person Jason Robert Brown would consider a relatable typical male human being. Jamie, in the Last Five Years, is definitely an average male asshole. His net impact on the world, over the duration of the show, is negative. All he does is hurt Cathy and leave. But every song that Jamie sings he frames so that he looks like he was not to blame. I do not know if the point was for the audience to see through that façade in every song (certainly, we were supposed to in the song in which he describes his cheating on Cathy), but I feel like if the average male asshole came across this musical, and saw something of themselves in Jamie, they would feel like they could use Jamie's justifications for his actions and apply that to their own lives. And that is definitely not acceptable or productive towards creating a society with less assholes.
I am going to get a lot of flak for this but here goes. I don’t particularly like The Last Five Years… just not my cup of tea. Personally Im just a little over Cis hetero love dramas, and this one is on the wrong place at the wrong time for me. I wast really moved by the music it was kinda just there. There is also this new age opera sing dialog thing going on. I started noticing it several years ago and its becoming a defiant trend and apparently I don’t like. I think the most notable example of this new style of musical theatre would be Dear Evan Hanson. Everyone loves it, it won all kinds of Tonys, but I just never think about it until someone brings it up. Think its just a new generational thing. This would be the generation just younger than me. This is the generation that just missed Spring Awakening on Broadway, but loved “Run Away With Me” by Kerrigan-Lowdermilk. And its just snowballed into this new kind of sound but its host not work for me that much anymore.
This concept, while not incredibly novel or unique, is still intriguing. I find it incredibly fascinating that we continue to be fascinated with love stories, people who find each other in the world and either work out or do not. We, as human beings, like to experience the complexities of relationships from a distance; it gives us hope that what is happening to the characters in front of us on stage may happen to us, or that we are glad that what is happening to them probably will not happen to us. In this case, Jamie has it going on in his life, he is rising to fame and wealth, while Cathy is obviously struggling a little at this point in her life. I think the fact that Jamie is the one to leave Cathy is probably what makes this show for most people- the kicker that the one who is more stable in life is the one to break it off, leaving the other in a semi-dire situation financially and a fully dire situation emotionally.
Post a Comment