I am not really a musical person. Having just spent a fortnight with my family, however, my opinions on how mainstream musicals are the death of serious theatre have been exposed as the misanthropic rantings of a man obsessed with finding something in performance that he has failed to find in his life. That's the best thing about families. They aren't afraid of an ad hominem attack.
New Year, New Vile: I am going to go and see A Chorus Line. It's a musical, but it isn't by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Besides, it is up at Eastwood Park - ironically, my closest local theatre which I visit too rarely and it is being produced by Glasgow Music Theatre, who have a mission to encourage new talent. Rather like my support for Into The New, I am heralding the avant-garde of performance here.
A Chorus Line is well within my remit for theatre, anyway. I know it has songs and dance and all, but it is about the hard edge: set in an audition, there is plenty of bitterness, failure and desperate hope. Just like my usual Saturday night.
I am reluctant to enjoy art that takes art as its subject - a musical that is about an audition for a musical, boy, they took imagination - but Glasgow Music Theatre have pointed out that the metaphor of too many people applying for too few jobs fits rather nicely with the current economic climate. Add in the portrayal of LBGTQ characters in a medium that is more likely to tell the story of a lion than a gay man, and I'm almost willing to drop my prejudice.
No comments :
Post a Comment