LCD Listens to LND (so you don't have to), Act 1 Tracks 16-19
There are one or two things in this section that actually work. It doesn't take ALW long to put an end to that nonsense, though.
A-five-six-seven-eight! We’re “treated,” if one can call it that, to Meg and her backup showgirls rehearsing “Bathing Beauty.” I have thoughts on this particular number, but will save them for its full rendition. Meg gets a break while backup showgirls practice, and the rehearsal pianist plays the opening bars to A Chorus Line (da-da, da-da-dum-dum! A-gain! Step-kick-kick-leap-kick-touch, a-gain!). To paraphrase Tom Servo, never put a good musical in the middle of your crappy musical. Meg begs for approval from her mother and gets it, but is more interested in Mr. WTF’s favor. “It’s been three months!” she complains (Exposition Dump #7), and he still hasn’t come around to watch her shake her moneymaker. Frau Blücher assures her to be patient, as the boss has been up nights composing “something glorious.” Or just taken out of the ALW trunk, whichever you prefer. Frau tells Meg to “make herself useful,” which I’m sure will involve at least some of the tricks she showed Mr. Thompson.
In comes Christine, scoping out the performance space, while Gustave tags along wanting to find Mr. WTF and go sightseeing. “I’m sure he’ll send for you when he’s ready,” Christine assures him, speaking no doubt from experience (might want to keep an eye on any nearby mirrors, kid). Christine asks Meg for help, and the two recognize each other to the tune of the “Angel of Music” coda (“He’s with me even now,” etc.). This is a clever reference to the fact that they sang the same music in the original show. They have an awkwardly civil reunion in “Dear Old Friend,” and Christine’s attempts to be kind to tarted-up Meg’s face are kind of amusing. If I’d left a friend with a promising career at the American Ballet Theater and then ran into her years later and found out she was swinging around a pole for dollar bills at Shotgun Willie’s, I’d probably react the same way. Meg’s a little surprised to find out Christine’s been hired to sing. After all, Christine only had half of the New York press squad covering her arrival and insulting her husband, and there’s probably no publicity around the park or anything, so how was Meg to know something was up?
Meanwhile Percival and Frau Blücher are having their own little reunion. Like her daughter, Frau has been in the dark about this whole thing, but it a little bit faster on the uptake-it only takes Percival showing Christine’s contract and absurdly high performing fee for her to put two and two together. Percival wants more money and demands to know who the boss is, and is shocked-SHOCKED!-when Frau Blücher says “it’s him.” Meg and Percival go all OMGWTFBBQ over their respective bombshells-“There must be some mistake,” ‘Him? You work for him?” etc. It’s exhausting hearing characters trying to process information that should have been obvious to them ten minutes ago. Percival is concerned with how his wife will react, but since this might actually make him sympathetic Frau has to head it off by insinuating Christine knew it all along. (Did she? I guess it all depends on whether or not you want to think of Christine as excessively foolhardy, or just blindingly oblivious.) So Percival shifts back into full Abusive Husband mode, grabbing Christine roughly and promising to “deal with [her] later.” And everyone keeps up an affable pretense while really snarking at each other, which starts out rather well with lots of double-talk and nice harmonies but then goes on for about two choruses longer than it should.
But wait, where’s the kid in all this? “Gustave? Gustave?” Christine calls, using the same notes everyone else uses for her name. Percival is annoyed (Bad Father™ and all that) but Christine, having the Smart Ball for the moment, figures out where he is and says she’ll go find him.
Gustave is, of course, being taken to Mr. WTF’s pad by Peter, Paul, and Mary accompanied by some decently Elfman-esque creepy music. It’s actually effective, so of course it has since been cut from the show. Why would anyone want a genuinely eerie moment with the freaks when they could hear the six millionth chorus of Syrupy Andrew Lloyd Webber Ballad #729, after all? Lock, Shock, and Barrel go off, Mr. WTF comes in. “This is my realm, illusion’s domain” he announces-the music here is PONR again, and since that’s a song of seduction, its use here is overloaded with Unfortunate Implications. (And once again, good musical in crappy musical=not a good idea.) Gustave goes to the piano and plucks out a simple little ditty, and Mr. WTF is impressed (hey, it was only seven notes, but he played them with style!). “I think it’s beautiful” Gustave says, which is his all-purpose adjective. Christine should speak to the kid's language tutor. Meanwhile, Mr. WTF is finally cluing in on something that everyone who read the plot synopsis already figured out: “Ten years old…My God! My God!” Since ALW is on a sequel kick right now, maybe his next project should be Troll 2: The Musical.
And now either my iTunes player has given up and fled to one of my Trans-Siberian Orchestra albums, or we’ve just arrived at “The Beauty Underneath.” This is one of those moments that’s just so off-the-wall, so “what were they thinking?” absurd, that you have to wonder what was going through minds of its creators:
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Right, now Phantom of the Opera had a slightly out-of-place rock number, so for the sequel what we need is a really out-of-place rock number.
FLUNKY 1: I couldn’t agree more, my Lord! Another Phantom/Christine number, then?
ALW: No, I just want them to sing florid love duets. We don’t want anybody to think there’s anything dark or dangerous about their relationship, after all.
FLUNKY 1: Now you see, my Lord, that’s why you make the big money.
FLUNKY 2: Maybe it could be a duet between the Phantom and the boy? Kids like that rock music stuff, after all…
ALW: That’s it! I’m a genius! He can sing the song when he first suspects the boy is his, and the two of them can bond over their mutual love for the bizarre.
FLUNKY 2: Of course! No normal ten-year-old boy would ever be interested in strange and unusual things, so that’s a sure sign that there’s a connection between them!
ALW: Exactly! So the Phantom can sing to his son about the splendor and beauty of darkness and the night, about the dark yearnings hidden deep within his soul…
PERSON WITH A BIT OF COMMON SENSE: Um, excuse me, my Lord, but isn’t that really the same sort of thing the Phantom uses to seduce Christine in “The Music of the Night”? And in that context, doesn’t that make him using the same techniques on a ten-year-old boy-especially one he strongly suspects of being his own flesh and blood-a little, well, wrong?
ALW: Who let you in here? Get out of my sight! The rest of you, start working on staging this! I want a big special-effects extravaganza! I want Art Nouveau ladies, I want singing chandeliers, and maybe some sort of steampunk-skeleton-monkey-organist thing.
FLUNKY 1: Brilliant!
FLUNKY 2: You’re a national treasure, my Lord!
The, ahem, “male bonding” comes to a bad end when Mr. WTF takes his mask off, and Gustave freaks. He really should warn people about that thing, rather than just springing it on them like that. Christine shows up, comforts the kid, and sends him off while she stays behind to apologize. Mr. WTF demands the truth, and after a bit of token “Oh my God!”-ing, Christine confirms that yeah, the boy’s his. (How does she know? Mother’s intuition, I guess, which is shorthand for “The writer couldn’t think of a logical reason.”) While Sierra sings distressingly high, Mr. WTF deals with the implications of this: “My own flesh and blood! And even he recoils in horror from me-just like his mother!” Dude, she slept with you; she’s over it! This is like Michael Jackson complaining of being a victim of racism long after most people had forgotten he was black.
Christine apologizes, saying she’s brought Mr. WTF “nothing but woe.” Wait, what? Okay, let’s ignore everything that happened between these two in the first musical, since apparently we’re supposed to do that anyway. We’re still talking about a guy who took her virginity, abandoned her afterwards (a dickish move in any case, but now all the worse with the revelation that she conceived that night) and then years later butts back into her life, expects her to pick up where they left off and wants to lay claim to a son he didn’t even know or care existed until five minutes ago. Christine has NOTHING to apologize for--the entire second act could be Mr. WTF begging for forgiveness, and he still wouldn’t have made up the deficit. But Christine is the Long-Suffering Woman, so she bravely takes the blame, and promises to sing for him and leave.
Mr WTF, meanwhile, gets over his son’s rejection remarkably quickly, vowing the boy will inherit everything he has. Unfortunately, Frau Blücher is listening and rails about how everything she and her daughter have worked towards will come to naught. Secret revelation, villain overhears it, gets angry…why does this sound familiar? Alas, there’s no lighting fixtures for Frau to take her fury out on, so she does is rage. “All might have been ours if that bastard had never been BOOOOOOOOOOOOORN!” It may not be as dramatic as the writers hoped, but it does provide me with one last good laugh before the act break.
A-five-six-seven-eight! We’re “treated,” if one can call it that, to Meg and her backup showgirls rehearsing “Bathing Beauty.” I have thoughts on this particular number, but will save them for its full rendition. Meg gets a break while backup showgirls practice, and the rehearsal pianist plays the opening bars to A Chorus Line (da-da, da-da-dum-dum! A-gain! Step-kick-kick-leap-kick-touch, a-gain!). To paraphrase Tom Servo, never put a good musical in the middle of your crappy musical. Meg begs for approval from her mother and gets it, but is more interested in Mr. WTF’s favor. “It’s been three months!” she complains (Exposition Dump #7), and he still hasn’t come around to watch her shake her moneymaker. Frau Blücher assures her to be patient, as the boss has been up nights composing “something glorious.” Or just taken out of the ALW trunk, whichever you prefer. Frau tells Meg to “make herself useful,” which I’m sure will involve at least some of the tricks she showed Mr. Thompson.
In comes Christine, scoping out the performance space, while Gustave tags along wanting to find Mr. WTF and go sightseeing. “I’m sure he’ll send for you when he’s ready,” Christine assures him, speaking no doubt from experience (might want to keep an eye on any nearby mirrors, kid). Christine asks Meg for help, and the two recognize each other to the tune of the “Angel of Music” coda (“He’s with me even now,” etc.). This is a clever reference to the fact that they sang the same music in the original show. They have an awkwardly civil reunion in “Dear Old Friend,” and Christine’s attempts to be kind to tarted-up Meg’s face are kind of amusing. If I’d left a friend with a promising career at the American Ballet Theater and then ran into her years later and found out she was swinging around a pole for dollar bills at Shotgun Willie’s, I’d probably react the same way. Meg’s a little surprised to find out Christine’s been hired to sing. After all, Christine only had half of the New York press squad covering her arrival and insulting her husband, and there’s probably no publicity around the park or anything, so how was Meg to know something was up?
Meanwhile Percival and Frau Blücher are having their own little reunion. Like her daughter, Frau has been in the dark about this whole thing, but it a little bit faster on the uptake-it only takes Percival showing Christine’s contract and absurdly high performing fee for her to put two and two together. Percival wants more money and demands to know who the boss is, and is shocked-SHOCKED!-when Frau Blücher says “it’s him.” Meg and Percival go all OMGWTFBBQ over their respective bombshells-“There must be some mistake,” ‘Him? You work for him?” etc. It’s exhausting hearing characters trying to process information that should have been obvious to them ten minutes ago. Percival is concerned with how his wife will react, but since this might actually make him sympathetic Frau has to head it off by insinuating Christine knew it all along. (Did she? I guess it all depends on whether or not you want to think of Christine as excessively foolhardy, or just blindingly oblivious.) So Percival shifts back into full Abusive Husband mode, grabbing Christine roughly and promising to “deal with [her] later.” And everyone keeps up an affable pretense while really snarking at each other, which starts out rather well with lots of double-talk and nice harmonies but then goes on for about two choruses longer than it should.
But wait, where’s the kid in all this? “Gustave? Gustave?” Christine calls, using the same notes everyone else uses for her name. Percival is annoyed (Bad Father™ and all that) but Christine, having the Smart Ball for the moment, figures out where he is and says she’ll go find him.
Gustave is, of course, being taken to Mr. WTF’s pad by Peter, Paul, and Mary accompanied by some decently Elfman-esque creepy music. It’s actually effective, so of course it has since been cut from the show. Why would anyone want a genuinely eerie moment with the freaks when they could hear the six millionth chorus of Syrupy Andrew Lloyd Webber Ballad #729, after all? Lock, Shock, and Barrel go off, Mr. WTF comes in. “This is my realm, illusion’s domain” he announces-the music here is PONR again, and since that’s a song of seduction, its use here is overloaded with Unfortunate Implications. (And once again, good musical in crappy musical=not a good idea.) Gustave goes to the piano and plucks out a simple little ditty, and Mr. WTF is impressed (hey, it was only seven notes, but he played them with style!). “I think it’s beautiful” Gustave says, which is his all-purpose adjective. Christine should speak to the kid's language tutor. Meanwhile, Mr. WTF is finally cluing in on something that everyone who read the plot synopsis already figured out: “Ten years old…My God! My God!” Since ALW is on a sequel kick right now, maybe his next project should be Troll 2: The Musical.
And now either my iTunes player has given up and fled to one of my Trans-Siberian Orchestra albums, or we’ve just arrived at “The Beauty Underneath.” This is one of those moments that’s just so off-the-wall, so “what were they thinking?” absurd, that you have to wonder what was going through minds of its creators:
ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: Right, now Phantom of the Opera had a slightly out-of-place rock number, so for the sequel what we need is a really out-of-place rock number.
FLUNKY 1: I couldn’t agree more, my Lord! Another Phantom/Christine number, then?
ALW: No, I just want them to sing florid love duets. We don’t want anybody to think there’s anything dark or dangerous about their relationship, after all.
FLUNKY 1: Now you see, my Lord, that’s why you make the big money.
FLUNKY 2: Maybe it could be a duet between the Phantom and the boy? Kids like that rock music stuff, after all…
ALW: That’s it! I’m a genius! He can sing the song when he first suspects the boy is his, and the two of them can bond over their mutual love for the bizarre.
FLUNKY 2: Of course! No normal ten-year-old boy would ever be interested in strange and unusual things, so that’s a sure sign that there’s a connection between them!
ALW: Exactly! So the Phantom can sing to his son about the splendor and beauty of darkness and the night, about the dark yearnings hidden deep within his soul…
PERSON WITH A BIT OF COMMON SENSE: Um, excuse me, my Lord, but isn’t that really the same sort of thing the Phantom uses to seduce Christine in “The Music of the Night”? And in that context, doesn’t that make him using the same techniques on a ten-year-old boy-especially one he strongly suspects of being his own flesh and blood-a little, well, wrong?
ALW: Who let you in here? Get out of my sight! The rest of you, start working on staging this! I want a big special-effects extravaganza! I want Art Nouveau ladies, I want singing chandeliers, and maybe some sort of steampunk-skeleton-monkey-organist thing.
FLUNKY 1: Brilliant!
FLUNKY 2: You’re a national treasure, my Lord!
The, ahem, “male bonding” comes to a bad end when Mr. WTF takes his mask off, and Gustave freaks. He really should warn people about that thing, rather than just springing it on them like that. Christine shows up, comforts the kid, and sends him off while she stays behind to apologize. Mr. WTF demands the truth, and after a bit of token “Oh my God!”-ing, Christine confirms that yeah, the boy’s his. (How does she know? Mother’s intuition, I guess, which is shorthand for “The writer couldn’t think of a logical reason.”) While Sierra sings distressingly high, Mr. WTF deals with the implications of this: “My own flesh and blood! And even he recoils in horror from me-just like his mother!” Dude, she slept with you; she’s over it! This is like Michael Jackson complaining of being a victim of racism long after most people had forgotten he was black.
Christine apologizes, saying she’s brought Mr. WTF “nothing but woe.” Wait, what? Okay, let’s ignore everything that happened between these two in the first musical, since apparently we’re supposed to do that anyway. We’re still talking about a guy who took her virginity, abandoned her afterwards (a dickish move in any case, but now all the worse with the revelation that she conceived that night) and then years later butts back into her life, expects her to pick up where they left off and wants to lay claim to a son he didn’t even know or care existed until five minutes ago. Christine has NOTHING to apologize for--the entire second act could be Mr. WTF begging for forgiveness, and he still wouldn’t have made up the deficit. But Christine is the Long-Suffering Woman, so she bravely takes the blame, and promises to sing for him and leave.
Mr WTF, meanwhile, gets over his son’s rejection remarkably quickly, vowing the boy will inherit everything he has. Unfortunately, Frau Blücher is listening and rails about how everything she and her daughter have worked towards will come to naught. Secret revelation, villain overhears it, gets angry…why does this sound familiar? Alas, there’s no lighting fixtures for Frau to take her fury out on, so she does is rage. “All might have been ours if that bastard had never been BOOOOOOOOOOOOORN!” It may not be as dramatic as the writers hoped, but it does provide me with one last good laugh before the act break.