One thing I noticed, and loved, is that they really emphasized the artifice of it all. We open not on the stage, but backstage, getting ready with only partially-costumed actors. We follow the actors onto the stage. A clapboard tells us that the action is about to start. It cuts to a wide, and in that wide you can see one of the cameras that was following the actors in the wings. Hermes comes on, turns to the audience, and tells them, and us, that we are about to hear a story, to watch a show. He introduces the chorus.
Throughout the show, there are shots of the audience, and it is a constant reminder that yes, this is a show. Even when the characters are supposed to be alone on stage, the audience and the ensemble are still there. Everybody knows that walls have ears. For better or worse, you are never truly alone.
And then, "Doubt Comes In" starts, and it cuts to a series of very filmic medium shots and close ups. The video is lit so that you cannot see the back of the stage. It is just Orpheus, alone, in a void, with the Fates and their lanterns telling him that there is nobody else out there, and Eurydice, trailing behind, unable to reach him through her own bubble of darkness.
And then, as the song starts to reach its end, the shot starts to zoom out and the stage begins to brighten. You can see the tops of the audience's heads, and you can see the background. And you can see that the set pieces are moving around so that the underworld set will be gone and replaced with the cafe set just in time for the song to end. It's a play, a story, and we are once again watching it with an audience and we can see that there is a chorus and a set and nobody is really isolated or in danger.
And then Orpheus turns around, and it IMMEDIATELY goes back to a series of very filmic close ups and mediums where you can't see the audience for the rest of the scene, and Orpheus and Eurydice are alone together as they are ripped apart. And then there is a close up on Hermes's shoes as he walks onstage, and it cuts to a wide again as he reminds us that yes, this is a story, but it is a sad tale. It's a tragedy. And we were all part of it. And we will sing it again.
And then I had to go to class (on the highly relevant topic of environmental law) and do my best not to be too annoying telling everyone that they NEED to see the proshot.
I'm not the kind of person who "chews on the walls", as they say, about these kinds of things, but if I were, well, the masonry WOULD be affected.
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