#"different

I'm not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.

-- Lewis Carroll

If It’s True

video clip 1 (opening night)

video clip 2 (different night, not sure when)

full song audio from opening night (the full show audio’s on youtube btw)

Below analysis is mostly based on the opening night performance.

I think we’ve seen the first video by now, where he starts the song curled up on the ground crying. He sobs and wipes his nose on his sleeve, completely broken. What you can’t see from the angle of this video is his acting after he walks to the side.

He starts to leave the stage but then the workers start to sing and he turns back to look at them and even bends down to their level to check he’s hearing them. This is something that’s been pointed out is a unique thing Jack’s Orpheus does: the other Orpheus’s don’t usually acknowledge the workers yet. But after noticing they can hear him, Jack starts singing the song to them.

“If it’s true what they say / I’ll be on my way.”

I’m sure you can hear it in his voice but he’s having a wee bit of a breakdown (y’all I wish you could see his acting; it’s so emotional, I don’t know how stage actors do this over and over again every night). He’s standing but he’s still defeated, hunched over and curled into himself. He’s holding a hand to his ribs like he’s injured.

“Who are they to say what the truth is anyway?” he has a flash of an angry smile because he’s laughing at the hypocrisy of it. He’s visibly shaking as he sings, occasionally bringing a hand to his mouth in a kind of nervous tic.

He starts in utter despair but you can see it building to a righteous anger all in his acting. He’s still crying but out of frustration. When he sings “While we play the game they fix” he points to Persephone and even starts moving toward her and that’s why she flinches at 2:21 in that first video clip. Then he sings the next lines in her direction: “And the ones who speak the word / always say it is the last.”

“And no answer will be heard,” then he bends down to the eye level of one of the kneeling workers “to the question no one asks!” And then walks to the centre of the circle to speak to all of them. “So I’m asking if it’s true!” He’s trying to rile them up. “I’m asking me and you and you and you!”

“I believe if there is still a will / then there is still a way.” His voice almost breaks on “will,” he barely gets the word out. He speaks most of the lines in this section to each of the workers, making eye contact with them in turn.

During this part the workers sing “We’re standing” in response to him and each rise one by one. And he is just so scared y’all. The workers are standing with him but he still flinches when they look at him or move toward him; his shoulders are still rounded, making himself small.

“I believe in us together / more than anyone alone”

Eurydice is the last one still kneeling so he crouches to her eye-level to rouse her to stand too:

“I believe that with each other / we are stronger than they know”

(You can see it more clearly in Clip 2).

Jack’s Orpheus also frequently does this thing throughout the show where he covers his eyes when he’s overwhelmed (both from sadness and from happiness) and he does it a bit during this song after Eurydice is the last one to stand. “I believe we’re stronger than they know.”

He keeps going and his voice keeps building. “If it’s true what they say / I’ll be on my way.” And the workers start to fall into line behind him.

“Tell me what to do!” (In the opening night performance he says this directly to Eurydice, pleading with her).

And she responds by stepping into place beside him. And he finally stands tall and upright. (And y’all, in the Sep 2 performance Eurydice/Morgan looks so damn proud of him 😭).

“Is it true what they say!”