Me: [at the witness bench] I am still very much haunted by the removal of the slow-motion Le Bal reprise as a transition to C’est Pas Ma Faute. Because we feel the impact of RetJ finding out they are each other’s enemy all the more, that ominous doom and gloom of it all. It’s a good transition! Instead, the Austrian and Revival version interrupts this with Tybalt and Capulet’s argument and then Tybalt sings C’est Pas Ma Faute in the middle of the ball. Like. Can we not? We need to close on RetJ first before we can focus on Tybalt and Capulet and the plot. Even the London had the wit to put that argument after Le Bal, and it was a perfectly good idea (though the execution was terrible, as always, and getting rid of C’est Pas Ma Faute altogether for a sung Le Bal reprise sucked). The most baffling part of all this is, most if not all productions have followed suit! To this day, we haven’t had a slow-motion Le Bal reprise transition, not even the Takarazuka and Toho. Why not? Is it not very feasible? Is it goofy-looking live? Maybe it’s the sort of thing that makes better sense in a movie than on stage. But I personally feel you can still have Tybalt and Capulet argue after the transition as in the Shakespeare and still work musically. Either way, I don’t want to see more of Tybalt tearing down frozen couples mid-ball because angst, please and thank you.
