so uhh i looked up Pieces of String cause iām always up for new musicals like holy shit the few songs iāve listened to are so powerful??? wow what a great show, i can already tell. but i wanted to ask what you really liked about it or what your favorite songs/scenes are. have a good day!!
RIGHT OKAY BUT THIS IS MY FAVOURITE FUCKING MUSICAL AND OOOOOHHHH MY DAYS
I mean this with every bit of my soul, there is a Special Rare Type of Dopamineįµį“¹ that my brain emits when I see the two main soldiers together, Tom and Edward, that is un-fucking-paralleled to anything I have ever experienced.
The entire thing is outstanding. And when I say itās a gay WWII musical, Iām not talking about something meh or something where the gay representation needs a magnifying glass to be seen, no. This is actually extremely good representation of a story that gets omitted from history so often that to see it portrayed on a stage in a very emotional and powerful way just HITS.
There are actual full on men kissing men, not some bullshit kisses. They lay in each otherās arms in a field for an entire scene. One gets taught how to dance. One tends to the otherās wound and holds him cos heās scared. There is such good chemistry between the men?? Iām not giving much away but there is a reason why itās called Pieces of String and ITāS BRILLIANT.
Anyway, my favourite song isānot sure of the exact titleāthe one that Tom sings, might be āYou Are My War Storyā and I explain why below if you donāt mind some spoilers.
And my favourite scenes areāminor spoilersāthe scene where Edward gets hurt on the head during a battle and Tom sits really close to him and tends to his wound and presses Edwardās head to his chest and holds onto him. I also love the scene where the two of them are sitting out in the field and Edward is laying in Tomās arms and then when Tom cuts off a piece of his bootlace and ties it into a ring and āproposesā to Edward and says that it will keep them tied together and they kiss (and btw I LOVE the way that scene was played because genuinely well written representation of gay soldiers is rarely portrayed in the raw, sweet, and heartfelt way it was there and the two actors were so natural with each other there). And my final favourite scene is when Tom is singing the āYou Are My War Storyā song BECAUSE. This is after you learn Edward went back to living with his wife and that he feels afraid to love Tom so they part ways. Tom, during this song, is revisiting these memories when he and Edward were together in the war and THIS SONG is about how the entire war just meant āEdwardā to him, and when heās going back and acting out these memories while heās singing, heās holding onto Edward tighter, knowing that these are the only things heās left with of Edward, just memories, and him holding onto Edward tighter as he relives these just shows how heās clutching so hard to this love he wanted thatās heās so heartbroken it never came to be and?????
The whole musical is so very well done. And even though I know it doesnāt have the happiest ending for Tom and Edward, (even if modern day couple Harry and Edward do) you donāt feel like itās one of those āgays sufferingā stories at all. It feels like youāre journeying with the characters through the joys and also societal complications of homosexual love during a time when it was illegal, and moreover, they balanced out happy scenes with sad ones, and so it didnāt leave you feeling all empty and cheated?? THEY WAY THEY PLANNED SET CHANGES AND BLOCKING for the whole thing was so well devised and I love the way they utilise time parallels and the usage of memory and?????? Itās so good. Itās SO fucking good.
Anyway Iām done rambling, it was fantastic and I 1000% recommend it if you find it somewhere!! And if you still arenāt convinced, here are a few stills....
