WylanCarstairs

death doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints

life doesn't discriminate between the sinners and the saints

Hate people who see WSS as “just a Romeo and Juliet retelling”. Hate people who see Hadestown as “Just an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling”.

Hate people who watch a musical that takes a classic story everyone knows and uses it to explore/critique our modern society and only see it as a funky retelling.

Not Getting The Point of WSS is one thing because it’s more subtle and it can be really easy to just see it as a modern R&J, especially if you don’t really know R&J.

How the fuck do you watch Hadestown and see it as just an O&E retelling? It is one of the most heavy-handed political musicals out there how are so many people missing the point?

Orpheus has to fail. Not because that’s how the Greek myth ends but because that’s the whole point of the message of Hadestown.

Social reform is hard. Changing the world is one of the most challenging things you can try to do. So often we see people try to make a difference in society, to change some kind of injustice in the world. And so often we see those people fail. It can feel so impossible to actually do some good in this fucked up world because we see these people who are smarter and stronger and more qualified than us fail over and over again.

Why do we even keep trying?

Because we have to.

Because one day, someone will try and they’ll succeed.

One day Orpheus won’t turn around.

One day the people of Hadestown will get to see someone escape and they’ll know they can escape too. Only then does the world get to change.

So we have to try. We have to keep singing the sad song, no matter how many times Orpheus turns around, because one day he won’t.

In the Greek myth, Orpheus fails because he loves Eurydice.

In Hadestown, Orpheus fails because we fail.

We try and we fail to make a difference. We try and we fail to change the world for the better. We try to see the world for what it could be and it keeps letting us down.

But we don’t give up. We don’t stop singing.

Hadestown is genuinely one of the best musicals ever. Full stop. This musical is one of the reasons i wish I was smarter because I would love to be able to do an entire thesis on this show and all the themes and messages in it. Some of them are subtle. Some of them aren’t.

It is not just an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling. I am begging people to hear the real message.

Never stop trying to change the world.

One day we’ll make it out of Hadestown.

i'm on the train that says, in hadestown's iteration, orpheus does not turn around because he loves eurydice, but because he has been corrupted by the hegemonic capitalist system.

consider the parallels between "wait for me" and "doubt comes in." in the latter, orpheus' melody fails to bring in a chorus or move stones or grow flowers like it did before. he repeats the. same. words. that the fates tried to break him with in the earlier song (who am i? where do i think i'm going? who am i? why am i all alone?), but back then the melody worked against them bc he still had innocence and hope. THEN he takes it a step further in the next verse and really internalizes his new experiences (who am i against him?...why would he let me win?) — & yeah he's really truly cooked atp :'(

(i read that the fates can represent the mass media and i'm so with that. they both praise and criticize the rulers, but always manipulate/bring down the poor. we know orpheus has lost when he listens to them.)

eurydice and orpheus switch places from beginning to finale with their arcs. she starts out cynical and then is the hopeful one, SHE raises up the backing vocals in "doubt comes in." he starts out optimistic, ends up cynical (last words before he turns: "i used to see the way the world could be, but now the way it is is all i see"). bc we need both optimism & a sense of reality to change the world.

hades knows he would turn around, but due to his doubt rather than his love. inside, he is sure that can not overcome his doubt for his love, and he sees this supposed inevitability take root in orpheus, too. but when the young couple full of promise dooms themselves, the older, jaded couple, seemingly hopeless, agrees to try again (they switch!).

At the start of the Hadestown, Orpheus is the optimist, who sees the world for how it could be. And Eurydice is the cynic, who sees the world as cruel and cold.

And they meet and fall in love. But love won’t feed you when you’re starving. And Eurydice has always had to look out for herself. She doesn’t believe that Orpheus’s song will save them, so she makes the deal with Hades.

And then Orpheus goes after her, but along the journey the cruelty of the world starts to chip away at him. The cruelty of a world where the woman he loves could suffer and be taken away. Where the fates taunt him and the darkness terrifies him and the winter winds chill him to the bone.

And by the time they’re able to leave Hades, their roles have reversed.

Eurydice has become the hopeful one: Orpheus came after her! The world isn’t as cold as she thought! They can leave together as long as Orpheus just believes in her! As long as he believes that she’ll follow!

And Orpheus has become disillusioned. Eurydice left him behind willingly. Hades was just toying with them, he’ll never let her go back home. And maybe she’s better off now than she was with him.

Eurydice learned to hope because of Orpheus. And Orpheus learned to doubt because of Eurydice.

And so she follows him.

Jack Wolfe in Next to Normal

kaz - i dreamed a dance

inej - superboy and the invisible girl

jesper - who's crazy/my psychopharmacologist and i

wylan - perfect for you

matthias - i'm alive (reprise)

But oh my god yes the change was such a revelation. Like, I understand the creative decisions behind the original, the malevolent and almost seductive power of wallowing in your grief. I get it, and I was totally there for it when I saw it way back when. But this. THIS version though.

Grief is a child that you want to love and take care of and cherish. And Gabe - the real Gabe, the actual child that she knew - Gabe was just a baby. He never got to grow up, not really. She imagines him older, of course, playing pretend of what he might have been. But when the hurt really hits, when he gets stripped down, at the core of him and the core of their grief is just that poor, scared, suffering child. And grief, like a child, does not understand. It does not understand anything outside of its own pain, and it does not understand the consequences of its actions. It's not an intentional malicious force. All it knows is that it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Fucking next level shit. I watched this and immediately felt like I was seeing that poem by Barbara Crooker beamed directly onto a stage.

Grief is a river you wade in until you get to the other side. But I am here, stuck in the middle, water parting around my ankles, moving downstream over the flat rocks. I'm not able to lift a foot, move on. Instead, I'm going to stay here in the shallows with my sorrow, nurture it like a cranky baby, rock it in my arms. I don't want it to grow up, go to school, get married. It's mine. Yes, the October sunlight wraps me in its yellow shawl, and the air is sweet as a golden Tokay. On the other side, there are apples, grapes, walnuts, and the rocks are warm from the sun. But I'm going to stand here, growing colder, until every inch of my skin is numb. I can't cross over. Then you really will be gone

And that change brings the audience into the family's struggle more fully, too. It's easy to sit apart as an observer and be like "well yeah, obviously she needs to just face it and let it go" when Gabe is unambiguously malevolent sexy-pole-dancer Gabe. He/The Grief is manipulating her, and the solution is obvious and simple, even if it's not easy. It's like watching you friend keep going back to their toxic ex. Of course we feel absolutely awful for what happened to Diana and Dan and Natalie and feel empathy for them, but Gabe's gotta go.

But making us see him as he would have been as a child, with the sweetness and mischief and tantrums a child has. Making him endearing, giving us the big wet eyes and making us want to protect him and playing on our empathy. Making us feel that empathy FOR THE MANIFESTATION OF GRIEF THAT IS DESTROYING THEM, and not just for Diana and Dan and Natalie. Well, now the audience is almost complicit because it starts to hurt us to hurt him too! We feel what Diana feels when she tries to push him away and he makes that face. Now WE feel that discomfort of being pulled in multiple directions inside, of knowing what is best for the family, what would free and heal Diana and Dan, what Natalie needs and deserves. But we also feel pain seeing Gabe scared and sobbing when Dan cleans up all the blood, seeing him empty eyed and crying by the counter when Diana finally leaves him behind without even looking at him, feeling his catharsis so close when he finally gets the attention he's been begging for from his father just to be denied when they're interrupted right before he actually gets that loving touch, the glimpse of the brother he might have been when he touches Natalie's hand and for a moment she feels him. It's so close, and they've made you feel bad for him so you want him to get it too. And maybe if he stayed just a little longer, if he just had one more moment with Dan before Natalie came home, of he stayed longer after Natalie feels his presence, he might get it, he might...

Except he won't. He can't. Because he's not here; he's not real! That perfect moment of catharsis is forever out of reach for him because Gabe, the real Gabe that actually existed and lived so briefly, is dead and gone. He hasn't really been there the whole time, will never actually be there to feel anything again, so he and now the audience will never get that perfect moment in the sun. (Which is reflected in the new blocking at the end of Light. We no longer get the entire cast stepping out together in a row on the same level. Because Gabe isn't there, Gabe is on another plane - literally lol - at the top of the stairs still. He doesn't get to join them.) WE have to let go of that dream of the perfect ending where everything is tied up with a little bow and everyone gets closure, because it's not possible. The family can continue to grow and heal and try to move on in a healthy way without just forgetting or burying it, that's what's best for those still living, but Gabe will not, cannot. And accepting that hurts to audience as well as the characters now. And the lynchpin for those themes and emotions is the incredible vulnerability and fragility in Wolfe's portrayal.

MY MAN HAS ALREADY SUFFERED ENOUGH DON'T YOU DARE GIVE HIM, TESSA AND WILL THE "AFTER DEATH ENCOUNTER OF SOULS LIVING HAPPILY EVER AFTER DEATH" THINKING WE FANS OF JEM ARE GONNA ENJOY THAT. NO NO NO WE DESERVE BETTER. WE DESERVE JEM ALIVE SEEING MINA GROW UP TO BE AN AMAZING SHADOWHUNTER.

THIS MAN WHO HAS MY HEART SINCE THE DAY HE PROPOSED TO TESSA, THIS MAN WHO WAS SO ILL AND TRAUMATIZED BUT NEVER LET THOSE THINGS RUIN HIS WISH TO GIVE LOVE TO WOMAN HE LOVED SO DEEPLY, HE DIDN'T LET HIS PAST AND HEALTH GET ON THE WAY OF HIS LOVE, HE STEPPED UP, HE SHOWED UP DESPITE EVERYTHING, THAT WAS WHEN I THOUGHT IF I WAS IN TESSA'S PLACE I WOULD ONLY SEE HIM, MY EYES WOULD ONLY SEE HIM IN A CROWDED ROOM I WOULD ONLY CHOSE HIM FOREVER.

I'M NOT EVEN GONNA TALK ABOUT HIM SEEING THE WOMAN HE LOVED MARRY HIS PARABATAI WHO HE ALSO LOVES DEEPLY AND HAVING TO SEE THEM BOTH BUILD A FAMILY AND SEEING THOSE KIDS AND HELPING THOSE KIDS AS IF THEY WERE HIS OWN WHILE BEING TRAPPED FOREVER IN THE SILENT BROTHERS ORGANIZATION.

Please cassandra clare now that this man got what he wanted the woman that he loves and a family let him continue to live happily until he grows old and dies because of age please I beg you whatever you do keep that man alive.