The first time I saw a musical was in 2014, when I saw a localized and improved version of Avenue Q. The musical was very funny and relevant. The content of the musical was very funny and grounded, but at that time I didn't know what a musical was, I thought I was watching an ordinary play, and I didn't know the rule that you can't take photos in the middle of the theater, and I even took out my phone to take a photo of the actor when he came to the side of the show to perform at close range. A number of years later I accidentally discovered that the actor standing next to me at the time was Zhang Haiyu from "Tonight's Paradise".
Nowadays I don't do the things I didn't know how to do when I first joined the theater. From the perspective of an "old man" who has been in the theater for many years, it's also easier to recognize people who are new to the theater. I remember seeing my second musical, The Phantom of the Opera, at Shanghai Culture Square in 2014. With a 10-year absence, the Cultural Square attracted many art lovers in Shanghai who were in pursuit of high art. True musical lovers told me that it was only the ninth year since The Phantom of the Opera first came to Shanghai. In order to promote the art, the theater also inevitably used a speculative marketing strategy.
The first time I went to see The Phantom of the Opera at the Cultural Center, I saw a young man wearing a tall blue bowler hat, a suit, and a bow tie, looking a bit like Conan. His "formality" emphasized his "amateurism", and in fact, you don't need to dress up to see a musical. Many people still can't tell the difference between musicals and operas, and when they hear me say that I like to watch musicals, they associate them with obscure and difficult to understand operas that make them sleepy, and think that I am interested in elegance. Not to mention, whether the real opera is really sleepy, at least the musical in the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries is as common as the movie entertainment program.
The easiest way to distinguish between a musical and an opera is to look at whether the actors are wearing microphones. Opera actors usually do not wear microphones, and the headset often seen in videos, hidden in the hairline, is only for sound. Opera, which relies on purely human voices reverberating through the theater, requires a high level of skill in the singing of the actors, and as a result, is not as rich in dance and performance as musicals, which are less likely to have actors singing and dancing. Musicals, on the other hand, are more diverse and have a wider variety of themes. Singing requirements are not as high as opera singers, but relatively in the dancing and acting skills, it will need to be balanced development.
In the last 10 days of the end of 2018, I went to the theater to see three musicals - Carmen Cuba, Gone with the Wind, and Chicago. Of those three, only one, Chicago, was from Broadway. The "Illustrated Guide to the Scum of the Earth", which was a big hit online a while ago, was a localized version based on it. But unlike the localized version which is spicy and cruel, Chicago is more of a social satire. While every scumbag in The Illustrated Guide to the Scumbags of Heaven seems to deserve to die, the female inmates in Chicago play out a narrative that exonerates them for their crimes. The clever lawyers crafted personas for the criminals, utilized public opinion, stirred up public emotions, and successfully made the victimizers into "victims", exonerating one death row inmate after another, while the inmates who had actually been unjustly imprisoned were exceptionally executed ...... Using Tears, The use of tears, the identity of the victim, the tragic life to win the sympathy of the public, to cover up the real should be regarded as the core of the problem, subconsciously guide the audience's thinking, to guide the direction of public opinion ...... This kind of drama is not being staged in China nowadays, isn't it? It's just that this kind of trick was recognized by the Americans 40 years ago and adapted into a musical public tour, so the gap between China and the developed countries is really only in the beauty of the buildings and the wealth per capita? The gap that is imperceptible to our naked eye is much larger than what we can perceive.
I saw Chicago at the Maggie's Theater. I remember the first time I came here, I saw Xie Junhao's The Thirteen South Seas, one of the few plays I've ever seen. Compared to Shanghai Culture Square, Maggie's is much older, and the height of the location is not very reasonable, so much so that when I watched Chicago, I was constantly blocked from view by the audience in the front row, and I had to sit my body straight, which in turn inevitably blocked the view of the audience behind me. And the Shanghai Cultural Plaza has its shortcomings. If you sit in the third floor auditorium, the top part of the stage backdrop will be blocked by the spotlights, and if you need to match the background to tell the storyline of the play, you will be easily affected. For example, there are a couple of scenes in Elizabeth where Death needs to come down a staircase in the shape of a sharp blade at the top right of the stage, and users sitting in the back rows would have a hard time noticing Death's presence, and perhaps not be able to perceive that the staircase, designed to look like a sharp blade hanging at the top of SiSi, is an ambush to hint at the end of her stabbing.
Watching the musical from the video, the picture and sound are crystal clear, but there's just something about musical theater that can only be appreciated by not going to see it live. Musical theater is a kind of performance that makes people feel y "alive". The way the actors dance and sing, always full of passion, as if they never tire, is so contagious that every time I see a musical, I feel rejuvenated, as if my blood is also beating and boiling to the rhythm, as if I've been injected with a shot of chicken blood, and I'm glowing.
I remember watching a lot of Takarazuka musicals for a while. Takarazuka had a very famous male servant named Yamato Yukawa. When I watched her performances on video, I thought she had no acting skills and played all her roles like a little rascal. But when she came to Shanghai to perform, and I saw her singing and stage presence, I finally realized why Takarazuka actors have such a high social status in Japan, and that they do have extraordinary charisma. When Yukawa Yamato, as the Night Mask, stood in the center of the stage in a black tuxedo with a straight back, it was easy to distinguish her from the rest of the cast. She threw her cape off in style and rushed off the stage without saying a word, moving cleanly and without delay, and this stage presence caused a gush of screams from the manga fans on stage. Although I am not a manga fan, nor a fan of Yamato Yukawa, at that moment I y realized what another famous Takarazuka actor, Mizuhashi, had said: Takarazuka's actors are more manly than men and more feminine than women. I was so impressed by Yamato Yukawa that day that I was still in a state of ecstasy when I left the theater, as if I had met some idol of my choice. I also finally realized the huge difference between video and live.
In fact, real high-quality musicals don't necessarily sell well in China. On the contrary, some of those adapted from world-famous books or movies often reap the rewards. I remember last year I bought the French version of Les Misérables, due to misremembering the time, late to go a day, so I can only wait directly at the scene scalpers have a suitable price for the remaining tickets sold to me. I didn't realize that tickets with a premium of a few dozen dollars online would directly multiply the price by six when I arrived at the venue. Even after the show started, the scalpers didn't let up at all, which was an eye-opener for me.
There seemed to be more out-of-town scalpers at the entrance to Shanghai Culture Square, and more local scalpers at the entrance to Maggie's. I preferred the out-of-town scalpers to the local scalpers. In contrast, I prefer to ask foreign scalpers for prices. The reason is that although they ask for the price, but the attitude is quite gentle, to the middle-aged women or young men mostly. Most of the scalpers in Shanghai are men and women wearing flowery shirts and gold chains. They are the typical Shanghainese in the impression of outsiders who have never been to Shanghai, and they have the shrewdness and greasiness of the old Shanghainese in novels. I don't like their oily face, and I don't like their wall clock swinging body; I don't like them swallowing clouds and boasting, and I don't like them trading with me without delay and without explanation. Often a transaction is completed before I understand what is happening. Their gestures in checking and counting money are particularly sophisticated and swift, which is too fast-paced, just like the city. You could say that they are the snakes and bugs of this foreign metropolis, but they also happen to be the most vital individuals of this city.
The people in the theater, too, are diverse. Since there are not many people around who like musicals, I usually go to the theater alone. There is more time to observe others when you are alone. I've seen mothers with 4- and 5-year-old children who want them to understand the English version of The Sound of Music without reading the subtitles, high school students who sing along with the show in order to show off their professionalism, young men who gyrate exaggeratedly to the music as if they're high on drugs, and hypocrites who look so nice but curse their wives throughout the show. ...... The end of the year goes to While watching Carmen Cuba, two girls behind me kept whispering about it, which didn't bother me, but annoyed the girl sitting next to me. The girl next door turned around and said something in a very harsh tone, that she thought they were being noisy. I was very scared, I was afraid of them arguing back and forth endlessly, this is a scene I am used to, I am really afraid of encountering in such an occasion in the theater, but fortunately the girls behind me did not hear. Just I do not understand why in such a humanistic and artistic atmosphere of the environment, people can still be like a powder keg with a fuse, a touch of fire, it is difficult to be quiet ...... in and out of the elegant art place seems to be able to make people instantly become temperament, have a connotation, but in some cases it is just a piece of literary and artistic coat, after all, do not fall into the vulgar is the The most important thing to remember is that you have to be able to get the best out of your life.
In order to learn about musicals, I've been to a few musical theater groups, but basically I've just been trying to get some resources, and it's hard to meet people who are like-minded. The people in the groups were enthusiastic, but they also used a lot of nicknames and abbreviations, which made me very frustrated when I first learned about musical theater. When they talked about those musical actors, it was like they were talking about an old friend who had known them for many years and was very familiar with them, and they could tell a lot of interesting things about them. Unfortunately, I really have no feelings for these foreigners, and I can't treat them like an idol, and always remain enthusiastic about them.
I'm willing to sell anything I think is good to my friends around me again and again. Maybe one day they'll idly click on a link I've shared and be as y attracted to musicals as I am. Next year, there are a lot of great shows coming to Shanghai again, so if you have a chance, go to the theater and check them out.