The Road Goes Ever On and On

There and Back Again

Whatever you do, I'm certain it will be lovely.

The Grey Havens - 04/03/2004

Long Time Gone - 22/02/2004

Only for Now - 04/02/2004

The Neverland - 19/01/2004

There's no times at all, just the New York Times - 15/01/2004

Links and Rings
No Shame Pieces
Untitled Story
Other Writings

22/03/2003 - 7:24 p.m.

The name on everybody's lips is gonna be...

I saw Chicago the other day- at last at last. I've not seen it on stage, but I have the soundtrack from the 1998 revival. Now I want to see it on stage, to see what sorts of changes were made. Watching the movie, I got the feeling that a lot of compressing had been done to the story. This is something that I tend to feel about all musicals, though. They tell everything too fast because they assume that a two minute song will make up for a ten minute scene.

In Moulin Rouge (I hate to compare them, but really, what other movie has tried to do that musical-esque "people breaking into song and dance" routine recently?), that aspect of speed was important to the film, if it had lost the momentum, you realised that there wasn't anything holding the story together. As long as it kept rolling, I was caught up in it, and watching it every step of the way. Most musicals haven't got this going for them, though, it's just assumed it all happened in the songs, and that's that. You can present a full musical only through the songs, but you can't take out the songs and try to tell the story.

In this movie, the cast seemed bigger than necessary for a movie that's about four people- Roxie, Velma, Billy, and Mama (and if you want to stretch a bit, Amos). There are so many other stories going on in the show: the heiress, Mary Sunshine, the Hungarian girl; why don't they tell those stories? They are given to us in passing, but they're not dwelt on, which could be done. I want to know more about them.

I always watch the credits in a movie, and it was nice to see that they actually named all of the members of the band in the credits. Usually they just tell you which symphony orchestra played the music, but this was treated like a musical and listed the members of the band and their instruments.

My other favourite thing about Chicago: no love story. Amos and Roxie don't have any "getting back together" scenes, neither Roxie nor Velma fall for Billy (as was my worry).