The Clouds Begin to Thunder

So back when I was talking about the weird promo images Spring Awakening Norway was producing, I said that a lot of productions had a serious sex sells thing going on with their ads (and I called out Brazil for it specifically) but that Norway was blowing my mind by having promo photos consisting of the entire cast in their underwear, piled on top of each other, and covered in dirt and dead flowers. Really. Really. Really.

I take it back a little.

...because Brazil has a weird let's-pile-everyone-on-top-of-each-other set of pictures too. Even if theirs is substantially more clothed (unlike some of their other promo photos...). And more sanitary. And does not make me think of Melchior/Moritz/Wendla threesomes. ( Speaking of which... )

idk about these Brazil pics. Their cast is attractive, these pictures have a cool sepia-toned vibe, and there are a couple I sort of love, like this Wendla picture, and I love that the cast all looks young. The girls a little more than the boys, but that usually happens in SA.

But then again, no promo photos from any production of SA (the whole set is here for the record) should result in responses such as:

Arqueete *naf says:
*POPSICLES, REALLY
Jaymee says:
*NORWAY MAY BE THE WINNER, BUT DAMN IF BRAZIL DIDN'T GIVE THEM A RUN FOR THEIR WTF MONEY

Rachelle Dulcinea *naf says:
*WHY IS ILSE NAKED
*WTF MARIANA
Arqueete *naf says:
*Melchior: In situations like that, you just don't ask why.
Rachelle Dulcinea *naf says:
*WHO THE FUCK IS INA

Tonight is a Glee night, and so I shall post a funny Lea Michele video.

So. Spring Awakening, right. I like it. It's great.

It's also pretty... depressing from basically the middle of act one onward (as Seth Rudetsky once said, "If you don't know Spring Awakening, essentially, A) Devastating B) Fabulous") and we've all liked it for a very long time now. I think people like us (being... me and musicisgone and our MSN chat friends) can only like something that sad and watch it so many times before, well, things like our sa_lulz community and the Melchior Gabor Twitter happen. We are bad, bad people who are being very disrespectful to real life, serious issues.

...we try and remind ourselves as we lol inappropriately.

After spamming musicisgone with old macros tonight, I thought I'd share with you all the best of sa_lulz (well, the best of the macros at SA Lulz that people who read this journal INCLUDING YOU LOSERS WHO HAVEN'T WATCHED THE SHOW YET would understand without explanation)

( Warning: May make you feel like a bad person )

Just putting it out there to the world that for whatever headdesky reason, I am not receiving e-mails as of this morning. Period. This happened to me once before and lasted a few days or something and was obnoxious. If it doesn't come back soon, I'll like... switch my LJ e-mails over to working ones or something, maybe, idk, but in the mean time I haven't gotten notifications from any replies from today or last night.

If for some odd reason you need to e-mail me, um... you should be able to reach me at arqueete at gmail.com

What, you say? That's all? E-mail, straight and to the point? There's not going to suddenly be an LJ cut to some videos or something now?

Quick, a picture of Matt Doyle's dog!



There.

Update: A couple e-mails from early morning on the 11th are trickling in. This is a good sign.

People of LJ, last night was a busy night for Mr. Matt Doyle.

( First, he broke up with his boyfriend on Gossip Girl. ...not his actual boyfriend, I mean, the boyfriend of... his character on the show... YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN )

( And then he sang -- as the description claims, 'the living hell out of' -- a new song by one of my favorite composer/lyricist duos! )

You're welcome.

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So I just made a post yesterday and I don't think anyone here cares about this besides the people who've already seen it -- well, I don't know if musicisgone has seen it yet but undoubtedly as soon as she signs on she'll be getting the link instead of a hi from me.

QUICK BACKSTORY TIME. So when Spring Awakening opened on Broadway (in November 2006), they have two Melchior understudies, right, Jonathan B Wright and Robert Hager. In March-ish Matt Doyle (that's my boy) gets hired, Jonathan no longer understudies Melchior, and now it's Robi and Matt. Jonathan Groff (the original Melchior) has to be like, unable to get out of bed before he's willing to miss a show, so it isn't until July that he misses ONE day (and it isn't because of illness, he just takes a day off for a family thing back home). And of course, they put Matt on for Melchior. In August, Robi leaves the cast, never having gone on for Melchior, even though he was understudying the role long before Matt even appeared.

And since that day we have often pondered what BUENOOOOO IT'S MELCHIOR (inside joke about Robi's Mexican pride) would be like.

( BUT AS OF TODAY, WE HAVE TO WONDER A LITTLE LESS )

That is all.

I was going to make a post today as a tribute to the London cast of Spring Awakening in response to this here picture... but then the tour cast went and put their new press footage (as they have a new Melchior AND Moritz now so their old clips were looking a liiiiittle outdated -- which means the new clips have the exact cast musicisgone and I saw twice in Milwaukee!) up on YouTube. AND YOU KNOW I CAN'T PASS THAT UP.

I'll admit, I'm a little disappointed by the audio on these clips -- it's not very well balanced, IMO, you can't hear the band enough and therefore you hear the singers TOO much. And the performances are a little lackluster. But I nitpick. When I make my tribute post to Spring Awakening London I can gush to you about how much better their promo is than anything the American productions have produced.

HERE'S THEIR NEW MONTAGE:



( Two more and OBC press reel nostalgia under cut )

So, the Spring Awakening tour vlog, Totally Trucked, has a history of some... pretty strange videos, especially when now-former Melchior Kyle Riabko was involved. Actually almost every time Kyle was involved.

But I don't know, Kyle might have to watch out, because this one is pretty odd.

( Christy Altomare... will you consecrate Melchior and Wendla's love, right now... but eating this basket of M&Ms together? )

Guys. There is no Glee tonight.

How am I supposed to deal with this?

I don't want to watch baseball. Glee is the only thing I currently watch on TV.

Instead I'll post this video of Lea Michele singing the shit out of a one-woman arrangement of Touch Me, which is the song that Melchior's username comes from.

( Like, seriously. If you had any doubt that she really can sing... she really can sing. )

Jason: "He can't help to laugh a little at the memory; [Melchior] looked like a wet little puppy. A Victorian puppy."

( PUPPIES?!?!?!?!?! )

I was going to make a serious analysis sort of post today. This seemed more important.

I was trying to hunt down an old page on Broadway.com which has since vanished, and in the process of beating the search function to death I came across an article they had for Mother's Day 2008 where they ranked mother characters in musicals as "dreams" or "nightmares." No SA adults were ranked, but in the introduction:

And what to make of Melchior's mom? She may be the nicest adult in Spring Awakening, but isn't that a bit like saying Hannibal Lecter was the nicest serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs?

I loled a little.

Melchior's mom is one of my mom's favorite characters in the show. (Melchior, however, she has little sympathy for. She did finally admit that he's "intriguing" but she'd still "never want to be friends with him" because he's too arrogant.) SO THERE'S SOME INSIGHT INTO MY FAMILY.

Speaking of insights into families. The character of Melchior's mother was inspired by the playwright Frank Wedekind's mother.

His mother hated Spring Awakening.

Those are your fun facts for the day.

This post comes in TWOOOO PARTS.

( 1. Three pictures )

( 2. Just a quick quotation from Hunter Parrish re: rape where I promise not to write a novel-length commentary )

THAT IS ALL.

The original Melchior (and the first Melchior I ever saw), Jonathan Groff, finally came out of the closet this weekend (at an event that also sort-of former Melchior from the 2001 workshop, Hair's Gavin Creel, was prominently involved with!).

I posted this once way back, but it seems only appropriate to repost.

( NSFW (language) )

Harts to you, Groff. Harts to you.

It was almost a year ago when I first heard Matt sing "A Change Is Gonna Come"... and it was like... we always knew Matt was a good singer since obviously the only things anyone knew him from were musicals... but his performance of that song at that benefit concert was just like... I know I must've had it on repeat for hours in the days following that concert. And I sure as hell wasn't the only one.

I listened to it again tonight on a whim... and like... Just the falsetto around 2:25 still blows my mind.



I just needed to post it again. I'm not even going to put it under a cut because idec. And all shall know the wonder The world must be educated to the existence of this.

(msmoocow and I agreed that this one was technically better, but she advised me to post the above on the grounds of being more visually appealing)

So guys.

Two things are coming to my town this October.

I'll give you a hint. The first one sounds like Bachelle and the other one sounds like Bring Bawakening.

THAT'S RIGHT musicisgone is coming to visit me again for a few days and we're not only seeing Spring Awakening, THE WHOLE THING THIS TIME (I don't know if I talked about our experience in Chicago... but we unfortunately missed like half the first act), BUT. Today we called and got the elusive ON STAGE SEATS.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. We are seeing Spring Awakening TWICE and one of those times we get to SIT ON THE STAGE. My dad's going to KILL US when he finds out we bought these tickets but I DON'T EVEN CARE RIGHT NOW THIS IS LIKE MY DREAM COME TRUE.

( LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT IT. )

I can't sleep. And I had a bad day today. So that's why instead of replying to the tags waiting on me or something productive I'm gonna share some quotations from ~the play~.

( My canon is a musical that was written in the last decade, but that musical is based on a play actually from 1891 )

SO THAT MATT DOYLE KID. WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING THESE DAYS ANYWAY?

( If you hadn't heard... )

Also, on an unrelated note, people, please tell me it's a bad idea to want to app another teenage boy here? Sigh.