Welcome to the Musicals Thread, the Avocado’s space for anything and everything related to musical theatre! Every month I’ll post a discussion prompt, but please feel free to comment on other topics, from new discoveries to old favorites. If you have ideas for future prompts or would like to write a feature for the thread, let me know!
As any number of critics will be happy to tell you, in everyday life people don’t tend to sing about their feelings or what’s going on around them. Such phenomena are the bread and butter of musical theatre, though, and all theatre runs on the agreement of the audience to use our imaginations and fill in the gap between what’s on the stage and what it represents – this lamp is the moon and so on (advancements in costumes, set design, and effects notwithstanding). Those of us who are fans of the medium may then find ourselves more accepting of other breaks from the mundane within a story too, from miracles to monsters to magical kingdoms.
What’s your favorite use of the fantastical or supernatural in a musical? Are any special measures taken to portray it onstage? One that I love is the ending of Sunday in the Park with George, in which Dot (as a ghost? a vision?) visits her great-grandson George to offer him encouragement and a look back at a lost world. We are shown what peace she’s found and lessons she’s learned since her tumultuous experiences in Act 1, resolving that tension as well as George’s and paving a way forward.