Decisions, Decisions!

I am helping plan a trip to NYC for my niece's wedding.  Her Mom, my sister, and the rest of her immediate family will also be there.  We all adore The Theater.  Last time we saw Book of Mormon, and It's Only a Play.  Unfortunately, we still can't afford Hamilton tickets for 7 people. So I have been listening to soundtracks trying to find THE SHOW, or shows, to see.

I had decided that I must see Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812; an electro-pop opera about War and Peace.  Almost as crazy as a hip-hop musical based on the life of  Alexander Hamilton. I majored in Russian, I love Tolstoy, went to his Moscow house,  I have had Josh Groban singing "Dust and Ashes" on repeat in my car for months. The opening number is a masterpiece! The show takes about a hundred pages of War and Peace, and explains it all in a song. "There's a war going on out there somewhere, and Andre isn't here."

ALL: There’s a war going on
Out there somewhere, and Andre isn’t here
There’s a war going on out there somewhere and Andre isn’t here

And this is all in your program

you are at the opera
Gonna have to study up a little bit if you wanna keep with the plot
Cuz it’s a complicated Russian novel

everyone’s got nine different names
So look it up in your program
We’d appreciate it, thanks a lot da da da da da da da da da
Natasha!

Brilliant! No contest, right? Not so fast. I start listening to the soundtrack of Dear Evan Hansen, and  Ben Platt slays me! No wonder he won the Tony. I encourage everyone to listen to this show. Maybe it hit me harder because my eldest son has Bi-polar disorder, but I started to cry when I heard these songs.  For those of you living in caves, or just not theatre fans, Dear Evan Hansen tells the story of an awkward, lonely teenager.   Who of us have not known someone, or felt that way ourselves? Or both?

Have you ever felt like nobody was there?
Have you felt forgotten in the middle of nowhere?Have you ever felt like you could disappear?Like you could fall and no one would hear?
Well, let that lonely feeling wash away.
Maybe there's a reason to believe you'll be okay.
Cause when you don't feel strong enough to stand
You can reach, reach out your hand
And oh, someone will come running
And I know they'll take you home
Even when the dark comes crashing through
When you need a friend to carry you
And when you're broken on the ground
You will be found

On the outside, always looking in
Will I ever be more than I've always been?
'Cause I'm tap, tap, tapping on the glass
I'm waving through a window
I try to speak, but nobody can hear
So I wait around for an answer to appear
While I'm watch, watch, watching people pass
I'm waving through a window, oh
Can anybody see, is anybody waving back at me?

We start with stars in our eyes
We start believing that we belong
But every sun doesn't rise
And no one tells you where you went wrong



The last song I'm going to post is not even in the show. Sung by the composers, it is a duet sung by Evan's mother, and the mother whose son has committed suicide. I had to transcribe the lyrics myself, and I sobbed while typing this. It is heartbreaking for anyone who has parented a child with "issues," physical or emotional.  I sobbed; you should too. The first two verses are sweetly reminiscing about when the boys were small "In the bedroom down the hall, I got you Ninja Turtle nightlights for protection, You used to say they kept the bad guys far away, remember?  Please listen to the entire song.

"Anything, to make you happy
Anything at all
Anything for my boy, 
in the bedroom down the hall

In the bedroom down the hall, 
We went to battle every evening after dinner.
I thought I knew some way that I'd get through to you, remember

In the bedroom down the hall, 
we fought a war where no one walked away a winner.
Cause everyday you pulled a little more away, remember?
So, the counselors, and the clinics, and the cures, a mother tries,
Cause maybe they could take away that anger in your eyes.

Anything, to make you happy
Anything, at all.
Anything for my boy, 
In the bedroom down the hall

You know you try to give your kid the world,
Give him everything you've got,
You find you gave all you could
I thought it was enough, 
I though it was enough, but it was not;
Did I let you down?
What else can I do? 
Everything I ever did, I did it all for you.

Anything, to make you happy
Anything, at all.
Anything for my boy,
in the bedroom down the hall."

UPDATE:
In the end, I waited too long for "Evan Hansen" tickets at a reasonable price. Good that I only needed three tickets instead of 7 or 8.  My niece from AZ, her husband, and I went to "Great Comet" at a much more reasonable price.  We even sat on stage! Amazing staging and lighting supported the overall ensemble nature of the show. Denee Benton and Ingrid Michaelson were incandescent. I had no need to worry about missing Mr Groban, because Okieriete Onaodowan was a revelation.  His singing voice is so pure, and his acting was moving. What they fail to tell you, is that the show could have just been called "Natasha Rostova."  I guess Dave Malloy was nervous to just call it "War and Peace."  Natasha, beautifully played by Benton, carries the entire show, and then some.  Everyone else is really a supporting character.  Anyone who knows the story, and you all should, knows that Natasha and Pierre don't get together until the end of the war.  It's almost an "and they all lived happily ever after." ending. The bad get what was coming to them, and the good get married, have children, and live blissfully at their country estates. Watch one of the several movies, or the BBC series if you want to catch up on the full story.  The book really is long.  Just trying to get through "Confessions" by Tolstoy, and that's only 94 pages versus the 1000 or more of "War and Peace." of course, I am reading it in the original. much slower going.

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