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When live TV-musicals go well, they can befantastic.
It made some divisive choices (see: Hot Mark).
But the productions legacy will always be thatit wasnotlive.
Except for the final 15 minutes (which were great!
), itwas all footage of the pre-taped dress rehearsal performance from the previous day.
Its really hard when you broke your damn foot.
You could hear the strain on the high notes right out of the gate on this number.
Like the East Village itself, this version has been hella gentrified.
Fisher and Clemons definitely were.
Asnoted on Twitter, even some of the posters spoke to Jonathan Larsons legacy.
KV
High: Vanessa!
I cant wait to hear the commentators on Foxs sister station, Fox News Sisters?
Theyre close going off on tirades about it all tomorrow.
JC
Low: Mark was too hot!
If Mark was supposed to be this hot, JC Chasez wouldve played him on Broadway.
Look, I am not complaining that Jordan Fisher was on my TV screen for three hours.
Like, did his iconically bad sweater need a glow up?
A nose ring?!?!
Hows he going to be buried in a Jewish cemetery?
Hot Mark fucks five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes a year.
The least he couldve done is sing like a nerd!
Lets do it all again.
Ben Platt comes back to play Mark.
And Jordan Fisher can play, I dont know, a version of Roger who moves very carefully.
Its true, he wasnt nerdy and didnt necessarily seem like a true bohemian.
But his talent and charisma were such a force that I enjoyed him anyway.
Cast walks from backstage to the front of the stage.
They sing the song and look at each other nicely.
Id call it Brechtian, if I knew what that meant.
They even do it in the movie and its a movie!
Thats because you want to be able to focus on the song: the lyrics, the melodies.
It plays like an impassioned plea directly to the audience.
It demands your attention.
(You dont evenhave to imagine!)
Ill Cover You [Reprise], a.k.a.
the part of the show that literally the entire theater cries during, is the real deal.
It is musical theater at the height of its emotional powers.
I wouldve turned it off at the first notice that they werentin it.
(I know this is a lot of build up.)
Then Brandon Victor Dixon started singing and you forgot this wasnt live.
You forgot you have seen this scene before and youve heard hundreds of times.
It felt like it was happening for the first time.
She just had a front-row seat to something really special.
It was as beautiful and devastating as the song can be.
It was the highlight of the show.
while uselessly stranded in the middle of the stage.
In spite of that awkwardness, the performances in the live scenes weresignificantlystronger than the pre-taped footage.
Jesse L. Martin hugging Brandon Michael Dixon!
(Jesse L. Martins hat!)
KV
