XV - The Devil

Jordan's Way Too Detailed Guide to Musical Theater

(a necessary preface)

This will likely be my most annoying letter yet. Musical theater lovers: this one’s for you. And if you’re not into musicals, I’m sorry to say you’re a hater, and I’m going to try my VERY BEST to change that. Musical theater, in my experience, is the most effective medium for expressing and eliciting emotion through art. I mean… singing AND acting?? Come on!!! It’s dramatic, it’s funny, it’s impressive, it’s almost always horny for some reason?

Anticipating that a large number of you are likely not as infatuated with this world as I am, I compiled a list of some of my favorite musicals, with relevant clips I find particularly moving, explanatory, or fun to watch. I’ll explain how I got hooked on each one, in hopes that I can serve as someone’s gateway into this fantastic art form I’ve only scratched the surface of. (Also in hopes that someone reading this has more theater knowledge than I, and can recommend some play or musical I haven’t discovered yet.)

Up first:

Spring Awakening

If you’re on the internet at all, you may have heard of the Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known documentary, where Lea Michele confesses that, in an educational moment, she showed her co-lead and best friend Jonathan Groff her “whole vagina” under desk lamp light, because Jonathan is gay and had never ~interacted~ with one before. Since the entire musical is about puberty and sex education and the dangers of censorship on youth, the anecdote made sense, but still, it’s easy to poke fun at, and many people did.

I’m starting with Spring Awakening because it’s the most recent musical I’ve found (and also plays very well into the themes of the Devil card). Sparked by the Lea Michele memes, I watched a very blurry bootleg of the original musical Tuesday night, and then the documentary Wednesday morning. It’s only been a few days and I’m already obsessed with the songs, the storytelling, the entire premise.

Set in 19th century Germany, rock melodies tell the tragic stories of a few Lutheran teens burdened by desire and shame and frustration at a world which tries to keep them in the dark. It’s controversial and uncomfortable and ohhhh so beautiful. These songs play a little less like typical musical songs and more like standalone rock songs (character diving > plot furthering), so if you’re into that, I specifically recommend Mama Who Bore Me (original and reprise), The Bitch of Living, and Touch Me.

Little Shop of Horrors

Quite the opposite of Spring Awakening, this musical is good clean fun. It’s not necessarily up there with my all time favorites, but I discovered it second-most-recently, and was surprised at how much it made me laugh.

My first real introduction to Little Shop of Horrors was Jenny Slate stepping in for an absent middle schooler in the rom-com I Want You Back (another surprise fav). I was TAKEN by the song, and a few weeks later finally watched the movie version of the musical. The storyline is wonderfully weird and the humor unexpectedly holds up (Steve Martin as the dentist had me fully out-loud laughing).

I loooove Jenny Slate, but scroll to 17:30 on this Tiny Desk Concert for a truly impressive version of Suddenly Seymour.

Now that we’re caught up on what I’ve been listening to this week, we can go back to the beginning - to the musical that made me love musicals.

Les Miserables

I’d never seen anything like it. The story not just interrupted by song, but TOLD through song. What a concept!!

If you haven’t seen Les Mis, then actually what are you doing. I won’t shame you for the others but I will shame you for this. Get on it.

I love this story because it does such a good job of taking its time - letting you connect to and understand the characters even before they make a decision that tells you who they are. This is something I think other musicals sometimes lack, pulling you through character arcs or plot lines so fast that you have to just go with it. These characters feel real. The songs don’t feel corny. On both screen and stage it’s a very very immersive experience (seeing Les Mis live was among the top 5 greatest days of my life).

In recent years I’ve seen some hate for the movie adaptation and I just want to say, I’m not havin it. This movie was ambitious and original in style and process, and the way they transformed the songs to breathe with the actors is genius. It was good in 2012 and it’s good now! Don’t be a hater!

Moulin Rouge

This clip cuts off right before the best part (gah!). The first time I watched Moulin Rouge I really had to adjust my expectations before I could get into it. The loud, glitzy, artificial, obnoxious, theatric film is not what I was expecting my mom and sister to show me, based on my understanding of their taste in movies up until that point. I put up a bit of a fight for 10 minutes or so, and then became so taken by Satine and Christian that I surrendered to the ridiculousness of it all.

Written and directed by the same man who adapted Romeo and Juliet into a 90s blockbuster set in (essentially) Miami, Moulin Rouge inspired a stage version of the musical that’s been touring since 2018. Here’s a clip of Aaron Tveit (you may recognize him as Enjolras from Les Miserables) going absolutely OFF in El Tango De Roxanne with an IMPRESSIVE opt up on the last few words.

Clearly, Aaron Tveit is on another level, but Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman’s chemistry cannot be topped. From what I’ve seen of the stage production, impressive as it may be, I think the original movie version takes the cake for me. Baz Luhrmann is the king of Camp and excruciating yearning - both key elements in most musicals - and brings a certain magic with his directing to the silver screen (lol) that I haven’t quite felt watching the red-curtained live performances. This seems like one of the rare instances where the Broadway/adapted version feels less Camp-y than the original?

Side note - if you’re as clueless on the definition of Camp as I was when the 2019 Met Gala theme was announced, here’s some outtakes from Susan Sontag’s Notes on “Camp”, which sum it up better than I could.

Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.

[…]

Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.

Now… if they’d done Moulin Rouge on ICE… that would be PEAK Camp. If you watch nothing else from this letter, please watch this. I’ve seen it an embarrassing number of times, and if I remember correctly, only actually watched Moulin Rouge the first time in preparation to watch this ice skating routine (thanks syd). It’s been my #1 comfort video for years now. Scott and Tessa you will ALWAYS BE FAMOUS!!

And holy shit how did I JUST find out Moulin Rouge is also an Orpheus and Eurydice retelling. Oh my god. Oh my god???

I guess that brings us to our next musical: Hadestown. A more literal, equally tragic interpretation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and Hades and Persephone.

Hadestown

I first listened to the soundtrack on a walk around RIT, in the bitter cold, and then didn’t listen to anything else for probably a month. This album sustained me through hours and hours of driving around in the snow, delivering people’s Uber Eats orders, feeling like I’d never be warm again. The soundtrack validated my struggle, and comforted me through the literal and metaphorical winter.

Give Hadestown a listen if you’re feeling depressed, or if you’re just really into greek mythology. The songs are catchy and the story is easy to follow without visuals (literally like an audiobook but sung to you), so this is also just a great gateway musical if you’re intimidated by the genre. And if you do want the visuals, it’s no Hamilton Original Broadway Cast Recording, but I found this hilariously titled bootleg the other day.

Here’s a clip of the original cast performing Wait For Me (Reprise) - easily my favorite song from the musical. The chemistry between Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada, who are together in real life, just melts my heart. They’re both adorable and STUPID talented and I can’t wait to see them live this summer. (The build at 2:45 is adshafkljgldkshgg !!!!!)

The next clip is just more evidence of Reeve Carney’s talent. I first heard him in the 2011 Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark hit, Rise Above 1 ft. Bono, The Edge. The musical famously flopped, but not before I became obsessed with that song as a pre-teen. Imagine my glee when I found out ten years later that Reeve was the main lead in this epic new greek mythology themed musical.

Speaking of “epic”, I’ll segue into the next musical with this little crossover clip of Damon Daunno (Curly in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 2019 revival of Oklahoma!) crooning one of the songs from Hadestown. Reeve and Damon each have very distinct voices, both utilized for their robust and captivating falsettos. It makes perfect sense that he’d cover one of Reeve’s parts.

Oklahoma!

I saw a small, original version of Oklahoma! in Washington D.C as a kid, and don’t remember much more than the general layout of the stage and the back of my heavy eyelids. Anticipating boredom, I was pretty indifferent to the 2019 re-make the first few times my sister made me listen to it. But after a while the overdone accents, dark twists, and reimagined music grew on me. I became impressed more than anything by the performances.

Here’s another fun clip of Damon, this time covering the same song Ali Stroker opened the (above) Tony performance with.

Waitress

Sara Bareilles DID! THAT! I honestly need to give the whole soundtrack a few more listens. I’ve been too busy crying to She Used To Be Mine on repeat.

As devastating as that song is, the rest of the musical is actually really funny. With insane belts on almost every track, the songs milk the voices performing them for everything they’ve got.

The full, detailed plot isn’t super easy to glean from just the soundtrack, but you can definitely understand enough to enjoy it, and many of the songs stand well on their own. I recommend When He Sees Me, Never Ever Getting Rid of Me, Bad Idea, and I Love You Like a Table.

A Very Potter Musical

It’s so stupid. God, it’s so stupid. I love it with my whole heart.

I don’t know how popular this was?? It seems like a large part of the internet also discovered this parody play broken up into 23 shitty youtube videos in their youth, but maybe that’s just my corner of the internet? It was at least popular enough for Starkid to make a sequel and a threequel.

If you can suffer through the quality (I think it actually enhances the experience), and you’re a fan of Harry Potter, you’ll probably get a laugh out of the silly banter and absurd physical comedy. And if you’re curious, but don’t want to subject yourself to the entire play, these parts are my favorite and are hilarious on their own if you have the context of the books or movies.

Honorable Mentions

The Phantom of the Opera (a classic, what more can I say)

Come From Away (true story of the days following 9/11 when 38 planes were grounded in Newfoundland and a small town scrambled to house and feed 7000 stranded passengers. impressive utilization of just 12 actors to play countless roles and somehow it’s not a mess. sounds like it would be dramatic but it’s actually mostly a comedy!)

Book of Mormon (listen to The All-American Prophet and you'll be hooked)

Hamilton (this one was just… tooooo obvious. it’s phenomenal. you knew that already)

Heathers: The Musical (Dead Girl Walking - insane)

Legally Blonde the Musical (I can’t believe I watched a bootleg when this pro-shot existed)

Hercules (doesn’t reallyyyy count but also very much does)

Spamalot (I almost forgot about this one. I saw a high school production of Spamalot when I was in middle school maybe? and it’s still one of the funniest pieces of entertainment I’ve ever enjoyed. just found out Sara Ramirez was in the Broadway version and man does she kill it. great if you like things that are meta)

Ooooh, scary. A perversion of The Lovers card, The Devil represents subconscious desires, bad habits, addictions, sexual energy, shame, oppression, the illusion that nothing exists beyond what’s right in front of you. It’s a complicated and nuanced card. Just as you can compare the naked figures to the ones in The Lovers card, you can compare the Devil’s arm gestures to those of the Magician (the lightning bolt diagram). Instead of directing heaven down to earth, the devil resides underground, so they direct the earth (what you can see, what’s right in front of you) down into the murky underworld. The Devil keeps you content in the underworld by keeping hidden any possibility of a better life.

Think Dante’s Inferno. While scary and uncomfortable, acquaintance with the Devil is a necessary stop on the journey towards a happier, wiser self.

And just for fun, because I was thinking about The Devil card and the chain imagery reminded me of this song, here’s some tarot associations with my favorite part of Epilogue from Les Miserables. Notice the triangular composition in The Devil, The Lovers, and Judgement (among many other major arcana cards), and compare that to the positioning of Cosette and Marius against Valjean in the scene.

Fell deep deep down some rabbit holes while writing this letter, if you couldn’t tell. I counted 45 links. Consider it a ~resource~.

Happy Saturday,

Go indulge in something Camp,

<3 Jordan