Though lots of small things are different from the musical, all the big arcs are pretty much the same -- although the ending is totally different (by necessity). It's been fun spending even more time with Jeremy, Michael, and the gang. Plus the novel is full of "Bonus Features"...
For instance, I was reading the novel and got to a reprint of a Yahoo News item that Jeremy sees online about the Squip... What?
Let's pause here for a second...
Sometimes reading the source novel is incredibly helpful; sometimes it's not. When New Line produced Sondheim's Passion in 1996 (am I really that old?), I watched the source movie, Passione d'amore (The Passion of Love), which is really wonderful and really fucked up. Sondheim and Lapine had stuck pretty close to the movie, so it was interesting to see but didn't tell me much new. Then I read the autobiographical (!) source novel by Iginio Tarchetti. It's a wild, incredibly entertaining, often disturbing ride, but it was a blast to read. Plus, I found virtually nothing that was at odds with the musical, and so much that enhanced and added to the information the musical gave us. It really helped us in concrete ways.
Reading Ragtime was like that as well.
Then again... I read the Sweet Smell of Success novella while we worked on that show, and while it's an amazing book, it's really only a jumping off place for the show. Lots of things are different, and most notably, the novella's plot starts near the end of the musical's first act. So reading the book was fun, and a little helpful with time and place, atmosphere, tone, etc., but I had to understand that the show was a different animal. That was also true of reading The Once and Future King while working on Camelot. In the novel, Lance is ugly, after all...
Weirdly, the book Pal Joey is actually backstory for the musical Pal Joey. And the musical Man of La Mancha explores only a few small sections from the sprawling novel Don Quixote (one of my favorites!), much like South Pacific does.
The Be More Chill novel falls on both sides of this question (not a surprise for this show), which is why I waited to read it till after we opened. I do feel like I'm getting to know these characters better, particularly Jeremy and Michael, but I also know that the story we're telling is the stage musical, not the novel.
Meanwhile, I'm also learning so much about BMC from audiences members and other fans. I happened upon a Be More Chill Wiki site, and there are lots of cool tidbits there...
Two things that really struck me...
For those who don't know, the Konami code is a cheat code or a command that has different effects depending on the game in question, most commonly used in Konami branded games and few Nintendo games. It was also called the "Contra Code" or the "99 lives code." The exact code is: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A. Though the Squip's little code is: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, A.
Okay, mind blown.
Also, I found this: "Joe Tracz claims that it is unknown if the Squip's motives were to take over the world, but the Squip does wish for everyone in the world to own a Squip (Tracz compares this to how Apple wants everybody to have their products)." Again, that's interesting...
Here's the big mind-blower so far. I'm reading the novel and I get to a Yahoo News item that Jeremy reads online:
Sony Hints at Next Generation of Wearable Computers
Just as the Segway Human Transport system was introduced to the world as clandestine, heavily-funded “IT” technology, digital designers and futurists are now buzzing about “SQUIP” as the next great leap forward in human lifestyle enhancement. SQUIP is being developed by Sony (SNE).
“It’s a simple device that will redefine how computers operate within our society,” says Harvey Dinglesnort about SQUIP, which Sony refuses to comment on directly. Mr. Dinglesnort reviews high-end devices for a variety of publications including The Sharper Image(SHRP). “They’re keeping close tabs on it because it really will be a sensation when it is released.”
What is known about SQUIP is that it involves microcomputers that can be implanted—or ingested—into the human body. Devices like the VeriChip, fromApplied Digital Systems (ADSXE), already provide this functionality, but VeriChip implantation is a surgical procedure (albeit an outpatient one) involving a needle large enough to dose an elephant. SQUIP is said to be much smaller and easier to “install” due to the fact that it does not employ conventional microchip structure.
“Sony is going consumer with quantum computing,” Mr. Dinglesnort explains. “Scientists have been researching for years the prospect of building a computer based not on the binary system, where a piece of information is either a one or a zero, but on a ‘qubit’ system, where a piece of information can be a one, a zero, or a sort of in-between state that collapses into a one or zero when it is observed closely.”
The quantum computer is of interest to researchers because of its staggering data-processing capabilities, exponentially surpassing those of current CPUs. It has been discussed for projects ranging from large-scale materials fabrication to time travel. But Sony seems to have simpler plans.
“What they have said is, ‘Let’s not worry about all the great things quantum computers can do. Let’s just make a simple one and take advantage of the fact that it can be tiny, and try to manufacture a sort of ingestible Palm Pilot,’” Mr. Dinglesnort says. Consumer models are a long way off. But the prospect of SQUIP has futurists drooling and investors lining up…
Yikes. We know this isn't exactly the Squip's backstory onstage, because in the musical Michael searches the internet but can't find anything at all about the Squip -- which makes him suspicious. (Also in the novel, Michael's is a serious horndog with a thing for Asian women, and his brother actually took a Squip!)
I said we know that this isn't the Squip's backstory in the musical, but we don't know that. The only thing we know is different is that, in the musical, there's nothing about it on the internet; but it is from Japan, it's incredibly high-tech (nobody made this in their garage), and there are a lot of them.
This backstory does make sense in the context of the musical...
How does that help us? It's just another piece of "reality" that helps this fictional world feel real and complete to the actors, which makes it feel real and complete to the audience. After all, acting is really just about acting naturally, logically, in fictional circumstances. So the more the actor knows about the world she's inhabiting, the more convincingly she'll do that.
One thing that really struck me as I read the novel is how much had to get left out -- and yet it really doesn't feel like the musical is missing much at all. The Joes (Mssrs. Iconis and Tracz) did a masterful job of combining multiple similar incidents into one, combining similar characters into composites, etc.
People talk about how much gets left out by necessity when a 300-page novel is adapted into a 90-minute film, but the transformation is even more extreme when a novel is transformed into a stage musical. The script of a musical is -- by necessity -- the most compact kind of storytelling, and therefore, the most difficult. The book of a musical gets so little stage time, because singing takes much longer than talking. Music slows down time in a musical. Though not as grotesquely as a lot of opera does. What might take 30 seconds to say in dialogue may well take a minute and a half, or two minutes, or even more, to express in song.
Considering all that, it's genuinely astonishing to me that only small things are different between the novel and the musical, that the Joes told this story in all its fullness and complexity, despite the form's inherent restrictions and its limits on time and space. That's some damn fine writing.
And when big things are different in the story, it's so clearly a choice made to enhance the emotional content of the story; after all, musical theatre is one of the most emotional forms of storytelling, since it uses the abstract language of music, alongside the concrete language of words.
For instance, in the novel, Jeremy has somewhat emotionally absent, shitty parents. In the musical, Jeremy's mother has left and his father is trapped in his deep grief. That's a much more intense set of circumstances, which needs the emotional intensity of music to tell its story. When people ask me, I always tell them that the thing that makes a great story into a great musical is the intensity of emotion; musical theatre's great super power is its ability to portray deep, complicated, and intense emotion far better than spoken words alone ever could.
The Joes (Iconis and Tracz) took an inherently emotional story, and with only minor adjustments, turned it into an incredibly emotional story, with very high emotional stakes. That's what great musical theatre does.
I don't know how to break it to them, but we can't make a great show out of not-great material. It doesn't work that way.
Several of the reviewers talked about how the characters were all stereotypes, but then went on to explain in detail how they aren't stereotypes; and likewise, these same people declared our story derivative and predictable, and then they go on to talk about all the unexpected twists and turns the story takes. My favorite review quote along those lines was, "There are definitely relatable aspects, but there’s not much here that hasn’t been done before, and better."
Really? Because I'm trying to think of another musical about young people that appears to be a romantic musical comedy at first, but soon morphs into a dark sci-fi thriller, that deals with peer pressure, bullying, teen depression, suicide, the over-medication of kids, absent parents. Actually I'm trying to think of another musical that applies the Faust legend to kids. (No, not Little Shop, since Audrey and Seymour are at least ten years older than these kids, despite the usual miscasting, and they exist in a completely different time, place, and storytelling style.)
Also, part of the genius of Be More Chill, and the reason that literally millions -- let me repeat that, MILLIONS -- of people connect to this show so powerfully, is that the characters at first seem to be stock character types, but every one of them proves to be much more complicated than that -- exactly as it is in real life. Early in the show, when BMOC Jake talks to Christine about how her play affected him, the show blows up the jock stereotype...
JAKE: Hey. You were in that play last year.
CHRISTINE: You mean Romeo & Juliet?
JAKE: Yeah. you were that girl who died!
CHRISTINE: You mean Juliet?
JAKE: Yeah! That was depressing.
CHRISTINE: Thanks ...
JAKE: But. .. you were good. I'm Jake.
CHRISTINE: I...know.
JAKE: Cool... Can l say something stupid? When 1 saw you die in the play last year. .. That was like the saddest I'd felt in a long time. It was like everything in my life, all the pressure I feel to be the best, at everything, all the time ... Suddenly felt so small. And then, when you got up at the end for your victory dance ...
CHRISTINE: Bow, it's called a bow.
JAKE: Right! I remember thinking, "l 'm glad that girl's not dead ... before I ever got the chance to know her." Stupid, right?
CHRISTINE: That's ... not stupid at all.
This is one of my favorite moments in the show, because the stereotypical jock is revealed to be a real person, with real emotions he doesn't fully understand, and the audience realizes they can't assume anything about any of these people. This jock has just discovered the magic of theatre and he is fully embracing it. Maybe high school and college kids recognize this basic truth even more readily because they're in the midst of living through all that...
But then again, aren't we all...?
Every show we produce teaches me a lot -- about the show, about humans, about life, about storytelling, but this show is also teaching me about preconceptions. When I ask people after the show why they think the show is having such massive success, both adults and kids tell me pretty much the same thing -- it's because the show is fiercely, deeply honest and authentic. This is not a silly story about silly emotions; this is not a story of stereotypes and cliches; no, this is a story about the incredible complexity of human relationships, and the social context that we all create that can lift up or beat down anybody, popular or not, smart or not, loved or not.
And almost everybody I ask, from current high school kids to seniors, says this story mirrors their own high school experience in a thousand ways, some obvious, some very subtle. The word lots of people use about the show is "honest." I couldn't agree more. You never hear Iconis and Tracz in this dialogue or these lyrics; you hear the authentic voices of high school kids.
Yes, there are other musicals about teens -- great musicals, some of them -- but there's nothing else like Be More Chill. And if you think there is, you're not paying attention. I agree with RFT reviewer Paul Friswold, who wrote:
New Line's Be More Chill is a startlingly fresh musical that avoids cliche to tell an exciting and at times very funny story about modern teenagers with a sci-fi twist. . .
As good as Joe Iconis' songs are (and the New Line band, led by Marc Vincent, plays them very well indeed), Joe Tracz' book is equally compelling. An off-hand factoid about stagnating human evolution dovetails quite tidily with the Squip's motivations for disseminating more of itself through the school. This is the real menace of life lived by remote control, and everything in Be More Chill hinges on someone "just saying no" to technology-laced drugs. For all its charms and honesty about the bad decision-making of high schoolers, Be More Chill's gripping conclusion proves that not everyone takes the easy way out. It takes only one brave teen armed with a fondness for retro '90s culture to stop the madness. Uncoolness never looked so good.
I agree -- startlingly fresh. The funniest part of this is though several reviewers thought there was nothing new here, no one even mentioned Faust. They (incorrectly) think Be More Chill isn't that different from Heathers or Mean Girls, but apparently they don't recognize the story's actual source.
BroadwayWorld reviewer Tanya Seale called our show, "one of the coolest, freshest comedic musicals in years. . . It features modern-day teen characters who speak modern-day lingo, who dress in modern-day fashion, and who cleverly and intriguingly use modern-day technology onstage." I'll leave you with the end of Tanya's review...
I can't even begin to convey just how refreshing it was to see an audience respond so enthusiastically to musical theatre. It was almost as if the teenagers in the house were calling out, "Thank you! You see us!" Productions like this are exactly what contemporary theatre needs to cultivate new audiences and Be More Chill certainly delivers on that tall order.
The adventure continues.
Long Live the Musical!
Scott
1 comments:
I wonder why "Be More Chill" was almost completely shut out of Tony award nominations?
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