酒馆音乐剧板块《曲外之音》，跟璐璐和英国资深音乐剧人Oliver一起品名音乐剧背后的故事，让高雅艺术触手可得~公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】可以索要英语全文稿哦~
Hi, everyone. And welcome back to Sound of Musicals. 欢迎回来【曲外之音】。
In the previous episode, we talked to Oliver about West Side Story, and today we're gonna continue that talk about its conflicts and the music.
Hi, Oliver. Hello. Welcome back to the show.
Thank you. It's good.
I remember talking to you when we're not recording and then you mentioned that you play the character in West Side Story. However, this is not one of your favorite musicals.
No, that's true. I was in this show, and there are definitely some good aspects of it. But it doesn't sit perfectly with me. There are lots of things which I think could have been done better, or changed, or it’s just not my style.
It’s not as hopeless as Les Mis (Les Miserables 悲惨世界).
Yes, that's true. Les Mis is on the other end of the musical chart in terms of hopelessness and sadness really. But I think some aspects in this, yeah, they could have certainly been a bit more serious, a bit more heart-hitting than they were.
Yes. When I was watching it, at bits I also felt like it is still about gang violence or maybe they were just using this as a backdrop, but certainly at place it felt like they were kind of playing light of this theme which should be a lot darker, a lot heavier.
It should, yeah. And most times people do make gang violence, gang warfare to be very dark because that is more towards the truth of gang violence. West Side Story takes it in a very different direction by having these serious gangs who fight and kill. They do elaborate dances to happy music while they click their fingers, it doesn't feel quite like I should take them seriously. It's hard to be, it does feel like that.
It's like pretend gangsters but actual musical actors.
Yes, it does feel like that. We are supposed to believe these guys fight and they're angry and they do lots of bad things, but you can't really believe it sometimes when you see them. That's one of the things that I think could have been changed a little bit. But I do know that lots of people like that side of it. It’s embracing this gang culture, this gang idea but not in a serious heavy sad way.
Yeah, I mean you can't imagine turning Godfather trilogy into musicals, it just doesn't work.
Don Corleone (唐·柯里昂, 《教父》系列的Godfather) clicking his fingers and spinning doesn't really go very well with that movie.
No, no.
And I think a lot of people do love the idea of gangsters. Actually, I think in many cultures, there has been a period… different historical periods of people would into that sort of film, TV, it's also about this youth related adrenaline rush, like you're fighting for whatever you think it's the right reason to fight. And you can use violence to correct the wrongs or to deal with everything. That idea I think you can obviously see in the gang members.
Yes, definitely.
Both of the gangs have very different ideas of … in terms of how they should be seen by other people and how they should be treated and their positions within the neighborhood. Both of them are using violence to try to become the top gang to have everybody listen to them, so they are respected.
What that actually means for the neighborhood? I'm not entirely sure, because would they do if they are number one? But that's not talked about within the musical. I don't think they just want to be the best. So…
No. But the other thing I noticed about the two gangs it's not just normal two nameless gangs. It's more like, there’s the racial element. There's definitely the racial element. It's the whites, the local gangs. I don't know if they're Italian because Tony sounds very Italian, then some of the other names sounds a bit Italian. And then you have this other newer immigrants, the Puerto Rican gang. So the racial element that you do see.
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公号【璐璐的英文小酒馆】可以索要英语全文稿哦~