#uhhhhhh i'm dead and my cause of death is Bandstand on Broadway

[loving-jack-kelly]

Today I saw Bandstand, the matinee of September 16

y’all, i entered prepared to cry

I stood in line to get my ticket scanned and snapped the group chat that I was gonna cry

and I cried more than I thought I would

this post ended up as mostly plot details I’m passionate about so wait for the next one for production stuff and acting stuff

I walked in, the theatre was smaller than I thought, but the stage was gorgeous

the set was super simple walking in, and there wasn’t a curtain, so you just saw a super simple bar/club scene, a small stage and counter and the open dancefloor

the back of the “buildings” was open, and you could see through to a brick wall

then the lights were AMAZING

the lighting design alone made me cry probably more than I’m willing to admit, but let’s generously round down to like fifteen

the stage was just barely lit up before curtain, so you could see the set but it clearly wasn’t active, dim lights and almost the ambiance of a closed club, which was perfect

also, they were playing big band swing over the loudspeakers in the background, so it was just lovely and nice

then the show started and oh my god

oh my god

if you’ve listened to the soundtrack (if you haven’t do it’s amazing) you know Just Like It Was Before starts out with The Drumbeattm 

However, the show actually starts with gunfire and bombs falling and slowly getting louder until you’re hearing the dirt rain down, and the lights go up

on Donny and Michael using the stairs of the set stage like their trench, and Julia in the foreground, putting flowers in a vase, completely oblivious to her husband’s coming death

then Donny is having a rough time, almost like he was disassociating, and Michael is trying to get him involved and back in his own head with the “there is a train” bit

Donny yells “Get Out!” and as that happens you realize Michael, who you actually don’t know is Michael yet I don’t think, died and that Julia is his husband because you see Julia get the telegram and collapse

honestly just this song could have it’s own post but anyway

so Donny gets home and tries to find work to the chorus of “It’ll be just like it was before!” and at first he was genuinely happy to be home and optimistic, but he slowly starts drinking more and more and is getting angrier

after the guy says “try the community theatre guild” Donny gets mad and pushes a box out of his hands and get’s beat up by security, which I didn’t realize, and he sings the “that’s what they tell me/why not believe it” section on the ground sort of nursing his bruises, curled up, clearly desperate

and he loses it more and more during the song until he has a really bad flashback (flashbacks get their own section it was so well done) and has a panic attack, which leaves him on the ground next to his piano

but when Andre Barouche gets on the radio, every time the music lifts Donny pulls himself up a little more, until you see him pulling himself together during Donny Novitski

I Know a Guy was hilarious and then it was emotional

Jimmy is a nerd, he wore a sweater vest

He knew Michael before the war, and they used to play together. Also, you learn Michael was killed by friendly fire, but Donny doesn’t elaborate.

also you learn that Michael was known as “Rubber” and I didn’t get the joke until Donny and Julia talked about it later, but it was a condom joke because their last name is Trojan, and apparently Michael has had that nickname since high school

Davey constantly makes Shakespeare references and has the best one liners, although Johnny is a close competitor for that one

Ain’t We Proud was incredible. I’m not usually much of a fan of trumpet solos but Joey Pero managed to convert me. It was insane. All of them were amazing musicians

also, scene transitions usually featured ensemble members dancing across the stage in cute little mini scenes, like a soldier and his girl walking holding hands, only swing dancing. I loved it

So until this point, you’ve only seen Julia, not met her, and Donny promised Michael he’s check on her, but it takes him until then to screw up the courage to go and he almost walks away but she said “aren’t you a little old for ding dong ditch” so he came back. I love Julia and Laura Osnes a lot.

also, for the record, I said I’d cry when Corey and Laura were on stage. I cried as soon as they were on stage. 

Donny’s clothes for the first few songs were loose, like he wasn't eating well or sleeping much, which we knew, but as soon as he was performing again they fit better

Who I Was takes place after Julia invites Donny to come for dinner, and June tells her not to ask about how Michael died because Donny might not want to talk about it

Donny comes for dinner, Beth Leavel shows her incredible comedic timing, and somehow the script and acting are perfect enough that I went from laughing to crying in .2 seconds so kudos to the Bandstand team for that one

Donny 100% tricked Julia into singing with them, he invited her to watch their set and then called her up to sing

but she agrees to join, which leads to Breathe and You Deserve It

awesome fact: in You Deserve It when they sing “I look to my left, I look to my right” they are only talking about each other, everyone dancing to their song freezes

Donny wanted to use You Deserve It as their contest song, but Nick was gonna leave and join the Dwight Ansen Band because he thought they had a better chance of winning, and they get into a physical fight over it. Donny can’t stand the thought of Nick leaving the band created by vets for vets

Love Will Come and Find Me Again is actually a poem Julia wrote that Donny set to music, and Nick stayed with them when they chose that song

They won the Ohio contest! But then they found out they had to pay for their own train and hotel, which triggered another panic attack from Donny

actually, all of them did, but they all showed it in different ways, which was so cool

Donny fell over and was clearly having an actual panic attack, Davey started cracking jokes but very aggressive ones, things like that

Donny starts Right This Way in a panic attack, just like how he sang in Just Like It Was Before

Corey Cott is so talented, everyone is talking about Ben Platt crying while singing but Corey is not only crying he’s on the ground curled up in a ball, breathing weird, crying, and still managing to belt beautifully

The Drumbeat

The Drumbeat is incredible okay it’s so good, and Donny was singing to himself more than anything about the train, because it was a promise between him and Michael, who had been his best friend during the war, that one day they’d make it home and take the train to New York, first class

even when the whole band is singing in Right This Way, Julia isn’t until the final stanza, when she takes her place in line and sings alongside them

Nobody was amazing go watch the Tony performance and multiply that amazingness by like ten

at one point a guy slid on his chair until it was literally on the edge and stopped just in time and he looked very smug about it too

I Got A Theory was adorable, the scene before it was Donny and Julia hanging out and Julia makes up the song on the spot after Donny and her talk about Michael and you learn they played together to get the troops going and Michael kept saying “faster” until he yelled “now sing” and it was both touching and funny

Julia plays the ukulele throughout the whole song again I love her and Laura Osnes

Johnny! My Boy! he’s so good! 

“I’m one of the lucky ones...because I don’t remember” I cried

Joe Carroll’s comedic timing was insane? every one of his jokes landed and it was amazing

even though he’s “on brain matter, shy” he really isn’t and he does the math in his head

after that, Donny is walking Julia home and earlier they fought about her changing her name and going by Adams (her maiden name) and she said no because so much of her life with Michael had been erased she wasn’t erasing his name too

and she pushes Donny to talk about what happened and he Explodes

and this scene is probably where I cried the most, it was just the two of them onstage, no music at all even from the orchestra, gentle lighting, and both of them were sobbing

Donny tells Julia how Michael had been in a trench on a hill for three days, no sleep, with Donny and the rest of the men you saw in the very beginning. Michael had thrown a grenade that night, while it was raining, desperate to make some kind of progress, and Donny had tried to do the same. When Donny pulled the pin, he dropped the grenade, and it got lost in the mud. Neither of them could find it, and Donny yelled “Get Out!” and dove away into another hole down the hill, but Michael wasn’t next to him. He spent the rest of the night trying to keep whatever was left from washing away, but there wasn’t even a body to bury.

Julia ran home and didn’t show up the next night to play, and Everything Happens is right after than, when Donny calls to see if Julia is coming

I still hold that Everything Happens is super important, even more so now after seeing the show. June knows what’s up.

Julia writes Welcome Home as a sort of apology poem to the band, and Donny puts it to music

Donny sings probably about a verse of it alone on stage, and the chorus, and I nearly sobbed audibly 

He also changes the lyrics to be a love song, still Welcome Home but from the perspective of a girl seeing her soldier come home

a good speech from Donny at the VA hall where they perform that version: “I’m sure when we hear them say hero, we don’t know who she’s talking about, cause none of us feel like one” 

Oliver, the owner of one of the clubs, got enough money together with the help of the city to get them to New York and cue a freaking EPIC set change that changed my life I swear but I think I’m gonna make another post about set and lighting bc this one is already long and it’s mostly just plot

so they go to New York and get told they do get to perform, because NBC tricked them so they had to go through another audition before getting to perform, and Donny and Julia have to sign a paper saying they can air the song, and they’re planning to sing Love Will Come and Find Me Again

then comes This is Life, and the entire thing is sung softly in front of Julia’s hotel room door and they were super close and like hugging and it was soft and adorable until they pulled away because they decided they couldn’t have a relationship with the baggage they share about Michael

then right before they perform, Jimmy is missing, and he shows up and reveals that NBC tricked them into giving away the right to Love Will Come and Find Me which is when Donny decides to do the original Welcome Home, the one about what it’s really like to come home from the war

The raw emotion of Welcome Home was crazy. The entire cast was insane. I cried again. Alot.

They don’t actually announce the winner, it goes right from them about to announce it to the Donny Nova Band leaving the movie theater, but you find it it was Illinois who won, but their band is doing well. 

it was so good and now I’m gonna make another post about production and acting because it was incredible but this post is already so long

#Asper talks too much #txting #bandstand #uhhhhhh i'm dead and my cause of death is Bandstand on Broadway