Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism/Theatre: Difference between revisions

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** Then again, the greatest shows of the early Broadway era weren't as lightweight as people remember. ''Show Boat'' dealt fairly realistically with race relations, and not all of the good guys got happy endings. [[Rodgers and Hammerstein]]? Hooboy. ''[[Oklahoma]]'' has a song wherein the hero tries to convince his rival to commit suicide, and he later kills his rival and is universally praised for doing so. ''[[The King and I]]'' has two self-righteous egos butting heads, and one dies at the end. ''[[The Sound of Music]]''- yeah, real happy ending: they have to flee their home, leaving behind anything they can't easily carry, in order to escape the Nazis.

* Whether [[Shakespeare]]'s plays are idealistic or cynical, and how much, is highly debated. The same plays can seem very different depending which critics you read.

** Also, the characters themselves fall on different parts of the scale. Which happens to be heavily tilted towards cynicism. At the start, they range from midway through the cynical (Sweeney) to evil-but-not-either (Turpin) to falling off the idealist end (Anthony). By the end of Act 1, Anthony is about at the midway point, Sweeney's fallen off the cynical end, and Mrs. Lovett has actually risen into idealism. Once you hit the endgame, Antony is still at the midpoint, Johanna is obviously at the cynical end, Toby's, well, crazy, and Sweeney is a dot at the end of the cynical range. Mrs. Lovett seems to be the only one that actually becomes more idealistic.

* And then there's the cheerful works of [[Bertolt Brecht]]...

* The musical ''[[Man of La Mancha]]'' is practically a plea for idealism... which is quite the contrast with its original inspiration, ''[[Don Quixote]]'', who ''is'' in the cynic side but moves the slide back and forth for the sake of the funny.

* The musical ''[[Chicago]]'' announces its cynicism even before the curtain goes up:

 

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