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The Woobie/Theatre: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
* Eponine from ''[[Les Misérables (theatre)|Les Misérables]]'', especially in the musical. She's abused by her parents, is always alone, and falls in love with Marius, who doesn't love her back. After she visits the middle of rebellion to see him, he asks her ''to deliver a letter from him to the girl that he does love''. She ends up taking a bullet during the fighting and dying (although she dies happy because he's there comforting her).
** In the book, she's much more of a [[Stalker with a Crush]], although she's still quite sympathetic. Though that does NOT give her fans white card to bash Cosette for either [[Die for Our Ship|
** You've got to hand it to Cosette, too, when it comes to woobiedom. First, she gets separated from her mother. Then she gets berated, teased, overworked, starved, beaten, and deprived of adequate clothing by the Thenardiers. At one point, she wraps a small knife in rags and sings to it, pretending that it's a baby doll. Things do improve considerably for her, but still.
** Jean Valjean himself. Granted, he dies happy, but throughout the course of the book, all his suffering (and there's a lot of it) is derived from his desire to simply help other people. The man spends nineteen years in jail because he was trying to feed his sister's family (granted, fourteen of those years are his own damn fault) and only gets the law back on his trail because he saved a man's life.
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* The title character of Benjamin Britten's opera ''[[Peter Grimes]]''.
* Jack Point in [[Gilbert and Sullivan]]'s ''[[The Yeomen of the Guard]]''.
* Tobias Ragg from ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (theatre)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]''. A Victorian orphan, possibly mentally handicapped [[Alternate Character Interpretation|depending on the production]], abused by Signor Pirelli until he's taken in by Mrs. Lovett, for whom he develops a deep and sadly misguided devotion. When he discovers just what's been going into those meat pies of hers, he literally [[Go Mad
** The movie version makes it even worse, since the depictions of Pirelli's physical violence were so much more extreme (and bloody) than it generally is in stage productions. Not to mention the fact that in the movie, Toby really looks like a ''little kid'', whereas he's generally played by a guy in his mid- to late-teens or early twenties on stage, since it's really not child-appropriate material.
*** Toby doesn't ''look'' like a little kid, he ''is'' a little kid.
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* Pretty much everyone from [[Avenue Q]]. [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] in "It Sucks to be Me" and "Schadenfreude".
* Olive from [[The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee]]. Her mother lives in India and Olive never hears from her and she rarely hears anything from her dad, either.
* Patrice from [[
** Once Archie stops acting like a [[Jerkass]], he becomes this, too.
* Carmen from ''Fame'', though she'd probably deny it.
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* MacDuff from ''[[Macbeth]]'', who has lost his whole family to the title character's paranoia. And in the scene where he learns of this, it is revealed that Scotland is ''full'' of woobies.
* This troper would like to put forward a case for Horatio from ''[[Hamlet]]'' as Woobie. He turns up in Denmark for the King's funeral (presumably partly for his friend Hamlet's benefit, though it appears that he didn't actually get a chance to see Hamlet until Gertrude and Claudius' wedding). Then he gets his whole worldview blown out of the water by the appearance of the Ghost, watches Hamlet's emotional issues (or outright insanity, depending on the interpretation) take him over and can do nothing about it. And at the very end, most of the cast suddenly drops dead around him and Hamlet dies in his arms. No wonder he tries to kill himself.
{{quote|
...If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story. }}
* [[Girl Next Door|Gertrude McFuzz]] from [[Seussical]]. She's in love with her next door neighbor, Horton, although he never notices her. Plus, she is really self conscious about her one-feathered tail.
* Blanche Dubois from [[A Streetcar Named Desire]]. First of all, she fell in love only to discover that her Husband was gay. Then said Husband killed himself, partially over something Blanche herself said. Blanche becomes slightly unhinged after that, turning to promiscuity because it's the only thing that makes her feel validated and living in a fantasy world because she hates her real life so much. It was her Brother in law who finished her off, though- firstly, by telling her new partner, Mitch, about her past, resulting in Mitch leaving her; and then, finally, by raping her, which caused her yet more emotional damage. When Blanche tried to tell her sister about the rape, her sister chose to disbelieve her and pack her off a mental institution.
* Stanhope from R.C Sherrif's play 'Journey's End'. Set in a trench in [[WW 1]], the play teems with Woobie's, but Stanhope stands out mostly because the poor thing is so young and so damaged. When he gets drunk and finally breaks down you just want to get a huge orange shock blanket and cuddle him to death.
* Audrey from [[Little Shop of Horrors]]. She's trapped in a relationship with the most [[Depraved Dentist]] in New York-and a [[Domestic Abuser]], at that. {{spoiler|He dies, but Audrey's next, more promising, relationship, with Seymour, proves to be fatal, when the carnivorous plant that he leaves lying around kills her. [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|Her dying words cause the extinction of the human race, as she asks Seymour to feed her to the plant.]]}}
* [[Handsome Lech|Robert]] in [[Company]]. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taKy678J_jI You don't even have to see the whole show to think "Awwww!"]
* [[The Drowsy Chaperone]]: He doesn't look it, but {{spoiler|Man in Chair}} has a ''complicated'' past.
{{quote|
* Beth from [[Little Women]] does everything for her family, and {{spoiler|dies before they can repay her}}. Well, except Jo.
{{tropesubpagefooter}}
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