It occured to me today that while I know the basics about important and influential movies that I’ve never watched, I know almost nothing about famous theatre shows. Phantom of the Opera has a guy in a mask, Cats is about cats or something and Rent is about the gays. Thats about the extent of my knowledge. So go ahead and give me the low down on what I need to know about shows that are famous enough to have entered into pop culture.
Les Miserables is about some miserable people.
Open spoilers or no? I’ll play it safe and assume it’s not.
Miss Saigon was about a Vietnamese girl forced to sell her body to survive. Falls in love with her first client, a GI. They plan to marry but due to circumstances, he left in the last flight out of Saigon and she didn’t. Fast forward a couple of years and she’s in Bangkok lap dancing. And she has a kid. Guess who the father is? GI boyfriend, now married, tracks her down in Thailand and plans to bring the kid back to the States. By this time, audience is going, “Just the kid? This won’t end well.” Indeed it doesn’t. Kid gets to meet biological father, mom shoots herself.
Cats is a musical about a bunch of cats. That really is about all there is to it. Most of the lyrics are based on T.S. Eliot’s poetry about cats. The performers are all elaborately made up to look like and act like cats. It’s a fun, light-hearted, somewhat eclectic show, but there’s really no plot to spoil.
Same thing with Mamma Mia. Sure, there’s a paper-thin plot about the daughter getting married but really, you only buy the tickets to hear the ABBA songs.
Jesus Christ Superstar is about the last sevem days of Jesus’s life.
Not so much.
There are gay characters in the play, however, that is not what the play is “about”. Rent is an adaptation/modernization of Puccini’s opera La Boheme. Although the setting is moved from Paris to modern day (well, early 1990s) NYC and the disease is changed from tuberculosis to AIDS, the story remains quite close.
If you get a chance you should really see it. It’s great. The film pales in comparison to the live show, but it’s better than not seeing it at all.
I think all the lyrics are taken right out of a book of poems by Eliot called Old Possums Book of Practical Cats except for a couple words.
Miss Saigon is a more updated version of Madama Butterfly, which is set in WWII. (Except the soldier in Butterfly is more of an ass). So there ya go. Two spoils in one.
Look up the the shows you want spoiled on Wikipedia. They have pretty good summaries of all of the ones you mentioned.
And for the record, Rent is about a bunch of young artists living in NYC who are really poor, and for some reason, they’re somewhat surprised about that. Yeah, and there’s AIDS and drugs and sex and stuff.
Yes, with two notes. One, I couldn’t remember the name of the book this morning when I wrote that post. Two, actually, the song “Memory”, probably the best known song from the musical, because one can sing it and enjoy it without having any connection to cats, was not written by Eliot.