I finished reading 13 but with a theme of suicide and a worse protagonist the musical today and my fucking god. It’s. Wow.
- it’s formatted fucky. this was the for sell copy and it was annoying formatted to where we (my class) had to flip back multiple pages between songs
- It really wanted to be prose. Like there were paragraphs of “”“actions”“” that weren’t actions at all and it was really annoying. Stop with the pretentious prose and get to what the fuck these characters are doing.
- the dialogue is so unnatural. People don’t talk this way. Subject changes happen at thw wrong time, and all the women (especially Zoe) talk with the same style. It’s annoying.
- onto the women actuually, Zoe has no consistent personality. She is literally just a character that shapes to whatever fits best in the situation. Sucks because she’s such a major character in the narrative that if she had a personality that lasted more than 10 seconds at a time she could be the most interesting character in this hell musical. A similar issue pops up with Alana in that she’s interesting and practically like Evan but not a disgusting human being. There’s no closure for her Character. I can’t tell if this story was trying to villify Heidi or not?? Like at times it really REALLY seems they are and at other times it’s not, in the end it’s apparently not but as the ending is rushed. Cynthia is under developed (especially compared to Larry who had no fucking right to get developed, fuck you)
- The pacing is probably the most blaring issue. It’s typical that you’ll see 3 narrative acts pushed in 2 acts in theater (especially musical theater) because they wanna be movies, but this is a slightly rarer case where there isn’t a second act. Of course this isn’t actually a 1 act, the universe hates me too much for that. Instead this first act goes on for the entire play, it is drawn out, the majority of the first act and like 4 scenes away from the end. It’s so fucking borrringgg. Then, suddenly, instead of an ending that has any real closure it snaps off and everything id gine and uwuwwuwuw Evan fixed my family.
- Words Fail is a fucking evil song. It’s a villain song. It’s literally a villain song, it’s so laughably try hard and desperate ti tug at your heart strings. I wanted to bash Evan’s skull in. That brings me to the biggest problem witj the story itself; Whenever it gets close, or once or twice actually does, the story (not nessacarily the Character of Evan himself) is sure to mention that he’s SOOOO anxious and sad and oh my goodness his dad left him have we told you he’s sad and anxious?????????? This is a painfully obvious attempt to make the audience sympathetic to him. It’s pitiful. Imagine being so much of a coward that you can’t let your Character do anything less than perfect without going “But He’s just sad that’s why he does it!” 60 times afterward? How does that qualify as anything but bad? And like, Evan is the only main Character who gets this. Zoe, Alana, Heidi are all instantly hated for anything less than perfect that they do, either by indirectly saying it or making poor baby Evan suddenly feel “nauseous” or “his hands clam up”
- this story isn’t sad at all if it weren’t for the fact that every single Character sounded like they were crying regardless of if the Character was happy or sad or angry. It’s not a conincidence, it’s lazy writing. When you want to make your audience feel something despite writing a boring and/or enraging musical? Make them cry. Actors can probably back me up here, there are so many actors who have the dramatic range of a dead fish but because they can cry on q and use it A LOT, they’re considered great actors. The same applies to writing, hack writers/directors will make characters constantly cry (or sound like they’re crying) to trigger empathy in their audience when they either can’t figure out or are too lazy to work to make the audience cry naturally through suspense, good dialogue, and realistic relationships. Also, plot points (especially in the second act) are raised and then dropped and that’s judt really fucking annoying and prevented me from getting even slightly emotionally invested in it. I’m just so tired with narratives about men’s anxiety and depression being about how they’re allowed to be bad people now.
It’s also painfully unfunny when it tries to be, but that ties into the bad dialogue. I cannot sympathize or empathize with Evan AT ALL. I have tried and I have listened to why other people do, and I haven’t been able to piece it together. The answers I’ve got for the most part are:
1) I don’t know (This one is obvious, and can be explained by the hack writing as described above)
2) Projection (You’re either REALLY projecting or a terrible person, probably the first. This is valid, but I cannot see how. Are we such babies that a story screaming “HE HAS ANXIETY LIKE YOU THEATER KID!!!” over and over again will make us love the Character?)
Psychoanalyzing people for how and why they like and empathize with Evan would be a field day. How do people not see how unapologetically and desperately emotionally manipulative it is? The more I think about it the more it kinda grosses me out. This is aimed at teens, you can’t really claim otherwise, and particularly the friendless anxious variety. And instead of using the power of having a fragile audience to help them grow into better people or to make them look critically at their actions or do look for help, it just does the bare minimum of acknowledging their existence. In fact there are times I’d even claim it’s got some REALLY BAD ideas for a play that takes it’s mental health aspect seriously (going off medication for anxiety and depression and showing it as something that will actually help you grow as a better person is reckless and also just, not true, even anti-medicine freaks would probably agree) it’s so reckless and I hate to see so many kids falling for it.
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