Matt's best and most important moment in bapo is Promise. It is the turning point of his character arch. We cannot know that for sure, though, because he is not the focus of the show. Matt's tragedy as a character is that he has no place in this show. Bapo is all about finding your place and owning it (Ivy: "the stage is [mine]", Nadia: "life is lived on other stages [where I am not]"). Matt's deal is that he always gets parasite-d off the stage by other characters, this is first established during Auditions when he literally has to fight Jason to be able to speak (even though this song starts with Matt alone having all the space to move and sing, yet he gets slowly pushed off), it follows on during Portrait of a Girl and then during Are You There. Matt's relationship with Ivy is telling on the matter: she rejects him off the stage, twice: 1) at the start of One Kiss, 2) during Promise.
Yet the deal is that Matt should have been the main character of any given heroic story. Any other show, musical, book, would have had him as its lead character: he is chivalrous, honest, hard working, your classic medieval hero, it is not surprising that he eventually gets cast as Tybalt, even though he is meant to be Romeo
Eventually it is even hard to classify him as a main character alongside Peter, Jason, Ivy and Nadia, because Matt does not have a solo and his character arch mostly happens behind the scene
So what happens during Promise?
Very interesting scene regarding his character. After struggling to find a way to occupy the stage and to speak freely, and after struggling with the notion of justice and honesty (he has to lie to keep Peter and Jason's couple secret, he has to put up with feeling robbed by Jason), you can see Matt eventually choosing to become a villain, if that means existing at all. In 2013!LA, he arrives on stage when Ivy is saying 'Jason, I still love you', you can see him staying on the side, looking down and facing a moral dilemma. Then he makes his entrance, finally takes the stage and speaks his mind
In 2004, after starting to say 'maybe he would love you...', Ivy and Jason turn to him in surprise and stay together. Matt represents a danger to the couple. All this to say that Matt is here represented as a classic villain
Yet this important decision that you can literally see him make is not the occasion for a monologue, like it would be the case in a drama, or of a solo, like in any given musical. You get nothing. Because Matt once again does not get to be on the stage even though he decided to become a villain in order to be on it. The writers must have known how important that split second was though, because it is turned in a solo in Bare the musical when Peter considers outing Jason (What if I told?). Peter, though. Not Matt. Matt does not get satisfaction because his motivations themselves are flawed. Once he realizes how fucked his actions were, he regretted it (Two Households), but his excuses and his mental process are once again not the occasion for a song, like it would be the case in any given musical
Most importantly, we have to listen to bare 2000:
The most important change in this version is that Matt is there at the being of Promise, with Ivy, when she says 'where have you been...'. He is then pushed off the stage by Ivy ('Matt, can you leave us alone?', to which he says 'Sure', you know, like a perfect gentleman)(actually i dont know if he stays on the side of the stage or if he leaves completely because, no video). That means he hears all Ivy and Jason's conversation
When Matt comes back, there are lines that were eventually cut out: absolute silence, no music, and he just says, 'Ivy, you're so blind in so many ways'
1. The absence of music is very unusual in bapo. Bare is an opera, it is supposed to be always sang with music in the background. Not there. Matt's words can thus be considered the only spoken line in the show
2. This echoes Role of a Lifetime, 'In the silence will he stay?', the silence initiated by Matt when outing Jason
3. The way he says those words are also threatening, partly due to the lack of music, so once again it is villain-y
4. The idea of blindness is everywhere in bapo, because it is a biblical trope: you are blind because you are lost, you are lost until you fall in love, then you will know the (God's) truth and finally see the world
5. Ivy is blind to three things imo: 1) Jason's sexuality and inherent inability to love her; 2) Matt's feelings for Ivy, which she doesn't notice; 3) What Ivy really needs in life, and that is (in Matt's eyes) to be with Matt instead of Jason
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