realizing i never posted my mince thoughts on the rest of the new principal year four cast (chloe is great and we already know that) so here you go - they’re gonna be a a bit of a jumble and also there’s less of them because my eyes were kinda glued to maddie oops
- god i love ahmed’s charles
- he’s on of my favorites ever
- having a black actor as charles makes the start of the show even more heartbreaking
- his dancing in the entire show, especially jft, is incredible
- when they’re meeting ivor, ahmed taps chloe on the shoulder to make her turn away before literally crawling under the rope to get into the gargoyle club. not sure if this is a him specific thing or just my first time noticing it but i genuinely lost it laughing at the way he frantically crawled
- there was no use of monty OR ewen pre jft
- the way he and charlotte do the post dear bill scene is heartbreaking
- during the stabby knife table thing with charles (i cannot remember what that’s called rn) colm REALLY wants to stab him
- his charles feels so self aware that he’s different but he clearly has no idea how to “fix” it or how to make people less off put by him
- his charles felt like the most grounded/realistically autistic portrayal of charles, not sure if that was what he was going for but that’s what i got
- crazy german dance moves
- the way he says importante is so so so good
- i don’t know why but his masterman might be my favorite ever
- i’ve seen people (rightly) say that jeff!spilsbury put those bodies there himself, well colm!spilsbury has a bloodlust for the audience and wants them to be his bodies
- he is SO physical in the role, whenever he’s playing a character that isn’t hester/the captain/an admiral he is running and leaping and almost as airborne as maddie
- THE THING about his performance that stuck out to me was after a truly devastating ‘dear bill’ he waited to turn around. almost as if hester is caught in memories and doesn’t think about the fact her colleagues are seeing her in that moment. i’ve never seen anyone else wait so long before turning away and it broke me. such a good choice, especially for people (like me) who are expecting hester to turn and hide her tears immediately. it lets you see how upset she is in that moment before attempting to regain her composure.
- willie watkins has crazy little wiggles that i love
- dublin accent JUMPSCARE at the end, i literally jumped out of my seat despite knowing he was from dublin
- very cute with chloe and the hevan date at the end
- her vocals in all the ladies are amazing
- a very self-assured jean from the very start
- i don’t quite remember this but one of my notes is “charlotte bill hat wiggling” do with that as you please
- her steve is so fucking done with this shit, it’s so good
- steve and juan were definitely going in for a kiss, shoutout to all the huelva polycule fans
- i don’t have as many notes on charlotte simply because i thought her acting was lacking a little? not bad, and not unenjoyable in the slightest. but i felt like her facial expressions were just not there, to the point where i’m wondering if she’s maybe had botox or something. again, no hate on her performance and maybe i just caught her on a bad day or i just need to see her again to fully fall in love with her jean. one of my notes is that she’s very “stoic” which i think was just me trying to articulate that her acting fell slightly flat when compared to the other four on that stage. maybe i’m just stupid and delusional who knows lol.
very awkward moment after stage dooring where i happened to be walking in the same direction as her and ahmed as they left which made me worried they thought i was following them. this happened to me with reeve carney and eva noblezada and i made a detour that added thirty minutes onto my walk just so they wouldn’t think i was following them (there’s a lot more to this story actually, i might talk about it some day). the problem this night was that i was actually slightly in front of them but close enough that i could hear their conversation and i wanted to hide in a bush.
