Anastasia and the Price of Revolution

This last spring I went on an all-out musical theater binge.  I blame Hamilton, but Wicked shares the fault, and those two together sent me on a months-long journey through Rent, Heathers, Dear Evan Hansen, In The Heights, Fun Home, Chicago, Newsies, Phantom of the Opera, Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, only to name a few.  There’s something so unabashedly fun about the kind of pseudo-drama in the campier numbers of a musical, where memorable and endearing melodies combine with a narrative to provide something that feels more substantial than fluff, but still tastes so sweet.

Now, I loved some of these.  Some of them, not so much. More often than not, I found songs I loved and portions I could just as well write off.  First acts tended to outshine second acts by a longshot, and I loved most of the opening numbers if we’re being honest.  But quality felt pretty inconsistent - by second or third listen through these soundtracks I was usually skipping around a fair bit.  And that’s all fine, it’s no easy task to produce twenty songs that all contribute to the plot that all work equally well. You have to take the good with the bad.

But with all that being said, I cannot stop thinking about Anastasia.

No, not the movie, the musical.  And I have such a love-hate relationship with this musical.  It does two things so, so well. Firstly, it actually presents a view of Russia from its citizens, caught in the crossfires of the political turmoil that led to the execution of the Romanov family and the Communist Revolution.  To what extent this portrayal is truly accurate, I’m not particularly qualified to say, but the emotional impact of exploring the inner conflict of Russian citizens from this time is really powerful. The bittersweet melancholy of “Stay, I Pray You” reminds me of the conflicted patriotism of “Edelweiss” in The Sound of Music, and I mean that as the highest praise.  And “The Neva Flows” presents the ambivalence of a Russia about the price of its own revolution.  Both of these, among others, frame this story of the lost Russian princess in a larger context, with real humans having conflicted emotions about their political realities.  And by focusing on the human element of history, the themes become universal, and Russia becomes a parable. There are moments in these songs that border on truly profound.

And on the other hand, the musical presents several lighthearted numbers that sound like they’re from an operetta, songs that are both lyrical and complex by musical theatre standards.  “We’ll Go From There” and “Quartet at the Ballet” both incorporate a remarkable amount of counterpoint, and “The Press Conference” could be mistaken as an upbeat number from a Bernstein operetta.  The Quartet at the Ballet deserves special mention for its incorporation of Tchaikovsky without actually being cheesy - the song interweaves different characters and plot-lines in a really effective way, balancing levity and depth with some success.  And the tie-in with history helps - it’s easy to assume this is the famous Ballet Russes in Paris bringing our various storylines together.

But sadly, this is as close as the musical gets to effectively bringing these two things together.  The thing is, I would watch either of these musicals - a tragic historical fiction or light operetta - on their own, but combined, it doesn’t work.  I get whiplash when I listen to this soundtrack straight through, as I’m jerked from heartfelt patriotism to Disney number and back again. And I’m not trying to diss on Disney here either, they at least have tonal consistency most of the time.  They know what they are, and they tend to do it quite well. But Anastasia the musical wanted to do both, and each side of the musical kept the other from being as great as it could have been.

Now, of course, a lot of this has to do with the movie (which technically speaking was *not* Disney, but it imitates a Disney movie so closely it’s practically indistinguishable).  This was a musical adaptation of the movie, so it had to contain those lighthearted songs from the original - “Learn to Do It” and “Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart”. But they decided to go such a different direction, a pretty bold direction at that, with the other songs that you end up with completely different themes and moods that don’t blend.

And truth be told, I didn’t care for the original movie.  It was a fine movie, and I enjoyed it and the music in it, but the backdrop of the entire plot is so dark - the slaughter of the Romanov family and the many tragedies of Communist Russia that followed are glossed over in a lighthearted opening number with St. Petersburg citizens singing about “the rumors / that get us through the day”.  There’s no sense of irony here, but almost one of necessity, as if the movie knows it needs to lighten up and get more palatable for its younger audience. So, it does, abruptly, undermining and contradicting the truly grave opening and setting. It ends up feeling like a fairy tale set in Nazi Germany, and it just doesn’t work for me.

The musical keeps that opening number, sadly, and many of the problems from the original movie.  By keeping those songs from its source, it attempts to have its cake and eat it too, attempting to present a truly compelling musical portrayal of Russian citizens caught in the crossfires of history without alienating the audience who fondly remembers the Disney-not-Disney movie of the 90’s.  I think it’s a shame. I would have loved to see a Les Mis style dark musical about this topic, and I think it could have been amazing.  But instead, we’re left with two halves that don’t fit together and an unsatisfying total product.

Nowhere is this more clear to me than in the final number of the musical.  In the finale the musical reprises “Once Upon a December”, one of the more poignant numbers of the work, a fictional lullaby sang to the Romanov princess as a child and serves a major plot point in reuniting her with her grandmother.  And after a dark penultimate number that sees Anastasia’s confront her conflicted would-be assassin, the choice feels appropriate. And yet, at the last moment, the finale abruptly veers from minor to major, and decides to shoot for triumphant rather than cathartic.  It doesn’t work. Instead, this pseudo-triumphant finish only serves to undercut Anastasia’s powerful emotional stakes on the altar of a happy ending.

When I go back and listen to Anastasia, there’s two different versions I put on.  One is fun, and the other profound. I wish they had decided beforehand which they really wanted to be.