London and NYC versions of the show
Re: London and NYC versions of the show
Personally, I think the show's stronger if Tony stops Jackie before he goes into the mine. For dramatic purposes, Jackie needs to be brought to the brink of scabbing, but he doesn't need to make the irrevocable step of actually scabbing. Simplifies explaining him still being accepted by the other miners if he doesn't go down, even for a single day.
Re: London and NYC versions of the show
Hmmm. I had always thought that Jackie (Greg) was crying because he was sorry about hitting Tony and/or sorry about crossing the picket line, since he knew Tony was so dead-set against him doing it. Admittedly, I'm not as personally wrapped up in the miners' strike as I might be if I was from a mining region (in either England or the U.S.). But I would think the audience would be forgiving since they knew Jackie was going back to work to give Billy a chance to go to the RBS. Surely I'm not the only one who interpreted it this way, as I was always under the impression that he had indeed crossed the picket line to work with the scabs. It never occurred to me - despite numerous viewings of the movie and the musical - that Tony stopped him from doing this - only that he tried to stop him.StevenKing wrote:In the movie he is stopped before he does something he can't be forgiven for. I think it was changed on broadway to make it more shocking and it succeeds BUT it can only be done here, in the UK the cultural differences would get too much disdain for Dad and he wouldn't be forgiven in the eyes of the audiences( never mind the miners). At first it didn't work well here either till Greg started to bawl he was sorry later on.
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Re: London and NYC versions of the show
In the movie and London Tony trys and suceeds in stopping him, in USA he's not given the chance till afterward to try and stop him from doing it AGAIN.some of those miners look like they want to rip him limb from limb and only DEEP friendship is keeping them back and looking for an explanation. I just think in the UK you DON'T cross the picket line for ANY reason. Here we can understand it more without the underlying ideology getting in the way.