THIS IS A MUSICALS POST.
Okay, let's be honest. I haven't done a lot except stan Park Euntae and watch musicals the last several days. Weeks, perhaps. It honestly doesn't make me a particularly interesting person to talk to and hence I've been slow about updating my LJ. Even my last LJ entry was just about me going LOOKIT WHAT I'M DOING FOR MY NEW BIAS.
Well he's not really THAT new. I've been into him since late last year when I found that amazing Mozart video that set it all off, and of course we saw him perform at Junsu's Musical Concert (which I recently got to relive through the purchase of the DVD, hee). Sadly musical actors are very rarely noticed/acknowledged by the actual k-pop fandom, so it's yet another small fandom I've cornered myself in. Those seem to attract me the most :| maybe because they're not full of spastic fans. But I guess the thing I dislike about being in small fandoms like that is squeeing about my biases and everyone else going '...who?'
I'm going to use this post to talk about musicals. And not just Korean musicals, although the Korean versions of European musicals are going to be mentioned because of the Euntae factor. In fact, I'm listening to the Korean Mozart! OST right now. This post is very TL;DR, you guys-I apologise in advance, and do not expect you to read it all. I will try and break it up with gifs, pictures and videos so it's not a huge text-wall.
Musicals-well done musicals, that is, are a bit of a drug. A very addictive, eye-opening one. In that sense I guess it's like k-pop; you find just the right song accompanied by just the right kind of visuals and you're instantly hooked. You want more. You want the whole show the song is from, and that's just the beginning. I'm not saying that everyone is going to find a theatrical performance that has that effect on them-some people just don't like theatre, and that's fair enough. But if, like me, you're one of those people open to that kind of entertainment, you should probably check outside of Broadway if you haven't already, because there's so much amazing stuff out there.
The song that we like the call the musical gateway drug is Die Schatten Werden Langer from the German-language musical Elisabeth. In it, the character of Death using prince Rudolf's despair to try and lure him into his arms. It was the one mad_hatter__ showed me years ago that got me immediately hooked onto the rest of the show, and it's the one I show everyone else. We've gotten several people hopelessly hooked on Elisabeth through this song, especially since the slight homoerotisicm in it (the song, not the whole show) also appeals to quite a few. The whole show of Elisabeth, the Wien show which is also available on DVD, is now up on YouTube with English subtitles, something I had begun doing but now don't have to because someone else did all the hard work for me (yay!). You can find the channel here.
Elisabeth was honestly the first musical I went absolutely mad for. I had friends who were nuts for Cats or Phantom of the Opera, but honestly none of it had really held too much interest for me. But for Elisabeth I spent $70 back when I was at a rubbish job with rubbish pay to bring home the DVD from the only place it seems to be available, a German musicals website that only takes credit card, in Euro.. When the Anniversary Edition with three discs was released a few years later, I didn't think twice and bought it as well. I have watched the DVDs so many times, I couldn't accurately guess the number, and I know all the songs by heart. It's a little easier for me than some, anyway, since I'm Dutch and the German language is kind of familiar to me.
OTP fo' lyfe.
Hattie and both got heavily into Elisabeth for a while, despite the fact the show had been at its most popular over a decade before. And even now, years after I first discovered it, I still occasionally pull out the DVD and sit down to watch it.
For anyone interested, I still have direct download links up (without subtitles) in this post.
No other musical really got my attention like that, although I did enjoy the Broadway musical Wicked and saw it three times while it was here in Melbourne. Even so, all my friends seemed a lot more mad about it than I was. A few years later I found that, once again, it would be an overseas production that was going to get my attention-Mozart!, which I only discovered a little while later was by the same writer and composer as Elisabeth.
Although mad_hatter__ had already dabbled in them, I had never really thought of exploring more European musicals, but when Junsu from DBSK was cast to be the lead in a Korean remake of Mozart I sat up a little straighter and paid attention. K-Pop was my big thing at that time, so anything fancy that a k-idol got involved in, regardless of which idol it was, drew my attention. Although I had not really heard of the Mozart! musical before then, I decided to give it a chance.
It's now right up there on my list with Elisabeth.
While Hattie wanted to go to Junsu's Musical Concert for... well, duh, Junsu... I was more interested in the German musical actor Uwe Kroger being there (the original actor for Death in Elisabeth), and the fact they had promised that songs from Elisabeth would be performed. In Korean. It was a completely surreal experience actually, and one I would love to experience again, because I was completely blown away by the Mozart! Performances. Some of them even moved me to tears, plus it was all so stunningly beautiful to watch that it left us breathless. I had come for only a few reasons but had been given so much more than I had expected. On a whim I had bought the 2-disc edition of the Korean Mozart! Cast, and after seeing the show I was thrilled to have it.
Thank god for YouTube. It brought me plenty of Mozart when I searched for it. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) this was the next step into me spiralling into a never-ending whirlpool of Korean and European musical goodness, because this was when I discovered Park Euntae for the first time, and this is the video that did it for me (and if you watch only one video in this whole post, make it this one):
I had been looking for Junsu performances that weren't fancams, but I had given this one a chance, and I was blown away. Who the hell was this guy, and why was he so amazing?! I watched the video again and again. I got goosebumps every time. I read the hangeul at the beginning to find out his name and went on a frenzied search. I got nowhere. Nobody in the fandoms I crept around in really cared about Korean musical actors so the only places I could have found information/more media were Korean sites, which I was terrible at navigating. But I was in love. I needed more.
I showed that clip to anyone willing to give me a few minutes of their time, and I listened to the Mozart! soundtrack over and over. Mozart! and Elisabeth were my drugs, I was completely addicted.
When we (g_aria and I) were set to return to Korea in February, we discovered that Euntae was performing in a Korean adaptation of Kiss of the Spider Woman. As it had been a Broadway musical, that was what we had been expecting, but it soon turned out that it was going to be a two man play. I won't rehash our experience in this post since it's not a musical but a play, instead you can read about it in my earlier post here.
It was hot, anyway.
This is a perfect example of how my Korean obsession actually broadens my horizons overall-I had never heard of the book that a movie, a musical and now a play had been based on, regardless I loved the play so much regardless of the fact I could understand very little of the dialogue that I went out and bought the book, which I absolutely adored, and while I haven't yet seen the musical of it, I downloaded the 1985 movie which I then also loved so much that I recently purchased the 2-disc collector's edition DVD. Which I'm currently waiting for in the mail.
Yeah.
My love for Euntae became g_aria's love too, and as she is much more into online sleuthing than I am, she eventually stumbled on a download for Notre Dame de Paris, originally a French musical (duh) but later adapted by Korea, starring Euntae as the poet/narrator Gringoire. Although it was the Korean one we watched first, I found a torrent for the French one with subtitles, and wasted no time downloading it. It's a very visual musical; the choreography and costumes are awesome and the songs are the kind to very easily get caught in your head, they're full of energy and emotion. I was instantly in love with this musical as well, the original French version stealing my heart over the Korean remake-there's just something about the French language that makes the original version so enjoyable, plus I think the casting in the original French suits the characters more.
For anyone interested, you can download the whole (French) show via torrent with subtitles here.
Euntae love had us come across the Korean version of Hamlet in which he and Kim Seungdae, both stars of the Korean Kiss of the Spider Woman, alternated as Laertes. Although written simply as a Shakespearean play originally (as we should all know) the Koreans had adapted into a musical. When it comes to the Shakespeare plays I don't actually know very much in the way of remakes that different countries/groups have done, so I don't KNOW if the music was originally taken from a European production, I haven't looked into it quite that far, but I did find it incredibly amusing to see this particular version because I felt the music was totally inappropriate for the theme/story. Not that it made the show bad... far from it, the music was really catchy and it was actually incredibly refreshing and amusing-although I suppose Hamlet isn't really supposed to be an amusing story. Pretty much everyone in it dies or goes crazy.
Good ol' Shakespeare, amirite.
This one didn't quite grab me the way the incredibly large-scale visual ones like NDdP and Elisabeth did, but I still enjoyed watching it. The costumes are beautiful and the songs catchy, like I said before. While trying to remember the story of Hamlet I got myself confused with Macbeth so watching it without subs weirded me out because I had no idea what was going on (i.e. “ISN'T IT SUPPOSED TO START WITH WITCHES?”) XD I kind of feel ashamed, waugh. *hides*
If I can grab subs from somewhere I'll probably be able to enjoy it more. Hell, if I make myself reread Hamlet so I actually know what the hell's going on I'd probably already enjoy it more. My literature teacher would be ashamed of me.
Musicals have been big part of my fangirlism recently, both Korean and non-Korean, but aside from the couple of friends who I in turn got hooked on them it's kind of hard to find anyone to share the enthusiasm with. I'm actually still quite angry at myself for not going to see [Miso], the Korean musical that seems to be running all the time in Seoul, the two times I've been there. I think if it's still going when I go back next February I'm going to make time to go and see it, because it's all traditional Korean and looks beautiful.
If you managed to get through all that, congrats and thank you. If you got through it and watched all the videos/clicked all the links, then you're extra amazing.
Might not be for everybody, but I hope I intrigued some of you, at least a little.
Well he's not really THAT new. I've been into him since late last year when I found that amazing Mozart video that set it all off, and of course we saw him perform at Junsu's Musical Concert (which I recently got to relive through the purchase of the DVD, hee). Sadly musical actors are very rarely noticed/acknowledged by the actual k-pop fandom, so it's yet another small fandom I've cornered myself in. Those seem to attract me the most :| maybe because they're not full of spastic fans. But I guess the thing I dislike about being in small fandoms like that is squeeing about my biases and everyone else going '...who?'
I'm going to use this post to talk about musicals. And not just Korean musicals, although the Korean versions of European musicals are going to be mentioned because of the Euntae factor. In fact, I'm listening to the Korean Mozart! OST right now. This post is very TL;DR, you guys-I apologise in advance, and do not expect you to read it all. I will try and break it up with gifs, pictures and videos so it's not a huge text-wall.
Musicals-well done musicals, that is, are a bit of a drug. A very addictive, eye-opening one. In that sense I guess it's like k-pop; you find just the right song accompanied by just the right kind of visuals and you're instantly hooked. You want more. You want the whole show the song is from, and that's just the beginning. I'm not saying that everyone is going to find a theatrical performance that has that effect on them-some people just don't like theatre, and that's fair enough. But if, like me, you're one of those people open to that kind of entertainment, you should probably check outside of Broadway if you haven't already, because there's so much amazing stuff out there.
Click to viewThe song that we like the call the musical gateway drug is Die Schatten Werden Langer from the German-language musical Elisabeth. In it, the character of Death using prince Rudolf's despair to try and lure him into his arms. It was the one mad_hatter__ showed me years ago that got me immediately hooked onto the rest of the show, and it's the one I show everyone else. We've gotten several people hopelessly hooked on Elisabeth through this song, especially since the slight homoerotisicm in it (the song, not the whole show) also appeals to quite a few. The whole show of Elisabeth, the Wien show which is also available on DVD, is now up on YouTube with English subtitles, something I had begun doing but now don't have to because someone else did all the hard work for me (yay!). You can find the channel here.
Elisabeth was honestly the first musical I went absolutely mad for. I had friends who were nuts for Cats or Phantom of the Opera, but honestly none of it had really held too much interest for me. But for Elisabeth I spent $70 back when I was at a rubbish job with rubbish pay to bring home the DVD from the only place it seems to be available, a German musicals website that only takes credit card, in Euro.. When the Anniversary Edition with three discs was released a few years later, I didn't think twice and bought it as well. I have watched the DVDs so many times, I couldn't accurately guess the number, and I know all the songs by heart. It's a little easier for me than some, anyway, since I'm Dutch and the German language is kind of familiar to me.
OTP fo' lyfe.
Hattie and both got heavily into Elisabeth for a while, despite the fact the show had been at its most popular over a decade before. And even now, years after I first discovered it, I still occasionally pull out the DVD and sit down to watch it.
For anyone interested, I still have direct download links up (without subtitles) in this post.
No other musical really got my attention like that, although I did enjoy the Broadway musical Wicked and saw it three times while it was here in Melbourne. Even so, all my friends seemed a lot more mad about it than I was. A few years later I found that, once again, it would be an overseas production that was going to get my attention-Mozart!, which I only discovered a little while later was by the same writer and composer as Elisabeth.
Although mad_hatter__ had already dabbled in them, I had never really thought of exploring more European musicals, but when Junsu from DBSK was cast to be the lead in a Korean remake of Mozart I sat up a little straighter and paid attention. K-Pop was my big thing at that time, so anything fancy that a k-idol got involved in, regardless of which idol it was, drew my attention. Although I had not really heard of the Mozart! musical before then, I decided to give it a chance.
It's now right up there on my list with Elisabeth.
While Hattie wanted to go to Junsu's Musical Concert for... well, duh, Junsu... I was more interested in the German musical actor Uwe Kroger being there (the original actor for Death in Elisabeth), and the fact they had promised that songs from Elisabeth would be performed. In Korean. It was a completely surreal experience actually, and one I would love to experience again, because I was completely blown away by the Mozart! Performances. Some of them even moved me to tears, plus it was all so stunningly beautiful to watch that it left us breathless. I had come for only a few reasons but had been given so much more than I had expected. On a whim I had bought the 2-disc edition of the Korean Mozart! Cast, and after seeing the show I was thrilled to have it.
Thank god for YouTube. It brought me plenty of Mozart when I searched for it. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) this was the next step into me spiralling into a never-ending whirlpool of Korean and European musical goodness, because this was when I discovered Park Euntae for the first time, and this is the video that did it for me (and if you watch only one video in this whole post, make it this one):
I had been looking for Junsu performances that weren't fancams, but I had given this one a chance, and I was blown away. Who the hell was this guy, and why was he so amazing?! I watched the video again and again. I got goosebumps every time. I read the hangeul at the beginning to find out his name and went on a frenzied search. I got nowhere. Nobody in the fandoms I crept around in really cared about Korean musical actors so the only places I could have found information/more media were Korean sites, which I was terrible at navigating. But I was in love. I needed more.
I showed that clip to anyone willing to give me a few minutes of their time, and I listened to the Mozart! soundtrack over and over. Mozart! and Elisabeth were my drugs, I was completely addicted.
When we (g_aria and I) were set to return to Korea in February, we discovered that Euntae was performing in a Korean adaptation of Kiss of the Spider Woman. As it had been a Broadway musical, that was what we had been expecting, but it soon turned out that it was going to be a two man play. I won't rehash our experience in this post since it's not a musical but a play, instead you can read about it in my earlier post here.
It was hot, anyway.
This is a perfect example of how my Korean obsession actually broadens my horizons overall-I had never heard of the book that a movie, a musical and now a play had been based on, regardless I loved the play so much regardless of the fact I could understand very little of the dialogue that I went out and bought the book, which I absolutely adored, and while I haven't yet seen the musical of it, I downloaded the 1985 movie which I then also loved so much that I recently purchased the 2-disc collector's edition DVD. Which I'm currently waiting for in the mail.
Yeah.
My love for Euntae became g_aria's love too, and as she is much more into online sleuthing than I am, she eventually stumbled on a download for Notre Dame de Paris, originally a French musical (duh) but later adapted by Korea, starring Euntae as the poet/narrator Gringoire. Although it was the Korean one we watched first, I found a torrent for the French one with subtitles, and wasted no time downloading it. It's a very visual musical; the choreography and costumes are awesome and the songs are the kind to very easily get caught in your head, they're full of energy and emotion. I was instantly in love with this musical as well, the original French version stealing my heart over the Korean remake-there's just something about the French language that makes the original version so enjoyable, plus I think the casting in the original French suits the characters more.
For anyone interested, you can download the whole (French) show via torrent with subtitles here.
Euntae love had us come across the Korean version of Hamlet in which he and Kim Seungdae, both stars of the Korean Kiss of the Spider Woman, alternated as Laertes. Although written simply as a Shakespearean play originally (as we should all know) the Koreans had adapted into a musical. When it comes to the Shakespeare plays I don't actually know very much in the way of remakes that different countries/groups have done, so I don't KNOW if the music was originally taken from a European production, I haven't looked into it quite that far, but I did find it incredibly amusing to see this particular version because I felt the music was totally inappropriate for the theme/story. Not that it made the show bad... far from it, the music was really catchy and it was actually incredibly refreshing and amusing-although I suppose Hamlet isn't really supposed to be an amusing story. Pretty much everyone in it dies or goes crazy.
Good ol' Shakespeare, amirite.
This one didn't quite grab me the way the incredibly large-scale visual ones like NDdP and Elisabeth did, but I still enjoyed watching it. The costumes are beautiful and the songs catchy, like I said before. While trying to remember the story of Hamlet I got myself confused with Macbeth so watching it without subs weirded me out because I had no idea what was going on (i.e. “ISN'T IT SUPPOSED TO START WITH WITCHES?”) XD I kind of feel ashamed, waugh. *hides*
If I can grab subs from somewhere I'll probably be able to enjoy it more. Hell, if I make myself reread Hamlet so I actually know what the hell's going on I'd probably already enjoy it more. My literature teacher would be ashamed of me.
Musicals have been big part of my fangirlism recently, both Korean and non-Korean, but aside from the couple of friends who I in turn got hooked on them it's kind of hard to find anyone to share the enthusiasm with. I'm actually still quite angry at myself for not going to see [Miso], the Korean musical that seems to be running all the time in Seoul, the two times I've been there. I think if it's still going when I go back next February I'm going to make time to go and see it, because it's all traditional Korean and looks beautiful.
If you managed to get through all that, congrats and thank you. If you got through it and watched all the videos/clicked all the links, then you're extra amazing.
Might not be for everybody, but I hope I intrigued some of you, at least a little.