Friedrich: Mythos und Tragödie (The Musical)

[selenak]

Thanks to prinzsorgenfrei, I watched the musical Friedrich: Mythos und Tragödie, of which I previously knew some of the songs - the ones which are up at YouTube - but not all, and had read a summary in German.



So, impressions: first of all, the summary had left me with the idea that it was two thirds Crown Prince Fritz, one third Old Fritz. Which technically is true, but because Old Fritz is so often on stage, due to the framing narration, he's as much a presence in the story as Crown Prince Fritz. (Which is a plus in my book, btw: both because it's somewhat cheating if you want to do something about Frederick the Great and emphasize the young prince over the monarch, thereby saving yourself the ambiguity, and because Chris Murray (Old Fritz), at least in this performance, is a better actor and singer than Tobias Bieri (Crown Prince Fritz.)

Secondly, and unsurprising, since I had seen the excerpts and read the summary: Hamilton, this is not, neither in terms of the music or the lyrics/dialogue (i.e. in terms of "how to put on a personal and political 18th century story into a two plus hours musical). Songs and script are on a workman level. This said, the script does try something ambitious - antihero as central character, avoiding the easy solution of limiting themselves to young Fritz and ending with his ascension to the throne and/or Silesia 1 - , and despite the obvious and necessary cutting down of the rl cast to just a few characters and the gratitious het (I'll get to that), a few actual historical details ended up in it I hadn't expected to see, such as FW pressing Fritz to renounce his place in the succession (we don't see any of the non-Wilhelmine siblings on stage, and this is indeed the only indirect acknowledgement of their, or rather of AW's existence) and Fritz' reply, some fragmentary quotes from his letters to Wilhelmine from Küstrin worked into the fictional letter adressed to Katte from Küstrin, Fritz dissolving the Potsdam Giants as a money saving gesture, or the way the argument with Wilhelmine (which for my money is one of the three best musical numbers, along with Ebenbild and the early Fritz/Wilhelmine duet) works in some actual Fritz-and-siblings (not just Wilhelmine) arguments from rl. And they do try to explain why Grumbkow & Seckendorff were against the English marriages, though this brings me to the gratitious het.

It's not just the Katte/Wilhelmine but also Grumbkow/SD (which certainly must be the winner over least likely pairing of a Frederician story); here, Grumbkow fools SD into thinking he's on her side while really scheming against the English marriages. He's also there to pick up the letter in which Fritz reveals all about the Katte connection of his escape which Wilhelmine and SD inexplicably dropped and are leaving behind. I mean, this is far quicker and easier for the audience to understand than how Fritz writing to Katte ended up with the wrong Katte and then with FW, I get it, but given how frantic SD and Wilhelmine were about burning and rewriting letters in rl, it took me out of the mood and made me giggle. The other thing which made me grin regarding our enterprising duo of schemers was that Seckendorff actually gets played with an Austrian accent. Guys, yes, he worked for Team Vienna, but he was actually a Franconian. Quite a different dialect. Oh, and then there's this bit, when newly ascended to the throne Fritz shows his father's council what's what and confronts Seckendorff, who in this version is still Imperial envoy:

Fritz: Is there anyone except for myself in this room whom you (Seckendorff) haven't bribed?

(Historical Seckendorff: Excuse you. I bribed you as well. You took my money gladly. That you didn't deliver was certainly not for lack of spending on my part.)

Other than being fooled by Grumbkow, SD in her few appearances is presented as a tender mother (to both Fritz and Wilhelmine), without a song of her own. She's not much there. FW is his worst self and has to be talked out of executing Fritz by Grumbkow (showing up with the pinched letter that makes Katte the alternate victim). Mind you, given the solid foundation for making him Evil Ogre Dad in this musical, I did not expect anything else. (The complexity comes in by the way the musical makes a big thematic thing out of Fritz, contrary to what FW thinks, actually sharing traits with him, the more the more time passes, and the song Ebenbild in which he finally faces this and admits FW has won is the emotional climax of the show and the start of his very late liberation.

The equation the show draws isn't particularly new: i.e. his father's brutality culminating in Küstrin created Frederick the Great and his need to compensate with war-won glory and praise while also ensuring life long loneliness, and in terms of history, you can complain about simplification (we talked about this; given the spirit of the age, the existence of the most modern and best drilled army of Europe and the shape of the Prussian territories, even a lightside version of FW as a father would have not made Fritz into a pacifist, and he'd still gone for Silesia, though he might not have been such an attack-attack-attack type of general), but it certainly works as an emotional arc for a musical. By starting with Kunersdorf, then with a time jump into his final years, making Old Fritz confront his life via Ghostly Katte and showing him trying everything to avoid both the memory of the execution specifically or the admission that he did not become what he dreamed of being as a young prince but rather something else, you get a bit of what we call Küchenpsychologie ("kitchen psychology") feeling, but, again: works for a musical.

Ghostly Katte, and Katte in general, I'm in two minds about. The premise itself - Ghost! Katte challenging and making Old Fritz think about his life - is a good idea, though he's a bit too much Fritz' buried conscience and too little a person in his own right for my taste. I also note that in the two full depictions and the one audio depiction of the execution, we get Fritz apologizing and asking for forgiveness, but don't hear Katte's reply. (I'm also nerd enough to complain about his wearing a shirt and his head being covered by a paperback/hood - I mean, after all the trouble we went to accumulating contemporary execution descriptions, it's just a Pavlovian reaction to mutter about this.) This is because Fritz doesn't get forgiven/can't forgive himself until the very end of the musical, I get it, but still - that Katte said it is such an important part of what makes the character in any version.

The other problem with Katte is that partly, though not exclusively due to pairing him up with Wilhelmine romantically and partly due to lacking scenes with Fritz on his lonesome before Fritz springs the "let's escape together" idea on him, the audience just doesn't get a sense of what makes this Katte feel strong enough for Fritz to risk this. I did get the impression the script wanted to have his cake and eat it in terms of Fritz and Katte, i.e., on the one hand, there's the invented romance with Wilhelmine for the no-homo-crowd, on the other, the way Fritz reacts throughout does get across, imo, that he's having feelings for Katte himself. But other than feeling sorry for Fritz because of FW's behavior, I didn't see this musical's Katte being given anything that shows me him having strong emotions about the brother as well as the sister back - right until Fritz begs him to come with him on the escape, and Katte is unable to say no. It's a well played scene, but emotionally, it comes out of nowhere because we did not see this Katte and Fritz develop their friendship, with the musical so set on presenting them and Wihelmine as a trio. (I should add that the Katte/Wilhelmine romance isn't that convincing, either, since it's on a "she's a girl, he's a boy" level, but at least it's there so her being upset that her brother and her boyfriend want to run away and leave her behind to FW's tender mercies does not come out of nowhere.)

Which is to say: you don't even have to ship Fritz/Katte to be dramatically somewhat unsatisfied on the lack of build up for this relationship, which stands in disproportion to what the structure of the musical itself (i.e. the Ghost Katte and Old Fritz confrontations) would have demanded. It's also telling that Fritz and Katte have no duet.

Fritz and Wilhelmine have two, and despite the gratitions Wihelmine/Katte, that makes their relationship the more most successfully depicted in the musical. (Other than Fritz/Power as compensation for Fritz & FW.) I had known the early Wir beide gehören zusammen duet, but not the late one. Now explaining about Marwitz, the Erlangen journalist, and lunch with MT would not have been stage friendly, so the script goes for another element, the (surrounded by pro-MT territories) little Bayreuth wanting to remain neutral (which was a thing, and of course Fritz' assumption that all the principalities his sisters had married into were automatically his subjects subordinate allies was a thing between him and his other brothers-in-law and sisters, too) as the trigger for the argument between Fritz and Wilhelmine when she visits him at some nebulous point in the timeline which is somewhere in the early 1750s (since Voltaire is there, and Sanssouci) but actually incorporates their fallout from the mid 40s) . This is easier to understand for a newbie audience, and also isn't treated as the entire problem but just the thing that lays open the problem. It's a fierce duet with both performers really bringing it, and it culminates with Fritz demanding submission and getting it, and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

Since I mentioned Voltaire: as I expected from having watched Bienvenue in Sanssouci, his number, on YouTube, he's there as the comic relief and played with maximum camp. (Though comic relief or not, this number and the following scene with the table round at Sanssouci do make it clear that the "I'm just a philosopher here and a man of letters" thing is not workable because King Fritz still expects his rules to be obeyed, though funnily the show has Maupertuis, not Voltaire, make the mistake of going against the rules and getting a royal reproof as the result.) There is no mention of the big Fritz/Voltaire implosion and fallout. Mind you, what we get is Katte sarcastically replying to Fritz' boast that he got the idol of his youth to come and join him in Sanssouci with the observation that Fritz is paying Voltaire a large enough salary for this.

(To which the Voltaire in my head said: My good man, you overestimate our boyfriend's generosity and underestimate my business acumen. Let's not forget that this man haggled about my travelling expenses with me. On the other hand, I had decided early in my life that if money without talent is for fools, talent without money is asking for humiliation, and thus ensured I'd be a wealthy man through my own mercenary efforts. Trust me, I made more money due to said efforts than I ever received from my Prussian Alcina. The salary really wasn't what kept me in this mantrap of a country for three nerve-wrecking years.)

The biggest ensemble number is Sieben Jahre Krieg, which is another "so not Hamilton" moment but here I mean it not in terms of script or musical quality; in terms of how war is depicted in a post WWII German musical versus a American musical. "The World is Upside Down" has very much a "yay us Americans!" vibe, leaving no doubt that the "right" side won. There is no vilification of the British soldiers, no, but that the War of Independence itself was a necessary and good and glorious thing is treated as a given. Meanwhile, "Friedrich: Mythos und Tragödie" has Ghostly Katte dispute Fritz' claim he was forced into this war from the get go and Sieben Jahre Krieg is a complete condemnation of said war (and by implication, all of Fritz' wars), not in a "MT was right" manner but in a "all these people died for his mixture of ego and brokenness" manner, and it leads up to Fritz' big breakdown number "Ebenbild", acknowledging his inner FW.

The award for most cringeworthy lyrics goes to: the Orzelska-seduces-Fritz number in Dresden. (Though I will say that all the praise certainly works with his praise kink. *g*) It's not that the musical tries to make more of the episode than it was - it doesn't - but that writing sexy lyrics that aren't unintentionally funny is hard, and here they missed the mark.

Most bewildering twist from history not already named: FW forced (King August makes him) to leave Fritz and Wilhelmine (who in this version has come along to Dresden as well) at August's court for two more months after departing himself. Yeah, no. OOC for Musical!FW and even more so for RL FW. But I get the musical's wish to give the kids a break.

In conclusion: marks for effort, but also, I can see why this has not been revived for a good long while, as opposed to, say, Elisabeth, when it comes to German language musicals picking a historical subject.

A second review of this musical by the musical far more astute than I cahn:



I HAVE FINALLY WATCHED IT. Thank you so much prinzsorgenfrei for this musical!! Honestly, basically all you have to do is make a musical about, well, anything, and I will have ALL THE FEELINGS about it and I'm so happy to have gotten the chance to watch and understand it thanks to your subtitles! :D Those were a labor of love indeed <3 (And sorry it took me so long to watch -- I've had issues watching anything for the past year (idk why, my bizarre response to 2020 apparently??), and have just gotten to the point where I can do so again.)

So I wrote most of this and then went back and found the discussion with selenak's review (and have added in some replies to that conversation), and was rather charmed to see how much we agreed :) )

It was interesting coming to this as someone who now knows a little, versus if I'd watched it a year ago, and I was impressed by how historical it actually was! Maybe I just have super low expectations due to the way US entertainment generally treats historical subjects (Hamilton was a notable exception in mostly trying to follow the history and for the most part not over-romanticizing it) but... I loved that we got August the Strong and Grumpkow and Seckendorff and even a mention of Maupertuis :D and that it didn't shy away from what Old Fritz became, and how that contrasted with Young Fritz. (Which really might be American Broadway low expectations on my part? Like, if, oh, say, Frank Wildhorn or Andrew Lloyd Weber (who admittedly isn't American, but same deal) got hold of Fritz' story, I suspect there would be... a lot less of Old Fritz in it.)

I also thought it got a lot of the feel right; the one thing I kind of thought was weird -- besides the big het elephant in the room, getting to that -- was how Wilhelmine was played as basically relentlessly cheery, which was definitely not the impression I'd gotten of her from the memoirs. I mean, there's some libretto textual evidence that she's putting on the best face possible, and also her function in the musical as foil and central relationship with Fritz means it might work better for her to be cheerful -- but it was still a little ?? to me.

I'd purposely tried not to spoil myself by e.g. reading selenak's review beforehand (although I did see enough that Grumpkow/SD was spoiled for me, whoops -- but perhaps for the best, lol), but I'd seen a couple of the clips on youtube that selenak had shown us before. And yet, even having seen the clips I was unprepared for the overwhelming het weirdness of Katte/Wilhelmine and the near-absence of Fritz/Katte or even Fritz & Katte. Like... Katte meets both of them, he's immediately assumed by all three of them to have paired off with Wilhelmine, and then that's... kind of it... until later on Fritz is like "you're my best friend I want to escape with you!!" and I was like "...he is? What happened? Was there a whole scene I missed?" (There was not a whole scene I missed.)

Fritz is definitely played as more into Katte than strictly platonic friendship, but there was absolutely no chemistry or attempted chemistry between them, either romantic or platonic, and not even any really good friendship moments. Some of this was Katte's actor, who seemed almost to be shying away from Young Fritz sometimes, but a lot of it was just the lack of any text. (Contrast Rodrigo and Carlo in Verdi; you could even cut the friendship duet bits of Dio che nell'alma infondere, and act it totally non-slashily, and Act II would still give you no doubt of the friendship between these two.) Which makes it not very resonant at all when Katte is executed, much less as the ghost who is talking to Old Fritz. Knowing the ship history (and thinking of it a bit as a dramatization of mildred's Pulvis et Umbra) I still enjoyed it, I guess. And yet the part of me that was watching it as a self-contained musical was like "...why is Katte here?" and I imagine if you didn't really know the history very well it would not make much sense at all!

(I must admit laughing a bit when they do the letter-play where Katte drops a letter which Grumbkow picks up and gives to FW, and FW is all "Katte has betrayed me!!" Schiller strikes again, I'm betting! :) Or perhaps it's convergent evolution -- after all, it's rather easier, and therefore dramatically sensible, to think of FW feeling personally betrayed by Katte, and letters are a canon-relevant way of getting that information across... but...)

Random bit that totally made me laugh (given how much knowledge about Fritz there was on display, I feel that someone here was having fun):

Old Fritz: I got Voltaire to come see me! He read my poems! [Direct quote from prinzsorgenfrei's subtitles:] And that he came all the way to Potsdam shows how much he liked them!
Me: Oh Fritz. Oh Fritz.

I thought Fritz & Wilhelmine was quite well done, and though someone not in fandom wouldn't necessarily come out of the play shipping it (though there was definitely subtext there, which I thought was hilarious), I totally bought their close relationship in a way I didn't buy Fritz & Katte at all. The Wilhelmine scene where she argued with him about wanting Bayreuth to remain neutral was amazing. (And I thought that was a brilliant elision of history; lunch with MT, much as I adore that bit of history, wouldn't have worked nearly as well in a two-hour musical.) And now, selenak, I understand what you meant about the curtsey at the end -- her relating to him as the King she has just submitted to, not her beloved brother, ouuuuch.

And at the very end of the musical, I kinda loved that Katte slipped away during the final trio, leaving Young Fritz and Wilhelmine alone together. Though speaking of incestuous subtext: not only does Katte disappear, no longer coming between the two of them if you know what I mean, but she is wearing a white dress in the finale which I realize is supposed to symbolize that she is dead, but for this American audience member it also LOOKS LIKE A WEDDING DRESS and they're standing up on a platform like two figures on a wedding cake! I'm just saying.

The music was for the most part... selenak called it "workman level" in her review, and that's a good way of describing it; it did the job of making me invested (seriously, make anything into a musical and I will suddenly be emotionally involved in a way I wasn't before) but it wasn't at all memorable. The chorus numbers were for the most part particularly mediocre; often I really like the chorus numbers in musicals, but there was nothing in these that I found melodically or harmonically particularly catchy. The only song I could even take a stab at recalling the melody afterwards is "Sieben Jahr Krieg," which has that as its hypnotic refrain, and especially at the beginning of the song is rather devastatingly staged, with Old Fritz frowning stock-still at his desk in the middle while the chorus-stylized war is swirling around him. (Later in the song they start dancing around, which I think was supposed to evoke the frenzy of war but which I feel didn't work so well.) And I've forgotten that one too, a day later. Oh, and I did very much like the FW and Fritz duet ("Die Schande Preußens") about how Fritz is a disgrace to Prussia because he doesn't like war, etc. -- the neat thing was how FW and Fritz traded their melodic line back and forth, prefiguring the way Fritz takes on FW-like qualities later on. (Though I feel they lost a great opportunity for a callback when Fritz sings about how he's totally going to invade Silesia -- or maybe they didn't; although it's not the same melody as Die Schande Preußens, it's got enough harmonic commonality that on first watch-through I wondered if it was the same tune, which maybe was intentional and if so good job.)

Old Fritz (Chris Murray) is in my opinion by far the strongest singer in the cast; he's really good, with a resonant voice. So good that when it goes from his powerful solo (Ebenbild) to the finale where Young Fritz, Wilhelmine, and Katte have a trio, I had a moment of disorientation of "...why did the singing just get substantially more mediocre? Oh, because Old Fritz isn't singing anymore," which is probably not what you want your audience to be thinking at the grand finale. (I've now gone back and looked at the previous comments and saw prinzsorgenfrei said Bieri (Young Fritz) wasn't having a good day, which yeah, I'd totally buy. But even if he were having a good day, Murray's voice is substantially darker and richer than the others' (in part I imagine just because he's older and his voice has settled), and I don't think that was considered in the transition to the trio.)

Of course, this was the other thing I was thinking near the end:

Everyone in the musical: Old Fritz, you're such a terrible person that you're all alone!
Me: What about Fredersdorf?? ...oh, well, I guess he's dead at that point. What about Heinrich?
Heinrich: Leave me out of this!