Re: Mack and Mabel (Re: BOUNCE off-Broadway)

What I don't get is: Who really cares if the plot of Mack and Mabel
reflects what really happened?  I suppose there are a few people
remaining with intimate knowledge of the lives of silent film people
who are sticklers for accuracy.  Thank God they're a tiny percentage
of the musical theatre audience today.


> > From: ElBo...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (robert=A0armstrong) Making the character
nicer
> > does not contradict the show's assertion that Mack has "man" issues,
and=

> > can appear thoughtless and emotionally unavailable in ways that
> > frustrate the women in his life, especially while he's working at
> > building a business. The songs that refer to Mack's personality such
as
> > Wherever He Ain't and I Won't Send Roses, and the plot points such as
> > Mabel's leaving him in disgust or Mack's final too-late promise
> > --------------------------------
> > Now, right there's where you lose me-- because the *exact* opposite
was
> > true in real life. Why do they have to keep connecting his fictional
> > romantic indifference to her downfall?
>
> No, in the '74 Broadway production it just happens suddenly that
> Mabel, after she leaves the Sennett studio, turns to other things and
> gets involved in the drugs and murder. Change in the show's overall
> tone is discomforting.
>
> Part of the revision I recall was, when Mabel's drug addiction is
> first mentioned out loud, the insertion of a line that it was probably
> the hectic work schedule with Sennett that made her turn to drugs
> *before* she left his studio.
>
> Don't get the impression either way that Mack destroyed her by
> neglecting her. Mostly the show says they were starcrossed. Yes, the
> love relation****p was probably fiction.