More about Mama Mia
One thing I noticed during the production had nothing to do with the acting, the singing, the score or any of that... it was the moon.
During the opening scene, there was a small gibbous moon hanging in the back of the scene--one of those "photo-real" shots where you can nearly count the craters in the face of the moon. And, it being early in the show when I'm still in an easily distracted state, I thought about it being kind of sad that, since we've been to the moon a few times and we now have all these high resolution pictures of the face of the moon, that it's no longer fashionable to just hang a plain moon up in the sky. Kind of takes all the romance out of it.
Well, in the final scene of the show, the moon comes back. And this time it's a really big, full moon that basically fills the back of the scene. And it's that old-fashioned, plain-faced moon. No craters or photo-realism allowed. And it occurred to me that it was a nice juxtaposition to that earlier moon... the small, photo-real gibbous moon. Because early on in the show, it's really all about real world stuff... getting married, Sophie finding her father, dealing with mom's past... messy, everyday types of things. But at the end of the show, the two young lovers are off on an idealistic adventure to try and find their future. And here, hanging in the sky, instead of that boring old photo-real moon, is a big, glorious, romantic moon, beckoning them on into the unknown. So I was no longer bothered (or disappointed, I guess would be a better way to put it) about that earlier moon. It was all a very nice use of setting to reflect the tone of the piece.
One thing I noticed during the production had nothing to do with the acting, the singing, the score or any of that... it was the moon.
During the opening scene, there was a small gibbous moon hanging in the back of the scene--one of those "photo-real" shots where you can nearly count the craters in the face of the moon. And, it being early in the show when I'm still in an easily distracted state, I thought about it being kind of sad that, since we've been to the moon a few times and we now have all these high resolution pictures of the face of the moon, that it's no longer fashionable to just hang a plain moon up in the sky. Kind of takes all the romance out of it.
Well, in the final scene of the show, the moon comes back. And this time it's a really big, full moon that basically fills the back of the scene. And it's that old-fashioned, plain-faced moon. No craters or photo-realism allowed. And it occurred to me that it was a nice juxtaposition to that earlier moon... the small, photo-real gibbous moon. Because early on in the show, it's really all about real world stuff... getting married, Sophie finding her father, dealing with mom's past... messy, everyday types of things. But at the end of the show, the two young lovers are off on an idealistic adventure to try and find their future. And here, hanging in the sky, instead of that boring old photo-real moon, is a big, glorious, romantic moon, beckoning them on into the unknown. So I was no longer bothered (or disappointed, I guess would be a better way to put it) about that earlier moon. It was all a very nice use of setting to reflect the tone of the piece.
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