Falsettos: Thoughts on Act I vs. Act II

My first few times through Falsettos, I was struck by the feeling of quasi-disconnect between the first and second acts.  It reminded me of the difference between act breaks in Into the Woods (with its second-act “after the happily-ever-after” deconstruction) and Sunday in the Park with George (which changes in its time/place setting and all its major characters between acts.)  In all three cases, the differences can feel like jarring, and especially with Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, you can encounter folks who think the show would’ve been better off ending at the intermission.  To some extent, I do prefer the first act for all three shows, but I ultimately recognize the added depth that comes from the two sides stitching together (spoilers for Falsettos.)

Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods are both Sondheim shows from the same period in his career, so it made sense to me to see the similarities there, but it surprised me a little to get the same feeling from William Finn’s Falsettos.  In truth, though, the disconnect in Falsettos is a little more understandable, since it actually began its life as two separate one-act shows written about a decade apart; even though both halves feature the same characters and a continuation of the same story, it really is two different musicals put together!

Then I discovered that, while Falsettos has a different composer than Into the Woods and Sunday in the Park with Goerge, all three have the same bookwriter – James Lapine – and were written in the same ten-year span.  So, in part, I think this is just something Lapine does.  He takes one story and then breaks it into something else or comes at it again from a different angle.  This can have a disorienting effect, as the audience struggles to find its feet again after a dramatic shift in tone/theme or setting/characters.  But by and large, I like it.  I like the extra room it provides to really dig into the show’s ideas, to go deeper than it did the first time, and even if I tend to like the first act of these shows better than the second, I appreciate the new dimension provided by the second act and recognize how it makes the show as a whole into a richer experience.

For me, Falsettos comes at that dynamic a little backwards.  I think Act I, which began its life as the one-act March of the Falsettos, is the more sophisticated of the two, a complex character study trying to make sense of the tangled connections between a small group of incredibly-flawed people.  It’s messy and definitely not pretty, but it’s so engrossing; I love these characters and their neuroses, and I cringe at how they hurt themselves as they hurt one another in misguided attempts at self-preservation.  By contrast, Act II/Falsettoland is more straightforward and narrative-driven, still exploring strong (and highly-emotional) themes but with less of the down-and-dirty character work of Act I.  Within the context of story, two years pass between acts, and the characters are still flawed in Act II, but the level of growth and smoothing-out of their rough edges doesn’t seem entirely believable.  I love both halves of the show, but I do think in the first act is more interesting as a whole.

However, the time lapse between the creation of March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland is key to understanding these differences.  March of the Falsettos was first produced in 1981, meaning it would’ve been written mostly before the advent of the AIDS crisis (Finn recalls speaking with a doctor friend of his after an early performance and asking about the “gay cancer” he’d been hearing about.)  By the time Falsettoland came along in 1990, the world had fundamentally changed, and the show was in some way Finn (and Lapine’s) attempt to process the decade he’d just lived through using these familiar characters he already knew and cared about.  As such, Falsettoland is different because, at this point in time, Finn and Lapine were different.  The world and LGBTQ community were different, and that had to be dealt with.

That’s important to remember, that this show’s second act is set at the dawn of the crisis (Act I is set in 1979, Act II in 1981) and was written by someone who watched it happening from the frontlines.  And because AIDS in those days was so massive, terrifying, unfathomable, and tragic, that means a hyper-focus on it.  Yes, there are other things happening in Act II (like the plans for Jason’s bar mitzvah) and the characters do still snipe and argue despite their growth between acts, but Whizzer’s declining health and the family’s struggle to deal with that takes center stage because it has to.  It’s too big not to.  As Whizzer himself sings, “The many stupid things I thought about with dread / Now delight.”  The mind games and petty concerns and power struggles fall away in the wake of the encroaching shadow, and I think that’s reflective of life at that time for those caught in the eye of the storm.