Rogers: The Musical

It is important for people to understand that when the official first trailer for Hawkeye dropped I saw the part about Rogers: The Musical and lost my entire mind. To me this was a gift brought down from the Heavens to bring me, personally, the kind of warm glow of joy and satisfaction that normally only comes when, oh let's say Dan Levy invites me over for brunch because while I do not think he would ever date me there is nothing saying the two of us can't enjoy a quiche together.

Naturally I had to comment. And... comment. And comment.

Ahem.

So for prosperity and because we all know damn well I'm going to be linking to it repeatedly when Hawkeye comes out, please enjoy this reformatted version of my tweet thread on Rogers: The Musical.

(Bullets are individual tweets.)

• I am currently far more obsessed with the logistics and staging of Rogers the musical than anything else Disney has ever put out and I hope  #Hawkeye respects my entirely niche need for the show to focus on nothing else but that.
• I woke up to @spooloflies proving once again my brand is known and I am understood and seen.

• I am fascinated in the guest list for opening night. Like was Clint on the list and the only Avenger who RSVPed yes? Was he not and had to wait to get a ticket years later like any normal person going to see Hamilton?
• The entirety of episode one is Clint waiting on line at the TKTS booth.
• Are we going to get to see the looks on Sam, Bucky, and Sharon's faces when they hear about it? Did they make a date to see it together so they could giggle through the whole thing?
• And of course John Walker said yes before they could even invite him and he probably only got a ticket because someone like Coolio canceled last minute and the show figured fine, better to have someone in the seat.
• Do people understand that by the laws of the multiverse there is a world where the events shown in the musical are one for one canon including the dance numbers?
• Who is the guy in the I Love NY shirt supposed to be? The gay Russo?
• Part of me wants them to lean in to the show being awful for the humor and another part of me hopes they took shameless advantage of how Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of their in house composers to get him to write 16 bars on "Hulk? Smash."
• Peter gets to see it but only because of the EduRogers program which requires him to both write an essay on the topic and perform a song or monologue of his own on something not covered by the show and it is REALLY UNFAIR that his classmates can include Spidey and he can't.
• Act 2 includes Civil War and Scott is first represented with a light like Tinkerbell but then by just showing giant legs like Jumbo in the only Barnum musical I will ever acknowledge until the day I die.
• Okay but like there would totally be a number called "I Just Wanted a Dance" that they hope rivals the emotional impact of "Bring Him Home" from Les Misérables and earns their lead a Tony. (he doesn't get one because a Hollywood actor snags it for a show that closed in 2 weeks)
• And there is in universe wank about how staging "Until The End Of The Line" as a comedy number is homophobic.
• Everyone agrees that the highlight of the show is the work that went into the quick changes that Tony does in and out of his suits. The actor playing Iron Man is considered to be the breakout star and the only one to win a Tony for Best Supporting. The headlines die of puns.
• Ironically the actress playing Nat loses out on Best Supporting to actual Scarlet Johansson
• All of Tony's lines are rapid fire rap, of course, and sadly none of the Lafayette actors were available for the role (they turned it down, actually)
• It's not until months later that someone notices all the foreshadowing done by the dancer playing the Tesseract
• When the next hit musical comes along the role of Loki is the one used for famous actor stunt casting. The first to take it on is a former Disney child star trying to shake his "guy next door" image. It's favorably compared to when Neil Patrick Harris played the MC in Cabaret.
• There's a lot of online Discourse (tm) about how the predominantly white swings play Wakandans in act 2 by wearing masks of poorly researched "African" designs.
• (I'm doing so much inside baseball here and 1. I don't care and 2. I see you, each and every one of my fellow theater nerds who are right there with me.)
• When the original Broadway cast starts to leave they get a Black actor to play Thor and Tumblr never stops talking about it.
• When the musical first comes out there's a Tik Tok "do the shield scene" challenge where you recreate increasingly absurd moments showing how the only way he catches it on stage is by the use of wires that swings desperately try to avoid running into.
• The best entry is the first theater kid who does it by combining it with "hand at the level of your eyes" complete with Phantom costumes
• Sam eventually gets Bucky to calm down enough to agree to see the show just for fun but then Sam finds out he's not even in it and it's Bucky's turn to listen to the ranting about the disrespect.
• Decades later there's another musical which shows what the version of events would have been like if the character of Peggy had been given any lines instead of being represented by an offstage light symbolizing Steve's dreams.
• My dog, genuinely wondering if she needs to stage an intervention for me:

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• In the original pitch for the show Wade Robson was going to do the choreography but after the snap delayed production for years they thankfully got Andy Blankenbuehler instead.
• Credit to @steinba for this but the number they do for the Macy's parade is the Sondheim-esque one where Steve tries to say "Avengers Assemble" and everyone keeps interrupting him.
• Early reviews use phrases like "sure to inject much needed super soldier serum into Broadway ticket sales which have been flagging since the blip."
• "Much better than the composer's prior effort of a hip hopra about a group of super powered beings where the lead male's impressive yet confusingly handled F# in the 8th octave was the only line he ever spoke."
• When they finally do the movie version people point out the guy who originated the role of Steve can't convincingly do Skinny Steve anymore now that he's in his 40s. Attempts to hide his height, age, and beard through prosthetics and cgi don't work well.
• Strange and Wong only get to see it because after multiple attempts they finally won the ticket lottery. Strange refuses to say if he used the time stone to cheat the system.
• The actor who plays Tony is the first of the cast to be invited to host SNL. He's considered Jon Hamm-esque in his ability to elevate the material he was given.
• The actor who plays Steve doesn't get invited to SNL until years later when he's promoting a romcom he's starring in with Addison Rae (his first, her fourth). Reviewers admit he never stood a chance given that it was at the start of a transition season after vet cast members left
• The actors playing Steve and Tony only reunite for a "Rebuilding After Kang" benefit concert featuring, among others, Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel. Eagle eyed viewers notice none of the four are ever in the same shot together.
• The actress who plays Nat eventually finds comfortable success for eight seasons as an ADA on Law and Order: Special Heroes Unit.
• Her backstory is that she THINKS her mom died during the Snap but a season 3 twist is that mom is alive and working for the Ten Rings.
• Shang-Chi and Katy disagree about which of the songs is best to sing. Shang-Chi says Avengers Assemble but Katy says it's Avengers Assemble (Reprise) because that's the only one where a female character gets a verse.
• (I HAVEN'T EATEN BREAKFAST YET, PEOPLE. THIS IS WHAT THIS HAS DONE TO ME)
• During the Original Cast Album recording the veteran actor playing Erskine struggles for hours trying to get the notes right. He eventually storms out of the studio at 3 am, ranting about how they made him miss a urologist appointment.
• When he comes back the next day he records "A Good Man (Not A Perfect Soldier)" in one take and everyone agrees it was so good it gave them chills.
• The director keeps confusing the actor playing Thor by insisting it's pronounced "tess-sear-act" not "tess-sir-act."
• Die hard fans of the show debate for years if it was a good idea to cut the numbers "My Best Friend Tony" and "The Reason I Never Talk About Wanting To Spend My Life With Her" when the show moved from the Public Theater to the Rogers.
• (the Rogers, of course, being the most appropriate theater for the show)
• For Broadway Easter Bonnet they have Steve and Tony, in costume, do "Me and You (But Mostly Me)" featuring Tony as Elder Price. Their bonnet is a recreation of Stark Tower.
• The actor playing Bruce/Hulk volunteers for Broadway Bares and does a surprisingly good number where he plays a clumsy flight attendant who loses his clothes as he trips over a passenger in first class played by Jane Krakowski.
• Thayne Jasperson plays Hawkeye and at five years running he's the cast member who's stayed the longest with the show.
• (I feel like there could be a genuine competition for which one of these jokes threads the most elaborate yet tightest needle on niche humor and I honestly do not know which would win)

And then, in response to this gif of the performance:

• Okay so the costumes either suggest that they didn't spend the money to get Lion King/War Horse-esque puppets for Hulk or this is a deliberate "Avengers dressed like college students" vibe, like when people do Shakespeare in modern times. I am here for both options.
• OMG it includes the waitress! Ashley Johnson is legendary no matter what role she plays.
• I will ABSOLUTELY be talking the shit out of the costumes and staging when the episode airs and we actually get to see it. Not that I think any of you were worried but, yanno. Save the date as it were.
• But like notice the guy in the I Love NY shirt isn't hitting his lines or mark when he should. Which suggests either Hawkeye the show was lazy about this or IN show they were lazy about it. Which really just fuels my theory he represents a Russo only there to pick up a union card.
• Also you know Kamala has written VOLUMES online about how Spidey shouldn't be there because he didn't join the team until years later.
• And based on this shot I bet having to carry Mjolnir is the "We walk that way because King George's crown is @#$%ing heavy" of this show.
• God help all of you if the show actually gives us enough of this musical that I can judge a dance number.

And that's all for now. You know, the legends say somewhere out there I'm still going...

Outro

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