The Grinning Man

So I guess there is another Youtube Channel that I should follow and that is Bristol Old Vic. I just happened to revisit The Show Must Go On for any new offerings but it seems like they are no longer showing full musicals there. And Youtube recommendations are just so fantastic, they gave me BOV and at that time the dark musical The Grinning Man was on. This tragicomedy brought tears to my eyes. Imagine having experienced cruelty at such a a young age! And to think that cruelty will stay with you forever and will almost define your whole being!

Our show begins with Grinpayne, a puppeteer in a freak show, telling his own story using puppets. Part of the audience is a noble, Lord David. The puppet story shows a young boy who is refused admission to a ship because of his mutilated face, a face that is believed to bring ill luck on the sea. This is during a time when a tyrant king reigns. The child walks alone and encounters a baby girl with her dead mother. He ends up in Ursus' house and there grows up with Dea, the baby girl. 

The tyrant king dies and his daughter Angelica is chosen to be the next sovereign. She is set to just displace his father and continue the tyrannical rule her father started. Her sister Josiana and brother David have an incestuous relationship. So when David shares his experience at the freak show, Josiana and the court fool Barkilphedro join him to go to the freak show and there witness the face of Grinpayne, revealed to be forever in a smile, a smile so frightening because it is a smile made from violence which he got during his childhood, but he remembers almost nothing. The sight strikes something in David and Josiana and both claim to see the whole of humanity in Grinpayne's grinning pain.

So anyway blind Dea and Grinpayne fall in love with each other. However things get extra exciting when Josiana and Grinpayne begin to be intimate with each other and when Angelica saw the latter, she is so moved that she named him a Lord, replacing her own brother David whom she cast out to the streets. Barkilphedro becomes Grinpayne's servant much to his dismay as he has been eyeing the title of Lord for quite some time already. Barkilphedro visits Ursus and tortures him, thus the audience learns the truth of the past. Dea overhears the conversation and realizes that the "medicine" being given to Grinpayne is actually to make him forget his past. It turns out that Barkilphedro is actually the one who mutilated the young Grinpayne so as to save his life. Grinpayne is the son of an executed lord whose family was also to be killed but Grinpayne's mother pleaded with Barkilphedro to spare the child. In order for people to never recognize the young lord, he gave him the permanent scar. Ursus knows about it but is helpless to prevent it as his priority is his wife and infant daughter, the latter turning out to be Dea. 

As Grinpayne and Josiana are about to be married following the burning of the fair and with false news of Dea's death, David appears and challenge Grinpayne to a duel. At that time, Grinpayne collapses in pain for want of medicine and Dea arrives to tell him what the potion actually does. Grinpayne remembers Barkilphedro and is about to kill him when his dead mother appears to him and persuades him not to kill. All past secrets are made known and Grinpayne sails off with Dea away from it all.

The songs in this musical remind me a lot of Weber. There is even a line in one of the songs that says "and you'll love like you've never loved before" which seems to be a play on "and you'll live as you've never lived before" in The Phantom of the Opera. I also like the dark gothic feel  of the whole play, the props and costumes making this story very rich visually. And it appeals to one's sense of humanity in so many ways, like how under a dark reign, you will be very touched to find that there will be people who will still show kindness even though in different forms. What Barkilphedro did to Grinpayne is indeed horrible, but as the past unravels itself, we are led to discover that his intention is to save the boy and also himself lest he be branded as traitor for not following the king's orders. This  coincides with my concept of kindness, that most times it takes a cruel form. I explained that to Q one late afternoon during a jogging date in UP. Sensing that he could be a people-pleaser and someone who will not be honest because the truth might come out ugly, I told him that my concept of "good" is very different from other people's, that for me authenticity, integrity, honesty tops normal conceptions of goodness. In the end I was right that he's just one of the normal guys who prefer to preserve a "good boy" image. I have been right in my assessments and it's a good thing I have become better at detecting red flags so I didn't fall hard for him. That was still a good exercise and I am glad all my feelings are right. As I learned before, gut feel does not lie.