History Fridge / Theater

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On to the theater...
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* Fridge/{{Cats}}
* Fridge/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory
* Fridge/{{Chess}}
* Fridge/FiddlerOnTheRoof
* Fridge/{{Hamilton}}
* Fridge/IntoTheWoods
* Fridge/TheKingAndI
* Fridge/LegallyBlonde
* Fridge/LesMiserables
* Fridge/LittleShopOfHorrors
* Fridge/MeAndMyDick
* Fridge/PeterPan
* Fridge/ThePhantomOfTheOpera
* Fridge/TheRockyHorrorPictureShow
* Fridge/RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead
* Fridge/SpringAwakening
* Fridge/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet
* Fridge/ThoroughlyModernMillie
* Fridge/{{Urinetown}}
* Fridge/AVeryPotterMusical
* Fridge/WilliamShakespeare
** Fridge/{{Coriolanus}}
** Fridge/{{Hamlet}}
** Fridge/{{King Lear}}
** Fridge/MacBeth
** Fridge/TheMerchantOfVenice
** Fridge/MuchAdoAboutNothing
** Fridge/RomeoAndJuliet
** Fridge/TwelfthNight
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This is a personal moment for the viewer, but follows the same rules as normal pages, meaning no first person or natter. If you start off with "ThisTroper", really, you have no excuse. We're going to hit you on the head.

* Fridge/theimportanceofbeingernest

* Fridge/Theimportanceofbeingernest

* Fridge/theimportanceofbeingernest

* Fridge/Theimportanceofbeingernest

* Fridge/WilliamShakespeare
** Fridge/{{Coriolanus}}
** Fridge/{{Hamlet}}
** Fridge/{{King Lear}}
** Fridge/MacBeth
** Fridge/TheMerchantOfVenice
** Fridge/MuchAdoAboutNothing
** Fridge/RomeoAndJuliet
** Fridge/TwelfthNight

* Fridge/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory

* [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fridge/CATS CATS]]

This is a personal moment for the viewer, so every example is signed by the contributor. If you start off with "ThisTroper", really, you have no excuse. We're going to hit you on the head.

* Fridge/CATS

** Fridge/TheMerchantOfVenics
** Fridge/AMidsummerNightsDream

* Fridge/TheFiddlerOnTheRoof

* Fridge/{{Shakespeare}}

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[[AC: Brush Up Your Shakespeare]]
* Although I'd read Hamlet in High School, and knew that Gertrude's line: "Methinks the lady doth protest too much" came from the scene of her watching (essentially) an {{Expy}} of her marriage to Claudius, it wasn't until after college that I realized the significance of Hamlet's line leading up to that quote. He's basically asking her if she's enjoying the play, but the exact words he uses are: "How like you this play, Mother?". With a different inflection, this could be a statement. "How LIKE YOU this play, Mother". Brilliant.
** Another piece of wordplay-related brilliance in Hamlet: Claudius' line, "My offense is rank; it stinks to heaven". It struck me at a literal fridge how layered and complex this line is, and how elegant a fusion of the tragic and the comic. Claudius' offense is 'rank' both in the sense of an unearned position (his ''rank'' as king) and in the sense that his offense is figuratively smelly and repulsive. It "stinks to heaven" both in the sense of a rising stench, and also in the sense of being repulsive to the heavens, an affront to the sacred.
* [[strike: This UnknownTroper]] has always loved {{Shakespeare}}'s ''TwelfthNight'', more for familiarity's sake than anything else, but always found the romance between Viola and the Duke Orsino to be a little... mm, lackluster, overly convenient, it seems to pale beside the romance between [[LesYay Viola and Olivia.]] And yet, while I was in the middle of writing about ''Twelfth Night'' for an essay test, it occurred to me that Orsino starts off the play as a real EmoTeen with this over-idealized idea about love, and what Viola does -- plucky, brave, outspoken Viola -- is she shows him that love doesn't have to be this train of sighs and pun-making -- it's about friendship and confidence and being happy with someone else, and ''doing'' things for the person you love. And suddenly ''it all fit.'' And I had a great essay. -- {{Vifetoile}}, proud Twelfth Night fangirl
* I ''loathed'' {{Shakespeare}} up until college. I thought he was a terrible writer for using such complicated, incomprehensible language and that the plots themselves were incredibly slow and boring and padded. Eventually, I learned that due to changing times and the effects on language, Early Modern English is ''not'' Modern English, and the playwright wouldn't have sounded incomprehensible to his own audience but clever, and with some help from footnotes and such, I was able to actually appreciate his wordplay and {{Double Entendre}}s and clever use of language. Once I could understand them, I realized the actors I'd seen performing the plays (or heard reading them...) ''weren't'' acting but reciting, so I read them to myself picturing normal voices and acting instead, and I was able to fully appreciate the stories and characters -- try to imagine what's going on in Prince Hamlet's head, cringe at each new atrocity in ''Titus Andronicus'', and cheer when Macbeth was finally killed. Is there AnAesop to be learned here? '''[[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids Shakespeare is NOT for kids!]]''' -- {{Lale}}
** I had a similar change in attitude when I was able to understand more of his jokes (the lewd ones became especially clear with age and reinforces [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids your point.]]). And I've had friends who've said that Shakespeare was only really good at writing tragedy!
* Early on I thought Shakespeare's work was simply overrated -- good, but not worthy of the "best of all time" status its given. Getting more exposure to a wider selection of his work, especially stuff like Othello and Lear, convinced me that he truly wrote exceptionally dense, rich and layered fiction. -- {{Tarsus}}
* A large barrier to appreciating Shakespeare is how it's so rarely ''acted'' and most often performed as if it were some completely different form of stagecraft, an attitude that plants it on a lofty pedestal and as a result does it a complete disservice. Now if you see an actor who can drop the pretensions to hold the heart of their character, they can take what's essentially a surreal speaking style and make it feel ''believable'' and natural. This is the kind of treatment elitist critics absolutely despise, while holding Shakespeare so sacred that only canned recitation can do it any justice. Compare Kevin Kline and Mel Gibson's performances as Hamlet, and then compare their treatment in reviews. Anyhow, my moment of FridgeBrilliance revelation to Shakespeare came when trying to adapt the premise of ''KingLear'' to a futuristic western, and started cross-referencing {{Magnificent Bastard}}s throughout his other works. -- DokEnkephalin
* Again, Shakespeare, but this troper used to dislike ''RomeoAndJuliet''. No, he practically despised it. He was convinced that it glorified teenage angst and falling in love at the drop of a pin and then acting like an idiot afterwards. Compared to shows like ''TheTamingOfTheShrew'' and ''AsYouLikeIt'', the romance seemed more about horomones than anything deeper. Then, he read it again in college. And realized that, while Romeo still comes off as a lovestruck teen, Juliet comes off much better. She's the one who makes plans and follows through with them. She's the one who sets up the scheme at the end for them to be together. Only at the end, after both the love of her life and the arranged husband that she agreed to "look to like if looking liking lead" are dead does she succumb to despair and turn to the dagger. Of course, this troper also suspects that the high school version may have had all the good bits pulled out of it for space and {{bowdlerization}}. -- FuzzyBoots
** It's amazing how easily people overlook the fact that RomeoAndJuliet is about war and violence as much as it is about love; or more accurately, it's about the way they influence and interact with each other. I didn't realize this until I watched the Zeffirelli production for the first time in college, at the tail end of my History and Political Science majors. I mean, this is not the kid-friendly lovey dovey show people seem to think it is- for god's sake, the opening scene is two of the Capulets talking about raping and/or decapitating the women of their enemy's house. And the famous lines- ''what's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor any other part belonging to a man''- are actually a profound moment of political awakening for Juliet, the moment she realizes that there's a vast gulf between the labels attached to a person and their fundamental humanity. Vonnegut, consummate cynic though he was, mentions RomeoAndJuliet in the prologue to BreakfastOfChampions as an example of something sacred, and this troper suspects there's a reason he chose this play, out of all of Shakespeare's: That man understood war. -- LaplacesKyton
** More ''RomeoAndJuliet'' issues abound here; when this troper read it as a teen, she hated it, convinced Romeo was just a fickle teen -- evidenced by how quickly he switched his affections from Rosaline to Juliet -- and was unable to feel any sympathy at all for the idiot. Coming back to it years later, she now sees that Rosaline was put in so the audience could see the difference between Romeo-with-a-crush and Romeo-experiencing-true-love. She still doesn't feel any sympathy for the idiot, but at least she now finds his love for Juliet convincing. -- Weez
*** I actually saw Rosaline's presence in the play as a way of introducing ambiguity. Romeo's initial infatuation with Rosaline could mean one of two things: Either that he's an unintentional manskank who falls for women easily and is a slave to his infatuations when he does, or that his love for Juliet was the real deal- real enough to pull him out of his funk and make him recognize his crush on Rosaline as the petty infatuation it was. Which makes the burying of the parents' strife all the more powerful- not only does Shakespeare illustrate that love can be a real political force, but that it's a better way than violence even in it's dumbest and most adolescent forms. -- LaplacesKyton
*** High school teachers regularly screw up teaching ''Romeo and Juliet'' because they assume it was written to appeal especially to youth. This causes them to concentrate only on the love story, as if everything else going on was irrelevant, and teenagers end up viewing the play as sappy and maudlin. But ''Romeo and Juliet'' is much more than a love story, and it was written primarily to appeal to adults (the people who bought tickets). The Aesops one can take from the play range from "we can't always get what we want, because the fates can act against us and there's nothing we can do about it" to "if you keep your daughters stupid they're likely to fall prey to the local Lothario" to "Italian customs bad, English customs good". Elizabethan audiences would have seen the Capulets as negligent parents, Romeo as a liar and a con artist who took the opportunity to get into the pants of an emotionally distressed thirteen-year-old, and Paris as a sleaze who wanted to marry a barely pubescent girl. (The trope of the time was that marrying a virgin would cure syphilis, so any man who wanted to marry one was assumed to be poxy.) Most playgoers in the 17th and 18th centuries who described the play in their diaries or otherwise (such as Samuel Pepys, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, and David Hume) universally disliked it, seeing it as brutal, heartless, and even coarse. It took the chocolate-box Victorians to play up the love and romance angle and to discard everything else. -- Blurgle, who has taught Shakespeare for years and who is constantly unamazed at how badly high school teachers screw up every single play
** You get an entirely different look on the works of William Shakespere, once you realize the man wasn't trying to create ''Fine Art'', but was just writing and directing plays as a job, adapting historical tales (McBeth, Richard III, the Death of Caesar, etc) and writing "stock" drama, comedy and romances, not for scholars and kings, but for the commoners who routinely attended his shows. This makes William Shakespere the Elizabethan equivalent of a Hollywood director, and his most famous plays are the period's Blockbuster movies. So, whenever you see Hollywood rip off Shakespere's plays to make a movie, keep this in mind: He'd probably have approved. -- lonewolf23k
*** He seems to have regarded his poetry (Lucrece, Sonnets and so on) as his serious work - published in his lifetime with dedications to prominent noblemen - and his plays as being commercial hackwork that he did to provide for his family. (You'll notice that the first official edition of the plays was published ''after'' Shakespeare's death by a couple of actors from his old company.)
** I first read this play in 10th grade, and it wasn't really until college that I realized it's not about star-crossed romance, as teachers had suggested, but about the futility of keeping feuds going. The moral isn't "Don't be a doofus about falling in love", it's "Look at what you can destroy with your anger if you let it blind you". Half of both the families are dead at the end of the play, and the people who had a chance at happiness die tear-jerking deaths solely because they had to sneak around about their love. -- {{becky}}
*** And the Prince hangs a lampshade on it, in the "All are punished" speech: blaming himself for not saving half a dozen lives by stamping out the feud earlier.
** I'd hated Romeo and Juliet since I was first forced to read it in 8th grade, for the usual teen angst. Until this year I realized...Romeo and Juliet can be thought of as the Ur example for the tragicomedy. In terms of Shakespearean theatre, a comedy ended in a wedding and a tragedy in death. In Romeo and Juliet, the first three acts are typical of Shakespeare's comedies, until BAM! People are dropping off left and right, heroes are going into hiding, the fueding takes the place of much of the romance.
*** He ought to know, since two of those snuffed-out lives were kinsmen of ''his''. -- (Maven)
** I always appreciated ''Romeo & Juliet'' as a tragic love story when I was younger. It took re-reading it once past puberty to understand that there's also a satirical edge to it. Romeo and Juliet fall in love with each other in an instant and are married within a few days, following a princely sum of two whole conversations, despite the fact that one was virtually engaged to someone else (and Juliet didn't love Paris, but she didn't have a problem with him before she met Romeo) and the other was crazy about someone else. The whole thing is a wry look at young love, and the inherent drama that goes along with it - they're all supposed to be teenagers, after all, and the play is constantly full of characters either getting into fights or falling in love on a whim, both of which crop up in your life when your hormones start going haywire. Friar Lawrence spends half the play basically staring at them and doing a FlatWhat. It's even explicitly stated that the only reason he goes along with Romeo and his dreamy bullshit is because he's hoping that the pair of them getting together might force their parents to resolve their feud, a feud which is getting people killed - people Friar Lawrence has probably had to be involved in funerals for. It can't be easy seeing young men murdered for no good reason, no wonder he's trying to stop it. That's why he doesn't call shenanigans on the whole thing earlier.
* More Shakespeare, but come on. I used to refer to ''Coriolanus'' as one of Shakespeare's B-sides. I'd read the play in college but I didn't connect with it until I saw it on stage, particularly in the scene where Volumnia brings his wife and his son to beg him to not destroy Rome with the Volscians. In the production I saw, Martius hardly looked at any of them and especially not his son. It was painful to watch. And in general, a smart play with a lot of politics. Never again will I laugh at ''Coriolanus''. -- {{Lizimajig}}
* Mine's more on how Shakespeare is taught more than anything else. I had always liked Shakespeare fairly well and was a little surprised to find most of my classmates HATING it when we read ''RomeoAndJuliet'' in English. Then I realized just this year that it was because my very first experience with Shakespeare was in middle school when we did a Shakespeare unit in my theatre class. Not only did I get a glimpse of Shakespeare in theatre but the first activity we did was to make Shakespearean style insults at each other. We started out doing something FUN to get our heads out of being terrified of Shakespeare before going into it deeper. It really makes sense. I think part of the reason that it's thought of as stuffy and boring nowadays is that the teachers are probably required to teach it and that's how they were taught to teach it. It's always treated as a literary classic and not as the play it should be. It's hard getting used to the language anyway, top that off with the heavy content (because the ones studied are almost ALWAYS dramas), trying to listen to someone stumbling through lines because they don't know how to act (understandable but it makes it SO much harder to listen to), the "bow before the might of Shakespeare for he is much greater than anybody EVER" vibe, and the presumption that it is extremely boring. I say start with a light comedy that's just simply entertaining to get used to the language before getting into all the deep stuff. Unfortunately, there's no way there'd be enough time for that in a school setting. -youngcosette
** This troper's school system actually did exactly that. We did one Shakespeare a year starting in 7th grade (...yeah), but we worked our way up the difficulty scale, starting with ''AMidsummerNightsDream'', which is easily the most accessible, then ''RomeoAndJuliet'', ''JuliusCaesar'', ''{{Macbeth}}'', ''{{Hamlet}}'', and ''{{Othello}}'' in that order. The teachers weren't always great, but the language and feel of the plays were never problems after reading them for so long. --{{starshine}}
* I never really had any love for Shakespeare; I knew only the absolute barest plot of ''RomeoAndJuliet'' until 7th grade Drama class, and my 9th grade English class made it practically unbearable. It wasn't until the end of 10th grade, when I played Snout in ''AMidsummerNightsDream'', that I finally had an understanding of Shakespeare and how good the writing was. Seeing what was once horribly boring performed by genuinely funny actors allowed me to see Shakespeare's potential. The rehearsal process for ''Romeo And Juliet'' in the summer of 11th grade was a very emotional, difficult process that had the director pushing acting methods that would make a professional stage actor sweat with exertion and a number of New Age-style meditation and focusing exercises that, in the end, did absolutely nothing to help. When I finally saw ''Hamlet'' performed by professional actors at the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, I realized how unnecessary all the breathing exercises, yoga, and meditation was to acting; it's all about treating the characters as real people and getting deep into their motivations and emotions. The ensuing production was so good that my girlfriend, who suffers from ADD and has never studied Shakespeare in her life, was enthralled by the performance and absolutely loved it, when I was afraid that she would be bored to tears. Not only has my opinion of Shakespeare changed, so has my opinion of acting. I've begun delving deep into the emotions and minds of my characters, and I've delivered some rather powerful stuff. I once nearly ended up crying during a rehearsal because I was so into my performance as [[{{RepoTheGeneticOpera}} Nathan Wallace]] that for a moment, I really felt like I was keeping my life as a sociopathic killer secret from my daughter. Thanks, Will. --{{chitoryu12}}
* This troper recently realized that the forms of the apparitions in ''{{Macbeth}}'' represent parts of the prophecy. The helmeted head that says to "beware Macduff" is Macbeth's severed head, which was severed by Macduff. The bloody child that says that "NoManOfWomanBorn" can kill Macbeth is bloody because it represents a child born by C-section. Macduff was born by C-section. Finally, there is the man who holds the tree branch and says that Macbeth cannot be defeated until Birnam Forest marches against him. He holds a tree branch because the soldiers who [[StormingTheCastle storm the castle]] at the end of the play use tree branches to hide their movements -MarkyMark
* It was years before I finally got the 'country matters' joke in ''{{Hamlet}}''. Since then, I've enjoyed Shakespeare a great deal more. - Shinyfox
* I've played [[MuchAdoAboutNothing Benedick]] before, but it wasn't until I saw a video of a Canadian production that I realized the meaning behind the following exchange:
--->'''Don Pedro:''' I believe this is your daughter?
--->'''Lenoato:''' Her mother hath many times told me so.
--->'''Benedick:''' Were you in doubt sir, that you asked her?
--->'''Leonato:''' No, Signor Benedick, for then you were a child.
% Yes, Benedick is implying that Leonato was a cuckold and that his daughter Hero was born illegitimately, but he's also implying that ''he himself'' is the father. Leonato brushes him off by saying that he was too young to have dealt in those CountryMatters. -A Troper Who Legitimately Hasn't Signed Up
* In ''TheMerchantOfVenice'' there's a comedy relief scene before the big trial where Launcelot, the clown, gets told off by Lorenzo for making puns: "How every fool can play upon the word!" To get some revenge, Launcelot deliberately misinterprets all of Lorenzo's subsequent requests to get dinner ready (told to "cover", as in cover the table, he acts scandalized that Lorenzo would tell him to "cover", as in cover his head, since he's a low-born servant who's not supposed to do that in the presence of superiors). It ends up with Lorenzo laughingly admitting that, okay, Launcelot's not just an idiot--he's got some serious pun skills. At first, the scene doesn't seem relevant to the plot at all--merely a quick comedy sketch. Then you realize that it comes right before the trial scene, in which Portia saves the day using ExactWords. Wordplay isn't just for fools, it seems.
* ''RomeoAndJuliet'': Upon meeting Romeo, Juliet sends her nurse to inquire after him: "Go ask his name. If he be married/My grave is like to be my wedding bed." In context it simply means that she's afraid Romeo is too good to be true, that he might be a married man who just wants to have a fling with her. But, look at it another way, and it's a prophecy: when Romeo does get married (to Juliet), it starts a chain of events that lead to her death on the night of her planned wedding day.
** Whilst everything is open to interpretation, it's meant more on the face of it to mean if he's married, she won't be able to marry him, and therefore she may as well be dead as marry anyone else. Which is another Aesop you can take from this play - Teenagers Are Dramatic.
* In ''{{Macbeth}}'', Shakespeare breaks many standard writing tools. The main character is very unlikable, as is his wife, and the climax of the story is at the beginning. Despite this, the play is still amazing and one of Shakespeare's best known works. On top of this, since the majority of the story takes place after the climax, that drives in the theme that this is a story about how Macbeth ''falls from his highest point''. There's some symbolism for you. -Froggy



[[AC: Everyone Else]]
* In ''{{Fiddler On The Roof}}'', during the DisneyAcidSequence of The Dream, when the chorus pass one to another about the arrival of [[spoiler: Lazar Wolf's late wife]] one of them say "Why not?" I always thought it was just meant to be a funny line... until I heard it again and thought about it... and remembers this whole sequence is meant to be Tevye inventing a dream to his wife, so this is actually him saying ThrowItIn. -- {{Maxmordon}}
* I had one for ''[[{{Theatre/ptitlenjisnv3p}} Les Misérables]]'' based on one of the performances on Youtube. During Thenardier's VillainSong "Dog Eat Dog", he refers to {{God}} being as dead as the "stiffs at (his) feet". Initially, this just seemed like a usual example of a villain having NietzscheWannabe pretentions, but then it hit me... During this scene, Thenardier is in the Paris sewers, and it seems like the "stiffs" he references are Valjean and Marius, neither of whom are dead. Thus, the musical is sending the message that God is very much alive.-- {{Jordan}}
** Here's another one from Les Mis. Jean Valjean's [[HeelFaceTurn repentence song]] ("What Have I Done?") is about how the bishop's love has turned his life around. [[InspectorJavert Inspector Javert's]] [[DrivenToSuicide suicide song]] ([[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Javert's Suicide"]]) is about how Valjean's love has turned his life around...only in a completely opposite way. The tunes to both songs are the same. Every song in this musical gets a reprise (most of them [[DarkReprise increasingly darker]]), and it's fittingly ironic that the hero's song about deciding to live a purposeful, redeemed life should return as the [[AntiVillain antagonist's]] song about being unable to continue with life.
* I was listening to the soundtrack of ''{{Legally Blonde}}: The Musical'' and realized that Elle's sorority sisters are a modernized version of the {{Greek Chorus}}. What is another name for fraternities and sororities? The ''Greek System''. -- {{Cyberbanjo}}
* I was in a production of Peter Pan. In it, Wendy mentioned that she couldn't hear any fairies; all she could hear was a quiet sound that sounded like the "tinkling of bells." TINKLING OF BELLS- TINKERBELL! A whole new meaning. --{{Lulamorashi}}
** Her named initially came from her being a blacksmith type of fairy.. one who "tinkered" on bells. It's probably a double meaning, like the above posted mentioned. - {{Gallows}}
* In the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, I was always bothered with how Mrs. Meers seems to suffer massive {{VillainDecay}} in the second half. She seemed to turn from a threatening villain who sold people into slavery, into a reject choir girl. Watching it again, I realized that indeed, this transformation does indeed happen... but there's no indication that any of her victims are ever found or rescued. In other words, ''she has shipped off perhaps hundreds of young girls, mostly orphans, to be unwilling prostitutes in China, a country with people they cannot communicate with'', because of her "reject choir girl" reasons. Alright, Meersy. You get your villain status back. - Hueha
** Actually almost ''everything'' in Thoroughly Modern Millie is FridgeBrilliance. When it's revealed at the end that [[spoiler: Jimmy and Miss Dorothy are not only brother and sister but Muzzie's wealthy step-children whom she cut off financially]]. It explains everything, how Dorothy was supposedly raised in an orphanage but extremely RichInDollarsPoorInSense, how come Millie saw Jimmy and Miss Dorothy together, etc.
* When I first became a fan of the ''[[RockyHorrorPictureShow Rocky Horror Show]]'', I simply saw the song "Sweet Transvestite" as a catchy VillianSong. A few years later, I listened closely to the lyrics and had a fridge brilliance moment concerning the line ''"Well you got caught with a flat. Well...how 'bout that"''. The way Frank N. Furter says it in such a smug tone pretty much implies that '''he''' was the one who caused Brad and Janet to get a flat tire in the first place.-baronobeefdip
** In the film, it's even more brilliant because [[TimCurry Frank]] looks at the audience and pretty much grins at them when he says it. He [[BreakingTheFourthWall broke the fourth wall]] and pretty much had a "Yeah, I'm behind the whole thing" smirk at the audience.
** Keep in mind also that Brad and Janet never actually told Frank they had a flat tire. That's pretty much key right there. Knowing Frank, it's a lot less likely that he just took a wild guess.
** Riff Raff at first seems like nothing more than a shady butler who kills Frank for no reason at the end. And, then I saw an interview with Richard O'Brien in which he points out that [[WordOfGod Riff Raff is jealous of Frank]] and that [[spoiler:it was actually Riff Raff who did most of the work on Rocky.]] Suddenly, Riff's shady behavior makes a lot more sense.
*** Even better? [[WordOfGod Richard O'Brien]] has stated that Riff Raff and Frank are NotSoDifferent. I watched the film/play again with this in mind...and it really adds to the animosity between Frank and Riff.
* I always enjoyed the [[DarkReprise "Point of No Return" trio]] in the final lair scene of ThePhantomOfTheOpera, but it just hit me that the song is very appropriate in that context because all three characters involved -- the Phantom, Christine, and Raoul -- are passing a "point of no return" in some sense. For the Phantom, it's the MoralEventHorizon he crossed by threatening to kill Raoul. For Christine, it's the knowledge that she has to choose between saving herself or her fiancé. For Raoul, it's the willingness to risk his own life for Christine's freedom. Brilliant. - Toru771
** ...And suddenly it's AnAesop about how you ''can'' turn back. Since [[spoiler:The Phantom [[IJustWantMyBelovedToBeHappy just wants his beloved to be happy]], and so neither Christine nor Raoul have to die.]] Oh. And [[ScrewDestiny you may be able to turn back]], but [[YouCantFightFate the turning back may be out of your control]]...nice. --@/RedWren.
** Years ago, I saw Gary Mauer playing a particularly bold and driven Raoul, and it hit me why Raoul makes such a great foil for the Phantom: he's the only person in the entire musical who is ''never'' intimidated by him. He gets threatening notes and brushes it off, he gets fireballs hurled in his face and doesn't blink, he stands on the brink of death and never falters for a second in his desire to protect the woman he loves. The Phantom is a world-class ManipulativeBastard, but the one person standing between him and Christine is also the one person he absolutely ''can not'' control--and that has ''got'' to piss him off. After that, Raoul was less of a RomanticFalseLead / ShallowLoveInterest and a bit more of an interesting character in his own right. - TheDiva
* I JUST realized why Seymour says "Do I know you?" to Bernstein at the beginning of The Meek Shall Inherit in LittleShopOfHorrors. Because of AndYouWereThere, Seymour HAS met him before-when he played the first customer, and the dentist. --@/OOZE
** It hit me in Advanced English (while reading Jane Eyre, of all things) that Little Shop has many of the elements of a Greek tragedy (albeit, a very funny one). While it is certainly modern in much of its set-up, much of it seems to root in tragedy: The Doo-wop girls are a Greek chorus. The reversal (peripiteia) comes after he kills Mushnik. Anagnorisis (moment of recognition) comes when Seymour realizes Audrey II had planned this from the start. Pathos (scene of suffering) is when [[spoiler: Audrey is killed by Audrey II.]] And Seymour fits the bill for a tragic hero: "a great man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake (flaw)."
* I was watching Chess: In Concert (2008, London), and the scene where Freddie ambushes Anatoly during an "interview" by demanding to know about his family in Russia was quickly filed under Freddie's asshole file. But later, I was listening to Pity the Child again (I have the Murray Head version on my I-Pod) and it occurred to me that Freddie was probably taking the opportunity to [[CallingTheOldManOut vent his anger at his own father for abandoning him by taking it out on Anatoly.]] Freddie still comes across as a ManipulativeBastard, but [[JerkassWoobie a somewhat more sympathetic one.]] - TimeTravelerJessica
* This Troper sort of had one with {{Urinetown}}. The first half consists of mostly slow, balladish songs, seeing as that's before everything gets all intense. There's about like maybe 2 quick tunes, then the Act I finale mixes both the intensity and the calmness of Act I. Then Act II is made up almost entirely of fast/catchy tunes, as Act II is when all the intense stuff happens. - PropaneNightmare
* ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'' is a lot more interesting when you consider that Sweeney and Anthony are actually foils of each other beyond the simple fact that one is older and broken and more worldly and the other is younger and more optimistic. Going deeper, they are exact opposites in how they react to wrongs committed against themselves and the ones they love. Sweeney discovers how his wife was raped and his daughter was unhappily trapped within the Judge's house, and all he does is go on a long plot to kill the Judge. Even though he knows Johanna is alive and scared and miserable, he makes no effort to save her, unless it contributes to his plan to kill Turpin. His plan, while done in the name of his wife, still only help himself and add to the misery and bloodshed. Anthony, on the other hand, knows of Johanna's plight and spends the play trying to rescue her. Even though he knows how the Judge is mistreating her, he chooses to try to fix her situation and rescue her instead of get revenge on the Judge. This is perhaps best shown when Johanna is being sent to the asylum and Anthony threatens to kill Turpin. At that moment, Anthony could choose between killing the Judge (an act of revenge) or chasing after the carriage (directly helping Johanna). He, of course, chooses the latter. And at the end, that's why he and Johanna survive and escape while Sweeney becomes so horribly broken that he lets himself die. Anthony is really the more heroic of the two!
* I'm not sure if this counts as Fridge Brilliance, but there's one thing in ''TheKingAndI'' which had always bugged me. Right before Anna sings "Young Lovers" early in the musical, Lady Tiang tells her that she believes that Tuptim loves a man other than the king. This bothered me because Tuptim had only been brought in that scene, and Lady Tiang entered the stage an entire song after her, and they had never said a word to each other. Lady Tiang hadn't even seen or heard of Lun Tha, Tuptim's love interest. Then one day it hits me: before Lady Tiang comes on, Tuptim has a whole solo song about how the king will never know she loves another man ("My Lord And Master"). Lady Tiang must have been standing right offstage while Tuptim was singing, listening in! (Although this doesn't explain why neither the king nor the Kralahome knew, because they were right offstage, too.)
* In ''RosencrantzAndGuildensternAreDead,'' The Player's line [[KillEmAll "Deaths for all ages and occasions. Deaths of kings and princes... and nobodies."]] It isn't just The Player describing ''{{Hamlet}},'' and to a further extent tragedy, it's him pointing out the simple truth of life: Death eventually takes you, no matter who you are.
* ''AVeryPotterMusical'':
** When Dumbledore says Hogwarts has a "hidden swimming pool", he's not kidding. Harry visits the "hidden swimming pool" (or giant bathtub, either one) in the prefects' bathroom in the fourth book.
** Snape shows Harry exactly what he needs to do. [[spoiler: Die, of course!]]
** Bellatrix tells Voldemort there are "pieces of [him] missing", and Voldemort defensively asks if she's talking about his Horcruxes. [[spoiler: Considering how Voldemort survives, she ''is'' talking about ''one'' of them.]]
** In Ron's first year he was told he doesn't get the girl [[spoiler: by future!Draco]]. So he's a bit of a butthead -- he's protecting himself by denying any feelings for Hermione until Granger Danger strikes and he can't deny anymore.

** Fridge/Coriolanus

* ''SweeneyTodd'' is a lot more interesting when you consider that Sweeney and Anthony are actually foils of each other beyond the simple fact that one is older and broken and more worldly and the other is younger and more optimistic. Going deeper, they are exact opposites in how they react to wrongs committed against themselves and the ones they love. Sweeney discovers how his wife was raped and his daughter was unhappily trapped within the Judge's house, and all he does is go on a long plot to kill the Judge. Even though he knows Johanna is alive and scared and miserable, he makes no effort to save her, unless it contributes to his plan to kill Turpin. His plan, while done in the name of his wife, still only help himself and add to the misery and bloodshed. Anthony, on the other hand, knows of Johanna's plight and spends the play trying to rescue her. Even though he knows how the Judge is mistreating her, he chooses to try to fix her situation and rescue her instead of get revenge on the Judge. This is perhaps best shown when Johanna is being sent to the asylum and Anthony threatens to kill Turpin. At that moment, Anthony could choose between killing the Judge (an act of revenge) or chasing after the carriage (directly helping Johanna). He, of course, chooses the latter. And at the end, that's why he and Johanna survive and escape while Sweeney becomes so horribly broken that he lets himself die. Anthony is really the more heroic of the two!

** Keep in mind also that Brad and Janet never actually told Frank they had a flat tire. That's pretty much key right there. Knowing Frank, it's [[{{Understatement}} a lot less likely]] that he just took a wild guess.

** In the film, it's even more brilliant because [[TimCurry Frank]] looks at the audience and pretty much grins at them when he says it. He [[BreakingTheFourthWall broke the fourth wall]] and pretty much had an "Yeah, I'm behind the whole thing" smirk at the audience.

*** I actually saw Rosaline's presence in the play as a way of introducing ambiguity. Romeo's initial infatuation with Rosaline could mean one of two things: Either that he's an unintentional manskank who falls for women easily and is a slave to his infatuations when he does, or that his love for Juliet was the real deal- real enough to pull him out of his funk and make him recognize his crush on Rosaline as the petty infatuation it was. Which makes the burying of the parents' strife all the more powerful- not only does Shakespeare illustrate that love can be a real political force, but that it's a better way in violence even in it's dumbest and most adolescent forms. -- LaplacesKyton

** Another piece of wordplay-related brilliance in Hamlet: Claudius' line, "My offense is rank; it stinks to heaven". It struck me at a literal fridge how layered and complex this line is, and how elegant a fusion of the tragic and the comic. Claudius' offense is 'rank' both in the sense of an unearned position (his ''rank'' as king) and in the sense of being figuratively smelly, i.e. offensive. It "stinks to heaven" both in the sense of a rising stench, and also in the sense of being repulsive to the heavens, an offense to the sacred.

** Another piece of wordplay-related brilliance in Hamlet: Claudius' line, "My offense is rank; it stinks to heaven". It struck me at a literal fridge how layered and complex this line is, and how elegant a fusion of the tragic and the comic. Claudius' offense is 'rank' both in the sense of an unearned position (his ''rank'' as king) and in the sense of being figuratively smelly, i.e. offensive. It "stinks to heaven" both in the sense of a rising stench, and also in the sense of being repulsive to God, to the heavens and to anything sacred.