My thoughts on Ratatousical
This is an offshoot of another post; my brief history of Ratatouille: The Musical. This post replaces Part 5 but is its own post because it is best to divide it into its own separate sections.
There are multiple references in this post to the full version of the Ratatouille musical including timestamps. They refer to this video.
Disclaimer: This is not a review, but it does contain some (constructive) criticism.
Remy is not a ratatouille
So firstly, re the
Remy, the ratatouille,
Controversy - The way they get around this is not what Emily suggested (see the other blog). They instead use it to reference (SPOILER ALERT) Remy's restaurant at the end, La Ratatouille. This is one way around it, but IMO it doesn't matter.
Most people won't care, just like they don't care that the list of colours in Joseph and the unnecessarily long title contains FIVE different shades of brown (brown, ochre, fawn, chocolate, russet), FOUR shades of red (red, scarlet, ruby, crimson) and THREE shades of purple (violet, lilac, purple)
Puns
Ratatousical is a portmanteau of Ratatouille and Musical. Why isn't it Ratatouille: The Mousical?
The length
You may have noticed that the musical is considerably shorter than the movie (the movie is 1h51m and the musical is about 59m). Most musicals are about 2 1/2 hours long (1 1/2 hours Act 1, 1h Act 2), so we should be expanding, not summarising!
So why is the musical so much shorter? Probably due to parts like what happens at 37:55:
Blah blah blah, Linguini told Colette about me, The Rat in The Hat. Blah blah blah, the humans fell in love, big shocker there blah blah
Remy was also the narrator in the original movie, but then he was describing what was happening, not 'filling in gaps'. I assume that these narrations would be expanded for the full stage show. Ideas for where to put songs to pad out the time:
- Remy as poison control (soliloquy)
- Remy and Emile cooking in Mabel (the old woman)'s kitchen
- Remy going through the sewer (possibly just music and dancing, look to the stampede scene in The Lion King (stage show) for inspiration
- Remy making soup (already exists)
- Skinner and the lawyer scheming about Gusteau's will (watch the Interrogation Song from Muppets Most Wanted for inspiration
- When we are introduced to Ego (see below)
- Reporters asking about Linguini's parentage
- Linguini prepares to cook for Ego
- The chefs abandon Linguini (soliloquy by Remy and Linguini? Is that a thing?)
- The rats invade the kitchen (possibly dance only)
- The rats cooking (see above)
Counting
At 45:07 Remy is instructing the rats on how to cook. Transcript:
Alright - Team three - we'll be - alright - Team three'll be handling the fish. Team four - roasted items. Team five - grill. Team six - sauces. Get to your stations! Let's go!
Now I don't claim to know much (read: anything) about professional cooking, so I won't question the apparently (to my untrained eye) random groups of foods (what are they making?!). I also won't address the fact that he at no point actually separated the rats into teams, because that was probably not included due to not working in this video medium.
What I will address though, is the numbering of the teams. You see, I studied GCSE Numbers, and although it was a while ago, I think I remember there being some other numbers before three. Surprisingly, The IMDb page for Ratatousical doesn't yet have that in the Goofs page (in fact, as of the writing of this (29 Jan 2021), it doesn't even have a Goofs page.
And in case you were thinking "But surely people aren't that nitpicky that they'll complain about that!", the Goofs page of Ratatouille (the movie) contains such gems as 'most of the spices used are actually herbs' and 'most of the characters don't have French accents' [exact text paraphrased and shortened]
Ego
I do have one quibble/criticism to make. It regards Ego. I am sure that Andre DeShields is very talented and I haven't heard any evidence to the contrary, but IMHO, he wasn't the best choice to play Ego. Why? Because although Ego isn't technically the villain of Ratatouille (that honour goes to Skinner), he is definitely sinister.
Just check out this clip from the movie. Even if the death imagery escapes you (the room is coffin-shaped and Ego's typewriter has a skull on the back), the English accent is a dead giveaway (English accents suit villains best), most notably how he says 'popular' (1:13).
DeShields is too cheerful to play sinister, although I do like his line at the end:
I didn't like this musical - I LOVED it!
One more thing on DeShields (sorry, I don't mean to have a go at him; he can't help this). IMO, Ego should be played by someone with a bass vocal register.
Tangent - Skip if you already understand vocal registers
Basically, if you can sing, you will only be able to sing a certain range of notes. Usually, women have a higher (although not necessarily wider) range than men, although that can vary. There are 5 different main vocal ranges (highest to lowest):
Soprano
Alto
Tenor
Baritone
Bass
There are additional ranges such as contralto and mezzo-soprano, but the above are the main ones.
Back to the blog!
One of the verses of the song Ratatouille particularly caught my attention:
Ratatouille, it's served to peasants and the like
Ratatouille, do I dare humor it with a bite?
When I review food abroad, they look at me with dread
"No need to seal the coffin for this restaurant is dead"
The last word in this verse (dead) is the lowest. Originally it was sung by the TikTok composer RJ Christian (@RJTheComposer), and (I believe) he has the vocal range as DeShields. I could be wrong about this, as my knowledge of music theory is sketchy, to say the least. I can tell definitively though that neither singer has a bass voice. Want to know how deep a bass voice can be? Watch this video at the timestamps 0:21 and 1:46.
The clip above is from Jesus Christ Superstar, in which Caiaphas (the bass singer) is the villain. There are other villains in JCS, but Caiaphas is easily the most sinister.
Also, another song was written for Ego by CameronFoxMusic. You can watch it here. I suspect this is because the musical was shortened because, in my opinion, it was a good song. My one quibble is the presence of two Egos. Is one supposed to be the Id (psychology joke)? There is also the issue of it working best with Ego playing the piano/keyboard, which could be incorporated. I think this song was meant to be for when he tries the ratatouille, but personally, I think it would be best if this song was played when we first meet Ego in his office. That way both songs could be included.
One final thing on Ego: Check out this video
Skinner
Skinner in this show was played by Mary Testa. Again I have no real objection to this. She did an excellent job, both at playing the character and doing a good French accent. However, I'm not sure why a woman was cast in that part. I have two theories:
1. Skinner is supposed to be comically short and women, as a rule, tend to be shorter than men - This shouldn't matter as most of the shots, especially of Skinner, are only from the shoulders up.
2. Skinner's song [I knew I smelled a Rat] was written and initially performed by a woman - so was Django (Remy's Dad)'s song [Trash is our Treasure], and Django is played by a man, so that on its own isn't a reason.
Re the height issue though, it would still be funny to have Skinner be comically short. But how would you do that? The same way they did Farquaad in Shrek: The Musical [Pun not found. I mean, there's got to be one, right?]
Costumes
You may think that a lot of this section is me trashing on Tilly Grimes (Ratatousical's Costume Consultant), but the fact is he did his best job working within the limitations of COVID restrictions.
"We just asked [while looking through actors' closets via videochat] 'Do you have gray?' Do you have makeup so you can put whiskers on your face?' - Producer Greg Nobile
Source: https://time.com/5925560/ratatouille-tiktok-musical/
TikTok has of course raised the issue of costumes, namely: How do we get humans to look like rats?
A couple of ideas were floated early on, mostly based on Disney's other animal-based stage show, The Lion King. TLK features over 25 different animals, each portrayed in a different way by 49 performers, but not all of them are useful as inspiration for Ratatousical.
Source: https://eu.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/arts/2020/01/29/the-lion-king-broadway-series-meet-animals-and-their-zoo-doubles/2834447001/
Because lions are the main characters (six of the main characters are lions), their costumes are the most human-like, their lion-ness (not to be confused with lioness) being mainly portrayed by headdresses/masks:
↑ This word is spelt correctly. I was surprised too.
Gerald Caesar as Simba in The Lion King
Patrick Brown as Scar (L) and Steven Taylor as Mufasa (R) in The Lion King
The only other bipedal (two-legged) animal in TLK is Timon, the meerkat:
Nick Cordileone as Timon in The Lion King
This was also floated as a possibility for Ratatousical, but as Bernadette Banner pointed out, Timon works like that because he is one side character. This also wouldn't help with choreography, as dancing in a costume like that would be difficult, painful and very difficult to look good.
The above screenshots are not necessarily from the same productions.
Below is a screenshot from the dialogue just before Trash is our Treasure. It is not a very flattering picture of any of the actors, but it gets my point across:
L-R Tituss Burgess - Remy, Adam Lambert - Emile, Wayne Brady - Django
So each actor has interpreted the brief 'dress like a rat' differently. Burgess appears to be wearing human clothes, but they are blue, presumably referencing Remy's colour in the movie (side note - why is he that colour?). Lambert seems to have come as himself, and Brady is rocking a sort of rodent-Fagin-type vibe.
I think this tweet covers it best. If you were to look at these three people and ask what animal they were pretending to be, here are some answers you might come up with:
Burgess - I looked at the picture for a very long time before deciding that I couldn't see him as anything other than human
Lambert - Cat/Tiger/Panther etc.
Brady - Mouse/Rat
In all Lambert and Brady's cases, no one would actually confuse them for actually being those animals, but they evoke the nature of the animal. Here's a better shot of Brady:
- The title
- The poster
- The synopsis
- The word which is used 100+ times[citation needed] in the show
I am aware that the bullet points immediately above completely invalidates the prior rant.
Backup rats wouldn't need so much detail in their costumes:
Emile (Adam Lambert) and the Rat Queens (separate rant in Part 6 of my original post) singing The Rat's Way of Life
In the above screenshot, Lambert, as I mentioned, is evoking some sort of big cat, so we're focussing only on the Rat Queens. As
↑ As of this word, this splinter post is officially longer that the post it came from
they have a yellow filter on them and are also tiny, below is a screenshot from later.
So why did you include the first screenshot? - Ed.
You'll see if you just listen - VFLD
The Rat Queens about to apprehend Skinner
Side note - exactly how many Rat Queens are there? I know some of them are duplicated footage, but at various times, the numbers vary between 8 and 12, and-
I can already sense this becoming an extended rant. Form a splinter post - Ed.
The Rat Queens all have whiskers and ears (although strictly the ears seem to be Mickey Mouse ears), which again evoke a rodent aesthetic. They are also wearing grey and black outfits (The black is only visible in the 1st screenshot, which is why I included it - Phil), because rats are usually grey (except the blue ones, obviously). In an actual performance, the outfits would be more uniform.
One of the Rat Queens did not stick to the grey-black colour scheme. Can you find her?
Scale
One of the biggest (and smallest!) problems that's needed addressing is the scale issue. There are three main configurations of cast members onstage at any given time:
- Humans with humans
- Rats with rats
- Humans with rats
Configuration 1 isn't a problem. Humans have been interacting with other humans onstage at least since the 1930s, possibly even earlier.
Configuration 2 is slightly more problematic, but nevertheless, there is a precedent (sort of ). The best-known example of this is in the musical Cats. The cats in Cats (the movie and the stage show) famously don't look like humans or like cats (see my rant for more), so they can't really help with the costume issue (see above), but they deal with the scale quite cleverly, using oversized props and setpieces. However, Cats has a strange relationship with scale:
Jennyanydots inside a car boot/trunk, Mr Mistofolees atop
Ok, so cat-human scale is a little off, a cat at this scale is probably around 4ft (120cm/1.2m) high (estimate at best). OK, I can deal with that. Just. But later in the show:
As interaction with human implements is far more important to the plot of Ratatousical, a more consistent prop scale would need to be worked out. But that's not the biggest problem.
The biggest problem, of course, is Configuration 3 (humans and rats interacting, in case you've forgotten).
The only precedent I know of with humans interacting with smaller characters is the Disney on Ice versions of the Toy Story franchise.
Lotso in Disney on Ice 2011 - Toy Story 3
The main suggestions for Ratatousical via TikTok:
- Puppetry
- Shadow puppetry (especially inside Linguini's hat)
- Actors on different levels/perspective shift
Puppetry is a good idea, but I would suggest limited use of that technique only, and instead mainly employing a technique that doesn't seem (that I've found) to have been explored by anyone else is the use of a screen. Several times in the video, the human actors are shot from a lower angle to offer the view from a rat's perspective:
Andrew Barth Feldman as Alfredo Linguini
L-R Adam Lambert (Emile), Priscilla Lopez (Mabel), Tituss Burgess (Remy)
This scene was shot in this way due to lockdown constraints, but it could easily work just like that on stage. Also, as Mabel is only ever seen alongside rats, her part could be entirely pre-filmed. I'm not sure if there's a protocol for this. The closest thing I can think of is in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the stage show), where a news anchor is only seen onscreen:
Jerry Jubilee in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
He is shown introducing each of the children, who are in ordinary sets behind the screen:
Cherry Sundae (yes, that's actually her character's name!) with Augustus Gloop and family in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
He makes four TV appearances, leading the audience to assume that those sections were pre-filmed and the actor didn't have to come every night. However, when they broadcast from outside the factory, he actually turns up live.
I wrote all of the above and then remembered the 2012 stage show War of the Worlds, which contained an onscreen cast of about 15 people:
I asked the Martian to stop obstructing the screen but he was surprisingly uncooperative
It also contained a fully holographic Liam Neeson as the main character:
The hologram is the one on the left
Then again, in 2006, a different production included the 22-years-dead Richard
Burton:
The clips of Welles used archive footage from the original War of the Worlds broadcast
↑ This caption would make more sense if the footage was actually Orson Welles, as I originally thought, but I thought it was funny so I left it in anyway
I just remembered that this post is about a light-hearted musical about a rat. I'd genuinely forgotten.
So anyway, the third method:
Forced Perspective
This is the name of a genuine technique used in movies, meant to make objects or people look differently sized than they actually are:
These two men are actually the same size
The same set, when viewed from another angle, makes the secret obvious
This may seem like an amatuerish technique, to be used in independent projects and student films, but in fact it's exactly how The Lord of the Rings was made.
- A friend
- A sofa
- A chair which is the same colour as the sofa
Sit in the below configuration:
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