Assignment:
Please read Jeffrey Smart's Critical Misperceptions of Falsettoland before completing your entry (min. 750 words, no more than 1250).
As you summarize this article for your reader - and provide perhaps your own interpretation of the play - think of the following questions (but do not answer them one by one): What are the critical misperceptions Smart illustrates in his article, his complaints that New York critics failed to understand the meaning of labels used (perhaps, sometimes abused) by the play?
Illustrate the importance of "nouns" vs "verbs" in the play according to Smart's definition/explanation. What does it mean that, as the libretto recites, overall "words have lost their meaning" (within the broader interpretation of the play, not literally as a reference to AIDS)? Is the show an AIDS play (why yes, why not) and, what role does AIDS have in Marvin's and Whizzer's story (within the economy of that text, that is)?
Readings:
Labels Are Not Characters: Critical Misperception of Falsettoland
By Jeffrey Smart