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The Show Must Go On
by Heather Alexander

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Comment by Nelly on 12/13/11
So much info in so few words. Tolosty could learn a lot.

Comment by Jezzi Stewart on 03/11/06
I was going to write a long comment, but it would have been pretty much what Eric wrote.  The main points seem to be that she's the star and somewhat of a diva.  He's tired and doesn't much like doing fundraisers, and he doesn't much care for her or having to follow her lead.  The fact that he's performing enfemme seems secondary.

Comment by (AJ) Eric on 03/06/06
It's difficult to do a role reversal story about the theatre, if it's true that gender roles have always been more fluid there than in mainstream society.  In any case, I don't see where this one works very well.

(I'm assuming, partly from evidence in another story, that role reversal was the intent here.  My first reading of it assumed that we were dealing with a drag show, but the story made even less sense in that environment.)

Trouble is that I can't see where our protagonist's bad mood has anything to do with gender inequity, which ought to be the case if this is a role reversal story.  He seems to have two problems: one, hardly noble, is fulfilling an obligation to earn donations for the troupe that's paying his way and which we're told wouldn't be able to do so unaided.  The other is that as the co-star, he's obliged to defer, socially as well as theatrically, to the star of the show.  That's not a gender thing; it's a pecking-order detail which would be true regardless of which of the four possibilities (M/M, M/F, F/M, F/F) the two operated under.

So we're left with a not-particularly-likable protagonist who spends the entire story in a bad mood, three nondescript but attractive costumes and a fake smile.  Is there a point to this?  I'm not finding one.

It doesn't help that the story was very badly proofed, with wrong words and grammatical errors throughout, to the point where a few sentences look like unsuccessful translations from another language.  
("...she was finished her solo routine so that the dancers then he could go on to the stage. ...the dancers rushed past him and out onto the stage, where the meet another group...")

Eric



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