A wrinkle in yesterday’s ode to open-caption performances presents itself when dealing with writing that deliberately chooses a word that could be spelled in multiple ways.

When an actor says the word-in-question, the audience can consider how each possible spelling alters the meaning of the line, contemplation that would be negated by the open captioning’s visual confirmation of the correct spelling.

An example that springs to mind: the opening of Richard III. On paper, it reads, “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York.” But when spoken on a stage, it’s impossible to deduce if it’s “sun of York” or “son of York.”

I’ll spare you the blowhard exegesis on the relationship between these two words with respect to the play’s themes … so how about a sillier iteration:

One of the upsides to not clearly hearing every lyric in a musical are the wonky versions our confusion might breed. When I first saw The Producers at far too young an age, I was 100% not familiar with Joseph Goebbels. As such, after Springtime for Hitler’s smash opening night, when Max Bialystock sings, “It was so crass and so crude / Even Goebbels would’ve booed” in “Where Did We Go Right?”, my Richard Gere brain concluded that he actually belts, “Even gerbils would’ve booed!”

Weird pronunciation, weird idea … but Max is a weird guy, right?

As am I, self-evidently. 

Further proof: “Where Did We Go Right?” also includes a pull-quote from a rave review of Springtime for Hitler, a line that just so happens to encapsulate my artistic taste:

“It was shocking, outrageous, insulting … and I loved every minute of it.”