'Orphan Black' Season 2 Spoilers: Alison Takes On Comic Musical 'Blood Ties,' Mirrors Aynsley Death? [PHOTO, VIDEO]
Clone drama Orphan Black takes an insanely comedic dark Glee-esque turn in Saturday's Mingling Its Own Nature With It. In episode 3, Alison (Tatiana Maslany) starred in a darkly comedic musical called Blood Ties.
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Musical comedy was no big challenge for comedy-rooted Maslany, or her clone Alison Hendrix who performed the musical. To recap, Alison was cast in a community theater musical at the start of Season 2. The musical idea had kicked about in the writers room since last year. Writers were originally trying to get it to be Grease or some other big name. The problem was Grease, and all the other big name musicals were too expensive. The writers were in a bind.
However, writers assistant Mackenzie Donaldson told the writers to check out a little musical she was co-producing and had taken on the road to the Edinburgh Pringe Festival. That musical? Blood Ties.
Blood Ties is a chamber comi-musical about women at a bachelorette party who cover up a suicide. It's written by Anika Johnson and Barbara Johnston. Check out the real musical here.
"It was a real jaw-dropping moment," Co-creator Graeme Manson remembered. Blood Ties perfectly fit the struggle Alison was in after letting once-friend Aynsley (Natalie Lisinska) die in the Season 1 finale.
"We worried a little bit at first that it might be too on the nose, but ended up deciding this twisted little show was on the nose in the right way," he said.
Alison takes Aynsley's role in the play.
"Having Aynsley originally in the musical was a great way to double up the stakes because it meant that her murder is literally on stage," Manson continued. "That's the fortuitous thing going on with this musical that eerily paralleled the storyline. It added this other layer of psychological complexity to Alison's slow unwinding."
That slow unwinding came to a fast crash, when booze-and-pill-spiked Alison took a nose dive into the audience opening night!
"We knew that Alison's breakdown was going to come to a head on opening night because, psychologically, there's nothing more perfect for Alison than to have that breakdown on stage, in front of everyone," Manson said. "It's her deepest fears realized."
Alison literally "hit rock bottom and will have to pick herself up and dust herself off now. And she's going to have to do it in a very isolated way," Manson teased. "In the larger clone story, they're currently very much divided and the process of coming back together is an important one, but Alison has to deal with her personal issues first. For Alison, the betrayal of Donnie is actually a deeper issue than Aynsley's negligible homicide. So, first and foremost is: What will she do about Donnie?"
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Catch the official synopsis for next episode's Governed As It Were By Chance:
"Sarah comes home to look for answers. With Cosima's help, she digs into the origins of the clone experiment. The hunt takes her right into the belly of the beast, but getting out again could cost her more than she knows".
BBC America's next episode, Governed As It Were By Chance airs Saturday, May 10 at 9/8c.
Tatiana Maslany Had A Blast In Blood Ties!