The Woobie/Theater

• Eponine from Les Misérables, especially in the musical. She's abused by her parents, is always alone, and falls in love with Marius, who doesn't love her back. After she visits the middle of rebellion to see him, he asks her to deliver a letter from him to the girl that he does love. She ends up taking a bullet during the fighting and dying (although she dies happy because he's there comforting her).
  • In the book, she's much more of a Stalker with a Crush, although she's still quite sympathetic. Though that does NOT give her fans white card to bash Cosette for either daring to get Marius's love or for being girlier than Eponine (or better said, the Possession Sue they make out of Eponine).
  • You've got to hand it to Cosette, too, when it comes to woobiedom. First, she gets separated from her mother. Then she gets berated, teased, overworked, starved, beaten, and deprived of adequate clothing by the Thenardiers. At one point, she wraps a small knife in rags and sings to it, pretending that it's a baby doll. Things do improve considerably for her, but still.
  • Jean Valjean himself. Granted, he dies happy, but throughout the course of the book, all his suffering (and there's a lot of it) is derived from his desire to simply help other people. The man spends nineteen years in jail because he was trying to feed his sister's family (granted, fourteen of those years are his own damn fault) and only gets the law back on his trail because he saved a man's life.
  • Bung a vote in for Fantine, too... Falls in love, gets pregnant, man goes off and leaves her as a practical joke, ends up sending the child to be looked after, loses her job because she's trying to look after the kid, so she sells everything she has (including her hair and teeth), and, finally, her body. Gets helped out by Valjean, but dies before she ever gets to see her daughter again.
  • What, not the Barricade Boys? The fact that they all die helps. Mostly a fanon development, as though they do have personalities in the novel, they aren't explored in huge depth. Extra woobie points go to Grantaire, who's cynical, hard-drinking and emotionally wounded, as well as pretty much enamoured with Enjolras.
  • Really, it's right there in the title that most of the characters fit this trope in one way or another.
• Erik (the Phantom) in The Phantom of the Opera. He has huge issues about his physical appearance, exacerbated by being put in a freakshow and beaten by his captors. He eventually escapes and is able to compose his music underneath the Paris opera house until he falls in love with, and gives lessons to, a beautiful young singer who isn't repulsed by him, but, in the words of Cleolinda, "prefers the Missing Hanson Brother to [him]." Granted, he's a bit crazy and kills people, but he has a Freudian Excuse. And he's sexy.
  • He's only sexy in the movie version with Gerard Butler. In the original novel, the Phantom is ugly as sin and even more psychotic... but still can come off as rather sympathetic.
  • Although when it comes to Woobiefication, even Andrew Lloyd Webber can't beat the take on the character in the Arthur Kopit/Maury Yeston musical, who literally has lived his entire life under the Opera House, lost his beloved mother at an early age, and only starts getting nasty when an incompetent manager and his shrill-voiced wife start messing things up.
• While its merit otherwise can be debated (and it being canon is... questionable, to say the least), The Lord of the Rings musical managed to woobiefy Gollum--or, more specifically, Smeagol -- largely owing to actor Michael Therriault's performance. Smeagol actually wants to change for the better and physically fights with himself over whether or not to kill Frodo and Sam in their sleep, to the point of holding a sword to his own throat instead of allowing Gollum to stab them, then collapses, sobbing "We changed!" to Gollum's accusation of cowardice, and finally curls up to sleep by Frodo's feet. All made sadder by most of the audience knowing that he will eventually lose out to Gollum... about thirty seconds later.
• Yonah from Stephen Schwartz's Children of Eden. Her song "Stranger to the Rain" is especially Anvilicious. "I'm a daughter of the race of Cain/I am not a stranger to the rain."
• Alfred in Tanz der Vampire is so cute and well-meaning that you just want to pick him up and put him in your pocket, especially after the cutie-breaking sets in.
  • If Herbert isn't played as a Sissy Villain, he'll be played as one of these. There's not a lot of middle ground.
• The title character of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes.
• Jack Point in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Yeomen of the Guard.
• Tobias Ragg from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. A Victorian orphan, possibly mentally handicapped depending on the production, abused by Signor Pirelli until he's taken in by Mrs. Lovett, for whom he develops a deep and sadly misguided devotion. When he discovers just what's been going into those meat pies of hers, he literally goes mad from the revelation.
  • The movie version makes it even worse, since the depictions of Pirelli's physical violence were so much more extreme (and bloody) than it generally is in stage productions. Not to mention the fact that in the movie, Toby really looks like a little kid, whereas he's generally played by a guy in his mid- to late-teens or early twenties on stage, since it's really not child-appropriate material.
    • Toby doesn't look like a little kid, he is a little kid.
  • To a lesser extent, the boy who Judge Turpin sends to be hanged for stealing food. In this troper's production, he was played by the directors SEVEN YEAR OLD SON. Then audience as a whole was horrifed by the woobie face he made.
• Elphaba. Born into circumstances beyond her control, discriminated against since birth, had about 3 people in her whole life (Glinda, Fiyero, Dr. Dillamond) who cared about her, tried to do the right thing and got persecuted for god-only-knows how long for it.
• Tracie Thom's portrayal of Joanne in the on-stage version of Rent made the character into more of a woobie than she had been previously. It's probably her sweet face. In general, Joanne is more of a Woobie in the stage version than in the movie, simply due to some of the dialog removed from the film as well as because of her helplessly annoyed stage play-only solo "We're Okay".
  • Mark definietely qualifies, especially if you've seen the stage version of Rent. "Halloween" gives a lot of insight into Mark's character, it reflects on his intimate feelings on the loss of hope, confidence and coping with the harsh reality that he is being faced with in his life. After watching Angel die, he must come to terms that Mimi, Roger, and Collins will eventually suffer the same fate. This also shows how loveless his life is; he was dumped by Maureen for Joanne, and by this point in the show, Roger is leaving for Santa Fe. Not only that, but he is also failing at his filmmaking career, so much so that he resorts to working with Alexi Darling. This is when you realize/are reminded that among all the chaos that is going on in the show, Mark has been in the middle of everything this whole time.
• Every single teenager in Spring Awakening, no matter how much of a Jerkass they seem to be or how much teenagerly Wangst they show, makes you want to run down onto the stage and give them a hug. Lots of 'em. It certainly doesn't help any that some of the conflicts of the more minor characters aren't even resolved.
  • This troper knows that the point of the show is that Adults Are Useless, but even as a teenager it was hard not to feel sorry for Wendla's mother too. Fridge Logic ahoy!: Wendla's mother is a woman in the nineteenth century herself- how much preparation do you suppose she was given about matters of sex as a young girl? Isn't it more likely than not that she just told Wendla what she was told years ago?
• It's certainly very debatable, but depending on where you stand, Malvolio of Twelfth Night might well be this, despite having likely been written as a Butt Monkey (understandably, considering how unpopular puritans were at the time). If you're sympathetic to his conservative social views (which really don't seem unreasonable in practice), in particular, you'll likely see him as a very loyal, if somewhat dour, butler who was simply doing his duty in reprimanding his mistress's blatantly rude jester and arrogant drunkard of an uncle...and he gets rewarded by being humilated in front of his mistress, locked up in a mad house (notoriously horrible places at the time, of course), and victimised by his tormentors. And even after his innocence comes out, no one seems willing to offer him any real apology for any of this. May also depend somewhat on how serious or comical the particular production plays his character, but still...
  • Similarly, many productions make an effort to play up Sir Andrew Aguecheek, another Butt Monkey and the plucky comic relief, as one of these, the key often being his line 'I was adored once, too', combined with an emphasis on the abuse he recieves at the hands of Sir Toby. Some of the darkest and edgiest adaptations have managed to crank him up to an all-out tragic character.
• Go see Chicago some time. When Amos finishes singing "Mister Cellophane", listen to the crowd (and probably yourself) as they go "Awwww!". Pure woobie.
• Depending on your interpretation, Harry Beaton of Brigadoon. Forced to stay within his hometown for the rest of his life, can't go and get a university degree and make something of his life, and is forced to watch the one girl he likes marry another man. It's no wonder why he snaps.
• Pretty much everyone from Avenue Q. Lampshaded in "It Sucks to be Me" and "Schadenfreude".
• Olive from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Her mother lives in India and Olive never hears from her and she rarely hears anything from her dad, either.
• Patrice from 13. My God.
  • Once Archie stops acting like a Jerkass, he becomes this, too.
• Carmen from Fame, though she'd probably deny it.
• Frank Theatre's adaptation of Kafka's The Metamorphosis had Gregor Samsa as a Woobie. It helped that he appeared as a human with a beetle shadow not a vermin.
• poor juliet D;
• By the end of Copenhagen, Werner Heisenberg has become one - if Bohr didn't hug him at the end of his final monologue, I would have.
• Emile de Becque. Be honest, how many people have NOT wanted to give him a giant hug listening to "This Nearly Was Mine," or the "Some Enchanted Evening" reprise?
• The clown at the center of the "Snowstorm" act in Cirque Du Soleil's Alegria, which tells the tale of a friendship found and lost, between him and a stranger that manifests in his coat and hat when he hangs them up.
• Kim from Miss Saigon certainly qualifies. She's forced to work as a bar girl/prostitute even though she's underaged, falls in love with an American GI who leaves her and marries another woman, bears his child and eventually kills herself so her son can live with just his father and stepmom.
• Toby in The Medium by Gian-Carlo Menotti. Being The Speechless, he suffers in silence.
• MacDuff from Macbeth, who has lost his whole family to the title character's paranoia. And in the scene where he learns of this, it is revealed that Scotland is full of woobies.
• This troper would like to put forward a case for Horatio from Hamlet as Woobie. He turns up in Denmark for the King's funeral (presumably partly for his friend Hamlet's benefit, though it appears that he didn't actually get a chance to see Hamlet until Gertrude and Claudius' wedding). Then he gets his whole worldview blown out of the water by the appearance of the Ghost, watches Hamlet's emotional issues (or outright insanity, depending on the interpretation) take him over and can do nothing about it. And at the very end, most of the cast suddenly drops dead around him and Hamlet dies in his arms. No wonder he tries to kill himself.

Hamlet: O good Horatio, what a wounded name
...If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.

• Gertrude McFuzz from Seussical. She's in love with her next door neighbor, Horton, although he never notices her. Plus, she is really self conscious about her one-feathered tail.
• Blanche Dubois from A Streetcar Named Desire. First of all, she fell in love only to discover that her Husband was gay. Then said Husband killed himself, partially over something Blanche herself said. Blanche becomes slightly unhinged after that, turning to promiscuity because it's the only thing that makes her feel validated and living in a fantasy world because she hates her real life so much. It was her Brother in law who finished her off, though- firstly, by telling her new partner, Mitch, about her past, resulting in Mitch leaving her; and then, finally, by raping her, which caused her yet more emotional damage. When Blanche tried to tell her sister about the rape, her sister chose to disbelieve her and pack her off a mental institution.
• Stanhope from R.C Sherrif's play 'Journey's End'. Set in a trench in WW 1, the play teems with Woobie's, but Stanhope stands out mostly because the poor thing is so young and so damaged. When he gets drunk and finally breaks down you just want to get a huge orange shock blanket and cuddle him to death.
• Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors. She's trapped in a relationship with the most Depraved Dentist in New York-and a Domestic Abuser, at that. He dies, but Audrey's next, more promising, relationship, with Seymour, proves to be fatal, when the carnivorous plant that he leaves lying around kills her. Her dying words cause the extinction of the human race, as she asks Seymour to feed her to the plant.
• Robert in Company. You don't even have to see the whole show to think "Awwww!"
• The Drowsy Chaperone: He doesn't look it, but Man in Chair has a complicated past.

Love is not always lovely in the end. Often, in the end, there are lawyers.

• Beth from Little Women does everything for her family, and dies before they can repay her. Well, except Jo.

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