Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse

[John Adams]

Posted: 8/27/16 at 11:40am

Demitri2 spurred my thoughts about this team (and Newley in particular) in the Barbra's ENCORE thread. If you're looking for under-performed audition songs, I think one could look to their catalogue for some excellent selections. This song from The Good Old Bad Old Days for example:

 

 

Unrelated to the above thought, the similarities in these album covers freaked me out a little:

  

Thoughts? Favorite songs? Memories?

[John Adams]

Posted: 8/27/16 at 11:54am

I'm repeating my thought from the Barbra's ENCORE thread, but doing an Anthony Newley impression is a fun party trick if there's a lull...

 

 

[Demitri2]

Posted: 8/27/16 at 3:49pm

John,

 

Are you at all familiar with the musical CHAPLIN from 1983 (not the later 2012 Broadway production)? Newley wrote both the lyrics and the music to a biographical musical based on the life of Charlie Chaplin. I saw it back in 1983 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. At the time if you had a student ID card you could purchase any seat in the theater for three dollars. This allowed me to see a show in its first preview performance and its very last closing performance which I loved doing.

 

CHAPLIN was a rather amazing show. What impressed me the most was that what I first saw was a totally different show compared to the last performance. Never in my theatre going days have I seen total scenes thrown out, new ones added, songs rearranged, songs replaced, new lyrics and new scenery all accomplished within a short period of time (in fact Larry Grossman and Leslie Bricusse were flown in to doctor the score but I have no idea who ended up writing what) . What was so satisfying was that it all came together by the end. Andrea Marcovicci  played his last wife Oona O'Neill and one of the highlights of the story line was Newley on a ship being deported from the United States to Europe. In fact here's a video of the number:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dN-rEmEh5E4

 

What I think hurt the show the most was at the time Bank of America owned the rights of Chaplin as The Little Tramp that they were using on their TV commercials. Therefore the show was legally unable to show Newley impersonate Chaplin in his signature role. I feel the audience, not understanding the situation, felt cheated by not seeing the character they were sure they were going to see and faulted the show for not doing so. Anyway, Newley gave the show his very all and I was truly impressed by his ability to adapt to the countless changes that took place. Below is an article you might find interesting though it gets a bit tedious after a while.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/10/theater/why-chaplin-is-not-opening-on-broadway.html?pagewanted=1

 

 

[John Adams]

Posted: 8/28/16 at 10:21am

I'd found the NYT article and was going to link to it when I saw your post. As I was reading, I kept thinking about Rebecca and the financial issues that show encountered. Not exactly the same, but similar enough to be very interesting. Thanks!