Actually, this sounds preachy-awful to me. The original musical was no great shakes, but a revised version emphasizing the feminist-empowerment tropes that are so de rigeur these days in theater seems like a puke-fest to me.
That this film has been a disaster in the reviews is not a surprise. The stage musical was always polarizing for audiences, John Guare was making jokes about a movie version 30 years ago in Six Degrees of Separation and film, which is a visual and literal medium, was always going to be dicey for a musical whose central stage conceit was people dressed up as cats. There are many stage conceits accepted in the theater but film is less forgiving. This had potential dis
ModernMillie3 said: "Trey and Matt have always been equal opportunity offenders. For like 20 years now.
If this author is a young millennial I completely understand her being offended, as they are offended by everything."
It's already been established on this thread that she's not a millennial, but what if she was? Why are you putting down a whole generation of people because you don't like what this author wrote? One has nothing to
I didn't read that article as a take down. She said she really enjoyed them first time out and still recognizes several good things about both. They haven't aged particularly well, especially BOM, because times continue to change, as do sensibilities. I saw RENT when it first opened and thought it was terrific. I went back 9 years later and was surprised by how passe it seemed. What was contemporary in 1996 was cliche by 2005. It happens.
Sending a letter or note to a performer because you enjoyed the performance is fine at any age. As long as it is well-boundaried and not desirous of other contact (or overly gushy) I'd imagine it's flattering.
I'm just hoping Spielberg manages to get some grit into it that's believable. He's become so slick and "Hollywood" in how he makes his films and if he gives in to those tendencies I worry that the tone may be way off.
The year following the premature loss of a loved one is a blur to me now, and was when I lived it. People ask how long it took me to get over it, but you don't. The pain slowly recedes over the years and you incorporate the loss into the fabric of your life. I feel such compassion for this man. I do hope his friends and family are as available as possible for him. I remember that physical proximity to loved ones helped when no words could.
There is such a thing as craft in songwriting. The use of rhymes at the end of phrases, the use of internal rhymes or the choice to not use rhyming at all should be in service to the meaning or point of the lyric or the expression of character. Our patriarchal culture gets blamed for a lot of things, many of them valid, but if you really believe it's responsible for perfect rhymes in theater songs, then there's this bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell to you......
What a lackluster group to choose from: 5 jukebox musicals, 2 revivals and 3 new (to Broadway) musicals. My personal fave is Oklahoma! but in terms of originality and artistic reach, it has to be Hadestown.
While there's nothing about this show I find appealing and the cast album is rather bad, there's no denying that the show and the team behind it turned what looked like a flop into a bonafide success, and they deserve to enjoy that success. The investors of this show are being prevented from any possibility of earning back their money, and the hardworking group of people who put this show on 8 times a week deserve better. I may not care for the show itself, but I do h
I've included new shows, not revivals, with half plays and half musicals, in no ranking order. I must say, I think it was a much better decade for plays than for musicals, where I had trouble even coming up with five.
During a matinee of 'The Pirates of Penzance' in 1982, the Major General's daughters came skipping out in song when one of them took a tumble and 2 more went down with her. It was obviously a mistake but they played it up for laughs and had fun with it.
There's always been a move toward movies and TV from Broadway, but many actors tried and failed for one reason or another. Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Zero Mostel and Bert Lahr all went west early(ish) in their careers but, for one reason or another, never quite clicked with audiences in those other media. They each returned to Broadway for some of their biggest successes. It's always been true that many BW actors try to make the shift and never quite achieve it.
Voice type has also been characterized into role type, to a certain extent. Ingenue-Soprano, Young Male Lead-Tenor, Mother/Older Woman-Alto, Father/Villain-Bass, with contraltos and baritones spread among the categories. I'm not saying it's always like this or that it's quite this simple, but that's a fair characterization of many of the classic musicals in terms of voice casting. A bass voice in a lead role is typically something like Tevye in Fidde
