The book takes a while to get to the musical, because it starts with the city and then the twenties as a decade. Then there's the Chicago play and the two movies.
But once it reaches the musical, it really gets into it--the writing, the backstage, Fosse's anger, Verdon's last hurrah on Broadway. There's an analysis of the show that moves from scene to scene and song to song that sort of recreates it for you, explaining all the underpinnings, character motivations, Fisse
Mordden's on an upcoming Theater Talk show, discussing both Carousel and the musical Chicago, because of his new book on it. He quotes some more of those cut lyrics from the Bench Scene, which makes you wonder what other poetic bits Rodgers and Hammerstein shows lost in their Boston tryout.
This seems to have affected Rodgers especially. George Abbott cut "Wait Till You See Her" from By Jupiter, because he couldn't find a good place for it and the show played fine wit
The notion that "integrated" starts with anything in the twentieth century is absurd. There were shows with wholly story-attuned scores in the 1990s--Reginald De Koven's Robin Hood and John Philip Sousa's El Capitan, for instance. And that's speaking only of the American theatre. In England, the musical--meaning a dramatic work with dialogue and song that is more or less in the popular rather than the classical idiom--dates back to The Beggar's Opera, in 1728.
A good friend of mine who has done a lot of interviews over the years says Haskins and Riedel are the best hosts of all, because they knew how to throw the show to the subject and keep the whole thing lively. If you're appearing to plug your musical or your book or whatever, you want a show that not only informs but entertains.
Some interviewers want the show to be about them, which just frustrates the viewer and keeps the subject from loosening up and hitting a homer. Haskins
I, too, saw Davis in The Night of the Iguana. As I remember it, Davis didn't have that much to work with, while Leighton's role really took off (in a subtle and magical way, albeit) in Act Two. All the wonderful Tennessee Williams poetry is written for the Leighton and O'Neal characters. Even the old Nonno is more interesting than Davis' part.
I can see that Ava Gardner, through sheer life-loving charisma, got more out of Davis' role in the film version. Also, it ma
I think the best thing about On Sondheim is its fresh approach to what is becoming very familiar material, like all that background on the Italian literary movement that gave birth to the novel that Passion is based on, or the casting of the original Do I Hear a Waltz? This is stuff the other Sondheim books don't have.
I also like the choice of illustrations. Instead of the usual stage shots and so on, you get all sorts of things you couldn't have expected, for instance when th
Some of you may know this already, but these are called "Mondegreens."
The derivation is a misheard line from way back in some poem or other. The original words were "And laid him on the green," meaning "set his corpse down in that place."
I saw it in Philadelphia, when it was called Holly Golightly. The show has the reputation of being the worst flop of all time simply because it was so prominent, so anticipated, and then was shut down when still in previews. But it actually wasn't that bad. The problem was that its spirit and style didn't suit the Capote original at all: it had been turned into a conventional musical comedy with a dark side, when it needed to be as unusual and flavorsome as a Sondheim-Prince kind of s
Philadelphia used to have an odd habit of getting enthusiastic over shows that would then fail when they got to New York.
That was true of Flahooley, and when Oh Captain! played the town, they had to call the cops out to keep order outside the theatre for crowd control, so keen was the demand for tickets.
That Follies so-called "overture" occurs after a lengthy prelude and even a shortish book scene, so it's not an overture in any real sense. The overture is by definition the first thing heard. Otherwise it isn't an overture.
It is called one in the score, because it's a medley and there really isn't any term for what it is except "Potpourri" or "Arrival of Guests," etc. It uses cut numbers, but many musicals have included cut numbers in the
Finian's Rainbow is especially interesting because it starts with the first phrases of the VERSE to How Are Things in Glocca Morra, whereas you almost never hear the verse of a song in the overture to anything.
Finian's Rainbow's overture also ends oddly, in a kind of fade-out as the curtain goes up, without a big finish. At least, it did so in 1947, in the theatre. The recording used a concert ending, and even Lehman Engel's LP of overtures played a
This is going back some, but Show Boat has a unique overture in that it is less a medley than a tone poem, and included (in the original 1927 version) music that had been cut. What other overture plays cut music?
Another unusual overture is that to Goodtime Charley, which also has a "tone poem" sound to it, and, on the cast album, sounds as if a huge orchestra were playing, not just the pit band.
Moonshine Lullaby WAS on Annie Get Your Gun's original cast album.
The numbers Decca didn't record were Colonel Buffalo Bill, I'm a Bad, Bad Man, and I'll Share It All With You.
Among lesser known Berlin songs, Kaye Ballard sings a very funny version of Mister President's They Love Me on a studio cast of the show. She actually finds more jokes in the piece than Nanette Fabray did.
Speaking of those Berlin counterpoint songs, Miss Liberty's opening number was in that style
Ethan Mordden's recent history of the musical, Anything Goes, ends with an extremely long discographical essay that is essentially a history of cast (and studio-cast) recordings. It starts with The Beggar's Opera and Gilbert and Sullivan and quickly moves to the American musical, charting the first 78 singles of original-cast performers, the first American attempts at albums (with a few original-cast members), Show Boat in 1932 and Blackbirds in 1933. He says The Cradle Will Rock isn&
Well, The Producers really is a fifties-style musical comedy, and that's what the Abbott musical is, at heart. The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees could be the matrices for The Producers.
