West Side Story Revival Marquee-What are they thinking? Aug 22
2019, 08:22:50 PM
Isn’t there a line in the script, “you’re too dark to pass [for white]?” I’m completely against brownface, but I’m willing to buy that colorism is a thing and that the Sharks are a mostly indigenous-looking, dark-skinned group by necessity or choice, not by coincidence.
The whole use of Downton Abbey in this argument is disingenuous; the show is neither whitewashing nor using "forced diversity." If I recall, the second to last season dealt with issues of race explicitly, as a white member of the aristocracy was challenged in her desire for an interracial relationship with a black American musician.
Stunt Casting Aug 20
2019, 04:41:02 PM
The Chicago OBRC has a second disc of rarities and performances by some of their most notable stunt casting stars. I actually liked Lynda Carter and John O’Hurley better than the Mama and Billy on the OBCR- O’Hurley in particular made a campy meal of the tongue in cheek “All I Care About.”
I saw him as Elvis in Million Dollar Quartet and he was great.
Was Evan Hansen punished enough for his sin? Aug 14
2019, 06:29:43 PM
Speaking of mentally ill, manipulative but pathetic young protagonists, where the hell is my GYPSY II: DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE BLANCHARDS?
It's a saccharine "World's Greatest Dad," which had the much more daring and dangerous moral that "some people really are better off dead, and are not deserving of love or empathy."
It's a shame Cee-Lo Green has repeatedly rendered himself problematic; ever since hearing him in the Little Shop parody on American Dad I've wanted to hear him do Audrey II. He'd bring some of the wide vocal range Levi Stubbs gave the film version- the highs were VERY high and the lows were VERY low, as opposed to the Barry White sound most of the stage productions have gone for.
Barry Manilow ‘fighting horribly’ with hubby manager amid Broadway flop Aug 12
2019, 07:20:13 PM
One of my regular cruise ships, the Celebrity Summit, had (as of 2015) not transitioned from song and dance "floor show" revues to full Broadway musicals. They also had not changed their floor shows since 2009, leaving a few somewhat dated choices and inclusions. One of these was a full fifteen-minute tribute to "arguably the greatest songwriter of our time," Barry Manilow.
The audience reaction each year was priceless; half were little sighs of pleasure, the other half were guffaws, a
New Original Musicals By Black Playwrights In The Last 10 Years On Broadway Aug 12
2019, 10:19:02 AM
Do people of color WANT to write musicals? I’ve talked to at least two who feel uncomfortable with the historical baggage and commercialism of the genre; this may be why the fields of spoken word poetry and solo shows are often dominated by performers of color speaking truth.
Until maybe 2003, as far as I know, American productions were sent a handwritten set of lead sheets from the original London production. After that, they briefly licensed the 2000 revival version with a few changes, before sending out a sort of "based on no production in particular" typesetting with a five-piece band. I have written band parts and vocal parts for a larger cast version as well, enabling the use of some of those big studio-style harmonies you hear in the movie or Roxy
If the things that I learned in queer theory class back in grad school hold true, the "divas" of old are less necessary now than they were half a century ago. The central diva/claque symbiosis was that these larger-than-life, often eccentric or melodramatic women could evoke the exaggerated peaks and valleys of a "feminine" or feminized experience, enabling the mostly-effeminate gay men in the audience a catharsis of vicarious performance. Judy singing a hard-love ballad w
Leading Roles that Don’t Sing Much Aug 7
2019, 09:31:06 PM
In the 1998 version of Cabaret, Cliff sings one line in Perfectly Marvelous, and sings (but very commonly speak-sings) one more line in the Finale.
Super Mario the Musical Aug 7
2019, 08:58:23 PM
Since it's likely never going to happen, I'll share this: I spent about two years trying to chase down SOMEBODY at Nintendo to discuss pitching this very project, after my show did very well at NYMF. It felt like the right time, with Pokemon Go trending as big as it did, and quirky family shows like "Spongebob" and "Peter and the Starcatcher" showing innovative ways of staging impossible things.
The central points of my pitch were these:
1. An original, splashy Broadway score u
Favorite Show & Song From Each Composer Aug 6
2019, 07:21:28 PM
I'll have to do the full list at another time, but this made me think of how perfectly "Nowadays" from Chicago sums up Kander and Ebb's whole oeuvre. I know they insist there is no 'standard' Kander and Ebb style in their autobiography, but when you talk about K&E's style, people know what you're referring to.
Nowadays is the ultimate example of their works, because in one song you get all their major tropes: it's got that building, vampy vaudevillian feel; it's a tongue-in-cheek, semi-
The "comedy" in Dear Evan Hansen Aug 4
2019, 03:28:39 PM
I think it's also a very important line because it establishes Jared not only as a cringy high schooler, but as a VERY specific trope: the "message board edgelord." This is a musical that was written in the early half of this current decade before the Trump era, when the stereotype of a person spending a lot of time on 4Chan or Reddit was "self-styled wannabe hacker with a dark intentionally cringy sense of humor, most of which is tempered with a vaguely homophobic sense of homoeroticism." When
John Kander's "remixed" Cabaret? Aug 4
2019, 12:22:30 PM
I’m a fan of the Roundabout version too. I’ve twice done the ‘87; and those three “dance sequences” just kind of go on and on.
John Kander's "remixed" Cabaret? Aug 4
2019, 10:49:57 AM
Plus, if I recall the '87 version (which seems to be the model here), this version of Money is a three-part suite with "Sitting Pretty," "Money" and "Parade of Nations/Sitting Pretty (Reprise)," the Telephone Song also includes the extended dance sequence, and there's the Fruit Shop Dance, which I believe the '90s version used as underscoring instead.
John Kander's "remixed" Cabaret? Aug 3
2019, 09:09:24 PM
The authors never loved the song, according to their autobiography. Soon as Jack Gifford was gone they started cutting it, and when Fred Ebb played Schultz on the reference recording of the 1987 version, he admitted the song only worked for Gilford, and nobody else quite got it.
