I work as a music director for educational and non-profit theater and as a freelance writer. My main webhub is my entertainment media blog Cue the Media.
Wasn't there actually a Susan Boyle musical on the West End a few years ago? I Dreamed a Dream? I want to say Fox bought the rights to the musical so they could roll it into another musical they were developing based on Susan Boyle's life.
Be More Chill has been available to license for quite a while. I feel like Samuel French had it after the Two Rivers' run and now it's on RNH, though it might just be that Samuel French has other Joe Iconis titles and was selling vocal selections and a libretto separate from licensing. Either way, productions popped up a few times before the off-Broadway run in my area.
It's usually only local productions that get impacted when a show is available to license before bowing o
They don't always do questionnaires. I'm trying to think of the last show I heard do questionnaires and I'm drawing a blank. It's not particularly common at this point.
I adore the score but the book has not aged well. They would have to do extensive rewrites to make Paul's actions not seem predatory against Lili. I think it's possible. The first steps are clearly aging up Lili and giving her a better reason for being so drawn to the puppets than childlike wonder.
Agreed with BroadyFosse123. That's not your responsibility.
They should be dying character shoes and tap shoes to the color they want (or paying someone to do it for them). Green isn't exactly a regularly available color for dance shoes. They most likely dyed them for the Broadway production too.
Sailor Moon has always had high quality live shows. This version uses animated elements on projection screens, so it's easier to tour with. It's nothing something that would easily sustain a long run, but a few dates here or there in key markets should sell just fine.
This is simply marketing playing off of nostalgia.
The element of truth is that My Fair Lady is the stage to screen adaptation that won the most major awards in the US. It did win eight Oscars including Best Picture after winning six Tony awards including Best Musical. It's also been revived four times now on Broadway.
I agree with CT2NYC that The Sound of Music is probably a more accurate pick for Most Beloved. The Wizard of Oz makes more sense, too. But, then again, you do
The other element (aside from appealing to multiple demographics with distinct yet simple imagery) is the licensing aspect. Most of the major theatrical licensing companies also offer the option to license the original promotional art for your production. So if I want to license A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, I can pay an additional fee to get the rights to use the graphic of the falling piano with the show name on it. I plug in my show information (theater location, dates, etc.)
The answer to this would be easy if we went back 20 years: Contact, a dance musical that will probably never be revived.
Of the ones that can be licensed, Billy Elliott is the hardest to produce because of the need for so many talented young dancers who can sing. Spring Awakening is a close second there just because of the language and mature content. Once will be the hardest winner to produce once the rights are no longer restricted because of the actor/instrumentalist conceit. <
I actually got excited to see it based on the parade performance. I was on the fence about the concept but the approach clicked when I saw it in context with the lights and staging. I'm going to have to try to catch it next month.
Regarding the stage adaptation of High School Musical, a big part of the marketing push for the first year of licensing was Disney promoted it as a Broadway-bound musical they were allowing schools to do first. Obviously, it never made it to Broadway, but that was the intention at one point.
I've seen a lot of bad shows that I cherish the memory of seeing just for the sheer "why" factor of them.
No, my Unsee show would have to be something incredibly dull: In My Life. My most vivid memory of the show is the angel character's cane broke onstage and the head of the cane landed in the aisle next to me. I picked it up and handed it back to the actor, who seemed horrified that the prop almost hit someone in the audience. There was maybe a pleasant song with th
Rent, 8 times. 3 times when I was a student in high school, then another 5 times chaperoning field trips with the various drama clubs I worked with until the show closed.
On my own, Spelling Bee. 5 times. I saw it once off-Broadway, than four more times on Broadway throughout the run. I loved the show and the lottery was pretty easy to win.
I have no problems with the tone of the New York Times review. The critics at that publication always go in hard when they think a show is terrible. If anything, having two critics discuss their problems with the show softens the blow--could you imagine if Jesse Green wrote the review alone and ripped the Kong puppet to shreds, too?--while justifying such a negative critique. They knew the show was going to be so bad that they needed a sounding board to justify why they were so negative. <
Jefferson Mays in I Am My Own Wife. The play and production on Broadway were phenomenal. Mays felt effortless in all his character transformations done right in front of the audience and managed to draw focus from an extremely intricate set design of floor to ceiling living room sets ups with slight variants stacked behind him. My eye did not wander from him when he was onstage.
I liked the one where he thought handing out screens to put over cellphones would make people want to see Godspell. Has there been a "Tweet Seat" night since on Broadway?
The Apple Tree technically goes from the Adam and Eve creation myth to modern times. The caveat is that it's three short musicals connected by theme rather than a singular narrative.
Songs for a New World goes from 1492 to present, but it's a song cycle.
Drowsy Chaperone is another interesting wrinkle on the idea. It takes place in one night, but it's flashing back in real time to a Broadway show from almost a century before.