Profile for trentsketch

I am not the biggest fan of Wicked, but Kristin Chenoweth's performance was so incredible I actually saw it a second time for her. It encapsulated everything that makes her a star. Great comedy, a showcase of her pop and classical training, and surprisingly emotional moments after so many silly scenes in the show. 

I work with a few NJ theatre companies. There's a lot of talk right now about the risks of actually opening a show in October even with permission from the state. I will not be surprised to hear announcements of in-person productions soon from non-Equity houses.

I'm fine with changing the rules with such an abbreviated season. It seems to shock people every time when not so great shows wind up on Broadway, but it happens every season. A Tony award isn't a participation trophy.

With that said, I don't think this was done specifically because of Lightning Thief. We're dealing with an unprecedented season where none of the potential nominees can be rewatched before voting. A discussion of quality needs to happen more than ever bef

Amandla Stenberg is a non-binary (she/her and they/their) black actor who actually turned down the role of Shuri in Black Panther because she thought a darker skinned actor should play the role. This is the first I've heard of any controversy about their casting in the Dear Evan Hansen film.

Platt will look close enough to the right age when he's shaved and styled properly. They clearly want him to recreate the role on film. 

Oh, so now we don't like the movie Can't Hardly Wait? You're not wrong. Lysistrata Jones definitely pulled from a certain style of teen comedy.

Anyway, I was more referring to the musicalization of Lysistrata in a non-war context that made enough sense for the concept to hold water.

I think the score is better towards the end of the show than the beginning. I also think the finale, Give It Up, is the best song in the show by far. This was a case of me enjoying a musical in spite of its score. The cast, choreography, and book were pretty solid.

Grand Hotel is pretty spectacular, but nothing compares to Nine. That was a lightning in a bottle moment for the creative team. It's so experimental to have had as much success as it did on Broadway twice over. 

I will say I think Yeston's best work is December Songs, a song cycle inspired by Schubert's Winterreise. It's as alive and experimental as Nine in its combination of classical, cabaret, and musical theatre styles. It's the story of a sing

The Nine revival was spectacular all around. In the video BroadwayFosse posted, you can see Chita in "Folies Bergeres" around 17:35-22:40. The video has most of her song.

Absolutely, HeyMrMusic. Newsies had a brand new book and retooled the whole score. I just remember there being like a lot of "But Newsies is eligible" commentary when Once was not allowed to compete in Original Score. 

I heard a lot of, "Once is a play with music," almost as much as I heard, "well actually, Peter and the Starcatcher IS a musical" that season. And then One Man, Two Guvnors is just hanging out with its interstitial skiffle son

Reducing it to one part is the smart move at this point. When Broadway can reopen, the Harry Potter brand will obviously help the show. However, the cost of one Broadway ticket instead of two (with associated travel costs) will be a much easier sell to tourists. Dedicated Potter fans will surely come back to see how the story changed from the first time they saw it. It also gives them another much more manageable version of the text to license when it does close on Broadway. Do you know how m

The 2011-2012 season was an odd one for original musicals. Half of the new musicals that opened were adapted scores. The other half were critically panned original score musicals.

There were only a handful of new songs in Once: Abandoned in Bandon, the song in Czech, and The Moon. Everything else was adapted from the songs in the Once movie. It was ruled ineligible for Original Score. 

Newsies was also adapted, but featured enough new songs to be eligible. I can't remem

Actually doing a piano only show on Broadway is cost prohibitive. The American Federation of Musicians has a contract in place for a minimum amount of musicians who must perform as part of the orchestra or else there are very high fees to pay to work around it. There have been a few shows where the actors had to join the specific musician's union so the production could go ahead with their actor/musician concept. I swear John Doyle's Sweeney Todd had that happen, though it might have

The John Doyle revival of Sweeney Todd. Having the actors play their own instruments was a gimmick, but it worked because the actors actually played well and did really clear character work. When they died, they were witnessing Toby's story as he retold it in the mental hospital. There was a clear separation of what level the narrative was working on in any moment. It's not the only Sweeney Todd to reset itself in a hospital, but it's the only one I've seen that made it f

It wasn't terrible. It's just weird. Cry-Baby was an odd film to adapt even with it being one of John Waters' tamer stories. It had some good moments. Screw Loose is great and I like that number they picked for the Tonys where the convicts are tap dancing with printed license plates on their feet (A Little Upset.) Really, I think it just wasn't a match for Broadway. It was weird, but not really weird enough to serve the story it was telling. The original film is a musical

If I remember correctly, Passing Strange had some interviews/backstage footage spliced in at the beginning and end, which could push it to Documentary. It also only aired on HBO, putting it in TV categories rather than Film categories. Studios/distributors do a lot of work campaigning how a film is recognized. HBO wanted Passing Strange to compete as a documentary and not a TV special, so it did.

Hamilton is an edited (meaning filtered) recording of a narrative performance. I coul

Disney would be stupid not to submit it for consideration at the Academy Awards. It technically meets the updated requirements caused by the pandemic and is critically acclaimed. Whether or not it is actually treated as a film by voters is beyond the point. You miss all the shots you don't take. 

Hamilton meets the definition of feature length film for awards purposes that had every intention of being released in movie theaters. Due to Covid-19, the Academy Awards changed