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.
I'm torn between Wonderland and Soul Doctor. Wonderland went from okay in the first act to so bad in the second I grew to hate what I tolerated in the first, while Soul Doctor was just...words fail me.
Sweeney Todd is my favorite of his musicals, and one of my all time favorite musicals, as well.
I also really enjoy Assassins, A Little Night Music, The Frogs, and Sunday in the Park with George. Gypsy and West Side Story are great, too, but I view them separately as he was lyricist and not composer for those scores.
I just got an e-mail this morning that the show got an extension. They're adding an extra week of performances, bringing the closing date to Dec. 22 instead of the 15.
It's got to be some version of Alice in Wonderland. I'd even venture the guess that it could be Alice's Rock & Roll Adventure because the song for going down the rabbit hole has the cast singing "down, down, down" in sets of threes while Alice monologues about the trip. It also features the Cheshire Cat in an observational role as Alice's confidant who comes in and out and observes Alice's adventure.
I think Kate Bush's catalogue has potential for an original narrative. I mean, The Line, The Cross, and The Curve was a short musical adaptation of The Red Shoes fairy tale using her album The Red Shoes as inspiration. It was mostly a coherent narrative (minus the fruit scene, which was still awesome) and Bush's music is always written with dance in mind, even the ballads.
Since they cited a manufacturing issue, I have to imagine the delay is caused by something taking longer than expected for the box set. There could be issues with the replica props. There could be issues with a unique/uncommon design element in the coffee table book. It could even be unit cartons or packing material. I doubt they would specify delays due to a manufacturer over licensing/rights issues.
I'm sorry to hear they're holding back the rights. I know the school edition quickly became one of the most produced titles for Broadway Licensing (that was part of the e-mail/marketing blast a few months in) and the available perusal is solid.
We do JR shows all the time with elementary students at the theater I work at. They can handle the material just fine. They might not be able to do all the harmony, but the shows are short enough that they can memorize their lines, learn the melodies, and retain choreography. Little Mermaid Jr is solid. I also really like the updates they made to Aladdin Jr a couple years ago (they pull a lot from the Broadway version, including High Adventure, Babkak Omar Aladdin Kassim, and These Palace Wal
I'm curious to see how this production is going to turn out. For me, I find I Feel Pretty and the Somewhere Ballet to be much needed moments of hope and positivity in a show that does end on a very somber note. I like the contrast in tones. I like the brief glimpses of optimism that start to seem more and more unrealistic (fantasy, if you will) and spread further and further apart as the plot barrels towards inevitable tragedy. Without these moments in act II, it's mostly tension.&nbs
Choosing a show is difficult. You have to account for the students you potentially have (never a guarantee they audition) and what the administration of the school would be comfortable with.
I think most schools could do Honk, All Shook Up (there's alternate text that replaces the race dynamic with a rich/poor dynamic and it works well enough if you don't have a diverse enough community for the original version), and Once Upon a Mattress. They have large casts and the cha
This can be a tough one to get right. I was first introduced to it with a solid college black box production. It moved surprisingly fast because they kept Zillah onstage (technically, on a platform in the back of the house) the whole show. I take it this is a production of the Revisited text with Zillah and Xillah instead of just Zillah
The first one that pops into my head is Ann Harada for Avenue Q. It felt like she was going to get in for featured actress and then didn't. I was at the first performance after the nominations came out and her entrance was met with so much applause that they had to vamp until the house was quiet enough to continue the show.
I didn't dislike Memphis. The cast was great. I just preferred other shows that season. Fela! was wonderful and American Idiot was super polished spectacle. I even preferred Everyday Rapture. The revivals were great, too: A Little Night Music, La Cage Aux Folles, even the short runs of Ragtime and Finian's Rainbow were wonderful productions. Addams Family had its fans, too (not my favorite).
The filmed stage production technically represents the show, but Kimball's pe
I'm going to echo the popular sentiment with Jackie Hoffman. Those Addams Family vlogs were hysterical. From gazing out the window to the ever changing signs across the street to scrolling through all the Tony nominations the show didn't get, that vlog never failed to make me laugh.
I do enjoy Leslie Kritzer's recurring house usher character and the expanding lore of the Winter Garden Theatre. That was ::chef's kiss::
It's a show for a younger audience and those just don't have the best track record on Broadway. I don't know the specifics on why Honk didn't transfer, but it did run in London around the same time Seussical ran on Broadway. That was a family friendly show with a name that failed to find an audience. I can't imagine the ugly duckling musical seemed like a great investment if the Seuss name couldn't sell tickets to families.
I will say that vocal selections can be very useful for starting to get the feel of a show if rental materials aren't going to get there for a minute. Key changes are typically marked (something like "originally performed 1/2 step up" or even "originally performed in "x" key" ) as are significant changes (there's a lovely solo version of "Some Things Are Meant to Be" from Little Women t
The original Broadway production is among my favorite performances. I'm so excited to get to revisit this with a new interpretation of the material. Just having a different Caroline could make such a huge difference and Sharon D. Clarke's Oliviers' performance is so different from Tonya Pinkins' Tony performance of Lot's Wife.
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