Broadway tune suggestions for Broadway Revue

Posted: 6/22/11 at 7:58pm

Our small community theater is planning on doing a Broadway Revue. I've been asked to participate after taking 4 years off from theater to have kids. They've asked us to tell them 3 or 4 songs we would like to sing. Since I've been out of the theater loop for awhile I am having major trouble thinking of songs. I'm a mezzo soprano. Can anyone suggest some great crowd-pleasing songs, both ballads and more uptempo, solos and duets? Thanks!
Updated On: 6/23/11 at 07:58 PM

[bk]

Posted: 6/22/11 at 11:37pm

Well, the first thing you all need to do is learn the difference between what a "review" is and what a "revue" is. I believe that your theater is planning to do a Broadway Revue - the revue, of course, can be reviewed but cannot be revued.

Posted: 6/23/11 at 9:03am

Thanks

[castlestreet]

Posted: 6/23/11 at 12:17pm

Back in May I put together a revue called "Broadway's Unexpected Songs" it was a Two Act Revue of songs from flops and songs from shows that were hits, but the songs I choose from those are not the songs everybody associates with that particular score. The audiences loved what we gave them and it was a really big success and the cast had a lot of fun adding songs to their repetoir that they were not familiar with.

[kchenofan]

Posted: 6/23/11 at 12:32pm

The songs would depend on the story you want to tell. Some production numbers could include "Broadway Baby", "Give My Regards to Broadway," or "Lullaby of Broadway" as general Broadway numbers. An interesting concept may be to choose a specific era or composer that you would like to work around. For example, I am doing a revue now that is made up of George M. Cohan songs.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 6/23/11 at 1:02pm

It's important that theater songs for this type revue have a strong stand-on-it's-own impactful narrative outside the context of the show they come from. Of course there are a million possibilities, but you might want to consider whether any of these numbers might work for you: Jerry Herman's I Don't Want to Know from Dear World, Harold Arlen's Down with Love, Lerner and Lane's What Did I Have That I Don't Have? from On A Clear Day, from Cy Coleman and David Zippel's great City of Angels score: You Can Always Count on Me, a crowd-pleasing self-effacing up tempo song and With Every Breath I Take, a gorgeous romantic jazzy ballad that can be done as a duet, Noel Coward's amusing Why Do The Wrong People Travel from Sail Away, and Rodgers and Hart's The Gentleman is a Dope from Allegro.

[egghumor]

Posted: 6/23/11 at 5:31pm

Henrikegerman has made many wonderful suggestions, and so I encougage you to investigate all of them. The first I thought of upon reading this thread is the song "If" from the Jule Styne-Comden & Green show TWO ON THE AISLE a revue from 1951. Although these shows were Off-Broadway, all of them boast dozens of great stand-alone songs: CLOSER THAN EVER and STARTING HERE, STARTING NOW by Richard Maltby and David Shire; and SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD by Jason Robert Brown.

[rougeduck]

Posted: 6/23/11 at 5:48pm

"Light" from Next to Normal can literally end any show.