jv92 said: "helvizz said: "The Life and Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk. Two shows I don't see being revived any time soon in America..."
If they do any Cy Coleman show about down and dirty old midtown, they ought to do SEESAW before THE LIFE.
KISMET was done some years ago with Stokes and Marin.
Ted Chapin mentioned on a recent podcast that ALLEGRO Redux, ME AND JULIET aaaand the original FLOWER DRUM SONG have been bandied about."
Didn't Seesaw play Off-Broadway in February this year? Not that it shouldn't be done, but, since Encores likes to do shows that haven't been done in a long time, I suppose this could cause them to overlook Seesaw.
If SEESAW was done in New York in February, I don't know where I was. But even if it was, was it with the original charts and presented as close as possible to the way it was done in 1973?
I think people sometimes forget that Encores! is really more about showcasing a score and recapturing a long lost sound (and you could even say now that the ways shows sounded in the early 70s is long lost) than anything.
Hopefully the recent West send production of “City of Angels” that only got to play a few performances before being shut down in March, will have a life and come to broadway.
Jordan Catalano said: "Hopefully the recent West send production of “City of Angels” that only got to play a few performances before being shut down in March, will have a life and come to broadway. "
Totally forgot about that! That would be great. Would love for Andy Karl to play Stone 😊
Either Stop the "World or The Roar of the Greasepaint. Every time in my life I have heard "What Kind of Fool am I," or "Who Can I Turn To" sung by Anthony Newley or Sammie Davis, it has caught my rapt attention, although I knew nothing of the shows underneath. I feel like a must see one of these shows if just for the score, with whichever show is the most amusing and the least painful.
Stop the World played for over 500 performances and gathered five major Tony nominations. Neither show has been revived on Broadway since the 70's.
(My Amazon smart speaker Alexis is great the way she will just at my command pull up Newley singing "Fool" or Sammie singing "Who Can I Turn To," but after ten minutes of trying just to get her to play the OBC of Stop the World I'm ready to toss her out the window. She played me something from Hamilton.)
jv92 said: "If SEESAW was done in New York in February, I don't know where I was. But even if it was, was it with the original charts andpresented as close as possible to the way it was done in 1973?
I think people sometimes forget that Encores! is really more about showcasing a score and recapturing a long lost sound (and you could even say now that the ways shows sounded in the early 70s is long lost) than anything."
I agree with what you said partially: Encores isn't just about recapturing a long lost sound, but, in my opinion, putting on a live production with a full orchestra of a rarely-produced show that otherwise wouldn't be produced this way, specially in New York City. Many of the shows Encores has done in the past already had good cast albums, so if the idea was just to recapture an old score, then they wouldn't have been picked (like Zorba, 1776, Hair, Gypsy and Thoroughly Modern Millie). That's why I don't mind somewhat recent shows - although I wouldn't say a show that has been around for 25 years (and is not popular amongst theater performers and audiences) is recent. When they did Chicago, the show had been closed for less than 20 years, for instance.
The mystique of SMILE is compounded by the fact that the circulating script and the "reference recording" all represent the greatly-improved licensing version of the show, and there's an even BETTER cut of the show produced a few years ago if I recall. The Broadway version, a notorious flop, exists in a bootleg video and basically nowhere else.
So all the questions of "how did this clever, quirky little show fail so bad?" are referencing a version of the show that never had a CHANCE to be showcased at a major level.
I'd be curious to know what the version produced a few years ago was like. The current license script is a step up from the Broadway version, which I've listened to a few times via audience recording (great reaction to That Moment during the title number), but it's still kind of bad. It would be amazing for them to do a big re-write of it to better broach some of the topics covered, particularly surrounding Maria. I'd love to see her character get a bigger send-off in the second act, particularly since, after the title number, the show just kind of flounders to the finish line without even an 11 o'clock number (which In Our Hands is not).