What New Musicals are Opening Before May 2006- Page 2

[Smaxie]

Posted: 11/8/05 at 1:39pm

C-R-E-P-U-S-C-L-E was the inspiration for Spelling Bee, but it didn't really exist in some fully digested form before becoming Spelling Bee. I'd still call Spelling Bee an original musical.

[son_of_a_gunn_25]

Posted: 11/8/05 at 1:45pm

Here is the explanation I got for Threepenny not being a musical...

Threepenny Opera is so far out of the "musical" mentality that even though it has 20+ songs in it, it is really a play with music. Like Brecht's "Mother Courage" and "Happy End", rather than a musical. The reason it never lasts long in New York
is that people go to see it expecting a musical and instead get a
bizarre montage of 1920's jazz, serious German musical composition, some strange, heavy comedy, and a lot of Brechtian lectures on morality and socialism. The music is like American jazz as seen through a funhouse mirror, which turns it short, tall, narrow, wide, but isn't the true image of its progenitor.

Again not my wording. The explanation from the person who told me.

[jrb_actor]

Posted: 11/8/05 at 1:50pm

While I can see one's logic in feeling a play with music is different than a musical, I would strongly disagree in this instance--especially at 20+ songs.

And, this could be a segue to a discussion about where are the lines between play and musical and opera. To, me it's all theatre and the lines can be blurred, though it's easier to delineate that if the cast is constantly singing, you have music theatre.

[Smaxie]

Posted: 11/8/05 at 1:52pm

So, how does that same person explain the show's six year run at the Theatre de Lys, if it "never lasts long in New York"?

For all intents and purposes though, and with the Tony Awards themselves as a precedent setter, Threepenny Opera is a musical. (Lotte Lenya actually won a Tony for that Off-Broadway production. Raul Julia and Ellen Greene were nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress in a MUSICAL for the 1977 revival, etc.).

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/05 at 2:05pm

and Georgia Brown was nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for the 1990 revival

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/8/05 at 2:22pm

I don't know, I've always understood THREEPENNY to be a work of musical theatre (a large inclusive term) -- you can call it a play with music, or maybe a "songspiel" if you like (I wouldn't call it an opera, though), but it still comes under the umbrella of musical theatre.

Certainly for the purposes of Broadway and the Tonys it's always been categorized as a musical, not a play.

[jv92]

Posted: 11/8/05 at 4:33pm

Bells are Ringing
Allegro
No Strings
A Chorus Line
Follies
Company
Urinetown
Steel Pier

And that's about of the completely original shows I can think of.

But in keeping with this season, it looks pretty good! I mean, we're getting shows with good reviews, a lot of new stuff. I'm exited! Updated On: 11/8/05 at 04:33 PM

[melissa errico fan]

Posted: 11/8/05 at 4:43pm

Isn't Steel Pier based (however loosely) upon They Shoot Horses, Don't They? ?