Broadway and Beyond

[Lisa Miller]

I just want to fangirl over Patti Lupone's win for Gypsy. WOOOOHOOOO!

The standing O she got for performing Everything's Comin' Up Roses and her win was hugely deserved. Loved her acceptance speech. Just love, love, love her.

/fangirling

[Deleted]

Duke of URL, how did you like My Fair Lady?

I liked it enormously as a family event to see a stage classic, Wol. The production itself was good: Eliza & Higgins had great chemistry, even from the balcony; Higgins pater stole the show with extreme but highly entertaining applause-milking and stopped the show on "With A Little Bit of Luck"...totally ripping off that other show (Stomp, was it?) but a show-stopper nonetheless; set design allowed for quick and seamless transitions between locations (including a tube station & train!); they did a lot with lighting; Freddie was a terrific upper class twit. Etc. I didn't like the all-black Ascot, though. When my college did it, that scene was a riot of color that was a humorous contrast to the "stiff upper lip" style of acting.

ETA: Seconding the Patti Lupone lurv!

Further amended: The Sweeney Todd touring production is a stripped down version with like 9 actors onstage all the time, playing instruments when not in a scene (and sometimes when in a scene), single set, very presentational style (some scenes, including intimate ones with 2 actors, played between actor and audience rather than between actor and actor), no orchestra. Interesting and well done but it's very Brechtian and you may not like it if you go in expecting the big B'way musical experience.

[chiquita]

Last night I saw Turn of the Century, the new musical from Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), directed by Tommy Tune. It's horrible. The book is astonishingly bad. The premise is that on Dec. 31 '99, a singer & a piano player get transported back to the turn of the previous century, and they decide to make money by "writing" all of the great songs of the 1900s, from the likes of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Gershwin, etc. Those songs make up the majority of the music, but the two original songs are awful. The lyrics of the song that the characters write as their attempt at an original song occurs at a big dramatic moment, and I had to tune out because it had the cheesiest of cheeseball lyrics. What a disaster. Of positive note, Rachel York sounded great, and Jeff Daniels did a nice job despite being a mediocre singer.

[Wol]

Oct 15, 2008 12:03:41 GMT -4 chiquita said:

Last night I saw Turn of the Century, the new musical from Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice (Jersey Boys), directed by Tommy Tune. It's horrible. The book is astonishingly bad. The premise is that on Dec. 31 '99, a singer & a piano player get transported back to the turn of the previous century, and they decide to make money by "writing" all of the great songs of the 1900s, from the likes of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Gershwin, etc. Those songs make up the majority of the music, but the two original songs are awful. The lyrics of the song that the characters write as their attempt at an original song occurs at a big dramatic moment, and I had to tune out because it had the cheesiest of cheeseball lyrics. What a disaster. Of positive note, Rachel York sounded great, and Jeff Daniels did a nice job despite being a mediocre singer.

"Turn of the Century" was originally a movie script by Marshall Brickman. He tried to get it made forever. At one point Dan Aykroyd was attached. Very funny that he's made it over into a musical.

[The Brunette]

You may or may not know that Andrew Lloyd Webber is at work on a sequel to "The Phantom of the Opera." POTO is a guilty pleasure of mine, and I revere the stage version so much I refuse to watch the movie. I thought the musical ended perfectly, so I wasn't happy about this Electric Boogaloo.

Coming in late 2009, we will see that the Phantom, clearly not dead and clearly not over Christine, has created a robot likeness of her to violate. Also, he will have impregnated Christine - but when? The only possible time he could have done that would be if he raped her after she fainted in "Music of the Night." But since Act II takes place six months later, wouldn't Christine have been showing? Creating Phantom Spawn was certainly not a priority during the final lair scene.

At any rate, it's bound to be a clusterfuck full of inspiration from bad "phanfic" on FanFiction.net - not to mention variations of the "Fish Heads" melody (seriously, you can sing "Fish heads, fish heads, rolly-poly fish heads" to many ALW songs - most notoriously, MOTN).

Well, I saw on the news today that ALW plans to open this simultaneously in three different cities - London, of course, and also Broadway and possibly Shanghai.

I had originally taken comfort in the belief that in all likelihood, "Love Never Dies" would have been so savaged in London that it would never make it to Broadway.

There's already a trailer!

[bklynred]

I just saw In the Heights. It was pretty good, although I lost some of the dialogue in the lead's (Usnavi's) rapping. The sets were really authentic (maybe too much so?). There's also a lot of Spanish going on that my friend's daughter had to translate for me afterward. The dancing was great.

[Peggy Lane]

I pulled out my Parade OCR today, and damn. That show is just astonishingly, heartbreakingly good. Especially the building sense of hope starting with "This Is Not Over Yet" until you get to the finale, where it all ends so horribly. I particularly love in "This Is Not Over Yet" when the Franks sing 'don't underestimate Lucille and Leo Frank' together after never quite being on the same note during the rest of the songs.

[gingerdangerous]

Parade is wonderful. I also love The Last 5 Years and Songs For a New World which are by the same composer, Jason Robert Brown, who I got to meet at one of the previews for Thirteen(and dorkily asked him to sign my Playbill, haha! I swear, I've seen a ton of celebs around the city and never been starstruck but with JRB I was blushing and falling over my words). Unfortunately, Thirteen wasn't quite up to snuff... I thought it was funny and cute enough but nothing to write home about.

[tamaradixon]

Dec 30, 2008 14:36:25 GMT -4 The Brunette said:

You may or may not know that Andrew Lloyd Webber is at work on a sequel to "The Phantom of the Opera." POTO is a guilty pleasure of mine, and I revere the stage version so much I refuse to watch the movie. I thought the musical ended perfectly, so I wasn't happy about this Electric Boogaloo.

Coming in late 2009, we will see that the Phantom, clearly not dead and clearly not over Christine, has created a robot likeness of her to violate. Also, he will have impregnated Christine - but when? The only possible time he could have done that would be if he raped her after she fainted in "Music of the Night." But since Act II takes place six months later, wouldn't Christine have been showing? Creating Phantom Spawn was certainly not a priority during the final lair scene.

At any rate, it's bound to be a clusterfuck full of inspiration from bad "phanfic" on FanFiction.net - not to mention variations of the "Fish Heads" melody (seriously, you can sing "Fish heads, fish heads, rolly-poly fish heads" to many ALW songs - most notoriously, MOTN).

Well, I saw on the news today that ALW plans to open this simultaneously in three different cities - London, of course, and also Broadway and possibly Shanghai.

I had originally taken comfort in the belief that in all likelihood, "Love Never Dies" would have been so savaged in London that it would never make it to Broadway.

There's already a trailer!

I thought Toronto was getting this?

Need to do some research asap

ETA: Delayed from fall to next spring and TORONTO is included!

[divasahm]

Divaspawn1 and I saw Rent with Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal here in Austin the weekend before last--loved it! I wasn't as familiar with the show as I probably should have been, but it sucked us both right in. I just wish I'd seen Idina Menzel do Maureen's performance art piece--that was hysterical!