Popular Broadway Songs [Youtbe Clips]

Aida

Word came out this week that Elton John's Aida is heading back to Broadway next year. Here is one of my favorite songs from that show - the second act opener that give us an update on the love triangle, "A Step Too Far".


It will be hard finding voices to live up to Sherie Rene Scott, Adam Pascal, and Heather Headley.

Dear Evan Hansen

Jordan Fisher (Rent Live, Grease Live, Hamilton and Dancing With the Stars winner) is the new Evan on Broadway. The producers just did a wonderful video of him and Gabrielle Carrubba doing their duet of "If I Could Tell Her."

Note how perfectly this song builds on the Oscar Hammerstein tradition of "not-a-love-song love song" like "If I Loved You" and "People Will Say We're in Love". Evan can't come out and own his feelings for Zoe, so he pretends these are things her brother Connor told him. The feelings and observations are Evan's, but he precedes each of them with "He said...". This little trick allows his real feelings to spill out.

Road Show

OK, a day late, but truly a day and a legacy to celebrate. Here is a lovely gay love song from his last musical (to date), Road Show.

Terrence McNally


As I write this, Terrence McNally is the most famous American to die in the Coronavirus pandemic.

“Heartbroken over the loss of Terrence McNally - a giant in our world, who straddled plays and musicals deftly. Grateful for his staggering body of work and his unfailing kindness.” - Lin-Manuel Miranda

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One of the things that made Terrence McNally unique is that for his whole writing career he was an out gay playwright, unlike his ex-lover, Edward Albee and that generation that kept the public closet doors strictly shut. I like to think that Mart Crowley opened the door with The Boys in the Band, and McNally marched through it. His first hit was The Ritz, a farce centering on a straight man who inadvertently takes refuge in a Mafia-owned gay bathhouse. (Find the movie version with Rita Moreno as a bathhouse cabaret singer.)

McNally was equally at home with drama, comedy and musicals. He wrote the book for the Kander and Ebb musicals The Rink and Kiss of the Spiderwoman.


He wrote two plays (and won Tony Awards for both of them) during the AIDS era. The first is Lips Together, Teeth Apart about a woman and several of her friends gathering at a beach house on Fire Island that she has recently inherited from her brother, who died from AIDS. The second is Love! Valor! Compassion! about a group of gay friends who come together for Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day weekends at a cabin on a lake during the height of the AIDS death toll. The movie made from the play features the whole original cast, except for Nathan Lane who was replaced by Jason Alexander.


My favorite McNally play is Master Class. The concept is that opera diva Maria Callas, late in her career, is giving a master class before an audience. But Callas is less suited to teaching than holding court and passing out her views of music, life, audiences and her "rivals". (Best line: "How can you have rivals when no one else can do what you can do?")


McNally was voted a special life achievement Tony Award last year. He is survived by his husband, Tom Kirdahy, a Broadway producer and a former civil rights attorney for not-for-profit AIDS organizations.

While we are all waiting for the world to switch back to color from black & white, here is a little song of inspiration.

Buyer & Cellar

The play Buyer & Cellar was performed live tonight, but the archive is up - for how long I do not know - but it is wonderful. I saw Michael Urie do this Off-Broadway about seven years ago. Tonight he is doing it in his own living room- no sets or lights or music. But this one-man story is just as funny and human as it was in the theater.

Playwright Jonathon Tollins explains the concept in an introduction- an out-of-work actor gets a temp job working in the home of a certain 70something Grammy/Tony/Emmy/Oscar winning Jewish entertainment mega-star in Malibu.

It’s also a benefit for the Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS COVID-19 Fund.

Enjoy!

[ Video has been taken down. ]

Note - there may be international copyright restrictions - I don’t know. Try going to Broadway.com and see if there are any other links there if you run in to problems.

Happening in Central Park


OK, it was yesterday - but who can keep track of the days these days?

Here is something to really celebrate, and entertain you if you can't get out - Barbra's third CBS television special from 1968: A Happening in Central Park.

Note: OK, YouTube took down the concert, but here is the opening of the second act.


The concert contains some Barbra classics like "Cry Me a River" and "People". She also covers a song from The Fantastiks: "I Can See It". And we get her stirring rendition of "Silent Night". There is also her kooky "Latvian Folk Song".

Stephen Sondheim


This once-in-a-lifetime virtual concert almost didn't come off last night. It started 20 minutes late, and ten minutes in ground to a halt due to technical problems while a worldwide audience waited. More than an hour late, it got back on track. (In the archived version above all the mistakes have been edited out, thankfully.)

But here it is - for how long, I don't know. For union and copyright reasons these things tend to be deleted after a couple of days. So watch now while you have the chance!

Performance List

0:18 Stephen Schwartz - "Prologue" (Follies)
3:28 Broadway Musicians - "Overture" (Merrily We Roll Along)
8:47 Sutton Foster - "There Won't Be Trumpets" (Anyone Can Whistle)
12:47 Neil Patrick Harris - "The Witch's Rap" (Into the Woods)
16:26 Kelli O'Hara - "What More Do I Need?" (Saturday Night)
19:56 Judy Kuhn - "What Can You Lose?" (Dick Tracy)
23:53 Katrina Lenk - "Johanna" (Sweeney Todd)
27:11 Aaron Tveit - "Marry Me a Little" (Company)
32:58 Beanie Feldstein & Ben Platt - "It Takes Two" (Into the Woods)
36:25 Brandon Uranowitz - "With So Little to Be Sure Of" (Anyone Can Whistle)
41:04 Melissa Errico - "Children and Art" (Sunday in the Park with George)
46:20 Randy Rainbow - "By the Sea" (Sweeney Todd)
49:21 Elizabeth Stanley - "The Miller's Son" (A Little Night Music)
54:21 Mandy Pantinkin - "Lesson #8" (Sunday in the Park with George)
59:05 Maria Friedman - "Broadway Baby" (Follies)
1:02:36 Lin-Manuel Miranda - "Giants in the Sky" (Into the Woods)
1:05:46 Lea Salonga - "Loving You" (Passion)
1:08:28 Laura Benanti - "I Remember" (Evening Primrose)
1:14:06 Chip Zien - "No More" (Into the Woods)
1:19:27 Josh Groban - "Children Will Listen/Not While I'm Around" (Into the Woods/Sweeney Todd)
1:25:13 Brian Stokes Mitchell - "The Flag Song" (Assassins)
1:28:04 Michael Cerveris - "Finishing the Hat" (Sunday in the Park with George)
1:33:28 Linda Lavin - "The Boy From..." (The Mad Show)
1:37:10 Alexander Gemignani - "Buddy's Blues" (Follies)
1:41:08 Ann Harada, Austin Ku, Kelvin Moon Loh & Thom Sesma - "Someone in a Tree" (Pacific Overtures)
1:50:59 Raúl Esparza - "Take Me to the World" (Evening Primrose)
1:53:55 Donna Murphy - "Send in the Clowns" (A Little Night Music)
1:58:47 Christine Baranski, Meryl Streep & Audra McDonald - "The Ladies Who Lunch" (Company)
2:03:31 Annaleigh Ashford & Jake Gyllenhaal - "Move On" (Sunday in the Park with George)
2:08:14 Patti LuPone - "Anyone Can Whistle" (Anyone Can Whistle)
2:11:46 Bernadette Peters - "No One Is Alone

A Chorus Line

45 years ago this month A Chorus Line opened at the Public Theater Off Broadway and... well it was a like a bomb going off - it changed everything.

This week the cast of the 2010 revival hooked up on Facebook and even though they are now spread out all over the world, they each recorded some of the opening number which they then edited together to produce this video.


A Chorus Line when it moved to the Shubert Theater revitalized Broadway - and I mean that in every sense. It literally began the renaissance of the midtown theater district and demonstrated to the city the value Broadway brings and became an anchor for the revitalization of the whole Times Square area.

Five years ago the cast of Hamilton started their own metoric journey at the Public Theater and paid tribute to the cast of ACL.

Best Dances

We all remember the classic theater songs - sometimes we belt them out in the shower. But you may not realize that choreography is also handed down from one dancer to another. The original work of Agnes DeMille, Bob Fosse, Michael Bennett and Tommy Tune (to name a few) lives on. These are routines that dancers just want to know whether they are ever in that particular show or not.

How many are familiar to you through stage, screen or YouTube?

Into the Woods

Here is an excerpt from the Stephen Sondheim birthday tributes from a couple of weeks ago. Bernadette Peters sings "No One is Alone" from her apartment dining room a capella - and absolutely slays it.


This is a brilliant example of someone who knows that telling a story is more important than vocal frills and a beat. This is art and humanity at its most basic.

No one is alone - I hope this all finds you well.

Camelot

It's that time of year - "The Lusty Month of May" from Camelot.


Sierra Boggess (maybe you saw her in the recent streaming broadcast of the 25th Anniversary performance of The Phantom of the Opera) shows us here that she would make a stunning Guinevere (hint, hint, Broadway producers).

This is John Wilson conducting the BBC orchestra with the original Broadway arrangement including about four minutes of dance music that was cut back in 1960 in an attempt to get audiences home before the subways stopped running.

For a visually stunning alternative take, here is the movie version. Vanessa Redgrave brings the sexuality, if not the vocal timbre, to her interpretation amid all the frolicking directed by Joshua Logan.

Wicked

Here is a different take on a "Popular" song. Aaron Tveit (currently the star of the on-COVID19-hiatus Moulin Rouge!) goes back to his roots when he was featured in Wicked. Except instead of singing Fieryo, he takes a crack at a song owned by the blond girl.

Little Shop of Horrors

One of the great productions that was suspended in March was the Off-Broadway revival of the Alan Menken/Howard Ashman musical Little Shop of Horrors. Jeremy Jordan was a day away from stepping into the role of Seymore when New York shut all the theater.

Here is original Seymore Jonathon Groff last fall tending to his finicky plant.

UPDATE

They took down Jonathon Groff's rendition of "Grow for Me". So here is some alternative content - several weeks ago Jonathon (Seymore), Christian Borle (Orin) and director Michael Mayer did a Zoom discussion on how they collaborated on the project.

Porgy & Bess

As the days get warmer for some of us, here is an appropriate lullaby - "Summertime" by George and Ira Gershwin from Porgy & Bess. Here sung by Audra McDonald who played Bess in the last revival.

Anything Goes

The Tony Awards were supposed to close the 2019-2020 season this Sunday night - but of course that isn't happening. (To nearly universal frustration, they haven't said what they are going to do about this year's awards.)

So, let's go back to Tony's of the past. Sometimes you just need a good all-out tap production number to lift your spirits - and this is one of those times. Here is Sutton Foster and company pounding out the title song in the 2011 revival of Cole' Porter's Anything Goes. (Choreography by Kathleen Marshall.)


If you are up for a second dose, here is Jonathon Groff reproducing Sutton's number step for step the following year for the annual Miscast benefit.

Most Happy Fella

My favorite love song (which is also a special memory because it is attached to a special person) is "My Heart is So Full of You". The song is from the musical The Most Happy Fella by Frank Loesser (who also wrote Guys and Dolls). This version is by Liz Callaway.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

One of the last productions to actually make an impact in New York before the shutdown was Michael Arden's concert production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It starred Noah Galvin as a distinctly queer-identified Joseph, with multiple other Broadway stars (including Alex Newell, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Andy Karl and his wife Orfeh, Brooks Ashmankas and Gavin Lee).

Here is the mega-mix finale shot from someone in the third row.


The concert mixed the actors with over 200 singers from amateur choirs from all over the US. Joseph is not one of my favorite shows, but Michael Arden seems to have tapped in to the joy of a Pride Parade and just put on the show for the fun of it.

Audra McDonald

Live with Carnegie Hall: Audra McDonald

Carnegie Hall sponsored this streamed concert with Audra McDonald last week. Watch it while it is still available.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

Need a big Broadway production number to lift your spirits? Here is Daniel Radcliff leading the cast of the 2011 revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in "The Brotherhood of Man".


If you want more, here is Daniel's replacement - Nick Jonas - with the same cast in clips of the song.