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Thanks for your great posts, O to live in New York or even the USA, just to be able to get this great event live. Your predictions were insightful and helped appreciate the 3 hour production. Again thanks for your work.
You are very welcome. It just kind of happened after the Tony Awards last year I thought that I could contribute a lot to this particular conversation and maybe make it both informative and fun for Broadway fans. I really didn't foresee riding out the whole 2016 - 2018 season, but hey, I had a blast.
However, I do not want this to become my blog. This is for anyone that loves the theater or a good show tune. Post your favorites, or let me know what you like and want to see more of.
And the 2017 - 2018 season is already underway. The first play of the season, 1984, is now in previews and will open next week so the whole thing starts all over again.
No, it's not 1984. This is the opening number of Kiss Me Kate from the 1999 Revival. It seems like the perfect song to celebrate a new Broadway season. This performance was filmed in 2002 in London and stars Rachel York.
What could be more appropriate for the long evening of the summer solstice than the Stephen Sondheim musical adapted from the Bergman film, Smiles of the Summer Night?
On reflection, the 1973 musical A Little Night Music has something in common with the current revival of Hello, Dolly!. Both are stories of women of a certain age who after relishing their independance and years of freedom have decided to settle down and marry. Both Dolly and Desiree (the heroine in Night Music) have picked out their prospective husbands and spend the play plotting a proposal out of them. But, where Dolly is almost predictably successful, Desiree comes up short. This leads to the most famous song in the show when Desiree discovers that after years of leading Fredrik on, now that she is ready to give in, he has fallen in love with someone else.
Judi Dench was Desiree in the 1995 London cast of Night Music and she is even better now, all these years later. performing with the BBC orchestra in the Royal Albert Hall.
Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince wanted to do a romantic operetta - but not too gushy. "Whipped cream with knives" is how Prince described it. He supplied the cream; Sondheim the knives. Sondheim almost bowed out of the project until he decided that musically it could be a score of theme and variations - all done as waltzes, i.e. 3/4 time or multiples of that. With the plot simple and straightforward, it freed up Sondheim to simply dazzle with melody and rhymes.
For the first time a Sondheim show opened to mostly positive reviews with critics pointing out how much they loved his music, not just the lyrics.
"A Weekend in the Country" performed by the 1992 revival cast at the Sondheim Celebration at Carnegie Hall.
UPDATE June 30 2017 - The National Theater has just put up a really interesting behind-the-scenes video of how they technically manage to execute two-show days. Unlike most plays, with Angels a two-show day does not mean repeating the same show twice. Rather it is doing both plays on the same day: Millennium Approaches (3.5 hours) in the afternoon and Perestroika (4 hours) in the evening.
No, it's not a musical. It's only the greatest work of American drama in my lifetime. The hottest ticket in London right now isn't Harry Potter. It's Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, James McArdle, and Russell Tovey in Tony Kushner's two play cycle Angels in America.
And on July 20 and 27 a live capture of those two plays will be shown in movie theaters in the US and UK. (More international dates are pending.) For details, visit the National Theater Live website.
Angels in America is two plays that Tony Kushner started writing around 1990 at the height of the AIDS crises. It began with his own revelation: he found a new perspective where gay men were not victims of American neglect and animus, but were instead standing on the edge of history with a unique perspective and message for the nation. They weren't victims; they were prophets who were in a position to see clearly both the past and the future.
In its basic plot, it follows two couples - one gay, one straight. Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) has just been diagnosed and his partner Louis (James McArdle) loves to talk about his liberal compassion for minorities but can't cope with his lover's illness.
We also meet Joe Pitt (Russell Tovey) and his depressed wife Harper (Denise Gough) who have recently moved from their Mormon roots in Utah to New York City, where Joe has been doing such a good job as a law clerk for a prominent federal judge that he has attracted the attention of Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane). Yes, the actual real life historical character - former mentor of Donald Trump and hatchet man for Senator Joe McCarthy.
These characters and their stories intersect, but at the core is Prior who has dreams and hears voices announcing a vision, a messenger, and a great new work about to begin.
The plays wade into politics, religion, and sex without apology. Both conservatives and liberals are challenged by the "threshold of revelation" and, I think, uplifted by Prior's final exhortation for "more life".
The HBO film version is wonderful and easy to find. Directed by Mike Nichols it stars Al Pacino, Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep.
Rumor has it that producers are currently looking for a theater to bring this to New York next spring.
In 2008 a concert version was staged in the Royal Albert Hall in London starring former Rent stars Idina Menzel and Adam Pascal as the Americans along with Josh Groban doing his first professional musical theater turn as the Russian.
Chess is the 1986 musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of the pop group ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. This week Tim Rice announced that after completing an successful reading of a new script, he had producers looking for a theater to bring a new revival to Broadway either in the spring or fall of 2018.
The original video for "One Night in Bangkok" was released with the concept album and became a hit before the first production was staged.
Background
In 1972, Bobby Fisher captured the World Chess Championship from Boris Spassky of the USSR in a match held in Reykjavík, Iceland, publicized as a Cold War confrontation, which attracted more worldwide interest than any chess championship before or since. Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus from ABBA got the idea for a theatrical piece that mixed a love story with an East-West cold war chess rivalry tangled with international political gamesmanship. Tim Rice came in to write the story and the lyrics.
Chess began as a concept album, just like Tim Rice's previous work Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. The double album immediately spawned two top 40 hits: "One Night in Bangkok" and "I Know Him So Well". Work began on a London production with Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line, Dreamgirls) as director and choreographer. Michael's concept was to do the story on a giant tilting chessboard and add in a chorus of media types hounding they players with live TV images on giant banks of screens.
However shortly before rehearsals started, Bennett left London saying he was too sick to complete the project. What he had told no one was that he had AIDS and his health was indeed starting to fail. Trevor Nunn came in to replace him, but there was no time to bring in a new concept - he had to work with the designs that had been put in place for Bennett.
The show opened in London with the original stars of the concept album: Murray Head, Tommy Körberg, and Elaine Paige. It received mixed to positive reviews - but it was a definite hit with the public and it ran for three years.
It came to Broadway in 1988 with a new book and lyric changes to make it more American. But despite praise for the leads (David Carroll and Judy Kuhn) it got terrible reviews and ran less than two months. Perhaps unfortunately for the production in the years between the London and New York openings the Berlin wall fell, Poland elected an independent government, and Communism crumbled in the Soviet Union - the Cold War was over. The story seemed to be yesterday's news.
But fans and producers still loved the material and a US tour was mounted in 1990, again with a new book and a new production design. It did not do well either.
Chess has become one of those flawed musicals like Allegro, Follies, and Merrily We Roll Along that theater fans and professionals seem to be always trying to fix - hoping that they can rescue the great show that they know is buried in there somewhere.
John Barrowman and Daniel Boys do a same-sex take on "I Know Him So Well"
First of all let's give thanks to costume designer Coleen Atwood for finding a way to squeeze Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen into tight leather pants even though she was going for an overall Renaissance aesthetic. Extra thumbs up for the bondage influence on Billy.
This song is just a lot of fun and beautifully filmed by Rob Marshall in the movie.
This is a wonderful reminder that music is not just something overproduced on computers with calculated hooks sung by auto-tuned celebrities. Here you have a guy (Jesus Garcia) picking up his guitar and playing in his kitchen - and it brings tears to my eyes. The song is the heart-tugging lullaby "Maybe" from Annie. But it here is reduced just to variations on its plaintive melody - which is just as evocative as the lyric we are not hearing. Props to composer Charles Strouse for pouring so much emotion into his tune.
For more excellent work by Jesus Garcia check out his YouTube channel. He also has transcribed his arrangements into sheet music and you can buy them on his blog.
US Independence Day is coming up and that brings to mind composer Sherman Edward's musical 1776 about the struggle for the Declaration of Independence. It came to Broadway in 1969 and won Tony Award for Best Musical that year. It made a star of William Daniels and introduced Betty Buckely in the role of Martha Jefferson.
The music is stirring and the conflicts operatic - especially when Edward Rutledge of South Carolina objects to a clause in the Declaration condemning the slave trade, accusing the northern colonies of hypocrisy and telling them that the prosperity of the North depends on the Triangle Trade of ("Molasses to Rum to Slaves").
There was a full revival of the show in 1997 - this is the opening number "Sit Down, John" with Brent Spinner as John Adams.
The show was revived in 1997, though it was not as successful as the original run. While it is still popular in regional and community theater, it is a tougher sell in our post-Hamilton professional theater world. There are only two women in story, and they are only there because of their husbands. Race is of course an issue in the discussion, but the oblique treatment feels like something of a cheat today.
Still last year City Center Encores! did a concert version of the show in contemporary dress and with non-traditional casting. This was a good approach because it minimized some of the faults while still letting the great musical scenes shine.
Santino Fontana led the cast as John Adams with John Larroquette as Ben Franklin.
Movie
Jack L. Warner, the producer of My Fair Lady, Camelot, and Paint Your Wagon in the 1960s loved the Broadway production. Perhaps regretting dropping Julie Andrews from his previous Broadway transfers, Warner decided to film the musical with almost the entire original Broadway cast, including William Daniels as John Adams and co-stars Ken Howard, John Cullum, and Howard Da Silva.
The film is a very accurate recreation of Peter Stone's stage play. (No surprise since stone did the screenplay as well.) The film was recently re-issued on HD so it is easy to find Blu Ray copies and streaming options.
Warner controversially cut the number "Cool Cool Considerate Men" from the film after screening it for President Nixon. Nixon objected to the way the conservative politicians were portrayed in the song. Without consulting either the director or Columbia Pictures, Warner had the song removed from all prints. (In most TV showings and video releases the number is restored.)
The film actually opened in 1972 to excellent reviews, but it still bombed at the box office. We were just too far into the gritty Vietnam-era 1970s for patriotic songs about revolution being like hatching the egg of democracy. (Another musical did succeed that year - Bob Fosse's Cabaret. And the two films couldn't have been more different.) It was Jack Warner's last film, and Warner was the last of the flashy movie moguls that built Hollywood studios.
From the 1972 film - Stephen Nathan (the original Jesus in Godspell) sings the showstopper "Mama, Look Sharp". This rare quiet moment in the show occurs late in the second act. A young courier has been wordlessly delivering messages from General Washington throughout the show. This time he is asked what he has seen of the war and he shared this story written in the form of a folk ballad. This is one of the echos of Vietnam in the show.
Trivia note: Act 1 Scene 3 in 1776 holds the distinction of being the longest stretch in any musical where there is no music. For 30 minutes Adams tries to wrangle the Congress into taking up the question of independence. On Broadway musicians were actually allowed to leave the orchestra pit during the scene and regroup for the song "But, Mr. Adams" which ends the scene.
Judy Garland's Broadway resume is limited to her concert appearances at the Palace Theater in 1951, 1956 and 1967. But her place in the world of film musicals is unchallenged. She is directly responsible for the success of some the greatest musical films in Hollywood: The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St Louis, A Star is Born. Her films with Mickey Rooney may have been frivolous, but they are beloved.
"The Trolley Song" from Meet Me in St Louis Judy complained loudly about doing the film - she hated being cast as yet another teenager. But director Vincent Minnelli won her over and in addition to masterfully directing the family scenes, he presented her more beautifully on film than she had ever been seen before.
Yet at 28 years old, she was fired by MGM in 1950 and considered unemployable after they had to replace her on several films.
But that only served to begin the next phase of her career in concerts and radio. A year later her third husband Sid Luft leased the derelict Palace Theater in Times Square, had it renovated, and announced that vaudeville was coming back to the Palace with Judy headlining a bill of performers doing two shows a day. Part of her act was a tribute to the legendary vaudeville performer Al Jolson, including the song below, "Rockabye Your Baby", that became a permanent part of her act (including being the finale of her legendary concert at Carnegie Hall).
"Rockabye Your Baby" performed in 1962 in her CBS television special. The success of this appearance led to her weekly TV show in 1963-1964.
That television special is significant because it was just before she went on the road where she became deathly ill. Though doctors only gave her a few years to live, she bounced back and went on to do her TV show in 1963. However, that brush with death left her with the first signs of permanent vocal damage. While she pulled off wonderful performances on her TV show, she would never again have the rich full-throated belt she had in 1962. A severe bout with hepatitis in Australia in 1964 all but finished off her voice. Although she continued to tour (she was in debt to the US government over back taxes for the rest of her life), her singing was a shell of what it had been. But still the people came, and found her performances electric.
Judy Garland means different things to different generations. But amazingly everyone is introduced to her the same way - as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. It seems no matter what has happened, a part of Judy will always be the little girl from Kansas longing to find her way home.
This is the way countless concert audiences experienced Judy singing her signature song in concert. She would perform "A Couple of Swells" from Easter Parade with choreographer Charles Walters, and then come down to the edge of the stage and sing "Over the Rainbow" - usually without a microphone.
Josh Groban ended his run in The Great Comet of 1812 the past Sunday night. Here is the video of his final curtain call along with a touching speech by cast member Lucas Steele.
Also posting a closing notice is Cats which will end its run at the end of the year - so still plenty of chances to visit Grizabella , Jennyanydots, and Mr. Mephistopheles before they pack up and start a national tour.
Here's how the other new musicals are doing:
Of course, The Great Comet, Come From Away, and Dear Evan Hansen are hits and are doing capacity business. Though it will be interesting to see how Comet does without Groban.
The surprise demi-hit is Anastasia. While not quite selling out it is taking in over $1 million a week. Remember what I said when it opened about the power of teenage girls to create a hit?
Bandstand ,War Paint, and Groundhog Dayare sinking. Bandstand may survive longer because it is a less expensive show to run.
To the frustration of many fans, Groundhog may have to call it quits by the fall unless they can turn this around. In praise of Groundhog Day, Broadway World writer Alexa Criscitiello wrote an essay this past weekend titled Dear Phil Connors- Finding Truth in GROUNDHOG DAY, A Musical For All of Us. After being picked up by Slate and other mainstream sites this short but semi-inspiring read went viral.
Old Friend from I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road
OK, I admit this a more obscure choice. But the song is a gem - the picture of a friendship we might be only too lucky to have.
A revival of Nancy Ford and Gretchen Cryer's 1978 musical I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road opens in London this month which reminded me of this touching song, here performed by cabaret performer Michael Feinstein.
I first heard the song in Michael's act in the 1980s - but he used to fudge the pronouns then to mask his sexuality. He doesn't do that anymore and finally got around to recording the song on his 2009 album with Cheyenne Jackson The Power of Two.
An interviewer once asked Queen Elizabeth "How did you learn how to become queen?" Elizabeth answered, "I guess I learned the same way a baby monkey learns: by watching its parents".
Stephen Sondheim has a knack for encapsulating profound truths in simple lyrics. I like this version of the song because there is a particular authority putting these words in the mouths of children. It makes you stop in tracks and think to realize that there are young eyes watching and learning.
UPDATE June 30 2017 - The National Theater has just put up a really interesting behind-the-scenes video of how they technically manage to execute two-show days. Unlike most plays, with Angels a two-show day does not mean repeating the same show twice. Rather it is doing both plays on the same day: Millennium Approaches (3.5 hours) in the afternoon and Perestroika (4 hours) in the evening.
No, it's not a musical. It's only the greatest work of American drama in my lifetime. The hottest ticket in London right now isn't Harry Potter. It's Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, James McArdle, and Russell Tovey in Tony Kushner's two play cycle Angels in America.
And on July 20 and 27 a live capture of those two plays will be shown in movie theaters in the US and UK. (More international dates are pending.) For details, visit the National Theater Live website.
Angels in America is two plays that Tony Kushner started writing around 1990 at the height of the AIDS crises. It began with his own revelation: he found a new perspective where gay men were not victims of American neglect and animus, but were instead standing on the edge of history with a unique perspective and message for the nation. They weren't victims; they were prophets who were in a position to see clearly both the past and the future.
In its basic plot, it follows two couples - one gay, one straight. Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield) has just been diagnosed and his partner Louis (James McArdle) loves to talk about his liberal compassion for minorities but can't cope with his lover's illness.
We also meet Joe Pitt (Russell Tovey) and his depressed wife Harper (Denise Gough) who have recently moved from their Mormon roots in Utah to New York City, where Joe has been doing such a good job as a law clerk for a prominent federal judge that he has attracted the attention of Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane). Yes, the actual real life historical character - former mentor of Donald Trump and hatchet man for Senator Joe McCarthy.
These characters and their stories intersect, but at the core is Prior who has dreams and hears voices announcing a vision, a messenger, and a great new work about to begin.
The plays wade into politics, religion, and sex without apology. Both conservatives and liberals are challenged by the "threshold of revelation" and, I think, uplifted by Prior's final exhortation for "more life".
The HBO film version is wonderful and easy to find. Directed by Mike Nichols it stars Al Pacino, Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep.
Rumor has it that producers are currently looking for a theater to bring this to New York next spring.
The popularity of The Sound of Music, apart from the undeniable quality of the filmmaking, has to do with the fact that it addressed three themes that every human being deals with… one, the relationship between parents and children… two, finding your purpose in life… three, standing by your principles. The Sound of Music is a story (and basically a true one) in which a family has to deal with all three of these.... - Mike Matessino producer/director of the doentary The Sound of Music: From Fact to Phenomenon
The Sound of Music was Rodgers & Hammerstein's last Broadway show together. (Oscar Hammerstein passed away shortly after he completed the lyric for "Edleweiss" - the last song added to the show during rehearsal.) It was not their best stage work, but very popular. The cast album sold over 3 million copies and was #1 on the Billboard chart for 16 weeks in 1960. Star Mary Martin and the show won Tonys, somewhat controversially beating out the competition: Ethel Merman and Gypsy.
Mary Martin in a new R&H show made Sound of Music the most anticipated show of the year. Critics gave it mixed reviews, but audiences adored Martin and were entertained by the music and story.
But most people know the show through the film, thanks primarily to the work of screenwriter Ernest Lehman and director Robert Wise, which is much better than the original material. While the basic structure is the same, Lehman made Maria more like the real Baroness Von Trapp with more bite and determination. He swapped the songs around giving them much more impact, like using "My Favorite Things" during the thunderstorm with the children, rather than the "Lonely Goatherd" which was used on stage. In the movie "Goatherd" becomes its own unforgettable set piece with the Baird Marionettes.
Even 'Edlewiess" is given a more dramatic placing in a family scene that underscores the captains growing relationship with the children, the love developing between Maria and the Captain, and a rivalry between Maria and the Baroness - all during one simple number.
The lovely "Edleweiss" sung by Bill Lee dubbing Christopher Plummer in the movie.
The two production decisions that probably contributed the most to the success of the film were first casting Julie Andrews in the role of Maria, and second going to Austria to film the exteriors scenes. This is quite a contrast to Andrews's previous film Mary Poppins where every scene was filmed inside the Disney Studio soundstages.
The crew began filming in Austria in late spring / early summer of 1964. Weather and cold was a constant issue (it was freezing up on those mountaintops!) The end of the song "I Have Confidence" where Maria goes up to the villa and rings the bell was filmed in the rain. While filming the song "The Sound of Music" most of the time was spent huddled under blankets in tents and then running out quickly to get shots when five minutes of sun would appear.
But the poor weather also gave the film that unforgettable backdrop of billowy skies full of clouds.
Director Robert Wise and choreographers Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood pretty much invented the music video with this quick cut staging that jumps through locations and time without missing a beat of the song.
"Do-Re-Mi" is a masterpiece of musical film-making, and by the time the cast and crew reassembled at 20th Century Fox studio in mid-summer to start work on the interiors, editor William Reynolds had already done a rough cut of the song to show to the company. That was the point that everyone realized how special this project was and the high standard which had been set already.
The movie premiered in New York and Los Angeles in March of 1965. Although it would go on to win the Oscar the following year, many people credit SOM with cementing Julie Andrews's Academy Award for Mary Poppins just a month and a half after SOM opened.
The Rivoli movie palace in New York was the only place you could see the movie on the east coast for the first month it was open. After that it opened in dozens of cities across the country - but only one theater per city in it's original 70mm roadshow engagement. It played for two years at the Rivoli.
Today, most people experience The Sound of Music first on TV or video. Very few have seen it in an actual theater, much less a restored 70mm print. But if you have an HD TV and Blu Ray player, I highly recommend getting an HD copy of the movie and treating yourself to not just the story and the music, but the outstanding technical work that went in to the picture's original presentation. From those first moments flying over the Alps, to the final credits - it's like discovering the movie all over again.
The photo shoot gives people a taste for what is coming in this year's show.
What could be better than stripping for charity?
One of the summer rituals of the Broadway season is the Broadway Cares / Equity Fights AIDS fundraiser Broadway Bares. The show is a return to burlesque founded by director / choreographer Jerry Mitchell in 1992. Broadway dancers and actors perform striptease dances for the audience at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City for two shows only in late June.
This year Jerry did a back-to-school theme called Strip U. Here are highlights from the show last month.
You Can't Get a Man With a Gun from Annie Get Your Gun
Reba McEntire in the 1999 Broadway Revival
No less than Stephen Sondheim puts this song on his list of songs he wished he had written. But this is from composer / lyricist Irving Berlin who turned out verse after verse of clever rhymes on a single theme. Annie Get Your Gun is the 1946 Irving Berlin musical story of real-life sharpshooter and Wild West Show star Annie Oakley. The story shows her rise from backwoods rifle phenomenon to international star, and her love affair with co-star Frank E. Butler . It originally starred Ethel Merman and also introduced the song "There's No Business Like Show Business". There is a 1950 film version from MGM starring Betty Hutton and Howard Keel.
If you are looking for a good recording, try the 1966 Lincoln Center revival where Ethel Merman reprised her role with co-stars Bruce Yarnell, Benay Venuta, and Jerry Orbach .
Bye Bye Birdie is fun whether you are watching or performing it. The "Got a Lot of Livin' to Do" number is a lot sexier in the movie than on stage - you can see the West Side Story influence here. But great work by Ann-Margaret, Bobby Rydell, and Jesse Pearson.
UPDATE - Disney just announced that performances on Broadway will begin February 22 2018 at the St James Theater. Tickets go on sale August 14.
Last year the show everyone was waiting to see was Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly. This year the show we have been waiting on for over a year is Frozen.
They have just moved the cast and sets in to the Buell Theater in Denver to start piecing all the elements together for the August 17 opening of their pre-Broadway tryout.
But while they were in the rehearsal rooms they shot this teaser showing some of the work being done with the cast and creative team.
entary on the making of the concept album
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