Popular Broadway Songs [Youtbe Clips]

[topdog]

Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton from Hamilton by Lin Manuel Miranda

The original cast did this number on the Grammy Awards - then it disappeared from the internet. Now the London cast did it two weeks ago at the Oliver Awards, so you can now see Hamilton's opening number as it appears on stage.

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[topdog]

Crosswalk Musicals

James Cordon does another "Crosswalk Musical", this time tackling The Sound of Music.

Not familiar with this James Cordon bit? No time to explain - read this previous post. This time he has enlisted the help of stars working on neighboring soundstages at CBS Television City: Allison Janney (Mom, The West Wing), Anna Farris (Scary Movie, Mom), Ian Armitage (Young Sheldon), and Kunal Nayyar (Big Bang Theory).

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Note: Allison Janney sings pretty well, doesn't she? Nine years ago today she opened on Broadway in 9 to 5: The Musical playing the part Lily Tomlin made famous in the film. You can hear her sing part of her big number "One of the Boys".

 

[topdog]

Tony Awards

The Tony nominations are out and most are exactly what you would expect, because it was that kind of year. There weren't many new musicals or revivals, so once you toss out the "well, that's not getting anything" shows, the remainder just fill up the categories. There was just enough good work so that the nominations are deserved, and not many snubs to get indignant over. Although, there is a chill in the air... but more on that later.

2018 Tony Award Nominations
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Without further ado, here are the top musical categories.

Best Musical

• The Band's Visit
• Frozen
• Mean Girls
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

• Angels in America, Music: Adrian Sutton
• The Band's Visit, Music & Lyrics: David Yazbek
• Frozen, Music & Lyrics: Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
• Mean Girls, Music: Jeff Richmond Lyrics: Nell Benjamin
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical, Music & Lyrics: Yolanda Adams, Steven Tyler & Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Sara Bareilles, Jonathan Coulton, Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, The Flaming Lips, Lady Antebellum, Cyndi Lauper & Rob Hyman, John Legend, Panic! at the Disco, Plain White T's, They Might Be Giants, T.I., Domani & Lil'C

Best Revival of a Musical

• My Fair Lady
• Once On This Island
• Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical

• Harry Hadden-Paton, My Fair Lady
• Joshua Henry, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel
• Tony Shalhoub, The Band's Visit
• Ethan Slater, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

• Lauren Ambrose, My Fair Lady
• Hailey Kilgore, Once On This Island
• LaChanze, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical
• Katrina Lenk, The Band's Visit
• Taylor Louderman, Mean Girls
• Jessie Mueller, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical

• Norbert Leo Butz, My Fair Lady
• Alexander Gemignani, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel
• Grey Henson, Mean Girls
• Gavin Lee, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical
• Ari'el Stachel, The Band's Visit

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

• Ariana DeBose, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical
• Renée Fleming, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel
• Lindsay Mendez, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel
• Ashley Park, Mean Girls
• Diana Rigg, My Fair Lady

Summaries​

Shows with 5 or more Nominations

• Mean Girls (12)
• SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical (12)
• Angels in America (11)
• The Band's Visit (11)
• Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel- (10)
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (10)
• My Fair Lady (10)
• Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (8)
• Once On This Island (8)

Musicals with No Nominations

• Escape to Margaritaville
• Prince of Broadway

Other Thoughts​

A record broken - Angels in America scored the most nominations of any play in Tony history. Harry Potter was only one behind. Congrats!

How about those SpongeBob SquarePants: The Musical score nominees? Steven Tyler, They Might Be Giants, and Lil'C are officially Tony nominees.

I am over the moon that Steven Hoggett's work in Harry Potter was nominated for Best Choreography. Steven is so original and works with actors and dancers on unique stylized movement, rather than "steps". In the same vein, Adrian Sutton was nominated in Best Original Score for Angels in America, which to point out the obvious, is also not a musical. It just goes to show how little competition there is for an original score with all those jukebox shows. And even Frozen is just half an original score (but it does meet the "50% new" quota).

Speaking of which, it must be freezing in Arendelle today. If you just look at the big prizes I have listed here you might think that Frozen came out quite respectfully in Tony Nominations. But not really - those nods for best musical, score and book are the only nominations it got. Nothing for the director, actors, sets, or special effects - not a single technical nomination for this expensive Disney extravaganza. To put it another way, Frozen only got one more nomination than Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. And to add insult to injury, two of the Summer actresses were nominated versus none for Frozen.

Also left in the cold is Escape to Margaritaville - but what did you really expect? I was hoping for a nom for Alex Newell for his gender-bending turn in Once on this Island, but it didn't happen. I can't fault the other nominees, so that isn't so much a snub as a fall through the cracks.

Also, for the first time (to my knowledge) there are six Leading Actress in a Musical nominees. (Everyone is speculating on who was the sixth to sneak in to the category.) You see, the Tonys have very specific mathematical formulas based on how close the votes are that determine how many nominations are given out in a category. While five nominations is standard, there are often fewer if not enough possibilities score high enough. But six nominations is rare, and my guess is that the last two people tied in votes from the nominating committee.

And now, the Tony campaigns begin. Really, this is nothing compared to an Oscar campaign. But we should have a month of interviews and videos and morning TV appearances to look forward to.

Tony Awards are June 10.

For more information[/CENTER]

• Tony Awards 2018 nominations: See the full list
• The Nominees React - Broadway World has sent out reporters to get comments from the nominees.
• How Does Broadway Cast Its Deciding Votes for the Tony Awards? - Playbill breaks down the complex system behind awarding the theatre’s highest honor.

 

[topdog]

Mean Girls

The PR blitz begins! Fortunately that can give us a glimpse of these new shows. This morning Mean Girls hit the early morning TV circuit to talk about the show and let the cast perform.

The cast of Mean Girls preforms "Apex Predator" on the NBC Today Show.​

Actually the biggest star Mean Girls has to deploy is writer Tina Fey. (There's something you don't see every day - the writer is "the muscle".) No show could have a better spokesperson.

But Tina isn't just selling her show - she is also a nominee. Just the fact that she is out there on morning TV, The Tonight Show (with former news-buddy Jimmy Fallon) and hosting the season finale of Saturday Night Live hand her the Best Book of a Musical Tony on a platter? Does Itamar Moses who wrote the acclaimed book for The Band's Visit even have a chance?

Tina Fey talks to the NBC Today Show about the challenge of adapting Mean Girls to the age of social media.​

 

[topdog]

The Play That Goes Wrong

Just for fun, here is a bit of one of the funniest plays on Broadway: The Play That Goes Wrong. It opened last year (and won an Tony for Best Scenic Design, and you will see why).

It is allegedly a production of the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society, but if you've ever seen or particiapted in an amatuer dramatic production some of this has to feel familiar. It's kind of like Noises Off meets Waiting for Guffman.

This is an excerpt they did on the televised Royal Variety performance in 2015 when the show was running in London.

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For more information

• Olivier Award 2016 - The Play That Goes Wrong "Best Performance in a Sequel" - The Olivier Awards allowed Chris Bean, Robert Grove and Dennis Tyde to present the new award for "Best Performance in a Sequel". But in typical Cornley fashion, not everything goes according to plan.
• The Interview That Goes Wrong with J.J. Abrams - JJ Abrams produced the show on Broadway and he brings the cast on with him at The Tonight Show.
• Their next production in London was Peter Pan Goes Wrong (which was also produced for television on BBC 1).

 

[topdog]

Moulin Rouge

Director Alex Timbers (Rocky, Peter and the StarCatcher, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson) assembled his cast in Boston this week to begin rehearsals for Moulin Rouge: The Musical. The show has done two workshops, and this summer will be the first time the whole production has been mounted. There has been no announcement of a Broadway opening, but that will probably be determined by what happens in Boston.

The production stars Aaron Tveit (Next to Normal, Grease: Live) and Karen Olivo (West Side Story, In the Heights). (I love that a Latina actress is being cast in the Nichole Kidman role.)

Here is a video released this past week of Aaron singing "Come What May".

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[topdog]

Hello, Dolly!

Here is the opening ten minutes of Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! last year. This gives a clear look at both Midler's performance and the style of the production - very old-fashioned, but only the best of the old style.

Video link removed​

Big Dolly news! Bernadette Peters will end her run in July as planned. Who is the next Dolly?? Bette Midler! The Divine One is coming back to do six weeks (with David Hyde Pierce, again, as her Horace Vandergelder) and after that the show will close.

The closing announcement is really the biggest surprise - this could run for years with different Dollys just like in the 1960s. But uber-producer Scott Rudin wants to tour the show where he thinks it will clean up across the US, rather than think of new ways to keep it running in New York. So, get ready for a US tour in the fall. It certainly won't be Bette, but sometime in the summer we should get a casting announcement.

Who should play Dolly on the tour?

 

[topdog]

Tony Awards

The New York theater producers hosted the annual lunch for Tony nominees. Theater Mania pulled the nominees in for a quick interview. This will give you a chance to put the face to the names. (Full list of Tony nominations are here.)

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[topdog]

South Pacific

I'm Going to Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein from South Pacific

Need to get someone out of your life? Sometimes you just need a good "Hit the Road Jack" or "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover". Here's the song to do that.

Reba McEntire plays Nelly Forbush in the concert presentation of South Pacific at Carnegie Hall.​

If you want a more up-to-date version, take a listen to Billy Porter's take-no-prisoners dance version.

 

[topdog]

Andrew Rannells

Andrew Rannells Live from Lincoln Center
on PBS Friday Night​

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Andrew Rannells is a busy guy. Last December he taped an hour concert special that will be broadcast in the US on PBS Friday Night May 11. And last week he started previews of the new Broadway production of Mart Crowleys 1968 groundbreaking play The Boys in the Band. More on Boys another time. Here is a quick preview of his concert.

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This past week Andrew was talking with his buddy Jimmy Fallon about both projects.

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[topdog]

Me and My Girl

Encores at New York City City Center brings back a forgotten musical every fall and spring for a week in a concert (or semi-staged) presentation. Sometimes a producer will turn them into a full scale revival as they did last year for Sunday in the Park with George (with Jake Gyllenhaal) or even more successfully with Chicago, which is still running 20 years later.

For the past four days (closing tonight) the production is one of my favorite shows, Me and My Girl. This special presentation stars Christian Borle (Smash, Falsettos, Something Rotten) and Laura Michelle Kelly (Mary Poppins).

Me and My Girl is an old-fashioned British class comedy / music hall romp that took the world by storm in 1937 with it's hit song and dance - "Doing the Lambeth Walk". The story is about an unrefined cockney man who is happy with his life in southeast London with his girl Sally, when he is told that he is the 14th heir to the Earl of Hareford and awaiting him is a title, a house in Mayfair, and a large estate in the country. He then proceeds to disrupt the upper class while they try to find him a more suitable marriage partner than Sally.

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As I said it was a big hit in the late 1930s. Then in the early 1980s young British director Mike Ockrent wanted to revive it, but he needed a new book, so he turned to his friend Stephen Fry who provided one. They mounted the new production in the West End with English song-and-dance comedian Robert Lindsay and turned it in to another hit that ran for eight years in London.

In 1987 they brought the production with Robert Lindsey to Broadway at the Marquis Theater and it was hugely popular, running over 1400 performances and spinning off a successful tour. (It could have run longer, but it was forced to close because the theater was booked for what they thought would be a surefire hit - Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge. That show closed out of town and never opened in New York.)

Robert Lindsay and cast do "The Lambeth Walk" on the 1988 Tony Awards. That night, though Les Miserables swept the awards, Lindsay beat Colm Wilkinson for Best Actor in a Musical.​

The plot is, of course, just 1930s Depression fantasy. Noel Gay wrote this musical well before something like Oklahoma! demanded that you take musicals seriously. As a matter of fact, Me and My Girl is the model for the silly musical that we find Petula Clark headlining (Flossie from Fulham) in the 1969 film Goodbye Mr. Chips. (Don't recall? Here is her big number "London is London" which Leslie Bricusse wrote as a pastiche of Noel Gay-type music hall turns.)

But, the Stephen Fry revival book has charm. When was the last show you saw where everybody gets in to complications simply for trying to be decent and doing the right thing?

But the major credit for the success of the 1987 revival go to Robert Lindsay and director Mike Ockrent. Lindsay's talent and fineness you can see in the video clip above.

But Ockrent really showed a spectacular talent for musicals here, after staging mostly small plays in London. He came back to do another musical in 1991 - the George Gershwin jukebox show Crazy for You. The choreographer on the show was Susan Stroman, and they were soon married. Ockrent then did the less-than-successful musical adaption of the movie Big. Unfortuantely, he died of lukemia in 1999. The theater lost a great talent, and he never got to see his wife become a successful director in her own right with The Producers.

For more information

• Rare (and wonderful) footage of the original production of Me and My Girl in London - the BBC filmed a live stage production in 1939.
• Christian Borle and Laura Michelle Kelly Reunite in Me and My Girl - Laura and Christian toured the US in the Mary Poppins musical a few years ago (as Mary and Bert, of course). Last week the press was invited in to see some rehearsal and talk to the cast.

 

[topdog]

Bohemian Rhapsody

The troubled film musical Bohemian Rhapsody seems to be on track for next November. You may recall that director Bryan Singer was missing from the set for several days and was fired - something that is so rare that it is almost unheard of. The studio brought Dexter Fletcher in to finish the film.

Here is the first trailer.

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[topdog]

Dear Evan Hansen

Dear Evan Hansen welcomed a new cast member on Tuesday - Alex Boniello joined the company as Conner - the nemesis / fictitious best friend of Evan Hansen, now played by Taylor Trensch. To celebrate Alex and all the new cast members, the production released a video of Taylor and Alex doing "Disappear".

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[topdog]

My Fair Lady

Want to know how the current revival of My Fair Lady and Lincoln Center came about? The theater TV show Theater Talk sits down with director, Bartlett Sher; and producer André Bishop. Then they interview the cast - Lauren Ambrose, Harry Hadden-Paton, and Allan Corduner.

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For more information

Hear from the designers of this revival of My Fair Lady and get a closer look at the sets, lighting and costumes.

 

[Stonecold]

Dear Evan Hansen welcomed a new cast member on Tuesday - Alex Boniello joined the company as Conner - the nemesis / fictitious best friend of Evan Hansen, now played by Taylor Trensch. To celebrate Alex and all the new cast members, the production released a video of Taylor and Alex doing "Disappear".
Great song and talented singers.

 

[Stonecold]

We were planning on going to see Hamilton this Sunday but the cheapest tickets for good seats started at 499.00 each. The cheapest seats in the theatre were 419.00
I guess Hamilton is really that special and only for the well off.

 

[topdog]

Welcome to Hamiltonian Economics. I know, it sucks. You are seeing VIP seating, i.e. some of the best seats in the theater going for $400 - $1000. There were much cheaper seats when the tour went on sale, but they were snapped up quickly. I don't know if the Hobby Center is a subscription house, but if so they get first shot at tickets, and then later what is left goes on sale to the public. That was months ago. The show is only in town for a week, I think, and demand is through the roof, so it is essentially sold out except for the mega-expensive seats. If this was a normal show they would be slashing the prices of unsold tickets to get butts in seats. But this is Hamilton and you and I know that there is oil money that will happily pay those prices to impress a client or potential sex partner.

On the positive side...

• The producers use some of that extra money to send school kids to see the show for $10 a ticket. Last week the show's ticket sales dropped by over $1 million because it was one of the weeks that they brought kids in.
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• In Chicago you can get seats from $72 to $180. (I just checked for seats in the first week of June.) Get a cheap flight and enjoy Chicago - it's a great city.
  .
• Enter the Ham4Ham lottery for $10 tickets. You used to have to stand outside the theater, but now you can do it online. There is also an Android or iPhone app you can download.

Anyway, here is some of the show to take the edge off.

[Link has been removed]

 

[topdog]

Stephanie J. Block

Stephanie J. Block is beloved on Broadway and in this concert she gives us some of the zig-zags of her career. This is her PBS concert from Lincoln Center that was broadcast a couple of weeks ago. (As usual, watch sooner rather than later because this stuff rarely stays up for long.)

The link to the full concert is down - here is a preview.

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Stephanie first came to Broadway playing Liza Minnelli in The Boy from Oz with Hugh Jackman. After that the Wicked producers asked her to lead the national tour, which is where I first saw her.

On tour her Fiyero was Sebastian Arcelus (House of Cards) who she later married. Sebastian joins her in this concert for a duet.

Note: In the concert Stephanie mentions that she married a prince. She meant that literally. Sebastian is the grandson of the last Romanov born in Russia before the revolution. He is one of only 10 living descendants of Grand Duke Constantine, the last Czar's uncle. He is also in the line of succession for the British throne (distantly).

She went on to star in 9 to 5, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and last year's revival of Falsettos. (She does her show-stopper "I'm Breaking Down" from that show.)

Next season she will star in The Cher Show on Broadway.

For more information

• Stephanie has her Falsettos cast over to her house for a post-Thanksgiving lunch in 2016. Susan Blackwell interviews the cast and takes them through various questions and games. With Christian Borle, Andrew Rannells, and Brandon Uranowitz. This is incredibly funny, as well as a look at the intimacy of this cast. And educational - if you don't know what a "cock sock" is, you will learn.
• Megan Hilty & Stephanie J Block reunite and sing "For Good" from Wicked.

 

[topdog]

Mean Girls

Tina Fey hosted the season finale of the popular US TV show Saturday Night Live this weekend, and included a sketch about Broadway's Mean Girls. (Tina wrote the book and her husband, Jeff Richmond, wrote the music.) In the sketch, Tina wants to follow Lin-Manuel Miranda's example and star in her own show.

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You will see director-choreographer Casey Nickolaw, Tina's husband Jeff, Aidy Bryant and Cicely Strong from SNL, the actual cast of Mean Girls, and some quick takes from Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Lin apparently has his own Mean Girls-inspired Burn Book.)

Tina is currently nominated for a Tony Award for writing Mean Girls.

This is the second week in a row they have done a Broadway-themed sketch. Last week they took a look at a community center doing a "Junior" version or Rent with children by switching all the references of AIDS to diabetes.

 

[topdog]

Mean Girls

If you would like to see Mean Girls, here is a bootleg of the whole show. Normal disclaimers applies - this probably won't stay up long.

Video link deleted.