Sometimes I forget about The Boyfriend. But when I play the cast recording on iTunes, I always remember how much it razzes my berries. There is a notoriously bad film adaptation of the show, but this was my first exposure to the show and I watched it almost on a permanent loop when I was a child. For those who are not in the know, The Boyfriend is a 1950s show about the 1920s. Polly – Julie Andrews in the original Broadway cast – meets Tony and in true romantic comedy style, we know they will be together by the fall of the final curtain. Along the way, there’s a lot of fun to be had – camp fun, witty lyrics, mixed messages, cross purposes. It’s commedia dell’arte filtered through an English pastiche of the American musical. A true hybrid, then, and a winning one.
West Side Story is cool. A musical that fully integrated acting, singing and dance, that was set in contemporary urban society and that dealt with topical issues that are still relevant today – well, it’s groundbreaking in its conception any way you look at it. Then we get to the stunning Jerome Robbins staging, with choreographic contributions by Peter Gennaro. What was going through Arthur Laurents’s head when he cut down the “Somewhere” ballet in his recent revival of the show, I’ll never know. That decision communicates a misunderstanding of the role of dance in live musical theatre that I simply can’t understand. (Yes, it was cut from the film, but it wouldn’t have worked there. It’s too abstract and is designed for the live energy of musical theatre performance in front of a real audience who is experiencing the show in the moment.) The original cast recording is an essential for any musical theatre fan’s collection and for a comparison of different recordings of the show, I’d refer to you a previous blog on this site dealing with that very issue. Sometimes the show is criticized these days for being dated, miscast with models or actors that are too old or both and so on, but it still has an ineffable magic that hits home when you see it.
Musical Cyberspace 