Musical Theatre Sunday School: THE BOY FRIEND Readathon Part 4

Posted on March 24, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the libretto of THE BOY FRIEND by Sandy Wilson, click on the image above.

Our penultimate Musical Theatre Sunday School for the month concludes our little readathon of Sandy Wilson’s libretto of The Boy Friend, which we started at the beginning of March. Today’s reading focuses on Act III – pages 93 – 126 in the copy I own, which is the 1955 Andre Deutsch edition.

Sandy Wilson’s charming illustrations dot the action of the play once again in this act. I adore the one that is on the title page for Act III, which features the cast in costume at the ball, one of them looking decidedly like Charlie Chaplin. I wonder if the other figures in the illustration are also overt references to figures from the 1920s that are perhaps less instantly recognizable to someone like me, who grew up in the last two decades of the twentieth century. (If you are keen to play detective, the illustration is below left and you can leave your ideas of who the other figures might be in the comments box. Of course, they may just be fun generic figures in the style of the times.)

Sandy Wilson's illustration for the title page of Act III of THE BOYFRIEND

Sandy Wilson’s illustration for the title page of Act III of THE BOYFRIEND

The third act is, by necessity, a little more plotty than the first two. By necessity, because all of the narrative threads need to be resolved by the final curtain. That means more book and fewer musical numbers. In fact, there are nine pages of dialogue before we get to the first number. Even with all of the time spent on reuniting Polly with Tony, Percival finally capitulating to Mme Dubonnet’s desires to rekindle their lost romance and all of the other girls receiving proposals and stalling until the final lines of the show to say yes, there’s still one narrative strand that is neither developed nor concluded satisfactorily. While the plot of The Boy Friend may be inconsequential, it never falls into the illogical pitfalls of genuine 1920s musicals until this point.

The moment of which I am speaking involves the delightful duet, “It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love”. The subplot of which this number is the climax starts with the introduction of Lord Brockhurst in Act II. You’ll remember that he had a thing for all the young ladies of France, much to the distaste of his wife. In the third act, Wilson develops this by engineering a situation where he ends up with Dulcie, a situation which can’t really be developed any further because Lord has to be reunited with Lady as does Dulcie with her beau, Pierre. The problem is that Wilson doesn’t have the stage time in Act III to set up the scene that introduces the song well enough. In fact, Dulcie’s temporary disenchantment with Pierre is introduced in a short piece of onstage pantomime:

ENTER BOYS and GIRLS, followed by LORD B. Laughter and gaiety in the course of which DULCIE slaps PIERRE’S face. EXEUNT OMNES, leaving DULCIE disgruntled. LORD B. sees DULCIE and approaches her.

There’s a scene missing there, as well as one in which Dulcie’s apparent conflict with Pierre is resolved. Lord Brockhurst is neatly pulled out of the situation by an irate Lady Brockhurst, but the next time we see Dulcie, she’s accepting Pierre’s proposal. This time, there isn’t even a stage direction to get us from A to B. It’s the single flaw of an otherwise completely delightful book.

Other than the 1920s slang infused “It’s Never Too Late to Fall in Love”, the only other new songs in this act are “The Riviera” and “Poor Little Pierrette”. There’s also a dance showpiece, “The Carnival Tango”. The first is the kind of piece that was common in 1920s musicals, one that pays tribute to a new dance craze, like “The Varsity Drag” from Good News (1927). It’s my least favourite number in the show, but it does what it needs to do. “Poor Little Pierrette” is a diegetic number sung by Mme Dubonnet to Polly. Although the introduction of the number flows neatly out of the dialogue and into song, I’m not crazy about the piece being diegetic. It makes the setup of the number seem more contrived that it would, were it just a story Mme Dobonnet was telling that then slipped into song almost without the audience noticing. “The Carnival Tango” makes use of another musical comedy tradition, the exotic or ethnic number. Performed by a pair of speciality dancers, Pépé and Lolita, the number doesn’t achieve much plot-wise, serving only as a part of Wilson’s tribute to the traditions of his beloved 1920s shows.

Overall, Act III isn’t as tight a piece of work as the first two acts. There’s a little too much focus on gaining enough momentum to get to the end of the show and too little placed on the our journey there. Fortunately, the style of the piece probably pretty much neutralises those problems for the audience, who have gone with the flow of things for almost 60 years.

That’s all for today, folks. I’ll have to think of something smart for next week’s Sunday School – perhaps I’ll do something about various recordings of The Boyfriend. In the meantime, why don’t you share your thoughts about Act III of the show using the comment box below. (Of course, even if you come upon this column long after today, I hope you will share your opinions. I’m always up for some good discussion.) See you next week!

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The Saturday List: Favourite Songs from 1970s Musicals

Posted on March 23, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the Original Cast Recording of GREASE, click on the image above.

The Saturday List this week features some of my favourite songs from 1970s musicals. And let me tell you: while I thought that last week’s list about 1960s was tough, this one was even more difficult to compile! As with the list for the 1960s musicals, I’ve only allowed myself to select one song from any given musical for the list to allow a more even spread – otherwise, it might be completely possible that this list could be composed of songs from Company, Follies, A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd! But first, how about some honourable mentions, in no particular order: there’s “I Got Love” from Purlie (inseparable from a tour de force introduction into the show tunes catalogue by Melba Moore), the brilliant “Over at the Frankenstein Place” and “Dammit Janet” from The Rocky Horror Show; “All That Jazz” and “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago, “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin, Home from “The Wiz”, “Buenos Aires” and “Rainbow High” from Evita, “Could We Start Again Please?” and “Gethsemane” from Jesus Christ Superstar, “I Still Believe in Love” and “Fallin'” from They’re Playing Our Song and “All Good Gifts” from Godspell. And now for the my ten favourite songs of the decade.

10. “Those Magic Changes” from Grease

Others might cite songs like “Summer Nights” or “Greased Lightnin'” when it comes to naming a song from Grease for a list like this. Personally, I am so tired of hearing those songs at every wedding or dance I attend in the ubiquitous “Grease Megamix”, that there is no way they were going to make this list. My choice is “Those Magic Changes”, a beautiful and bittersweet little song about romance, nostalgia and music itself. Just thinking about the song stirs memories of old crushes, past relationships, my days at university and the Carpenters. It’s the kind of song that makes you smile even about the sad things that have happened in your past.

9. “NYC” from Annie

Like many folks my age, I experienced Annie on film before I saw it on stage. In fact, my first experience of the stage version of Annie was when I was in it, in 1997, which is when I eventually made the effort to get the cast album. Imagine how cheated I felt having realised that I had been subjected to “Let’s Go to the Movies” for all those years, when “NYC” was waiting in the score for me to discover it all along. I love “NYC”. For me, it captures what I think New York might have been like during the 1930s. And it’s a far better song than “Let’s Go to the Movies”. I was very gratified to see it restored in the TV film in 1999, with the original Annie belting out the Star-to-Be solo. Fabulous.

8. “Look What Happened to Mabel” from Mack and Mabel

Mack and Mabel is famous for being a show with a fabulous score and an unworkable book. I’m not going into a long discussion about the book now, but the score is fabulous and this song is one of my favourites. I first saw it on The Royal Variety Performance in a medley promoting the 1995 London production starring Howard McGillin as Mack and Caroline O’Connor as Mabel. Jumping Saint Jude, it’s a catchy number. I know now that I’ve been thinking about it, I’ll be singing it all day long.

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Musical Theatre Sunday School: THE BOY FRIEND Readathon Part 3

Posted on March 17, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the libretto of THE BOY FRIEND by Sandy Wilson, click on the image above.

Today’s Musical Theatre Sunday School continues with the readathon of The Boy Friend by Sandy Wilson, which we started two weeks ago. We’ve covered the preface, author’s note and first act so far and today’s reading focuses on Act II – which takes up pages 53 – 91 in the 1955 Andre Deutsch edition.

The act moves like lightening though the events of the act. Act 2 all takes place at the seaside and revolved around Polly and Tony’s meeting, which is surrounded by the numerous antics of the girls, boys and Hortense. The romance between Mme Dubonnet and Percival also continues to bloom – or rather, not to bloom as the case may be. And we are introduced to Lord and Lady Brockhurst, the former of which has an eye for young ladies and the latter of which suffers no fools, including her husband. It turns out that they are Tony’s parents and, by the end of the act, they are the cause of Tony and Polly’s separation, leaving us wondering whether they will ever be reunited before the final curtain. (Of course, we know they will – but how?)

All of the salient plot points are once again delightfully illustrated by Sandy Wilson. My favourite in this act is a sketch of Hortense proclaiming why it is so much “Nicer in Nice” on page 71. The songs that appear alongside that one in this act are: “Sur Le Plage”, “A Room in Bloomsbury”, “The You-Don’t-Want-to-Play-With-Me Blues”, “Safety in Numbers” and two reprises of “I Could Be Happy With You”. The best of these is the completely winning “A Room in Bloomsbury”, which is a throwback to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “A Tiny Flat Near Soho Square” from their 1926 musical, Lido Lady. (It’s also worth mentioning, at this point, since I didn’t last week, that “I Could Be Happy With You” is a reference to “I Want to Be Happy” from the 1925 musical, No, No, Nanette. Wilson certainly knew his stuff when it came to the 1920s!)

While there is still much in which one can delight in the second act songs, they are perhaps less satisfying on the whole than those from Act I. I think the thing that is frustrating about them is Wilson’s tendency to split up a single lyric line over several musical phrases and that the rhyme schemes are constructed as tightly so as to hold the thoughts together, as they are in the first act. Indeed, because Wilson is showing off a bit more with some deft rhymes, like those in “Nicer in Nice”, attention is called to the broken phrases. But given that these songs are intended to be a pastiche of a particular style of lyric writing, that which was very much en vogue in the 1920s, I tend to think it matters less than if they were simply a set of lyrics for a musical play with no such reference point.

The delightful characters continue to play with the stock character constructions of the 1920s musicals. The three primary romances all get into typical second act conundrums: it appears that Tony is only after Polly’s money, though thanks to a healthy dose of dramatic irony we all know this isn’t true; Percy refuses to bow to Mme Dubonnet’s attempts to kindle their romance; and Maisie keeps the boys, especially Bobby, guessing about who she will dance with at the carnival. It is classic three act structuring, perfectly executed. The coincidental and highly convenient arrival of the Brockhursts on the scene is a typical 1920s-style plot development, and their offering comic obstacles to the comic couples and a serious obstacle to the romantic couple is textbook stuff, yet another testament to Wilson’s knowledge and love of the period. His genuine affection for those 1920s shows (as well as his skill) is revealed by the way he takes the hackneyed techniques and motifs and that were the standard building blocks of those musicals and distills each to its essence, thereby showing each off at its best. Some of the genuine 1920s shows tended to become rather convoluted in the way they packed in all of the bits and pieces that were expected of them, but The Boy Friend is marvelously free of such clutter.

So, what did you think of Act II? Share your thoughts about this act the comment box below. In the meantime, I’ll start reading the final act, which we’ll discuss next week. See you then!

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The Saturday List: Favourite Songs from 1960s Musicals

Posted on March 16, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the Original Broadway Cast Recording of STOP THE WORLD - I WANT TO GET OFF, click on the image above.

Today’s list features some of my favourite songs from musicals of the 1960s. A tough decade to whittle down to just 10 songs, but here goes. For the sake of a more even spread, I’ve only allowed myself to select one song from any given musical for the list proper. And of course along with these there have to be many honourable mentions, including “They Were You” from The Fantasticks, “Married” from Cabaret, “The Brotherhood of Man” from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, “The Rhythm of Life” from Sweet Charity, “Elegance” from Hello, Dolly! and “Put on a Happy Face” from Bye Bye Birdie. And even then we’ve only struck the tip of the iceberg. Well, here we go!

10. “What Kind of Fool Am I?” from Stop the World – I Want to Get Off

Stop the World – I Want to Get Off is one of those musicals that seems to have been, in its time, a little musical that could. While it sports a couple of other songs that could make it onto this list (“Gonna Build a Mountain” and “Once in a Lifetime”), my choice is “What Kind of Fool Am I?” This song gets to the heart of what this musical is all about, a concern that was becoming an increasingly overt theme in musicals of the 1960s and would characterise many musicals of the 1970s and 1980s – the need to connect truly with other people. Yes, in this case the context is romantic, but that need to connect with someone and the idea that the only person in the way of that connection is oneself struck a chord with audiences who got caught up in the adventures of Littlechap, one that still resonates truly and profoundly today.

9. “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha

Most people love Man of La Mancha. I’m not one of those people. Don’t get me wrong: I admire it and don’t think it awful by any means. It simply hasn’t yet moved me in the profound way that it seems to have moved others. That said, I love this song. It may be cheesy, especially out of context, but it works.

8. “It’s a Fine Life” from Oliver!

What I love about this song is that while it starts off as what appears to be a jolly salute to life, by the time it ends, there’s a lump in my throat. Particularly in the hands of the original Nancy, Georgia Brown, who has a rawness that is lacking in many contemporary, more polished actresses who take on the role. (Shani Wallis also does a great job in the film, benefitting immensely from the altered setup for the number.) “It’s a Fine Life” probably isn’t the most technically proficient song – Lionel Bart is no meticulous perfectionist when it comes to crafting rhymes, for example – but this list isn’t about technical proficiency. This song captures the bittersweet nature of life so tenderly by the time it gets to its final verse, with an ironic glossing over black eyes that is typically Dickensian in its social commentary and, for just a moment, Brechtian in its approach, that its tender rawness wins one over completely.

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Musical Theatre Sunday School: THE BOY FRIEND Readathon Part 2

Posted on March 10, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the libretto of THE BOY FRIEND by Sandy Wilson, click on the image above.

This weekend’s Musical Theatre Sunday School continues with the readathon of the libretto of The Boy Friend by Sandy Wilson, which we started last week. Today’s reading focuses on Act I – pages 23 – 52 in the copy I own, which is the 1955 Andre Deutsch edition.

Once again, one of the most striking things about this edition are Sandy Wilson’s fantastic little illustrations, which pop up from time to time in the text. My favourite of the Act I illustrations is the drawing illustrating “Fancy Forgetting”, with Mme Dubonnet and Percy Brown clinking a glass of champagne.

As for the text itself, the first act of The Boy Friend is bright and breezy and simply wonderful. It is amazing just how straightforward it is and you can see why Wilson doesn’t want the piece played as a burlesque of 1920s musicals. That approach would simply make a sweet, unaffected romantic comedy into something mannered and unlikable.

The plot is a simple one. Polly Browne is at a finishing school and, unlike her friends, is unable to have a boy friend, having been practically forbidden by her father to do so because he is worried that she will be pursued by a gold digger. So when she meets Tony, who appears to be a delivery boy from a local costumer, she pretends to be a secretary and makes a date with him for the upcoming Carnival Ball. Meanwhile, the other girls also get their ducks in a row for the dance, particularly Maisie Merryweather, who has a serious suitor, Bobby, who wants to dance every dance with her. Polly’s father also comes to call and it is revealed that he once had a romantic fling with the school’s headmistress, Mme Dubonnet.

All of this exposition flies by in the blink of an eye, with a handful of diverting musical numbers to boot. Act I includes the following songs: “Perfect Young Ladies”, “The Boyfriend”, “Won’t You Charleston With Me?”, “Fancy Forgetting” and “I Could Be Happy With You”. Each is wonderful and just beautifully crafted, with real rhymes and instantly memorable tunes. There are some great stylistic period moments too, including the sudden arrival of the boys in the title song for no other reason than to build the number, and they way that the syncopated rhythms of the 1920s music break up the lyrics rather unconventionally in, for example, “Won’t You Charleston With Me?” That kind of breaking up of a single thought over several lines of music can be disastrous in lyric writing, but thanks to the use of rhyme schemes that really hold stanzas together, Wilson manages to make it work for the songs instead of against them.

The characters are delightful little constructions. True to the style that is being evoked, the characters aren’t fully rounded; in fact, they are pretty much the same stock characters you might find in a 1920s musical, and no less captivating for it. There is the central young couple, Polly and Tony; a comic secondary couple, Maisie and Bobby; an older couple, Mme Dubonnet and Percival; and a clever servant, Hortense. In short, a set of characters that harks back to the days of operetta and melodrama. I guess that is why it feels so easy to identify with these characters and get involved in all their little romantic intrigues.

The language piece uses to bring its characters to life is delightful, full of 1920s references and slang. I loved the references to things like “dorothy bags” and phrases like “I’m rather on my beam ends” had me grinning from ear to ear. Wilson’s love for the period really shines through in moments like that and it makes it easy to imagine this piece coming to life in the theatre of one’s mind.

It is clear from the start that The Boy Friend is not working with complex themes or big social truths. I’m reminded of Wilson’s comment in his Author’s Note that this was not a reply to Oklahoma!, which is so often criticised for being as simple as The Boy Friend is. But looking at The Boy Friend, it is clear that no one could take the show and plough for hidden depths as, for example, Trevor Nunn did with Oklahoma! in his landmark revival of the show. All Nunn did was highlight the themes around which Oklahoma! was built in the first place. The Boy Friend simply wouldn’t support that kind of reinvestigation. It is precisely what it appears to be, a light entertainment that recalls the delights of a bygone era. Hopefully we haven’t all become too cynical to appreciate that.

That’s all for today, folks. Next week, we’ll look at Act II, but hopefully you’ll share your thoughts about this act the comment box below before then. (Of course, even if you come upon this column long after today, I hope you will share your opinions. I’m always up for some good discussion.) See you next week!

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Musical Theatre Sunday School: THE BOY FRIEND Readathon Part 1

Posted on March 3, 2013 by David Fick

To purchase the libretto of THE BOY FRIEND by Sandy Wilson, click on the image above.

Sundays at Musical Cyberspace are a time to have a look at musicals in more depth. This month, we are going to have a readathon of the libretto of The Boy Friend by Sandy Wilson. If you can get a copy, or have a copy, or have read the libretto before, it would be great to hear your comments each week. The edition that I am using was published by Andre Deutsch in 1955. This week’s discussion will focus on the Preface and Author’s Note.

The first thing that strikes me about the book are the delightful illustrations, which were done by Sandy Wilson. This section of the book includes a brilliant on of a “boy friend” on the inside cover, with three girls going crazy for him on the opposite page, as well as an illustration of the setup line for the title song – ‘Oh, do tell us about him, Polly!’ They truly capture the spirit of the piece, which is outlined succinctly by producer Vida Hope in her preface:

Over coffee I declared my love for The Boy Friend, told Sandy I wanted to do it as a serious reproduction of a period and not a burlesque, and from that moment on his whole demeanour brightened and a friendship was forged that has withstood all the vicissitudes of the various productions of the show.

My first exposure to The Boy Friend was through the film version, which I watched again and again and again as a child until my father basically ordered me to tape something else over it from the television. It seemed to irritate him no end, but I loved it. Of course, the film is something of a burlesque of the play and I wonder to what extent that most times I’ve seen a bit of The Boy Friend on stage – I’ve never made it through a full production – the film is responsible for the sense of overexaggerated parody that seems to have characterised the productions I’ve attended. It seems to me, therefore, that in this little paragraph, Hope offers some important advice to directors hoping to stage The Boy Friend: it’s not The Drowsy Chaperone. There’s a difference between a spoof and a valentine.

Another thing I found interesting in the preface was Hope’s discussion of ‘miracle’ shows, shows that are unexpected successes and which capture the public’s hearts and imagination in a way that could not have been predicted. With The Boy Friend itself being such a show, Hope also cites Journey’s End and Oklahoma! as two other examples from her recent memory. While Hope seems to be happy not to delve too deeply into what makes a ‘miracle’ show, it occurred to me how much more obsessed people are with trying to find that formula, rather than fulfilling an artistic vision or telling a story well. Certain musical theatre coomposers, lyricists and librettists – as well as producers and other parties too – seem to be more obsessed with crafting hits than with crafting a brilliant musical that connects with its audience because of its thematic concerns and the way its told. That’s why the market is oversaturated with jukebox musicals and hurried stage adaptations of movies. Neither of these is new to the musical theatre scene by any means, but their prominence today is unprecedented and there are far too many Catch Me If You Cans and We Will Rock Yous and far too few Dogfights and – dare I say it? – Mamma Mias.

In Wilson’s Author’s Note, the thing that stood out most of all for me was his citing of Noël Coward’s advice to readers of lyrics, something which Stephen Sondheim picks up on too in his two volumes of lyrics, and that is that they cannot be read in complete isolation without any sense of the music that accompanies them. Great advice, and I urge us all to remember that in this readathon.

I also adore Wilson’s conviction that his show was not a British reply to Oklahoma! and his acknowledgement that ‘English Theatre has very far to go before it can rival Broadway’ when it came to musical theatre of the 1950s. The British really came into their own with the advent of Andrew Lloyd Webber and the mega-musical, which led to what some musical theatre fanatics call “the British invasion’ and, later on, by mounting newly-focused revivals of American classics, some of which have been enlightening (Carousel, Oklahoma! and La Cage aux Folles) and others rather more ponderous (Follies, A Little Night Music).

So with all of the these thoughts in my mind, I am ready to immerse myself in the world of The Boy Friend. Next week, we’ll be looking at Act One and I hope you’ll join me. Any thoughts to add about the Preface and Authour’s Note? Head on to the comment box below.

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1 to 5 Musical Theatre Month: Sondheim’s Post-Prince Shows

Posted on December 12, 2012 by David Fick

Even though it has been more than 30 years since Merrily We Roll Along flopped on Broadway and put an end to his fruitful collaboration with director-producer Harold Prince, Stephen Sondheim has only written five complete and completely new musicals for the stage: Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, Passion and Road Show. (Of course, Prince did collaborate with Sondheim on an earlier version of Road Show which was named Bounce at the time, but that didn’t work out as planned.)

1. Sunday in the Park with George

To purchase the DVD of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE on stage, click on the image above.

The first three musicals ranked here are really interchangeable for me. But perhaps, as it is the most ambitious of the three and arguably the most well-realised, Sunday in the Park with George deserves the top spot. The show creates a fictional account of the painting of Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” to examine the process of creating art and its place in our lives. The second act shifts in time and space to examine the same issues played out in our more recent history, through the exploits of Seurat’s (fictional) great-grandson. There is so much in this show that is moving and nothing more so than “Sunday”, the song that brings both Act 1 and the show as a whole to a close.

2. Assassins

To purchase the Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording of ASSASSINS, click on the image above.

I love Assassins. It is a brilliant show. It was especially brilliant before “Something Just Broke” was added to the score; now, it is a brilliant show in spite of it. The show takes a look at one of the darker aspects of the history of the USA: the assassins who killed, or tried to kill, American presidents and the underlying truths that they saw as reason enough to justify their actions. Many people might advise those uninitiated with this show to start with the Broadway Cast Recording. I’d say go for the earlier Off-Broadway Recording: overall, the cast is better and you get a reading of an indispensable scene from the book of the show.

3. Passion

Many people hate Passion with an intensity. They hate it so much that they will even say it is a bad show. It isn’t. Set in 19th century Italy and dealing with the the obsessive love of Fosca for a a young soldier, Giorgio, and the changes this brings about in him, Passion is a show that demands emotional maturity from it’s audience. (Emotional maturity has nothing to do with age it seems. I know someone who got more out of Passion as a teenager, than someone whose own barriers in middle age prevented him from appreciating it.) It’s a show that people struggle to face, because it deals with such personal themes in such an intimate manner. My advice: listen to or watch this show with an open heart, with a willingness to learn some dark truths about yourself. Cast it aside if you don’t like it. But realise at the same time that your dislike doesn’t equate with how well the show was made.

4. Into the Woods

To purchase the DVD of INTO THE WOODS on stage, click on the image above.

Into the Woods has become difficult to appreciate due to its apparent ubiquity. That said, the show still has its rewards. I found great joy in the piece when I directed it this year. The show’s ubiquity means that people are constantly trying to reinvent it. Child narrators (as seen in Moisés Kaufman’s production and the open air production that played both the UK and the USA recently) and different visual concepts (the witch costumed – way before the advent of Lady Gaga – as her garden or the storybook-influenced concept used for the misguided Broadway revival of the show) abound. My recommendation? Go back to what was there at the start, clear your mind and let your imagination run free.

5. Road Show

To purchase the Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording of ROAD SHOW, click on the image above.

A decade in the making, Road Show arrived in 2008 with great expectations, having already been seen in a workshop in 1999 and as Bounce in 2003. Audiences hoped for another Company or Follies and what they got disappointed them. For most people, that was enough to write off this little show about the Mizner brothers and forget about it. Me too, for a while at least. But a couple of years after the hype had died down, I revisited the show and found more in it that I remembered. There’s some great material in the piece, including “Addison’s Trip”, “Talent” and the universally liked “The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened”. What’s more is I found a show that I’d like to perform in. Just putting it out there…

Every day this December, I’m choosing 5 musicals linked by a common theme and ranking them from best to worst. I’d love to see your rankings of the musicals posted each day, so head on down to the comment box and share your thoughts.

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1 to 5 Musical Theatre Month: Keep it Gay!

Posted on December 10, 2012 by David Fick

The link for today’s five musicals is gay characters. Ten years ago, I wrote an award-winning dissertation called Homosexual Representation in the Broadway Musical: the development of homosexual identities and relationships from Patience to RENT. I’d love to go back and re-investigate that topic, but for today let’s just have a look at: Billy Elliot, The Book of Mormon, La Cage aux Folles, Hair and [title of show].

1. Hair

To purchase the new Broadway cast recording of HAIR, click on the image above.

There is so much LGBT stuff in Hair. There’s the guy in drag who sings “My Conviction”. While Jeannie is hung up on Claude, Claude on Shiela and Sheila on Berger, Berger is hung up everywhere and both Claude and Woof are hung up on Berger. Woof also states his desire to ‘make great love’ with Mick Jagger, also celebrating his appreciation of diverse sexual practices in the musical number “Sodomy”. People debate whether Hair is still relevant. The recent revival proved that it is. The show’s anti-war commentary still holds water, although I’m not a fan of productions that overtly force the link to some contemporary war and believe that audiences are intelligent to make the links for themselves.

2. The Book of Mormon

To purchase the Original Broadway Cast Recording of THE BOOK OF MORMON, click on the image above.

Two years down the line and the score of The Book of Mormon is still cracking me up. This hit show scooped up nine Tony Awards in the 2010-2011 season, although I’d still debate whether this show represented the Best Book and Score of that season. (The book all but disintegrates into links for the songs in the second act and the lyrics feature a number of errors in craftsmanship.) The gay character featured in this show is Elder McKinley, a role originated by Rory O’Malley, and one of the songs in the score, “Turn It Off” deals overtly with (amongst other things) his closeted homosexuality. It’s a great number with fantastic staging.

3. Billy Elliot

How I wish Billy Elliot had chosen “Expressing Yourself” as the number to showcase the show rather than “Angry Dance”. “Angry Dance” may work well in the context of the show, but it struggles to stand alone outside of it. “Expressing Yourself” is, of course, the number that showcases Billy’s friend, Michael, who has no problem with the taboos around cross-dressing in their conservative community. The number is five minutes of sheer joy and for me it is always great to see entertainment that affirms life for young LGBT people, because the world can still appear too full of challenges for them. That this number does so explicitly rather than in disguise is simply fabulous.

4. La Cage aux Folles

To purchase the new Broadway cast recording of LA CAGE AUX FOLLES, click on the image above.

La Cage aux Folles has never really been one of my favourites. Despite some great numbers, the score is short and repetitive. While the original production was a key show in the portrayal of homosexuals on stage, there was always something that bothered me about it: it felt “put on”. The turning point for me came with the 2008 London revival that subsequently moved to Broadway in 2010. Suddenly, the show made sense to me: a great example of how a production of a show can make the material snap into focus or not. Arthur Laurents would disagree with me – in fact he was quite vocal about how he believed this particular revival to be homophobic. But let’s just take that from whence it comes.

5. [title of show]

To purchase the Original Cast Recording of title of show, click on the image above.

[title of show] is a little show that I enjoy a lot. It’s meta-theatrical to its very core, a show about the making of a musical where the characters were played by the actors upon whom they were based, prompting questions at the time of the show’s initial run as to whether the show could be played successfully by anyone other than the original cast. Of course, it can be and, in fact, it is a show I would enjoy doing at some point. Now that I think about it, the show preempts Smash in its sharing of the backstage process, although Smash takes a few liberties more often than it should. Of course, the backstage musical is no new thing, but [title of show] took the idea to a new place. It’s a little show that could.

Every day this December, I’m choosing 5 musicals linked by a common theme and ranking them from best to worst. I’d love to see your rankings of the musicals posted each day, so head on down to the comment box and share your thoughts.

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1 to 5 Musical Theatre Month: Bernadette Peters

Posted on December 9, 2012 by David Fick

The link for today’s five musicals is Bernadette Peters. It goes without saying that Peters has had an incredible career on Broadway and choosing only a handful of her shows to feature here today was a tough choice. I’ve decided to go with some of her most recent appearances in musicals on Broadway, namely: Follies, A Little Night Music, Gypsy, Annie Get Your Gun and The Goodbye Girl.

1. Gypsy

Picking the show to take top honours here is difficult given that three of my favourite shows of all time appear here. Gypsy has the edge though. There’s not an ounce of fat in the score. The book is hands down one of the best Broadway has ever seen. (Well written books are all but a lost art on Broadway these days.) The integration between the two is seamless. Peters courted some controversy when she appeared in Gypsy in 2003. People either loved her or hated her in the role, and many of the naysayers debated whether or not she was miscast. While I do give the cast recording a spin from time to time, Peters isn’t my favourite Rose. Angela Lansbury is still the measuring stick.

2. Follies

Follies is a phenomenal piece of work, one that been subjected to all kinds of butchering since its original production. The most extreme of these revisions was seen in the London version of the show, but those changes were perhaps more obvious than the numerous tweaks made to the book for the Broadway revival that followed it. Peters appeared in the second Broadway revival of the show, as Sally, in the 2011-2012 season and, as with Gypsy, audiences were split about how successful her interpretation of the role was, as evidenced in the seemingly unending forum topics that were posted on sites like BroadwayWorld and All That Chat.

3. A Little Night Music

How I wish that Peters had been paired with Lansbury in the original cast of the revival of this marvellous show on Broadway. Catherine Zeta-Jones had star power and was cast for the selling power she had, but Peters and Lansbury would have been a perfect combination. (I also hated all of the stories about Elaine Stritch, opposite whom Peters was cast, going up on her words regularly. Legend or not, I don’t have sympathy for such a lack of basic professionalism.) The show itself is by turns lush and romantic and witty. It is a pity that wasn’t captured in the film adaptation. It’s a pity that with all the movie musicals going into production that a new version of A Little Night Music isn’t on the cards. It’s a well known fact that Lansbury is looking around for a great film vehicle. This could be it.

4. Annie Get Your Gun

Let’s start off by saying that the “revisal” of Annie Get Your Gun in which Peters found was something of a curate’s egg. Peters herself was a playful and sympathetic Annie, but listening to the recording is a frustrating experience because it is a reminder of the mixed results that were the end point of the good intentions that were at the core of this revival. I don’t like the show within a show framework. Some of the cuts to the score water down some of the subtleties this show can communicate about its setting and how we read its dynamics so many years later. Some of the new orchestrations are fantastic, while others stall at the gate. I guess there’s no point in getting too worked up. It was but a moment in time.

5. The Goodbye Girl

Everyone has shows that they just can’t get into. For me, The Goodbye Girl is one of those shows, the most recent Broadway musical in which Peters originated a role. The best thing I can say about the show is that it’s one of those musicals from the 1990s that tried really hard without getting anywhere at all. Whatever magical spark that brings the best musicals to life and even elevates some mediocre ones to popularity was just missing from this one. Ah well…

Every day this December, I’m choosing 5 musicals linked by a common theme and ranking them from best to worst. I’d love to see your rankings of the musicals posted each day, so head on down to the comment box and share your thoughts.

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1 to 5 Musical Theatre Month

Posted on December 1, 2012 by David Fick

Every day this December, I’m choosing 5 musicals linked by a common theme and ranking them from best to worst. I’d love to see your rankings of the musicals posted each day, so head on down to the comment box each day and share your thoughts.

Enjoy!

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