Post a song from a musical with the best music.
After a great deal of thought, I thought I would choose “This Nearly Was Mine” from South Pacific. It’s a beautiful piece of music, a heartbreaking waltz from Richard Rodgers, with words that match it step for step by Oscar Hammerstein II, that will stay with you forever once you’ve heard it. Here is a section of the broadcast of the recent revival. The lead up to the song starts at 07:46.
Post a song from your least favourite musical by your favourite composer.
I’ve never liked Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove’s The Frogs much. I just haven’t taken to it. As much as I like classical Greek theatre, I just can’t seem to find a connection to this adaptation of Aristophanes’ play as a whole, although there certainly are bits that I enjoy a great deal and bits that certainly are breathtaking and brilliant.
Post a song by your favourite musical composer.
The choice of composer is easy: Stephen Sondheim. But which song? That’s the tough part. Perhaps, then, I should simply go for the first one that springs to mind, “The Road You Didn’t Take” from Follies. This number really lets us into Ben’s head and it was a significant misstep to cut this from the original London production. (Possibly not as great a sin as the altered ending and the substitution of the songs in the climatic Follies sequence, but that’s another story.) Besides being a great character piece, I just find it haunting. When this song gets into my head, it sticks around for hours and I don’t tire of it. There’s so much to it. I’d love to play Ben one day. Dreams, hey? Anyway, here is John McMartin performing the song in the original production. Enjoy!
Above: The playbill for the original Broadway production of TITANIC
Next year will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.
I think it might be great to have a concert of the Maury Yeston and Peter Stone musical that is then subsequently released onto DVD and Blu-Ray, like the recent Les Miserables concert was. Perhaps it could even screen in movie theatres like Company will later this year. I would love to see someone some use this show to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic.
Now, to whom do we send emails to organise this?
Post a song from a musical that you haven’t listened to (or seen) in a while.
There are many of these. Which should I choose? I think I’ll go with Merrily We Roll Along, the musical flop that basically ended the till then unfaltering collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and Harold Prince until they briefly came together during the development of the musical that would become Road Show. People have different opinions on why Merrily We Roll Along didn’t work in 1981. The score is almost universally acknowledged to be fantastic, so that is rarely cited as the reason. Some people blame the book, either because of its structure or because of some perception of its overall quality. Well, sure, perhaps the book wasn’t all it could be, but its not bad enough for the show to have been the kind of flop it was. The blame, I’m afraid, lies chiefly on Harold Prince who himself has admitted in interviews that the show stumped him. Looking at video material that exists of the original production, it’s clear that this is true. A pity – although a time will come, I hope, when a major revival of this show gives it the success it deserves.
The clip isn’t of the best quality, but it is from the original production – a number now excised from the score, “Rich and Happy”:
Post a song from a musical that you loved from hearing the first note.
Today I am going to post a song from one of my big musical obsessions: Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim’s Gypsy. Gypsy begins with one of those overtures that vies for the top spot of ‘Best Overture of All Time’. It is electric. The score then moves through so many fantastic numbers: “Some People”, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (you have to love Jerome Robbins’s objection to the song’s title: ‘I mean, everything’s coming up Rose’s what?), “Together Wherever We Go” and “Rose’s Turn” among them. What is remarkable about Gypsy is that every single number is essential, even those that appear to be throwaways (“Little Lamb”) or frivolous nonsense (“All I Need is the Girl”, “Have an Eggroll, Mr Goldstone”). Lose one number and the show loses something.
There have been many Roses, including Ethel Merman, Tyne Daly, Bette Midler, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone. Best of the bunch for me is Angela Lansbury and it is Lansbury who appears in the clip below:
Post a song from a musical you could listen to all day.
There are lots of musicals that I could listen to all day. One of them is Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx and Jeff Whitty’s Avenue Q. There are lots of things that potentially attract one to this show: the comedy, the puppets, the parody and so on. But what makes in a keeper in the CD player is the catchiness of the score, both in terms of its lyrics and music. Because it is a parody of the kind of songs one might find in Sesame Street, the songs sound familiar even when you hear them for the first time. Of course, they are incredibly clever in the way that they pastiche the kinds of songs on which they are based. Avenue Q is the kind of cast album that I sometimes keep playing in my car for a week without changing it.
The song I’ve chosen is one of my favourites in the show, the hysterically funny “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist”:
(My other favourites are: “It Sucks to Be Me”, “Purpose”, “The Internet is for Porn”, “If You Were Gay”, “I Wish I Could Go Back to College”…. Hmmm… This could go on for a while….)
Post a song from the musical which made the most impact on you.
I had to think hard about this one – and then realised that the answer wasn’t so far out of my grasp after all. The musical that made the most impact on me was a production of Peter Pan that I saw when I was in primary school. The production included some songs from the Disney film – notably “The Second Star to the Right”, which was sung as a lullaby to the Darling children, as well as other songs. Why this production? Well, it was this show that sealed the deal for me when it came to musicals. After this show, I started taking drama classes. I took my music lessons more seriously (though, alas, not seriously enough). I played out scenes from the show in my garden with my sister and neighbours for months afterwards. So here is the song I remember most well from that show, in the version heard in the Disney film from whence it came:
Post a song from your least favourite musical.
This is another tough one to choose. Obviously, there are lots of bad musicals out there. But is that what the challenge is asking for here? A bad musical? I feel indifferent about so many bad musicals, so I’m not sure. For that reason I’ve stuck with a musical that I think really may be my least favourite: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart’s The Phantom of the Opera. So many people – and the marketing machine behind the show – will tell you what a romantic, tragic show The Phantom of the Opera is. I don’t buy it. When I saw it, I thought it was a rather empty piece of theatre. A friend of mine turned to me afterwards and said, “I’m left feeling rather unsatisfied by that theatrical meal.” And I had to agree with her. Yes, there is some lovely music. Yes, the design is absolutely gorgeous. Yes, Harold Prince’s staging rescues the show from being completely abysmal. Yes, it has run for decades. Does any of this make the characters more complex than they are – or rather, as complex as they should be? Does any of it make the lyrics any better? If this show were a gift, there would be lots of wrapping on the box. You would open up the box and sift trough layers of beautifully pressed tissue paper as you look for the gift itself. But if you managed to find the gift, then you would be disappointing. What’s inside simply doesn’t live up to the promise of the wrapping and the trimming.
The video I’ve chosen to represent this show is from the Tony Awards and includes a snippet of the title song and “The Music of the Night”.
Post a song from a musical of which you know all (or nearly all) the lines.
There are certainly a few of these. The Sound of Music is one – and I sing through all of the songs while I’m running. I think I run about 13km in the time it takes me to sing through the score. Another is Marry Me a Little, in which I performed a couple of years ago. However, for today’s musical I am going to choose my favourite Rodgers and Hammerstein musical: South Pacific. I love this show dearly and I think it is probably the Rogers and Hammerstein show that will endure the longest. I once played Joe Cable in this show and loved every minute of the process. Which song should I pick? I toyed with choosing the song cut from the original production, “My Girl Back Home”, which was re-instated in the film and in the recent revival. But ultimately I chose what, for me, is the most moving song in the show, “This Nearly Was Mine”. Here it is, sung by Paulo Szot, who played Emile to Tony Award winning-effect on Broadway just a couple of years ago:
Musical Cyberspace 