30 Musicals in 30 Days: A Song That Makes You Sad

Posted on April 6, 2011 by David Fick

Post a song that makes you sad or teary.

The song I have chosen today is “We Do Not Belong Together” from Sunday in the Park with George, which features a score by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. I must admit, it took me a long time to warm to Sunday in the Park with George, mainly because I am not the biggest Mandy Patinkin fan and had to deal with getting passed his mannerisms before I could actually take on board the material itself. I really have a great appreciation for the show and find many part of it incredibly moving, although I think the second act is not as seamlessly constructed as the first. There are other moments that make me teary in Sunday in the Park with George – the sheer beauty “Sunday”, for example – but there is only one part that I find devastatingly sad. “We Do Not Belong Together” makes me weep because of its truth. This song is unflinchingly honest and there is added resonance for me: I once date an artist and I discovered this show in its entirety shortly after we broke up. However, this song is so much more than that. It is a universal statement, perfectly moulded for the mouths of the two characters we see on stage.

I couldn’t find a video clip from the original Broadway production of “We Do Not Belong Together” (in which Bernadette Peters breaks your heart on every note) on YouTube, so here’s a clip from another production:

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30 Musicals in 30 Days: A Song That Makes You Happy

Posted on April 5, 2011 by David Fick

Post a song that makes you happy.

So many people write off Laurence O’Keefe, Nell Benjamin and Heather Hach’s Legally Blonde as a musical. I admit I rolled my eyes when the show was announced and thought it would be a standard half-hearted movie-to-musical adaptation. But when I imported the cast recording into iTunes and listened to it for the first time, I was introduced to a stage show that improves upon its origins, a feeling that is not lessened when the book is added to the mix or when one sees the production itself. Legally Blonde is a smart new-age musical comedy, one that takes account of the some of the lessons learned by the development of the musical play as well as some of those about musical theatre proclaimed by Sondheim (particularly “content dictates form”). It’s a diva style musical comedy like Anything Goes or Mame and it holds its own against those shows. Is it a perfect show? No. But it is accomplished and delightful, so I refuse to reconcile it to the realm of “guilty pleasures”.

The song that makes me happy from this show is “So Much Better”, seen here in a promotional video for the London production of the show:

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30 Musicals in 30 Days: An Overrated Musical

Posted on April 4, 2011 by David Fick

Post a song demonstrating how overrated you think a musical is.

Wicked has its moments. Sure, the book lacks focus and the second act is a complete mess-up story-wise, but part of the score is on the right track. It’s in numbers like this one where the wheels come off completely:

Dear Stephen Schwartz, the score for Wicked shouldn’t sound like the soundtrack for low budget porn. But that’s what you get when you recycle trunk songs from the 1970s, making only a few cosmetic changes to make the song sound as if it belongs in the score into which it has been placed. (By the way, the video features the marvelously glam Adam Lambert as Fiyero and Rachel Gonzalez as Elphaba, which means it’s from either the national tour or Los Angeles productions of the show from 2005-2008.)

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30 Musicals in 30 Days: An Underrated Musical

Posted on April 3, 2011 by David Fick

Post a song demonstrating how underrated you think a musical is.

The choice today is an easy one: Michael John LaChiusa’s The Wild Party. That this brilliant, devastating show lost the Tony Award for Best Score to Aida is unforgivable. (Let’s not even talk about how the Best Musical award that year was awarded to a show that was not even a musical in the first place.) That tons of fangirl-types prefer the Andrew Lippa version perhaps is not surprising; that they don’t realise why LaChiusa’s adaptation is superior is why mediocre shows like Wicked run on Broadway forever for now.

This video is a clip from the Tony Awards, featuring the brilliant Toni Collette as Queenie and a cast featuring Mandy Patinkin and Eartha Kitt.

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30 Musicals in 30 Days: Your Latest Musical Obsession

Posted on April 2, 2011 by David Fick

Post a song from your latest musical obsession.

It hasn’t been a very obsessive obsession and it’s pretty much over, but I have been listening to Brigadoon quite a bit lately, mainly – I admit – to figure out what the score isn’t as appealing to me as I suppose it should be given its classic status. Having listened to it again, my feeling is that – some exquisite numbers aside – this score still doesn’t quite work for me. I’m not sure why, although I have some ideas on the matter. But the bottom line is that – at this point – the effort doesn’t seem worth the time to wade through Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics (which is where I suspect the trouble lies) and Frederick Loewe’s score (which is lovely and lush, but perhaps not as refined as My Fair Lady or Camelot) and work out exactly what it is that doesn’t work for me.

The video I’ve chosen is a clip from the rather dire film version of Brigadoon. Nevertheless, it is a lovely song and my absolute favourite in the score: “The Heather on the Hill”

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30 Musicals in 30 Days: Your First Musical

Posted on April 1, 2011 by David Fick

Post a song from your first musical.

The first musical to which I was exposed was Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s The Sound of Music, which my grandmother used to put on the record player in the afternoons when I had to go and nap. I have a cassette tape of myself singing Liesl’s part of “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” from that time. I guess I must have been about 4 years old. I don’t know how old I was when I first saw the iconic film, but I really love it. The Sounds of Music is one of the best stage-to-screen adaptations of a musical, with many of the weaknesses of the stage show (which I directed in 2009) fixed in both the screenplay and the score.

The video I’ve chosen is a clip from the 52nd Tony Awards. The Sound of Music was up for “Best Revival of a Musical” that year and this medley includes a the thrilling “Gaudeamus Domino” wedding chorale, “Do-Re-Mi” and “The Sound of Music”.

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30 Musicals in 30 Days

Posted on April 1, 2011 by David Fick

I found this little game on Facebook and thought it might be a great idea to kickstart my blogging again. Time hasn’t been on my side the past couple of months and this seems like a relatively easy commitment. I’ll be posting a video from each of the categories listed in the game every day. I’ll be posting the first one shortly. Feel free to jump in and comment at any time with what your favourite songs in each category are!

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OPENING NIGHT: HOW TO SUCCEED… on Broadway

Posted on March 27, 2011 by David Fick
Playbill for HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING

Above: Playbill for HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING

The second Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying opens tonight. The Pulitzer Prize-winning musical features a score by Frank Loesser with a book by Abe Burrows, Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert. Rob Ashford, the Tony Award winning director-choreographer who has staged shows like Promises, Promises, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Cry-Baby), is at the helm of this production.

The show stars Daniel Radcliffe as J. Pierrepont Finch, with Tammy Blanchard as Hedy La Rue, Christopher J. Hanke as Bud Frump and Rose Hemingway as Rosemary Pilkington. Rob Bartlett will play Twimble/Wally Womper, Mary Faber will play Smitty and Ellen Harvey will play Miss Jones. John Larroquette will appear as J.B. Biggley and the book’s voice will be recorded by CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

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NEWSFLASH: ROCK OF AGES on the Silver Screen in June 2012

Posted on March 24, 2011 by David Fick
ROCK OF AGES

To purchase the Original Broadway Cast Recording of ROCK OF AGES, click on the image above.

We’ve known for some time that Rock of Ages will become a movie musical under the direction of Adam Shankman, who said the following about the way he wants to cast the film:

“I’m thinking big, and absolutely am going to attempt to cast with movie stars. Now that musicals are working again, actors are much more open to it.”

And we then discovered that Tom Cruise was offered a role in the film! Now we have confirmation that Rock of Ages will be released in 2012. Cruise has been confirmed to play Stacee Jaxx, with Alec Baldwin playing Dennis, Julianne Hough playing Sherrie Christian and Mary J. Blige playing Justice. The musical’s book writer, Chris D’Arienzo has adapted his book for the musical, incorporating revisions by Shankman and Justin Theroux. The film will be a Warner Bros and New Line co-production.

Regular readers of this blog will now I’m not really a fan of the show, so it will come as little surprise that I’m not really a fan of Rock of Ages becoming a film either. It’s a pointless exercise, although one certainly made more attractive by some of the casting ideas. Will I see it? Of course. I hope that Shankman has learned from the mistakes he made making Hairspray, though many of the errors made in that film were in the adaptation of the material rather than with his direction. At least Rock of Ages doesn’t have any kind of pedigree to begin with.

I wonder how the constant breaking of the fourth wall, that is a trademark feature of the show, will be dealt with successfully in the adaptation.

Any other thoughts, dear readers?

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RIP Hugh Martin

Posted on March 11, 2011 by David Fick

American musical theater and film composer Hugh Martin died today. Best known for the seasonal standard, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, which is taken from the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me In St. Louis. Martin contributed material to 5 Broadway musicals: Best Foot Forward (1941), Look Ma, I’m Dancin’! (1948), Make a Wish (1951), High Spirits (1964) and a stage version of Meet Me In St. Louis (1989). He was a true songwriting legend. Here is another of his songs from Meet Me in St. Louis, “The Trolley Song”:


Rest in Peace

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