The casting for the June 21st benefit performance of Titanic, Maury Yeston and Peter Stone’s award-winning musical about the 1912 maritime tragedy, is coming together.
Directed by Matthew Hamel, the company includes original Broadway cast members Tim Jerome (Captain Smith), John Hickok (J. Bruce Ismay), Martin Moran (Harold Bride), Henry Stram (Etches), John Jellison (Isidor Straus), Alma Cuervo (Ida Strauss), Michael Mulheren (John Thayer), Don Stephenson (Charles Clarke), Emily Loesser (Caroline Neville) and Jennifer Piech (Kate McGowan) along with Robert Petkoff (Thomas Andrews), Eamon Foley, Blair Ross, Patrick Wetzel, Bailey Hanks, Brian O’Brien, Rick Hilsabeck and Autumn Hurlbert.
The benefit is being held in aid of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.
Ricky Ian Gordon’s new musical, Sycamore Trees, starts previews tonight at the MAX Theatre under the auspices of the Signature Theatre. Directed by Tina Landau, the cast of Sycamore Trees includes features Farah Alvin, Marc Kudisch, Judy Kuhn, Jessica Molaskey, Matthew Risch, Diane Sutherland and Tony Yazbeck. Together with Nan Mankin, Gordon crafted the book around his family’s struggles and their reliance on each other through good and bad. In his own words:
When my father came home from World War II in 1945, my family lived in a crowded tenement in the Bronx, poor and with bed bugs. Then my parents got the idea to move to the suburbs where the dream of life flowering in a clean and spacious environment promised to be the answer. It wasn’t. This is the story of a family and what happened to them… and music is its heartbeat and inner life.
Described as personal and intimate, the show seems as if it might be the musical equivalent of one of those lyrical family dramas by Eugene O’Niell, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller that originally appeared during the 1940s and 1950s. Tickets can be bought by visiting the Signature Theatre website.
Vanessa Williams with SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM co-star Barbara Cook
Vanessa Williams – who is currently appearing on Broadway in Sondheim on Sondheim – has landed a role in Desperate Housewives.
It’ll be great for that show and Williams is certain to be great in it, but it’s a pity that Williams couldn’t sink her teeth into a real musical following her star turn in a revue whose main attraction is the video interviews with Stephen Sondheim that frame the evening’s entertainment.
The South African production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton’s The Boys in the Photograph opens tonight. Here’s a clip that showcases the brand new staging of the musical:
The cast features: David Chevers (John Kelly), Carly Graeme (Mary Mcguire), Grant Almirall (Del Copeland), Gemma Donnelly (Christine Warner), Adam du Plessis (Thomas Malloy), Gareth Worth (Gregory “Ginger” O’Shaughnessy), Sibu Radebe (Daniel Gillen), Tammi Meyer (Bernadette) and Neville Thomas (Father O’Donnell), with an ensemble featuring Norman Anstey, Judy Ditchfield, Christopher Jaftha, Clive Gilson, Byron Lee Olivato, Stephen Jubber, Lebo Toko, Kenneth Meyer, Daniel Buys, Aidan Lithgow, Shaun Brian Murphy, Shaun V, Darryl Evans, Christel Mutombo, Sarah Richard, Dolly Louw, Eloise Horjus, Dominique Paccaut, Revano Michael, Shelley Adriaanzen, Motlatji Ditodi and Nicol Sheraton. The show will also feature a children’s company, including Kelly Rose, Tiaan Nortje, Kyle Smith, Thulasizwe Cruickshank, Amanda Dlamini, Brenton Budler, Estiaan Conradie and Vashiv Naiker. Direction is by Janice Honeyman, with choreography by Celeste Botha.
Stephen Merritt was awarded an OBIE today for his music and lyrics for Coraline, the musical (with a book by David Greenspan) based on Neil Gaiman’s novel about a little girl whose discover of a seemingly perfect alternative home brings her adventures of which she never dreamed. The musical was commissioned by St. Ann’s Warehouse and was presented by MCC Theater from 8th May – 5th July last year. Here’s some promotional material for the show, which features some of Merritt’s thoughts about the show, along with those of its star, Jane Houdyshell, and director, Leigh Silverman:
The OBIE Awards are presented annually to the most deserving Off-Broadway productions in a number of categories. more information about this year’s awards can be viewed at the Village Voice website.
This is Part 6 in a series of posts that examines Disney’s Aida in detail. Aida has a book by Linda Woolverton, David Henry Hwang and Robert Falls, lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Elton John.
Act 1 Scene 4
The scene which follows, which introduces Amneris in the bath house as she primps, preens and dresses for the banquet that follows, sits rather oddly. It’s almost as if it was written as a skit for a high school play and if this Aida was written by a high school student, it might be very impressive. But it isn’t.
Obviously, the thing that is meant to jump out at us is the contrast between the Amneris we saw at the start of the show, a dignified pharaoh, and the Amneris we see in this scene, a prom queen renegade from Heathers or Mean Girls. I get that. I also get that we are looking at Aida from a different angle. However, this scene just doesn’t seem to fit in with the play we’ve seen so far. It’s that puzzle piece in the section of sky where all the pieces are light blue, the one that almost looks like it fits when you slot it in, but which might not – and you can’t really tell why. Again I think the problem exists because of the choice to go the book musical route instead of developing the material into a rock opera. Dialogue gives you more room to think and the thought that returns frequently during this scene is how the wit that Linda Woolverton is desperately trying to contrives only comes off as being dreadfully tacky.
During the scene, Amneris is presented with Aida, who manages to talk her way into the favour of the princess by giving her news of Radames and by displaying an extensive knowledge on dyeing fabrics(!). There is some dramatic irony at play here, because we know that Aida uses her own perspective on how a princess would like to be treated to work out her responses to Amneris, although the idea is underdeveloped as it seems most of the book scenes in this musical will be, merely being links that carry the audience from one song to the next.
This is Part 5 in a series of posts that examines Disney’s Aida in detail. Aida has a book by Linda Woolverton, David Henry Hwang and Robert Falls, lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Elton John.
Act 1 Scene 3
We now find ourselves in a hallway of the palace. As ordered, Mereb is taking Aida to Amneris and what transpires takes place in the style of one of those “in one” scenes that were developed by Oscar Hammerstein II in the musical plays he wrote with Richard Rodgers in order to keep the action moving apace downstage while scenes were being changed upstage.
The scene doesn’t do much to set up the song that follows it, almost arbitrarily planting in a cue after Mereb and Aida discuss Radames for a few lines so that we can see that he is somewhat different from other Egyptians in his treatment of the Nubian slaves. The song, “How I Know You”, is a duet by Mereb and Aida, during which Mereb reveals that Aida is the king of Nubia’s daughter and Aida begs him not to reveal her identity to anyone because she would be killed or used otherwise to subdue her father into giving away what little of Nubia remains free Nubian land.
Tim Rice’s lyric starts off well, but already begins to raise questions that are never answered in the lyric or in the book before the first verse is done. As Mereb describes his family’s abduction from Nubia, he says that Aida ‘witnessed (their) abduction’, presumably from the palace where his father worked ‘as advisor to the king’. Now, how was Aida spared being taken herself during this episode if she was close enough to witness it? And why does it seem that she did nothing about it? Surely Mereb’s family’s abduction was not an isolated event? No, it must have been part of a siege upon the palace. So what exactly happened here?
The marriage of the first stanza to the music works quite nicely, with the short phrases fitting neatly to the short phrases of the music. Musically, a pattern also seems to be emerging, whereby the Nubians sing in a musical language that is less driven by popular music forms, partly because of the orchestrations by Steve Margoshes, which aid this illusion. The marriage between music and lyrics in the second stanza doesn’t work quite as well: Rice starts making use of enjambments that are now split musically because of the pattern established in the first verse. This makes the lyric sound awkward and self-conscious, something that isn’t helped by the awkward and clichéd filler lyric about how Mereb’s reminiscence ‘surely ring a bell’ for Aida.
The rest of the song takes the form of a brief debate between the two about whether her identity should be revealed, even if only to the Nubians. Aida is dead set against this, but the argument feels unfinished and seems to hint at dramatic proposals that are never quite realised:
AIDA:
My only hope is silence
You’ve never seen my face
MEREB:
No you remain a princess
In any time or place
AIDA:
You don’t know me
The awkwardly phrased idea in the Aida’s first quoted line aside, there are other ideas that aren’t quite fulfilled in this lyric. The idea that Aida can say “You don’t know me” as a response to Mereb’s statement that she still looks like a princess – the line is after all a response to Aida saying that her face could be taken as that of any Nubian slave – makes one wonder what exactly Aida has gone through since Mereb was taken, what has changed her feelings about herself. Exploring that in a set of two verses would give greater psychological complexity to Aida, making this interaction go beyond circumstance and narrative by contributing to character and theme. It’s a missed opportunity.
Nubian life as depicted by Leo and Diane Dillon in an illistration from Leontyne Price's children's book adaptation of AIDA.
After the song, some more dialogue follows that basically reinforces the idea proposed in the song. This doesn’t appear to be a particularly economical or focused scene. Finally, Mereb drops in an aside to Aida in regard to Amneris and Radames’ relationship:
MEREB: Just so you know, Amneris is more than that to Radames. She’s his betrothed.
AIDA: He’s to be married? When?
MEREB: The day his ship sinks and the royal builders refuse to make him another. Come; let’s get you to the Princess.
The line about the date of the wedding almost makes up for the really weak introduction of the topic into the dialogue. This scene, and the song that accompanies it, really need a lot of refining to become a tight dramatic sequence. It’s that kind of sloppy complacency that prevents Aida from being as good a musical as it could have been.
NEXT UP: Amneris, Princess of Egypt… or is that Anna Wintour?
Kathleen Marshall has directed a reading of the new musical, SCKBSTD (“Sick Bastard”), that will be performed in Manhattan tonight. Part of the Virginia Stage Company’s American Soil programme, the musical will have a fully produced premiere production at the start of next year.
With a book by Clay McLeod Chapman, the show deals with the events following the arrival of a stranger into a small town, one who starts cruising the streets in his Dodge and sparking off feverish rumors from the town’s inhabitants. The score is written by Bruce Hornsby and Chip deMatteo, with 8 of the 19 songs in the score having appeared on Hornby’s 2009 album, Levitate.
The cast for the reading includes Robert Spencer, Jill Paice, Tom Wopat, John Cullum, Natalie Belcon, William Parry, Becky Ann Baker, Anastasia Barzee, Bryan Tyree Henry, Joey Sorge, James Moye, Dalton Harrod, Riley Costello and Brynn Williams.
This is Part 4 in a series of posts that examines Disney’s Aida in detail. Aida has a book by Linda Woolverton, David Henry Hwang and Robert Falls, lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Elton John.
Act 1 Scene 2
Micky Dolenz as Zoser in the Original Broadway Production
The next scene begins with another book segment, thankfully one that is less contrived than the interaction between Aida and Radames in the previous scene. We are introduced to Mereb, one of Radames’ slaves, and Zoser, Radames’ father, whose ambitions for his son include marrying the Pharaoh’s daughter, Amneris so that his future in the palace will be secure. During the book scene, when Radames is present, Zoser’s plans seem to end with that ambition, but during the following song, it is revealed that Zoser is, in collaboration with the other ministers, helping his cause by slowly poisoning the Pharaoh with arsenic. This is another aspect of a theme that was introduced in the the previous scene: that all things are not as they seem in Aida. This is reinforced by Radames’ treatment of the women slaves in this scene, saving them from certain death in the copper mines by sending them to work in the fields, an act that surprises Aida because of its decency.
The song that follows, “Another Pyramid”, serves to establish Zoser’s character further and to inform us of his political undermining of Egypt’s theocracy. The name given to the character is undoubtedly a nod to the the real Egyptian pharaoh Zoser who, along with his head architect, Imhotep, was responsible for conceiving the first Egyptian pyramid.
The song, known for its choreographed staging, doesn’t allow Zoser much complexity and unfortunately reduces him in some ways to a cartoon villain, like Scar in The Lion King. Starting with a reggae vamp, it eventually builds through the dance break to a strong rock finish – once again a choice that would suit the demands of a rock opera perfectly, but which seems odd when placed into a book musical, which requires a rather different, more organic integration between the libretto and the score.
The lyrics of “Another Pyramid” are messy to the extent that they seem exist in contradiction to the process that was followed in the writing of the songs for the show, with Elton John composing music to lyrics written and passed on to him by Tim Rice. In other words, it seems like the lyrics were forced to fit the music, even though we know the process was completed the other way round. Look, for example, in the awkward way the title is incorporated at the end of each of Zoser’s series of verses.
There is also this invocation of ‘the Hawk God Horus’ which makes me wonder whether Rice is trying to be clever by throwing in the name of an Egyptian deity, but failing because he doesn’t really know the conventions of the mythology: although, as would be the case in a theocracy, Horus is a god that is associated with the king and is indeed identified with the king during his lifetime, it is Osiris that is associated with the afterlife. Neither seems to be a god that deals in prophecy, so one is left to wonder through what oracle Zoser divined this information. The other option is to wonder whether Rice is really being clever and allowing the character to make the mistake, a flaw in the cover-up of his less admirable deeds for the benefit of his son, to whom he is singing this lyric. But then why doesn’t Radames pick up on the inconsistency? Is he so upset to hear of the Pharaoh’s illness? Certainly, the brief inter-verse dialogue that sees him exit indicates that he is – but perhaps that is a fortunate accident in theatre-making rather than a considered decision.
The rest of the song manages to incorporate trite expressions (“each dog must have its day”), poor linguistic choices for the sake of meter (“just like his fathers did”), self-conscious Rice-isms (“Summon Egypt’s greatest builder re: another pyramid”) and a statement that is just plain confusing:
We’ll extend fair Egypt’s power
Egypt’s glory strength and style
We shall have our finest hour
Far beyond the mighty Nile
He must have a vault that’s grand by
Any standards, floor to lid
Put five thousand slaves on stand by
Build another pyramid!
The opening of the first stanza quoted above reads logically, given what we’ve heard about Egypt’s exploitation of Nubia and their quest to explore and map the areas around the Nile. The second stanza also makes sense (the awkward fourth line notwithstanding) and throws in a delightful rhyme to boot. However, one wonders about the lyric that links the two. Who is the ‘we’? Egypt? Zoser and the ministers? Zoser and Radames? And why is this ‘finest hour’ ‘far beyond the mighty Nile’? Surely the triumph that Zoser is seeking is within Egypt itself? The answers to these questions remain evasive.
John Hickok sings "Another Pyramid" in the Original Broadway Production
Musically, as mentioned above, the song makes use of reggae to create (one assumes) the sense of political unrest that underscores Zoser’s words. It’s an interesting choice, given reggae’s use as a tool of political protest – although I don’t think that that its use as such in the real world encompasses out-and-out treachery. The fact that the show is a book musical rather than a rock opera also forces one to wonder how a Jamaican musical style from the 1960s makes its way to Ancient Egypt, but – as I’ve implied in the third post in this series – I think this kind of anachronism is a key feature of the score, the validity of which can be debated back and forth in relation to the form that has been chosen to communicate this narrative.
Musical Cyberspace 
Deconstructing Disney: AIDA Part 5
This is Part 5 in a series of posts that examines Disney’s Aida in detail. Aida has a book by Linda Woolverton, David Henry Hwang and Robert Falls, lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Elton John.
Act 1 Scene 3
We now find ourselves in a hallway of the palace. As ordered, Mereb is taking Aida to Amneris and what transpires takes place in the style of one of those “in one” scenes that were developed by Oscar Hammerstein II in the musical plays he wrote with Richard Rodgers in order to keep the action moving apace downstage while scenes were being changed upstage.
The scene doesn’t do much to set up the song that follows it, almost arbitrarily planting in a cue after Mereb and Aida discuss Radames for a few lines so that we can see that he is somewhat different from other Egyptians in his treatment of the Nubian slaves. The song, “How I Know You”, is a duet by Mereb and Aida, during which Mereb reveals that Aida is the king of Nubia’s daughter and Aida begs him not to reveal her identity to anyone because she would be killed or used otherwise to subdue her father into giving away what little of Nubia remains free Nubian land.
Tim Rice’s lyric starts off well, but already begins to raise questions that are never answered in the lyric or in the book before the first verse is done. As Mereb describes his family’s abduction from Nubia, he says that Aida ‘witnessed (their) abduction’, presumably from the palace where his father worked ‘as advisor to the king’. Now, how was Aida spared being taken herself during this episode if she was close enough to witness it? And why does it seem that she did nothing about it? Surely Mereb’s family’s abduction was not an isolated event? No, it must have been part of a siege upon the palace. So what exactly happened here?
The marriage of the first stanza to the music works quite nicely, with the short phrases fitting neatly to the short phrases of the music. Musically, a pattern also seems to be emerging, whereby the Nubians sing in a musical language that is less driven by popular music forms, partly because of the orchestrations by Steve Margoshes, which aid this illusion. The marriage between music and lyrics in the second stanza doesn’t work quite as well: Rice starts making use of enjambments that are now split musically because of the pattern established in the first verse. This makes the lyric sound awkward and self-conscious, something that isn’t helped by the awkward and clichéd filler lyric about how Mereb’s reminiscence ‘surely ring a bell’ for Aida.
The rest of the song takes the form of a brief debate between the two about whether her identity should be revealed, even if only to the Nubians. Aida is dead set against this, but the argument feels unfinished and seems to hint at dramatic proposals that are never quite realised:
The awkwardly phrased idea in the Aida’s first quoted line aside, there are other ideas that aren’t quite fulfilled in this lyric. The idea that Aida can say “You don’t know me” as a response to Mereb’s statement that she still looks like a princess – the line is after all a response to Aida saying that her face could be taken as that of any Nubian slave – makes one wonder what exactly Aida has gone through since Mereb was taken, what has changed her feelings about herself. Exploring that in a set of two verses would give greater psychological complexity to Aida, making this interaction go beyond circumstance and narrative by contributing to character and theme. It’s a missed opportunity.
Nubian life as depicted by Leo and Diane Dillon in an illistration from Leontyne Price's children's book adaptation of AIDA.
After the song, some more dialogue follows that basically reinforces the idea proposed in the song. This doesn’t appear to be a particularly economical or focused scene. Finally, Mereb drops in an aside to Aida in regard to Amneris and Radames’ relationship:
The line about the date of the wedding almost makes up for the really weak introduction of the topic into the dialogue. This scene, and the song that accompanies it, really need a lot of refining to become a tight dramatic sequence. It’s that kind of sloppy complacency that prevents Aida from being as good a musical as it could have been.
NEXT UP: Amneris, Princess of Egypt… or is that Anna Wintour?
Purchases from Amazon.com
FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: 1. Aida Original Concept Album CD. 2. Aida Original Broadway Cast CD. 3. Disney on Broadway Book. 4. The Making of Aida Book. 5. Disney’s Aida Vocal Selections.