RAGTIME to Close?

Posted on December 2, 2009 by David Fick

Officially, it has been said that there are “no plans to close at this time”, but Michael Riedel says in The New York Post that the rumour is that Ragtime will close on January 3rd…

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New SONDHEIM ON SONDHEIM Poster Art

Posted on December 1, 2009 by David Fick

Roundabout has released the newest poster artwork for their upcoming production of Sondheim on Sondheim, a revue that aims to use a high tech approach to get under the skin of Sondheim’s music and lyrics, including exclusive interview footage to contextualise the songs.

Sondheim on Sondheim Poster

The production will star Barbara Cook, Vanessa Williams, Michael Arden and Leslie Kritzer, with proudction conception and direction by James Lapine.

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BABY IT’S YOU: a New Biographical Jukebox Musical

Posted on December 1, 2009 by David Fick

Playbill Baby It’s You is a new musical, which tells the story of how a housewife from New Jersey discovered The Shirelles in the 1960s and subsequently established a record label to showcase new in the pop music industry. The following description is taken from the press release provided by the Pasadena Playhouse, where the show has been running since 13th November:

Wrapped in the sensational songs of the ’60s, [i]Baby It’s You![/i] is the new musical about the groundbreaking girl group, The Shirelles, and Florence Greenberg, the New Jersey housewife who discovered them. With the help of African-American songwriter-producer Luther Dixon, who became her lover, Florence took on a male dominated industry and revolutionized pop music. Her company, Scepter Records, created the most important songs in the golden era of rock ‘n’ roll, from artists including The Isley Brothers, The Kingsmen, Chuck Jackson and Dionne Warwick.

So it’s a reverse gender Jersey Boys? But if we look at the photos – here are just two from a larger gallery at Playbill –

BABY ITS YOU 1
BABY ITS YOU 2

– perhaps it looks more like a low-key, low-budget [i]Dreamgirls[/i] with one extra dream.

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WICKED Breaks Box Office Record

Posted on November 30, 2009 by David Fick

Wicked became the first musical to gross more than $2 million for one week of performances, for the week that ended yesterday. I guess having a 1900-seat theatre with exorbitant ticket prices helps – something like an average of $144 a ticket in this particular week, the highest average for musical ticket prices in that week. I’d love to see what Stephen Schwartz’s royalty cheques for the show look like.

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THE ADDAMS FAMILY: Evolution of a Musical

Posted on November 30, 2009 by David Fick

BroadwayWorld has a photo flash of The Addams Family in rehearsal. Just one of the shots to wet your appetites:

THE ADDAMS FAMILY in rehearsal

Make sure you check out the other shots too. It’s certainly done a lot to make me a bit more excited about the show than I did before. It makes me feel like the show is coming to life, as does this article about the show’s development from Variety. The most interesting quotation for me is this one, about the score:

“What kind of musical would Uncle Fester put on if Uncle Fester put on a musical?” [book co-writer Marshall Brickman] asks. (An old-fashioned, vaudeville affair, it turns out.) “Gomez, having Spanish origins, lives in a flamenco-inspired world. Wednesday’s music has electric guitar and Morticia’s has a leitmotif with a gypsy fiddle.”

It’s interesting to hear the score described in terms of language in the extract above, because that is one of the main problems I’ve had with Lippa’s work in the past, that he doesn’t seem able to (or lacks the discipline to) define a musical language that works dramatically for the world he’s creating on stage. I hope he manages to tie this one all together. It has the potential to be great!

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WEST SIDE STORY at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Posted on November 29, 2009 by David Fick

This was definitely my favourite performance from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Yes, we’ve seen “America” countless times before and, sure, it would have been great to see a number like “Cool” instead. But putting that point to one side, the performance of this number was super and I may like Natalie Cortez even more than Karen Olivo. The dancing is super and, except for some weird angles from the way they’ve had to use the performance space, this extract was just about perfect – even if one moment of choreography was made a little more family friendly than usual. The “location” performances really do deal with many of the same challenges in the context of this parade, and this one faced them head on and came out tops for me.

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BILLY ELLIOT at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Posted on November 28, 2009 by David Fick

Of the performances I’ve watched so far, Billy Elliot is one that I’ve enjoyed more than many of the others. Strange, perhaps, as this song has never been one of my absolute favourites in the score and I only really appreciate it when I see the staging, which makes it work despite any inconsistencies that might be found in the number itself. In this clip, it’s sold by the cast in terms of energy, which is all you can really ask for from one of these Thanksgiving Day performances can get. Polished in spite of the difficulties inherent to performing the number in this kind of setting; all it’s lacking is the dynamic of seeing it live in the theatre – and since that’s an impossibility, this is absolutely fine.

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BYE BYE BIRDIE at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Posted on November 28, 2009 by David Fick

So this is the Bye Bye Birdie clip from Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. It’s quite fun watching Uncle Jesse go though the moves, although director-choreographer Robert Longbottom hasn’t done anyone any favours with his lame choreography – although the idea of all the girls being sad is nice. John Stamos is perhaps not ideal, but he is doing the best Dick van Dyke impersonation I think he can and, since it’s clear that Longbottom isn’t a(n actor’s) director, who can blame him?

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RAGTIME at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Posted on November 28, 2009 by David Fick

I found the Ragtime performance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade underwhelming. The setting is lovely, but the lip synchronization is very out at the beginning and I found the performer’s bodies lacking in energy, which is fine when the camera is on their faces but as soon as it pulled out to show their whole bodies… well, it was just dead. It kicks into a higher gear when the camera pans to the ensemble for a chorus or two of the opening number, but even this doesn’t look like a fully energised or committed performance, particularly from the folks in white and the African Americans.

I realise it’s difficult and early for the performers and all that, but… I just didn’t find it as thrilling as I think it should be.

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Rob Marshall and NINE: the Cynic’s Edition

Posted on November 28, 2009 by David Fick

Rob Marshall and Daniel Day Lewis on the set of NINE.

CAPTION: Daniel Day Lewis tries to explain to Rob Marshall how Nine works dramatically and how so much of what seems to be happening to turn it into another Marshall-fest seems to work against that.

Angel of Irony

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