To purchase SCOTTSBORO: AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, click on the image above.
The Vineyard Theatre has announced that The Scottsboro Boys, the John Kander-Fred Ebb-David Thompson musical that received an invitation-only reading in June, will have its debut as a fully-staged production at their Off-Broadway theatre in 2010.
Susan Stroman will direct the show, which deals with the infamous 1930s “Scottsboro” case, in which a group of young African American teenagers who were unjustly accused of raping two women on a freight train to Mississippi. Perhaps, on first glance, this seems to be unusual subject matter for Kander and Ebb, but given the range of topics approached by the pair in their considerable body of work, maybe it isn’t.
Roll on 10 March 2010; we’ll be looking forward to it!
Irish Repertory Theatre will be producing the overlooked, but charming musical, Ernest in Love, Off-Broadway. Ernest in Love has a book and lyrics by Anne Croswell and music by Lee Pockriss and will be directed by Charlotte Moore, with Barry McNabb taking up choreographic duties. The press release from Irish Rep describes the show as follows:
Ernest in Love, a sparkling and witty musical about social hypocrisy among the crème de la crème of Victorian England, is a faithful adaptation of [Oscar] Wilde’s superb comic masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest — featuring all of its much-beloved characters… The clever, tuneful score is the perfect complement to Wilde’s incomparable wordplay and sharp witticisms.
The Princess and the Frog represents Disney’s return to their filmmaking roots – the animated musical. We’ve already had a teaser trailer:
A trailer:
And a sneak peak:
And I think all look very promising indeed. It’s obviously not a traditional retelling (though it seems not to be quite as subversive of fairy tale conventions as Shrek or Enchanted, which is a good thing to my mind).
I remember when I first heard that The Princess and the Frog would replace The Frog Princess, the original working title of the film, I was a bit skeptical. I felt it was a bit bulky (clunky – ?) and perhaps less effective, as the film is a kind of riff on the end of the original fairy tale and now that reference is lost. I also feel its too obvious a ploy to tap into the “Beauty and the Beast” dichotomy that is inherent to the content of the film and is therefore, perhaps, a bit too spot on – a bit too academic, if you will – and I suppose that is what caused my uncertainty about it. But… it’s grown on me, especially after seeing the publicity material.
Of course, this will also mark the first African American princess from the Disney studios and the as yet unreleased film has been followed with controversy in this regard. Take, for example, this article in the New York Times: “Her Prince Has Come. Critics, Too” by Brookes Barnes.
The article says, “For years, Disney has been lambasted by some parents for not having a black princess. Now, some of those same voices are taking aim at the company without seeing the finished product.” Some of the criticism is just ridiculous; one of the most damning comments seems to be this one, from Angela Bronner Helm at Black Voices:
Disney obviously doesn’t think a black man is worthy of the title of prince. His hair and features are decidedly non-black. This has left many in the community shaking their head in befuddlement and even rage.
The New York Times goes on to report that “Prince Naveen hails from the fictional land of Maldonia and is voiced by a Brazilian actor; Disney says that he is not white.” They also say that there has been some backlash against the backlash. This quotation from Levi Roberts:
This is one of those situations where I am ashamed of the black community. Are we being racist ourselves by saying this movie shouldn’t have a white prince?
That just brings us full circle, doesn’t it?
Poor Disney seems to be in a “damned if they do, damned if they don’t” position with this film. I understand that people would like something like this to be racially sensitive, but some of the points raised just lack any kind of perspective. Thank goodness there seem to be some rational people in the middle ground too.
Lastly – the score, by Randy Newman. Newman had an interview in Variety yesterday in which he discussed the film:
New Orleans in the early part of the 20th century – the setting of Disney’s animated The Princess and the Frog – is territory that composer Randy Newman has trod before. “I’ve been dredging those 30 months I spent in New Orleans for all I could in my life,” he quips, referring to the summers of his youth.
I’m very interested to hear what the full score is like, especially as it seems to offer an alternative to the kind of songs Newman has created for the Pixar films.
I think what Randy Newman has done for the Pixar films – created a score and one song that epitomizes the thematic core of the film – really works for those films, which are all fish-out-of-water cum coming-of-age films told in a fairly loose, comedic style. Of course, there are slight variations to the ‘Newman formula’ – Toy Story, for example, has three songs but still focuses on one big thematic number, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”. Toy Story 2 of course featured “When She Loved Me”, which is a very moving song, not least because of the vocal performance by Sarah McLachlan. But it’s still a voice-over reflection on an event long after the it has passed.
While I think that Newman’s Pixar scores (for Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc and Cars) have largely served those films and the mode in which those films tell their respective stories, I feel that they are more obviously functional as scores – serving the action on screen literally without delving too deeply into the metaphorical, emotional core of what’s going on, in the way that Alan Menken did particularly well in his scores for The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. I don’t really have any problems with this, as I think the kind of scoring created for these projects is appropriate to the films, although, as some have mentioned around these boards before, there tends to be certain sameness that has characterizes the songs, which was also evident in Disney’s part-live action part-stop motion version of James and the Giant Peach, which also featured songs by Newman. The only songs that really came anywhere close to working in that film were “My Name is James” and “Family” but even these weren’t consistent in the quality of their lyrics. The rest of the score was disposable. My reaction mainly was – nice tunes. But I think an animated musical needs something more than that, score that is a truly intrinsic element of the film as a whole.
But I’m glad that Newman has had to shift his mode into a different style of scoring for The Princess and the Frog and that John Lasseter (as the “big boss”) or the directors, Ron Clements and John Musker chose not to reflect something of that Pixar tone and style in this film.
Fela! has added a few new producers to the mix: Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Jay-Z. Super news for the musical that opens next week, and which promises to take audiences on a fascinating trip through the life story of African composer-activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Here is a summary of the reviews for the Ragtime revival on Broadway….
Raves
David Rooney at Variety: The 1997 musical not only feels trenchant and timely, but its multistrand story is delivered with fresh clarity and emotional immediacy in director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s elegant revival…. This is big-brain, bold-strokes musical-theater storytelling at its most vibrant…. Some may quibble that Flaherty’s score overplays its hand with its succession of emphatic anthems, but shuffled among those numbers are more delicate songs of introspection and yearning that bring the show gently back to earth from its many soaring peaks. Under Dodge’s assured direction, the impeccable cast plays that balance like perfectly tuned instruments.
David Sheward at Backstage: In a season full of star vehicles, the revival of Ragtime rides onto Broadway with nary a box-office name and steamrollers its way to the top of the heap…. Though that first production remains fresh in my mind, this edition finds new spark and vibrancy. The script by Terrence McNally and the lush and moving score by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens eschew the cool, detached tone of E.L. Doctorow’s original novel for a somewhat sentimental flavor. Dodge has fully and honestly embraced that sentiment. As a result, this Ragtime makes a deep emotional connection with the audience.
Melissa Rose Bernardo at Entertainment Weekly: A leaner, less lavish, yet somehow even richer incarnation of the turn-of-the-20th-century-era musical has been neatly fitted into Broadway’s Neil Simon Theatre…. And therein lies the biggest difference between the old and new Ragtime: edge. The opulent original production radiated an almost blinding streak of sun-soaked late-’90s optimism. This darker revival is by no means a bummer; it’s simply more grounded in reality. With its wonderful blend of nostalgia, anger, patriotism, and hard-won idealism, perhaps Ragtime is simply a better suited to 2009.
Frank Scheck at The Hollywood Reporter: The revival… serves as a valuable reminder that this show, based on the classic E.L. Doctorow novel and featuring a gorgeous score by Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), is one of the best musicals of recent decades. It has been reborn in a magnificently stirring production that deserves to run for years…. Director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s presentational-style staging, performed on a multilevel scaffold set, is far less lavish than the original version. But it works beautifully, balancing the epic with the intimate…. It’s almost unfair to compare the current, largely unknown company to their predecessors because the original Broadway production featured a dream cast, but the ensemble does justice to the material.
Peter Filichia at TheatreMania: Right away, we see that Dodge has added little touches that prove she’s intently thought about every Terrence McNally line and Lynn Ahrens lyric…. Dodge wisely directs much of the action right at the lip of the stage so we can better see and hear everything. At least when the 1998 Tonys were dispensed, Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty were justifiably rewarded. Interesting that Generation X’er Flaherty… composed traditional sounding theater music. When dealing with a period piece, he felt no need to write anachronistic rock for it. Other theater writers believe that we’re now in an era where a segment of the population wants to hear rock, so rock must dictate the sound of their show. Not Flaherty. He had to write for three different classes of people with three distinct sounds in a long-ago era, and he got it all right – beautifully right, stirringly right, from each waltz to (of course) ragtime song. Ahrens’ work is just as impressive.
Richard Ouzounian at The Toronto Star: The musical theatre had a great deal of its lustre restored on Sunday night when the triumphant revival of Ragtime opened on Broadway. For sheer melodic invention, lyrical intelligence and dramatic force, it’s unlikely that any show written in the 11 years since it first debuted in New York can match it…. Director/choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge has managed to stage the work in a way that gives it every bit of the splendour it originally possessed, but with a new fluidity and spaciousness that lets it acquire even more power. Derek McLane’s 10-metre-high set is lofty without being overbearing, Donald Holder’s lighting can fill the stage with happiness or horror on cue, and the magnificent original costumes of Santo Loquasto return in all their multicoloured splendour. There’s a superb cast as well, but the major ingredient that this production has on its side this time is timing – a factor that crippled it the first time around.
Robert Feldman at Bergen Record: Watching the vivid, stirring, lovingly staged revival of Ragtime, I had the thought, “This time they got it right.” … The revival… uncovers the compelling musical that had been hidden beneath the original’s massive sets and stilted presentation. Thanks to director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge, working with inspired designers and a superb cast, Ragtime can take its place as a major American musical… With Dodge adding humor — it’s amazing how light moments can humanize characters — Terrence McNally’s clear and cogent adaptation of Doctorow becomes a compelling story…. Ragtime lives in its songs, and, given a vibrant setting, the bounteous score by composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens soars, filling the evening with seductive ragtime themes, soaring ballads… and catchy novelty numbers…
Michael Sommers at Newsroom New Jersey: Among the few truly great musicals created in living memory, Ragtime does more than just tell a story through songs. Brilliantly weaving history and fiction into a musical tapestry of epic scale, it conjures up a panoramic view of early 1900s America as immigrants, black people and the white elite seethe in a cultural melting pot…. Marshalling a 40-member company, director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge swiftly and fluently stages the musical’s interlocking stories upon a looming skeletal setting by Derek McLane that suggests both old Pennsylvania Station and Ellis Island while providing numerous levels for the action happening in New Rochelle, Harlem, Atlantic City and Manhattan…. Anyone who’s never before seen Ragtime is likely to be blown away by the experience, while everybody else will thrill once more to the work’s dramatic sweep and musical majesty.
Roma Torre at NY1:Ragtime is a sweeping, powerful musical about a restless period in our history. But it is also an intimate story about love, loss and growing up. It is this aspect, not the broad epic quality, that director Marcia Milgrom Dodge went after and, with this nearly flawless production, she has struck a most resonant chord…. Terrence McNally’s astute book expertly blends the various tales into Stephen Flaherty’s gorgeously melodic score with Lynn Ahren’s intuitive lyrics. An impressive work before, now it’s even better. Director Dodge whittled away the excesses of the original production and gives us a more sharply focused experience…. The performances mostly match and even exceed those from the original production with glorious vocals enhanced by a wonderfully filled out orchestra…. To say that this company got it right is an understatement. This Ragtime is one for the ages.
Matt Windham at On Off Broadway: This revival emphasizes character detail and clarity over spectacle. Its three-story unit set of iron scaffolding and gothic arches allows the story to move fluidly alongside an evocative lighting design. The cast is uniformly fantastic, marked by great performers offering sensitive acting and gorgeous singing. Ragtime is a show about optimism in the face of prejudice and poverty and the bright possibilities of the future. As its ballads are sung with fiery emotional force, it’s impossible not to find modern relevance in this stirring production.
And Whoopi Goldberg raved about the show on The View:
Positive
Joe Dziemianowicz at Daily News: It’s hard to argue with a revival as surefooted as Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s strikingly staged and vividly performed redo…. Dodge, who also did the spirited period choreography, has a keen eye for creating stage pictures with her large cast — all 40 of them. From a lone woman kneeling before a looming sky to a group of twirling silhouettes, her visuals exhilarate. Same goes for Flaherty and Ahrens’ stirring score. It has moments of true magic. But it has issues, too. There are so many anthems that it becomes a power-ballad pileup and a case of diminishing returns. A song like “What a Game!” — a bouncy baseball ditty featuring Bohmer and the crowd-pleasing Christopher Cox as his son — is a welcome change of pace. A song without … that … last … big … note.
Michael Kychwara at Associated Press: Surely there are not many opening numbers better than the intoxicating first moments of Ragtime…. The show’s themes and characters are introduced lickety-split in a thrilling combination of song, story and movement that goes a long way toward explaining what musical theater is all about. Ragtime… will never be a small show. Yet director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge… has managed to scale back some, if not all, of its reverential pageantry. She allows the audience to concentrate on individuals in the three distinct groups that march through Doctorow’s massive tale…. What made the original so enticing was not so much the lavishness of its setting but the impeccable casting that anchored the show…. In this revival, the actors are not quite as accomplished in creating credible portraits even though Dodge has given them more breathing space in which to come alive.
David Finkle at TheatreMania: Lynn Ahrens, Stephen Flaherty, and Terrence McNally’s Ragtime, the great American musical of the late 20th Century, and Marcia Milgrim Dodge’s revival… is every bit as rousing, as moving, and as trenchant on the subject of the American melting pot coming to a turbulent boil as any prior production of the show I’ve seen. There’s no point hammering away at the high quality of the ragtime-infused and heartfelt score (which has undergone only minor revisions since the show’s original Broadway production) or harping on the fact that it has one too many plant-your-feet-on-the-stage-and-declaim anthems. Likewise, there’s no point to singing the cast’s praises at length, although they uniformly perform with fervor reflecting a nation struggling sometimes thrillingly, sometimes shabbily to attain equilibrium.
Peter Marks at The Washington Post: In most important ways, director Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s economical staging retains the infectiously melodious appeal of the version that worked to such stimulating effect in the Eisenhower. Several of the carryover performers, in fact, have deepened their interpretations…. What’s achieved here is confirmation that even if Ragtime is not a seminal American musical, it can be, via Terrence McNally’s libretto and Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens’s score, a very rewarding one, an impressive distilling of a panoramic novel and a moving account of the momentous currents of a turbulent age.
Michael Feingold at The Village Voice: The mixture of elements in such works, while never quite coalescing, gives them an exceptional density…. Even when the story runs thin… as happens late in Ragtime, you never feel like you’ve been shortchanged: Something else is always being evoked, supplying the aesthetic equivalent of moral support…. Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s new production successfully arouses… the sense it gives of being in that musical heaven where the artists do everything right….Dodge’s production… enhances the work’s tautness by linking its criss-crossed stories more sharply, and pushing for heightened tensions in Terrence McNally’s book…. Like the straight lines of Dodge’s lucid but slightly rigid staging, the production’s moral lines of good and bad are sometimes too simplistically drawn.
Mixed
Wendy Castor at Show Showdown: In Ragtime, Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), Stephen Flaherty (music), and Terrence McNally (book) give us a sprawling, robust, beautiful, and flawed look at the early 20th century as imagined by E.L. Doctorow in his novel of the same name. The politics are odd… and the scope of the story sometimes comes at the cost of depth and full characterizations. But the score is glorious, the lyrics are often wonderful, and the book manages to corral the three main story lines into a compelling and coherent whole…. This revival, having only a very very good cast, suffers in comparison (with the original). The somewhat uneven production has many more strengths than weaknesses, and the 30-person orchestra sounds wonderful.
John Simon at Bloomberg News: It is good to have Ragtime back on Broadway. The 1998 show, with book by Terrence McNally, music by Stephen Flaherty and lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, is a significant musical that narrowly misses being a great one. Even so, compared to what nowadays passes for a great musical (Wicked, for example), Ragtime is nothing short of a masterpiece…. The revival has a spectacular three-tiered unit set that suggests the main pavilion of some World’s Fair on which the brilliant designer Derek McLane works minor changes for different locations that – except for ships at sea and a baseball game – work very nicely…. Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s staging is generally effective, though her choreography is somewhat less inventive than Graciela Daniele’s back in 1998. The current cast was apparently chosen for vocal prowess, with acting and looks secondary.
Elysa Gardner at USA Today: Those who plan to see (Ragtime) are advised to put away their thinking caps and bring their hankies. As a work of social commentary, Ragtime… is hokey and pedantic…. Ragtime‘s unabashed sentimentality is more compelling, though, thanks to the relative wit and grace of its creators…. The score, composed by Stephen Flaherty with lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, is hardly A-list, but the songs are well-crafted and on occasion are genuinely soulful. And Terrence McNally’s book tugs at your heart and conscience with such artful aggression that only an ogre could resist the urge to weep at some points and smile at others. In this new Kennedy Center-based production, which opened Sunday, those assets are exploited by a supple cast under Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s vibrant direction.
Adam Feldman at Time Out New York: Marcia Milgrom Dodge offers us a tighter, leaner version of the show that whittles it down to the sinews. The impulse is right, but the results are mixed. For in stripping away the trimmings—except Santo Loquasto’s beautiful costumes—this revival exposes the boom-time naïveté and sentimentality that always lurked in the musical’s soul. In adapting E.L. Doctorow’s panoramic turn-of-the-20th-century novel to the stage, book writer Terrence McNally and lyricist Lynn Ahrens smooth out many of the spiky qualities that make it so compelling in the first place, often replacing clear-eyed observation with misty message-making. Many people loved Ragtime in its first go-around, and surely it will find passionate adherents this time as well. There is much to enjoy about it: Stephen Flaherty’s music, played by a rich-sounding orchestra, is often transporting… Dodge’s crisp staging on Derek McLane’s elegantly skeletal set gives her actors… a chance to stamp their roles with personality.
Ben Brantley at The New York Times: Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s appealingly modest new interpretation… often finds within this work’s panoramic sweep an affecting, uneasy human soul largely missing in the 1998 version…. Ragtime benefits from this less-is-more approach, but only to a degree. The show is hardly one of Sondheimesque complexity…. So to present a bare-bones Ragtime courts the danger of revealing how bare them bones are…. Mr. Flaherty’s score, which weaves variations on the rag form throughout, gives the show a natural momentum and unity, though it occasionally veers into annoying repetitiveness. I’m still not bowled over by the full-throated, teary songs about hope and loss and the future that awaits us…. On the other hand, I have new respect for Mr. Flaherty’s use of ragtime as the aural embodiment of something fresh and unsettling in a stale and settled world….
Jonathan Mandell at The Faster Times: The most visible change on the stage is the set…. It is easy to consider this an improvement, thanks to director Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s choreography (more posing than dancing, but done well); to the eye-catching costumes of Santo Loquasto… and to Donald Holder’s lighting…. My take on the original (to the extent that I remember it) was that, for all its wonderful and impressive moments, it was too big and too long and too self-important, not playful enough or soulful enough, almost intimidating. Whether you see the new Ragtime as a corrective or a continuation — as exhilarating or exhausting, stirring or stupefying… or your reaction, like mine, contains a bit of both extremes — will depend, I suspect, largely on your taste for the score…. As I sat in the theater, though, the cumulative effect of all this good and grand singing felt to me not just powerful but overpowering — and not completely in a good way.
Negative
Stephanie Zacharek at New York Magazine: Director and choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge and her 40-strong ensemble cast do their damnedest to keep things moving forward with the zeal and energy of a well-tuned engine. So why does the whole shebang come off like the product of a too-efficient assembly line? Neither Terrence McNally’s mishmash of a book nor the sometimes-syrupy songs (by Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens) do the show any favors. And then there are the inherent problems of Doctorow’s novel, a puffed-out chest of a book that uses its characters as flattened symbols of racism, intolerance, hypocrisy, and disillusionment. It groans under its own lesson plan, and the musical follows suit…. The story itself just has too many cogs, wheels, and levers for mere mortals to operate properly. None of the characters is onstage long enough for us to truly connect with their stories. The best the actors can do is to keep shoveling coal into the show’s hungry maw of an engine.
Linda Winer at Newsday: It gets off to a spectacular start…. But Ragtime dwindles, as it has always dwindled…. Precision craftsmanship in the first act turns bland and earnest, just when the stakes are highest. As the material gets tough, Terrence McNally’s cleaned-up, de-sexed adaptation of Doctorow’s heavily erotic, subtly political fiction goes into sincerity-overload, while composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens turn from canny period-pastiche to poperatic ballads and bloated anthems. It is then that the fine intentions of this astute production can no longer mask the limitations of the cast, which is more capable than individually remarkable…. Finally, Ragtime remains an ambitious, handsome, derivative piece that’s ultimately too pat to be the great American musical it so doggedly intends to be.
Elisabeth Vincentelli at The New York Post: It’s big ideas, all right, with big songs, big stories and big personalities…. But while the stage overflows with outsize feelings and themes, they make relatively little impression. Can too much be too much? … Derek McLane’s towering three-tiered set evokes a steel beaux-arts cathedral, as if to say, “We’re dealing with important stuff here.” Along with two essential props (a Model T and a piano reduced to their skeletal frames), it also signals that the show intends to look at America’s very bone structure. Don’t expect an X-ray — “Ragtime” is more about XXL bathos. Where Doctorow was dry and cerebral, bookwriter Terrence McNally seems to have never seen a heartstring he didn’t want to pluck. This is compounded by Marcia Milgrom Dodge’s staging…. The score only adds another disconnect, juxtaposing frequently soaring music by Stephen Flaherty with leaden lyrics by Lynn Ahrens.
Hilton Als at The New Yorker: Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, who wrote the book, score, and lyrics, respectively, also drag the production down with a number of clichés and caricatures that soften and undermine Doctorow’s unsentimental, loving but tough view of the world. Once Ragtime passes into Flaherty and Ahrens’s hands, it becomes less a musical than a series of saccharine arias and duets that are made to carry most of the weight of exposition as well. It’s to the discredit of the creators of Ragtime that they use the surefire manipulation of nostalgia to sweeten the bitter truths that are laced throughout Doctorow’s grander vision. His story is far bloodier than what director Marcia Milgrom Dodge and her collaborators are willing to show, which says as much about the limitations of the American musical as anything.
Matthew Murray at Talkin’ Broadway: Is there a more maddening conundrum in the contemporary musical theatre than Ragtime? Its original 1998 Broadway production was too big to be financially viable, yet reducing all or any part of it causes it to crumple like aluminum foil… And it constantly says so much so loudly that it usually ends up saying nothing at all. It’s everything an artistic success should be, while openly deserving the flop status with which it’s so often associated…. (Changes to the score) identify Milgrom Dodge’s attempts to wrangle the show down to manageable size. But all they do is sap the power and passion from a story that need them operating at full strength from beginning to end. Worse, she’s demanded the same of the performers, many of whom make no impression at all.
Overall, Critic-o-meter rates the show at a B+. That seems about right to me. It saddens me to see the original production so unfavourably compared to this one in some of these reviews, as if this new production suddenly makes sense of a show that wasn’t served by its debut staging. If one casts aside the drama that surrounded the original staging, which prevented a completely assessment of the production itself back in the late 1990s, and looks at what was onstage, it was wonderful – with a far richer choreographic palate; design that, while elaborate, enhanced the show’s efficacy; and performances that are matched in this production, sometimes, but not topped. Still, its great to see a solid revival like this one in a season that has been slow for musical theatre on Broadway, particularly in regard to original works.
Although my obsession with John Barrowman has waned somewhat in the years gone by, it is nice to see that a DVD of his latest concert is being released. The promo makes it look pretty cheesy, but I still enjoy his vocals:
Anyway, in celebration of this new DVD, here’s a little John Barrowman poll. Copy and paste the questions into the comment box below and answer them for yourselves!
1. What’s your favourite John Barrowman performance, in any medium? I’d have to say Putting It Together. I really like his performance of “Marry Me a Little” and I love the moment when he slides down that rope in “Live Alone and Like It”.
2. What’s your least favourite John Barrowman performance, in any medium? I’ve always found his “performance” after Carol Burnett’s skirt falls off in the extra feature on the Putting It Together DVD a trifile bizarre and mildy disturbing.
3. Favourite John Barrowman story / gossip / news? There was an interview a long time ago when he discussed his views on gay marriage, stating, “Why would I want marriage from a belief system that hates me?” It resonates even more today, living in a world where a country (Uganda) has just upped the punishment for homosexuality from a jail sentence to the death penalty.
4. John Barrowman on film: First De-Lovely – what did you think? And then The Producers – do you look back fondly on his Nazi solo? I really enjoyed his performance in De-Lovely; it was one of the few vocal performances in the film that I enjoyed. And he was probably my favourite part of The Producers. Most of that film was just plain awful.
5. If you were the developer of John Barrowman-land, what would be the show-related ride you’d create and what would it entail? It would be “The Lady’s Paying Dress Up Cabinet” where you get to kit John out in whatever you wish to see him wearing….
The Northwestern University performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass starts tonight at the Cahn Auditorium and will run until November 15th. In consultation with Jamie Bernstein, new lyrics for Mass have been created by Stephen Schwartz.
Featuring an eclectic mix of genres that includes rock, jazz, Broadway, blues, opera and hymns, Mass examines the crisis of faith of a celebrant, sung here by Andrew Howard (with Seth Dhonau performing the role at the Saturday matinée).
An audio interview about the production is available at the Northwestern University website, while Mass on Facebook features a behind-the-scenes video. Mass has been directed by Dominic Missimi with choreography by Jeffrey Hancock.
When last we heard about Disney’s Rapunzel, Kristen Chenoweth was going to be the voice of Rapunzel with Dan Fogler as the Prince; Glen Keane was at the helm; and some initial character designs had been released. Things have changed. The latest confirmed news for the 3D film is as follows: Mandy Moore will play Rapunzel, Zachary Levi will play the “prince” (a bandit named Flynn Rider) and Donna Murphy will voice Mother Gothel, the witch. The score has been written by Alan Menken (with Glenn Slater). Byron Howard and Nathan Greno will direct.
Rotten Tomatoes has an interview with Mandy Moore about her work on the film and she has the following (and more, if you follow the link) to say:
She’s definitely the quintessential sassy, young Disney heroine. She’s a bit of a spitfire too, and a very curious young woman. She’s really curious about the world she’s never really seen and she’s coming into her own…. I’ve done a little bit of work already, but the bulk of it I’ll start when I get back home. It’s a lot of fun. And there’s music involved; really great music.
More buzz on the film is that we can look forward to a complex villain with complex motives in Mother Gothel. Rapunzel, a princess rather than the daughter of peasants, will be more active and will not be trapped in her tower throughout the film. And for the Alan Menken fans: the big love ballad in the film will be sung respectively by Mother Gothel and the lovers in different styles. Things are looking pretty good so far…
Here’s some preliminary artwork for the film, the visual style of which was apparently inspired by the style of the painting “The Swing:
Playbill is reporting that American Idiot is Broadway bound, but that no timeline for a production has been established yet. Interesting pictures with the article too…. Hands up who wants to see John Gallagher Jr and Tony Vincent making out after seeing this one:
BroadwayWorld recently published an interview with Michael Kunze about his musical adaptation of Rebecca, which is aiming for an English language transfer to the a major commercial centre like the West End or Broadway. Kunze takes great pains to try and distinguish his work from traditional Broadway fare, so let’s take what he says, put it under a microscope and see if it holds up. The boxed sections below are all quotations from the interview.
The dramamusical is a tool to make clear that this is not a typical Broadway-type musical, which is more a musical-comedy. In what I do, we do drama with music. The way I write the shows is that I basically write the drama, of course with the music in mind, but the music is something that comes next, like a movie. The music is a very important element, but the most important element of the drama is the story, so the music really serves the story, and the music doesn’t really have a right in its own beside the story, like a number that is just made for the music and the dance.
Huh? It seems that Mr Kunze hasn’t seen any musical since 1926. He doesn’t seem to be aware of – for example – Show Boat, South Pacific, Sweeney Todd, Marie Christine, The Light in the Piazza. He doesn’t seem to be aware that musical theatre in the American tradition extends beyond the tradition of musical comedy that was dominant until the 1940s, but which made way for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play, in which music is most certainly in the service of the drama and for the various forms of the concept musical, in which the music is often related most clearly to the ideas that are being communicated in the show from the very moment of its inception. Even if we look at the musical comedies that have appeared after the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, many are far more integrated than their counterparts in the 1920s and 1930s. So I’m left to wonder whether this is a case of ignorance or self-importance.
It really isn’t something that I’ve invented. Jesus Christ Superstar [and] the other Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff, if you exclude Cats, follows the same kind of basic idea. Well, Andrew would never say that the music only serves the story, but that’s what it really is. He uses the music to tell the story, and that’s what all dramamusicals do.
All right, so he seems to know something about British musical theatre and deems it of a high enough standard to rank alongside his “dramamusicals”. But is it true of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals that the music serves the story? Without engaging in an elaborate discussion on the matter, I’d be willing to bet that there is at least one example in each of the Lloyd Webber musicals where the music does not serve the drama fully. Off the top of my head – and to keep in line with the example Kunze himself cites – there’s “King Herod’s Song” in Jesus Christ Superstar, although the newer, rock-flavoured arrangement does help its cause somewhat. So it seems that perhaps the music does not need a particularly profound dramatic agency for it to serve the drama in these “dramamusicals”, which of course contradicts Kunze’s original thesis, that ‘the music doesn’t really have a right in its own beside the story’. What other purpose does a song like “You Can Get Away With Anything” in The Woman in White, for example, have if it doesn’t really serve the character and the humour comes not from the lyrics but from a pair of rats that clamber in and out of the actor’s costume? Or is Kunze saying that the music in a case like this still serves a dramatic purpose, even though the song as a whole is a failure because of the lyrics?
I think all the shows that concentrate on a dramatic story are dramamusicals. Billy Elliot is a dramamusical. Wicked is a dramamusical. I just want to distinguish where theatre is more theatrical than in a classical Broadway musical which is based on the vaudeville tradition, on dance, on spectacular things happening, and this is not what I look for…. I think (Wicked is) a milestone in the development of the musical, because in the history of the musical, this show will be regarded as the first one that really combines the European tradition with the Broadway tradition.
Now I’m just beginning to chuckle. Wicked being taken as a prime example where the music exists in service of the drama? The book of Wicked was forced to fit in with Stephen Schwartz’s ideas regarding the way the story should be told. The book in its best moments is competent, but completely falls to pieces in the second act, completely ignoring the very concept that Maguire had in the first place: to fill in the gaps of the story behind The Wonderful Wizard of Oz without contradicting the basic mythology in that particular book in the series and its iconic movie musical adaptation and thereby offer a different perspective on the story. Winnie Holzman, spurred on by Schwartz, creates a story that prides itself in tying itself all up very neatly, but it does so with little sense of logic and the songs that punctuate the book become less and less credible as dramatic building blocks as we speed towards the final curtain. This doesn’t even begin to engage with ideas around the way the music is orchestrated, which separates it out even further from the given circumstances of the show. It doesn’t even work to access the show from the perspective of post-modern deconstruction, which is surely the very point of creating a musical of this nature, because the choices are so inconsistent – and in contradiction to Kunze’s view on the show, constructed around “spectacular things happening” rather than on any firm set of dramaturgical principles. Perhaps Wicked is a milestone, but it’s not one that develops musical theatre as an art form. In what is commercial, yes; in what is popular, sure. In what artistically successful and dramatically compelling; most certainly not. And I’m still not clear on what specifically European musical theatre traditions are incorporated into this hybrid form, but based on what Kunze has said about the “dramamusical”, I’m convinced they do more harm than good.
I believe in drama as the key entertainment in theatre, and I think I’m not the only one who does. I didn’t even invent the name dramamusical, that was invented by a journalist. I just think it’s more European because I think the tradition of opera with the highly dramatic stories lent more to that kind of art-form, and I think that also our audiences in Europe, and I really include here in England, are more interested in going to theatre and have a real theatrical experience, a real emotional experience at last, not just an entertaining evening, but something they can discuss after the show.
Well, at least Kunze displays some humility by admitting that he did not come up with the idea of a dramatically integrated musical. I wonder who the journalist who coined the term is; I’d love to have a look at what he has to say about this potent new musical theatre form he has identified….
The comparison with opera that follows is not one that works for Kunze’s argument either. Opera by its nature is led by the music; it is music theatre rather than musical theatre and, as long as it is technically well-performed, opera often manages to be excused in its shortcomings as drama. This is, of course, a generalisation as there are operas, particularly those that are more contemporary that do integrate dramatic aspects more successfully into the theatrical whole and certainly even many traditional operas have a strong narrative and thematic thrust – but they are still led first and foremost by the music, hence the prominence of the composer and the conductor in any discussion of any opera.
Then we get to what effect Kunze believes a musical should have on its audience. In his eyes, musicals like Wicked, The Phantom of the Opera and his own shows offer a rare, real emotional experience that delivers a sense of enlightenment hitherto unseen in the musical theatre canon and one to which the American musical theatre tradition holds no claim. Clearly, he’s never heard of Carousel, Cabaret or Pacific Overtures. Obviously, there is no such experience to be had in Camelot, Follies, Fiddler on the Roof.
I’ve never really engaged with Kunze’s musicals, but his work must be truly phenomenal if it is what he implies they are: impeccable examples of musicals in which all other elements are in service to the drama. I must get my hands on Elisabeth, Tanz der Vampire or this impending masterpiece of the musical stage, Rebecca, and see for myself – but they had better live up to the high expectations that Kunze has created for them….
The Northwestern University performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass starts tonight at the Cahn Auditorium and will run until November 15th. In consultation with Jamie Bernstein, new lyrics for Mass have been created by Stephen Schwartz.
Musical Cyberspace 