Saturday Night Live

if you think the modern american musical makes you wanna end it all, wait til you hear twenty one pilots

Here's where I point out LMM used to rap in a cape on The (New) Electric Company

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hTWuN0WCu4

terrible music I have no problem ignoring. but enthusiasm for Broadway garbage pops up in the strangest places, and I'm always a little taken aback when I come across people who profess to love it, like their aesthetic sensibilities were formed on some other planet where quality songwriting, acting, storytelling, staging, etc. were all subsumed under the spectacle of a bunch of people doing silly shit in fancy costumes on an expensive stage. I think I just have basic issues with what constitutes a "good" Broadway musical that do not line up at all with what they are these days. (For what its worth there *are* musicals I like, but I admit it's a narrow subset - a lot of times the basic artifice of the Broadway musical often prevents me from having any kind of emotional or intellectual engagement with the material, there's just some built-in ridiculousness to it that is hard for me to get past)

xp

I stumbled across that New Electric Company clip while searching for things to entertain my kids and it cemented a pigheaded desire to never, ever, ever see Hamilton deep in the foundation of my being

For the record, I've been holding off my take on Hamilton until I actually see it. But I really do wonder what LMM means to people who don't live in New York

special snowflake story: i saw the lion king in the west end (tickets via a relative who was pumbaa's understudy) and i don't remember a single second of it; it's all gone, blocked, except for using the crowded bathroom at intermission and being very cold walking home. years later in new york i was passed by a bus wearing a banner ad for the broadway production, emblazoned w the single enormous word UNFORGETTABLE

there were fart jokes

The costumes, in the posters that are all over Penn Station and half of Manhattan, make The Lion King look almost watchable. They're very cool. But then I remember it's a musical, not just a dance thing, and my interest fades.

I was baffled to realize that it is basically the plot (and in many cases the exact dialogue) from the movie transferred to the stage, with extra nudge-nudge/wink-wink jokes (like the fart jokes) added. And this is a thing adults were enthusiastically praising to me.

a lot of the costumes did look cool. but was consistently distracted from them by every other awful thing that was happening.

The Fela musical was great, but it was essentially a (insanely skilled, and very faithful-to-the-arrangements) Fela tribute act with bits of his bio between songs. The only part that didn't work was, not coincidentally, the only song written specifically for the show.

daveed from hamilton is in clppng that guy is legit!

I liked the Lion King on Broadway, iirc

Pippin was amazing. It's Pippin!

terrible music I have no problem ignoring. but enthusiasm for Broadway garbage pops up in the strangest places, and I'm always a little taken aback when I come across people who profess to love it, like their aesthetic sensibilities were formed on some other planet where quality songwriting, acting, storytelling, staging, etc. were all subsumed under the spectacle of a bunch of people doing silly shit in fancy costumes on an expensive stage. I think I just have basic issues with what constitutes a "good" Broadway musical that do not line up at all with what they are these days. (For what its worth there *are* musicals I like, but I admit it's a narrow subset - a lot of times the basic artifice of the Broadway musical often prevents me from having any kind of emotional or intellectual engagement with the material, there's just some built-in ridiculousness to it that is hard for me to get past)

xp

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, September 28, 2016 3:10 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Re-posting mostly because this pretty much encapsulates my own feelings about 99% of musical theater

My friend made some of the costumes for Pippin on Broadway!

I generally like the idea of musicals way more than the reality.

Also: SNL.

But also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5BQiJVqSHg

why

why would anyone want to see a movie translated to the stage with shittier performances, shittier music, shittier everything + more fart jokes

My friend just got done playing Fiona in local pro production of Shrek. She had to do that scene 70+ times over six weeks.

That is literally the Terrance and Philip movie

Worse it's the Broadway musical of the terrance and Phillip movie

it took stalinesque political skill to avoid being assigned any job on the musical of 9 to 5 my theater's doing this fall, but as documented in the mary poppins thread i did get happily caught up in that one last year. no idea what the 9 to 5 musical's like but suspect it won't produce quite as many delighted, weeping children.

I love the mentality of musicals, at leat the way Lin-Manuel presents it. Going out there eight times a week and working your butt off to entertain, because that's what you do. Going out before the show and doing something for the people waiting. Quite simply doing everything you can to please. That's an honorable mentality, and in theory it should lead to something pretty great. And for me, it has done so with Hamilton. But that's, like, the first time in fifty years it hasn't led to complete awfulness, I guess... That Shrek clip is one of the worst thing's I've ever seen.

That's not true, actually I've seen both Mary Poppins and Spamalot on Westend and liked it a lot.

well as
the ladder
o'life'as been strung
y'might think
that a sweep's
on the bottom-
-most rung
tho i spend
me time in
th'ashes and smoke
in the 'ole of the world there's no 'appier bloke

― playlists of pensive swift (difficult listening hour), Friday, September 25, 2015 8:33 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ bolded to emphasize where the chills come, every time

shrek clip really is next level.

(i still haven't listened to hamilton, prob will eventually, but i did reread vidal's burr this week in pointless private protest)

just watched the shrek thing again, in perverse fascination. keep thinking about the person doing the sound cues. to be standing there sweating in fear you'll produce the wrong fart.

a lot of the modern musicals (esp disney) are understandably trite + treacly but i don't understand ppl itt who have no time for any musicals ever. like rodgers & hammerstein, sondheim, or kander have some classics that i'd stack against any other musical form. i feel like the issue is that broadway has become somewhat synonymous w/ these big andrew lloyd webber type productions which i completely understand if ppl don't like them (tho even like jesus christ superstar + joseph are imo pretty classic) - but it doesn't really make sense to me to write off everything!

I had a post I didn't finish yesterday where I was going to specifically pinpoint my hatred of modern Broadway musicals to the ascension of Andrew Lloyd Weber actually. I like a bunch of the Rodgers and Hammerstein ones, which still retain an air of sophistication and feel like they are written for adults about adult things (even though they are still enjoyable for children), and I love Fosse. And Fiddler on the Roof and a bunch of others... but yeah the modern spectacle + fart jokes stuff is just waaaaaaaht why

Fosse gets meta and subversive in a way that really appeal to me, I'll watch anything he was involved in. (Oddly Pippin is, I think, the only one I haven't seen)

wait how the fuck has fred seen hamilton

i like cabaret

any time LMM's name comes up on ilx there is always a discussion of how terrible musicals are & how much ppl don't want to see hamilton... i say he is great and yr all grumps

i'd love to see hamilton but i never get to see any of the hip shows. i still haven't seen book of mormon.

I am p grumpy it's true

very :)

I love the mentality of musicals, at leat the way Lin-Manuel presents it. Going out there eight times a week and working your butt off to entertain, because that's what you do. Going out before the show and doing something for the people waiting. Quite simply doing everything you can to please.

idk seems pretty conservative at its core

I don't see how that's different from any other form of entertainment tbh, they all require tons and tons of work to do well

musical theater people are just more self-righteous and hammy about it

yo if you dont fuck with jesus christ super star (original with murray head and ian gillian) then i dont want any part of you

jesus is not all right with me, what can I say

why have you forsaken me

Okay so here's a FUN FACT FOR THE XLS:
I was Simon Zealotes in jcsuperstar back in college.

The one musical I stan for unreservedly is "Annie." That could be down to childhood nostalgia, but if I'm near a TV and it's on I will set everything aside to re-watch it.

it took stalinesque political skill to avoid being assigned any job on the musical of 9 to 5 my theater's doing this fall, but as documented in the mary poppins thread i did get happily caught up in that one last year. no idea what the 9 to 5 musical's like but suspect it won't produce quite as many delighted, weeping children.
― florence foster wallace (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, September 28, 2016 2:43 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

intermission on opening night and i just wanna thank donald j trump for the audience reaction

well then. SNL on the 8th oughta be interesting!

Yeah, can't wait to see what celebrated champion of women Alec Baldwin does

Ha! I actually thought about that too. Probably some too-close-to-home shit for him.

alec baldwin was obv an inspired choice for this role

remember there was that thread "who would be the democrat trump" or whatev and everyone said baldwin

whys lin manuel look like jim from the office now

i think it was a least partly bc he's been cast in the Mary Poppins sequel as Bert