Search And Destroy: Musicals

Search: I'm with Mark on "Don't Cry For Me Argentina". Also whoever mentioned "Send In The Clowns", though opinion seems to be against Sondheim here (I wouldn't know). After that my ignorance really is boundless because I've only really been exposed to the rubbish ones and hoofing school productions of Joseph.

Destroy: My visit to "Les Miserables" was one of the most numb-arsed experiences of my life.

And now I'm imagining Tom wandering aimlessly around the racks, looking confused, holding up CDs and muttering "Ketchup.... Catsup.... Ketchup....Catsup" until the staff lead him away into a van.

Also search Kurt Weill’s broadway shows (anyone who can do a detailed search and destroy on these would have my thanks); the mighty Gilbert and Sullivan (the only 'musicals' I would like to stage)

If you are in Spain look for Zarazuela's (the best operettas in Europe).

Search: The Sound Of Music. What beautiful songs that one has, and the story was a perfect reflection of the childhood fantasy of the caring mother who plays with the kids, sings, is pretty, etc. Any kid can relate to that so easily.

Adieu, adieu, to you and you and you...

Wait! Forgot the destroy. Count me in with the anti-Lloyd Webber group. His songs just aren't catchy.

I can only echo those who adore West Side Story. Guys and Dolls, Grease too. Wizard of Oz? I don't know the Porter / R&H / etc oeuvres a fraction as well as I want to. It is surprisingly hard to get hold of this stuff at good prices. Search: good Cole Porter collections (ie not cut-rate instrumentals by the Belfast Brickle Bridge Brass Band).

Destroy is really hard here. I'm interested in what Stevie T says re Sondheim - you must lend me that CD some time. He was very good on Walk On By (BBC), I thought. But the songs - not up to scratch?

Lots of people have panned Lloyd Webber. I don't like the idea of L- W, and I'm sure lots of his stuff is bad. But I liked Cats and Starlight Express as a child, and would never choose to destroy them.

I think that Stevie is pointing us somewhere interesting. I think that he is saying: what is it about the musical that periodically, or even continually, fascinates us? What kind of contribution, exactly, has the musical made to pop history? What kind of specificity does the 'show song' have that makes songwriters want to undertake it at some point?

As I myself intend to with PAPERCUTS!, opening in Covent Garden, May 2004.

Book (flights to Paris) now to avoid disappointment.

Background: can't sing (trust me), but I did grow up with a couple of musical soundtracks around the house, saw a few here and there on cable, ended up doing lighting for a high school production of _Oliver!_ and acting as Mayor Shinn in another HS production of _The Music Man_. Techie and actor, best of both worlds. ;-)

Search -- the two mentioned above, for sentimental reasons in part, sure. I actually have that production of _The Music Man_ on videotape. Heh heh heh. My all-time fave movie musical, hands down, is _Gigi_. Saw it when I was eleven, been a fan ever since. With time has come a further realization about how dodgy a lot of it is, of course! But there's too much in it to love for me to reject it. Meanwhile, stepping against the ALW tide a bit, my parents got the New York recording of _Evita_ with Mandy Patinkin as Che and Patti LuPone as Evita herself when I was ten or so, and I played that one to death, so again, nostalgia fix but a nice one.

Destroy: hoo baby. I think most of the fatted cows were up for slaughter already. I've actually seen _Les Miserables_, and I have to say I did like the "Master of the House" song, but I could probably ditch the rest without a care nowadays. That was the last musical I've seen, actually -- back in 1989! _Rent_, meanwhile...the ONLY reason anyone cared was because the guy who wrote it died and they could feel all sentimental about it. Gah!

CANNOT WAIT FOR: _White Trash Wins Lotto_, by Andy Prieboy. If all the promise I've heard about this one comes true, then it will be a happy, *happy* world. He's been working on it for about seven or so years, has done live performances of it with a small group, has yet to be staged. Prieboy has gone on record as saying that he's well aware how Broadway can be undervalued in modern pop perceptions, but that Broadway itself is its own worst enemy, and has a tendency to regard being cutting edge as sounding like Pat Benatar, so it sounds like he's coming in with the right attitude. Subject matter? It's the story of Guns 'n' Roses. Seriously. The hopefully-will-one-day-be-updated URL is http://www.andyprieboy.com/.

http://members.tripod.com/Point202/GuysandDolls/lament.html

(should be read with New Yoik accent)

"City of Angels": by two guys I haven't heard about since, all big- band jazzish and torch songy, parallel black and white world private- eye movie/writer writing private-eye movie color world storylines. Confusing in description, but much fun.

"Little Shop Of Horrors": can't believe this hasn't been mentioned yet. Rice and Menken, big man-eating plant and wimpy nebbish, based on a Roger Corman classique, and the movie version is a pitch perfect and has Steve Martin, Bill Murray, John Candy, and Rick "really pretty brilliant until I started making those family-Disney-shrinking pics" Moranis, who has an impressive set of pipes. Also features: Gina from "Martin," as in the "Gina! You so crazy!" Gina. If someone has mentioned this, I'm sorry to go on about it more.

Destroy: Dinner theaters. Do y'all have dinner theaters on the Isles? So ... unfortunate. *Shudder*

I like Phantom and Les Mis.

Destroy: Everything else by ALW. Cats... Cats... the horror. There was a joke on SNL at one point long ago when Dennis Miller was still on that went something like...

"For the 4,760th time the broadway musical 'Cats' was performed on stage, eclipsing the old mark of A Chorus Line. And for the 4,760th time, a man killed his wife."

Tommy. I mean, the movie and stage vers. And the studio album, actually. The live versions ROCK LIKE HELL tho...

Sorry. I went a little tangential there.

Annihilate - "Grease 2".

destroy: almost everything else by Lloyd Webber.

all Troma iz shite

"I don't know how to love him/how to touch, how to move him/he's just a man, JUST a man/and I've had so many men before, in oh so many ways/ he's just one more"

I loved to sing along to that (singer = Miriam D'Abo?), aged 11.

COMPLETELY TANGENTIALLY, does anyone else remember the movie Mary Mother of God or something to that effect? It was about the Virgin Mary and it was on CBS or NBC a few years ago. The reason I bring this up is because it starred Christian Bale as Jesus, just prior to it being announced he'd play Patrick Bateman. For the longest time no one would believe me that this was true, so I'm just curious if I'm the only one who actually remembers it. I mean, I looked it up online one day just to prove myself right, and sure 'nuff, there was Christian Bale, smiling in a beatific way from the poster. It rocked. If the Catholic church would use Christian Bale as their propaganda instead of the Jesus they usually use, I'd so be in church right now. "Oooh, Jesus, save meeeee"

Ahem. Sorry. Anyhow, Jesus Christ Superstar is a terrible musical and should be destroyed with the rest of Sir Webber's collection, but that PBS version was fantastic and I think me and Ethan saw the same one because I also saw this version just before Easter.

My Musical obsession is pretty much reserved for Rogers & Hammerstein. C'Mon South Pacific anyone. Happy Talk, Wash That Man Right out Of My Hair. Sound OF Music - especially Goatherd (never gets a reprise unlike the rest of the tracks, which makes the film a bit too long). The appearance of Singalong-A-Sound Of Music in London has been a rejuvenating thing for the whole idea of musicals. It reintroduces the idea of them actually being a whole shedload of fun.

Oaklahoma is top mad skills too, not to mention Pal Joey (not R&H but Sinatra's finest Musical moment). And I'm off to see Kiss Me Kate tonight at the NFT in the origianl 3-D. Unfortunately I don't have stereoscopic vision, but the gaudy nonsensical idea of a musical filmed in 3-D will keep me going.

Oh, and Candide is a very funny piece of musical theatre. "All's for the best" is in my top ten tracks of all time.

Destroy: Les Mis, without compunction. Especially since it has managed to destroy the book in popular culture terms. Oh and Notre Dame de Paris, especially "I've Got A Hunch About You". It might as well have been the Planet Of The Apes musical on The Simpsons (worth inclusion for "You'll Never Make A Monkey Out Of Me").

Destroy: "Godspell". And yeah, the rest of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stuff has got to go. I do remember dancing wildly to the Disco Evita version of "High Flying Adored", though, when I was a dizzy madcap teen. I didn't know where the song came from, I just thought it had a cool, queeny chorus.

If you have even the vaguest interest in the art of writing songs that use the English language to its fullest, you have to investigate Sondheim, the lyricist's lyricist. Simple as that.

DESTROY: Ticket prices. Thirty quid plus for a decent seat? Not exactly music for the masses, is it? Cheaper to get the original cast CD to pore over repeatedly in the comfort of your own cave.

SEARCH: Sunday In The Park With George (truly beautiful), Assassins (truly tap dancing Lee Harvey Oswald plus love song to Charles Manson), Follies (includes "Losing My Mind" as covered by Pet Shop Boys/Liza Minnelli, Company, A Little Night Music (includes "Send In The Clowns"), West Side Story (Sondheim & Bernstein). Also any Sondheim revue CDs that mop up his best songs, eg Side By Side By Sondheim.

AVOID (until you've developed a taste for him): Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, Pacific Overtures, Merrily We Roll Along.

NON-SONDHEIM:

SEARCH: Cabaret - wonderful film, peerless tunes, essential soundtrack. Barbra Striesand's "Broadway Album". Man Of La Mancha. Pirates Of Penzance & The Mikado... light operas being the forerunners of the musical. That 80s pop film of "Pirates" with Angela Lansbury, Kevin Kline, and Linda Rondstadt is a riot. Also: any musical by Cole Porter, especially High Society, and anything by Rogers and Hart, especially Pal Joey.

DESTROY: "Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire" - early 80s film musical featuring a singing Phil Daniels, Dracula, and, um, snooker. I'm sure it looked good at the planning stage.

Have you heard Liza Minnelli's 70s version of "Dancing In The Moonlight"? As in the Toploader song. You should.

Regarding a musical of The Breakfast Club, I would like to point out that I have Molly Ringwald's dance moves down to a "t", and am available at very short notice for understudy duties.

I have to go, I'm late for the "half"...

Phew, Dickon. This is quite a concept to swallow. But intriguing.

The Terror of Tiny Town is quite possibly the best musical of all time. Click on the link and you can watch the film - ALL OF IT. Including the Marlene Dietrich whore midget. Apparently, this is the film she is watching right now on television; Arizona, you know?

DESTROY: HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING - I just finished an excruitiatingly long month run of that show and I now despise it with everything that I have. If I had to sing "A Secretary is Not a Toy", cha-cha to "Coffee Break", or listen to the ever-so-annoying song "Old Ivy" again I think I would have died.

Me and my mum were there - we watched the first half, and then at the interval when we came out for drinks I decided I couldn't bring myself to go back in, and just walked out of the theatre. My mum ran after me, and then when she was outside she seemed to realise it was best if we slip away. So we walked out of the place, back to the car park, into our car, and drove all the way back home without saying a word to each other.

the USA was so traumatized by their experience of WW2 it facilitated the movement away from sophisticated prewar pop

that Atlantic piece does not mention this theory/argument, which seems p ridiculous on its face

obviously not a UNIVERSAL theorem, of course there's always gold n' shit in every era.

(Many, if not most, of the Tin Pan Alley “cleffers” had been unabashed hacks, anyway. “I had to recognize for myself that I was not Irving Berlin,” recalled Sheldon Harnick, one theatrical songwriter who nevertheless balked at the pressure to conform to the “crap” that was topping the Hit Parade in the early 1950s.)

B-b-but some of my all-time favorite pop songs are "crap" pop from the pre-rock fifties.

all this stuff: some leading factors in the decline of the Great American Songbook could certainly be pinned on murky dealings behind the scenes, including the ongoing skirmish between the two leading music publishers (the old-guard American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers and the upstart Broadcast Music, Inc.), the rising influence of radio disc jockeys (a show business phenomenon comparable to “an atomic bomb,” howled Variety), and the “payola” scandal that would eventually scandalize the industry. Dwindling sales of sheet music, once a staple of the industry, ended the careers of many composers, as did television’s displacement of the theater as the American family’s favorite pastime.

make sense. no half-assed theorizing about the American psyche required.

xp

really Shakey, there was a ton of bebop at the top of the charts?

DJP, I think Broadway people consider movie musicals, particularly the animated Disney ones, a breed apart not only bcz of the medium but there's so much more capital for them (and in Disney's case, millions of wee zombie disciples).

hey you just said 46-50s, you didn't say anything about chart-topping

"pop" as in popular

"race records", hillbilly music, jazz from that era is incredible and was popular albeit not chart-topping - and I don't think it's popularity reflected any shift in the American psyche akin to some kind of facile "omg I can't DEAL WITH FANCY LYRICS anymore! cuz WW2" reading, those forms represented an expansion of the industry beyond the rich white guys that were largely running shit prior.

I haven't read that book (I'm assuming you have?) but the author doesn't appear to make that argument you posted based on that Atlantic article.

geez i don't have time to read books about MUSIC

ok here is the specific piece on NPR i heard re that angle

Ben Yagoda: There was a change in popular taste. The soldiers who had come back from World War II didn't seem to be as interested in the more complex, challenging kind of popular song, the more jazz-based song. Sentimental ballads and, yes, novelty numbers, suddenly was much more appealing.

http://www.npr.org/2015/01/23/379086600/when-pop-broke-up-with-jazz

goodbye ILM

among other problems those arguments universalize (and also homogenize) the experience of WWII vets

i don't think sentiment has ever gone out of fashion

goodbye ILM

we should be so lucky :)

I don't know how you would even begin to quantify or back up that assertion

xp

Never saw Lin Manuel-Miranda "In the Heights" onstage, but just saw the movie and it was ok. The music and dancing was fun (although not amazing) but the plot story lines took so long to unfold and were kind of frustrating when you did figure them out. Why didn't the girl leaving Stanford just try to transfer to another school rather than letting her dad sell his business to pay for tuition? And yeah, I see Miranda has now apologized for having so many of the characters being light-skinned Latinx rather than Afro-Latinx.

Poor phrasing on that last item, but its referring to the choice of the actors and actresses.

"In the Heights" was never really renowned for its book, which doesn't have a huge amount of conflict or a big arc (the movie did actually change quite a lot from the stage version, though). it's more the characters, the music, and the choreography that really sold that one.

that said I really enjoyed the movie, but I ventured to NYC to see the original in 2008

the biggest change in the movie is that Nina's mother is alive in the stage version and butts heads with Nina's dad a lot and removing her took a lot of that dynamic away

Yeah, good songs, blah story, too long. Don't know how long the original show is but this felt like they didn't want to cut anything from it (though I see from Neanderthal's comment, they did)

there were two full-fledged songs cut from it, yet the length was still about the same, weirdly

I imagine cutting songs when adapting musicals to screen is done very carefully for fear of risking fan backlash

one of the songs cut was like a powerful second act song that many people used as like audition pieces/etc. was very surprised.

weirdly, no songs were added, either, which is usually a ploy to become Oscars-eligible for Best Original Song. almost all movie musicals have at least one song added (Hairspray had several)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/arts/dance/in-the-heights-dance.html

Scott, who comes from the street dance world of Los Angeles and is not Latino, worked with a team of associate choreographers who specialized in a range of styles, including Latin dance, hip-hop, ballet and contemporary dance
...
His team of associate choreographers is solid: Eddie Torres Jr. for Latin dance, with Princess Serrano as assistant Latin choreographer; Ebony Williams for ballet, contemporary dance, Afro and dancehall; Emilio Dosal, a popper who is versatile in many styles and brings the hip-hop element to the film; and Dana Wilson, who had a hand in everything — like all of the choreographers — but specifically worked with the actors to help them nail the physicality of their characters.

Above NY Times article is on the dance aspect and not the songs as referenced above