On Understudies! "Carrie": The Worst Musical Ever
You can take your Moose Murders and your Dance a Little Closers. Your Jimmys and your Raggedy Anns. Your Lolita My Loves. (Yes, a Lolita musical.) Carrie was something special. The tension between the astounding trash discussed here at length and the couple surprise moments of sheer brilliance (usually involving Miss Betty Buckley) elevated this show to its own level atop the Mt. Olympus of musical theatre disasters.
Favorite Carrie trivia: Apparently some publisher was banking on the show's success enough to release an edition of the novel that used the musical's poster as its cover. My high school library had a copy. I always regret not stealing that book.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_In5M5mqIDqU/SC1orJyG5oI/AAAAAAAACkk/dK843EROQj8/s1600-h/Stephen+King%27s+Carrie+the+Musical+Tie-In.JPG
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On Understudies! The American Musical and Life After "Cabaret"
But this is not new! Jersey Boys is the same as George M! The prior generation's pop hits shoehorned into a thin biographical plot. There's always been schlock. Time passes and we half forget about. And even worse: the past in which Broadway informed popular music ended in the 60s and not so very many years before that when existed a time when were scores incredibly shaped by popular music.
In 1927, Rodgers and Hart wrote a hit song, "My Heart Stood Still." Big hit with dance bands, bigger hit once the Duke of Windsor became a fan. And so they shoehorned it into their next show, A Connecticut Yankee, with a flimsy excuse for a generic love song. This was not unusual pre-Rodgers and Hammerstein.
The only real difference is the level of artistry. "My Heart Stood Still" is a better song to force into a story than, say, "Lay All Your Love On Me." Or adding "I'm a Believer" as a curtain call. Joe Layton was a far more intersting choreographer than Sergio Trujillo. [Side proposition: there are basically no interesting choreographers working on Broadway right now.] Joel Grey would kill John Lloyd Young in a battle of the musical theatre midgets.
The problem is not the forms, the problem is the lack of skill tackling them. Where is style, where is skill.... Where was I? Where was I?
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On Difficult Listening Hour: William Kentridge To Direct Shostakovich, Redeem Winter in NYC
Well, it's not video, but there is at least the Saturday matinee radio broadcast on the 13th.
All this and no one's mentioned Paulo Szot yet?
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On From the people who brought you "Burning Nancy Pelosi in effigy."
First the musicals and now Wizard of Oz jokes. Balk, are you sure you're straight today?
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On Showed Up: 'Elektra' at the Metropolitan Opera
More of this, please. Thanks.
Also, you're right be excited for Lulu. I saw Marlis Peterson in Chicago last year and thought she was just terrific. Sadly, I don't think the Met gets the really great Paul Curran production that went with her at Lyric.
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On Steve Schmidt Will Have To Waste A Whole HOUR
I doubt any of them will be reading it. What do they have assistants and interns for?
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On "Come Back With Your Commandments, Or On Them"
I think Val Kilmer already took care of that. http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Commandments-Musical-Val-Kilmer/dp/B000HXDWIM
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On Hey, It Is Really Windy
Expert opinion: You're suffering the shock of suddenly realizing you live in Chicago. It will soon be followed by a creeping depression brought on by sub-par pizza and bagels and coming to terms with the fact Batman doesn't actually live in your city. This is slightly cushioned by laughably cheap rents.
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On Massive Carnage-Death-Porn From '2012' Unleashed on TV
What bothers me about this movie (aside from the fact they couldn't even get a decent Arnold-accent on the governor) is how do you end it? If they don't unexpectedly go the bleak route and leave everyone rebuilding on the rubble of civilization, is there any way to avert the cosmic destruction of Earth without some awful cop-out like aliens or making Indiana Jones return the sacred statue to Tenochtitlan to stop the Aztec curse?
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On There's Got to Be a Morning After
Swim, Shelley, swim!