The Fantasticks is closing in New York City. For good this time. It’s not hard to have a personal relationship with a show that has been playing more or less consistently for 55 years—a lot of people were involved in presenting it over these nearly six decades. In the 1990s, I was one of them…. Read more »
The current revival of Cabaret on Broadway is a perfect copy of the revival that opened in 1998. Back then, a mostly unknown actor named Alan Cumming instantly made his career by emerging from darkness to play the Emcee, and Natasha Richardson was his Sally Bowles. The show played in a ruined theatre, the Henry Miller’s,… Read more »
We don’t need minstrel shows or vaudeville now. We have YouTube. Are Sweet Brown and Antoine Dodson the newest version of the old minstrel show?
Second person isn’t just a way of announcing, I’m a musical! I’m talking metaphorically about abstract concepts! It’s also a way for writers to distance themselves from the toughest feelings their creations have. As if to apologize for the absurdity of breaking into song, lyricists use You to provide some intellectual breathing room. It’s the hot mitt of musical emotion.
Something happened at the very start of Chicago that marked a pivot in musical theatre. In fact, what happened in the first five minutes of Chicago the movie could be said to have set the filmed musical on a new course forever, and few people even noticed it had happened.
You may think the musical Oklahoma! is a sweet little show about friendly farmers and cowmen, but I’ve got an arousing awakening for you. Oklahoma! is drenched in sexual innuendo, rape metaphor, and bestiality references. After all, the whole plot revolves around who gets to take Laurey to the “box social” — a coded consummation… Read more »
Although a whole lot bothers me about musicals, there are some things that I love, specifically, what stems from history. I almost never listen to a cast recording and get goofily carried away. I start thinking about the place and time of it, the look of the cabs that passed outside the theatre, the hats… Read more »
PBS showed a live telecast of the Broadway revival of South Pacific tonight as the show prepares to close. I saw this production, which opened two years ago, for the first time last Tuesday, and I liked it so much I made sure to watch it again tonight. I know there are a lot of… Read more »
I saw Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Public Theater. It grabbed me. Musicals that portray little-known aspects of American life strike a chord in me: Floyd Collins and Dreamgirls are two of my favorites, and my thesis musical at NYU, Americo Presents the Stars and Stripe Cavalcade, was a Cabaret-style skewering of all those… Read more »