Category Archives: Musical

Mrs. Doubtfire (musical)

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  • Mrs. Doubtfire (musical)

9/12/24 (Thurs), West End

I was wary of yet another musical retread from a beloved old film. In the movie, Robin Williams had a field day with the story of a divorced man who, granted only limited visitation rights with his children, disguises himself as a female nanny in a bid to stay close with them. It’s essentially the Robin Williams Show, so dominated by its central performance that it was hard to imagine how another actor could put his stamp on it. In any case, the musical was the unexpected choice of a friend, so I went along politely, albeit with expectations in check.

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A Look Back: Merrily We Roll Along

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Sourly We Roll Along

The notorious 1981 musical flop Merrily We Roll Along, known mainly to now for putting an end to the remarkable decade-long partnership between songwriter Stephen Sondheim and director Harold Prince, finally achieved Broadway success this year in a much-lauded revival of a revival imported from London. But claims that the show itself has finally found its audience seem far-fetched. Continue reading →

Sweet Charity (1969 film)

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  • Sweet Charity (film)

5/17/24 (Fri)

Bob Fosse was evidently a controversial choice as director of this 1969 work, never having helmed a film before, but he had ample Hollywood experience as a dancer and was championed by Shirley MacLaine, who had gotten her break in the Fosse-choreographed Pajama Game. Plus, of course, he had staged and choreographed the Broadway version of this show to tremendous success just a few years earlier. Stories of his battles over the film with the powers-that-be could be a book on their own, but his vision ultimately prevailed. A pity.

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The Outsiders (musical)

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  • The Outsiders

4/2/24 (Tues), Broadway

A musical still in previews based on a popular 1960s teen novel and 1983 movie of the same name. I seem to be one of the few who never read the book as a high schooler, so I came to this cold. I left the same way. The book felt insincere, the music was canned garbage, and the lyrics were just trite dialogue (“Your body’s wet, you’ll catch a cold”) with musical notes attached, not even attempting to capture the emotions or personality of the singer or the surrounding situation.

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It’s Always Fair Weather

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  • It’s Always Fair Weather

2/23/24 (Fri)

The 1955 film is a follow-up of sorts to On the Town, co-directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. The earlier show featured three sailors going off to war, whereas this opens with three soldiers returning to their lives after the war’s end. Comden and Green had conceived this, as with the earlier show, as a Broadway musical, but were convinced to write it directly for the screen instead.

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Brigadoon (1954 film)

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  • Brigadoon (1954 film)

2/15/24 (Fri)

This 1954 film, made in the glory days of the MGM musical, falls well short of the dizzying standards that the studio had set. The wonderful Broadway version offers ample opportunity for big-screen treatment: it’s set in the lush highlands of an exotic locale with distinctive speech, clothing and culture, and has fantastic music and dance scenes that could easily be opened up for the movie. Unfortunately the filmmakers were apparently unable to film on location in Scotland because of weather and cost issues, so the production looks somewhat cheap, like The Sound of Music without the Alps. Also, Alan Jay Lerner’s dialogue comes across as dated and sappy. That’s not true of other MGM musicals at the time, including Lerner’s own films, and is certainly not the case for Lerner’s engaging stage script. The film feels of its time. Continue reading →

The Boy Friend (film)

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  • The Boy Friend

2/1/24 (Thurs)

Ken Russell’s 1971 adaptation of the 1954 mega-hit musical, which was itself a pastiche of 1920s shows (Rodgers and Hart’s The Girl Friend would seem a pretty obvious source). Those shows tended to be forgettable fluff with lame stories, bad puns and interchangeable songs designed to show off the talents of its stars, an approach that the story-based Oklahoma! had rendered archaic by the mid 1940s. Few of the flapper-era shows were revivable by that time without significant rewriting. The original The Boy Friend is tuneful and fun but depends on a knowledge of what is being parodied, in this case the British variety of 1920s musicals, which would have been well within living memory for 1950s audiences. The plot, if you can call it that, is about a girl’s finishing school in Nice where the lovers who have presented themselves as poor discover in the end that each is actually rich and titled. The story is intentionally silly and delivered in mocking style, acknowledging its own irrelevance while offering lively characters and memorable tunes.

Film musicals were still alive if sputtering in the early 1970s, and Russell must have been looking for something enjoyable after the controversy over his provocative previous work. He evidently did not believe the campy original would translate to film (raising the question of why he turned to this show in the first place), so he did an even campier version where the musical is being performed at a seaside resort attended by a big American film producer there to scout out talent. The musical scenes in the show proper thus mix with backstage clashes within the troupe as the performers try to outdo one another to catch the producer’s eye. When the lead breaks her leg, the stage assistant is catapulted into the main role. (That parallels real life: the lead in the original London stage production fell ill just before the opening and was replaced by a minor performer, Anne Rogers, who rode the role to stardom.) She falls in love with the male lead, who to her frustration shows no interest in her.

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Moulin Rouge (ムーランルージュ)

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  • ムーランルージュ (Moulin Rouge) 

8/12/23 (Sat), Tokyo

The two-month run was completely sold out well in advance of the opening. I was curious about the show because of the unusual use of music – not the original songs but the brief clips from well-known numbers that sprang up so often throughout the show. Those range from “Nature Boy” and “The Sound of Music” to “Lady Marmalade” and “Material Girl”, encompassing standards, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, Queen and more, and I’m sure there were more up-to-date numbers that I simply didn’t recognize. Some were just a few seconds long, quoting a line or two, while others, most notably Elton John’s “Your Song”, were quoted extensively.

I was wondering if the older numbers would even be familiar to Japanese audiences, especially in the age group that they’re catering to. Because the songs are crucial to the action, they have all been translated into Japanese. As with Mamma Mia, the songs are fun to hear in a different context, but that assumes a knowledge of them in the first place; we know instantly what the song is referring to and thus respond to that memory, since the songs are rarely played in full. Translating them also takes the fun out of it. That said, Mamma Mia has been hugely popular here as everywhere, so what do I know?

The show, it turns out, is tremendous fun. Continue reading →

A Look Back: La Cage Aux Folles (musical)

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  • A Look Back: La Cage Aux Folles (musical)

With the opening of the UK’s latest revival of La Cage Aux Folles at the wonderful Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, I figured it was a good time to rerun my modest rewrite. The musical is great fun, but I’ve always been bothered by its preachiness. It shakes a virtual finger to lecture us (rather than subtly lead us) to love gays and hate bigots and so forth. As I noted, the fact that the message seems so obvious “is partly a function of the changing times, a trend that the musical itself helped bring about”. But the show is looking more like a period piece than the pure farce intended in the French play and film. The French are clearly much more relaxed about sexual matters like this – the original work dates from the 1970s, when openly gay-themed shows in English were pretty rare – and their approach was more cunning in underlining the couple’s basic humanity. Continue reading →

Camelot (2023 revival)

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  • Camelot 

4/2/23 (Sun), Lincoln Center

The magic is gone from this musical in more ways than one. Still in previews, it’s selling robustly on the strength of Bartlett Sher’s reputation with his past Lincoln Center productions, including an awesome South Pacific and The King & I and a woke (but popular) version of Lerner and Loewe’s previous show My Fair Lady. These productions offered gorgeous costumes and scenery, full orchestras with lush arrangements, and top-class performers. I was discouraged at first after reading an interview with the Lancelot, who boasted that the show included actors who are blind and use prosthetics so as to better represent America. See what’s missing there? How about talent? In any event, curiosity got the better of me, and I managed to get an excellent non-premium ticket (center orchestra!) an hour before showtime.

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