Category Archives: Musical

Calamity Jane (1963 TV version)

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  • Calamity Jane (1963 TV version)

11/9/20 (Mon), YouTube

Thirty-year-old Carol Burnett had just performed in the stage adaptation of the Doris Day film musical in Kansas City when CBS scooped her up for a television version. This marked her television special debut, but with a Tony nomination (Once Upon a Mattress) and Emmy Award already under her belt at this point, she was completely at home. Plus she appeared here with most of the co-stars from the stage production, giving it a real theatrical feel.

The show itself is no great shakes, an obvious (and inferior) rip-off of Annie Get Your Gun with songs that, while fun, are pale imitations of infinitely better numbers like “Anything You Can Do” and Oklahoma‘s “(Everything’s Up to Date in) Kansas City”. The story would never pass muster today with the woman ultimately seeking a man; the stage version never seems to have made it to Broadway and is unlikely to do so without significant rewriting, though it’s popular in the UK. But it doesn’t aspire to profundity, just entertainment, and it easily passes that test with its Wild West setting, unflagging high spirits, and boisterous star cowgirl role.

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A look back: Rent (2012 Japanese version)

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（日本語版はページ下部にあります)

I came across an article I wrote for GQ Japan on a Japanese production of the musical Rent in the 26 October 2012 edition. The article was in Japanese and significantly cut (I wrote way too much as usual), so I’m including both the English and unedited Japanese versions here. Rent is hugely popular in Japan, and there have been other productions since. This is the view as of 2012. 

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A look back: Hamilton

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With the mega-hit musical Hamilton due on television in a few days, I thought it a good time to rerun my review of three years ago. This is not part of the series of made-for-TV reproductions of classic shows – one of the best of which, Grease, was helmed by Hamilton’s own director Thomas Kail – but the actual stage version of the musical filmed with multiple cameras in live performance way back when with the original cast. We’ll see if Disney got its $75 million worth (that figure is not a typo), especially given what would seem to be limited international interest in the subject – I’d hate to be the person writing the Japanese subtitles. But the stage show has reportedly passed $1 billion in global revenues, including $650 million from New York alone, and spawned by far the best-selling Broadway cast album in history. With a usurious official ticket price on Broadway of up to $1,150 (also not a typo – don’t even ask about scalper prices), the audiences for the show have inevitably been less diverse than the famously racially mixed cast. As such, the television production will truly bring this to a new viewership. Hopefully it will lure a wider fan base to live theater once the nation’s stages reopen.

I’m still wary of the show’s version of history. Wait until the mobs find out that Hamilton, presented here as an ambitious Latin immigrant, was actually a 100% white guy (three-quarters British, one-quarter French) who espoused virulent anti-immigrant views and, in going to New York from the Caribbean, was simply moving from one British colony to another. Here’s my review.

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Jesus Christ Superstar Live

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  • Jesus Christ Superstar Live

4/12/20 (Sun)

Andrew Lloyd Webber has opened up his catalog for free streaming over weekends during this irritating coronavirus plague. I missed the previous week’s opening, Joseph…, not realizing that the download expired after the weekend. So I made sure to tune in for the next biblical pop opera, Jesus, by Sunday, which was after all Easter. I’d never seen this in any version and would normally have preferred to wait and see it in a theater. But this was a live unedited film of a 2012 production, so it’s the next best thing. Plus the price was right.

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A Look Back: Mary Poppins (West End)

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I see where the stage version of Mary Poppins has returned to the West End to largely favorable reviews. It’s hard to know how it will fare given its unexpectedly short run last time around; three years would qualify as a hit for most shows, but hopes had been riding particularly high for Poppins given the potent title, family-friendly content and combined power of mega-producers Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, who must have thought they had another The Lion King or Phantom (respectively) on their hands. Still, it did well enough, and it’s no surprise to see them coming back for another try.

I was less taken by the show, at least in its original production, due to its ham-handed approach to the material. In trying to bring together the original British novels and Disney’s lighter film version, the show loses its way entirely. Continue reading →

West Side Story (360° version)

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  • West Side Story (360° version)

8/18/19 (Sun), Tokyo

The highlight in this specially packaged production of the ever-popular West Side Story was not the show but the theater. Inspired reportedly by a similar venue in Amsterdam, the IHI Stage Around Tokyo has a donut-like structure with a stage that wraps around the audience, who sit at center on a revolving platform. Unlike Kabuki, where the stage revolves, it is the audience seating that turns in this case, stopping in each scene at the point at which a specific set has been arranged. Since the sets do not have to be struck for each scene, this allows for incredibly lifelike scenery decked out in eye-popping detail. Nearly all the locations – New York streets, tenement housing, dress shop – were more like movie sets than stage scenery. Doc’s drugstore happened to be positioned near the exit at intermission, and I nearly walked in, thinking it was the theater bar. The image that came to mind was the NBC Live musicals, which use huge sound stages rather than normal sets. This is complemented by intricate lighting effects and curtain projections (designed respectively by Broadway veterans Ken Billington and 59 Productions) as we revolve to the next scene, such as the shadows of a dancing Maria projected against the curtains as Tony strolls and sings her praises. The actors would often walk with us along the 360° stage or out into the audience as we revolve toward the next scene, passing other actively engaged set pieces along the way to create a continuous momentum. It was an innovative approach, to be sure.

Whether that in itself will appeal to audiences is an open question. Continue reading →

Harold Prince’s final bow

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  • Harold Prince’s final bow

It is frustrating that the last show presented by Harold Prince, the immensely influential Broadway producer and director who died yesterday at 91, will be the misconceived retrospective of his career, Prince of Broadway, that played mercifully short runs in Japan in 2015 and on Broadway in 2017.

That career is eminently worthy of a retrospective, encompassing some of the greatest musicals in Broadway history. Indeed, it is arguable that the entire trajectory of musical theater would have been different without him. As director, he changed the look and feel of musicals with productions like Cabaret, Company and Evita that took on weightier themes and bolder approaches than what was then the standard fare, changing the game for all subsequent musicals. The history of Broadway in the second half of the 20th century can’t be written without him.

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Fiddler on the Roof (Trevor Nunn)

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  • Fiddler on the Roof, 6/12/19 (Tues), West End

I had no intention of seeing this show for the umpteenth time, especially so soon after the magnificent Yiddish version on my last New York visit. But I was attracted by the rare Tuesday matinee, and the Trevor Nunn production and this cast had been very well received.

The show is indestructible and works beautifully here as always. But the acting is variable and overall not very Jewish, at least by the Yiddish-theater-inspired standards as conceived originally. Continue reading →

Encores! and… Millie??

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  • Encores! and… Millie??

What is Encores! thinking? New York City Center’s celebrated limited-run concert series of rarely performed Broadway musicals, offering starry casts and an onstage orchestra playing the original orchestrations, is either running low on imagination or falling victim to some serious governance issues. Its three shows for its 27th season next year include two eminently worthy choices in cult musical Mack & Mabel and the Kurt Weill-Alan Jay Lerner curiosity Love Life, along with – wait for it – the 2002 show Thoroughly Modern Millie, a limp adaptation of the limp 1960s film spoof.

What a letdown. Continue reading →

“Man problem” at NY Times

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The NY Times has printed yet another theatrical essay bemoaning the male supremacist content of classic Broadway musicals (“The Broadway Musical Has a Man Problem”, May 2, 2019). The author, one Amanda Hess, states,

“In 2019, a central obsession of American culture is the reassessment of all of its previous obsessions. We are reviewing our stories with a skeptical eye and banishing outdated plots on feminist grounds.”

Really? And who is this we, Tonto? Continue reading →

Ya Got Jackman

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3/16/19

I didn’t think producer Scott Rudin could top himself after the perfect pairing of Bette Midler and Dolly Levy in the recent mega-popular production of Hello, Dolly! But that was Till There Was Hugh: he’s landed musical man Hugh Jackman for The Music Man, bringing together a bona fide Broadway sensation with one of the greatest musicals and musical roles ever written. The show is set to open in October 2020.  Continue reading →