Category Archives: Musical

Carousel

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Carousel

2 December 2008 (Tues), West End

Carousel was pleasantly and unexpectedly old-fashioned, a throwback to the days when directors were confident enough to let the material speak for itself. As much as I enjoyed the National Theatre production years ago, I’ve always thought that Carousel, a show that includes joys like wife-beating, mental abuse, armed robbery and suicide, hardly needed darkening. The singing was magnificent, the best overall that I’ve ever experienced for this show. That’s a big plus for a score as beautiful as this one. The chorus was also very strong.

The acting, however, was another story. Continue reading →

Gypsy

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Gypsy

9 May 2008 (Sat), Broadway

I had high hopes for Gypsy, one of everyone’s favorite shows. I had seen this on Broadway twice before with very different portrayals by Tyne Daly and Bernadette Peters, not to mention the Rosalind Russell movie and the TV production with Bette Midler. The show depends on a strong central performance, and Patti LuPone had brilliant reviews – she seems pretty much born to do this role. So I was looking forward to it.  Continue reading →

Take Flight

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Take Flight

2 December 2007 (Sun), Tokyo

A musical in the formative stages with book by John Weidman and songs by the Maltby/Shire team. It had been done on a tiny scale in London at the Menier Chocolate Factory, but local director Miyamoto Amon has reworked it for the 1,500-seat Forum with hopes of taking it to Broadway. Its main draw for the Japanese was ex-Takarazuka star Amami Yuki in her first stage musical role in some time, which seemed a fair guarantee of commercial success. I was pretty dubious of the creators developing a work in a language they don’t understand for an audience way outside their target, and Amon’s tendency towards works that have “significance” wasn’t encouraging either. (In an interview in Theatre Guide, he quoted Sondheim as saying that the musical was dead. So who does he think killed it?) On top of this, Weidman tends to write shows about themes rather than people, and Maltby/Shire haven’t done much of distinction together since Baby. (The trio worked together before on Big, which flopped big time. The score was execrable.) In any case, I’ve been wrong before, and these are all major talents, no matter what I think. So I was eager to take a look. Continue reading →

Hairspray (film)

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Hairspray (film)

3 November 2007 (Sun), Tokyo

The previews of the movie had actually discouraged me from seeing it because of what seemed to be a strangely subdued performance by John Travolta, which suggested a take on the show that I wasn’t going to like. But curiosity got the better of me, and I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Continue reading →

Young Frankenstein

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Young Frankenstein

15 October 2007 (Mon), Broadway

Mel Brooks’ latest ripoff of one of his old shows. It’s still in previews after a fairly successful Seattle run, and expectations and advance sales are exceedingly high. Tickets are apparently a pretty tight commodity even in previews, and I was lucky enough to be invited by a friend. I would normally have seen the movie again first, not having seen it since its original run in the 70s. But I hadn’t even realized the show was in town already, so it was going to have to be a surprise. Continue reading →

The Wiz Live!

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The Wiz Live!

12 January 2016

I was excited right away by the idea of The Wiz as the now-annual live TV musical. It’s a family show with great songs and plenty of great visual and dance potential, and the Oz setting should be familiar to pretty much anyone in the US who’s been a kid. I was especially happy to hear that they were going to use an all-black cast as per the original rather than the multi-racial version done in New York, which by all accounts was bland – an ironic but broadly true comment on multicultural shows in general, I think. They gathered an impressive all-star cast of singers and rappers and actors, which makes a lot of sense for a name that doesn’t resonate like The Sound of Music. They’re also using new staging, choreography and orchestrations, which could go either way – I loved the funky 70s sound of the original, and dance pieces like the cyclone number were pretty hard to beat. But an update could work well if done right, a big if. Continue reading →

Porgy and Bess

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Archives: Porgy and Bess

26 April 2007 (Tues), West End

The opera performed as a musical, directed by Trevor Nunn. The story was reworked and all the recitative turned into dialogue, and the show was given an eight-performance-a- week run in the same way as any West End musical. It seemed a reasonable idea since the show is such a familiar name even to non-opera audiences, not to mention that wealth of famous jazz standards. I’d always found some of the recitative a bit long, so it made some sense from an artistic standpoint as well to try it out in a musical format. (Whether opera singers can hold up for eight performances is another question.) Generally I hate the idea of making things more “accessible”, since I would prefer to lift an audience up rather than to bring the show down. In this case, though, it seemed a justifiable effort.

But, as it turns out, it’s all in the execution. Continue reading →

On the Town (ENO)

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On the Town

23 April 2007 (Mon), ENO

A revival of ENO’s well-received production from last year. With an orchestra of 66 and a cast of 40-something, this was a major staging on a scale pretty much impossible in a Broadway theatre. (The ticket price reflected this at ￡76 or around $150.) The cast was a mixture of opera singers, ballet dancers and Broadway/West End actors, and choreographed in a combination of Broadway and classical dance. I hadn’t actually seen the show since a fantastic production back in Washington D.C. in the 1980s, one of my most memorable theatrical experiences ever, so I was watching closely.

The production was as big and brash as anyone could want for the most part, but there was a decisive shift in point of view that was a bit disconcerting if not entirely surprising. As usual with British productions of Broadway musical classics, the director imposed a “darker” vision on the material. Continue reading →

Follies (Encores!)

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Archives: Follies

10 February 2007 (Sat), Encores!

The opening show of the 2007 Encores! season, which is saluting the Ziegfeld Follies-type format. I wouldn’t have thought that Follies is a show that they would have chosen, since it’s still commercially produced – including two major productions within the last 4-5 years at Paper Mill and on Broadway – and thus hardly lost or forgotten. But the production has apparently generated the biggest response in the history of the Encores! series, and they actually had to add an extra performance on Monday, a first, in order to accommodate the crowds. I hadn’t seen Follies since the mid-1980s London production, which I remember only as being confusing. But given the show’s near-legendary status, the buzz surrounding this production (including a fantastic NY Times review) and the star-filled cast, it was hard not to be excited. Continue reading →

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

12 December 2015 (Sat), West End

My second chocolate factory this trip after Menier. I hadn’t bothered to see this in any of my previous trips but went along this time with a friend, figuring it would be harmless enough. I imagined that they would darken it, being British and all, and knew they had jettisoned the movie music for a new score. That score, though, was by the Hairspray team, which had me a bit hopeful. Continue reading →