THEATRE GOSSIP #388 - Above The Title at Feinstein's 54 Below

Reposting from the end of the previous thread: As always, MANY thanks to our National Theatre poster!! I really enjoyed The Habit of Art. A bit too clever by half? Perhaps, but I liked the play-within-a-play format. And some of my favorite actors, including Frances De La Tour and Adrian Scarborough! BTW, has anyone heard from Alan Bennett? Is he OK? Do we need to send out a search party of the Yorkshire Fusiliers?

A poster on the last thread, I think, accidentally called "Put on A Happy Face" "Sit on A Happy Face" instead while talking about Bye Bye Birdie and I think that should be the title of the next thread.

To continue, Tyne Daly was an excellent Rose. Easily the best acted one I've seen. Was her voice on par with Merman, LuPone, or even Lansbury? No, but she made the role her own and was excellent in the role. She's the first thing I think of when someone mentions Gypsy. She really was that brilliant. I've never seen a funnier or more human Rose. I've seen scarier ones and sexier ones and ones who could sing the score better, but never anyone who create the whole package the way Tyne did. It probably doesn't play well in clips or on audio recordings, because you really did have to see the full performance to see how she kept building throughout the evening.

Totally agree, R3. And Daly was scary, too. I remember leaning back in my seat during "Everything's Coming Up Roses" because I wanted to get as far away as I could from Rose at that moment.

But oh, that overture!

Yup. As the curtain came down on Rose and Herbie and Louise at the end of Act I, the friend I was with turned to me and said, "Oh, my God. That's a mad scene. I never understood that before."

Good work, Tyne.

R2 That was me and it was no accident.

I'll repost the last comment from the previous thread (my post):

It's well known that Tyne was seriously ill with the flu when her cast recording was made. She begged the producers to postpone but they were locked into contracts that would have made it too expensive to do so. No, she wasn't a great singer but she sounds much better and more convincing in the boots that are around. Excerpts pop up from time to time on youtube.

[quote] Yup. As the curtain came down on Rose and Herbie and Louise at the end of Act I, the friend I was with turned to me and said, "Oh, my God. That's a mad scene. I never understood that before."

I had the exact same reaction at the end of ACT I when I saw Lansbury. I was stunned I had never picked up the real subtext in that scene before.

It's funny how that song has become a big happy anthem thanks to it being covered by everyone and their mother once the show premiered. I knew the song well ever since I was a kid, but had no idea how it fit into the show until I saw it and it really threw me for a loop. It's brilliant writing. To place Rose center stage, belting out this exciting song about how everything is going to be great while Herbie and Louise are cowering in the corner, looking terrified, is just genius. It's so simple and so effective. Every production I've seen has, wisely, kept it that way.

and so few realize that is what can make the BOOK of a musical so go

...so good

When you worried that Tyne Daly might not make it through her first fucking song then you had to think it wasn’t such a bright idea to cast her as Rose. And I saw her when she was in perfectly good health. She was never “in good voice,” she had a lousy singing voice and had no business playing that role except in a non-musical adaptation of Gypsy Rose Lee’s memoirs.

So sorry to hear that Rick Unterberg, pianist at the Townhouse died a couple of weeks ago from coronavirus. He played lots of musical tunes over the years and was a really funny man too.

Inspired by the brief discussion in the previous thread about who played Mrs. Lovett better:

Who do you all think was a better Sweeney, Len Cariou or George Hearn? I've seen bootlegs of the OBC with Len and Angela, the PBS recording with George and Angela, and a bootleg with George & Dorothy Loudon.

To me, Len Cariou and Dorothy Loudon would have been the best pair to see, but I don't think that ever happened, right?

Len Cariou gave one of the greatest male performance in a musical I ever saw in many years of theater-going.

Someone on the last thread asked for Follies, again.

Tyne's "Everything's Coming Up Roses"

Our House.

Agree with R16. There are all those lyrics about how Sweeney is quiet, brooding, planning, etc. Len Cariou played the role with a sort of reserved intensity that cracked in "Epiphany" and then really returned when everything begins to unravel in Act 2. When Cariou moved downstage in "Epiphany," I remember he really inspired terror. And even with the ghostly make-up and the crazy hair, there was something sexy about him in the role. George Hearn - maybe one of the nicest men in the world - sings the shit out of it and there's so much to like about his performance, but the one thing I've never loved is how he is screaming from very early on. There's nothing methodical about his Sweeney. He's playing the crazy from like page 4. It's a different approach, but I don't know that it is the character as he is described. I think Cariou's performance delivered greater rewards.

Everything is coming up Rose's......what?

How can anyone watch the performance at R18 and complain about Tyne's singing voice? It's magnificent.

^ People who only know her performance from the cast album when she was sick, r22. But my friends have told me she did have off nights in the theater too.

She's no Googie Gomez r22.

Just need to chime in here...

If you want to see a chilling ACT 1 finale to GYPSY, just check out Patti Lupone's EVERYTHING'S COMING UP ROSES. She both acts and sings the number and practically moves mountains doing it.

Just wish her diction was a little better...

Why does no one ever mention Alexis coming in too early on the FOLLIES OCR during "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs"?

Perhaps, r26, because "everyone" has a life.

" You'l be swell, you'll bif gred, gound half th wur oonuplaet. "

In dum fum arf dum glimpder dum dym dum was lckd on dum sing sing shocking

But niw gd noes dum dum dump goes.

Tonight at 8pm on yotube Patti John etc. November

Macbeth - 2018.

[quote]People who only know her performance from the cast album when she was sick, [R22]. But my friends have told me she did have off nights in the theater too.

Given that Daly was not primarily a singer, and as far as I know had little or no training or experience as a singer before GYPSY, it's not at all surprising that she would have been more vocally inconsistent in performance than a trained, more experienced singer.

My problems with Dorothy Loudon as Mrs. Lovett, when I saw her early in her run, were twofold: (1) her Brit accent was very poor, and (2) she didn't have the soprano extension that's required for a good deal of the score, so as I recall she just belted some of those sections, and I think there may have been some transpositions downward as well. To me, those two liabilities were do distracting that I couldn't enjoy whatever may have been good about her performance in terms of her acting and interpretation.

[quote]And Daly was scary, too. I remember leaning back in my seat during "Everything's Coming Up Roses" because I wanted to get as far away as I could from Rose at that moment.

Linda Lavin has that same effect in everything she's ever done.

That clip of Loudon singing "Wait" is a masterwork. I've never seen that song played that way. She's almost seducing him and urging his bloodlust at the same time, while pining for him to notice her during the "I've been thinking flowers, pretty daisies" section, showing that, despite it all she does just want him to notice her, love her, and have a traditional loving relationship.

I've never seen someone make such a meal out of that song. Sondheim must have absolutely loved her.

She definitely doesn't have the right voice for it, opting to go down the octave or speak certain notes and her accent wavers, but she seems very different from anyone else I've seen in the role. I'd have thought for sure she'd go for a daffy interpretation.

R34, I just watched the clip of Loudon singing "Wait." I would say it works fine on its own terms, but first of all, her vocal timbre and style are more 20th century Broadway/pop, with bent notes and pop phrasing, than anything like Mrs. Lovett should sound. Her accent doesn't "waver," basically she decides to go for British on a few phrases and gives up the effort for the bulk of the song. And the whole song is indeed in a lower key than the original, as I sort of remembered. You could argue that some of these choices were appropriate for singing the song out of context on TV. but my memory is that's pretty much how she sang the whole score when I saw and heard her onstage in the show.

Plus, I think you're really exaggerating the quality of her acting. I've seen lots of other Lovetts who have brought out those elements in the song, especially the seduction part and her desire for attention. Loudon was GREAT in certain things (and I'll cherish her performance in ANNIE as long as I live), but SWEENEY TODD was not one of them, in my opinion.

When Loudon first took over from Lansbury, one critic described it as "a trainwreck hits London." She evidently improved dramatically as her run went on, as evidenced by what friends who saw her several times described to me and her youtube clips reveal. The youtube clips, if they are still there, are fabuloux.

Can anyone tell us what LuPone looked like naked in "The Robber Bridegroom"? Why hasn't she done it since?

I'd rather hear how her old bf Kevin Kline looked naked in "Loose Ends" in Washington, D.C. where he played the first scene with Roxanne Hart totally nude, but for some reason chickened out on Broadway at Circle in the Square and played it there in bathing suits.

[quote]Can anyone tell us what LuPone looked like naked in "The Robber Bridegroom"? Why hasn't she done it since?

Remind me never to read DL while eating dinner again.

[quote]When Loudon first took over from Lansbury, one critic described it as "a trainwreck hits London." She evidently improved dramatically as her run went on, as evidenced by what friends who saw her several times described to me and her youtube clips reveal. The youtube clips, if they are still there, are fabuloux.

I don't doubt that her performance might have improved in some ways, but did it improve in terms of her changing her whole style of singing to something more appropriate for the role? And did her lower-class Brit accent improve greatly? I guess the latter is more likely than the former.

Does anyone have a full recording of Sweeney with Dorothy Loudon as Lovett?

She was actually semi-slim back in the 70s and kind of hot with a nice rack. Small nips. Probably hot if you are straight.

She did a topless sex scene in some forgotten 70s film. The pics are easily out there on Google if you want to look for them but I'm not going to link them.

I love the way Loudon introduces the song. It's almost like she's telling a scary campfire story. She's a great storyteller.

All great singers are, r43.

r42 here. I was writing about Patti.

This is actually the best of the photos. Yikes!

I think the difference between Cariou and Hearn is that Hearn made it look hard and Cariou made it look easy. The mark of a truly great performance.

And I don't know if this is an urban legend or not but when Dorothy took over, the cast and crew thought she was terrible and someone wrote "Surrender Dorothy" on her dressing room mirror.

The best actress to play Mrs. Lovett was Julia MacKenzie in London. She was much more real than Lansbury, but hilarious at the same time. She deservedly won the Olivier for it.

As was mentioned in either the last thread or the one before, the first choice of both Prince and Sondheim for Mrs. Lovett was Patricia Routledge. She turned them down. She had moved permanently back to England and wasn't interested any longer in pursuing a US career. She turned down the original London production because she found the material grotesque.

The Broadway production of "Jerry's Girls" didn't amount to much, except every time Dorothy Loudon was on stage. Most of what was given to her was comic, but not all. Each of three female stars got a moment of their own to wear an evening gown and sing something serious. Dorothy's was late in the show. She came out from behind the proscenium arch on stage right, leaned against the proscenium and sang "Time Heals Everything."

It is often a whiney little long, but Dorothy used it to rip everyone's heart out. It seemed so clear that she was singing it for her late husband, even singing it directly to him. No one ever made more of it. She could be absolutely truthful and honest and open and vulnerable. Just wonderful.

Has anyone posted the Michael Cerveris/Patti Lu "Sweeney"?

Emma Thompson didn't have the benefit of more than a few performances to find nuance in Mrs. Lovett and she didn't always have the best voice, but she was a terrific Lovett as well.

Loudon was more known for her trashy, belty persona, but her "Fifty Percent" from Ballroom is heartbreaking and no one's ever done it better. She clearly wasn't a whiz at the accents, but I'm sure she had a lot to offer as Mrs. Lovett. Maybe it just wasn't the perfect fit for her.

It's interesting that Lovett's accent has been mentioned a few times, but how come Cariou and Hearn never did one?

No, no, no, R52. It was a perfect fit. She illuminated that role like no one has done in any other major production.

The accent issue is interesting. Most Sweeneys never seem to do one. Has there ever been a production where Lovett (intentionally) didn't have an accent?

[quote]She did a topless sex scene in some forgotten 70s film.

It was not some forgotten 70s film. It was Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam".

R55 Cheating slightly, but Imelda Staunton just used her normal voice. I mention it because Michael Ball did a pretty good job at an East End accent for it.

Everything by Spike Lee has been or soon will be forgotten. Who remembers the dishonest historical revisionist Summer of Sam?

[quote]...the first choice of both Prince and Sondheim for Mrs. Lovett was Patricia Routledge...She turned down the original London production because she found the material grotesque.

In one interview, she mentioned that as a child she was told that if she didn't behave that Sweeney Todd would get her (ie, cut her throat). She said, "You don't mess with things like that." I don't know whether she was superstitious or not, but the story obviously unnerved her.

I think Routledge's role in The Beggars Opera comes close enough to say that this is what her Mrs. Lovett would have been like.

Dottie being dotty. With just 45 seconds, she can show up all the divas of Broadway.

Having seen several operatic presentations of Sweeney, I've seen him have a European accent.

Dorothy Loudon, at one time, said the producers of Sweeney Todd saw this performance and immediately offered her the replacement role for Angela Lansbury.

You be the judge.

Maybe Dorothy should have done "The Act" instead of Liza?

"Hearn made it look hard and Cariou made it look easy."

For me the difference was that you thought Hearn was truly insane. Upped the ante.

"And Daly was scary, too. I remember leaning back in my seat during "Everything's Coming Up Roses" because I wanted to get as far away as I could from Rose at that moment."

"Oh, my God. That's a mad scene. I never understood that before."

I've seen Daly, L:avin, Lansbury, Lupone...but when B. Peters sang the ROSES, I was never so overwhelmed as when the desperation, lifetime of resentment, vulnerability, indomitability and Peters' own history as a child actor came at the audience with the force of a tsunami. It's the only time I was reduced to a blubbering mass at the end of Act One of GYPSY.

Someone should do a mashup of "Jerry's Girls" and "Jersey Boys." (And throw in "Jersey Shore" for good measure.)

Of course Len Cariou made insanity look easy. He fucked Glenn Close for awhile. He knew insanity up close and personal.

Patti LuPone lived with Kevin Kline

Bette Midler lived with Peter Riegert

Glenn Close lived with Len Cariou

Which one had the best deal?

R60's video. Dorothy singing "Easy Street." There are about three seconds in that video that capture what Dorothy did that was all hers. She comes on mugging, and continues to play it full out, and then at 0:35 - 0:37 she stops for a moment and gives a look that shows all the frustration of her entire life and the depth of her desire for her luck to get better. It tears at your heart. And then she pulls it back and goes for the big finish. That deep emotional understanding of her character and her ability to be instantly affected by it is what made her so very special. It's a very rare gift for an actress and she used it in every performance to make imbue even the broadest moment with humanity and truth.

R64, I disagree. I hated Peters as Rose. No layers. No depth. Just that babydoll voice trying to be taken seriously.

R41 There are two full length videos of the the original production of Sweeney Todd on Broadway, one with Cariou/Lansbury and the other with Hearn/Loudon. They both look to have been shot by the same person probably in March/April 1980 when the cast changeover happened and have been floating around on youtube and everywhere else for years. Shouldn't be hard to find.

Bernadette Peters was tremendous as Rose in the performance I saw late in the run. But nobody tops Lansbury for me. Well, except Andrew Stevens. Just made a little inside Murder She Wrote joke just now.

R70 I've found the OBC recording a while back. Still no luck on the Hearn/Loudon recording. Just clips.

[quote]It's interesting that Lovett's accent has been mentioned a few times, but how come Cariou and Hearn never did one?

In the original production, for some reason, I would say the only people who had thick Brit accents were Lansbury and Ken Jennings as Tobias. Also Victor Garber, but not so pronounced. Even the Beggar Woman didn't really sound like a Brit. I too don't think I've ever seen a stage production that had a Sweeney with a thick Brit accent, whether Cockney or more middle class. That didn't happen till the movie, in which everyone had a Brit accent, because I believe the entire cast was British (except for Depp, who prided himself on his accent, which I guess was the same one he used in the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies.)

r68, Loudon was delicious when she performed Easy Street on the Tony Awards the year she won for Annie.

And in the previous thread we were talking about what categories actors were put into for the Tony Awards. That year both Dorothy Loudon and Andrea McArdle were put into the Best Actress category. There were no featured actresses for Annie. Nobody was billed above the title. Dorothy was billed in the middle with "And Dorothy Loudon" but then in smaller type came "With Raymond Thorne and Laurie Beechman." Interesting that Laurie Beechman got billing but Barbara Erwin as Lily didn't.

November was enjoyable tonight, it’s probably on YT for a few days like Buyer and Cellar was. I though John Malkovich and Dylan Baker were terrific and Patti was OK as a lesbian WH speechwriter.

I now realise that whenever I hear Hail to the Chief at the start of a play, R75, I expect it to end in a hail of bullets.

I've seen Assassins too many times, haven't I?

Will the Tonys Be Canceled? Broadway’s Biggest Night Might Not Happen in 2020:

Performing Original Works in a Pandemic, Artists Turn to New Tools (including Michael Urie):

Are they calling Michael Urie a tool?

Broadway considers the path forward for shows to go on:

As a. reminder r39 don't read DL while eating dinner.

Christ, but I cannot wait for the fucking Zoom shit to go away. It's a horrible experience trying to watch these things. Everyone's timing is off, the audio sucks and it's worse than community theater. Enough already, you fucking hams. Sit home and watch tv like the rest of us. We don't miss you THAT much.

Sorry for being out of the loop, but what is Zoom?

Zoom is the app used to do those video calls

[quote] Are they calling Michael Urie a tool?

If the foo shits....

Dorothy Loudon was one of the greats, and one I feel that never got her dues. Even when hamming it up, her performances are never an affectation. Effortless and innate, and always in the moment.

Loudon is another contemporary performer, like Rivera, Stritch, who was unsuited to other mediums and whose appeal was primarily to gay men. Not a bad thing but all that hamminess is pretty hard to take outside the theater.

Dorothy and George on Merv Griffin's show.

Theaters in NY are not coming back this year and well into next. There will be no Broadway or classical season at all.

Period.

End of.

Theaters cannot be used at this point until a vaccine is in place. This pointless delusion and fantasy energy is better used trying to find an alternative.

It’s delusion to condition all reopening on the development of a vaccine, R89. No, we don’t need to pretend the virus isn’t real and head back to work starting next week like some of the foolhardy red-state protestors seem to think, but we also cannot pin our collective futures on a medical intervention that may well never exist or, at minimum, take years to arrive.

Dorothy could dance!

No one in NY is going to sit on top of or six inches from a stranger in a theater in NY. And productions can’t monetarily survive with six feet of distance in a tight theater with recirculated air.

It’s not happening.

And btw, I work in the arts. There’s no way I’m going into a tight basement rehearsal room in NY (which I’m scheduled to do next season) to be breathed on and sung on and sweat on and spit on by other performers (and I’ll be doing the same myself) in order to get a performance together. Whether or not you want to sit in a theater makes no difference to a lot of performers who don’t think it’s safe to even put a show together, and theaters and producers have zero answers as to how they’ll fix it or take care of it.

NY theaters are not opening for at least a year. Again, it’s not happening.

Obviously no one on this site has been reading anything actually happening with the virus. Of course there will be people in the theaters before there is a vaccine.

R92, check out South Korea — there’s a tour of Phantom there right now that has been playing to near-full houses. No, we don’t have as good a grip on the virus as South Korea yet, but the experience there shows theater can resume without a vaccine.

Re: R80

Eldergay here who's seen more shows than I can remember and I am in no rush to get back to the theater.

I don't trust people to stay home when they're sick. Especially for popular shows, tickets are bought weeks or months in advance, and if you wake up the day of a show with a sore throat or feeling iffy, you're going to pop a few Tylenol, fill your pockets with lozenges and see the show anyway. It's either that or toss a few hundred dollars out the window.

Since we know that asymptomatic people can spread the virus, taking temperatures is useless. Will audience members be required to wear masks? How are they going to stop someone from quietly slipping their mask off halfway through the play?

And what about the poor actors? Are they expected to self-isolate during the 20 hours a day they're not at the theater? Are they going to feel comfortable playing a love scene knowing their fellow actor was at the gym, the grocery store, or working their shift as a waiter earlier in the day?

But I was amazed at the number of maskless people hanging out in Central Park in groups of seven or eight last weekend, so, if they do reopen Broadway, I have no doubt people will once again line up to buy tickets.

No, R94. There won’t. All of us who actually work in the business read about it all the time. The fact is, especially in NY, theaters, concert venues and stadiums will be the very last things to come back. There is no plan in place for them to come back right now. At all. There’s not going to be some hodgepodge thrown together plan where performers will feel safe. And that’s not counting whether audiences will WANT to come back within the next year. There has to be actual ticket buyers who go to the venue in order to make it work financially. There’s just a lot of delusion and fantasy surrounding this instant return to normal. It’s simply not happening.

More than 80 percent of the people who contract the virus experience mild to non-severe symptoms that last 2-7 days and then are done. They are then immune -- for how long is being studied. If we find they are permanently immune, that will change everything. Stay tuned.

No one is predicting an “instant return to normal” for theater, R97. But the doomer belief that nothing can happen until there’s a vaccine is equally unrealistic.

Theater is thousands of years old. If Broadway skips a season or two, nothing essential changes about the art form.

But the theaters themselves are enormously vulnerable. They cost a fortune to maintain, even when sitting empty. Taxes, insurance, building maintenance, minimal heat and electricity, a security guard, minimum union staffs. And on and on. I am much more concerned for the individual theaters on Broadway and will not be surprised to see a few of them sold off and torn down. Or worse; turned into churches.

I hope not, but the pressure is real and it is only growing.

Funny how no one here has ever mentioned Len Carious is a pompous prick.

Hello, Glynis! @ R101

[quote]New York parody writers Bob & Tobly McSmith are assuring comedy and musical theater fans of one thing - when Off-Broadway theaters are safe to reopen, they'll be aiming to bring some levity back to the city. The creators of Friends! The Musical Parody and The Office! A Musical Parody are spending their time in isolation writing PARKS & REC! THE UNAUTHORIZED MUSICAL PARODY, a new sendup of the hit TV series that will spoof America's favorite Deputy Director of the Parks and Rec Department as she eyes a run for President.

Just what the world needs right now. These two are spectacularly untalented cretins who have managed to carve out very low level "careers" for themselves by doing these abysmal, witless Off-Off-Broadway parodies of famous TV shows. They are a blight on the theater, and it's sad to see that they're planning to continue displaying their total lack of talent even in a crisis. To give you an idea of what douchebags they are, here is their "bio" from the press release about their latest dumb project:

[quote]Bob and Tobly McSmith are esteemed noblemen who met while working at a dog walking company. They effectively lost every dog and were fired, but went on to create the following masterpieces: The Office! A Musical Parody, FRIENDS! The Musical Parody, Love Actually! The Parody Musical, Bayside! The Saved by the Bell Musical (NYTimes Critics Pick), Katdashians! The Musical, and too many others. They are hard at work on their next musical: Sopranos: On Ice! A Figure Skating Parody.

I definitely agree about "too many others." Guys, PLEASE stop. Enough is enough.

[quote] Funny how no one here has ever mentioned Len Carious is a pompous prick.

Yes, he had that reputation, especially in his prime. (Less so now). But honestly, who cares? There are a lot of actors who are not nice people who are magic on stage.

More of Tyne's Rose...

When did "parody" start meaning to rip something off instead of to make fun of it?

Cariou was fucking Victoria Mallory on ALNM before she ran off with Mark Lambert. Well, it was better than George Hearn fucking the ghastly Betsy Joslyn.

R106 when "parody" became protected under the law so you don't have to ask permission of the thing/person being parodied. "Ripoff" still isn't.

Hearn's shining moment.

The attention whores that work on the Broadway stages won't be able to take a year of not being in the spotlight.

Jeez, does that mean Billy Porter starts zooming nude?

"But nobody tops Lansbury for me. Well, except Andrew Stevens."

Really? Did the character Stevens played get jiggy with Jessica? Never once saw the show.

R112, no, Stevens himself apparently got jiggy with Angie.

That old woman fucked Andrew Stevens?

Ewwwwww!

Cute guy who I guess was in the Shaw Festival’s cancelled production of Gypsy playing “You’ll Never Get Away From Me” on his guitar.

He is cute. But he needs to stop scooping. It's just poor technique. Not ever style.

Hoping he doesn't have a singing role in the show.

He plays one of the strippers' tits

"Cute guy who I guess was in the Shaw Festival’s cancelled production of Gypsy playing “You’ll Never Get Away From Me” on his guitar."

Shaw festival plans to open on July 1. Sure.

James Daly

Tyne discusses Gypsy...

Peters did get better in her run and it's a shame it was never fully documented. By the end, she was one of the best and most interesting Roses. For the first time, I really believed Rose would have been a star if she, like Louise said "had someone to push her." With the others, when Louise says that you kinda laugh and think "yeah right", but when Tammy Blanchard said it, you thought "she's absolutely right and what a shame it is that everything in Rose's life seemed to prevent her from that and how awful it must be to see her two daughters succeed in something she wanted for herself." It suddenly became less a story about some psycho narcissist stage mom and more about a broken woman who really did deserve what her children had and it was a tragedy that she didn't have her own success.

I preferred Judy Kaye and Hearn at Papermill to Lansbury and Cariou at the Uris. They weren't so batshit crazy from the beginning. They were emotionally unstable and then their longings and desires overwhelmed them turning them batshit crazy.

There's no doubt that Tyne Daly is an excellent actress. She does great in acting a song. But it's not a singing voice that you want to listen to for two hours. No amount of training can cover the fact that she just doesn't have a pleasant singing voice.

Very diplomatically put, R24.

Her singing sucked, plain and simple.

Bye Bye Birdie - Starring Miss Tyne Daly.

The Arrest Of Ai WeiWei.

The Man Who Came To Dinner.

Jean Smart as Lorraine Sheldon is worth sitting through Nathan Lane stinking up the place.

Doyenne of the West End Elaine Paige comments.

[quote]Jean Smart as Lorraine Sheldon is worth sitting through Nathan Lane stinking up the place.

Jean Smart was indeed divine but so was Nathan Lane, where you couldn't even hold his hat.

I so much prefer Lansbury's performance in the Sweeney Todd bootleg to her performance in the taping with Hearn. She’s so goofy and over the top there. At the Uris, she had a nasty and very human hue to what she was doing.

r130, I'm glad Elaine Paige is having cock in isolation, but she doesn't need to brag about it.

r120 I knew James Daly. James Daly was my father. You, sir, are no James Daly!

Is there anything in the text of GYPSY that says Rose actually tried to become a performer—training, auditioning? Or is it just implied because of the last scene?

In Some People Rose sings about "all the lodges I had to play."

Here’s what I remember most about Tyne Daly: after June leaves, there is a brief scene with Louise & Herbie, talking excitedly about how this was their chance at last to give up show business and become a real family. Rose says nothing. But the whole time, you could see the wheels turning with Tune, that she was processing losing June & figuring out the way forward. It was amazing, how she made the stillness work for her.

Here’s what I remember most about Tyne Daly: after June leaves, there is a brief scene with Louise & Herbie, talking excitedly about how this was their chance at last to give up show business and become a real family. Rose says nothing. But the whole time, you could see the wheels turning with Tune, that she was processing losing June & figuring out the way forward. It was amazing, how she made the stillness work for her.

True, she acted the hell out of it but her singing was negligible at best.

That's why Rose never became a star. Get it?

[quote]Stevens himself apparently got jiggy with Angie.

I had NEVER heard that. Any more details?

[quote]He needs to stop scooping. It's just poor technique. Not ever style.

That kind of scooping is perfectly acceptable in pop singing, including a pop rendition of a Broadway song. But you must know that, you just wanted to sound like a know-it-all.

[quote]I so much prefer Lansbury's performance in the Sweeney Todd bootleg to her performance in the taping with Hearn. She’s so goofy and over the top there. At the Uris, she had a nasty and very human hue to what she was doing.

Agreed. It's still great to have her in the taping with Hearn, but I wish she hadn't decided to overact and mug so much. I guess maybe she did that because the taping was n front of a live audience (most of it, anyway) and she didn't want to shortchange them by toning down her performance, but it seems to be me toned it way UP from what she did on Broadway, and not in a good way.

[quote]Is there anything in the text of GYPSY that says Rose actually tried to become a performer—training, auditioning? Or is it just implied because of the last scene?

It's more than implied. Rose also has that line, something about "I could have been bigger than both of you, but I was born too soon and started too late," or something like that. There are no details about how far she got in show business before giving it up for herself, but it's pretty clear that she did try to make a career as a performer, at least briefly.

I've always interpreted "all the lodges I had to play" as another instance of Rose being unable to make a distinction between her daughters and herself. in reality, the "I" is June and Loud she as narcissist extensions in f Rose's ego.

[quote]In Some People Rose sings about "all the lodges I had to play."

She's referring to the clubs her father belonged to. June and Louise started out as toddlers performing at the Elks Lodge et al,, but Rose wanted to hit the big time already. It's been a while since I read Gypsy's memoir, but the musical is actually pretty faithful to it. Louise goes into detail about her grandmother being absent and her grandfather practically raising Rose on his own and how she was a daddy's girl. He often would give in to her. But he didn't approve of show business and only allowed the kids to perform at his lodges. He put his foot down about taking them on the road, which she did anyway. That said, I don't recall if Rose attempted a career herself early on. Probably not, since her father said no.

Rose didn't spend a lot of time being married. I think she had ambitions beyond settling down to a domesticated life.

There's no fucking way the theater industry's going to pin its collective or even gradual reopening on when a vaccine comes. Not too long after movie theaters are back and running, probably just after the concerts and sporting events, so's live theater. You don't want to attend or work in it, you don't have to. Some people shouldn't and, well, honestly, it'll probably get rid of some deadwood. I do think we're going to have a generation or so of insufferable actors, dancers, etc. fretting about being prone to COVID/over-dramatizing a close call/etc.

When Rob Ashford directs the revival of Gypsy (with Scarlett Johansson), we'll see the younger Dream Rose flitting in and out of upstage pools of light, trying to break into show business. It will be revolutionary.

[quote]And btw, I work in the arts. There’s no way I’m going into a tight basement rehearsal room in NY (which I’m scheduled to do next season) to be breathed on and sung on and sweat on and spit on by other performers (and I’ll be doing the same myself) in order to get a performance together. Whether or not you want to sit in a theater makes no difference to a lot of performers who don’t think it’s safe to even put a show together, and theaters and producers have zero answers as to how they’ll fix it or take care of it.

Will Socially Distanced Rehearsals Leave Space for Good Theater?

Opening is not going to be decided by the theaters or producers dear. They have no choice about when they open. It will be decided by the governor and to a lesser extent the mayor. And the governor has already made it quite clear that the theaters will not be opened until it’s deemed safe by the science.

And that’s a long fucking way off R145, so shut your fucking trap.

Well, on one hand, I agree that it's going to be a long time before theaters come back -- just too risky and audiences (and actors, too) likely won't feel comfortable with the idea until -- even short of a vaccine -- a real treatment is in place. However, I really don't see how the governor can give the okay for talk show audiences to return to the studios (Stephen Colbert was quizzing Cuomo about this on his show last night, who did not commit to anything) but not do the same for the performing arts (theater, dance, opera, etc.). Talk show audiences are packed in pretty much the same way Broadway audiences are and for about as long (an hour or more to tape one episode), so I imagine when one is given the green light to return, they all will be. (Of course, whether enough people show up to be there is a whole other aspect.)

R145 is an idiot. End of story.

And let’s be clear, Nick Cordero’s story is a close and personal one to everyone on Broadway, and no one wants to go down that road.

That reminds me, back in the last thread, somebody claimed Cordero had a pre-existing condition. Did they ever back up that claim?

"That kind of scooping is perfectly acceptable in pop singing, including a pop rendition of a Broadway song."

And it's still bad, affected singing, especially in musical theatre, where acting intentions should supersede all notions of indulgent vocal "style."

Does anyone have any clue who seems to be keeping Kyle Dean Massey and Taylor Frey while they spend their lockdown in Palm Springs? Judging by the robes he has them wearing I guess we can rule out anyone with taste

I do not like CHARLOTTE ST. MARTIN .

Charlotte is a refugee from another long-dead, never-to-return era. She needs to go away. Now.

Anyone else watch "By Jeeves" streaming on YouTube? Available all weekend.

There's a reason it doesn't get produced a lot regionally. Or anywhere, ever. But maybe it's just me...

[quote]And it's still bad, affected singing, especially in musical theatre, where acting intentions should supersede all notions of indulgent vocal "style."

Not in a pop rendition of a musical theater song, clearly performed in pop style with a guitar. "Scooping" (your derogatory word for it) is NOT considered "affected" in pop singing, no matter how loudly and repeated you insist otherwise, you numbskull.

[quote]]Jeez, does that mean Billy Porter starts zooming nude?

Basically nude but still covered with lace, tulle, sequins and other brilliants.

The Streetcar worth seeing is the Blanchett one. Are there any bootlegs of that? I've never seen one.

R159 If you've never seen it, how can you claim it's the one worth seeing?

Someone on the Disastrous Casting Considerations thread mentioned disapprovingly that Olivia de Havilland was under serious consideration for Blanche in the original film of Streetcar (which is true). I don't understand the shade. Under Kazan's direction, I think she might have made a very fine Blanche. Any thoughts?

Lol I meant I've never seen a bootleg of it. It's like the Holy Grail of bootlegs.

I can't quite picture Livvie going for it as far as Blanche is concerned. Besides which, Blanche has emotional/reality problems, and Vivien Leigh was bipolar. It was a match made in heaven.

[quote]somebody claimed Cordero had a pre-existing condition

Yes. He would scoop when singing a pop version of a Broadway song.

A singer might find an effective place in a song to scoop a note, but that kid didn't do it. Not in any of the five scoops in the first half of the song. And not when he does it again on the refrain.

Until he figures out how to do it better and more judiciously, then stop. And maybe find a lower key that better suits his range.

But he's adorable. He's absolutely adorable.

2:45 The queen of scoops. Horrid.

what the heck is scooping???

Theatre needs to come back because these threads.

[quote]Someone on the Disastrous Casting Considerations thread mentioned disapprovingly that Olivia de Havilland was under serious consideration for Blanche in the original film of Streetcar (which is true).

She wasn't beautiful enough for Blanche. For the screen, Blanche needed to have some evidence of having been beautiful. She might could have played Stella.

I think on the extras of the Passion dvd, there's an interview with Sondheim and he gets mad at Donna Murphy scooping a note. He says something to the effect that a composer works very hard choosing just the right note and then an actor comes along and doesn't sing it.

[quote]what the heck is scooping???

It actually should be called sliding. It's when a singer chooses a note a bit higher or lower than the note that is written and slides into the note rather than singing the note directly as written.

I agree: it's sliding. Dinah Shore used to "scoop" when she sang.

I like two scoops!

R166 I hope you were kidding. Doretta Morrow’s singing of that gorgeous song has never been bettered in any recording I’ve heard. She is sublime.

Renee Zellwegger scooping her way through Judy Garland's catalog.

Dinah was a scooper? Was Peggy?

[quote] That reminds me, back in the last thread, somebody claimed Cordero had a pre-existing condition. Did they ever back up that claim?

No they did not. And if you read one of the daily interviews People Magazine online publishes with the wife, she's always been adamant that he had no pre-existing conditions.

Maybe we’ll get a lot of new Seth Rudetsky videos?

[quote] People Magazine online publishes with the wife, she's always been adamant that he had no pre-existing conditions.

He could have had a pre-existing condition that was undiagnosed. Think about it. They don't just chop off limbs unless there is a major problem.

Don't hear much scooping in that. If you want scooping, the king was Spiro Malas. In "The Most Happy Fella, it was painful but he eventually did hit the note eventually. By the time he did Milk and Honey Off-Broadway, he never actually got to the right note. Ever. Oy.

Covid-19 causes blood clots in some people. It has been reported that this is what happened to Cordero and created the need for the amputation.

Whoever is titling the next thread sure as hell better work scoop into it.

[quote] He could have had a pre-existing condition that was undiagnosed. Think about it. They don't just chop off limbs unless there is a major problem.

I don't need to think about it. There have been numerous articles written about the fact that COVID can cause sometimes hundreds of blood clots.

[quote]She wasn't beautiful enough for Blanche. For the screen, Blanche needed to have some evidence of having been beautiful. She might could have played Stella.

Not at her age. She was in her mid-30s in 1951.

I'm with you R174. KISMET has been a favorite of mine since I was a little gayling, borrowing OCRs from the local library and reading Stanley Green's 'The World of Musical Comedy' when I should've been doing my homework.

She didn't have the big enough name, but they should have gone with Olive Deering for the movie of "Streetcar." She would have given us a Blanche for the ages.

[quote] She might could have played Stella.

"Might could?" Joan Fontaine was not southern.

[quote]Joan Fontaine was not southern.

Oh, my! That's funny. Neither were Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter or Karl Malden. Elia Kazan, too.

Perhaps the title should be Theatre Gossip #389-The Biggest Scoop of the Decade?

Because there’s, like, a Gypsy tie-in.

[quote] Joan Fontaine was not southern. Oh, my! That's funny. Neither were Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter or Karl Malden. Elia Kazan, too.

Or the Streetcar!

r189 thanks for the playing.

It would have been fun to have OdeH play Blanche with JF as Stella. The play would have ended after the first scene, with Stella sending Blanche off the booby hatch toute de suite.

Miss Ashford's story at 20:05 segues into her entering the glamorous world of Miss Andree.

r188 WHOOSH! Did you miss the quotation marks around "might could?" I was pointing out that only southerners use that expression.

Oh god. Leslie Uggams is a disaster in the Blithe Spirit on YT now. She might as well give her rendition on “June is Busting Out All Over.”

Six scoops, Dolores! Not five!

Lest we forget...

Subtitles start at 1:28.

I know they all mean well but this Blithe Spirit is painful and a leaden slog. Maybe just a bad idea for this Zoom format and the cast has no idea what makes Coward work. It’s not easy to pull off under the best circumstances

and now they've changed the label on Uggams screen and spelled "Arcati" wrong

This is neither here nor there, but Viennese opera audiences love sopranos who scoop, though the style has been moribund for a while.

Hilde Gueden, for you opera buffs out there, made her career on scooping. The critics are anguished and shake their fists, but nothing could stop her. In The Magic Flute, Arabella, La Boheme...there she was, scooping away. And the crowd went wild.

That Blithe Spirit could serve as the death blow for colorblind casting. It was absolutely awful. If they at least had a genuine black Brit like Cush Jumbo playing Elvira it might have been bearable.

It’s been 3 hours and it’s still going!

They lost 200 viewers from when it first started. Gee, I wonder why.

Speaking of disasters...

I scrolled through and don’t think I saw this happy news posted here as of yet. Choosing the name Hope seems very fitting, what a resilient, amazing woman. I only saw her on the Americans, but she must be wonderful on stage as well.

I roll my eyes whenever I hear someone say that so-and-so was a better Mrs Lovett than Lansbury.

I have literally seen a dozen productions of Sweeney Todd. No one came close

JFC, after watching that video of Blythe Danner, I NEVER want to hear another bad word about Tyne Daly as Rose.

Also, is Lucy/Jessie REALLY what they settled on for that number? It's a terrible song.

Leslie Uggams' internet feed was the problem; she hardly got to do any of the role; the director took over. The one who was really rather good was Montego Glover, who turned made Ruth into the standout role. The guy didn't really have the style, though he was good-looking and Renee Elise Goldsberry was mostly shouting and being the sexy imp that Elvira is supposed to be. Plus with a 10-minute or so stop to try to get Leslie Uggams feed to work, the thing last over 3 hours! Plus Brian Stokes Mitchell disappeared after an introduction. It doesn't work without at least somewhat cultured American accents .

"not" being the sexy imp

The Widower Mazzie and Kelli-O were on the latest "Stars in the House" (last night.)

Who did 50 percent the best?

Barbra, who added a dramatic scene at the beginning

Beatrice Arthur

Michael Feinstein

Elvira died young. She is Charles lost youth. Now he has a house and responsibilities and stuffy friends.

So why do they always cast Elvira so old. She is the sexual fantasy of a man who misses a world of infinite possibilities.

Suzanne Somers, who does a monologue at the beginning.

Suzanne Somers, who prefaces it with a monologue.

Carolee Carmello

Elaine Stritch

Many of you must have seen this but those who hasn’t this is amazing. No wonder Judi is national treasure.

And the grande dame herself, Dorothy Loudon

It's so damn hot today, I'd kill for two scoops of something cold and frosty...

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival had postponed its current season until September. Yesterday they cancelled it completely. That's a blow not only to the Festival but to the town of Ashland and all its restaurants, hotels, inns, B&Bs, shops, etc. Other than Southern Oregon University, Ashland is pretty much a one-company town.

Volpone - Act One.

Volpone - Act One.

why did Sondheim ever allow such a shitty production of the 2001 Follies ever make it to broadway?

Volpone - Act Two.

I watched the National Theatre Live's Antony and Cleopatra up to the intermission and decided I'd had enough. It wasn't bad necessarily, but it seemed shouty and unsubtle. Plus, it's not my favorite Shakespeare play (is it anyone's?). Some lovely lines, though, especially Enobarbus's speech about Cleopatra's barge.

That said, I am always amazed by what the set designers do with that massive revolve and the elevators at the Olivier.

R227 I find their Modern Dress Shakespeare rarely work.

This is just an awful Live, At Lincoln Centre.

Dorothy's my choice in the "Fifty Percent" race. That said, I've long suspected that had Bea Arthur starred in Ballroom, the show would have lasted at least a season.

I’d love to see Maureen Lipman do it in London. She might be too old for it now, though. Ballroom hasn’t had a West End run although I think it’s been done in the provinces.

R166 doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

[quote]That said, I am always amazed by what the set designers do with that massive revolve and the elevators at the Olivier.

Which made their Loveland all the more disappointing

[quote] why did Sondheim ever allow such a shitty production of the 2001 Follies ever make it to broadway?

It wasn’t a production that came in from anywhere. It was planned for Broadway from the get go. It’s entirely possible that the warning signs didn’t show up till late in rehearsals or in previews, which would have been way too late to pull the plug.

[quote]why did Sondheim ever allow such a shitty production of the 2001 Follies ever make it to broadway?

Why doe$ $ondheim ever allow anything to be done?

Why did he let foghorn Stritch play Madame Armfeldt, a woman who was once very desirable (and discreet)? Why did he let Stritch scream her way through "I'm Still Here" not even attempting to sing half the notes he'd written?

[quote] I roll my eyes whenever I hear someone say that so-and-so was a better Mrs Lovett than Lansbury. I have literally seen a dozen productions of Sweeney Todd. No one came close

Spoken like a true Sondheimite. We get it. Only the originals are best. Only the originals are legends. No can do "Ladies Who Lunch" better than Stritch, no is a better Sally than Dorothy Collins and so on and so on.....

For the best Fifty Per Cent, go with Dorothy.

Dorothy Collins.

A lot of women have done “Ladies Who Lunch” better than or equal to Stritch.

But no one has touched Dorothy Collins’ Sally, and I mean the whole performance, not just the songs.

Seth Rudetsky just said they’re going to redo Blithe Spirit due to the technical issues? Oh, for the love of god, there’s no reason to. It was terrible.

[quote] Ballroom hasn’t had a West End run although I think it’s been done in the provinces.

Did it ever have any major productions after Broadway here is the States? Does anyone ever do it now? Is it worth revisiting?

Nick Cosgrove and the Carnegie- Mellon musicians with " Fifty Percent."

Was it an all black Blithe Spirit? R238?

Scooping bothers the hell out of me when it's not well done, but I'm sorry, I think that kid's performance of "You'll Never Get Away From Me" is excellent in the pop style in which he chose to perform it -- with guitar. And his scooping sounds fine because the scoops are really quick each time, and when he does get to each note that's written, he sings it perfectly on pitch. You can disagree if you like, but that's my opinion.

No, R241, two of the actors in it are Asian-American.

My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies - Fifty Percent - Dorothy Loudon - 9/28/1998

Perfection!

Am I the only one who thinks “Fifty a Percent” is a pretty poorly written song. Tacking the “at all” at the very end is bad writing. The thought is over at the word “else.”

No “a” before “percent.

Yes, R246, you're the ONLY one...

50 Percent is such a boring and stupid song but considering it came from the Bergmans, that shouldn't be a surprise. The only one who gave it the justice it deserved was Suzanne Somers.

[quote]Why did Sondheim ever allow such a shitty production of the 2001 Follies ever make it to broadway?

I think one reason, other than the one mentioned above (that the warning signs weren't all there from the beginning), is that maybe the Roundabout made a long term commitment to him to revive (or import revivals) of several of his other shows thereafter. Sondheim seems to be all about the number of high profile productions of his shows, regardless of quality. Plus , of course, the Roundabout eventually named a theater after him, though I have no idea if they promised him that when he let them do FOLLIES rather than allow the tremendously superior Paper Mill production to come it.

The Roundabout Follies was easily the worst production of the show I've seen. A few ok performances, but most of it didn't work at all. Then again, besides Cabaret you can say that avoid just about every Roundabout revival. What's their problem exactly?

[quote]Am I the only one who thinks “Fifty a Percent” is a pretty poorly written song.

Yes. There's no "hook" to the song. It doesn't draw the listener in. The lyrics are a muddled mess. One longs to be listening to "If He Walked Into My Life" which is the song that Fifty Percent ripped off. The only reason it saw the light of day was that Dorothy Loudon is an excellent song stylist. It's the type of song that usually gets cut in Boston. Now it's relegated to basement gay piano bars where lonely, tipsy gay men screech it out thinking it's worth singing.

[quote]Then again, besides Cabaret you can say that avoid just about every Roundabout revival. What's their problem exactly?

Cabaret was just a recreation of the Donmar Warehouse production. So you can't even count that because it really wasn't a "Roundabout" production.

The Roundabout's problem is poor artistic direction. They hire no talent directors, surround them with famous actors who are miscast and expect magic.

Sondheim has said very often (more frequently as he's gotten so close to death) that he's wondering how he'll be remembered in the future, or if he'll even be remembered. I think that makes him much more lenient as to what works will be performed and how they will be performed.

When Sondheim dies, that boyfriend of his is going to sell the entire catalog. You think a female Bobbi is bad? Wait until you see a drag queen playing Madame Armfeldt, the all male Into The Woods and a puppet version of Sunday In The Park directed by Julie Taymor.

It's worth it for her tales of Kit Andree that she segues to starting at 20:10, r228.

When Sondheim dies, in 50 years, we’ll only have revivals of Sweeney. The rest will be relegated to Encores

There will be an Into the Woods revival every five year R256

Sondheim said he felt the only two shows remembered would be WSS and Gypsy.

The COMPANY original cast album is the most valuable part of that show. And it will be well known and still enjoyed 100 years from now.

Is there any video of Peters' 'Everything's Coming Up Roses'? I've seen video and live audio of her Rose's Turn, but never the Act I closer (outside of cast recording)

R254 When Sondheim dies, that boyfriend will probably be very disappointed with the contents of Steve's will

r261

what's the BF's name?

Jeff Romley. Whilst Googling that - which apparently R262 is inacapable of - I found that apparently he's a producer of Randy Rainbow's show. Which I guess explains that awful segment on that 90th birthday thing.

What's the name of the boy in the basement?

[quote]The Roundabout Follies was easily the worst production of the show I've seen. A few ok performances, but most of it didn't work at all. Then again, besides Cabaret you can say that avoid just about every Roundabout revival. What's their problem exactly?

Several problems. Really bad producing in general, and they very annoyingly tend to cast actors with some name value even when they're all wrong for the roles.

[quote]The Roundabout's problem is poor artistic direction.

That too. And the man in question takes credit for their "successes" but then, when they have a disaster like BYE BYE BIRDIE, he claims he has no artistic control over their productions.

[quote]There's no "hook" to the song. It doesn't draw the listener in. The lyrics are a muddled mess. One longs to be listening to "If He Walked Into My Life" which is the song that Fifty Percent ripped off.

What the holy f$(ck are you talking about? Please give examples of lyrics in FIFTY PERCENT that a "muddled mess." And the song has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with "If He Walked Into My Life."

Finally watched Michael Urie in Buyer and Cellar on YouTube. Really enjoyed it, both the show itself and his performance. He's talented.

[quote]Please give examples of lyrics in FIFTY PERCENT that a "muddled mess."

Both Fifty Percent and If He Walked Into My Life are songs about a woman needing to fill a place in her life.

In Fifty Percent, within two verses, she drones on about dressing him. It's wasted space because It tells us nothing about the woman that we couldn't have already guessed.

I don't iron his shirts

I don't sew on his buttons

I don't pick out his ties

Compare it to the introspection of Mame:

Were the years a little fast?

Was his world a little free?

Was there too much of a crowd

All too lush and loud

And not enough of me?

"Fifty Percent" might have redundant lyrics when sung outside the show, but consider that the character of Bea is a widow who has just learned her man has a wife of his own. And they're all late middle aged at least. I think it's as poignant as a someone like Mame Dennis finally getting introspective about Patrick, the one person she loves the most. And for that matter, "If He Walked Into My Life" is also a little odd-sounding out of context. How many romances are spoiled by a crowd. Anyway, for the TL;DR folks, they're both fine eleven o'clock numbers.

"Plus, it's not my favorite Shakespeare play (is it anyone's?)"

Perhaps not my favorite but the language, the poetry....dear God! Enobarbus' speech about the approach of the barge is a one-act play in itself! And scenes with Cleo throwing her weight around (like the hissy, haughty one with the messenger) are just delicious....

Fifty Percent, its surface charms, notwithstanding, is one of the lamest songs for a musical ever written. If a friend told you they were willing to be a back street woman for the man they loved, would you applaud their choice? Of course you wouldn't. Then why should an audience approve Bea's decision? One of several reasons why Ballroom failed.

Ursula

LOL wrooong thread. sorry! ^^

I thought for sure it was going to be a clip of Ursula singing Fifty Percent.

I wish! R273

I don't scrub out his shells...

[quote]Both Fifty Percent and If He Walked Into My Life are songs about a woman needing to fill a place in her life.

....in totally different situations. What a lame, over-general "comparison." Epic fail on your part.

And the lyrics you quoted from "Fifty Percent" are not muddled in any way. Bea is a completely different character, with a completely different, far more mundane lifestyle then Mame Dennis, so the words she would sing in a song like this would have to be very different as well. That's good songwriting, not bad songwriting. Epic fail #2 on your part.

[quote]Bea is a completely different character, with a completely different, far more mundane lifestyle

And that's the problem. Mundane lifestyles don't make interesting musical theater. Who wants to hear a song from someone mundane. There's a reason why nobody has tried to musicalize "Frankie & Johnny In The Claire de Lune." There's nothing in their lives to sing about Epic fail on your part.

The problem is not that the woman is mundane. The problem is that the authors wrote a dramatic musical monologue about a woman who settles. Not one who wins, even though she says she does. Kinda. And not really one who tragically loses. Those things would be dramatic. Settling is not very dramatic. It gives the actress nothing to do but crank it up and try to put the damned song over. And she comes off as foolish.

Sadly, fifty percent is about how far the damn song takes you. It's all very muddled.

[quote]There's no "hook" to the song (Fifty Percent). It doesn't draw the listener in...

Not true. The song starts with an introduction that says "I can't believe where I am today - what dilemma I'm facing". Then the song begins with introspection about why the relationship won't work - all the things that would never happen that you would expect from a traditional relationship. Then comes the "hook". She realizes that she's older, she's lonely, and she knows who/what she wants. Yes, this mundane, conservative, scared woman is willing to compromise. She'll "settle" for 50% rather than to wait for someone else.

And if you think this problem sounds trite, listen to the recording at R240 when it's sung by a man. I've had to consider making the exact same compromise when I dated a wonderful married man (many years ago). In my case, I was not willing to compromise. But I was young. I wonder what I would have done if I were older?

"I Know Him So Well" is about two women who are forced to compromise. That song hooks the listener in. And it really zings when it is sung by a man and a woman.

He needs his fantasy and freedom!

And a better song.

I've sat through some dull ass Theatre Gossip threads but this never ending conversation about 50 Percent is worse than sitting through a Kathie Lee Gifford musical.

The major R&H shows are all over 60 years old and they still get produced (Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, King and I, Sound of Music) and it seems likely they'll continue to get produced for another 60. Gilbert & Sullivan isn't exactly very hip anymore and their shows are still getting done. R&H will be the same along with Lerner & Lowe.

And, Gypsy and West Side Story are still going to be around for a long time. Great shows with terrific music.

As for Sondheim's other major work, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Assassins, and A Little Night Music will be produced for many more decades for the same reason. They're very popular shows for regional, community and educational theater.

As for Follies and Company, they're both tougher shows because they're so very specifically locked into the period they were written and set but they're both beloved by people who love the scores so they'll around but they're the ones most likely to get performed in concert form. Same thing with SITPWG and Pacific Overtures and Passion.

Isaac Powell and the West Side Story orchestra give us a Zoom performance of Something's Coming. Gorgeous.

Link in case the embed doesn't work (remove the spaces): instagram . com / p / B_8KOWBjahl /

[quote] As for Sondheim's other major work, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Assassins, and A Little Night Music will be produced for many more decades for the same reason.

I think you’re wrong about Assassins. I’d swap in Forum for that show.

Assassins continues to be produced successfully. Forum is an iffy bet, since most of the humor is dated. You won’t see major productions again for a long time, if ever. It’s now American Gilbert and Sullivan.

The gender politics of forum would be tricky now. Too bad.

People will always pay for tits and ass. Forum can give it them. It will survive.

Fifty Percent is a mediocre song on paper. In performance, it's a minor masterpiece.

Dated humor? Sexually inappropriate? Time will tell, I guess, about Forum. But you could make those same arguments about several Shakespeare plays. If that James Corden Forum ever happens, I bet it will be a huge hit. The Nathan Lane production sure was.

The unfunny One Man Two Guvnor was Forum.

Not going back.

I'd never seen a production or read Anthony and Cleopatra until I saw Ivo van Hove's Roman Tragedies a few years ago. I did and English Literature degree, and thought I was vaguely familiar with all the major works of Shakespeare (it feels like I've seen a thousand different Hamlets). But I'm not a Shakespeare fan, and am dubious of any claim as to the universalism or timelessness of any work of literature - particularly dramatic literature.

But Anthony and Cleopatra? I really fucking loved it. At it's core, I thought it was a play about how people sometimes do really ill-advised things when they're horny.

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I can't quite imagine Dolores Gray singing "Fifty Percent." Dolores seemed more of the Joan Crawford "tear down that bitch of a bearing wall" type.

Sondheim's argument was the G&S were Gods in their day and the audiences for their work is petering out, just like for opera and ballet. Who knows what people will be interested in 20 years from now and although DL continues to discuss Follies, it remains an elusive theatre piece. It is significant that he felt his two most enduring works would be those that had music written by someone else.

And yet the NT Follies proves that the show can be done justice by those who weren't alive in the time to which it harkens back, nor part of the culture/nation.

I saw the NT Follies last year and remember being impressed by the relative youth of the audience. Broadway audiences seem much older.

[quote]It is significant that he felt his two most enduring works would be those that had music written by someone else.

Sondheim is no fool. He knows he's a genius lyricist... and a good, at times great, but not genius composer.

Bernstein was a genius composer. Jule Stein approached genius.

The original Follies ran for a year in NY and only a few months in LA and that was in 1971-72. Yet it seems all DL saw it also making them old as hell. There's mystique around this project, even with the various videos of the original production. Because younger audiences have not been flocking to theatre, what will its fate be once the generation that claims to have seen the original dies out. What is interesting is how many people who truly saw the original, hated it. The Time cover story resulted in numerous negative letters to the editor and even Prince admitted that walkouts were a problem.

Someone on DL noted that Follies freaks were a bit like heroin addicts, always trying to find that high they got from the original.

Sondheim continues to be extremely popular in the US and UK. Not Hamilton popular, but I have seen almost all of his shows in the last five years, some several times.

[Quote] Someone on DL noted that Follies freaks were a bit like heroin addicts, always trying to find that high they got from the original.

And yet, the NT production was roundly praised - even on these theatre gossip threads, where we hate everything.

[quote]I saw the NT Follies last year and remember being impressed by the relative youth of the audience. Broadway audiences seem much older.

The UK seems to do a better job about educating youth about culture. The times that I've visited London, I was very impressed how many teenagers were in the audience for Shakespeare productions.

Though sometimes that's the problem, R302. I've often been at a terrible production of a Shakespeare and looked with pity at the poor schoolkids all round me who've been dragged there because it's on the syllabus. Often the company (if a subsidised one) has produced it only because it's on the syllabus, and not because the director had a single idea about it, or any of the actors really wanted to be there.

Whereas I've also seen wonderful productions but there are no kids there because the play isn't on the syllabus, or not that year. And I know if they HAD been there they'd have understood every word because the actors understood every word, and they'd have had a chance to learn to love Shakespeare.

It's a great idea to try to educate kids about theatre, especially Shakespeare, by letting them see it, but if you show them bad productions they'll think that's what all theatre, or all Shakespeare, is like.

R301, will the NT Follies evoke the kind of slavish devotion the original did? No chance.

FOLLIES' flaws only add to its mystique.

So Sondheim's musings have a great deal to do with mass popularity. He seemingly understands that (his) works don't get more popular in the future. He clearly is missing having a Hamilton, Wicked or, dare I say, Chicago on his resume.

[Quote] will the NT Follies evoke the kind of slavish devotion the original did? No chance.

It doesn't need to. It has proven that FOLLIES can live beyond memories of the original production.

The original was perfectly cast. That's the difference. When the time comes that the equals of Dorothy Collins and Alexis Smith play their roles, that production will be remembered. If the equals could be found of John McMartin and Gene Nelson and Ethel Shutta and Yvonne DeCarlo and on and on.... The Follies Freaks would melt.

A soundboard recording of the LA production exists after John McMartin and Dorothy Collins left the show. Janet Blair just wasn't the same. She was perfectly fine, but there was no cult following without Dorothy Collins and John McMartin. The production closed soon after those leads were replaced.

R307, I think that's ridiculous. One production succeeded (In London) after several tried it. If all of those other productions failed, there has to be something wrong with the source material.

Let's get real: Sondheim would KILL to have written as successful and popular as HAMILTON, WICKED, or CHICAGO. He might admit it..

Sondheimites can dismiss these shows and their success (so vulgar!), but as SS has pointed out: he's creating shows for the mainstream commercial theatre, for Broadway (for the most part), not for Ars Nova or the Moscow Arts Theatre or the Paducah Shakespeare Festival.

I love a lot of Sondheim's work, but the Sondeimites and the mythology they create are really the worst. It's not enough to love every SS exhalation; it's that one must despise everything else as inferior. That's what makes it a cult.

The "Follies Freaks" will be dead, dear.

A successful production can facilitate another successful production down the line. No more, no less.

[Quote] Let's get real: Sondheim would KILL to have written as successful and popular as HAMILTON, WICKED, or CHICAGO. He might admit it..

If that were true, he'd have lyriced an ALW show in the 1980s. He went his own way.

[Quote] The "Follies Freaks" will be dead, dear.

For that, I can’t wait. Only then will these threads be able to discuss something more substantial that Follies

There is no problem with the source material other than it is not especially commercial. The problem is with producers who try to make a financial hit out of it. The problem is with directors who don't understand the material and try to change it.

FOLLIES has been picked at again and again by people who wanted to turn it into a hit. They never made it better. They always made it worse. And their productions were never hits. The National Theatre returned to the original book and gave the production a director with good ideas and they had a significant artistic success. And, apparently, a good financial success, too. They brought it back after its original run.

He probably tried but couldn't succeed. He is perhaps NOW melancholy over he fact that he went his own way. Even in the 70s, he rather sadly noted that his only truly successful pop song was SITC, which made no sense outside of ALNM.

The song made no sense outside of Night Music? Come now. Its huge popular success and many recordings make that comment absurd.

[Quote] I think that's ridiculous. One production succeeded (In London) after several tried it. If all of those other productions failed, there has to be something wrong with the source material.

Or the right approach wasn't found. The NT Follies had two first rate performances - Janie Dee and Jospehine Barstow. Yet, it succeeded better than any major production since the original. It proves that a revival doesn't have to approach the original to work. That's a good thing for the future of the property.

Exactly how many performances did the NT Follies perform in total?

Popular of not, the meaning of Send in the Clowns has been addressed in theatre threads on DL so it is not as clear cut as you might imagine, even within the context of the show. Outside the show, if you're not familiar with show business lingo, it's perplexing. Beautiful melody, however.

Before Streisand would record it, she insisted that Sondheim write lyrics that would fill the gap created by the dialogue scene that takes place in the middle of the song and sets up the last passage. Without his additional lyric, or the dialogue, the song has a big gap in its progression. And he has agreed with her. Certainly, he wrote the lyric she requested for his most famous song.

[Quote] there was no cult following without Dorothy Collins and John McMartin. The production closed soon after those leads were replaced.

The Broadway production closed WITH those leads.

R320, it transferred to LA's Shubert with those originals and Blair replaced Collins shortly before it closed.

Oh, for fuck's sake. Go read it again, R320.

L.A. L.A. L.A.

Pop songs don't need to make sense.

You know what did not pass the test of time? Two Gentleman of Verona, which won best musical over Follies. History has made its judgment quite clear.

As has Chicago over A Chorus Line.

[Quote] Oh, for fuck's sake. Go read it again, [R320]. L.A. L.A. L.A.

Not necessary. The point was that John McMartin and Dorothy Collins did not keep any production open. Hal Prince kept the Broadway production running. No one in FOLLIES was box office at that stage in their careers.

Sondheim of all people would want his songs to make sense.

R324 is correct. I love "Two Gentlemen of Verona," but it has not evinced any greatness as it as aged. Follies certainly has.

But what a luxury in 1971, to have two important theater composers create two extremely original works for the Broadway stage. Oh, for that to happen again.

Theater Tawk...FOLLIES 1971

Are we really disputing Sondheim's legacy? Jesus fucking Christ. More so than any other writer of the American theatre in the second half of the twentieth century, his legacy is ASSURED. Assuming that opera companies will be in existence after the current crisis, Sweeney Todd and West Side Story are already in the operatic canon. Sunday in the Park with George is getting there Into the Woods probably will be soon, too. They've never been enormous commercial successes, but they are major, major cultural works and will continue to be so. They are part of the American and western cultural canon. That ain't changing anytime soon.

And even if it isn't... Even if nobody's performing his works in 50, a 100 years time, during his lifetime he expanded the horizon of the American musical. Others came and will come in his wake. Both his work, and him as a writer will continue to be significant reference points,.

And yeah, he could have written his Hamilton or his Wicked. But I'm fairly certain that getting even a small percentage of royalties from West Side Story means that for the most of his adult life he has had more money than he knew what to do with.

R330, a lot of verbiage because it's Sondheim who is questioning not his legacy so much as his longevity. The greats who came before him were bigger in their day than he was and even though they are still performed, theater, like everything else, moves on and their popularity becomes smaller and smaller. A big huge hit, one that resonates with the audience is something he has never really had. Even WSS and Gypsy were not hits in their original runs.

They weren't flops, r331.

R332, correct. But they weren't "Oklahoma" type blockbusters. WSS's reputation grew because of the movie and "Gypsy" because of Merman and her continual performances of the songs on TV shows.

Aren't any other Sondheim fans a little put off by the hyperbole behind the constant celebrations? I thought most of the online 90th B-day celebration was lovely, but it could/should have been half as long. And I could have lived without all the Carnegie Hall tributes on PBS over the decades, over and over again. Let alone the "Marry Me A Little/Putting It Together/Side By Side" revues.

Bock and Harnick wrote wonderful, classic musicals over the years. Kander and Ebb wrote wonderful, classic musicals over the years. A dozen other writers (Jule Stein, the underappreciated Cy Coleman, Ahrens and Flaherty) have done the same during Sondheim's reign.

They don't have Carnegie Hall tributes on PBS everytime they exhale. Enough already. Only Andrew Lloyd Webber matches this level of self-mythologizing.

It's Jule Styne, you fat whore.

Not fat, but otherwise correct, R335.

If Sondheim was truly interested in eternal success, he would have written more music for the movies. He could have taken his career in that direction if he wanted to. Instead, he chose to write intellectual music, lyrics with wordplay and internal rhymes and music that was difficult and non-hummable.

Plays and musicals find longevity when there is excellence in the writing. Gioachino Rossini wrote 39 operas. Some of them are as famous as any opera ever written. But not most of them. Many of them have titles very few people would know. No doubt all of them have plenty of good writing in them, but there is this group of his operas which have risen to the top. If the writing is suffused with excellence and the themes are universal, the work will live.

Show Boat is 93 years old and remains viable because of Kern's score, Ferber's story and themes, and Hammerstein's adaptation of them to the stage. Quality musical writing. Universal themes. Gilbert and Sullivan wrote about manners and mores and political concerns of their age. A lot of what was happening in those operettas is lost to us today But not Ol' Man River. It will never age.

Meyerbeer used to be the biggest thing in opera years ago, though his spectaculars were probably closer to ALW than to Sondheim. But opera houses rarely do his works -- occasionally "Le prophete" or "Les Hugenots" gets done. He was huge in his day, huge box-office too. You never know about what will last.

[quote]As has Chicago over A Chorus Line.

As has Wicked over Avenue Q.

Into the Woods will be the show that lasts forever. It has a beautiful score and a funny and then very touching story based on fairy tale characters who have already lasted centuries. Sweeney will be second. The rest of them all have reasons why they will be more limited.

Nah. GYPSY will outlast them all.

R342, I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but I do think Gypsy will be the longest lasting if only for the score.

GYPSY has a story that will always have an audience. Celebrity. Mommy issues. The whole shebang.

Gypsy isn't a Sondheim show. It's a Jule Styne show. Music trumps lyrics every time.

I'm rather glad Merman had Styne do the music to "Gypsy" rather than Sondheim. I don't know if it would have lasted as long, though back then a few years later with "Forum" Sondheim would write more hummable, melodic music for an entire score, without large chunks of recitative. Did Sondheim write some song for "Gypsy" on spec that he ever shared with the producers or the general public though?

I never hear anyone saying Evita or Jesus Christ Superstar are Tim Rice shows.

[Quote] I never hear anyone saying Evita or Jesus Christ Superstar are Tim Rice shows.

Have you met Elaine Paige?

I've seen Gypsy with everyone but Merman (I was a kid when I got student rush tickets to Angela at the Shubert in LA. $2.50) and what always surprises me is how the audiences react. It's always different. The show draws you in and it creates different emotions. When I saw it with Tyne Daly, the audiences gasped when she told the manager that Louise could strip. It was an incredibly ugly moment and Daly understood it.

I've been in a few productions of Gypsy and this is true. Every audience is very different. Some found the show very funny throughout act 1 and got much more quiet for act 2 and some found the entire show to be disturbing from start to finish. Only a truly great show can have that many different interpretations. I've seen a ton of productions, too, and no matter how cheap or amateur they are or how many roles might be miscast, the show still works somehow.

I don't think that show will be going anywhere anytime soon and Into the Woods will definitely stick around. That's still done at every high school, college, and community/regional theater in the world. It has a big cast and every character gets their moment or moments to shine which is great for amateur productions so that everyone gets something to do and doesn't feel left out.

Lansbury turned it into a love story as well, so when Herbie leaves her, there's a different layer of emotion. That was missing from the Daly production.

I've seen a handful of GYPSY productions in the last decade or so and the Jocko stuff didn't work in the productions I saw. The audience did not take to jokes like the big titted sister of the balloon girl.

I always like the burlesque scenes better than the vaudeville scenes in Gypsy. But the show is also dripping with sex, interesting for a show that begins with children.

I don't really understand Act 2 of Into the Woods from a moralistic standpoint. It has big points it tries to make about a community coming together to fight a common threat. The characters learn about the cost of the choices they made in Act 1, all of which have unexpected consequences. Everyone loses someone or something in the process. They sing a song about deciding what is right and good. And then they kill the Giant's Wife. Then a sermonizing song about being careful what you tell children. It sort of goes off the rails, despite all that is enjoyable about it.

Well said, r330. Of course his work will endure. And a recent anthology of his lyrics in the Everyman Pocket Poets series places him in a roster that includes Stevens, Yeats, and Wordsworth—and Leonard Cohen, another superb lyricist. Is he in a pantheon with Dickinson and Eliot and others in the series? No. But as far as theatre lyricists go, he's the only one accorded this kind of honor.

I think Sondheim has always been something of a celebrity chaser. He should have done American Idol.

I wish I saw what all the eldergays did with "Fifty Percent," I feel completely unmoved by it. And it's not age. I'm 39, but I tend to have eldergay taste. Beyond Sondheim, I'm not really a fan of most musical theatre of the 80s and beyond. I tend to prefer to golden age composers... Bernstein, R&H (both), Porter, Berlin, Kander & Ebb, Weill etc. But, whatever, it clearly works for many of you.

Totally agree, r354. I can’t stand the second act of ITW. (And for the record, I love Act II of SITPWG.)

[quote]You know what did not pass the test of time? Two Gentleman of Verona, which won best musical over Follies. History has made its judgment quite clear.

Yeah, NEITHER has ever had a successful revival!

R354, killing off The Baker’s Wife to me is no different from the slasher films like Friday the 13th. The message is if you are female and you have a pleasurable sexual experience you deserve to get killed.

To each their own, R358, but I love the second act of ITW. Everybody gets what they want in act one, seemingly with no cost whatsoever, just as in every fairy tale. The second act shows that not everything in life is so rosy and even people who seem to have everything may not be quite as lucky as they seem. The score is also top of the line. Last Midnight is one of the great exit numbers ever, No More/No One is Alone are the best two back-to-back numbers ever and are both supremely emotional songs from a composer who normally doesn't embrace the emotions of loss, and Children Will Listen is beautiful and heartbreaking as staged.

It always boggles my mind when people aren't moved by the second act exactly as it is.

will someone shut that man up?!

"The score is also top of the line. Last Midnight is one of the great exit numbers ever, No More/No One is Alone are the best two back-to-back numbers ever and are both supremely emotional songs"

Bizarre, but you're joking.

That isn't the message at all, R360. The Giant's Wife doesn't kill her because she hooked up with the Prince. That has nothing to do with it. It's not even an intentional act; she's tromping around knocking over trees and the Wife is in the wrong place at the wrong time. She now has a greater appreciation for what she has versus always wanting something grand and "other." Unfortunately, she doesn't get to take that new-found understanding back to her established life, therefore making her death more emotionally tragic than it would have been otherwise.

Nevuh!...Nevuh! R362

And, no, R363/Desiree, I'm not joking in the least.

Eh, what we need right now is...

A palate cleanser.

The idea that happy ever after doesn’t always work out is a good idea, but the story they concocted to illustrate it is thin and obvious and preachy.

Recently posted in improved resolution.

[quote] No More/No One is Alone are the best two back-to-back numbers ever

We had this discussion with you once before, R361. They are not better than "Ol' Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" in Show Boat; "Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin'," through "People Will Say We're In Love" in Oklahoma!; "Mister Snow" and "If I Loved You" in Carousel; the sequence of songs from "Ice Cream" through "Grand Knowing You" in She Loves Me; "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," "The Girl That I Marry," "You Can't Get A Man With a Gun." "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "They Say It's Wonderful" in Annie Get Your Gun, and countless other examples in Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, The Most Happy Fella... Hell, any of Harold Arlen's Broadway flops have superior songs next to each other. Even Jamaica.

[quote] Yeah, NEITHER has ever had a successful revival!

Several years ago, Shakespeare in the Park did Two Gentlemen Of Verona and that was about as good as a revival as you're going to get. I thought it was a fun show while I was watching it, but then I left with absolutely nothing. It's not something I would pay huge sums of money to see.

The problem with Sondheim is that you never get the brilliance on the first listen. It took me awhile before I understood the depth of what the Mysterious Man sings in "No More."

Running away- let's do it, Free from the ties that bind.

No more despair, Or burdens to bear, Out there in the yonder.

Running away- go to it. Where did you have in mind?

Have to take care: Unless there's a "where,"

You'll only be wandering blind. Just more questions. Different kind.

Where are we to go? Where are we ever to go?

Running away- we'll do it. Why sit around, resigned?

Trouble is, son, The farther you run,

The more you feel undefined, For what you've left undone

And, more, what you've left behind.

We disappoint, We leave a mess, We die but we don't...

I hear the first few notes of "No More" and I immediately burst into tears. I was actually glad it wasn't included in the movie, because I didn't want to start blubbering like a baby in front of all those people.

The Baker's Wife isn't killed because she has sex with the prince. She's killed to up the stakes. When some dumb slut is killed in a slasher movie, you don't usually feel bad about it, do you? When The Baker's Wife is killed, you do feel bad about it and it informs the rest of act 2. It's not just some throwaway death.

Fifty Percent is usually performed without that first verse ("If anyone had told me...") that tells you where the character is at this point in her life. I think that goes a long way to making the song work. In the hands of a skilled performer who can make us understand where this character is coming from, it's excellent. I think something like Send in the Clowns is a far better song, but I've seen that one butchered by terrible performers who don't understand what they're singing about. It's all about the performer.

There hasn't been an original Sondheim score in 25 years and all of his lyrics are well published.

[Quote] Send in the Clowns is a far better song, but I've seen that one butchered by terrible performers who don't understand what they're singing about.

I know just who you mean.

[quote]the Wife is in the wrong place at the wrong time. She now has a greater appreciation for what she has versus always wanting something grand and "other." Unfortunately, she doesn't get to take that new-found understanding back to her established life, therefore making her death more emotionally tragic than it would have been otherwise.

Oh horseshit. If she had been with her husband and child and not in the back woods fucking the Prince she would have been alive. She might as well have been in Camp Crystal Lake.

I know these are lean times, but is Sondheim's legacy really up for debate at this stage? There isn't another composer of the latter half of the 20th century whose legacy is more assured than his. This is silly.

The point is that Sondheim himself is questioning his legacy. There's no questioning that for the dominant composer of Broadway, he has never had a blockbuster hit.

Hey, leave slasher movies alone. They're fun! And no, not all women in them are punished for having sex. There are quite a few where sexually active women survive and kick the killer's ass, so fuck right off with that dumb shit. You sound just like Siskel and Ebert back in the day.

Unlike Sondheim shows, some of those slasher movies actually make money.

[quote],I know these are lean times, but is Sondheim's legacy really up for debate at this stage? There isn't another composer of the latter half of the 20th century whose legacy is more assured than his. This is silly.

It sure is, your post, we mean.

I bet this anti-slasher person really hates Sweeney Todd. All that immoral slaughtering of innocent people! What the world needs now is love, not violence.

Surely I couldn't be the only person who's thought Passion could have been spruced up with a murder or two. I believe Fosca has it in her.

If only Fosca has murdered James Lapine. That could have solved a number of problems.

Speaking of Fosca...

If you think Sondheim is just going to fade away because he didn't have a mega hit that ran for a decade, you're delusional and quite stupid.

"Hit" doesn't translate into enduring. Many hugely popular and successful works of art and entertainment have faded away over time....some of them astonishingly quickly.

Chicago will be around for many decades because it's a great show but so will A Chorus Line. Both are great shows with gorgeous music.

TBH, I don't know about Wicked. It has the benefit of being part of the "Oz" franchise but...the songs mostly suck. And, not easy to stage. And, it's dumb to compare it to Avenue Q because Avenue Q is also very popular with audiences AND theater companies since it's a fun show to produce.

And, someone sneered at Assassins being considered a popular Sondheim show; it is. It has a really great score and it's the type of piece that colleges and edgier theater companies love to do; not a huge cast and frankly it has a provocative title that's easy to market.

[quote]The point is that Sondheim himself is questioning his legacy.

Because he's in a self-pitying mood and wants attention.

He coined the phrase "Everything's coming up roses." He has created some beautiful theater work. Huge stars have sung and recorded "Send In The Clowns" "Nothing's Gonna Harm You" "Losing My Mind" and "Being Alive."

Liza's version, arranged by Pet Shop Boys, of "Losing My Mind" shows how versatile and adaptable his music can be. Was any of the R&H catalog able to transform and hit the pop charts in the 80s and 90s? And Merman's disco album demonstrates that not all music adapts itself to other genres.

Most of his incredible body of work is a solo act, he did both lyrics and music himself. He has no reason to ponder his legacy.

[quote]"Hit" doesn't translate into enduring.

True. The Broadway revivals of Evita and Cats both sucked bigly. Just because it's been a hit doesn't mean it will lay a golden egg everytime.

But you got to know the territory!

Then turn it around. What enduring shows were not hits?

Sweeney Todd will still be around when Wicked and Ave. Q and Rent and Hairspray and The Producers are all forgotten. Night Music might (or at least should) live on, too.

Sondheim may never have had a "lines down the block" smash in his lifetime. He never really hit the zeitgeist. But quality endures.

The film versions of INTO THE WOODS and to a lesser degree, SWEENEY TODD, were modest hits. I liked them both.

If Sondheim wants to ensure his legacy, perhaps he should be angling to get as much of his work adapted for film/TV as possible. A brand new film version of A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC might be a good place to start.

A radical rethink of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (by a really gifted film director) could vastly improve on the stage show and make the past relate to the present day in an interesting and emotionally involving way. (I'm one of those people who loathe Act 2 of the stage show).

I'd also add a brand new take on EVENING PRIMROSE for television to my wish list. That score is too beautiful to overlook.

[quote]I'd also add a brand new take on EVENING PRIMROSE for television to my wish list. That score is too beautiful to overlook.

I've always wanted them to do a bit of work to that show. Several years ago, I was hoping they would put in the work and expand Mrs. Monday's role and get Angela Lansbury to play it. Maybe dump Goldman's book and have a new book writer come in?

R394 - never seen the TV production and imagine it's not that compelling from what I've ready, but, YES, those songs he wrote for it are GORGEOUS. I think I probably "discovered" the score when I heard Cleo Laine's beautiful rendition of I Remember.

[quote] I think I probably "discovered" the score when I heard Cleo Laine's beautiful rendition of I Remember.

The Cleo Laine album is probably the best collection of Sondheim's work ever recorded. Better than anything Streisand put out, better that the revue shows like Side By Side and better than any of the birthday celebrations.

Anyone Can Whistle needs a new production, too. That score is so great.

I also love Evening Primrose.

Why doesn't Netflix do a series of new productions of his lesser-remade (or not remade) shows? Just simple, taped onstage like NBC Theater and PBS' American Playhouse used to. Do it for the theater queens! Netflix throws so much money at standup comedy specials, and people don't have time to watch half of them.

I question Sweeney's longevity. Despite the greatness, it suffers from being sung almost all the way through and also from the horrendous Tim Burton movie. Being somewhat of an operetta being the more serious, especially to young audiences.

Sondheim should have done a Rap musical since he's experimented with the idea Company, maybe before.

[quote]Anyone Can Whistle needs a new production, too. That score is so great.

The book is utterly hopeless, and hopelessly of its time.

[quote]The problem is not that the woman is mundane. The problem is that the authors wrote a dramatic musical monologue about a woman who settles. Not one who wins, even though she says she does.

What a strange comment. Not everyone in this world "wins," lot of people "settle." And "settling" isn't necessarily less dramatic than winning, it depends on the situation. In the case of BALLROOM, her "settling" is dramatic because, obviously, she's not entirely happy about it, and it's going to be a continued source of angst in between the happy times.

[quote]So Sondheim's musings have a great deal to do with mass popularity. He seemingly understands that (his) works don't get more popular in the future. He clearly is missing having a Hamilton, Wicked or, dare I say, Chicago on his resume.

I agree that his works probably won't "get more popular in the future," but it's pretty rare for that to happen to anyone's work (with some notable exceptions). I do think that Sondheim's works in general are more popular now than at any previous time in his career, because now there are more film and video versions of more of his shows, and his songs continue to be used in new movies and TV shows as well. I don't suppose that 20-year film version of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG will happen now, but if it did, that might have been a project that would have helped carry his fame forward for quite some time.

[quote]Before Streisand would record it, she insisted that Sondheim write lyrics that would fill the gap created by the dialogue scene that takes place in the middle of the song and sets up the last passage. Without his additional lyric, or the dialogue, the song has a big gap in its progression. And he has agreed with her. Certainly, he wrote the lyric she requested for his most famous song.

I wouldn't say there's a gap in the progression of the song without the dialogue or without the extra lyrics. Judy Collins recorded the original version without either, and that certainly didn't stop the song from becoming a hit. But I have always felt there's a flaw in the original lyrics. At the end of the third verse, she sings "Quick, send in the clowns -- don't bother, they're here," but then at the end of the fourth verse (after the instrumental break, where the dialogue comes in the show), she sings "There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe next year." So which is it? Are the clowns here yet, or not? The lyric as written makes sense only if "clowns" is referring to two different things in those two verses, and if that's what Sondheim intended, that's also confusing.

[quote]I love a lot of Sondheim's work, but the Sondeimites and the mythology they create are really the worst. It's not enough to love every SS exhalation; it's that one must despise everything else as inferior. That's what makes it a cult.

I would think and hope there are actually very few people who feel that way to that extreme.

[quote]I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but I do think Gypsy will be the longest lasting if only for the score.

No, WEST SIDE STORY will be the longest lasting because of the score. And the fact that Steven Spielberg has just made a film remake of it will certainly help.

[quote]I don't really understand Act 2 of Into the Woods from a moralistic standpoint. It has big points it tries to make about a community coming together to fight a common threat. The characters learn about the cost of the choices they made in Act 1, all of which have unexpected consequences. Everyone loses someone or something in the process. They sing a song about deciding what is right and good. And then they kill the Giant's Wife. Then a sermonizing song about being careful what you tell children. It sort of goes off the rails, despite all that is enjoyable about it.

Agreed, and that's the untalented James Lapine for ya. The movie of ITW was actually somewhat of an improvement over the show, because they cut some of the stuff you refer to.

Being sung all the way through is something music lovers tend to enjoy. That is perhaps why Sweeney Todd seems to one of Sondheim's most produced work.

[quote] At the end of the third verse, she sings "Quick, send in the clowns -- don't bother, they're here," but then at the end of the fourth verse (after the instrumental break, where the dialogue comes in the show), she sings "There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe next year." So which is it? Are the clowns here yet, or not?

You are agreeing with Barbra Streisand. In between the two verses, Fredrik apologizes for having come to 'flirt with rescue when one has no intention of being saved.' And then he leaves her sitting there by herself. He dumps her in the middle of the song. And that's the problem with the lyric.

As you have pointed out, Desiree's thoughts change during that short interlude. They change drastically. But without the dialogue, we are back asking your question. Are the clowns here yet, or not? They were. Then Fredrik left. Now they're not. Desiree just became single.

Barbra wanted that fixed and Sondheim fixed it for her. It makes no sense for anyone to perform the song without those additional words that address that problem.

R364 you’re missing the point that r360 was making. It’s not about the motivation of a character (e.g., the Giant), it’s the trope from so many writers. Slut enjoys sex, gets killed.

"Sung-through" is a personal taste. I love musicals and show music but I prefer a more traditional book-music format. When characters break into song, they should have a dramatic reason for doing so, IMHO.

I associate sung-through musicals with the age of PHANTOM and LES MIZ. And with opera, which I don't really care for.

R401 I’ve always hated you and your 5-part posts and your pronouncements after each.

You don’t seem to understand the scene or the song, r403. Fredrik “dumps” her at the beginning of the song, saying that he loves her but would rather be with his child bride than the love of his life. She is bitterly reflecting on the ridiculous ups and downs of their relationship. To him. He then leaves her alone, which changes the focus of the song. The clowns are no longer there because Fredrik has exited. It’s really quite straightforward.

The Baker’s Wife is not *punished* for adultery. The very next song examines all the reasons for her death, and guess what? Every bit of it relates musically and lyrically to the six beans. In fact, “Your Fault” pulls together almost every musical theme in the show. Lapine wanted to have the heroine unexpectedly die for no real reason. But people who prefer to see sex punished will ignore all that and blame her for her own death.

Why R406, that's a bit petty and personal of you... and I couldn't agree more. Hee.

A little part of me dies insider when R406 comes swanning by on these threads in her horse-drawn carriage, waving her magic wand over the thread--yay to this, nay to that, yay to this--and then disappears in glitter and dust. She has spoken.

It's the insufferable show queen drive-by.

A little part of me dies insider when [R401] comes swanning by...

She knows who I meant.

[quote] Fredrik “dumps” her at the beginning of the song, saying that he loves her but would rather be with his child bride than the love of his life.

That is not correct. Review the text. Fredrik does not make the statement you claim before she cuts him off with the song.

R409 I’m glad I’m not alone

[quote]R329 Theater Tawk...FOLLIES 1971

You know, much as I joke about it and insert the title whenever possible... I’m really not at all interested in that show.

I can’t even watch more than 5 minutes of that taped discussion!

R410, I know the show and the scene extremely well. He clearly rejects her in the speech directly preceding the song. When she realizes what is happening, the music starts. Why else would she sing those lyrics if she weren’t being dumped? What do you think is happening before she sings?

[quote] r349 Only a truly great show can have that many different interpretations.

Does RuPaul have the voice to pull off Rose?

Just thinking out loud, here - -

What is happening before she sings is that Desiree sees that despite her efforts, this might be slipping away from her. 'Sometimes I think of you, but sometimes I think of her....' And she cuts him off. And he sits there. Still with her. Still present. Still close. Desiree is down, but not out. Not yet.

Finally, during the interlude, he pulls it together and apologizes for his actions and makes his exit. And that is when Desiree and everybody else in the entire theater can see that he has made his choice. When he leaves is when things change for Desiree and the lyrics reflect that change.

It's a huge moment. The first part of the song comes before it. The last part comes after it. And the lyrics, as originally written do not account for that moment at all.

"Running away- let's do it, Free from the ties that bind. No more despair, Or burdens to bear, Out there in the yonder. Running away- go to it. Where did you have in mind? Have to take care: Unless there's a "where," You'll only be wandering blind. Just more questions. Different kind. Where are we to go? Where are we ever to go? Running away- we'll do it. Why sit around, resigned?" Trouble is, son, The farther you run, The more you feel undefined, For what you've left undone And, more, what you've left behind. We disappoint, We leave a mess, We die but we don't..."

I yield to no one in my admiration of Sondheim. However.....

"Being sung all the way through is something music lovers tend to enjoy."

Sez who?

"That is perhaps why Sweeney Todd seems to one of Sondheim's most produced work."

Depends on your definition of 'sung-through.' I suspect you mean wall-to-wall music. SWEENEY, however, is, for the most part, a song-based score and not sung-through (meaning, not strophic) at all.

"Bock and Harnick wrote wonderful, classic musicals over the years. Kander and Ebb wrote wonderful, classic musicals over the years. A dozen other writers (Jule Stein, the underappreciated Cy Coleman)"

And all have been duly acknowledged with revivals and tributes of one kind or another. As far as the others go...meh.

"it's that one must despise everything else as inferior. That's what makes it craft."

There, I changed it for you.

"Forum is an iffy bet, since most of the humor is dated"

As long as sexual potency is an issue for humanity, it will never, ever be dated.

"The audience did not take to jokes like the big titted sister of the balloon girl.

Because they've been brainwashed to be humorless prigs. This, too, shall pass, as it must and will.

R415, strangely my interpretation means the song makes sense while yours creates a “flaw.” Every audience gets that he had just dumped her before the song begins - you can literally feel it, But you see the flaw in a Grammy-winning song from a Tony-winning show. You must be right.

[quote]Desiree is down, but not out. Not yet.

Of course she is! Why do you think she's singing about clowns? You know, the clowns they'd send out to cover up when something awful happens on stage. And she's an actress. Who something awful has just happened to...I mean really, come on.

Fredrick says (only) the following in the middle of SitC:

“Desiree, I’m sorry. I should never have come. To flirt with rescue when one has no intention of being saved . . . Do try to forgive me.”

(He exits)

I’ve never seen it, but wasn’t CARNIVAL a big hit in it’s day? Why is it one of the lesser-revived “classics” now?

R419, I can’t believe you are arguing this!

In the lines before. Desiree makes a gentle play for “rescuing” Fredrik, which he blows off. She acknowledges the rebuff (“It was only a thought.”) He has already dumped her, but in case you missed it, he continues

“When my eyes are open, and I look at you I see a woman who I have loved for a long time, who entranced me when I came to her rooms. A woman who gives me such genuine pleasure that, in spite of myself, I came here for the sheer delight of being with her again. The woman who could rescue me, of course. But when my eyes are not open, which is most of the time. All I see is a girl in a pink dress (anne) teasing a canary running through a sunlit garden to hug me at the gate, as if I've come home from tim buck too instead of the municipal court house 3 blocks away.”

It’s a beautiful monologue, with an extremely clear subtext (Desiree: no, Anne:yes). I have seen the show many times abc never heard an audience miss the point. But then, I’m half Swedish and half Welsh.

Oh, and I copy/pasted from BWW. I know how to spell Timbuktu.

Admitting you visited BWW is probably a greater DL crime than not knowing how to spell Timbuktu

Fair, but I don’t have the script at home and it showed up in a search.

I’m not arguing anything, I’m just typing up the line.

He doesn’t explicitly dump her in the interlude, either.You have to be totally out of tune with the scene to think that Desiree is “Down! But not out!” at the beginning of the song.

No, she's bitterly ironic. Watch Elizabeth Taylor in the movie. She hits every mark of the song beautifully, like Glynis.

[quote]I’ve never seen it, but wasn’t CARNIVAL a big hit in it’s day? Why is it one of the lesser-revived “classics” now?

It's seen as a bit "arty". A man who uses puppets. Plus, it needs a young girl with a legit soprano voice.

Thank you whoever recommended Cleo Lane's Sondheim album. I'm listening to it on Spotify and it's great!

[quote]I can’t believe you are arguing this!

Girls, girls, your both pedantic.

Read the lyrics. In each verse she is interacting with him rhetorically. It is all about the two of them. He is still there with her until he gets up and leaves. When he leaves, his departure from her life finally becomes real.

His exit is a momentous piece of business in the play and in Desiree's life and it sets up the last verse. It is Desiree, alone, with thoughts about herself. It is the only verse that does not refer at some point to Fredrik. Removed from the context of the play, without that information the audience gets in the interlude, the remainder of the song is undermined. The singer is stuck with the task of inventing some way to silently connect the two distinct parts of the song. It's not in the music and it's not in the lyric.

If Sondheim did not agree, at least in part, he would be unlikely to write exactly that kind of lyric for Streisand's recording.

[quote]You are agreeing with Barbra Streisand. In between the two verses, Fredrik apologizes for having come to 'flirt with rescue when one has no intention of being saved.' And then he leaves her sitting there by herself. He dumps her in the middle of the song. And that's the problem with the lyric.

I don't agree. Frederik has already pretty much said, just before Desiree starts singing, that he can't bring himself to leave his very young wife and go with Desiree, even though he realizes what a blind fool he's being. That's why she starts singing the song in the first place, and why she sings lyrics such as "Just when I'd stopped opening doors, finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours, making my entrance again with my usual flair, sure of my lines, no one is there" and "I thought that you'd want what I want -- sorry, my dear." It's true that Fredrik makes it even more clear that he "has no intention of being saved" in the dialogue before the last verse, and that's when he actually walks out, but Desiree already knew that he was backing away from her. And anyway, the extra lyrics that Sondheim wrote aren't the equivalent of that dialogue scene. They just repeat with different wording the same idea of the rest of the song, that Desiree and Fredrik are always at cross purposes.

R406: Right back at you. I could never understand why it bothers you SO MUCH that I sometimes respond to multiple posts in one of mine, but regardless, I don't care that you feel that way and I'm certainly not going to stop doing that because of you.

R406, you deserve to be alone.

No one is alone, R433.

"pretty much said..." Oh, that makes for snappy drama. Basically. Kinda. Pretty much.

R431 She's not interacting, she's covering. Even Sondheim says he wrote it as Desiree reacting, not interacting:

[quote]And the big scene between her and her ex-lover, I had started on a song for him because it’s his scene, and Hal Prince, who directed it, said he thought that the second act needed a song for her. And this was the scene to do it in. And so he directed the scene in such a way that even though the dramatic thrust comes from the man’s monologue, and she just sits there and reacts, he directed it so you could feel the weight going to her reaction rather than his action.

[quote]Girls, girls, your both pedantic.

Not to be pedantic -- but oh, dear!

Make that three. ^

Pedantic's definitely the word for it. Could you gals take it to All That Chat, the official shrine of theatre queen pedanticism?

Anyway, this is very nice...

Speaking of Whistle, I haven't listened to the OBCR in years. I forgot out.. well... fierce Angie was here. Someone in the YT comments said, she's a tigress here.

"He never really hit the zeitgeist."

Can I remind you that Sondheim's Mrs Lovett hit the boards the same year Margaret Thatcher became PM?

(London's full of them.)

Anyone Can Whistle has no business being revived, but it's got songs that should be better remembered. "Come Play Wiz Me" is a chamer.

Carol Burnett would have been the best Rose ever! Surprised she was never given the opportunity. Maybe it had to do with her shitty behavior over leaving Fade Out, Fade In.

Hasn't Sondheim said that he prefers and angry approach to "Send In the Clowns," rather than a sentimental/tearful one. That doesn't sound like the approach of a woman who's trying to hold on to a man. Desiree knows that they're finished.

Did Sondheim ever say what he thought of Liza’s “Losing My Mind” recording? I don’t think he made a comment about it in his book of lyrics.

I've directed LNM, and this is a fascinating discussion about the song which is making me think about it a lot. I think the further issue about the shift in the song is that sending in the clowns is presented as a bad thing that you don't want ... until the end when she says "well, maybe next year." If you don't want to clowns to be sent in, then why would you be hoping for them next year?

[Quote] I've directed LNM, and this is a fascinating discussion about the song which is making me think about it a lot. I think the further issue about the shift in the song is that sending in the clowns is presented as a bad thing that you don't want ... until the end when she says "well, maybe next year." If you don't want to clowns to be sent in, then why would you be hoping for them next year?

Because it's better to have love and to make a mess (call for the clowns), than to have no love at all.

The strange thing about Anyone Can Whistle is that the book (both in terms of tone and structure) is just too fucking weird for a Broadway musical comedy, and there's a huge incongruity between how it sounds and how it moves, which I don't think is the same thing as it being necessarily having a poor book, or a poor score, etc. I'm yet to be convinced that it's actually *that* dated (or at least no more than anything else that opened in 1964) and if anything perhaps it is perfectly apt for our current historical moment. Corrupt leaders? The promotion of false miracles to a dumb populace? The delegitimisation of intellectualism, expertise, creativity? The scene where Faye is forced to name her patients, all of them named after artists, writers and philosophers - while it ain't exactly subtle, it perfectly encapsulates the collapse of American civility.

But the problem remains that it ACW has been written in two theatrical modes, that are for the most part remain irreconcilable within the aesthetic sensibilities and the economic considerations of mainstream American theatre.

I'd love to see what a Regietheater production of ACW would look like. In the hands of somebody like Barrie Kosky, I'm sure it'd be a revelation.

The basic story and attempted fable-ish tone of Anyone Can Whistle aren't bad. And the score is, of course, remarkable. But the actual writing of the book is flat-out terrible; cutesy, dated, filled with gimmicks. I really wish a good, funny writer would write a new book for this show. It could be made to work.

Leave Pal Joey and Flower Drum Song alone and focus on a show that actually needs a new book.

Also, R407, no one said the Baker's Wife is punished for having sex within the script of ITW.

If you look at horror movies, where this progression happens most often, there is no actual narrative connection between the sex the girl has and her imminent death. But it is a trope that when a woman enjoys sex she dies soon after. Though this regressive trope is most often discussed in relation to horror films, it is seen everywhere in many genres. And it is never an explicit punishment. The women die for reasons unrelated to the sex...but they do die. And many see this as a "punishment" because our culture is uncomfortable with women' sexuality.

It is just weird to see Sondheim using it.

Don't you mean Lapine?

yes r449 that's what I meant, you just stated it more clearly

r432, I'll try to explain. Your posts end up being conversation-stoppers, like someone at a dinner party (ever been invited to one of those? I thought not) who prattles on and on with her opinions but doesn't engage anyone else and doesn't let anyone else talk. [quote] I wouldn't say there's a gap ...and you start every one of your many paragraphs with some decree about what has come before [quote] I agree that ...with judgy-even-by-DL-standards pronouncements about a litany of previous comments that you evaluate one after the other [quote] No, WEST SIDE STORY will be ...and it's kind of superior and annoying [quote] What a strange comment. ...and you do it on purpose.

See how annoying?

well that didn't work

Well, r453, it was certainly annoying.

"If you don't want to clowns to be sent in, then why would you be hoping for them next year?"

But she wants the clowns sent in, as a relief from the (emotional) catastrophe. If not now, then any time is better than never (even if it's too late).

"If you look at horror movies, where this progression happens most often, there is no actual narrative connection between the sex the girl has and her imminent death. But it is a trope that when a woman enjoys sex she dies soon after. Though this regressive trope is most often discussed in relation to horror films, it is seen everywhere in many genres. And it is never an explicit punishment. The women die for reasons unrelated to the sex...but they do die. And many see this as a "punishment" because our culture is uncomfortable with women' sexuality. "

It's like the famous E.M. Forster example: "The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot." In other words, one is causal, the other is not. We had this discussion one drunken evening when I did the musical Barnum a coupla years back. In the show, Barnum's wife, Cherry, dies, after which he almost immediately becomes famous with his circus. Related? Coincidental? Unconscious writer reveal?

"the actual writing of the book is flat-out terrible"

ACW fit right in with "the inmates are running the asylum" meme that was so popular at the height of the youth revolution in the 60s, and included such works as Marat/Sade, King of Hearts, Man of La Mancha, etc.

"well, maybe next year" is general wistfulness. Better luck next time. Maybe I'll be able to laugh about this in a while.

Angie's take...

[quote] ACW fit right in with "the inmates are running the asylum" meme that was so popular at the height of the youth revolution in the 60s, and included such works as Marat/Sade, King of Hearts, Man of La Mancha, etc.

I can’t speak for King Of Hearts; I’m ashamed today I’ve never seen it. But La Mancha and Marat/Sade both hold up pretty well. I saw a production of Marat/Sade and I was frankly a little shocked at how well it still played. Superior writing. The book of ACW plays like a pale imitation; Laurent’s strenuously trying to be one of the rule-breaking hip kids when he was really a rock-solid classicist.

The Baker's Wife's death is meant to be a random tragic event, but its placement really makes it seem like punishment for her adultery. I don't blame anyone for having that reaction to it. Since Act Two was going through frantic rewrites during previews, perhaps it's just something that never was solved - or the writers didn't care that people have a wrong response to it. But if audiences have a widespread misunderstanding of what you've written, perhaps you should try to fix it?

I mentioned my problems with the conclusion of Act 2 above at R354, but I also think "Last Midnight" is a bit of a dud as well, especially after the considerable strength of "Your Fault." Part of it is that the tacky jazz waltz accompaniment to it that makes it sound as threatening as Dave Brubeck's "Take Five." I'm not sure that Sondheim has ever quite solved the problem of that number, since it seems he's always rewriting it.

Glenda/Marat/Sade

That obnoxious Red Riding Hood should have been killed in Into The Woods.

Boom! Crunch!

Thank you, R404. Yes, R364 completely failed to grasp my point. I wasn’t talking about the actual plot but the moral judgment served upon The Baker’s Wife for daring to have a dalliance and was punished for it with her life. This sort of thing was prevalent in slasher/serial killer films.

Thanks also to R449, for clearly grasping my point and expressing it far better than I ever could.

And R459 is clueless.

Um, I'm sort of agreeing with you, R360. The way it is presented, it feels like the classic punish the slut narrative. The authors have commented that it wasn't what they intended, but it still plays that way.

GRIND

[quote]Yes, R364 completely failed to grasp my point. I wasn’t talking about the actual plot but the moral judgment served upon The Baker’s Wife for daring to have a dalliance and was punished for it with her life.

Girls, girls! You're both sluts!

Interesting R462. The changes made were for the best.

The LaJolla finale is also on YouTube. It makes a strong case for the Broadway set. costumes, and even The need for choreography. Oddly, all the performers who went to Broadway (Zien, Gleason, Kim Crosby, Ben Wright) give performances as good as on Broadway, even when the material or staging is clearly not.

OK, R459. Thanks for the clarification.

then you career from Korea to Korea

Outer Critics Circle Awards names 2020 honorees:

No " Slave Play"? Racists!

Hunchback of Notre Dame from LaJolla.

R462's who's the Witch? She's... um... well... she makes me appreciate Bernadette even more.

Ellen Foley, who had a leagues better voice than Bernadette Peters.

Ellen Foley is from St. Louis, MO. Why does she always sound like old-school Brooklyn to me?

I do like her singing voice, anyway.

Rolling Stone said that Foley's singing was as soggy as wet Twinkie.

Somebody said that the original London production was very good. Was it Julia McKenzie playing the witch? How was she?

Last Midnight.

The actress who played the Baker's wife was very good. Whatever happened to her?

r479 it looks like she replaced on Broadway for the last month of the run. That seems so weird

Not weird. They needed a name. Foley did not have marquee value.

La Foley will ALWAYS have...

Do any of you remember this guy? Apparently he was a chorus boy way back when - perhaps in the Broadway revival of HAIR, in which Foley starred.

Foley got her first big break here. Only Debbie Allen really took off.

I had a few of Ellen's albums.

Mimi's had a fairly steady career, r487.

Foley was part of a planned repertory company with Patti LuPone for a TV show that would feature a new, original musical every week. The pilot is on YouTube. Patti plays a ghost stuck in a laundromat.

I don't understand the article about the OCCs. Are they saying there will be no winners?

Meh. Ellen Foley is no Hannah Waddingham playing Catherine Zeta-Jones impersonating Joanna Lumley.

here:

Yes, of course, by 2015, Bernie's voice wasn't quite what it was, but I LIVE for her CRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH scream at the end of Last Midnight. Shame they couldn't have an orchestra for these 2015 Into the Woods reunion shows.

I need help. I just watched the revival of Hair. Does anyone understand the lyrics to “Flesh Failures”?

We starve-look At one another Short of breath Walking proudly in our winter coats Wearing smells from laboratories Facing a dying nation Of moving paper fantasy Listening for the new told lies With supreme visions of lonely tunes

Somewhere Inside something there is a rush of Greatness Who knows what stands in front of Our lives I fashion my future on films in space Silence Tells me secretly Everything Everything

Manchester England England Manchester England England Eyes look your last Across the Atlantic Sea Arms take your last embrace And I'm a genius genius And lips oh you the doors of breath I believe in God Seal with a righteous kiss And I believe that God believes in Claude Seal with a righteous kiss That's me, that's me, that's me The rest is silence The rest is silence The rest is silence

[Singing] Our space songs on a spider web sitar Life is around you and in you Answer for Timothy Leary, dearie

Nonsense, of course. The beginning of the the slippery slope of bad songwriting in musical theatre...

R494 - I was at that reunion (maybe not that night). Her voice was ragged, but she had the audience in the palm of her hand the second she put on a fake nose for the Witch’s rap. Most of the leads were there and it was electric.

There was a professional filming, but I have no idea what happened to the video. It was a great performance all around.

It's no Whoop-Up.

Many people consider Bernadette the "chief interpreter" of Sondheim. Everytime there's a birthday concert, she's in it.

Some people are suckers for a crying performer.

Patti & Merv....

Watched the 25th anniversary of Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall over the weekend. I have to say this production was good even though the space doesn't allow for the bigger production elements of the show. I've only ever heard the soundtrack (which I hated) and I still felt a lot of the music was painful but the leads really made watching it an enjoyable experience. A girl named Sierra Boggess played Christine and Ramin Karimloo played the Phantom. They had great chemistry and their acting really pulled me in, have to say I was impressed.

I like the opening number Hannibal, Notes, PrimaDonna, Masquerade, Don Juan Triumphant, Wishing You Were Somehow Here, The Point of No Return (because of the actors involved). I don't know how I would like it if I were sitting in a theater watching great vocalists who aren't good actors perform this since I've never cared for the soundtrack in the first place. Watching this version made to be televised catching all the visual nuances and with really good actors made this a great experience.

Did you know Our Rose was in the original?

R495, it does not help that you intersperse the lyrics of Manchester England, which the audience will recognize from early in show, and which is sung in counterpoint to the Flesh Failures.

While the lyrics are pretty artsy, they are not hard to understand. They keep contrasting the manufactured reality of a dead false culture with the hopes and authenticity of the hippie characters. Not that hard to figure out.

[quote]A girl named Sierra Boggess

Really? In the THEATER thread?

25th Anniversary Royal Albert Hall Phantom

What do you make of “With Supreme visions of lonely tunes”?

[quote]The basic story and attempted fable-ish tone of Anyone Can Whistle aren't bad. And the score is, of course, remarkable. But the actual writing of the book is flat-out terrible; cutesy, dated, filled with gimmicks. I really wish a good, funny writer would write a new book for this show. It could be made to work.

I thought I hated the book of ANYONE CAN WHISTLE, based on however much of it was performed in that Carnegie Hall concert (which was a kind of a mess anyway). Then I saw the Encores! production and I thought it was so good that it made me feel the book has no major problems, I think because that production was directed with such a light touch (and it also had a great cast).

I know you are being snarky r505, I'min here getting away from COVID 19 and political threads and trying to learn more about theatre. I don't understand what you are alluding to.

[quote] it also had a great cast

Meaning me! I sang extra flat for the occasion!

r509 You don't need to say "a girl named Sierra Boggess" to people who are familiar with the theater. She is not an unknown quantity.

NT here. Just a heads up. As lockdown has ended I will be going back to posting new stuff and a little old stuff when is needed.

Thanks for the many thanks.

Growing up in New Zealand had zero chance to see real shows, so I love sharing.

Hope lockdowns end well for all.

Thank you, r512....

Speaking of Sierra Boggess since this is a gossip thread, anyone know what happened between her and Tam Mutu? Dated for years, got engaged and then broke up at some point before marrying.

[quote] What do you make of “With Supreme visions of lonely tunes”?

It means Rado, Ragni and MacDermot dropped too much acid and foresaw the coming of FOLLIES.

Thanks 511 I had never heard of her, I did look her up but from what I saw I wasn't sure how widely recognized her name would be.

Where do she and Ramin fall as far as voices go, up there with some of the best ones or as far down as, "we couldn't get anyone else".

Galt MacDermot's music is vastly superior to Ragni and Rado's lyrics. I have great affection for HAIR as a product of its time, but lyrically, it's very sloppy and puerile. Same problem with TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA: it's really fun, but John Guare's lyrics are ghastly (much worse than Ragni and Rado's).

MacDermot should have collaborated on later projects with other writers who were his equal.

When Sierra first swam into our hearts....

Don’t judge the newbie. Sierra Boggess is as memorable as a bowl of couscous. One could sit through her solo show and not be blamed for losing her name.

Sierra Boggess sounds like a vacation destination.

Sierra Boggess...Christy Altomare...such annoying names. Their names should be Evelyn Sands and Polly Forbes, instead.

Eldergays, did any of you see the original Pacific Overtures? I think it's one of Sondheim's most gorgeous scores. It's kind of stunning to think such a bold work was produced in the commercial theatre. It never would have been made today. Certainly not at that scale. It would be great to see someone like LA or SF Opera mount a production.

And the actors were so strong on the cast recording. Walking a delicate balance between the traditional Japanese music and Kabuki influences with Sondheim's knowing modern sensibility an sly humor.

Chrysanthemum Tea is just genius. A miniature play in one song.

R522 It is up on YouTube

R522 It is up on YouTube

Dorothy Loudon was an undisciplined ham a friend described her Lovett as “a train wreck hits London.”

She had no ability to read the house, it was 200% all the time with her performances. She actually was able to bring it down a little in her few film appearances, but onstage she was a nightmare.

I saw the original production of Pacific Overtures. One of the highlights was the beautiful Boris Aronson set. He was an integral part of the team that made Follies, and A Little Night Music, and Company so terrific. BUT...

On the night I saw PO, there was a scene with a beautiful painted Japanese scrim across the back of the entire stage with Japanese kites flying in the air just in front of it. During the scene, one of the kites became detached from the hidden wire suspending it. It would have come crashing down on the stage, but at the point where the tail meets the kite, it caught on the scrim, and like a sharp knife, did a slow-motion diagonal RRRRRIIIIIIIIIPPPPP across the entire painting. The audience gasped in unison. The actors on the stage - not sure of what was happening - looked up, backed away, and then continued on with the scene.

I wonder how much it cost to repair/replace that scrim?

In the movie version, "The Flesh Failures" segues into the "Let the Sun Shine In" chorus from "Aquarius" at the very end and it works brilliantly. In the play, Claude jokes about being from Manchester, but he's actually from Flushing. When he sings about being from Manchester in the movie, it's as a desperate fantastical plea when he's about to be shipped to Vietnam, where's he's killed. There was no draft in Manchester. The rest of the lyrics to "The Flesh Failures" have an anti-establishment, free-flowing, druggy 60s vibe and I love them!

Voice teacher reacts to Phantom's Ramin and Sierra.

It's Twiggy Tuesday!

Seeing PO (twice) in the theater was an unforgettable experience. The set was only aspect of its power—but a significant one.

I thought Julia Mackenzie in ITW was far better than Bernadette.

I know the original Broadway cast of Into the Woods is beloved, but the best cast recording of the show is the one done by the original London cast.

Hamilton, with the original cast, coming to Disney + July 3rd.

R531, I have to disagree. The OLC is a strong contrast to the OBC, but it’s hard to make that argument if you truly compare all of the performances. Ben Wright, Kim Crosby, Robert Westenberg, Chuck Wagner, and Danielle Ferland are far superior to their London counterparts. Also, the London production is a different take (foppish princes, wallpapered woods, slamming doors) that is only possible if you have a more traditional first production to respond to. How would you say the OLC (especially the poorly sung cast album) is better than Broadway?

Agree with R533. There are some really painful vocal performances on the OLCR. I don't mind a less accomplished voice if a performance can deliver in other ways (like Judi Dench's Sally Bowles for example), but the London ITW is tough to sit through, with Julia McKenzie an exception. The OBCR is muffed and remote, even after being remastered, but most of those performances are hard to beat. And has Joanna Gleason been matched by anyone?

R533 - spoiler: it isn't.

I wonder if one's affection for and connection to the Original Broadway cast of Into the Woods is somewhat generational. I'm a -- I hate this term -- xennial. Born in the early 80s. Analogue early childhood, digital young adulthood. When I was a kid, Andy Cohen was still just some whore CBS News intern and Bravo was an ARTS channel that seemingly constantly re-ran Into the Woods. I probably saw that production a dozen times on Bravo and it's absolutely cemented in my heart and memory. I just can't imagine a better cast and I've never seen/heard one.

Fascinating move on Hamilton's part. So will people still want to pay $200 a ticket to see it live (they have like what, 4 U.S. companies?) after being able to get it for $5 on an app?

Is CHICAGO still playing (pre-lockdown) after the movie was released?

[quote]And has Joanna Gleason been matched by anyone?

I think that both Joanna Gleason and Chip Zien were perfect in their roles and have never been equaled.

Why do productions cast a fat baker? I get that they assume he eats all the stuff he bakes (sticky buns), but the baker and his wife are supposed to be struggling financially and fat usually indicates good living.

Not in America.

You can't really compare CHICAGO to HAMILTON. CHICAGO never had more than one touring company. Hamilton has 3 or 4, all of which are grossing more than $2,000,000/$3,000,000 a week. It's in its own category. Maybe the video will make people want to see it live, but not at what they're charging now...

Well, you haven't made a good case that the video is going to hurt the theatre box office.

"Hamilton" coming to Disney+ on the 3rd Of July!

Broadway theaters to remain closed through at least September 6, 2020.

It's been said many times but how can a theater sustain with social distancing? Until there's a vaccine how will this be handled?

All the "there needs to be a vaccine" cries are total nonsense. There's no vaccine for the Flu, and people take that risk. What needs to happen is more time to understand the virus, how its transmitted, and foremost better medicines, medications, palliative care. Then we can return to the theatres, and people will.

Understanding the virus will not happen by September 2020.

Um, the virus has happened, love....

Huh um.....

[R540] also CHICAGO is famous worldwide and HAMILTON is not. Also, CHICAGO is the musical for Heteros visiting Broadway.

While Sondheim shows will likely remain in the canon (particularly Into the Woods and Sweeney), I fear that Jerry Herman's shows will be stuck at Encores.

While that last revival of Hello,Dolly! was spirited, the book was co creaky and dated. Nothing will salvage that.

Speaking of which I wonder if that West End production of Hello, Dolly! starring Imelda Staunton will ever happen.

100% agreed R550. I thought I'd enjoy it more than I did. You could smell the mothballs.

The idea that Sondheim wished he had a WICKED-size hit is absurd. The zeitgeist is almost always laden with carpola. He’s had a glorious career writing ambitious, sophisticated, exquisitely crafted musical theatre. Praised and lauded to the hilt. Uncompromising. Almost always appreciated, although perhaps not initially. Made a nice chunk of change. Traveled in the toniest circles.

Why would he want to be some schlock-meister like Lloyd Webber?

While I was too young to see the original Broadway production of "Anyone Can Whistle", I do remember seeing a production of the show in the ballroom of The Hotel Carter off Times Square. We loved it, and got to attend the last performance, because Sondheim was not happy with it ,and had the show shut down. That production endeared me to the score forever.

Patti's Cora...

Here's the entire Encores! Anyone Can Whistle. The cast and Casey Nicholaw really made the most of it. "The Cookie Chase" at around 1:22:50 is especially fun.

"Chicago," the movie was not a filmed version of the stage play, as I understand "Hamilton" will be. It was a completely different experience from the stage show.

Disneyland is hard enough to navigate and take in in a day. It seems silly to go see a full length movie while you’re there.

Does anyone really think Hamilton-level prices and frenzies are coming back? I think this is a tacit recognition that an era has ended.

I had tickets to 11 shows before the shutdown. Even marginally selling shows were asking for premium prices, despite many unsold seat. The Lehman Trilogy - marked as the next hit - had many performances that were over 60% unsold. You couldn’t find an orchestra seat under $200 (most were $400). Do you think people will support that level of demand?

Plus, tastes are already changing. We may want very different kinds of shows after the pandemic subsides.

It will be a whole new ballgame, that’s for sure.

Has The Music Man starring Hugh Jackman been officially cancelled?

Not yet. That is Show #11.

Matthew and Sarah Jessica should just do Plaza Suite online as a benefit for the Actors Fund and move on:

R562 I hope more shows will postpone till 2021. Although I can see how many will be unable to. But 'Plaza Suite', really? That was pretty much last on my list of shows that I was excited for.

I saw Plaza Suite in Boston. It was great.

PLAZA SUITE had, prior to quarantine, sold out pretty much its entire limited run on Broadway before previews. That's at top prices and no discounting that I'm aware of.

Frankly, I had no interest in it (I've seen both of them live before and been underwhelmed, and I'm not a Simon fan), but that production was a cash machine. Pre-coronavirus, of course.

[quote]Speaking of which I wonder if that West End production of Hello, Dolly! starring Imelda Staunton will ever happen.

Our Imelda is too busy cashing her tv paychecks. She just showed up in a pivotal guest starring role (3 episodes) on the new Apple Network show "Trying." If it's renewed, I have no doubt, she'll make a few more appearances.

Anything that keeps Imelda off the stage is AOK in my book.

Imelda obviously likes doing musicals and the stage in general. She'll do Dolly, no doubt.

[quote]While Sondheim shows will likely remain in the canon (particularly Into the Woods and Sweeney), I fear that Jerry Herman's shows will be stuck at Encores.

I think a wave of nostalgia will roll through in 20 years or so. In the 1970s, they brought back "No No Nanette" and "Irene" and then the popular redo of "Crazy For You" in the early 90s. I think in 2025, you'll see Beanie Feldstein and Gavin Creel playing Dolly and Horace in a revival of "Hello Dolly".

Dolly doesn't deserve what Imelda will do to her.

[quote]Why would he want to be some schlock-meister like Lloyd Webber?

While Webber is a schlock-meister his musicals will play for a long while after he is dead because of the audience they appeal to. Sondheim is brilliant but the stories his shows tell won't age well and they do require a bit of dedication on the audience to appreciate. You don't just sit disengaged and watch a Sondheim musical.

[quote] I think a wave of nostalgia will roll through in 20 years or so. In the 1970s, they brought back "No No Nanette" and "Irene" and then the popular redo of "Crazy For You" in the early 90s. I think in 2025, you'll see Beanie Feldstein and Gavin Creel playing Dolly and Horace in a revival of "Hello Dolly".

You do know that 2025 is only five years from now, yes?

[quote] You do know that 2025 is only five years from now, yes?

Yes, sorry. My fat fingers are trying to type on my phone and not doing very well. It should be 2045.

R564 = Andy Cohen

When did Matthew Broderick start looking like k.d. lang?

[quote]The zeitgeist is almost always laden with carpola. He’s had a glorious career writing ambitious, sophisticated, exquisitely crafted musical theatre. Praised and lauded to the hilt. Uncompromising. Almost always appreciated, although perhaps not initially. Made a nice chunk of change. Traveled in the toniest circles.

This post made me LOL. Not because I disagree so much as that the poster seems to have emerged, smart cocktail in hand, from between the pages of a 1981 issue of AFTER DARK.

In a satin kimono.

People here rag on Broderick's looks but I think his face looks good for a boyish type.

Finishing The Hat - Stephen Sondheim doco.

Matthew Bourne's Romeo and Juliet.

From 2005 Sweeney Todd

R569, cross out Gavin Creel and put in Neil Patrick Harris. Or any number of more suitable performers who could handle the comedy much better than Creel.

Neil Patrick Harris? WTF - is Horace now going to be the gay role? The new Dream Curly?

It wouldn't surprise me if NPH steps into "The Music Man" if Hugh Jackman can't clear his schedule for when Broadway returns.

[quote]also CHICAGO is famous worldwide and HAMILTON is not. Also, CHICAGO is the musical for Heteros visiting Broadway.

AND "Chicago" was on Broadway for twenty five years and "Hamilton" only ran for five!

R583, Sutton Foster still has to shoot her final season of that truly groundbreaking series on TV Land.

[quote]The zeitgeist is almost always laden with carpola.

Pics please.

I do think Into the Woods was lucky that it had such a great video recording out there in the public for years. That's probably what keeps it being a favorite among many generations. It pains me to think that many people might have never known who Joanna Gleason was if it hadn't have been for that recording. I'd hate to think of a performance like that being lost to time. It's the reason why I've never seen another Baker's Wife come close to what Gleason did with that role. Some have come close, but they've never been better.

This is why I wish they'd record more shows like that. I know it can't compare to seeing it live and in person, but it's nice to have a clear looking record of this stuff.

Like anyone would believe NPH as a straight con man.

[quote]Galt MacDermot's music is vastly superior to Ragni and Rado's lyrics. I have great affection for HAIR as a product of its time, but lyrically, it's very sloppy and puerile. Same problem with TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA: it's really fun, but John Guare's lyrics are ghastly (much worse than Ragni and Rado's). MacDermot should have collaborated on later projects with other writers who were his equal.

Agreed on all counts. And damn, I always thought the lyric in "Flesh Failures" was "supreme visions of lonely tears," which at least makes a little more sense than "lonely tunes." Those guys really were a mess as lyricists, weren't they?

Why Dame Edna was never asked to host Tony Awards?

"Sondheim is brilliant but the stories his shows tell won't age well and they do require a bit of dedication on the audience to appreciate. You don't just sit disengaged and watch a Sondheim musical."

Any show that is well-written ages well. And I can't think of a single musical I've attended in the past 30 years at which I haven't been disengaged EXCEPT for a Sondheim musical.

[quote]also CHICAGO is famous worldwide and HAMILTON is not. Also, CHICAGO is the musical for Heteros visiting Broadway.

That's because every Z list actress has managed to snag a limited run as one of the leads.

HAMILTON is a little more complex for that type of stunt casting.

Actual gossip:

[quote]Former Dear Evan Hansen stars Ben Platt and Noah Galvin are now dating

But who’s the top and who’s the bottom? It must get very confusing.

They just get each other off by talking about how great they are

R595 I bet Ben cries.

[quote] In the play, Claude jokes about being from Manchester, but he's actually from Flushing. When he sings about being from Manchester in the movie, it's as a desperate fantastical plea when he's about to be shipped to Vietnam, where's he's killed.

At the end of the movie, it's Berger -- standing in for Claude, having taken his place in the army -- who sings that bit of "Manchester, England." Much earlier in the movie, Berger and Claude sing it during an acid trip.

FIRST MIDNIGHT!

Has the footage of Annie Golden singing "Frank Mills" ever turned up on any of the releases of HAIR (DVD/Blu-ray)?

New thread, bitches.

R584, Chicago had only been on Broadway for 5 years.

The original production ran a lot less than that, and it was rarely revived in the intervening years.