Broadway Musicals - anyone else a fan?

[xrayspecs]

Regarding RENT - they've made a film out of it, faithful to the Broadway production and using most of the original cast. I meant you should rent or download the video of the film and watch it - a big part of the attraction is the dance/choreography and sets.

OK, an update.

I really enjoyed Rent. Sure the story was a bit weak and if I watched it again I would certainly skip over the whole protest / cow mooing sequence by Maureen but apart from that it was very good. Most of the songs were well written and the vocal performances (especially the slightly grittier, rocky ones) were excellent. Apart from Maureen the characters were likeable and Mimi was hot. Hell, Angel would have gotten one after a beer or two!

So yes, what probably made it for me was the style and quality of both the songs and vocals.

As for Wicked .. well I gave it a listen and to be honest I don't think it's my thing. Maybe it's due to the music and singing both being done in a classic musical style or it could be the subject matter. I think I'm more drawn to a more contemporary and edgy sound most of the time.

Anyway, thanks for the recommendations and I'm certainly open for more suggestions.

[pdogg]

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Sunday, June 10, 2012 -- 11:08 PM EDT

-----

‘Once’ Wins Tony Award for Best Musical

The bittersweet romantic musical “Once” was the unexpectedly dominant winner at the 66th annual Tony Awards on Sunday night, winning best musical and seven other awards, including for best book and director, while its chief rival, “Newsies the Musical,” won in the major categories of best score and choreography.

Other winners included a Tony for “Clybourne Park” for best play, and acting awards for Audra McDonald, Nina Arianda, James Corden and Steve Kazee.

[pdogg]

Heathers....The Musical just opened based on the cult classic movie.

 

Most memorable line, "fuck me gently with a chainsaw"

 

 

Are there any souls out there brave enough to admit they were popular in high school? O.K., maybe Gov. Chris Christie, but that wasn’t a good career move.

 

The teenage kings and queens of the prom, the homecoming and the keg party — the golden boys and girls who taunt and belittle the smart and sensitive — have become first-choice villains in contemporary pop culture. They’re the winners we love to hate, and one of the last minority groups (along with their parents, the 1 percent) that it’s acceptable to mock savagely.

 

The latest entertainment to capitalize on this satisfying loathing is “Heathers,” the rowdy guilty-pleasure musical that opened at New World Stages on Monday night. This is a show that turns an Ohio senior class in-crowd into a lineup of piñatas, waiting to be busted open. And when I say busted open, I am not speaking metaphorically.

 

Written by Kevin Murphy and Laurence O’Keefe, “Heathers” is based on Daniel Waters’s screenplay for the 1988 Michael Lehmann movie, which died at the box office but has had a flourishing afterlife in cult heaven. Starring a young, untarnished Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, “Heathers” was the bold template for later, more successful films like “Mean Girls,” not to mention cherished misfit television series like “Freaks and Geeks.”

 

Mr. Lehmann’s film, which presented its leading heartthrob as an exterminating angel specializing in bratty rich kids, was also blacker and more daring than its successors could afford to be. Since the original release of “Heathers,” the United States has experienced the Columbine massacre and much consciousness-raising about adolescent bullying and suicides.

 

This means — and how strange is this? — that “Heathers: The Musical” is nostalgic for a more innocent time, when a plot about killing off high school royalty wasn’t quite so sick a sick joke. This show also evokes a pre-”Hunger Games” era when fantasies about teenage revenge could be smaller and didn’t have to involve apocalyptic maneuvers. In a way, this latest incarnation of “Heathers” is to the 1980s what “Grease” was to the 1950s (when it was first staged in the 1970s). Directed by Andy Fickman and featuring a buoyant, cartoonlike cast, this “Heathers” isn’t as savvy or mordant as the film that inspired it.

 

But in scaling up the movie’s grotesqueness — which is inevitable when you set dark material to bubbly music — the production puts a guilt-quelling distance between its onstage mayhem and its audience. The rowdy matinee crowd with which I saw the show hooted as gleefully as little Bart and Lisa do when they watch gore-filled “Itchy and Scratchy” cartoons on “The Simpsons.”

 

The three title characters of “Heathers” (played with sneering cheer by Jessica Keenan Wynn, Elle McLemore and Alice Lee) rule Westerburg High with expensively manicured fists of iron. With their more dimwitted male equivalents (embodied by Evan Todd and Jon Eidson) they mock and torture those who are less cosmetically perfect and more studious, with epithets usually banned in public discourse.

The doom of these tyrants is sealed when they recruit into their clique one Veronica Sawyer (a very good Barrett Wilbert Weed), a geek with makeover possibilities and a gift for forgery. “These are people I work for, and our job is being popular,” Veronica rationalizes to her previous best friend, the overweight, natural-born bully target Martha (Katie Ladner).

 

Veronica is deeply divided about her new social status, a state that Ms. Weed conveys engagingly, by singing and dancing while looking as if she weren’t sure whether she’s supposed to be enjoying herself. She’s ripe to be seduced by the school’s resident boy in black, J. D. Dean (the smooth Ryan McCartan of the Disney Channel’s “Liv and Maddie”), a Baudelaire-quoting renegade with a homicidal God complex.

 

For its first half, “Heathers” is skillfully sloppy fun, as it arranges the cool kids for vivisection with dopey blue jokes and prancing choreography by Marguerite Derricks. Mr. Murphy (“Reefer Madness”) and Mr. O’Keefe (“Legally Blonde“) provide the sort of bubbly generic score and sassy sendup lyrics now common to musical adaptations of film comedies. (I enjoyed J. D.’s ode to the numbing ecstasy of Slurpees.)

 

In the second act, the show turns serious, sort of. It almost seems to be apologizing for any untoward pleasure it may have afforded us before, as it ricochets between the antic and the conciliatory. (The movie had similar tonal adjustment problems toward its end.) The production would be more digestible if it were at least a quarter shorter. Not that the audience with which I saw “Heathers” seemed to mind. As you may know, drinks — the hard, kicky kind that the Heathers imbibe illegally — are served in the lobby of New World Stages. And though I’m loath to advocate drinking and theatergoing, this might be a show to see while slightly buzzed. Everything is writ large enough to penetrate an alcohol haze.

 

That includes the film’s most cited line, which is delivered directly and archly to the audience by Ms. Wynn. I can’t quote it in full, but it involves using a chain saw for sexual gratification. That’s “Heathers” for you.   

http://www.nytimes.c...ree-mayhem.html

[Hefe]

I didn't realize this thread existed...

 

1- Recently saw "Jersey Boys" on Broadway - highly recommend it esp. if you are of "a certain age"   Very entertaining & who knew their pal from the "neighborhood", a teenaged Joe Pesci, was a factor in their (The Four Seasons) formation. I think I read somewhere that a movie is in the works.

 

2- Despite what I would've guessed, the new musical "Rocky", based on the movie, has garnered pretty favorable reviews. 

[SiamSam]

I saw Jersey Boys years ago on Broadway. Has to be one of the best shows ever. Would love to see it again. 

[globetrotter]

Broadway musicals are sooooo ghey :)

[williethepimp]

The nearest i get to being a fan of musicals is the big lebowski.......BTW-Would the likes of the jersey boys &the Queen "musical" be classed as musicals.........? Incidentally,the 1st movie i ever saw (6 years old) taken to the cinema by mama was The Sound of Music...(no wonder I'm slightly gay).....I recently got a copy from my local charity shop and watched it again......what a crock of sheeet imho

 

[Hefe]

Hated, hated musicals (except for Wizard of Oz which was an annual event growing up). Ok... gave in to A Hard Days Night but that's not what we are talking about I think. Couldn't stand all the break into song & dance sequences, too much suspension of belief, and besides that it was my parents' generation music. (Talking about movies now, never went to a theater until an adult) 

 

Then in the space of a few months I saw Fiddler on the Roof & Cabaret, loved them both, esp. Cabaret since it was pretty "edgy" material & the numbers flowed seamlessly from the plot. A couple of years later a film class pushed me over the line as a budding cinephile watching American in Paris & Singing in the Rain. 

 

It has taken me some effort to watch some of the old classics, but the songs are usually great once I open my mind up to it, & if it is directed by Minnelli it's a win-win. In recent years I resolved to make it through West Side Story which I could never sit through more than 20 minutes of (gang members dancing en point?). Glad I did because the music was fantastic.

 

But point taken, nothing's worse than a bad musical.

 

Still can't stand any of the A. Lloyd Webber dreck or Le Miz tho. Horrible stuff!

[deepthroat]

Nope, not a fan of musicals, Broadway or of any ilk.

 

I'm not gay, you know.

 

No, but your boyfriend is.

 

[pacman]

Then in the space of a few months I saw Fiddler on the Roof & Cabaret, loved them both, esp. Cabaret since it was pretty "edgy" material & the numbers flowed seamlessly from the plot. 

 

I've only seen Titanic on Broadway & I didn't rate it as a great musical. The prop of the ship sinking was pretty good but I couldn't hum a bar of the music today, that's how much of an impression it left.

 

I have seen a few musicals over the years & I am always up for a good one. Good music that is. I loved Fiddler on the Roof which I saw as a youngster, I remember not wanting to see it but got caught up in the music which won me over completely. I did see Les Miserables & I don't get the fuss. The music didn't inspire me at all & had no desire to see the movie version despite Hugh Jackman getting rave reviews for his performance. I'm sure all the people who banged on & on at me about how great the music was had a point but somehow the music for Les Mis fell into a black hole in my musical appreciation. I half expect to hear it under different circumstances one day & finally "getting it".

 

The two musicals I admire most are 42nd Street & Cabaret. The first one I saw on opening night in the best seats in the house. I was escorting a journalist friend of mine who had seats 5 rows from the front. The show was fabulous & the after show party was even better. All those beautiful dancers getting up on the dance floor to dance with themselves when I was standing there unable to join them because it would have been humiliating for my partner. Oh the pain of watching these long limbed goddesses clowning around with each other while all the attached males stood helplessly by thinking of the possibilities. I remember about 10 of us standing there with our tongues out. And the knowing look we all gave each other, it was an exclusive club none of us wished to be in.

 

But the motivation to write this post came from Hefe's comment about Cabaret's music being "edgy". I have never seen the show live but I have friends who would play the movie version with a room full of people after a good meal & lots of wine. The first time I was invited to watch it I didn't know what to make of it, I didn't know the music, I'm not a fan of Liza Minnelli, I wanted to leave. I was glad I stayed. From the opening song sung by Joel Grey I was intrigued. I soon got into the swing of it when the whole room burst into song to sing along with every number. Despite not knowing any of it I "got it".

 

There's a dark undertone to the whole thing with the Nazi influence but the songs are excellent. I saw it on several more occasions with the same group of friends & found it to be a sensory experience when viewed (and sung) under the influence of several glasses of wine. We finished up fast forwarding to the next song when we weren't in the mood to sit through the whole thing.

 

Not all musicals are good but the good ones can fill an important gap in our lives.