Don't Bother Havoc, She Can't Cope

Obligatory Snarky Recap of a Television Show No One Cares About:

Oh, man. Am I the only person alive watching "Celebrity Idol"...erm, I mean, "Celebrity Duets"? It might as well be that. Because this was the most anti-climactic finale since Justin met Kelly.

Wayne is wearing a sequined vest. Why? I don't know, but my brain is too dead to make a decent Gunther Gebel-Williams joke. He says we're going to be treated to 1. the final three contestants singing solo 2. a performance from the "legendary" Boyz II Men (which leads to the obligatory "a lot of babies were born to their music" joke and the groaner "I even named my kid 'End of the Road' Brady!"), and two legends singing a duet we're probably never going to see anywhere else. If that's the case, I'll bet it's Little Richard and Marie Osmond.

First of all, I'd just like to thank this show for not being the total trainwreck that was "But Can They Sing?" but barely aspiring to be the laughable humanity that was "Performing As..." Hey, FOX network, way to get celebs who aren't pro singers, but have had some semblance of singing experience. Great move, but still, Celia Keenan-Bolger they ain't.

The "Great 8" finalists sing a fifties medley that stars with this really clunky arrangement of "Rock Around the Clock" that has four of the five guys running onstage and caught between panting and yelling. The girls come out with Cheech. Hey, anyone else remember the video for "Bang a Gong"? This really reminds me of that "Simpsons" gag with the Super Bowl Halftime Show in "Lisa the Greek." This goes into applause.

But wait! They're not done yet! There's this weird thing with the cameras where Mrs. McFly, Chris Jericho, Jai, and Carlton sing one line of the song, and then Carly, Xena, Cheech, and Hal sing every other line back. And they twist. It's another dumb 50s song we don't want to hear. Mercifully, it's short. Jai, perhaps as a consolation prize, gets to introduce Little Richard, replete with backup dancers and stage fireworks, who does his thing at the piano and doesn't let any of the celebs sing with him. Is the lyric in "Good Golly Miss Molly" I could never hear "Sure likes to bone"? Ewww...

And then, it's over. Six Flags has nothing to worry about.

For the solo turns, Hal goes first and sings that song "So, why are you running away?" that I used to know but I can't remember either the title of the song or the band who sang it due to some girl caught in a black cotton tourniquet spinning around on stage left and a coupla backup dancer girls in ripped denim skirts "running" interpretively.

(ETA: It was Hoobastank.)

Anyway, Hal thanks his "heroes" Metal Skool, who look like your typical bad hair metal cover band in full costume/drag. Is that name supposed to be like "Metal School"? OR does their name have this double meaning, like, "Metal's Kool"?

We get a segment showing how incomprehensible Little R. is before learning he actually had to leave early. I think my screen cracked from Xena's duet with Smokey Robinson. The duet is between Smokey and Gladys Knight, by the way. Then Xena performs. She gets an elevated stage and a mic stand and the dancers wear skimpy Tina Turner dresses while she gyrates and screeches a Janis Joplin song with the following chorus: "Tell mama what you want./Tell mama what you need." She ends by kicking over the mic stand.

We see Lucy's husband Rob "I Created Xena" Tapert in the audience. If Carlton doesn't do "It's Not Unusual"...eh, screw it. I can always catch that stuff in reruns on Noggin. Or Nick at Nite. Or TV Land. Or My9. Or TBS.

I flip on over to "I Love the 80s Strikes Back." Oh, Hal. You don't have to try so hard.

Marie Osmond finally takes to the stage...to introduce "supergroup" Boyz II Men featuring Wayne. Of course. He turned down The Wiz to do this? Wait. There's only three of them. I'm looking over my notes, and I kept listing their names and crossing them out just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Okay. Who quit the band? Wanya is still ugly. I can't tell if the third guy there is Shawn or Michael. Turns out it's neither - Wayne gets to sing both their solos anyway. Oh, wait. That is Shawn. He just grew a fugly-ass goatee. Nate really let himself go. I mean, moreso than usual. They just don't sound the same without Michael. Um, not that I would know. Or care. In case you cared, they sang "I'll Make Love to You."

Wayne screws up Michael's soliloquy in the middle of the song by ad-libbing some lame jokes about how Marie loves chocolate and Easter. He introduces them as "Nate, Wanya, Shawn." Thus, Michael McCrary is sorely missed.

Carlton gets the raised platform stage and a floating cloud background. Finally! A song I recognize! "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," which he sang a cappella in those irksome commercials for this show. He doesn't get any dancers, though. This is the crappy "American Idol" arrangement that skips all the good lyrics and cuts straight to the high belting notes. Damn. I've been listening to a lot of classic rock lately (Shut up, I can't thrive entirely on showtunes, you know. I'm only human.) and I've gradually begun to realize how much Elton John needs Bernie Taupin. If anything, Captain Fantastic owes the Brown Dirt Cowboy. I mean, compare "The One" to "Someone Saved My Life Tonight." You can't. They're in a totally different league. Yeah, "Believe" has some kick-ass instrumentation, but have you ever listened to the lyrics? "Fathers and sons/Make love and guns/Familes together/Kill someone"? Sweet potato pie, Elton!

Anyway, the eight do a medley of David Foster songs with Foster at the piano. We start with the final four (Carlton, Jai, Hal, and Xena) taking turns on different sections of some song I don't know. Some generic eighties power ballad with a big key chance at the last chorus and a lame bridge. At which point, the roommate came in and asked, "Is that Carlton singing? Lucky guess. He's really good!" It's "Hard For Me to Say I'm Sorry" by Chicago (thanks, roomie). Probably because it requires them to actually carry a tune. Marie comes in at the end of the song to show them how it's really done (The roommate: "Oh, gee. She sounds terrible."), and also to choke David. He says she's not going to get him to sing.

Hal climbs on top of the piano. Then the rest of the celebrities run out on stage for "Got To Be Real" and mug for the camera. The girls are all wearing dresses, and the guys all wear suits, except for Hal, who doesn't change from what he was wearing for his solo (jeans and a black t-shirt) unless you count adding a black leather vest and a wallet chain "changing." Chris Jericho gets to sing the "My love is your love and your love is my love" part of the song. Cheech interrupts him and can't finish the rest of it.

Anyway, Carlton wins and gets a crappy trophy made of two crisscrossed microphones. He also gets $100,000 donated to the charity of his choice, which is Fresh Start, an organization that provides plastic surgery to disfigured children. He says he's the co-chair with Grant Show. Well, at least one celebrity is using plastic surgery for the cause of good. I mean, if you can actually consider Grant Show and Carlton Banks "celebrities."

He sings that Billy Ocean song with a slap bass that I can never identify correctly. Maybe if you call me on the phone, I can hum a few bars. Either I'm old or ridiculously out-of-touch.

That's what I've always said!

Friday Quote for the Ages:

"I am the single person left on earth who does not have an iPod. Well, I have one, but I have yet to put anything in it...on it...whatever. It's pathetic, I know. But music has never been something that can be in the background for me. It requires my full attention and the iPod isn't really made for one's full attention, now is it? I mean, I appreciate background music at a dinner party, but I always find myself drfiting away from a conversation and thinking "Wow, did you hear how Ella phrased that?" Which is, frankly, rude to the person who is telling me about their divorce. When people are talking about their agents or the way show business "used to be" I find the background music helpful as a distraction. I don't even listen to music in the car as I seem to miss exits and run over pedestrians. Inevitably, I sing along, throw my hands in the air at the end, and all hell breaks loose. I suppose an iPod would be good for the gym... but then one would have to go to a gym. I belong to two, but don't go to either. I watch TV while on a treadmill at home because if I am listening to music I am compelled to jog to the tempo of the song that is playing. I can't help it. So, that takes out any ballad I might like to hear. And showtunes don't really go with running, except for any Ethel Merman song and let's face it, a 40 minute run with Ethel Merman could seem like a lifetime. In short, I recognize that I need to get with the rest of the population, but at this point, it would be out of fear of being antiquated rather than any true need. But I am not completely behind the times. I got one of those cameras for my computer and the sex is great."

-Sam Harris, on why he doesn't own an Ipod

See-Dee Binge!

I am currently battling a Sween-ey Stomach Flu.

I did not get to go to the Flea Market.

I made the time for one good hour of an improv show, and then it was back to the sickbed.

Although, one thing I did want to post on the blog but didn't get a chance to was this most random piece of street garbage found yesterday in Murray Hill: An understudy slip announcing that "At This Performance of The Wedding Singer, the role of Robbie Hart, usually played by Stephen Lynch, will be played by Kevin Kern."

Anyway, on the way home from UCBT, I stopped off at a Chelsea street fair and somehow had the energy to splurge on some very cheap (and very intriguing CDs).

Dames at Sea: Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording (1968) was the first one I jumped on based solely on the cover art. Look at this! And it stars Bernadette Peters, who was only seventeen at the time, but you knew she was destined for greatness. Dames at Sea is a very broad, tongue-in-cheek spoof of old Broadway musicals like 42nd Street, even though it's a live stage show with very few props and sets, and only six actors, based on the essential plot of 42nd Street (the movie) that actually predates 42nd Street (the Broadway musical). The liner notes extensively summarize both the plot and why the show worked: It was such a hit at the tiny Bouwerie Lane Theatre that stars like Noel Coward and Ethel Merman legendarily schlepped down to the Village to see what the fuss was about. Anyway, we all know the story: Small-town girl fresh off the bus from Centreville, Utah meets the Navy boy of her dreams and replaces the lead in a Broadway show after she loses everything but her tap shoes. If you can believe this, and appreciate the humor, it's the show for you...who is to say, me. Every single line is played with the utmost sincerity, no matter how preposterous it sounds. These kids really love what they do!

The original production used only a piano, but this version has a full orchestra conducted and arranged by Jonathan Tunick, giving it the feel of a real Broadway show that could actually be playing right now. Because I couldn't help but think of The Drowsy Chaperone every time I've listened to this so far. Did the Chaperone crew really crib that much from the people who did this show? Well, the characters in Dames at Sea are more overtly based on the real people (one character screams Gene Kelly, and you don't exactly get to see him tap-dance on the CD) who starred in backstage musicals. On the other hand, just try not to be reminded of "Message from a Nightengale" based on the hilarious "Singapore Sue." The similarities are all too much. But its spoofy DNA is everywhere. Especially in the finale, "Let's Have a Simple Wedding," where, natch, every single character gets married in a fantastically/ironically huge ceremony. Think of it as "I Do, I Do in the Sea."

The lyrics? Rhyming "Richard Arlen" and "Spanky McFarland"? Genius. Reminds me of another brilliant lyrical insight, this one from Forbidden Broadway Cleans Up Its Act!: "Doug Sills gets impaled on a foil, and Mandy Patink will drink castor oil."

And there's more than a little of Sutton Foster going on with young Bernadette. I guess the cast of Dames at Sea didn't really go on to much after that, except for Bernadette, because Lord knows whatever happened to David Christmas, who gets a hilarious pre-Follies number called "Broadway Baby" that more than vaguely seems to recall "All I Need is the Girl" from Gypsy.

Well, there's also Steve Elmore, who is perhaps best known as Paul in the original cast of Company. He's the guy who gets to sing, "Todayyyy is for Amyyyy, Amy I give you the rest of my life, to cherish and to keep you, to honor you foreeeeveeeerr...Tooooodaaaayyyy is for Aaaaaamy, my heavenly soon to be wiiiiiiife..." Man. If I was a guy? I'd seriously harbor a secret fantasy to play Paul. He's a nothing role, but he gets to sing that line. Which is something I've been torturing a lot of people with for quite some time.

In all seriousness, Elmore's fine, because he gets to play two great character roles. In the first act, he's basically Julian Marsh. In the second, he's the naval captain who gets a great solo turn with "The Beguine," which is (I'm paraphrasing the liner notes here) "perhaps the most romantic song ever written about Pensacola, Florida." It's your typical salsa/Latin pastiche number, which is perfect for any period spoof. It's also great because, every time I hear him singing it, I keep hearing "Todaaaaay is for Aaaaamy..."

Which is hilarious, because, look who played Paul in the last revival of Company.











Moving on...

The Scarlet Pimpernel: Original Broadway Cast Recording has to be heard to be believed. Granted, I never really "got" Wildhorn aside from "low-rent American Andrew Lloyd Webber." Just that he's made a lot of concept albums that, apparently merit full-scale Broadway musicals that get constantly reworked...which has pretty much changed my conception of him into "postmodern Jim Steinman."

Okay, I'll admit that, in high school, The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy was one of my favorite reading assignments ever. How could I not be morbidly curious about a concept album of a musical based on the novel?!? As long as they keep the humor intact. And, I ask you, is there a more wonderfully cheesy opening number as bombastic as "Madame Guillotine" (in which an anonymous mob of angry French people sing about how justice will be served when it cuts off your head)?

Among the most listenable songs on the album: "Storybook," which is the big group waltz/ascot-gavotte set at the lavish Act II costume ball; "The Creation of Man," which is the wacky comedy number where the Pimpernel and his men sing about how they're going to disguise themselves as dandy fops in order to carry out their mission; and "Falcon in the Dive," which is the villain's token "I'll get you yet!" manifesto song. As performed by Terrence Mann, it could not be more vengeful...or unintentionally hilarious. I mean, if that is their true intention. Doug Sills (who, by the way, hasn't been impaled on a foil just yet) sounds pretty commanding as the Pimpernel and, if you don't believe me, you can check out this old commercial for Pimpernel that promises "Lotsa laughs!" So, this is the guy who turned down John Wilkes Booth in Assassins and Sir Galahad in Spamalot? Lotsa laughs. And I wonder whatever happened to him...or Wildhorn, for that matter. Because a lot of his music sounds freakishly similar, as well as similarly freakish, just based on this and Jekyll & Hyde.

According to the liner notes, Pimpernel was really an attempt to bring "popular music" into the legitimate Broadway theatre. Hence, the concept albums. And the constant revisions. And the synthesizers, they are a-plenty. At least there are enough real instruments to balance out the chaos (they even added some extra strings just for the album). Understandably, a lot of the actors in this show don't act anymore. Although, there is a minor chorus member listed in the liner notes named Sutton Foster.

Side note: I couldn't help but think of David Koechner and Mark McKinney as the dandy fops from "Saturday Night Live" when I first listened to "The Creation of Man" (mm-ooh-hoo-hoo nyeesssss). So you know it's quality.

Barbra Streisand: Back to Broadway is an album my parents would probably scold me for not buying. Because we are a Barbra family. She's pretty much staked her claim as our favorite singer, and we always manage to catch all of her TV specials ("Great Performances" is re-airing Color Me Barbra and My Name is Barbra, although I suspect it will take several months before they get to my parents' hometown affiliate). But I really didn't like this as much as I thought my DNA would dictate. Neither her duets ("One Hand, One Heart" with Johnny Mathis and "Music of the Night" with Michael Crawford...oy) nor her Sondheim covers ("Everybody Says Don't" from Anyone Can Whistle, "Children Will Listen" from Into the Woods, and "Move On" from Sunday in the Park With George) could ally me with her side of apparent good, as the arrangements are all very syrupy and eighties-ish. Remember: This was the voice that made "As If We Never Said Goodbye" from Sunset Boulevard a huge hit on the pop charts. Also, "Send In The Clowns." Again.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I've been too desensitized by my love of oldies and classic rock to truly appreciate the Barbra in all her capacity. The arrangement for "Luck be a Lady" sounds a little too "Pills and Soap" for my taste.

Strictly "Bring your mother" material for me. I look forward to either pawning it off as a present for a beloved relative or chucking it in the trash unnoticed.

And, finally we have Annie (1999 Television Film Soundtrack), which sounds fundamentally wrong, but there would be no better time to buy this and be reminded of Victor Garber's brilliance before his post-"Alias" TV show got cancelled after one episode. Of course, they also had the Godspell soundtrack for that, but I'm partial to this, because Annie was probably the first movie musical I ever saw and, for all of its flaws, it was catnip to any showtune-loving five-year-old.

The TV movie basically rectified any cinematic flaws John Huston might have wrought on the original by using some pretty "duh" devices. First of all, Garber's Daddy Warbucks, shaved head and all. If his delivery of the line "Yesterday was plain awful" in "I Don't Need Anything But You" doesn't convince you he's a way better choice than grumpy old Brit Albert Finney was, maybe his studied reading of the opening lines in "NYC" will. Also, original Annie Andrea McArdle (who was denied a role in the first movie) has a nice little cameo as the Star-to-Be. Most of the dated references are changed, but this is an updated version of the original show. Updated in the sense that they included both versions of "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile." Also? The girl who plays Annie is not annoying. If you've ever seen the TV movie, Netflix it post-haste. I am telling you, this is the best TV-movie remake of a classic Broadway musical, because it truly does everything right. Yes. Better than Bye Bye Birdie, South Pacific, Cinderella, Once Upon a Mattress, The Music Man, and Gypsy combined. I never understood why Michael Eisner was so crazy about these, but now, I guess I do. Huston's Annie is thus stricken from the record.

Annie's hair never once touches a perming device. That's devotion.

Anyway, the cast reads like a who's-who of musical theatre in the late nineties. You've got Audra McDonald as Grace, Alan Cumming as Rooster Hannigan, and Kristin Chenoweth as Lily St. Regis. And then there's Kathy Bates as Miss Hannigan, who actually outshines them all (...well, maybe not Audra). The songs that were cut essentially contextualized the show as being set during the Depression ("We'd Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover" and "A New Deal for Christmas"), but this is the happy optimistic late-nineties Annie that features someone named LaLanne as one of the orphans and Daddy Warbucks proposing to an African-American Grace, so who's to complain about political incorrectness at this point? And, Punjab aside, if you really want to know how politically incorrect Annie probably was going to be, listen to Charles Strouse's original cut song demos on the Annie original cast recording...especially the one that's basically a parade of offensively dated racial stereotypes. Leapin' lizards! Those tracks would make even the creators of "Message from a Nightengale" blush.

Anyway, a worthy purchase. I'd totally raise a daughter on this one.

And into the fire we goooo...

Finally, They Get Some Respect!

Forbidden Broadway wins Special Tony Award.

Now, if only Weird Al could win a Lifetime Achievement Grammy, everything would be right with the world.

Past the Point of No Return

I confess. I spent some time looking at that Phantom of the Opera fan page I posted a whole day ago. As a joke.

God help me, I think I'm starting to like Andrew Lloyd Webber.

I really have a lot of time on my hands. Could you tell? Initially, I hated the big British shows as a whole. I sort of eventually became indifferent about Phantom, though. The show was kind of cool. The Phans turned me off. I was lucky enough to be invited to an understudy dress rehearsal once and it completely changed my perspective on the show, because not only do the actors care fully about the work they’re doing, they care about the show itself. They really respond to it emotionally and artistically. And actors not only having work that is perfect for them, but having work that is also something they love is, well, perfect.

And, again, I feel like Lloyd Webber must be doing something right, but I just can’t figure out what it is, and it might just be a matter of taste for me. I think it’s morbidly appealing schlock.

Then I took a look at some of the people who have passed through the show during its entire run. And pretty much everyone who has put on the mask looks exactly the same as the last guy who played the Phantom before him…and so on.



But, after perusing that website? I’d have to say the cutest alum here is a direct tie between Jim Weitzer and Tim Martin Gleason. Mwrowrrrr.





Of course, I sent my mom the link to this website and she became addicted, too. She probably would also beg to differ with me. She knows damn well who I’m talking about. He’s under “L.”

Although, maybe Fabrizio over here’d be a close third. Maybe right behind an understudy I met a few years ago at the rehearsal, because…man, I really can’t believe I’m typing this. I used to be scared of this show. Like, really frightened of it up to and including just after I graduated college. I have the same problem with animatronics. So, by the time I got invited to that understudy rehearsal in the Broadway theatre in all of its bare-bones glory, and I couldn’t even let myself in through the stage door, I was still shivering uncontrollably. One of the understudies, Fred, was kind enough to hold my hand and walk me through that dark stage and just let me know it was all okay. And he even pulled me up onstage and stood next to me when we got to do vocal warm-ups with the actors. What a sweetie pie!

We talked and he’s subsequently left the show to get a real principal contract for a Broadway run. Because he plays an instrument, too, it's John Doyle's Broadway now, and the development is completely unsurprising to me.

So, my feelings about Phantom are decidedly changed. I’m happy about it becoming the longest running show on Broadway, because, man, at least it’s not Cats. Also, I always assumed that you couldn’t rock out that hard on the cello, but, Rasputina and said understudy aside, it is possible.

Where are they now? Tim’s in Vegas and Jim recently played…John Brooke in the Broadway musical of Little Women. Gaaah!

See? After getting over the Phantom? This is what scares me now.

That, and this creepy-cool photograph of Tim in The Rhythm Club.



Boogity!

Lloyd Webber must have done something right.

Haben su gehorte das Deutsche Starlight Express fan fiction?


Man, all this talk about Starlight Express makes me wonder what in the heck ever did happen to Robert Torti.

More info than you would ever want to know...

About Phantom of the Opera...

Is here.

On Geocities.

Ma-ra-Ma-ra-Marathon

I have been listening to the original off-Broadway cast recording of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. I don't know why. Shit's been real crazy lately, and my mood has more or less been "crazy, nonsensical French lyricism translated into crazy, vaguely ironic English? How about, yes, please?" The music and orchestrations are blatantly French modernist (think Aznavour, Gainsbourg, and Bertrand Bergalat), but the words incorporate references to atomic robots and burgers and fries and picture shows and Adolph Hitler's rise to power. The emotions of the singers run the gamut from complete apathy to screaming, sensationally overwrought pain. I can't explain it. Just listen to the freaking album, because I'd sooner recommend it than inflict it on any of my unsuspecting peers. The revival recording doesn't come out until October anyway, and, by then, most of the tracks will only be available on Itunes, because they couldn't spring for a two-CD set in their low, Off-Broadway thrift store budget.

This is the Greenwich Village "sensation" (well, Richard Jay-Alexander wrote the liner notes for this, so I can only assume he was there to appreciate it in 1966) conceived by a New York City record producer, a beatnik poet, and an Israeli acting teacher/director/mime that supposedly reduced Liza Minnelli to breathless tears. My parents saw it, too, during its original run, and they have countless copies of this in vinyl at the Gramercy thrift store. Since I'm not hip enough to count a turntable as some sort of necessity, buying this on CD in the basement of the Virgin Megastore (Why, God, Why?) has to suffice. I blame the fact that I'm so into oldies to actually give a crap about popular music for my not being up-to-date on the current trends. I have no clue about half the bands that exist today.

Which means that I am turning into my dad. Last night, I was sleeping and all I could think about was the revival recording of Man of La Mancha with Brian Stokes Mitchell as Cervantes and Ernie Sabella as Sancho Panza. I don't know why: It's my dad's favorite musical, right up there with The Most Happy Fella, Mayor (I shit you not..he really has the original record of this and there is no CD available. Basically, it was like the Avenue Q of the 80s), and Do Re Mi. This was a strange little curio from the late fifties-early sixties about a down-on-his-luck salesman (Phil Silvers in the original, Nathan Lane in the revival at City Center Encores!) who meets a sexy nightclub singer and gets embroiled in a wacky jukebox scandal. This has one of the greatest eleven o'clock ballads ever, "All Of My Life." Most of the other songs are instantly forgettable, because they're supposed to be wacky, exaggerated parodies of the kind of pop music that was coming out when Comden & Green were pretty much on their way out (Hey, just like in Singin' in the Rain!). And it was recorded to great effect with an all-star cast, so just take my word for it, listen to it, and impress your friends with your obscure knowledge of musicals, because mine pretty much begins and ends with Do Re Mi. And Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

Except not only is Jacques Brel a popular show right now (we did it at summer camp ages ago...I went to a really artsy camp), the revival currently packs 'em in at the Zipper Theatre Off-Broadway. And Jacques Brel also has a blog! And he's on MySpace! Yeahhhh!

I have no clue about the MySpace.

Since this is quickly becoming the obligatory post about "What CDs I'm currently obsessed with this week," I'll just elaborate.

I shouldn't like Frank Sinatra. He has mob ties. He is overrated. And he's Frank freaking Sinatra! The Entertainer of the Century! But that doesn't stop me for loving Come Dance With Me! for its sheer kitsch value. Mostly because the songs on this CD are Sinatra-ized showtunes (and I'm such a showtune purist I wouldn't even touch his Rodgers & Hammerstein and Comden & Green and Gershwin records with a ten foot dance belt). I'm a big booster of Kismet, which is a horrible musical, but the melodies stick with you because of its kitsch value, and I'd take Sinatra's swingin' "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads" over any of the original versions any day. It's almost like that song was screaming to be Sinatra-ized into a campy swing classic. I actually almost bought that CD opera reissue of the old Kismet highlights record with Gordon MacRae based on the kitschy cover art alone, but didn't because I am a very picky buyer.

Sinatra does "I Could Have Danced All Night," too. That's something I didn't think could translate to his style, but I guess he could do whatever the fuck he wanted to Rodgers & Hammerstein at that point in his career.

As for retro kitsch that isn't blatantly offensive in some respect, I really, really have a soft spot in my heart for Promises, Promises. I can't explain it. It's like the same way I feel about Big River. To me, Promises, Promises is the apotheosis of the perfect Broadway show: The music is provided by Burt Bacharach, Hal David did the lyrics, Neil Simon wrote the dialogue, Michael Bennett choreographed it, and Jerry Orbach starred in it. And it's based on the classic 60s movie The Apartment with all the stylistic trappings intact. Revive this! Now! I mean, sure, doing it at City Center Encores! with Martin Short is perfectly fine, but, based on those names alone, this show actually merits the big-scale revival it so richly deserves.

Anyway, this is a show where nearly every song is as hummable and memorable as "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" And it is. Basically, a corporate drone lends his apartment to the sleazy higher-ups who keep him employed in exchange for some fringe benefits. He lets them boink their mistresses in his pad, as long as he keeps their little secret (and if you listen to the CD, you can easily hear Eugene Levy playing the Edward Winter role as his boss). And then he falls in love with the innocent Miss Fran Kubelik (Jil O'Hara). There's some counterculture involved and the obligatory drug references, but you have to love any Broadway show where the overture sounds a lot like this: "Ba. Ba bop. Doo-wah. Ba ba ba ba ba dum!"

It's also what Bennett's muse, Donna McKechnie, did before leaving to do another retro kitsch show, Company. And, yes, she gets a big dance solo as Miss Della Hoya. Of course, you'd just have to imagine it for yourself. I imagine it was a lot like "Tick Tock."

And then...there's this. I don't know why I find myself pathetically and repeatedly going back to this CD. It will never be the funniest thing ever recorded. It's horrendously dated, and, to truly appreciate it, you have to have a mindset toward the time when Contact, Seussical, Dirty Blonde, and Jane Eyre were all on Broadway. But I suppose it's the nostalgia that keeps me playing it and makes Forbidden Broadway 2001: A Spoof Odyssey that much more appealing to me. I'll give a small, pithy example. Yesterday, I was home alone and cleaning and listening to "Would-Be Stars," which is a parody of the song "Wunderbar" from Kiss Me, Kate, and is about how the stars of Kiss Me, Kate in 2001, Brian Stokes Mitchell (Stokes again! Stokes alive! He's also in Do Re Mi, and that makes me positively...stoked) and Marin Mazzie, have names that are completely unrecognizable to mere mortals. And if you're like me and giggling like a dork at how stupid and inane that sounds, you will probably love this CD.

The highlights: "Sondheim's Blues," a song to the tune of "Buddy's Blues" from Follies about why Sondheim shows are never revived, to hilarious effect. It's this CD's damn fault I know the words to "Sondheim's Blues" better than the actual lyrics. And, yes, an epic parody of the biggest musical of 2001, Elton John and Tim Rice's Aida (again, you had to have been there...it was fantastically cheesy and misfired). It's a testament to how dead-on this show is when the white girl who plays Heather Headley on this actually went on to star as the villain in Aida just before it closed. And the guy who plays Cole Porter on the Kiss Me, Kate parody ("I'm the top, I'm the great Cole Porter...from this season on, no more new shows..." Again, you had to have been there) recently played the Caliph in Kismet at City Center Encores! opposite...Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie. Do you think at any point during the rehearsal process Stokes and Mazzie ever heard "Would-Be Stars"? Now, that would be hilarious. While I can only assume that the Great Stokes is not that easily offended, I hope he kicked the guy's ass for this.

City Center Encores! and imminent ass-kickings? It must be that time of year again.

Damn kids.

You Know You Have No Social Life

...When you spend a good chunk of your Friday night searching for piano/vocal sheet music to Carrie.

For reals.

Back In Business

I am watching the DVD of Sondheim's Putting It Together right now because I am sick and not working. It was somewhat based on recommendation and somewhat based on curiosity...but it's kind of campy and sweet. George Hearn's still got it. That is going to stink when he gets to a certain age and his baritone isn't quite in the shape it used to be.

My best friend refused to believe him as anything other than Sweeney Todd. When I told her he won the Best Actor Tony for playing a drag queen, she flipped. Can I write that now unironically? Flipped? Yesterday I caught myself saying both "Cripes" and "Holy Cats" and nobody called me out on my severe uncoolness...although the fact that I'm watching a DVD of Sondheim's Putting It Together and figuring out that Sondheim wrote a freaking Madonna song just now pretty much outed me in that first sense.

Carol Burnett plays Hearn's wife in this. It's not much of a show with a structured plot; just a revue of Sondheim's songs about relationships set at a cocktail party on an art deco set with an older couple (Hearn and Burnett) mingling with their younger counterparts (Brit stars John Barrowman and Ruthie Henshall). For some reason Balki from "Perfect Strangers" plays this weird, Greek Chorus-like character who introduces the scenes and comments on the action. He's pretty much what you'd expect from Balki singing Sondheim. And you've got Carol singing "The Ladies Who Lunch" and Hearn handling "Pretty Women" and the younger kids doing a cleaned-up version of "Unworthy of Your Love." And Balki gets all the comedy songs, too. "Buddy's Blues" and "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" and such.

Man. I think the most disturbing thing about him is that the high school in the movie Clueless was named after the guy. He also was Amy Heckerling's lover for awhile. Can I say that? Lover? I have a woman?

I've been driving the fam crazy with The Drowsy Chaperone quotes. At some point I was really worried to bring it over into the office two days ago with "I'm singin' a song an old Negro taught me! A Dixie remedy for Wedding Day jitters!" Which so isn't me. Although I prefer my water cold, my seat warm, and my comedy seriously irreverent.

Anyway, yes. This is one for the Neflix queues. If you like your Sondheim, anyway. And Carol Burnett. It's weird to think this role was originally played by Julie Andrews. And Balki was Christopher Durang(!). And the stud (Barrowman) was Reverend Camden from "Seventh Heaven." All I know's about Barrowman was that he played Bobby in Company with Emily Skinner and Matt Bogart. And he's got a quite interesting cameo in the Producers movie (the newer, abysmal one, not the classic for the ages) as the Nazi tenor.

And Balki. Balki.

Sweet.

Ad Wars

So, I bought the Sunday Times with the Fall Broadway preview in it, and was just so taken by the full-page, full-color, and, in some cases, colorless ads for all the new Broadway shows, I just had to do a write-up on them. I don't have a background in marketing or advertising, but I always disagreed with the old Entertainment Weekly poster reviews for incredibly valid reasons.

Noticeably absent from the ad pages? Banned-for-years but nonetheless still extremely popular revivals Spring Awakening and Les Miserables.

Let's get to this, shall we?

The Pirate Queen: Oops. I mean, "Riverdream PRESENTS Boublil and Schoenberg's The Pirate Queen: AN EPIC NEW MUSICAL." Groups on sale now! If you've seen the subway ads, you aren't missing much here. Just a simple graphic of a woman who isn't Stephanie Block with her face obscured by a mass of blue digitized hair. I mean, this doesn't leave much to be desired. All we know about this show is that it's from the creators of Les Miserables and it might come to Broadway late this February.

Which is exactly what happened with Martin Guerre. Hey! Remember that? C-

Jay Johnson: The Two and Only!: What a sad little number. No colorization, only less than half a page with some very encouraging press quotes with less of Jay, more of his puppets, and the interesting tagline "The new comedy about finding your voice...and throwing it."

Sue me for thinking ventriloquism is a lost art. I'd take this over The Pirate Queen any day. B+

High Fidelity: This won't be giving the cute novel cover, or even the old John Cusack Hard Day's Night-derived movie poster a run for its money anytime soon. It's just a nondescript black-and-white photograph of attractive, appealing leads Will Chase and Jenn Colella with their faces obscured and their bodies canoodling in indie rock shirts. It's not very sexy. The only color part of this is a gigantic decal-looking label that says "High Fidelity: Live and In Stereo," and even that covers Colella's strategically photographed torso. And it's in a highly pukey yellow shade. What we do know is the show is re-based on Brooklyn, and written by some amazing people. But you'd never know that..or anything else about the show except that it's a Broadway musical based on High Fidelity.

Are they going for an indie rock show poster feel? Or an album cover? What is this? It all looks forced. Aside from the so very "Clarissa Explains It All" Nickelodeon graffito font written "Every life has a soundtrack," you won't be able to find out much else about it. You'd have to squint just to find "TopFiveBreakups.com" nestled in there somewhere. C+

The Vertical Hour: This is the book my mother would reach straight for at Borders. Wait...you mean it's not a book? It's not even a play about books? Wait, no. It's "THE WORLD PREMIERE OF A NEW PLAY ABOUT THE CONFLICT ABROAD AND THE CONFLICT AT HOME." Starring "Four-Time Academy Award Nominee Julianne Moore and Golden Globe Nominee Bill Nighy, Directed by Academy Award Winner Sam Mendes." This is like those annoying ads for All The King's Men that purport to be smart, but are really just geared toward stupid people. Sure, they look stylish, but then you slowly begin to realize that it's really just a shameless, hackneyed remake of a much better classic film starring a lot of people who have been nominated for and/or won these many awards of some sort.

People, when will you get it through your heads? The Tony is not the Oscar. At this rate, the Oscar isn't even trying anymore. D+

Company: And, phone rings, door chimes, you know the drill. It's a nice composite graphic with pasted-on photographs around it, that spreads several different messages around a full page, with the uniting theme of "perfect relationships," and a scintillating log line: "Five married couples, three single women, and one conflicted bachelor try to balance romance, commitment, and sex in the city that never sleeps." That's a mouthful. Also? It's all so well-spaced. The show's star, Raul Esparza, isn't well-known outside of theat-uh circles, but he gets top billing, in more ways than one.

But the ice cubes? I know this is supposed to be set at a swank Manhattan cocktail party (it's like "Sex & the City" set to music), but this is not an "ice cube" show. It is pink and it is purple. But dark blue and glass panes? The poses of the actors playing the different characters are fine, as are their names in off-white serif type against a plain background, as opposed to something cooler, like a city backdrop of stars. It's like the seventies Woody Allen version of the poster, as opposed to the eighties romantic-comedy Nora Ephron interpretation. But it looks as if nothing's changed since the original regional production this revival is based on. At least one of the girls changed her hair. It was probably her image consultant's idea.

I'm sorry...it's just...I'm extremely excited for this show, I really am. I actually know two people in the cast: One through my job, and the other through mutual friends, and I couldn't be more ecstatic and happy for them about this huge opportunity. I love this show and the soundtrack CD, despite all bad experiences in the past I may inexorably tie to it. But I was recently referred to a "image consultant," because somebody from Company supposedly attributed the entirety of her success as an actress to this.

And I should get into this issue at some point with the blog, if I am reaching any desperately needy actors out there...Follow that link. Go see a life coach. Seriously. Take a career planning class. If you are completely disillusioned and impressionable at this point in your life, you really need to get your shit together, and you will listen to and truly believe anything, listen to positive affirmation above all else and believe it as such.

But when you surpass that plateau and gain so much confidence that you can go out there and pursue a real career on your own terms, a lot of the self-help mumbo-jumbo doesn't ring as true as it did before, and it sounds more like, well...self-help mumbo-jumbo.

See? This is exactly why I am trying so hard to get on a tour. I need to prove to my roommate that she can have this entire apartment to herself and live a normal adult life in it. I need to prove to my parents that I am independent enough to join Equity and seriously pursue this as something other than a hobby. (My parents: "Those Equity actors they got for the community theatre are the real deal...Who cares if they're not very good? They're in Equity...You'll never get into Equity, Rose, you're not as good as them..."). I need to prove to my friends that I can join them in this crusade, relate to them more as just peers, and live my life on my own terms. All of this has happened for a very good reason.

And, above all of that, I need to prove to a shitload of casting directors that I can be nice and talented and that I so need this. I want this and I need it a fuckload more than the old lady with a wig and kids to support does because I am not bitter and an asshole. I have no reason to be. Also? So I can join the union and find real legal jurisdiction in order to sue their asses for being inhumanly cruel to me because they can.

I have encountered a serious bias against educated people in show business. I don't know why, but I suppose the fact that we didn't devote the entirety of our four years in college to working as actors, singers, and dancers is actually perceived as a kind of hindrance. They assume that we were too busy playing with our chemistry sets instead of honing our craft, which is bullshit. They forget how much of a voluntary choice all of this really is.

So, when I had built enough of a trust with my life coach, I wanted to ask about how an educated person, like said actress, who doesn't have a degree in musical theatre, but nonetheless went to a top-ranked school, got to Broadway. What route did she take? And the answer, boiled down to two words, was, as such: "Image consultant."

So, I obsessed over my clothes and hair and went straight to point A again. At which point I realized that you do not get cast in a John Doyle show based on your clothes and hair: You have more of a chance based on your ability to play three musical instruments at once. As an actress friend of mine, who is also very well-educated, interpreted the real answer in three words: "Buy my shit."

When, really, it's totally free to decide, "Hey, I should dye my hair red."

Anyway, the poster is good, but not good enough. It promotes a product, but, by understatement, it just doesn't sell it the right way. Leading me to believe they do need some serious image overhaul...or else. B

Disney and Cameron Mackintosh Present Mary Poppins: "Wind's in the east, there's a mist coming in...Like something is brewing and 'bout to begin." We all know the brand. But this is ALL branding. There's the familiar logo of a silhouetted Poppins flying over the chimneys of England, but how do we know this isn't going to be like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: A West End import Americanized and compartmentalized right next to the McDonald's in Times Square?

There's no mention of stars Ashley Brown and Gavin Lee, who have certainly gotten their fair share of press attention. Instead, there's "Based on the stories of P.L. Travers and the Walt Disney film." Well, actually, even the understudies get as much play here as...Two-time Tony nominee Rebecca Luker? What's she doing in this? B-

Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Utopia: For a show that's marketed squarely to snobby elitists and college drama geeks alike, they wasted no time clarifying how big this is going to be. The only two-page ad spread, it's a real eye-opener, with a weird panorama graphic, an extremely lengthy description of the plot, and a handy color-coded chart and mini-calendar denoting when each individual "chapter" runs concurrently, with the entire trilogy running at other times as a nine-hour marathon. Point is, as cluttered as it looks, they still make Stoppard the main selling point. This would be interesting, considering the sweeping, oil-painted portrait of a gigantic shipwreck, juxtaposed with the expansive, snooze-worthy, downright unreadable summary of it being about Russian intellectuals, if Stoppard really was the main selling point.

Because the cast is featured just as prominently, if in name only, and, if they aren't actually pictured in the ad...not showing them in character gives us reason to really worry. Someone on ATC accurately dubbed this thing "Coast of Wanktopia" because, given the fact that it's a Lincoln Center prestige piece that featured some of Britain's best natural resources in the original London cast, when it came time to recast this for American audiences, did they even look at their choices? Ethan Hawke? Amy Irving? Josh Charles? Wanks.

Just one qualm: This is a sweeping epic with forty-plus people involved. Every cast member gets very clear billing. Who are these people? I mean, David Pittu's in it, and I guess he was in King Kong, so, he's cool, but how did they find so many actors to put their names in boldface type for two whole pages? They couldn't have just found them at the EPAs. Strictly for Ben Brantley fans only. I miss Wendy Wasserstein. D

Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas: A very Manhattan landscape accentuates fun graphics, striking colors, and the sealer: "Catch the Grinch!" But, to quote an old evaluation of a forgotten movie poster, Liberty Heights, we're all just going to think that this is about one thing and one thing only: A big, ugly yellow car. D-

The Times They Are A'Changin': The phrase "Broadway musical set in a traveling circus" has about as much appeal as the operative words "a cover of the Foreigner classic 'I Wanna Know What Love Is'" or even "blackface." Nothing strikes more fear into the hearts of theatergoers. Luckily, the iconographic tents and wagons are painted so discreetly into the picture, they're barely in view. Crossing a prominent wooden signpost, with the Public Theatre-style sideways boldface type, this stylizedly plays up the involvement of big names Twyla Tharp and Bob Dylan over substance...and the neon scheme is a great touch, with a comet flying over this dusky sky.

But this is indoor entertainment, people. And, unlike the discreetly brilliant Movin' Out street sign logo, it just isn't the same. C

Grey Gardens: Doing everything right, this Broadway transfer recycles the original poster from its celebrated Off-Broadway run: "The Incredible True Story of Jackie O's Most Outrageous Relatives." A tantalizing portrait of the main character here, a tucked-in, but still very noticeably Brantley quote there, a non-drab, but not-too-flashy color scheme, and the demure denotations of stars Christine Ebersole and Mary Louise Wilson with a simple declaration of this as a musical, and you've got yourself the perfect New York Times ad. A

Losing Louie: The latest quirky British import from Manhattan Theatre Club, the show stars very few big names and almost necessitates a great poster in order to make it the sleeper hit we all should think it deserves to be. So, we get a black-and-white shot of the four actors, seemingly lying down from different directions, with blankly humorous looks on their faces, holding black roses and wearing ties and pearls. Clearly, this show revolves around a funeral. And, clearly, the quirky green typeface lets us know that it's got dark humor to spare, with an apparently untested playwright (Simon Mendes da Costa) and a tested director (Jerry Zaks) above the cast and crew. Based on the ad, and the deliberate lack of a tagline, surely, we can't really figure out that this comedy was actually a big hit on the West End, but I think some newbies will definitely be intrigued with this proposition. Those funny facial expressions could be worth the $49.50 AmEx special alone.

Just one quibble: What is this, anyway? My Big Dry British Funeral Party? MTC has a reputation for using the same stable of actors and playwrights, but I guess Brian F. O'Byrne was just too busy doing The Coast of Utopia. A-

Heartbreak House and Suddenly Last Summer: Underpaid stars? Limited runs? Sparse ad space? This must be the Roundabout. The Heartbreak House segment doesn't do much to promote anything other than the not-nearly-as-well-known-as-you'd- think title, with George Bernard Shaw's name slightly obscured and a strange illustration of a factory (house?) on water, and two cringeworthy slogans: "Classic is always in season" and "a timely comedy from a timeless master." Meanwhile, all Suddenly, Last Summer has to offer are gauzy headshot photgraphs of stars Blythe Danner and Carla Gugino. How quickly we forget this Tennesee Williams play is really about native boys devouring her son, Sebastian, and she witnesses every course, from soup to nuts. F

A Chorus Line: This is coming back? Oh, yeah. Here's a nice lineup with a bright, if distracting, color scheme: The actors, facing sideways in a diagonal pose, wearing the original seventies costumes from the iconic show. Effortlessly, it gets away with some subtle tricks here, like using the original show font, and, in subtly giving away the show's ending, dimming a spotlight over the cast that doesn't quite capture everyone pictured - an underlying theme of this seminal musical. You'd have to look closely to spot Cassie. At this point, it's too early to complain about why Sheila is black now, or why Zack isn't pictured with them, but we really do want to root for these kids, along with the innocent header: "Five, six, seven...8 days until performances begin." Of course, neither the cast nor the creative team are listed in this, and too much space is cut off for the real bottom line: This poster is dwarfed by a giant American Express ad. C+

Como esta Rose Luis?

Havoc will be on an episode of "The Colbert Report" this week. Check your local listings!

I'm very excited about this one. I'm being featured in an upcoming segment called "Chewbacca and Friends." Hopefully, they won't cut me out in post!

Lovette George has died.

I received the email in my Inbox just now. What a sad, sad day. Even sadder, I just found this out on All That Chat literally seconds before even checking my AOL mail.

I'm going to step outside of my happy-happy Blogger persona for just a mo, and step back into my real-life, work-work, sort-of-a-hard-ass personality and say that this is very sad news, indeed. Although I knew Lovette was ill, I did not realize the broad range of work she had accomplished in recent years. Off-Broadway, she appeared in such shows as The Musical of Musicals and Requiem for William, which was produced by the Transport Group. At Lincoln Center, too, she was involved with several very important plays, including A New Brain (where she understudied Kristin Chenoweth), Marie Christine, and Carousel (the latter two also with her dear friend Audra McDonald).

My condolences to family and friends.

Theatermania obit
Broadway.com obit
Lovette's IBDB profile
IMDB profile
Off-Broadway credits

Bits of Havoc

Or, things I would have posted here earlier but didn't get around.

One thing I neglected to mention in the last entry: The new songs Stephen Sondheim wrote for the movie version of A Little Night Music? Apparently just a reworked version of the third song on the Night Music soundtrack (and also the bonus track on the CD copy I have) and the intro music from the original with lyrics added. Seriously. One of the greatest songwriters within the last half-century of musical theatre added lyrics to his own overture. Seriously! He just didn't put any effort into it, which is a darn shame. You didn't hear anyone adding lyrics to the freaking intro to Gypsy: "Gypsy Rose Lee...She's gonna be-come - a strip-perrr...and-her-momma's-gonna-exploit...HER! Gonnamakeherfamous gonnamakerfamous gonnamakeherfamous...Gypsy Rose Lee, she grew up screwed on the road, her sister was pret-t-ier than her! How could she just go, nobody would know, how they did the show, but there is a story behind all of this, wheee! It's so swell, it's so great..."

Although, I think Roddenberry tried it with the theme from "Star Trek" ("Star flights...") and Bill Murray did have that nifty take-off with Nick the Lounge Singer doing the intro to Star Wars ("Star Wars, wonderful Star Wars, give me those Star Wars, don't let them eeeend!"). I'm paraphrasing here, but, Sondheim, man! I thought you were better than that.

One thing I received in the mail yesterday was a back issue of The Sondheim Review. I don't know why, but I was at the bookstore the other day, and saw this.

There is an entire magazine about this guy.

Although it can get pretty elitist at some (most) points, it's an interesting addition to the Rose Havoc Archives. We have an interview with the guy who played Tulsa in the Bernadette Peters revival of Gypsy. We don't really learn much about him, except that he started out in musicals but decided he wanted to be a serious dramatic actor instead, and suddenly ended up in strange Edward Albee plays with nude scenes and lots of cursing. Then he got the call to do Gypsy and has subsequently returned to his jazz-handing ways. There is also a nice featured article about Gypsy choreographer Jerry Mitchell, who reveals that "All I Need Is the Girl" was actually a cut scene from Jerome Robbins' Broadway.

And also? Nothing much, unless you really care about Wise Guys.

Although, there is an interview with the guy who played Henrik in the Broadway revival of A Little Night Music, and who, incidentally, played Tulsa in our local production of Gypsy, like, fifteen years ago. That might have been the first real live musical I ever saw. The first professional one, anyway. My mother has stories about me getting kicked out of the local dinner theater for singing along with Fiddler on the Roof on the stage.

I rewatched the Rent movie again, and, yes, it still is crap. But it's enjoyable crap. I have no doubt in my mind, years from now, this movie will be regarded as a camp classic. Granted, nobody does anything right with movie musicals these days - but, based on the Oompa-Loompa scenes in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I am still holding out hope for Sweeney Todd. Chris Columbus was the wrong guy to direct this; Rosario Dawson shouldn't try to top Daphne Rubin-Vega, and she doesn't; everything from the dialogue interludes to Adam Pascal's hair is horribly misconceived. It's like a train wreck. A horrible, horrible train wreck. Or A Little Night Music. You just can't look away.

The last time I saw Rent live on stage, I don't know. The energy just wasn't there anymore. It wasn't like when I was twelve and had heard the CD soundtrack millions of times at summer camp that actually seeing it, in my Sunday Best from the third row, was a completely mind-blowing experience. It was more like ten years later, when my friends and I were tired and sleepy from a long day's work, and, standing in the SRO area near the lobbies, gift shops, and back exits, kept falling asleep on the carpets. The staging, the storytelling devices, even soundtrack on its own still has staying power, but the non-Equity touring company and "American Idol" stupidity machine have sort of tainted the momentum it used to have. Methinks the theatre wags have already begun to realize that emperor Michael Greif has no clothes (Grey Gardens? For real? Mr. Marmalade? Come on.).

Here is a partial listing of things this movie does wrong.

The dialogue. I feel sorry for the kids who see this movie, because this might be their only exposure to Rent ever. They are going to wonder why most of the spoken sentences in this movie rhyme. It's not unintentional. The words from the script are sort of copied word-for-word, but, hello? The entire live show is sung-through. That's why it's a rock opera. Oops.

I mean, you didn't see freaking Uncle Ernie speaking about how he's going to fiddle, fiddle, fiddle about with Tommy.

There are constant excuses. Like setting the movie in 1985, when it's being made in 2005, based on a musical written and set in 1995. And showing Joanne and Maureen getting engaged for no apparent reason other than to 1. somehow make an extremely dunderheaded comment on the nature of gay marriage during a Republican presidency and 2. somehow make a little contextual sense out of "Take Me Or Leave Me," like when Elizabeth Taylor does a bunch of things that are all leading up to this moment where all the characters finally have a suitable excuse to start singing "A Weekend in the Country."

The song just doesn't have any meaning anymore. The new girl is not Fredi Walker. And it's kind of creepy hearing her sing with someone who's clearly done this before. When I was twelve, I wanted to be Idina Menzel. Now, I'm slowly beginning to realize that she is only capable of singing out of her nose. She has no falsetto, and she even strains on the low notes. I'd rewatch that chapter on the DVD again with the commentary right now while I'm typing this, but the roommate is watching "Laguna Beach" on DVR and every time these fuckers talk about their "stories," I keep flashing back to Clay Collins on The Days of the Week: "It's nice to know my music turns on pretty girls like you."

Or "I'll Cover You"? This is a perfect example of how reticent they must have been to even so much as show two guys holding hands in a PG-13 movie, let alone sing a romantic duet together. Also, the way "Santa Fe" is done in the movie is different, but it's kind of cool in the show, too, when only about fifteen people in the whole cast are playing various people in tent city.

And, Columbus? Nice move on having Randy Graff show up and not sing a word. Idiots.

Remember?

Right now, I am actually missing a comedy show I was quite looking forward to: Being as fixated with the Broad-way as I am with the NYC underground comedy scene, it's no wonder that I was so excited about this (and given the fact that I'm a girls' school grad who is big into musical theatre and hangs around the UCB in Chelsea, it's no wonder I need to meet more straight men).

So, it's at Mo Pitkin's, a place I've never been to and have some weird fascination with the fact that I need to see something there quick. It's the same deal as Under St. Mark's, and, if you're completely foreign to the small venues that are available to indie improv groups and the like, basically, they are all pretty much the same place. The drinks are crappy and the walls are painted-on black-box-theatre cinderblocks. It's no different than the Producers' Club 2. Only, y'know, underground.

It's Obsessed with Julie and Jackie.



Perhaps this existed in the massive mental backlog of entries I'd planned to write for this website, and am still, hopefully, going to get around to; these include:

*A guided tour of the annual BC/EFA Flea Market
*More pointless lists
*A blog of the opening night of Dreamgirls at Chelsea Clearview (and, given my choice of venue, it will probably be a madhouse)
*A "Bloomsday on Broadway" write-up where my best friend and I re-enact the November day depicted in The Producers on Bloomsday - that is, as soon as I learn how to upload personal photos to this thing. I always keep prolonging this one, as I will probably never get around to so much as owning a digital camera, let alone wanting one, so it may well not happen.

Utterly pathetic.

Anyway, since I can't go to Obsessed tonight (darn curfew!), I've decided to write about my stupid obsession of the moment...because, really, I tend to obsess over things in spurts. One minute it's "Arrested Development," and the next it's the original Broadway cast recording of The Full Monty. Then I just get defensive and can't bring myself to gush about them anymore with the gusto I used to summon at around those times.

So, without further ado, I am going to write about the absolute worst movie Elizabeth Taylor ever made. Seriously. Worse than Cleopatra. It's never going to make any AFI top whatever lists anytime soon, and it's not exactly a movie I'd recommend to my friends, but God help me if I end up defending it to my grave for no apparent reason other than it's proof that even great geniuses make horrible, horrible mistakes and even so much as destroying the evidence will never, ever change the past.

This elusive movie...is called...A Little Night Music.

There it is, just staring at me. A crusty, antiquated video box with a flowery mod pink font that no longer exists, and the photograph of Len Cariou in regal, turn-of-the-century Scandinavian aristocracy period costume smooching La Liz on the lips while simultaneously trying not to gag. Someone apparently thought that something so great and exquisite, a wonderful Broadway show like A Little Night Music would make a great movie. They were wrong. Dead. Wrong.

Because, maybe there was some strange occurrence in the film industry. Perhaps the gay mafia was overthrown by the Jewish mafia in terms of supremacy. Which is b.s., because the Jewish mafia doesn't just taint Broadway like this, too. I never count In My Life. No. What makes A Little Night Music spectacularly awful is that it's trying so hard in vain to avoid these precarious (read: obviously dunderheaded) mistakes that practically every major-studio movie musical of the last half-century and beyond has made. It's as simple as saying, "I know the actors are twenty years too old to recreate their original Broadway roles...but how to mathematically and logically balance it out...I know! Let's set Rent in the mid-eighties and film it in Canada!" Or "We have to work a major-label star who's way past her prime in here somewhere...the record company demands it...Why don't we just work Mya into the 'Cell Block Tango' number?" Or, just simply, "Nicole Kidman!" None of this makes sense. The biggest anachronism in Rent wasn't that scene where they were surrounded by posters that very visibly said "Freelancers' Union: Established 1998." It was that the actors really were twenty years too old to recreate their original Broadway roles.

But I digress. A Little Night Music is a terrible, terrible movie that practically seems to demand its own snarky DVD commentary. I can't explain why I'm so obsessed with it. I can pinpoint every twist and turn coming up. I was actually telling someone the other day that it's also a prime drinking game movie, because it took over two years to film - and, in that time frame, Liz's maximum-heifer to minimum-skinny weight was fluctuating so badly she was like the Luther Vandross of the mid-seventies. And every scene in this movie contains some elusive reshoot cut where Liz goes from hot to huge. I can't explain it. She's like two different women.

Here are just a few reasons to be morbidly obsessed with this movie: Some of the songs are cut. Some of them are changed. Even "Send in the Clowns" manages to sound good, even though they're working with late-seventies technology. Also, one woman dubs all of the female singing voices, except for Diana Rigg, who plays the Countess. And the actor who plays Henrik also does all of his own cello-playing, and he does it live. Not only that, he actually went on to do the voice of Frodo Baggins in the Bakshi Hobbit. And the only thing they really didn't change was the poster. It's still the same iconic "Well, you think you're looking at an ugly tree, but look closer, and it's actually a bunch of naked people fucking!" Broadway poster logo. Which, in my opinion, is way up there with La Cage for its sheer audacity: Balancing both vaguely artful graphic design and cool, ready-for-a-t-shirt crudeness.

They did not fuck up the score. Watching it again, it's kind of enhanced. The original Broadway score is all woodwinds and strings - no brass or percussion. The movie affords them to use both a full orchestra and outdoor settings. Which is a liability, because I saw some old book at the Strand the other day that had the old production photos of the original show, and those Broadway sets were pretty kick-ass. Like an Aliki book on heavy acid usage. Sets aside, though, there's enough to keep the purists happy, because Sondheim wrote two new songs for the movie, and he enlisted Paul Gemignani to musical direct, and Jonathan Tunick to arrange (Tunick actually has a nifty cameo, fake moustache and all, appropriately enough, as Igor Stravinski!).

Those two new songs, though...They got rid of "The Miller's Son." No matter. The nice and chubby lady who played Petra in it wasn't going to work much after that...in a severe case of art imitating life, she got knocked up by the guy who played Henrik. Look at me, all Man In Chair on this thing. And I wasn't even old enough to live through this movie's release!

Still, Len Cariou gives a peerless master class on lip-synching during "Now." That's got to be worth something, right? And wouldn't you rather take a chance on this late-seventies schlock than The Boynton Beach Club? Seriously!

I confess, I've never seen A Little Night Music live. I only have the soundtrack, and someone should probably motivate me to seek out the live taped version from the Kennedy Center at the library archives with Douglas Sills as Count Carl-Magnus and that wonderfully wonky brunette chick from The Light in the Piazza as Anne. I can't justify this movie's existence. Hal Prince probably can't save it either - it was the last movie he ever directed. Someone needs to bring this antique back into the public eye. I don't know how, or however ironically, people should appreciate and treasure this movie. It's an oddity. That's what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. And it's got Elizabeth Taylor on two extremes. So, it's really not that bad. But you'd think someone would have noticed at some point...

Here's a nifty, if somewhat over-long, review of the VHS!

And here's a place you can seek it out, too!

Les Miserablegos

I give you, the beloved, climactic Act I closer of Broadway's Les Miserables, acted out entirely by Legos, courtesy of Google Video. No, I didn't make this. Someone else did. I don't even own a video camera. Clearly, this is what happens when you have way too much time on your hands. Still, you've got to love the detail on the Thernardiers. It's just in time for the revival, too. Happy Labor Day everybody!

All The Children Sing

I just listened to the York Theatre Company concert cast recording of I Sing! Which is, as such, described by its creators as "a foul-mouthed operetta about lost twenty-somethings searching for love in Manhattan." A musical about aimless twenty-somethings living in New York City? It is, as the liner notes state, well, more than once, "Sex & The City meets Friends set to Music!" I guess the cast recording is nothing to sneeze at, either. It stars Lauren Kennedy, Matt Bogart, Danny Gurwin, Leslie Kritzer, and Chad Kimball, none of whom were in the original Off-Broadway cast of the show, but all of whom have appeared on Broadway before (in the liner notes, the creators of the show give copious thanks to the one-night-only concert's casting directors...more so than their college advisors, anyway). I know what you're probably thinking..."Who? What? Why should I care about this thing?"

Long story short, I found out about this one through the impossibly good company and somewhat claustrophobic network I’ve cultivated since moving to New York City (and being an aimless twenty-something...hello). For a two-CD set, it is relatively inexpensive, but nonetheless hard-to-find (this was Amazon's last copy in stock). Also, there's a buttload of liner notes. The token intro to the liner notes was written by Lonny Price. Because if anyone knows about being an aimless, spoiled twenty-something in today’s New York City, it’s the original Charley Kringas.

So, I had auditioned for these guys who wrote the musical. I didn't hear back. But, during the downtime, I found out they wrote this tiny little Off-Broadway musical. After being outright rejected (or just impatient) I decided to seek it out. I really don’t know why.

It’s like when they have a skinny girl in a fat suit on as Tracy Turnblad. It doesn’t make sense.

Just, as well, the CD arrived in the mail yesterday.



Maybe because it does kind of seem like some well-worn territory...I'm not upset with the fact that it's been done before. Just the fact that it's been done better. Maybe I'm losing touch, or I'm watching too many of the televised ATW seminars where they interview composers who have been getting kind of disillusioned about the state of musical theat-uh, but there are maybe enough people I can count who can write better material than this. But, I guess it's that eternal idea of "I've got this great idea for a musical!" When no one really follows through on the promise. I mean, my mom wouldn't, but she probably could write better. There have been...well, I guess because old musicals never die, they just play in rep, so, there are enough musicals with aimless, spoiled twenty-something characters that are a lot more timeless and less dated.

And that reminds me...I want to know what is so fricking wrong with Baby.



Yes. Please. Bring this back. No Les Miz; yes, Baby. Boyz 'R Us!

As for I Sing!, I read my mom the following lyrics over the phone yesterday.

I am Barbra Streisand
In the body of an elf
I never liked my thighs
And I feel bad about myself
There's twelve unfinished screenplays
On my self collecting dust
I don't wanna temp forever
No, it's Miramax or bust
I feel like Nora Ephron when I start out
Then I grab the teflon
And I stir-fry my heart out

My mom: It’s like they set your life to music!

I just wish I could sing more like Kritzer.

The music is cutesy, piano-driven fluff that owes more than a little to William Finn and Jason Robert Brown. And the voices? Well, it’s like discovering a movie like Can’t Hardly Wait just now. When I was a whippersnapper your age, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Lauren Ambrose, Donald Faison, and Ethan Embry were the stars of tomorrow! Yeah, these are the new-school musical theatre actors of what is probably my generation. There really is no Broadway star system anymore, so just try to imagine that they’re big names right now. Even if they’re mostly in their mid-thirties and barely even on Broadway anymore. Well, Kennedy is in Spamalot…but who else is in that these days? On the plus side, all of them sing variations on the f-word numerous times on this recording.

I mean, I’ve been hopelessly in love with Gurwin’s voice since Forbidden Broadway 2001: A Spoof Odyssey. I’d like to forget he was ever in Little Women. Bogart is the big, booming, dramatic baritone you could easily imagine as Billy Bigelow, Chris, or Dr. Zhivago. I'll bet he competes with Patrick Wilson for a lot of those roles. Kennedy’s the blonde ingénue, Kritzer the cute, young, belty Streisand-alike, and Kimball the whiny nasal high tenor with big ears. Last I heard of him he was in a beer commercial. Which is a damn shame, because he was, like, the first person to ever play Milky White on Broadway. Poor guy also had the misfortune of starring in both Lennon and Good Vibrations. Is he in hiding?

I guess I feel an obligation to worry about anyone who posts this entry in his blog:

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

penis poop pee
current mood: :( sad

well, well, well. i see i got your attention. so, did you read my other blog? because you haven't commented OR left any kudos, and i am beginning to feel like you don't care. that makes me sad. i have been crying almost all day. except at lunch. i didn't cry then. that was fun. but then i started crying again after my nap. and as i write this, tears are falling inbetween the keys and making it hard for me to type. ll dlakda ;alkd. hold on. i am drying off the keyboard. would you hand me some paper towels. thanks. anyway. would it kill you to leave a comment - or even read it? crying hurts. why you want to hurt me?

Anyway, he’s quite good and doesn’t sound the least bit depressed over Good Vibrations closing early or the lack of a Lennon cast album. He can wrap his voice around a decent power ballad here and, in the numerous photos in the liner notes, his look, with thick, square-rimmed glasses, a baseball shirt, and a repeatedly, strategically, slanted-at-different-angles tan newsboy cap, says to me, “Artsy-fartsy-alternative Boston guy.” Which, apparently, he is. That or he’s losing his hair.

Still, Chad doesn’t really carry this whole thing by himself. And he shouldn’t. The liner notes explicitly state that this is "Sex & the City meets Friends set to music!" You mean like I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change was “Seinfeld” set to music? Or how Forbidden Broadway is "sort'a like Weird Al goes Broadway"?

It's like...it's actually less like Can't Hardly Wait and more like that shelved, low-budget movie set in a pizza place with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Dash Mihok, and Jamie Kennedy that seems to exist perpetually in the "New Release" section at Blockbuster with the simple tagline "Hot Young Cast..." If it was given a "Special Edition" DVD rerelease. If that could actually happen this soon, considering how the Blockbuster seems somewhat - entirely - obsolete now.

Anyway, yes, this "Hot Young Cast..." is given enough play, but the rest of this thing feels pretty excessive. I suppose it's just the packaging. No Off-Broadway musical deserves liner notes that thick, especially if they're just pictures of the actors in rehearsal clothes standing behind music stands, emoting dramatically, and sipping hot coffee out of cardboard cups with straws and sleeves. There's even a photo of Danny Gurwin kissing Lauren Kennedy on the lips. Just as soon as my mom was going to jokingly ask if there was also a photo of Gurwin kissing Matt Bogart on the lips, sure enough, there is a photo of Danny Gurwin kissing Matt Bogart right on the lips in these particular liner notes. Excessive, much? That's an argument you seriously can't refute.

As far as music goes, it's a cutesy diversion. Is it one of the 50 Greatest Off-Broadway scores ever written? Yes. Does it deserve to be ranked above Lucky Stiff, No Way to Treat a Lady, and You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown? Hell's no!

Well, let's weigh it out.

Plus: Hot young stars cursing like sailors!

Minus: Too thick, man, too thick.

And pretty people.

Motherfuckin'a.

Curious and Curiouser

Obscure Musicals on Netflix: Alice at the Palace

Meryl Streep should do more musicals. There, I wrote it. How else to explain Alice at the Palace? I honestly don't know why I put this DVD as high as I did on my Netflix list, but if she did more stuff like this and less like Mother Courage, where she plays a tyrannical dictator who abuses her three disadvantaged children (well, one of them is a deaf-mute, one of them is named Swiss Cheese, and one of them is Fred Weller...so, yeah, talk about disadvantaged!), maybe the world would be a better place.

There's no better time to rent this hidden, albeit incomprehensible, 1982 filmed-for-television gem than now. After all, Streep is currently selling out crowds at Central Park as Mother Courage, and this is a Joseph Papp Public Theatre Pro-duction. Meaning the actors in it probably made a huger deal out of the fact that they were doing this one show than any Broadway work they'd ever done. It's the same deal with Lincoln Center, if you read the program bios close enough. To actors, this is an even bigger deal than actually getting in the Union! Oddly enough, no, I have not seen Mother Courage. I don't know why I find Mother Courage uneventful, and yet, I keep working it into the same conversations I always do...it was the same deal with Lestat and the movie Undercover Brother, actually.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I just like saying "Noseworthy."

But the real reason Alice at the Palace probably exists is because it is "that" show. It's the weird, avant-garde rock-influence artsy, experimental "Music Hall" that none of these leotard-clad actors has ever mentioned, nor will ever mention, in their current bios. Which is a shame, because, unlike Bonfire of the Vanities (et tu, Tom Hanks?) or Virtuosity (eh, Denzel?), I think kids should check this out if they really want to know why there probably is nothing Meryl Streep isn't capable of as an actor. Anyone who's watched Postcards from the Edge or even the first five minutes of Death Becomes Her knows Meryl can sing. She actually has a very sweet, true, lilting soprano voice that goes in between hard-core riffing and a killer Joan Baez impression - while strumming a flamingo guitar, no less.

Well, it's on DVD, and it is one strange...bird. The idea behind the show is a "Music Hall" based on Alice in Wonderland and Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass. The music itself was written by Elizabeth Swados, who is frequently mentioned alongside pretty much every major late-seventies rock musical composer (like the Hair guys) for her own Public Theatre rock musical Runaways, about teenage runaways. This DVD speaks to pretty much everything f'ed-up and exciting that was going on in Off-Broadway musical theatre at that time. You want retro pastiche? There's a square dance number, a Charleston, a calypso, a barbershop quartet, and a waltz (just in case all you A Little Night Music fans were still holding out for the waltz to come back in style at some point during the mid-to-late seventies). The costumes are all variations on striped or bland-hued leotards, turtlenecks, and legwarmers, except for a few odd ball gowns and tiaras. Toy instruments are utilized with the music, and the movement is all experimental, Viewpoints-type choreography (read: Do whatever the fuck you want right now) where one moment everyone is marching around in a circle chanting gibberish all in unison, when the next minute they're tumbling all over each other and doing the robot for no apparent reason. This is a show that has painted backdrops with both pictures of British music halls and big squares on them, and includes lyrics like, "Bananas, hot buttered toast, cherries and pineapples" and "Goodbye feet, I wonder who put on the stocking you choose, I wonder who ever put up with you..." so any attempt to even try to explain it would seem like a waste of valuable bandwidth.

Streep, of course, is Alice, a wide-eyed seven-year-old girl played by a fully-grown woman, and she wears Olive Ostrovsky-like pink corduroy overalls with too-short legs to cover up the fact that she is very obviously pregnant. I can't speak for Meryl or any of the Streep kids if this show had a very definite influence. There is one scene with lots of smoke where the ten actors in the ensemble huddle on top of each other to make a caterpillar, who gives Alice soup in a mushroom, and she sings, "Beautiful soup, so rich and green, waiting in a hot tureen. Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful soup." But I can speak for the fact that this musical was probably, um, influenced by mushrooms of a very different sort.

Then, what happens next is anyone's guess. Like Story Theatre, Godspell, Pippin, and the movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar, Alice continues that strange tradition of "The actors are really actors acting out the story with as much exaggeration as possible!" that is a watermark of so many late-seventies classic-story-based retro-pastiche skit musicals. It might as well star a very young Martin Short and be called Stepbrother de Jesus, for that matter, only this is more...insane. Nobody lugs around a suitcase at the beginning, but someone does play a baby who bangs on pots and pans. And, with the small cast, there's at least some future-star-finding to be found, of the "Spot Data in Sunday in the Park with George!" variety. Mark-Linn-Mr.-Larry-Appleton-Baker from "Perfect Strangers" plays both the March Hare and the Mock Turtle, and, for some reason, he uses a thick Jewish accent as the Turtle. Michael Jeter is the Dormouse, and he even does a hilariously accurate Bob Dylan impression. And Debbie Allen is the Queen of Hearts, but her role amounts to little else than yelling "Off with their heads!" The scenes never really go anywhere. They're more like skits with pop culture references aplenty. When some Terrence Mann-looking fellow named Richard Cox sings, Frank Sinatra-style, about the turtles under the sea, he apparently has groupies, too!

And the songs? Besides the retro pastiche, there's nothing here that screams "traditional musical theatre." It's basically throwing things into a blender and seeing what sticks. There's almost no rhyme in the lyrics. Lots of cacophonous "sound bombs" that just involve the actors yelling off-key, banging random things, and doing statues while making weird sounds with whatever they can think of. It's like a free-association musical. There's almost no dialogue, and the camera movements jerk from scene to setting, making this very unlike what you'd normally see in a televised musical. Once Upon a Mattress this ain't.

So, rent Alice at the Palace if you're into seeing young, experimental New York City theatre actors at the end of an era doing what they did well. Just be sure to check what you're tripping on before second-guessing what the heck is going on in this one.

New York Times Review of the Original Off-Broadway Production

Buy Alice at the Palace!