You know, if you killed someone, I wouldn't turn you in.
People, I am sorely disappointed in you.
Way to have an opinion on Company. The love-its don't have too many reasons for loving it, other than the theatre critics' equivalent of words to ejaculate to; and the hate-its can't muster up enough validation for their bile-fueled pans. Just bad jokes about actors playing instruments. Oh, yeah, and the all black costumes. Jesus Quintana, for the love of Peter, Paul, and April, get a life!
What disturbs me about this particular crop of reviews is not their assumptive logic that if you can play one note on an instrument, you're an automatic virtuoso. No. It's their assumption that the actors are either uniformly brilliant or uniformly awful. There's no justification. They either blame the director for coaxing 14 bad performances (well, one of the reviews compared these actors to regional theater and all I could think about was Amy Poehler in Wet Hot American Summer: "You guys? Am I at the Cleveland Playhouse?" Actually, given the Ohio origins of this show, that's kinda funny...), or praise him with the strength of whatever would have happened if Patrick Stewart's one-man Christmas Carol had the technology to clone him 14 times over.
I really liked Company. There were some flaws. It wasn't perfect, but nothing ever is. And what few truly bright spots it had shone a klieg light on exactly what is missing from the current Broadway scene.
As it is, I am especially upset that no one is singling out Fred Rose as the only one in the show who aptly juggled its Jack-of-all-trades demands. And I know I lavished praise on some of his other castmates in the last entry, but what he did with his acting, singing, movement, and playing in that show was pure magic.
What do the critics say about him? Nothing. They lump him with the other husbands and say that "they" fail to make a serious impression in the play.
Well, this one said he was good. But his "wife" was better.
She was okay. Pretty to look at in a Tina Fey mold. Perhaps. But to me, he was prime. If this was an 80s dance musical, he'd be Scott Wise.
Whatever. People just don't understand. How weird is it that most of his credits in the program are straight, non-singing acting roles? Which is crazy, because he has a wonderful singing voice. Oh, those crazy actors who can sing too, often at the same time. What will they think of next? Instruments?
Ah. Now we all know how lame those jokes look on paper.
Moving on...
Brantley loved it. My mom said that he made a great case for her to finally come out and say that she loved both this show and Sweeney Todd. Which to me is like the culmination of the Washington-Sarajevo talks. But, when you get right down to it, she read a review before she formulated her opinion, and, whose opinion was that? Ben. Brantley. Wait, who?
The guy who attributed his wet dreams to Julia Roberts.
In. Print.
Also, disturbingly, a lot of these critics are men. I don't know if they're all straight, but they really loved the pretty little blonde girl, April. Which is funny, because, all day today, I was singing the song from that old Strong Bad e-mail about the pretty blonde girl ("That skinny blonde girl...Something about the ages...I failed college algebra...").
I should get to the library right now to do some research on an upcoming project, or, at the very least, blow-dry my hair out before heading there...but I just can't bring myself to.
The current culprit is, as always, the job search. As tempted as I am to find some bookstore and put in an application, it just seems a little too Box Office Poison for me to throw the towel in this early.
I totally waivered on a current interview I was supposed to set for the day after tomorrow. And while this idea of working for a nonprofit that provides free cosmetic surgery to disadvantaged youths both nicely complements my beliefs and provides a decent entryway into the foundation industry...I would be staring at photographs of severely disabled children who deserve free corrective surgery. As opposed to the last job I interviewed for, which is both looking for a really immediate hire...and where I would instead be boredly staring at a poster with Fred Rose on it, with a look on his face that just seems to beckon, "Yeah, my pretend wife is the one with her arms embracing me, but it's you I want to wrap my legs around and make sweet, sweet music with..."
Yeah. I know. Ew. And hopefully, my family won't be too sick of me going on endlessly, "If we got married, my name would be Rose Rose!"
A sucky job for the holiday season would suck, but still remain nonetheless below me.
A decent job for the holiday season would be faboo.
And, frankly, I do not ask for much this holiday season. I already got a new computer: All I ask for in life right now are a job, a social life, a cool velvet jacket like the one Larry the older husband wears in Company, and -- speaking of Company -- a nice makeout session with Fred Rose.
Edited to add: It's been well over a day since I started this post, and, yes, I did go to the library. I did not find what I was looking for. Except I really felt like I should have at least checked something out. Well...
In an effort to finally exorcise (or at least quell) my obsession with Jason Alexander, I checked out the soundtrack to Jerome Robbins' Broadway.
There, I said it. Even though this is easily the least embarrassing thing I've confessed in the span of this blog entry so far. This is a show that falls on the "Best Musicals" spectrum somewhere between City of Angels and Drood. Although calling it a musical is sort of like calling Design of a Decade the best album Janet Jackson ever put out.
It's more like a greatest-hits retrospective of every great big production number Jerome Robbins ever directed/choreographed. Like Fosse, but with its dancers also handling the singing and dialogue. And you've got your Scott Wise playing everyone from an On the Town sailor to a West Side Story gang member (no wonder he won the Tony!), and your Debbie Shapiro handling the brassy belting, and your Faith Prince doing the googly, dippy character roles, and for some reason Havoc fave and "Law & Order" mainstay Jack Noseworthy is listed in the liner notes as one of the chorus dancers. Wow.
Alexander isn't really the star of this show, but for some reason or another, he's actively involved in it. He's really more like Joel Grey in Cabaret or Ben Vereen in Pippin. Only the short, neurotic, bald, Jew version of this archetype. And he plays some other characters over the course of the album, including Pseudolus in Forum, Floy in High Button Shoes, and Tevye in you know damn well what. But he still plays all of them as George.
For one thing, I was totally mistaken. Jason Alexander doesn't play Peter Pan in this. Charlotte D'Amboise does. She also sings Anita in the West Side Story montage. I have no doubt in my mind that she can fill out a green leotard much nicer than Costanza.
And, yes, I am well aware that there is a Broadway musical called High Button Shoes, and the lead character is named Floy. I know this because the Goodspeed is doing it this year, and, for some sadistic reason or another, I've wanted to earn my first big regional credit at a show there or maybe somwhere else like the Paper Mill, where decent, however dated, musicals (like 'Lil Abner and Summer of '42) are still allowed to exist. On a personal note, one of my dad's favorite CDs is their two-piano version of The Most Happy Fella. After the early season announcement, though, I am not getting my hopes up on a Goodspeed-deigned Equity card over this coming season. That show is all men in swim trunks and women with parasols and that is so not my real estate. More specifically, no Jews in that world. My voice teacher keeps telling me she's surprised that I've never played Hodel before, and now I totally understand why.
Here's what else Alexander does over the course of the album: He basically patters it up with stupid introductions, as if this was the Living Museum of Broadway Production Numbers. As in, "The year is 1928. The Prohibition is looming. You need a password to get into the jumpingest juke joint in town and that password is...Billion Dollar Baby!"
It's horribly schtick-y. Happily, for the West Side Story sequence, they don't even use him anywhere. Assuming the audience hears that opening snap, and knows what kind of romantic tragedy they're in for: Specifically, "Introduction," "The Dance at the Gym," "America," "Cool," "The Rumble," "Somewhere," and lots of dancing. So, it's really like the Cliffs Notes version of West Side Story. Too bad this whole show isn't on a video somewhere. I feel like I'm really missing something without the dancing.
And, looking at the liner notes, George actually shares top billing with triple-threat performer Robert LaFosse, who sort of serves as the principal dancer of the show, playing Tony in West Side Story and Gaby in On the Town. I should also mention that "You've Gotta Get a Gimmick" is the only number from Gypsy included here, although I hear from my theatre-obsessed sources that "All I Need is the Girl" was cut from previews.
Surprisingly, I don't know anyone who's ever seen this show. Not even my parents.
But because she's probably reading this, I should note that this is my mother's all-time favorite musical. If you sing any song from the beginning terribly, she will proceed to sing said entire song with more energy and pitch than the entire cast of Company.
Except Fred Rose. He can stay.
Happy December, everybody!
Way to have an opinion on Company. The love-its don't have too many reasons for loving it, other than the theatre critics' equivalent of words to ejaculate to; and the hate-its can't muster up enough validation for their bile-fueled pans. Just bad jokes about actors playing instruments. Oh, yeah, and the all black costumes. Jesus Quintana, for the love of Peter, Paul, and April, get a life!
What disturbs me about this particular crop of reviews is not their assumptive logic that if you can play one note on an instrument, you're an automatic virtuoso. No. It's their assumption that the actors are either uniformly brilliant or uniformly awful. There's no justification. They either blame the director for coaxing 14 bad performances (well, one of the reviews compared these actors to regional theater and all I could think about was Amy Poehler in Wet Hot American Summer: "You guys? Am I at the Cleveland Playhouse?" Actually, given the Ohio origins of this show, that's kinda funny...), or praise him with the strength of whatever would have happened if Patrick Stewart's one-man Christmas Carol had the technology to clone him 14 times over.
I really liked Company. There were some flaws. It wasn't perfect, but nothing ever is. And what few truly bright spots it had shone a klieg light on exactly what is missing from the current Broadway scene.
As it is, I am especially upset that no one is singling out Fred Rose as the only one in the show who aptly juggled its Jack-of-all-trades demands. And I know I lavished praise on some of his other castmates in the last entry, but what he did with his acting, singing, movement, and playing in that show was pure magic.
What do the critics say about him? Nothing. They lump him with the other husbands and say that "they" fail to make a serious impression in the play.
Well, this one said he was good. But his "wife" was better.
She was okay. Pretty to look at in a Tina Fey mold. Perhaps. But to me, he was prime. If this was an 80s dance musical, he'd be Scott Wise.
Whatever. People just don't understand. How weird is it that most of his credits in the program are straight, non-singing acting roles? Which is crazy, because he has a wonderful singing voice. Oh, those crazy actors who can sing too, often at the same time. What will they think of next? Instruments?
Ah. Now we all know how lame those jokes look on paper.
Moving on...
Brantley loved it. My mom said that he made a great case for her to finally come out and say that she loved both this show and Sweeney Todd. Which to me is like the culmination of the Washington-Sarajevo talks. But, when you get right down to it, she read a review before she formulated her opinion, and, whose opinion was that? Ben. Brantley. Wait, who?
The guy who attributed his wet dreams to Julia Roberts.
In. Print.
Also, disturbingly, a lot of these critics are men. I don't know if they're all straight, but they really loved the pretty little blonde girl, April. Which is funny, because, all day today, I was singing the song from that old Strong Bad e-mail about the pretty blonde girl ("That skinny blonde girl...Something about the ages...I failed college algebra...").
I should get to the library right now to do some research on an upcoming project, or, at the very least, blow-dry my hair out before heading there...but I just can't bring myself to.
The current culprit is, as always, the job search. As tempted as I am to find some bookstore and put in an application, it just seems a little too Box Office Poison for me to throw the towel in this early.
I totally waivered on a current interview I was supposed to set for the day after tomorrow. And while this idea of working for a nonprofit that provides free cosmetic surgery to disadvantaged youths both nicely complements my beliefs and provides a decent entryway into the foundation industry...I would be staring at photographs of severely disabled children who deserve free corrective surgery. As opposed to the last job I interviewed for, which is both looking for a really immediate hire...and where I would instead be boredly staring at a poster with Fred Rose on it, with a look on his face that just seems to beckon, "Yeah, my pretend wife is the one with her arms embracing me, but it's you I want to wrap my legs around and make sweet, sweet music with..."
Yeah. I know. Ew. And hopefully, my family won't be too sick of me going on endlessly, "If we got married, my name would be Rose Rose!"
A sucky job for the holiday season would suck, but still remain nonetheless below me.
A decent job for the holiday season would be faboo.
And, frankly, I do not ask for much this holiday season. I already got a new computer: All I ask for in life right now are a job, a social life, a cool velvet jacket like the one Larry the older husband wears in Company, and -- speaking of Company -- a nice makeout session with Fred Rose.
Edited to add: It's been well over a day since I started this post, and, yes, I did go to the library. I did not find what I was looking for. Except I really felt like I should have at least checked something out. Well...
In an effort to finally exorcise (or at least quell) my obsession with Jason Alexander, I checked out the soundtrack to Jerome Robbins' Broadway.
There, I said it. Even though this is easily the least embarrassing thing I've confessed in the span of this blog entry so far. This is a show that falls on the "Best Musicals" spectrum somewhere between City of Angels and Drood. Although calling it a musical is sort of like calling Design of a Decade the best album Janet Jackson ever put out.
It's more like a greatest-hits retrospective of every great big production number Jerome Robbins ever directed/choreographed. Like Fosse, but with its dancers also handling the singing and dialogue. And you've got your Scott Wise playing everyone from an On the Town sailor to a West Side Story gang member (no wonder he won the Tony!), and your Debbie Shapiro handling the brassy belting, and your Faith Prince doing the googly, dippy character roles, and for some reason Havoc fave and "Law & Order" mainstay Jack Noseworthy is listed in the liner notes as one of the chorus dancers. Wow.
Alexander isn't really the star of this show, but for some reason or another, he's actively involved in it. He's really more like Joel Grey in Cabaret or Ben Vereen in Pippin. Only the short, neurotic, bald, Jew version of this archetype. And he plays some other characters over the course of the album, including Pseudolus in Forum, Floy in High Button Shoes, and Tevye in you know damn well what. But he still plays all of them as George.
For one thing, I was totally mistaken. Jason Alexander doesn't play Peter Pan in this. Charlotte D'Amboise does. She also sings Anita in the West Side Story montage. I have no doubt in my mind that she can fill out a green leotard much nicer than Costanza.
And, yes, I am well aware that there is a Broadway musical called High Button Shoes, and the lead character is named Floy. I know this because the Goodspeed is doing it this year, and, for some sadistic reason or another, I've wanted to earn my first big regional credit at a show there or maybe somwhere else like the Paper Mill, where decent, however dated, musicals (like 'Lil Abner and Summer of '42) are still allowed to exist. On a personal note, one of my dad's favorite CDs is their two-piano version of The Most Happy Fella. After the early season announcement, though, I am not getting my hopes up on a Goodspeed-deigned Equity card over this coming season. That show is all men in swim trunks and women with parasols and that is so not my real estate. More specifically, no Jews in that world. My voice teacher keeps telling me she's surprised that I've never played Hodel before, and now I totally understand why.
Here's what else Alexander does over the course of the album: He basically patters it up with stupid introductions, as if this was the Living Museum of Broadway Production Numbers. As in, "The year is 1928. The Prohibition is looming. You need a password to get into the jumpingest juke joint in town and that password is...Billion Dollar Baby!"
It's horribly schtick-y. Happily, for the West Side Story sequence, they don't even use him anywhere. Assuming the audience hears that opening snap, and knows what kind of romantic tragedy they're in for: Specifically, "Introduction," "The Dance at the Gym," "America," "Cool," "The Rumble," "Somewhere," and lots of dancing. So, it's really like the Cliffs Notes version of West Side Story. Too bad this whole show isn't on a video somewhere. I feel like I'm really missing something without the dancing.
And, looking at the liner notes, George actually shares top billing with triple-threat performer Robert LaFosse, who sort of serves as the principal dancer of the show, playing Tony in West Side Story and Gaby in On the Town. I should also mention that "You've Gotta Get a Gimmick" is the only number from Gypsy included here, although I hear from my theatre-obsessed sources that "All I Need is the Girl" was cut from previews.
Surprisingly, I don't know anyone who's ever seen this show. Not even my parents.
But because she's probably reading this, I should note that this is my mother's all-time favorite musical. If you sing any song from the beginning terribly, she will proceed to sing said entire song with more energy and pitch than the entire cast of Company.
Except Fred Rose. He can stay.
Happy December, everybody!
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