Crazy for You

There are a lot of people working in the musical theatre today who don't respect the musical theatre.

I can't count how many productions of musicals I've seen over the years for which the director has clearly not even tried to find truthfulness or insight in the show, much less textual themes, in-depth characters and relationships, social and historical context, and all that other great stuff that makes a great musical a great musical. It's like a peanut M&M that's nothin' but the candy coating. Even the more lightweight shows like Hello, Dolly!, No, No, Nanette, and Anything Goes have interesting subtext and cultural context worth exploring. Too many directors (and designers and actors) think working on a musical is a vacation; they can turn their brains off because they're sure their audience will turn theirs off as well. These theatre artists will never give The Music Man or Cabaret or Rent the same effort or the same thought they would give to Death of a Salesman or August: Osage County.

And that makes me crazy. Audiences deserve better.

Actor Larry Luckinbill once wrote to me (I know I quote this all the time, but bear with me), "Go broke if you must, but always over-estimate the public's intelligence. They will thank you for it." And you know, he's right. Audiences aren't idiots. And, as I often argue, people don't want "escape;" that's just a lazy assumption. They want connection. And real connection can only come from Truth. When will theatre artists learn that?

Sometimes it's hard for me to see productions of musicals because I have high expectations, and quite often, I already know the show and love it and have thought about it, maybe even written about it. So when directors or actors take a show I know is great and treat it like it's nothing more than a mediocre sitcom, it genuinely upsets me. It hurts me. I know that sounds melodramatic, but it's true.

I've seen directors add whole new scenes and sometimes songs from movie versions to musicals  -- without permission of course, since they could never get permission to do that -- and also without any regard for what they're doing to the material. I've seen productions in which the director has literally written in new jokes -- yes, new dialogue. I want to ask these presumptuous directors, Do you really think you know better than Stephen Sondheim -- or Lerner and Loewe, or Rodgers and Hammerstein, or Kander and Ebb -- how to make a piece of musical theatre?

And then there are the productions that are crammed full of comic schtick that has nothing to do with the characters, the story, the dialogue, or the themes, but they shoehorn it in anyway because they think it'll get a laugh. You know what else will get a laugh? That cat trapped in the hamster ball on YouTube. Surely, the bar's not that low, is it? Anything for a laugh? Once in a while, when I disagree with a piece of business an actor wants to add in a show, their response will be, "But it's funny!" And I'll reply, "Yes it is. If we were doing a sketch comedy show, you could keep it. But we're not."

Because you know what's funniest of all...? The Truth. Think about it -- the funniest jokes, shows, movies are built on the two commandments of good comedy. It has to be a surprise, and it has to reveal something truthful. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. That's a joke about the human predilection to complicate the world. The obvious answer doesn't occur to us because we immediately search for a more complicated answer. And then we hear the punchline and we laugh because we notice ourselves caught in that bad habit. It's truthful. And we recognize that on a subconscious level so we laugh.

Now, none of this musical theatre molestation I'm complaining about is malicious. In fact, I think most of these directors never even think about subtextual character detail or the story's socio-political context when they're working on a musical. Which, I believe, is the problem. (For example, Hello, Dolly!, No, No, Nanette, and Anything Goes all have relevant cultural contexts that shape both the characters and the narrative.) And even though these "offenses" I cite make a production inferior in my eyes, there will always be people who still think the show is wonderful for whatever reasons. But I genuinely believe that those people would think it was even more wonderful if it was done more authentically.

Here's a case in point. There's a local production of Godspell going on right now that everybody is raving about. The reviews are great and word-of-mouth is great. Everybody's talking about how charming and entertaining it is. But I just can't go see it. Why? Because they tell me that the director has redistributed all the lines and songs at random. In other words, she's short-circuited all the character development in the script. Yes, Godspell is built to accommodate quite a bit of improv inside the parable stories, so each production is different and always tuned into the pop cultural zeitgeist, but the show was not meant to be rewritten. You have to wonder if this director would have randomly reassigned the lines in You Can't Take It With You or Aracdia... Probably not.

When done respectfully and intelligently, Godspell develops each character in the show very carefully and very subtly, through what they say, which songs they sing, which parables they narrate, which characters they play in the parables, etc. Just as in any well-made play, we get to know these characters by observing them and listening to them. We watch their various relationships with Jesus develop over the first act and into the second act, so that when the second act turns dark and dramatic, there's an enormous emotional payoff because we know these characters so well. When all that is set up right, the show's ending is shattering. But when all the lines and songs are scrambled together -- apparently, all the women sing "Turn Back, O Man" in this production -- then this carefully constructed collection of individuals becomes just a bunch of talented actors having fun. That's not theatre; that's show choir. In reassigning "Turn Back, O Man," the song loses its slyly ironic double-edge (the temptress warning Jesus not to give in to temptation) and the show loses its "loose woman" character (the Mary Magdalene stand-in) who tempts Jesus; and so both that temptation and the later redemption of the "loose woman" get lost.

Why would someone do this to Godspell? Either because they think it doesn't matter or they just didn't bother to notice all of that is in there. And so I can't go see it. Because I love this show, and I'm freakishly transparent, so if I hate this sliced-and-diced Godspell, everyone will know I hated it, and then I'll feel guilty about hating it... and so it goes...

And what bugs the fuck outta me is that I know this director is good; I know she directs non-musicals with sensitivity and intelligence. And she's also a playwright -- how would she feel about someone rewriting a show she had written? But I guess musicals are the Rodney Dangerfield of the theatre world. Even though theatre with music has been the norm for most of the history of theatre, and it's only very recently in our history that we've come to the bizarre, topsy-turvy conclusion that theatre with music is somehow less "legitimate" than theatre without music. How did that happen? I've actually had theatre artists in town tell me to my face that musical theatre isn't "real theatre." They're just lucky I'm more Zen-like than I used to be, thanks to my prodigious cannabis consumption...

So why are theatre people taught -- consciously or unconsciously -- to think less of musical theatre than of theatre that lacks music? Certainly musical theatre is harder to do well from a purely practical standpoint, and it requires more skill and training. Musical theatre has been around longer than theatre that lacks music. And while there are certainly some dumb musicals, there are just as many dumb plays. So why is there this inexplicable bias?

Now to be fair, I have not seen this particular Godspell, so it may well be very entertaining and a lot of fun. I imagine audiences will have a great time seeing it. I'm not denigrating the production or the cast, but I am saying they shouldn't have rewritten it, that it's a better, smarter piece of theatre than this director gives it credit for.

Though I didn't intend this, my life and my career in the theatre has become a never-ending campaign to get some respect for my art form. That's why I write my books, why I write essays about all our shows, why I write this blog, why I post so much to New Line's Facebook page, to prove to people that musicals are worthy of respect. And most of the time, once they see that, they're converted for life.

"One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!" -- John 9:25

It's often a very dramatic conversion for actors in their first New Line show when they see how deep we dig down into every musical we produce and how much fuller that makes their performance. It opens their eyes to how rich and complex many musicals really are -- especially shows usually looked down upon, like Grease, Rocky Horror, Hair -- in ways that most people never even considered. My new book, Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals, has chapters on all three of those shows. I promise you'll be amazed at what's there...

"Our eyes are open,
Our eyes are open,
Wide, wide, wide..."
-- "Walking in Space," from Hair

It's usually a pretty cool ride for an actor working with us for the first time, discovering that seriousness of purpose behind even our wackiest shows, finding that fearless but intensely truthful New Line style -- what the creators of Bat Boy call "the depth of sincerity, the height of expression" -- and discovering just what is possible in the musical theatre. I call it "jumping off the cliff," when you just let loose and go for it, and fearlessly let the work carry you wherever it goes. It's artistic hang-gliding. It's that same thrill I got last week in New York, seeing The Blue Flower, Lysistrata Jones, Bonnie & Clyde, Follies, and Rent. All of these productions take the art form seriously, understand its power and its endless possibilities, and all of them have come up with fearless, original, thrilling work.

Imagine if the Rent revival had reassigned all the lines and songs at random...

But having this deeper awareness, this richer vision of musical theatre and all its possibilities makes it harder to watch mediocre productions of musicals, even when they're well-intentioned. Once your eyes are opened, you can't close them again. You go see a mediocre show and all you can see are the missed opportunities, the lack of understanding, the timidity of the commitment.

On the flipside, when I see something really wonderful and surprising, like Next to Normal, American Idiot, The Scottsboro Boys, or Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, I get twice the joy the guy next to me gets, because on top of the great show everybody else is watching, I also see all the glorious detail work, I tune in to the rich textual and musical themes the writers poured their souls into, the carefully built interior rhymes, the elegant geometry of good staging, the subtle nuances of character, the set-up and payoff of narrative themes...

It's a blessing and a curse. I'm so tuned into all that now, after years of directing shows and writing my books and essays -- and writing a few musicals myself -- that I see much more than most people sitting around me. So a mediocre show becomes even more annoyingly mediocre but a really great show becomes utterly transcendent. And that's a fair trade-off. And meanwhile, I'll do my best to show other people how to see all that wonderful stuff too.

Here endeth the rant.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

One Day More to Revolution...

It was interesting being in New York this past week. Not just because I saw five really brilliant musicals and hung out with some of my favorite theatre people, but also because I can see so clearly the world of musical theatre fundamentally changing in front of me (mirroring, I think, our sociopolitical world), and that's so exciting to watch! We are at a historical turning point. It's part of what my last book is about. And I see these arguably massive changes happening in two areas -- the transition from the world that venerates Rodgers and Hammerstein to a new world that values originality and authenticity and relevance above all; and parallel to that, the widening gap between the commercial musical theatre world and the more artsy, more ballsy nonprofit musical theatre world.

The commercial theatre apparently doesn't have room in it for the miracle that is The Blue Flower (its run is being cut short by Second Stage), and that's a shame.

After I saw Follies last Friday night, I thought a lot about the Sondheim and Prince revolution of the 1970s and the mixed reception for Follies in 1971 -- it was too dark, too sad, too nihilistic, blah, blah, blah. Yet here is this forty-year-old show feeling as fresh today as any new work on Broadway. I think it's because the musical theatre is in a very dark, sometimes nihilistic period now, reflecting (as it always does) our real world. Think Urinetown, Bat Boy, American Idiot, Jersey Boys, Taboo, The Color Purple, The Scottsboro Boys, Next to Normal, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson...

This new Follies, under Eric Schaeffer's loving and skillful hand, is darker than any Follies I've ever seen before, darker I think than even the original. And the acting is much more raw, more naked, much closer to the bone. Heavier. If you ever want to see a Sondheim show done really right, this is it. I recently wrote a letter to Sondheim, asking him if he'd let New Line take a stab at the original version of Merrily We Roll Along, because I think its relentless darkness (not to mention its structural rebellion) is finally right at home in the contemporary musical theatre. (Sondheim said no, which I totally understand.)

Many folks will bitch and moan about how dark the musical theatre has gotten (they wouldn't like Bonnie & Clyde much) and they'll pine for the days of Damn Yankees and Mame. These are the folks who don't want our art form to keep moving forward, to stay fresh and relevant, to mirror the world around us as the musical theatre always has. They think musical theatre should have stopped evolving a few decades ago. They think the pinnacle of the art form is the Rodgers and Hammerstein model, so our rejection of that model today seems like a tragedy to them. This is the same sort who denounced the rock musical as the ruination of the art form in the 70s.

I bet it drove them crazy when Rent and Next to Normal won Pulitzer Prizes...

But "these are very difficult and dangerous times" we're living through right now. America is having a nervous breakdown of sorts (which I think is what makes Follies, Bonnie & Clyde, and The Blue Flower, not to mention Next to Normal, so potent right now) and is redefining itself in so many fundamental ways. Lysistrata Jones really struck me as a compelling exploration of this new America 2.0, a neo-musical comedy with its very racially integrated cast (mirroring the real-world "browning of America"), its strong hip-hop influences, and its joyous reclaiming of what made the American musical comedy such a cultural juggernaut a century ago -- the brashness, the aggressiveness, the vulgarity, the playfulness, and the sly cultural criticism that goes all the way back to the father of the American musical, George M. Cohan, who was literally inventing the American musical comedy exactly a century ago. Just as the classic musical comedy was once replaced by the modern musical drama, then the concept musical, then the pop opera, then the more cynical postmodern musical, now those forms are giving way to the neo-musical comedy (some of which are also postmodern musicals) and the now fully mature rock musical.

No more are musicals required to imitate the "well-made play" that came over from Europe in the nineteenth century. No more do musicals suffer their uncomfortable relationship with "the Fourth Wall," imposed on them by the disciples of the European Enlightenment; musicals don't do naturalism very well and it's silly to make them try. No more do musicals aspire to the form of grand opera, which was endowed with some faux superiority during the 20th century. No more are musicals in a choke-hold to middle-class, 20th century morality, as encoded in the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon -- now characters in musicals can say fuck and shit just like real people do. Now musicals can talk about sex openly, without clumsy metaphor or awkward euphemism.

There's a whole new generation of artists creating new musicals now and they don't suffer from the hang-ups and nostalgia the Boomers inherited from the Depression Generation. I find that I can't watch Lysistrata Jones or The Blue Flower without feeling overwhelming joy and optimism for the future of my art form.

And finally, for the first time in its history, the musical theatre is no longer defined by commercial success. Now there are literally hundreds of musicals being written and produced all over our country every year (try a Google search and prepare to have your mind blown). The monopoly is broken. The requirement that a musical be inoffensive enough to appeal to the least literate tourist is dead. Today the most exciting shows to open on Broadway do not start there. Of the five shows I saw in New York last week, Follies started at the nonprofit Kennedy Center in DC; Lysistrata Jones was first produced by the nonprofit Dallas Theatre Center and then by The Transport Group in the nonprofit Gym at Judson down in Greenwich Village (where some of the coolest experiments of the 1960s and 70s happened); Bonnie & Clyde started at the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse in California; and both The Blue Flower and Rent were playing off Broadway houses, one of which is nonprofit.

Today, commercial viability isn't always the central concern for people creating new shows. The art form itself has finally become more important than its commercial prospects. That's partly a product of history -- in the first half of the 20th century, Broadway really was the only place to produce a new musical, and for much of the second half of the century, new musicals had only Broadway and off Broadway as options. But since the "new wave" of the 1990s (with New Line Theatre at the forefront, by the way), nonprofit "art" musical theatre has steadily grown in power and influence across our country and now rivals New York's commercial theatre, offering an alternative to Broadway and touring shows for millions of theatre-goers. High Fidelity, bare, and Passing Strange were all rejected by New York's commercial theatre but are now being embraced all over America by the nonprofit theatre world.

Money no longer drives the musical theatre. Now the artists do.

Come join the Revolution!

Don't get me wrong -- Broadway does still hold some magic for me. But we're not living in the 1950s anymore, when Broadway was the only game in the country (in the world?) for a musical theatre artist. If some New York producer called me tomorrow and wanted to produce Johnny Appleweed or wanted me to direct a revival of Bat Boy (that's our 2006 production in the photo), I doubt I'd be able to say no. But until that day comes, I get to keep doing the most exciting work of my life -- working with amazing artists on amazing shows like Passing Strange, Love Kills, High Fidelity, bare, The Wild Party, The Robber Bridegroom, Forbidden Planet, the masterpiece that is Bat Boy, and so many others that the moneyed folks in New York would never let me produce there.

And that's alright, to quote Stew...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

Rent

Last night I saw my last show before coming home today, the off Broadway revival of Rent.

I was a little wary of this one. I saw the original production just a few weeks after it moved to Broadway in 1996, and it was one of the most thrilling theatre experiences of my life. This was before a recording had been released, so I knew very little about the show. And it blew my freaking mind. It was so defiantly unlike anything else in the musical theatre, even though (on closer inspection) it uses many traditional musical theatre devices.

Its rawness and naked honestly was amazing. (I still think had Larson not died, and had he gone on to further polish the show, it might have ended up less than it is now.) Rent quickly became one of my favorite shows ever.

This is the baggage I brought with me to the performance last night.

And you know what?
I loved it.

It's incredibly different from the original -- the only piece of staging that remains is "Seasons of Love," which was the perfect moment to pay tribute to the original. But every other moment and every character interpretation was so different.

And yet, it gave me exactly the same thrill, the same profound emotions, the same joy. It's as if the original production was a 1990s musical capturing the zeitgeist and this revival is a 21st century musical about the 1990s. It really feels like a different show now. This Rent speaks to this moment just like the original Rent spoke to its moment. This creative team found a way to tell this story in today's terms without violating it for a second. And here's the real shocker -- both productions were directed by Michael Greif!

After so many years of the original memory fading a bit, after seeing too many other productions reproduce the original but with lesser results, I think my love for Rent had waned a bit. But this new production fixed that. I can't count the number of times tears welled up in my eyes, only a few times in sadness, but more often in the kind of pure fucking joy that only great theatre can supply.

And on reflection, with time admittedly obscuring the original a bit, it seems this production may have better acting, more subtle, complex characterizations than the original. These characters also seem younger than the originals did, more vulnerable, which makes their stories much more powerful and the stakes higher, and I think that supercharges both the sadness and the joy of this beautiful story. Maureen is funnier and realer, Mark (Michael Wartella at this performance) is more vulnerable and even more the emotional outsider, Roger is more damaged, Joanne is stronger, Mimi is more aggressive. It's as if the original production hired great rock singers who could act, but this one hired great actors who could sing rock and roll. The difference is subtle, but it's real.

Like the set for Bonnie & Clyde, the Rent set looks simple but isn't. It performs some cool stage tricks but never pulls the focus away from the actors. It's a full-stage sculpture of scaffolding, some pieces moving from time to time, with fire escape stairs, a wrap-around balcony, and other cool stuff, clearly discarding the fierce physical minimalism of the original. And they use a lot of projections, video, etc. (which, I gotta say, I could do without). But not only did it look cool, it sounded cool whenever they moved it or used it, giving the whole thing a very urban, downtown, rock club kind of vibe.

I've never directed Rent because I always thought there was essentially just one way to approach it -- the original seemed so fucking perfect. I didn't want to imitate it but i didn't want to lessen its perfection either. But this new approach is perfect too. Maybe this production will finally rescue Rent from a million lesser reproductions of the original. And maybe, just maybe, I might be ready to tackle it soon...

Not next season, but soon...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. Here's my background and analysis essay about Rent, from my 2001 book Rebels With Applause.

P.P.S. See also my thoughts on Follies, Lysistrata Jones, Bonnie & Clyde, and The Blue Flower.

The Blue Flower

I just had one of the greatest artistic experiences of my entire life. A musical called The Blue Flower, by Jim and Ruth Bauer. It's beautiful and weird and thrilling and powerful and incredibly original, as if Kurt Weill and Jacques Brel were still alive and decided to write a new rock musical.

It's about the artist Max Baumann and his circle of friends in Europe at the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, as they grapple and struggle with the tumultuous waves in the tides of history. But it's also about art making. And when the show ends, we realize that this musical is a collage like the ones that Max makes, a rush of images, colors, film, movement, and some of the most gorgeous music and most poetic lyrics I've ever heard.

It's almost more performance art than conventional musical, defiantly breaking one rule after another -- not just for the sake of breaking rules, but because it's a story about artists who were testing boundaries, breaking rules, throwing off the conventions of past generations, trying to break through to something new. And though its aggressively Brechtian style seems to hold us at arm's length, it's still one of the most emotional shows I've seen in years.

The profoundly high-energy, versatile cast almost never leaves the stage, but at the center of it all is Broadway veteran Marc Kudisch who gives a fearless, reveletory performance as Baumann, in glorious voice and with the weight of history on his shoulders and his heart.

It's one of those shows that's so stylized, so specific in its physicality, and director Will Pomerantz and choreographer Chase Brock have created some of the most intense, most interesting, most beautiful staging I've ever seen.

It's so rich and so smart and so all-around amazing that as much as I loved it -- and Jesus, did I love it -- I don't know that I'd want to direct it myself. Not only does it use a ton of film and projections (and you know me, I hate tech), but also, I just can't imagine anyone equaling the brilliance of this staging. It seems so perfect, as if the gods of theatre brought together these writers, this production staff, and these actors for this one perfect moment, never to be repeated. It's a show that reminds us how magical great works of the theatre can be in the right hands.

The other shows I've seen this weekend, Bonnie & Clyde and Lysistrata Jones, are great shows, but The Blue Flower is something different. I'll never forget this show as long as I live. More proof, if I needed it, that my chosen art form has never been more vigorous, more alive, more inventive, or more thrilling. This is the Golden Age of the Ameican musical theatre. I've never been more convinced of that than I am right now.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. See also my thoughts on Follies, Lysistrata Jones, Bonnie & Clyde, and Rent.

P.P.S. A few weeks after I originally posted this, I was able to arrange an interview with Jim and Ruth Bauer about The Blue Flower, for a local radio show I co-host, Break a Leg: Theatre in St. Louis and Beyond. You can listen to the interview on the KDHX website.

Bonnie & Clyde

Let's start with the fact that I've never met a Frank Wildhorn musical I liked. Jekyll & Hyde is a mess of cliches, amateurish lyrics, silly direction, and nice pop music that can't do the job of good theatre music. Sure, there are some decent pop anthems in there, good music to skate to, but they're lousy theatre songs. The Scarlet Pimpernel is marginally better, only because it doesn't take itself too seriously, so its flaws are more forgivable. And let's just skip The Civil War -- one of only two musicals I've ever walked out on in my entire life.

Mom always said, if you can't say something nice...

All that said, I bought a ticket to Wildhorn's Bonnie & Clyde with some understandable trepidation. For $136.50, I want to be fucking impressed.

And holy shit, what do you know, I was!

Bonnie & Clyde has an excellent, dark, emotional book by Ivan Menchell (his first Broadway musical), interesting, dramatic, evocative lyrics by Don Black (who also did Song and Dance), and jazzy, aggressive, high-energy music -- nothing like the sometimes bland, often interchangeable pop tunes Wildhorn has burdened his other shows with. There's not a clunker anywhere in this score.

And the set is one of those "trick sets" Broadway loves that, for once, never becomes the star of the show and never gets in the way of the storytelling, with almost the whole set in rough-hewn wood -- exactly right for the period and the subject matter -- three large sliding panels that are used really effectively, and period projections that continually remind us that this is a real story, that these people were real, that these things -- these murders -- actually happened. The richly suggestive set seems minimalist, but it's actually fairly complex, with hidden trap doors, various ramps and such, all enhanced with some really cool lighting effects and projections that work beautifully with the wooden panels.

And there's gore -- lots of it, not just blood, but late in the show, one character's face half shot off. In fact, the first moments of the show assault us with deafening machine gun fire and a tableau of the doomed couple's assassination in their car. It announces the intensity of the show brilliantly.

This is an adult show about murderers, they're telling us, even if they are very charming murderers...

And then there's the cast -- Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan are just amazing in the leads, not just vocal powerhouses, but also sexy, scary, vulnerable, passionate, damaged, and so in love. Sure, the show romanticizes them to some degree -- I don't know who could tell this story without doing that, at least a little -- but it also doesn't shy away from their savage killing spree. And really, the entire cast is just as pitch perfect and just as fully committed to every moment. And Jeff Calhoun's direction is a study in restraint and the power of the tableau, without a misstep anywhere. It's a real joy to watch actors that good having that much fun.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that St. Louis' own John McDaniel is the conductor, music director, and orchestrator -- and god, are those orchestrations exciting!

And on another interesting note, at intermission I heard some really pretentious theatre people in front of me putting the show down in the most condescending terms. And as I eavesdropped, I realized one of them was the director of The Book of Mormon, and it took all my self-control not to lean forward and suggest to him that this was a more interesting, more adult, better crafted show than Mormon, which sounds like it was written by a creepy twelve-year-old with Tourette's... I'm just sayin'...

I never thought I'd be saying I loved a Frank Wildhorn musical, but god help me, I do. I guess that just goes to prove, the theatre is a never-ending parade of surprises. Maybe that's why I love it so much.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. See also my thoughts on Follies, Lysistrata Jones, The Blue Flower, and Rent.

P.P.S. A few weeks after I originally posted this, I was able to arrange an interview with John McDaniel about Bonnie & Clyde, for a local radio show I co-host, Break a Leg: Theatre in St. Louis and Beyond. You can listen to the interview on the KDHX website.

Lysistrata Jones

This afternoon I saw a rock/hip-hop musical comedy based on the classical Greek play Lysistrata (the one where the women go on a sex strike until their men give up war). It's called Lysistrata Jones and transplants the story to a college campus -- sort of now and sort of 411 BC -- and swaps war for a basketball losing streak.

You can see how I might be wary of this one...

But it's an absolute blast! With a wacky, fast-paced book by playwright Douglas Carter Beane (author of the brilliant As Bees in Honey Drown and The Little Dog Laughed), a pulse-pounding, hyper-high-energy hip-hop score by Lewis Flinn, and wacky fun-filled direction and thrilling hip-hop choreography both by Dan Knechtges. There are only a few musicals that deliver this much fun. (Bat Boy comes to mind.) Bucking my least favorite trend on and off Broadway, this is not a production that thinks bad acting is funny. These actors are 100% serious within this wacky world and the stakes are sky high, and that's what makes the whole crazy enterprise so utterly hilarious.

They have lots of fun with the double time period, existing both in classical Athens and also in the world of today, with smart phones and Joel Schumacher Batmam movies. But they never make the mistake of self-reference for its own sake. Everything here contributes to the wild fun of the world this awesome cast of 12 creates on stage.

I'd be lying if I said the considerable amount of bare chests and other beefcake didn't add to my enjoyment, but this is a really terrific, neo-musical comedy, using the energy and devices of George M. Cohan but in a relevant, modern way.

Its high spirits and silly seriousness reminds me a lot of awesome shows like Bat Boy, Urinetown, Forbidden Planet, and several other of my favorites. And though it's not long on substance, it is very smart and very literate, and it's the perfect musical comedy for this ironic age of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

It's hard not to have a total blast when everyone onstage is having that much fun. What a joyful, wild, well-crafted piece of musical theatre! Bravo!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. See also my thoughts on Follies, Bonnie & Clyde, The Blue Flower, and Rent.

Follies

So last night I saw the new, utterly transcendent revival of Follies, which I kept hearing was the best production of this brilliant postmodern musical since the original in 1971.

And I think they may be right.

It was my third Follies, having seen the show on Broadway in 2001 and in London in 2002, and though the other two were very good, this one leaves the others in the dust.

The cast is uniformly amazing, the production design is gorgeous, and the direction is excellent. My only real complaint is that they stuck an intermission into it. Once more, friends -- if a show is written without an intermission, it's structured very differently from a two-act show, so just cramming an intermission into the middle of a one-act show (which people do to Pippin, Man of La Mancha, Assassins, and other shows) doesn't make it a two-act show.

But letting that go for the moment...

Not only were the four leads outstanding, but every one of the secondary leads, most of whom get one song and a smattering of lines, were also wonderful. Among those secondary leads were Broadway veterans like Elaine Page, Teri White, Don Correia, Susan Watson, Florence Lacey, and others.

And then there are those four leads. Ron Raines as Ben was really good, and yet he was the weakest of the four. I'd never seen Jan Maxwell (Phyllis) before but she's a remarkable actor and she made a lot of choices I've never seen from Phyllis before. As an example, as much as I loved Alexis Smith's bitterly cold "Could I Leave You?", Maxwell plays the song as a rage-filled breakdown, almost a mad scene, and it really works!

Danny Burstein (most recently seen in a brilliant performance as Luther Billis in the South Pacific revival) is Buddy, and I've never seen anyone do it better -- such sadness, such heart, such love, such rage, such conflict crippling him and ripping him apart inside. It's a brilliant, thrilling performance, exactly the way Buddy should be approached, so honest, so flawed, so human...

And then there's Bernadette. As much as I love her, I don't always love her acting, but here Bernadette the Broadway Star utterly disappears in the fragile, damaged, profoundly depressed Sally. It's by far the best work I've ever seen her do. Her performance is so raw and honest it's almost painful to watch her. She and Burstein are incredibly believable as this fucked-up couple, married thirty years, who should have never been married to begin with. And it's not just honest, it's really subtle and detailed.

And because the acting was so outstanding, the characters so complex and nuanced, the last third of the show -- the fantasy Follies numbers -- had more resonance than I've ever seen before. And in all four cases, at the end of each song, the sadness, the loneliness creeps back in.

I think this is the darkest production I've seen of the show, but also the most honest. After all, this is about the pain and regret of middle-age. Stressing the considerable amount of pure entertainment over the acting lets both the characters and the audience off the hook. Director Eric Schaeffer wasn't about to let that happen this time.

It's truly one of the most emotional, most powerful productions I've ever seen on stage, and I got choked up any number of times. I'm so glad I finally got to see Follies done absolutely perfectly. Not a flaw to be found.

Oh yeah, did I mention the twenty-eight piece orchestra? How often do you ever get to hear that live?

All in all, a magnificent evening with a true masterpiece of the theatre. It makes me want to produce and direct this show more than ever -- and all we need is an old proscenium house, a full orchestra, a huge cast, and a huge set and costume budget. That's all...

C'mon, who's gonna write me a check to cover all that...?

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

P.S. See also my thoughts on Lysistrata Jones, Bonnie & Clyde, The Blue Flower, and Rent.

A Helluva Town

So here I am, back in the big bad apple for my annual Broadway trip. As much I hate travel, I do enjoy seeing new Broadway and off Broadway shows. Quite a few of the shows I've seen here soon after became New Line productions.

Last night, after I settled into my hotel, I met up with my buddy Doug Storm (in the background in the picture) -- native St. Louisan, performer on Broadway, off Broadway, and in national tours, and closest to my heart, an original cast member of Bat Boy. Doug left New York a while back, moved back to St. Louis for a bit, tried his luck in Los Angeles and Las Vegas (where he has also performed) and Chicago, and is now back in New York. It was interesting talking to him about how incredibly difficult it is for an actor to make enough money to live on. I think some people think that's only a problem in St. Louis and it's not.

I've got tickets to see five shows while I'm here, but I started today at Lincoln Center, in the Theatre on Film and Tape Collection of the New York Public Library. I saw three things. First, I thought I was gonna see excerpts from the 1969 musical Promenade, but it turned out to be something else with the same title. Shit.

Then I saw excerpts from Carrie, the infamous Broadway muscial flop. As the librarian put it, "We didn't get a chance to tape it" -- in other words, it closed too fast (16 previews and 5 performances). I've always wondered about Carrie, whether it was really as bad as they said it was. Well, now I think it was. What they had on video was a press reel, portions of 7 or 8 songs. Some of them were really wonderful. Betty Buckley (as the crazed mother) was brilliant and powerful. Linzi Hateley in the role of Carrie was very good. I was surprised to see "Leroy" from the original film version of Fame in some of the clips. But many of the songs were awful. And the choreography was by far the blandest, stupidest, and clumsiest I have ever seen in a musical. And not just on Broadway. From what I what I could tell in these clips, the direction was also terrible. No wonder it was such a flop!

And then I watched something really cool -- the recent off Broadway musical The Burnt Part Boys, which is kind of a cross between Floyd Collins and Stand be Me.

It's about a mining town where a bunch of men were killed in a mining accident ten years earlier. With the news that the mine is about to be re-opened, five kids make a pilgrimage to the "burnt part" of the mountain where it happened. The one kid, the central character, brings along dynamite to close the mine up once and for all, accidentally trapping them all inside, and as their air runs out, the dead miners appear and these kids are able to finally say goodbye to their fathers. And the main character's older brother gets his father's blessing to leave the mining life before he's killed as well. Some of Act I was a little slow, but overall, it's a very entertaining show and the last half hour or so is really powerful. You'll be happy to know a cast recording of the very cool bluegrass score is now on Amazon for pre-order.

Tonight I see the revival of Follies, which they say is the best production of this masterpiece since the original. I can't wait.

I'll check in again soon.

Long Live the Musical!
Scott

They say the neon lights are bright...

Tomorrow I head off on my annual pilgrimage to the Big Bad Apple, to see what's going on in the commercial musical theatre. I really hate to travel, but I love seeing friends and shows in New York, so it balances out. And this time, I'm seeing five shows in three days. Well, six, actually. (More on that later.) And I'll be blogging while I'm up there...

I"m seeing the new Broadway revival of Follies, which I've been told is the best production of the show since the original. I've seen two production of Follies before, one on Broadway in 2001, and one in London in 2002. I thought both were excellent, but I'm extremely psyched to see this one. It's such a remarkable piece of theatre, like no other show ever written. Definitely a show I'd love to tackle someday...

I'm also seeing the new off Broadway revival of Rent. I saw the original production of Rent just a few weeks after it moved to Broadway back in 1996, and none of the actors were out with blown vocal cords yet, so I got to see the entire original cast. It was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had in the theatre, dead center, tenth row. I hadn't heard any of the music, just read a few things, so everything about it was a surprise. And since all the tours and even local productions since then have essentially replicated the original, it'll be interesting to see a new take on the show.

I'm seeing Lysistrata Jones, the new musical that takes the classical Greek play Lysistrata, about women going on a sex strike until their men give up war, and transplants it to a college campus where the girls go on a sex strike until the boys basketball team breaks their endless losing streak. The show was off Broadway and has moved uptown. Sounds like fun.

I'm seeing Bonnie & Clyde, which normally would be totally exciting, but this one has a score by Frank Wildhorn, whose scores I usually hate more than later Lloyd Webber. So I'm a little wary. But I heard a lot of the music on the show's website and it's pretty good (actually, Wildhorn always writes good music, just lousy theatre songs). Also, the lyricist is Don Black, who wrote lyrics for "Tell Me on a Sunday" (half of Song and Dance), which I really like a lot. And it's directed by Jeff Calhoun, who directed that amazing Deaf West production of Big River, which was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

And I'm also seeing The Blue Flower, which sounds wild. Here's what Playbill.com says about the show: "Spanning two continents and half a century, The Blue Flower explores the romantic and tumultuous relationships among four young friends -- three artists and a scientist --as they create a world of art, revolution and passion amidst the turbulence and destruction of the World Wars." It goes on to say, "Set in Germany at the end of World War I and the beginning of the Weimar Republic, The Blue Flower is inspired by the lives of historical figures Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, Hannah Höch, and Marie Curie. Influenced by the art movements -- particularly Dada and Surrealism -- and the political tenor of the day, Max, Hannah, Maria, and Franz try to make sense of the world in which they struggle to create, relate, and survive." That sounds a New Line show, doesn't it?

And of course, I always have to take A Trip to the Library (to reference one of my favorite show tunes), to the New York Public Library's Theatre on Film and Tape Collection, at Lincoln Center. This time, I'll be watching excerpts (that's all they have) from Promenade, a bizarre, absurdist musical from 1969 that I really want to produce, and the original Broadway production of Carrie. And then I'll also be watching a full tape of The Burnt Part Boys, a recent off Broadway musical that I heard a lot of good things about. Might be a New Line show...

Tomorrow and Monday are entirely travel days, so I'll essentially be in New York for three days and I'll see six shows. Not bad, huh? Go ahead and say it, I'm an addict. I don't care. I'm not ashamed of it.

At age 47, I don't have the same wide-eyed adoration for Broadway that I once had. Broadway is different now. I'm different now. Now that I get to work directly with the writers on some of our shows, I can see how often commercial considerations on Broadway ruin otherwise wonderful shows. Sure, Broadway still sometimes turns out great new musicals, but the truly interesting new shows (the ones I want to work on) almost never start on Broadway, even though sometimes they eventually get there. Still, tarnished as the Great White Way may be for me, it's still Broadway, and since before I could remember, that word has always carried with it more magic than any other word I can think of.

Come on along and listen to 
The lullaby of Broadway, 
The hi-de-hi and boop-a-doo, 
The lullaby of Broadway. 
The band begins to go to town 
And everyone goes crazy...

Long Live the Musical!
Scott