Sing of Today!

Okay, let's get something straight. I saw Urinetown in New York. I've seen it several times on bootleg video (Shh! Don't tell anybody!). I saw it at the Rep's off-ramp series. I've been playing through the score for the last couple weeks. I know this show as well as anyone could without having worked on it...

And yet I had no idea -- no idea, I tell ya! -- how HARD this fucking music is! Jesus Christ! No really, Jesus Christ! Luckily, we have a dynamite cast and they're handling it valiantly. Even after only one rehearsal, they sound great. But Jesus Christ!

Over our past sixteen seasons, we've produced Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Floyd Collins, Songs for a New World, Bat Boy... In other words, we've tackled some of the hardest, most ambitious scores the musical theatre has to offer, and yet still this score scares me a bit!

On the other hand, the score also contains some of the best vocal writing I've ever encountered in my life -- gorgeous harmonic part writing, thrilling counterpoint -- the kind of vocal writing that, once you've learned it, reveals how utterly perfect it is, how exactly right every note is. I can tell now that once the actors are comfortable with the choral work (which appears in almost every song in the show!), they're going to have a Serious Fucking Blast singing it every night...

We all thought singing "Comfort and Joy" in Bat Boy was about as close to heaven as musical theatre gets, but now we've got "Run, Freedom, Run"...

All I can say is Wow!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott