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Getting to Know You
After much debate internal, and many brainstorms, I have decided to follow up my introductory post (“Give Me Your Hands, If We Be Friends…”) by pursuing a path of minimal resistance: that of further exposition.
Several months ago, while serving as a fill-in host for The Sub-Beacon podcast, John Podhoretz was asked (by Jonathan Last, if I recall correctly) to provide a ranking of the five superlative Broadway musicals. As I mentioned in my first post, musical theatre is one of my main points of interest; in fact, it is a major element of my background. As such, I would like to offer my own list of musicals which have earned my hearty recommendation.
I will stipulate that this list is, by no means, intended to be exhaustive. Additionally, I do not presume that my list should be considered to be a ranking based on any objective metric(s), but merely as a window into my own personal preferences. I will resist the temptation to justify my choices at present; the comments section and future postings will provide ample opportunity for elaboration. Finally, I am not observing any numerical limitations, and I present my entries in no particular order.
-Sweeney Todd; the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979; music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by Hugh Wheeler)
-Man of La Mancha (1965; music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion, book by Dale Wasserman)
-1776 (1969; music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards, book by Peter Stone)
-The Most Happy Fella (1956; book, music and lyrics by Frank Loesser)
-Shenandoah (1974; music by Gary Geld, lyrics by Peter Udell, book by Udell, Philip Rose and James Lee Barrett)
-On the Twentieth Century (1978; music by Cy Coleman, book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green)
-Kean (1961; music and lyrics by Robert Wright and George Forrest, book by Peter Stone)
Having bared a little bit of my soul, I now invite my fellow Ricochetti to comment with suggestions of musicals worthy of similar attention. I wish to gauge the tastes of my fellow members, and it is not unlikely that I will attempt to tailor future conversations based on responses that I receive.
Published in General
I wonder how many, @xeno, had the patience to “get” the reference to “some debate internal?”
Chicago should be in the conversation, as well as the Marc Blitzstein version of Threepenny Opera, if it counts as a “musical.”
When I first saw that cartoon as a youth, I got it, and I didn’t. No internet, so you had to dig to find out what a Trans-Lux was.
As a teenager interested in film, I once went to the very last of the Trans-Lux newsreel theaters before it shut down. It’s been a mere, oh, 54 years since then, but IIRC it was next to Grand Central Station. Like Times Square, it had a lot of travelers just looking for a place to kill a few hours.
I adore On the Twenty-First Century! My high school put it on when I was a sophomore. (My favorite play, which is taboo now, is The Foreigner. I will probably never get to see it performed again.)
I have to think about the other musicals I love. I will never see The Book of Mormon musical, though. (I have a sense of humor about my religious practices, but not enough to spend a wad of money on it.)
One pleasant, lucky oddity of this site: a disproportionate number of Utahns. I don’t know why, but some of our best known, funniest members are in the Salt Lake City and surrounding areas. People like @jasonrudert, @theroyalfamily, @catiii, @bishopwash, @ltpwfdcm, @thelonious. And you!
I don’t claim to have comprehensive knowledge of the genre, but how can we not include Guys and Dolls in this list? Horse racing, craps, Havana, the Salvation Army, the mafia–Guys and Dolls has it all.
Love the lists. One of the greats is missing from it. Hello Dolly, Carol Channing. Jesus Christ, Superstar deserves a mention. Anyone who has ever played it in band knows of the music quirks. For example, alternating measures of 4/4, 3/4, 4/4, 3/4.
I’ve never seen any of these. Like most Americans, I’d have to say “Hamilton” is my favorite right now. I need to see more!
I had no idea! You forgot Jim Wright and C.U. Douglas, too.
Question that seems appropriate here:
Why haven’t filmed (DVD) performances of shows ever become a thing? Stick a camera sixth row center and let it roll. Then, there’s also the possibility of streaming (live or otherwise).
When there are sell outs at $150/ticket for some shows, and burgeoning home theatre set-ups, the answer that there’s no market strikes me as questionable. And I really doubt it would cut into tickets sales because . . .well, people like live.
Sure it’s nice when somebody makes a film and the director gets to do his stuff. But how about the real thing for those of us who don’t get to the theatre that often?
An excellent question. The answer is, they’ve tried, but it doesn’t really work. An early example you can still find online was “Top Banana”, a hit musical with Phil Silvers before “Bilko”. It was filmed in 3D and advertised not as a movie, exactly, but as the complete Broadway show, intact. In the Seventies a group called American Film Theater tried their best with limited runs of filmed plays. These were “hard tickets”–sold in advance, with seat numbers–and each play ran for only a week.
The main problem is this: all those camera angles and editing aren’t the director showing off, they’re meant to be the equivalent of what people do at the theater; look at the most interesting, most relevant action. The film techniques merely do what audiences already do with their eyes.
Filmed theater might work if the the film was 3D and (unlike Top Banana in 1953) the screen was really large and/or up close. Then you’d be able to do just what you’d do watching a play; direct your attention anywhere on stage theat interested you.
How about the inverse? When they turn Cats the musical into Cat the Movie, it was an abomination of the first order.
Thanks.
I should’ve remembered those AFT productions. I saw a couple, including a wonderful Butley directed by Pinter. They even tackled Ionesco.
There are some productions that are similar to what I had in mind–Sunday in the Park with George with Peters and Patinkin, and Into the Woods.. These may have been produced for PBS originally if memory serves.
Which reminds me, no one has mentioned “Sunday in the Park,” which is a great concept.
If a play becomes a feature film, they’ll almost always “open it up”, get it out from “the proscenium arch”. They’ll invent scenes to give it a bigger scale, a sense of the real world. But if a play is adapted for television, it’s often given only a light dust-over. Disney’s recent streaming of Hamilton is about as direct a presentation of theater as you’re likely to find at the moment. There were angles, there were cuts, but they kept the unity of time and place. They didn’t shoot scenes dancing in Philadelphia streets. They didn’t film the Hamilton/Burr duel outdoors. They took the play seriously enough to get out of its way.
In Europe, film directors often start in the theater, move up to live TV drama, and if they’re lucky, get promoted to films. Here, there’s much less interchange. Theater directors are much more of a separate craft here. Directors of three camera “live” TV (that is, done with TV cameras, whether taped or live) don’t often move up to film; they rarely even move up to filmed TV drama. I don’t think there’s a single case of the guy who directs The Guiding Light or General Hospital making it to the big screen. They might possibly have made it as far as directing episodes of three camera, live audience comedy.
Already mentioned but my favorites are Les Miserable, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady. In that order.
It is nice to know that at least one among the membership had the patience to discover this little Easter egg.
We are very fortunate that so many of the original cast were invited to recreate their roles on screen, and we are especially lucky that the footage cut from the original theatrical release was rediscovered and reinstated for the Director’s Cut DVD edition.
In keeping with the American Revolution era theme, 1776 would seem to be an obvious recommendation. There is an excellent film version, mentioned earlier in this thread, with several recognizable stars (e.g. William “Mr. Feeney” Daniels as John Adams and Ken “White Shadow” Howard as Thomas Jefferson).
My own favorites are very conventional, but for me these are eternal:
1)Showboat (especially with the entire originally written score) – Moving story and fantastic music. My all-time favorite.
2) Carousel
3) West Side Story
4) Cabaret
5) Fiddler on the Roof
That said, any of the following honorable mentions might make my top five if you asked me on another day:
South Pacific, Flower Drum Song, Man from La Mancha, Bye Bye Birdie, Oklahoma, a Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum, Porgy and Bess, Music Man and perhaps Grease.
And yes, I loved 1776 as well.