Dear musical theater creators,
Please don’t stop trying to turn plays that have no business being musicals into musical. It’s just too much fun when they don’t quite work.
Thank you,
Robert
An excerpt from Macbeth: The Musical.
Daily Archives: 14 July 2011
News, Theater
Coming Soon: Three New Musicals on Broadway
by Robert • • 2 Comments
Define soon. So far, there has only been official confirmation of three new musicals opening on Broadway in the 2011-2012 season. This is sad for someone like me who really likes new musicals. Fortunately, there are a bunch of other shows circling the possibility of coming to Broadway. There’s just nothing official yet.
The three shows that are coming couldn’t be more diverse than most anything that’s playing on Broadway right now. They’re ambitious concepts based on strange ideas that may not even work on a big Broadway stage. As a fan of weird, I have to commend these producers and creative teams for taking the risk to go on the Great White Way. Sometimes the risk pays off big time (Avenue Q: who expected the downtown dirty puppet musical to still be running in a NYC commercial space, albeit Off-Broadway), and sometimes it doesn’t (oh, Glory Days, your pop music quartet about high school friends reuniting is the definition of too small for Broadway).
The first show to arrive is a production of the pretty-well-reviewed Off-Broadway musical Lysistrata Jones.
Reviews, Theater
Ghost: The Musical: A Listening Guide
by Robert • • 2 Comments
You can stream Ghost: The Musical‘s Original Cast Recording right now on their Facebook page. You should. It’s probably the strongest pop score since Boy George’s Taboo. It’s clever, it’s emotional, and it actually elevates the (for some inexplicable reason to me) guilty pleasure paranormal-romance film Ghost to a level that might actually create a new appreciation for the Academy Award nominated film.
Here are my notes, track by track, on what makes these songs tick. It’s almost TL:DR enough to get you through the whole cast recording.
The Original Cast Recording of Ghost: The Musical: A Listening Guide
Overture: The recording starts with a very sweet little pop instrumental. There’s a sadness to it, and a good bit of drama. It’s small, but sweeping.
Here Right Now: I love the use of synth in this score. It’s just so sweet and friendly without being cloying. Very nice uptempo love song to open the show. The two leads have phenomenal pop-theater voices. I could listen to them sing the phone book together and be happy. Lyrics are a little cliché. Key change feels a little unnecessary.
Unchained Melody: Yes, that Unchained Melody.