musical Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Ramblin' with Roger

Musical review: Finding Neverland

Note that we’re not looking for historical accuarcy here.

Finding Neverland is the story about how James Matthew Barrie (Billy Harrigan Tighe) wrote the story of Peter Pan by befriending a widow, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies (Lael Van Keuren) and her four boys. One of the boys is named Peter, and the death of his father had damaged his sense of childlike wonder.

Barrie too had gotten all grown up, married to a high society-minded woman, having fancy dinners with snooty people such as Mrs. du Maurier (Broadway working actress Karen Murphy), and in need of writing another successful piece for a theater impresario, Charles Frohman (John Davidson – yes, THAT John Davidson) and his troupe.

(I’ll admit I love the stunt casting in these touring shows that my wife and I see at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady. I didn’t recognize Davidson straight off – his hair is much whiter than when I watched his TV show decades ago – but he was a solid performer, as was Adrienne Barbeau from Maude in Pippin a few seasons back.)

Barrie discovers he needs to find his own sense of adventure. And – no spoiler here – he finds it, with Frohman the inspiration for Captain Hook. Indeed, the Frohman character BECOMES Hook, taunting/inspiring the writer. Note that we’re not looking for historical accuarcy here.

The production features music and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy, based on the book by James Graham. It was all quite serviceable to the plot, with a few pretty good songs. But I will admit that I got a bit misty-eyed at the end of the penultimate scene. It was one of the best payoffs I’ve experienced in seeing theater. If it’s touring in your area, I recommend it.

We did see the movie, also based on the play The Man Who Was Peter Pan by Allan Knee. back in 2004 or 2005, with Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, and Julie Christie. I remembered enjoying it, but this iteration, I believe, had a more of an emotional wallop.

Finding Neverland, the musical, ran on Broadway for 565 performances in 2015 and 2016, with Matthew Morrison, the teacher from the TV show Glee, as Barrie; Kelsey Grammer, who starred as Frasier on TV, as Frohman; and Carolee Carmello as Mrs. du Maurier. Morrison and Carmello were nominated for Tonys but did not win.

The Lydster, Part 145: Hip hop

“It’s SO annoying, but it’s still fun.”

The youth of our church, ages 6 to 18, did a hip hop performance of original readings, one extant reading, plus three dance numbers, and one song, at the beginning of March.

The Daughter’s first contribution was like pulling teeth. She was supposed to write a poem about her good qualities, but she was so self-effacing, I sat with her to suggest what she was good at, such as dancing, and being a good friend.

In a collective piece called Church and Family Rule, she ended up saying: “Mom: tucks me into bed at night. Dad: watches the news with me at midnight.”

Now, what she had ORIGINALLY written was that I watch the news with her, then something entirely different about our cats Midnight and Stormy. So, NO, Albany, I don’t watch the news with my daughter at midnight, unless she’s having insomnia.

Her solo reading, though, was particularly popular with the crowd. I was glad I had heard it a few times before she delivered it. And I had NOTHING to do with its composition, except, apparently, as its inspiration.

My dad and I dance to The Beatles.
Well, I wouldn’t call what he was doing DANCING, but something like that.
I dance to I Saw Her Standing There, Help, Hey Jude, and Revolution.
My dad sings, “She was just seventeen if you know what I mean.”
And as soon as he starts to sing, I start to sing.
It’s SO annoying, but it’s still fun.
We do it a couple of times a year, usually around the Beatles’ birthdays.

SHE added the extra “if” to the song lyric.

It was well-received by the audience that was clearly not a traditional hip hop demographic.

Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton’s powder horn is up for auction.

I’ve become obsessed with Alexander Hamilton for a while now. He was married to Elizabeth Schuyler, a member of First Presbyterian Church in Albany (my current church!), in 1780. When Aaron Burr killed Hamilton in an 1804 duel, First Presbyterian Albany minister Eliphalet Nott wrote a persuasive sermon that led to the demise of dueling in America.

It definitely intensified with that campaign by some group to put a woman on the $20 bill, replacing Andrew Jackson, something I fully supported.

But then I heard about the Treasury Department’s plan to put a woman on the $10 bill, replacing Hamilton, our first Treasury secretary, and the greatest immigrant among the founders of the country. That plan was tweaked to keep Hamilton on the bill somewhere.

Hamilton’s greatness has become clear as I started listening to the soundtrack of the Broadway musical Hamilton, an extraordinary work by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Here’s the introductory piece. The production is quite influential among some folks; for instance, I found an article titled ‘Hamilton’ Makes Me Want to Be Great.

My family has given three copies of the soundtrack to the musical as Christmas presents this season, and I finally got a copy myself. Getting a ticket to the show is much more difficult, though President Obama has seen it twice, once in previews.

This is a prediction, based on nothing but a gut feeling, and the unexplained postponement of the $10 redesign. Obama decides that the $10 won’t be replaced after all, because, in his feisty last year, he wouldn’t do that to old Alex. Instead, he dumps Jackson, an opponent of the banking system. He suggests a woman, a black woman, maybe Rosa Parks, but I’m hoping Harriet Tubman.

Chuck Miller points out that Alexander Hamilton’s powder horn is up for auction on January 11, 2016.

K is for Kinky Boots

Kinky Boots will be performed in 2016 in Melbourne, Australia.

Back in June, The Wife and I saw the touring company production of the musical Kinky Boots at Proctors Theatre in nearby Schenectady, NY.

The book was written by actor, playwright, and voice actor Harvey Fierstein, based on the Miramax motion picture written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth. Music and lyrics were by Cyndi Lauper, probably best known for the song Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

What I wanted to know: how did I NOT know about the movie version? OH, it came out in 2005, when the Daughter was one, and her parents were still in a sleep-deprived fog.

As for the storyline, it was quite compelling. “A drag queen comes to the rescue of a man who, after inheriting his father’s shoe factory, needs to diversify his product if he wants to keep the business afloat.” That drag queen suggests moving from those conservative shoe styles that were no longer selling to something a bit more daring. This was not necessarily an easy sell for some of the long-tenured factory workers, who, in fact, might be out of jobs altogether without the diversification. But, as a business librarian, it was easy to see the value of this strategy.

The musical I enjoyed quite a bit, though I was unfamiliar with any of the songs. Much of the audience seemed to know when the showstopper songs were going to come up.

In addition to Broadway and the US tour, the show is running in London, England; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; and the show will be performed in 2016 in Melbourne, Australia.
***
Raise You Up – finale

Billy Porter is (still) the star of Kinky Boots, the long-running hit on Broadway. At the performance on June 26, 2015, he made a touching curtain speech.

A Final JEOPARDY! answer.

ABC Wednesday – Round 17

Pippin, the musical (Five Photos, Five Stories #1)

The circus motif was quite effective in addressing Pippin’s search for meaning and purpose in his life.

I’d been waiting to see Pippin, the Stephen Schwartz musical, for the last forty-plus years, ever since I was living in my college town of New Paltz in the mid-1970s, and saw the “first TV commercial that actually showed scenes from a Broadway show” on the New York City TV stations.

“The commercial, which ran 60 seconds, showed Ben Vereen [as the Leading Player] and two other dancers, Candy Brown and Pamela Sousa who were in the chorus of the show, in the instrumental dance sequence from ‘Glory’. The commercial ended with the tagline, ‘You can see the other 119 minutes of Pippin live at the Imperial Theatre, without commercial interruption.'”

Pippin was originally directed and choreographed by the legendary Bob Fosse, and ran nearly five years, from October 23, 1972 to June 12, 1977, a total of 1944 performances. It was nominated for 11 Tony awards, and won five, including one for Vereen and two for Fosse.

Pippin was reimagined by director Diane Paulus with a circus motif. It ran for nearly two years on Broadway, from April 25, 2013, to January 4, 2015, with 709 performances. It won four of the 10 Tonys for which it was nominated, including Best Revival of a Musical and Best Director.

Now there’s a touring show, which I was REALLY excited about, especially since I saw this CBS Sunday Morning segment. John Rubinstein, the original Pippin, now plays his father Charles, a/k/a Charlemagne; yes, this VERY loosely based on actual historic figures.

The Wife and I saw the show on Thursday evening, May 28, at Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady.

The circus motif was quite effective in addressing Pippin’s search for meaning and purpose in his life. And the performances in the first act were incredible – the magic, the athleticism. More than once, including at least one costume change, the audience wondered, “How did they DO that?”

In the Times Union review of the Tuesday, May 26 opening night performance, Times Union critic Steve Barnes described that cast members “twirl from long ribbons, stand three-tall atop one another’s shoulders, balance on a board precariously perched on four steel cylinders and even, in the show’s most extraordinary physical feat, create the human equivalent of a ring-toss game.”

We were wowed by 69-year-old Adrienne Barbeau, from TV’s Maude, playing Berthe, Pippin’s grandmother, singing, upside down, above the stage.

Sasha Allen, who was a contestant on the singing competition The Voice a couple of seasons ago, had been playing the Leading Player, part narrator, part circus ringmaster. Unfortunately, she damaged her hand in early May. The role when we saw it was played by Lisa Karlin, who was quite good. Barnes described her as “a looming, effective presence; you wouldn’t want to cross her.”

Then the second act, which is totally different. The contrast spoke to the pointlessness of the razzle-dazzle of war and the like, in favor of finding meaning in ordinary life. It’s only at the end when I finally GOT the message.

I enjoyed Pippin a great deal.

Useless detail I learned while looking up stuff: Irene Ryan, who played Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies television show, was nominated as Best Featured Actress in a Musical, for playing the grandmother in the original production of Pippin.

Note: I have been nominated by my buddy Lisa over at Peripheral Perceptions to participate in the Five Photos, Five Stories meme, which simply says I should post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.

The problem is that almost all my posts are stories and have pictures. So I’m cheating and writing only one new post. And I’m nominating YOU!