I've never really been a summer person. I get bored at the beach, and I assiduously avoid the sun. Thankfully, summer provides lots of heavily air-conditioned theater-going opportunities, wh…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:58PM[SHARE]Two of the shows that I cover in some detail in my musical-theater history course are On Your Toes (1936) and On the Town (1944). My students often confuse the two with each other, which is …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:05PM[SHARE]Immersive theater is clearly the flavor of the month, both on and off Broadway, which I guess is fine. I'm not automatically for or against it, as long as I don't have to climb up and down s…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:24PM[SHARE]Composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie really seem to like a challenge. The first musical of theirs to gain widespread attention was Grey Gardens, an admittedly flawed but nonethe…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 05:47PM[SHARE]One of the most entertaining musicals I saw last year was Murder Ballad at the Manhattan Theater Club, Off-Broadway at City Center. (Read my review.) I found the show smart and sexy, and dra…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 01:42PM[SHARE]The 1920s was a heady and busy time for American musical theater. Musicals were still a relatively new art form, and the rules for creating them were only just emerging. That didn't stop com…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 05:01PM[SHARE]Never let it be said that I won't give a show a second chance. I was considerably at odds with both critical and public opinion on the recent American Repertory Theater production of Pippin.…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:45PM[SHARE]As often happens with me at the end of the semester, I've got a bit of a blogging backlog to make my way through. Although some of these shows are still running, there have been some product…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:30PM[SHARE]What's that, my friend? You say that you love Gilbert & Sullivan, but you don't have the...er... patience to sit through an entire Savoy Opera? You're not alone. I mean, I love me some G&S, …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:54PM[SHARE]In his review of the current Broadway revival of Jekyll & Hyde, New York Times critic Charles Isherwood referred to Frank Wildhorn musicals as "the crab grass of Broadway." Som…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:11PM[SHARE]There are some musicals that achieve cult status, despite - or perhaps because of - relatively short runs in their initial incarnations. Often these musicals live on through their cast recor…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 07:22PM[SHARE]Regular readers will know that I have a love/hate relationship with the Tony Awards, with all awards, in fact. On the one hand, I'm as interested and fascinated as the next showtune queen wh…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 10:34AM[SHARE]So, Motown: The Musical. OK, let's do this. Yes, it's bad. But we knew that was going to be true. But the genuinely surprising thing about Motown is that it's not entirely disastrous. Sure, …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:52PM[SHARE]Yeah, I don't get it. I saw the new musical Here Lies Love recently at The Public Theater, and found it reasonably diverting, if shallow and repetitive. But the reviews were overwhelmingly p…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:53PM[SHARE]I don't often get the chance to see Broadway shows twice. By the end of the season, I'm lucky if I have time to see things once. But I recently had the opportunity to see the current Broadwa…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 09:23PM[SHARE]I don't know how my fellow critics feel about this, but I find it much harder to write a rave than to write a pan. I guess that says something about me as a person, but I think it's also...
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 07:05PM[SHARE]Let dreamers dream what worlds they please; Those Edens can't be found. The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees Are grown in solid ground. We're neither pure nor wise nor good; We'll do the …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:20AM[SHARE]I've been a bit disheartened of late by crowds going full-tilt bug-nutty during, and at the end of, shows that, at least from my perspective, are seriously deficient in quality. It happened …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 09:56AM[SHARE]One of the hottest tickets in New York right now is the Classic Stage Company revival of Passion, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. (The show has been ext…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 11:50AM[SHARE]Who turns documentaries into musicals? Why, Doug Wright does, that's who. In collaboration with Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, Wright trandformed the the cult documentary Grey Gardens into…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:32PM[SHARE]Dear Reader: My humblest apologies for my extended absence from the blogosphere. I've been caught up in teaching, and the semester has really gone into high gear. But one of the things that …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:41PM[SHARE]A confession: I love Annie. Yes, it's sappy. Yes, the characters are two-dimensional. Yes, there are songs that serve no purpose except to cover a costume change. And yet it gives me joy. It…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:58PM[SHARE]One of my favorite theatrical experiences last season was One Man, Two Guvnors, a British import that rollicked at the good old Music Box Theatre for 159 performances, three at which I was i…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:43PM[SHARE]Last week, the Off-Broadway production of the musical Bare announced that it would be closing this coming weekend after 21 previews and 65 regular performances. I wish I could say I was eith…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:29PM[SHARE]Bad theater is a gift. I genuinely believe that. I know plenty of people who only go to see shows that they're already pretty sure they're going to like, or that have received strong reviews…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:11PM[SHARE]In the arts-criticism course that I teach at the Boston Conservatory, one of the DVDs that I've had my students watch almost every semester is Pippin. This isn't because I necessarily like t…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:29PM[SHARE]When I was in eighth grade, our class produced a little mimeographed yearbook, of which I was the editor. The yearbook contained individual student profiles, essays about class trips, a clas…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:20PM[SHARE]Dear Reader: With this post, I've finally caught up on my blogging backlog. I've still got some posts in the pipeline (including my Best and Worst Musicals of 2012, as well as my review of P…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:11PM[SHARE][Dear reader: The musical Giant played an extended run at the Public Theater from October 26th to December 16th, 2012. I saw the show twice, once in previews and once after it opened. Then I…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:35PM[SHARE]During the build-up to Christmas 2012, there was something very actively on the minds of theater fans across the country and around the world, and it didn't have anything to do with the usua…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 04:26PM[SHARE]I love blogging. I love teaching. But they do tend to conflict with each other. The two busiest times of the year for New York theater tend to be right before Christmas and then right before…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:11PM[SHARE]
