The Independent Theater Bloggers Association (the "ITBA") is proud to announce the 2012 recipients of the Fourth Annual Patrick Lee Theater Blogger Awards, (the "the Patricks"). Patrick Lee …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:33PM[SHARE]Regular readers of my blog will likely know two things about me: 1) In selecting shows to see, I tend to stick to the musicals. 2) I teach full-time, and toward the end of each semester, I t…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:21PM[SHARE]What if you gathered together some of the most profound thinkers and artists of the 20th century, and then didn't give them anything particularly profound to say? That's pretty much what we …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 04:28PM[SHARE]I have genuinely mixed feelings about "songbook" shows like Crazy for You, My One and Only, High Society, Never Gonna Dance, etc. One the one hand, the fact that all of these songs can be re…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 05:20PM[SHARE]Want to know what's wrong with contemporary musical theater? Then sidle over to the Lunt-Fontanne Theater and catch a performance of Ghost the Musical. Yes, the show is yet another in a long…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 01:50PM[SHARE]The recently ended Broadway season certainly saw its share of musical flops, notably Lysistrata Jones and Bonnie & Clyde. Although each of those shows had its champions, I was not among them…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 11:50AM[SHARE]I've been reviewing musicals and other theatrical productions on this blog for over six years now. For the most part, I've been doing it for the sheer love of theater, and musical theater in…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 04:38PM[SHARE]Louise Pitre gives a vibrant and heartfelt performance in the title role of Goodspeed Musical's revival of the beloved tuner.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 02:30PM[SHARE]A few weeks back, I had a chance to revisit the two musical revivals from last season, and it was a stark study in contrasts. My second visit to How to Succeed in Business Without Really Try…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:14PM[SHARE]I hated the movie "Newsies." Hated hated hated it. I found it plodding, forced, cloying, and resolutely earthbound. My roommate at the time, Todd, has a father who's an actor, and his father…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:34PM[SHARE]I got a call yesterday from a producer at Marketplace on National Public Radio. She wanted to know what I thought about the impending Tony Award nominations, and specifically what I thought …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 01:11PM[SHARE]How much of a difference can one performer make? That's the question I was left to ponder while walking out of the strangely lifeless revival of Evita that's currently packing them in at the…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:40PM[SHARE]The current theater season has provided me with ample opportunities for wistful nostalgia: Godspell, Evita, Follies. These were some of the recordings that I and other show-tune queens of a …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 07:02PM[SHARE]A few weeks back, during spring break at the Boston Conservatory, I took advantage of the brief semester hiatus to hightail it down to New York to see as many shows as possible. (I mean, duh…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:05PM[SHARE]When I saw the new musical Once Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop, I found it disarming and sweet, but I had serious reservations about plans to move the show to Broadway. It's a…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:40PM[SHARE]So, you didn't win the tickets to see Jesus Christ Superstar? Well, here's another chance to catch a brand new Broadway show absolutely free. We've been hearing for a few years now about the…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 11:57AM[SHARE]I continue to be amazed by purists who seem to think that any changes to Porgy and Bess represent nothing less than sacrilege. Of course, it started with Stephen Sondheim's now-infamous scre…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 05:01PM[SHARE]What's so special about Oklahoma!? Seventy years ago when Oklahoma! premiered on the New York stage, it singlehandedly changed musical theater forever. Well, I say "singlehandedly," but in f…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 09:20AM[SHARE]As you may have read, two formidable cultural icons are making double comebacks on Broadway this season: Jesus Christ and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The former is represented by both Godspell and …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 05:00PM[SHARE]"Carrie - There's never been a musical like her" That was the tag line in the ads for Carrie when it first appeared on stage in 1988. At the time, it was certainly true, but not really in th…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:40PM[SHARE]Executive director Rob Orchard describes the current and future plans for this two-year-old arts-programming initiative.
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 08:00AM[SHARE]There have been quite a few musicals over the years that just kind of break your heart. Usually, these shows sound great on their cast recordings and make you wonder how, despite such terrif…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:03PM[SHARE]Dear Reader: As you may know, I, your humble blogger, teach musical-theater history at The Boston Conservatory. As part of my course, I direct a series of staged readings of historically imp…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 09:36AM[SHARE]As you may know, the terminally perky little musical Lysistrata Jones closed this past weekend on Broadway after only 30 performances, despite a near-rave from Ben Brantley of the New York T…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 01:07PM[SHARE]I've heard a lot of apologists for Bonnie & Clyde say that it was surprisingly good. You know, for a Frank Wildhorn show. Well, saying that Bonnie & Clyde is Wildhorn's least awful m…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:25PM[SHARE]I had been hearing really great things about the revised version of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, which has been kicking around for a few years now in various workshops and readings. I…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:30PM[SHARE]I like to think that nobody deliberately sets out to write a bad musical. Every composer, lyricist, and librettist who has ever set pen to paper, hands to piano keys, or fingers to computer …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:00PM[SHARE]For Christmas, I treated myself to the Stephen Sondheim's Hat Box, which comprises both volumes of his collected lyrics: Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat. I'm in the active process o…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:10PM[SHARE]More blogging catch-up today. This post is about two (gasp) non-musicals that I saw recently on Broadway. One of these shows has already closed, but is likely to return later in the season. …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 05:26PM[SHARE]I'm really late to the game on this one, as The Blue Flower closed at the Second Stage Theatre (2ST) about a month ago, but I'm taking advantage of the semester break to catch up on some of …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:02PM[SHARE]The fall semester at the Boston Conservatory is over. ("Big breath in. And release.") Now I get a chance to catch up on some much-delayed blogging. Among the numerous shows in my c…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:26PM[SHARE]
