musicals
Matt Wolf
Has anyone else noticed how fulltime this streaming thing has become? Those who were of a mind to (and who never slept) could find enough cultural output to satisfy 24/7, especially if one adds to the free offerings that crop up by the week the ongoing back catalogue made available on sites such as Marquee TV or Digital Theatre, and the like. While those platforms continue to roam freely across productions and even art forms, each week brings with it a fresh supply of intriguing fare. This week's lineup includes curiosities from the very different minds of Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Time is moving in mysterious ways at the moment. It's been possible over the last month or so to mark out the beginning of each week with the arrival online of a different production streaming from the Hampstead Theatre archives. The National, meanwhile, does its change-over of offerings on a Thursday (Frankenstein, see below, begins tonight), while the RSC and Shakespeare's Globe have enough material between them to satisfy the most ardent Shakespearean and newbies to the Bard alike. What's fun is when these stalwarts are joined by more unpredictable offerings, several of which are itemised Read more ...
David Nice
Maybe you can't compare incomparables, but it was instructive to watch this Broadway lockdown gala feting nonagenarian Stephen Sondheim a night after the Metropolitan Opera's galaxy of stars welcoming us into their homes. More slick, no doubt (once it started, an hour late), with all the accompaniments clearly heard and sassily done, equally blissful in its funny spots, but somehow less warm and spontaneous-seeming: odd that many of those opera singers on Saturday came across as more companionable than some of the more self-regarding or intense show folk here. But again, carping is unfair: Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The lockdown has been extended, but here's the good news: each week whereby we are shut inside seems to bring with it ever-enticing arrays of theatre from across the spectrum, from online cabarets to freshly conceived podcasts and all manner of archival offerings of tites both familiar and not. Below is an unscientific sampling of items of interest to look out for either at the moment or during the week ahead. Some theatres change over programming on Mondays or even midweek, so if the current link you have to hand seems to be to something else, hold fire and the title in question should be Read more ...
Joseph Walsh
The world might have changed drastically in the wake of Covid-19, but thankfully those hyperactive, candy-coloured Trolls haven’t. Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake are back as the delightful odd-couple, Poppy and Branch, for round two of pop-infused peppy animated adventure in the land of felt and feelings, where music can solve a myriad of problems. The first movie was a gleeful delight. Yes, it was slight on plot, but it possessed an infectious optimism and a message of love and acceptance. It wasn’t going to have the bosses at Pixar quaking in their boots, but it was an undeniable Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
“Whipped cream with knives” is how Harold Prince, who directed the Broadway premiere of A Little Night Music in 1973, famously described this particular Sondheim show. And nowhere is that borne out with more exquisite agony than in this duet between two unhappily married women. With a book by Hugh Wheeler, the musical, based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 film Smiles of a Summer Night, is about the pain, ecstasy and killing disappointments of life, love and desire.Set in Sweden around 1900 and composed largely in waltz time, it’s ravishing and cruel, hearts breaking beneath starched shirt fronts, Read more ...
David Nice
Two numbers, one hair-raising slice of music-theatre. When Sondheim's paying homage to the older, revue type of musical, you can extract a string of top hits: Follies, from which Marianka Swain chose "I'm Still Here" yesterday, could yield at least half a dozen more choices, Company almost as many. When his aim is a more through-composed kind of story-telling, with leading motifs recurring and transformed, "highlights" are less easily detached. Sweeney Todd (1979) was his first high watermark in that art, Into the Woods (1986) the next; later shows attempted a more minimalistic palette, with Read more ...
Marianka Swain
Surely there’s never been a more apt time for Sondheim’s great cry of defiance? “I’m Still Here” is sung by showgirl-turned-actress Carlotta in Follies (1971) – added during the Boston try-out in place of “Can That Boy Foxtrot”. Loosely inspired by Joan Crawford, it’s the ultimate anthem of showbiz survival.Carlotta looks back on a tumultuous career: “Plush velvet sometimes/Sometimes just pretzels and beer”. Musically, it’s a Harold Arlen pastiche, as Sondheim explains in Finishing the Hat, since Carlotta “would see her life as a flamboyant, torchy ballad”. Lyrically, it’s pure Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Here's an irony worthy of the work of Stephen Sondheim, an artist who clearly knows a thing or two about the multiple manifestations of that word. On the same day that he turns 90, namely today, Broadway is unable to host the keenly awaited American premiere, scheduled for this evening, of the gender-flipped Company that stunned London last year. The city's theatres there (as everywhere else) shuttered by the coronavirus, New York will have to bide its time until audiences can see the director Marianne Elliott's fresh take on the story of a Manhattan singleton, once male and now female, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Two years before he took on The Beatles, George Martin was working with another artiste who would go on to have success in America. Martin first encountered Matt Monro in 1960 when he signed him to the label he ran, Parlophone. The “Portrait of my Love” single charted later in the year. In summer 1961, “My Kind of Girl” hit America’s single’s charts. His 1965 version of ”Yesterday” had a Martin arrangement. The same year, Monro – born Terry Parsons – moved to America after he had been picked up by Capitol Records, which also had The Beatles on its books. Also relevant to Monro, Capitol had Read more ...
Marianka Swain
There’s concept on top of concept in this revival of Jason Robert Brown’s beloved 2001 musical, which charts the ebb and flow of a relationship by juggling timelines: aspiring actress Cathy’s story is told in reverse chronological order, while aspiring writer Jamie’s moves forward. It’s an apt framing for a couple who are never on the same page, their dual ambitions and relative success wrenching them apart. Director Jonathan O’Boyle now adds another layer: this is an actor-musician production, with both performers playing the piano throughout, among other instruments.There are crystalline Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It’s not so much that Pretty Woman: The Musical isn’t much good, which it isn’t. More to the point is that this West End replica of the recent Broadway musical of the 1990 film feels utterly superfluous: a gloss on a popular romcom that doesn’t improve upon or deepen our appreciation of the original in any way. Indeed, at the press preview attended, one could feel the audience all but marking time until the iconic Roy Orbison song of the title gets trotted out in order to bring an expectant crowd to their feet. Nothing else in the preceding two and a half hours comes close to Read more ...