Great Songs from Broadway Musicals

[doncoin]

2 hours ago, InBangkok said:

I have never seen Sutton Foster on stage and so can only judge her performances from clips like those in the earlier posts. In my view, she has the voice but her acting is somewhat more wooden than both Patti Lupone and Elaine Paige. Have you seen her?

 

I saw her in her breakout role, Thoroughly Modern Millie back in the early 2000s, and something else which I cannot recall now. She is popular, as she has transitioned pretty well to TV as well. 

[30yochinese]

6 minutes ago, doncoin said:

 

I saw her in her breakout role, Thoroughly Modern Millie back in the early 2000s, and something else which I cannot recall now. She is popular, as she has transitioned pretty well to TV as well. 

Can i quote what an American Youtuber( he is a Reviewer ) commented in his reaction video of Miss Sutton Foster?

         
quote. She hasn’t aged a bit!!! She looks so freakingly young as though she just came out of her mother’s womb! UnQuote.

      
so damn funny😜🤪😝

[30yochinese]

2 hours ago, 30yochinese said:

Can i quote what an American Youtuber( he is a Reviewer ) commented in his reaction video of Miss Sutton Foster?

         
quote. She hasn’t aged a bit!!! She looks so freakingly young as though she just came out of her mother’s womb! UnQuote.

      
so damn funny😜🤪😝

 

[InBangkok]

I have seen a few over the years.

 

Len Cariou in Sweeney Todd

George Hearn in La Cage aux Folles

Michael Crawford  in Phantom of the Opera

Alan Cumming in Cabaret

 

If you add in the other nominees who failed to win, I'd add to that list Larry Kert in Company, Howard McGillin in Anything Goes, Gene Barry in La Cage aux Folles, Peter Friedman and Brian Stokes Mitchell in Ragtime, Tom Wopat in Annie Get Your Gun. If you also add in Actors in a Play I have only two - BD Wong in M. Butterfly and Nathaniel Parker in Wolf Hall Parts 1 & 2.

[30yochinese]

37 minutes ago, InBangkok said:

I have seen a few over the years.

 

Len Cariou in Sweeney Todd

George Hearn in La Cage aux Folles

Michael Crawford  in Phantom of the Opera

Alan Cumming in Cabaret

 

If you add in the other nominees who failed to win, I'd add to that list Larry Kert in Company, Howard McGillin in Anything Goes, Gene Barry in La Cage aux Folles, Peter Friedman and Brian Stokes Mitchell in Ragtime, Tom Wopat in Annie Get Your Gun. If you also add in Actors in a Play I have only two - BD Wong in M. Butterfly and Nathaniel Parker in Wolf Hall Parts 1 & 2.

I am trying not to get jealous here, lol

         

i realized of all the actors u mentioned, there's a nice mix of Caucasians & Asian-Americans &(others&) shows the diversity on stage👍

    

my 2nd observation is, most of them are Revivals, & goes to show how an Actor can breathe life into old material, & give a Tony-Award-Winning-Performance👍

[InBangkok]

53 minutes ago, 30yochinese said:

my 2nd observation is, most of them are Revivals, & goes to show how an Actor can breathe life into old material, & give a Tony-Award-Winning-Performance👍

Actually because I'm a lot older than you, only one was a revival - Alan Cumming in a fantastic revival at Studio 54 in New York. All the others including musicals and plays were the original productions. Larry Kert was not on Broadway. It was the immediate transfer of Company to London. It was one of the first musicals I attended.

 

Of ladies in musicals, I only saw Elaine Paige once in what i thought was a dreadful musical titled The Drowsy Chaperone in 2007. It bombed and closed after less than 100 performances. Two of the finest performances were Jean Simmonds and the wonderful Hermione Gingold in the first London production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Then the equally wonderful Angela Lansbury in the Broadway production of another Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd. 

 

One of the loveliest productions i have seen was a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies on Broadway in 2001. This is very difficult to produce because it requires about a dozen couples in their 60s and older meeting at a reunion of hose who performed in the Weissman Follies between the two World Wars. When it first opened in London it had Roger Moore in the cast. But he really could not sing (!) and so he pulled out a few weeks before opening night. In the revival I attended there were some wonderful elder Broadway actresses including Blythe Danner and Marge Champion. Ms Champion had been the wife of the great Broadway dancer and choreographer, Gower Champion. He died just hours before the opening night of the musical 42nd Street which he had directed. The news was kept from the cast until after the curtain came down at the end.

 

I was at the opening night when 42nd Street transferred to London when Catherine Zeta-Jones was a member of the chorus! An old fashioned musical, it ran in London for 5 years. When a cast member fell ill, Zeta-Jones took over in her first starring role.

 

 

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by InBangkok

[30yochinese]

27 minutes ago, InBangkok said:

Actually because I'm a lot older than you, only one was a revival - Alan Cumming in a fantastic revival at Studio 54 in New York. All the others including musicals and plays were the original productions. Larry Kert was not on Broadway. It was the immediate transfer of Company to London. It was one of the first musicals I attended.

 

Of ladies in musicals, I only saw Elaine Paige once in what i thought was a dreadful musical titled The Drowsy Chaperone in 2007. It bombed and closed after less than 100 performances. Two of the finest performances were Jean Simmonds and the wonderful Hermione Gingold in the first London production of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. Then the equally wonderful Angela Lansbury in the Broadway production of another Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd. 

 

One of the loveliest productions i have seen was a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies on Broadway in 2001. This is very difficult to produce because it requires about a dozen couples in their 60s and older meeting at a reunion of hose who performed in the Weissman Follies between the two World Wars. When it first opened in London it had Roger Moore in the cast. But he really could not sing (!) and so he pulled out a few weeks before opening night. In the revival I attended there were some wonderful elder Broadway actresses including Blythe Danner and Marge Champion. Ms Champion had been the wife of the great Broadway dancer and choreographer, Gower Champion. He died just hours before the opening night of the musical 42nd Street which he had directed. The news was kept from the cast until after the curtain came down at the end.

 

I was at the opening night when 42nd Street transferred to London when Catherine Zeta-Jones was a member of the chorus! An old fashioned musical, it ran in London for 5 years. When a cast member fell ill, Zeta-Jones took over in her first starring role.

 

 

 

Thx for that detailed history, i can only imagine how clever u are... coz ticket prices back then were value-for-money unlike now... 

        

i was thinking, my 1st musical was prob the 199? production of Les Mis. so from 1997 to 2020, how many shows have i watched which were the ORIGINAL CAST?

                

        

-Lea Salonga in Cinderella,

-Andrea McArdle, Disney's BATB,

-Ashley, Aladdin, Melbourne,

-The Lion King in 1998, SHIKI THEATER,

-Disney's B.A.T.B. Japan,

-Lea Salonga, Miss Saigon Manila,

-Cats, Malaysia,

-Eva N. 2016, Miss Saigon, West End,

-Tamsin, Oliver, Sydney 2005,

-Monique Wilson, Cabaret, Manila,

-RENT, Manila,

-Mamma Mia, Melbourne,

-Jersey Boys, Singapore,

-Avenue Q, Singapore,

-WICKED, Melbourne,

-The Book of Mormon, London,

-Fun Home,

-Chicago,

-Fiddler on the Roof,

-La Cage Aux Follies,

-Evita,

*all the above i attended in a theatre with a live orchestra.

      

      

 

[InBangkok]

You have seen more than I. From the shows on your list I have only seen these since about 1997 -

 

The Lion King in Sydney and Bangkok

Miss Saigon in a Cameron Mackintosh supervised production in Bangkok with an excellent Thai cast

CATS in Bangkok (umpeenth Australian production)

Mamma Mia in Singapore (3 times!) and Bangkok

Wicked on Broadway

Chicago in London (1999) and Bangkok

 

Additionally in that period I saw

 

Sound of Music in Sydney and Shanghai

Annie in Sydney

My Fair Lady in Singapore

 

Only Wicked had the original cast. And I must be one of a very few who actually loathed the show. I even walked out at the interval after booking my seat online and paying about $150 plus add ons. I almost did the same with Annie but I had been invited by a friend who loved the show and I could not be disrespectful. These two I would never see again!!

 

Ticket prices in both London and New York certainly used to be relatively inexpensive. There were also the half price ticket booths in both cities where there was a chance of getting cheap tickets. I think The Producers was the first show to hit $100 per ticket. After opening night when tickets were in huge demand, they kept back 40 or 50 of the best seats for sale to hotel guests via the concierge network. Those tickets cost $500. It seemed Broadway had gone crazy.

[30yochinese]

On 8/4/2021 at 5:05 PM, InBangkok said:

You have seen more than I. From the shows on your list I have only seen these since about 1997 -

 

The Lion King in Sydney and Bangkok

Miss Saigon in a Cameron Mackintosh supervised production in Bangkok with an excellent Thai cast

CATS in Bangkok (umpeenth Australian production)

Mamma Mia in Singapore (3 times!) and Bangkok

Wicked on Broadway

Chicago in London (1999) and Bangkok

 

Additionally in that period I saw

 

Sound of Music in Sydney and Shanghai

Annie in Sydney

My Fair Lady in Singapore

 

Only Wicked had the original cast. And I must be one of a very few who actually loathed the show. I even walked out at the interval after booking my seat online and paying about $150 plus add ons. I almost did the same with Annie but I had been invited by a friend who loved the show and I could not be disrespectful. These two I would never see again!!

 

Ticket prices in both London and New York certainly used to be relatively inexpensive. There were also the half price ticket booths in both cities where there was a chance of getting cheap tickets. I think The Producers was the first show to hit $100 per ticket. After opening night when tickets were in huge demand, they kept back 40 or 50 of the best seats for sale to hotel guests via the concierge network. Those tickets cost $500. It seemed Broadway had gone crazy.

thx for sharing, this also happened to me> And I must be one of a very few who actually loathed the show. I even walked out at the interval after booking my seat online and paying about $150 plus add ons. I almost did the same with Annie but I had been invited by a friend who loved the show and I could not be disrespectful. These two I would never see again!!
                                                  
But my situation was different,
The Usher showed me to my "Restricted View" seat in London, for "The Book of Mormon" & since it was a "R.View" Seat, the chair was smaller... don't ask me why, anyway i couldn't take the discomfort of sitting in a chair with caused me increasing pain, so after the 5th Song i stormed out of the theatre... Good thing that was a cheap ticket,
     
DAMN! why was i so stupid to buy a Restricted-View-Seat?!?
   
     

[doncoin]

Apple TV+ is streaming the Broadway stage version of Come From Away starting today. 

 

 

Amazon Prime Video will be streaming Everybody's Talking About Jamie on September 17. 

 

 

Netflix will be releasing Jonathan Larson's Tick Tick Boom in November. This was what Larson wrote before Rent. 

 

 

I left out the ones that will be released theatrically like Dear Evan Hansen and West Side Story. 

 

[InBangkok]

Sad news. Stephen Sondheim has died aged 91.

 

Sondheim revolutionised the musicals genre even more I believe than Rodgers and Hammerstein II. Indeed it was Hammerstein who first noticed him and helped encourage him. I was fortunate in having a dear friend in London who adored musicals. He gave me my first Sondheim experience with the London production of Company featuring the Broadway original performers: Larry Kert in the lead role of Bobby and the legendary Elaine Stritch whose "Ladies Who Lunch" remains seared on my memory.  We then saw A Little Night Music with the wonderful pairing of Jean Simmons and Hermione Gingold. "Send in the Clowns" from that show became his one worldwide hit. Unlike Lloyd Webber Sondheim was not especially interested in beautiful melodies. Whereas Lloyd Webber always wrote the music first and then had lyrics added to it, for Sondheim the lyrics and the detail in those lyrics were the absolute key to how he wrote a song.

 

A struggling London producer who was to become a close friend and collaborator on future Sondheim shows, Cameron Mackintosh (later to produce the four great blockbusters CATS, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon), then mounted a low budget evening of songs by Sondheim titled Side by Side by Sondheim - a reference to one of the songs from Company. This was a total joy. On Broadway I was later to see Sweeney Todd with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. I enjoyed it so much I returned a second time. Although Company remains my favourite, a close second is Follies which I saw again on Broadway in the 2001 revival. A truly wonderful evening. It is a difficult show to produce almost anywhere requiring as it does effectively two casts - a group of 60/70 year old singer/dancers who used to perform in a variation of the famous Ziegfeld Follies and return for a reunion. They appear alongside a younger group performing as ghosts of their former selves.

 

Most will remember him with "Send in the Clowns". I prefer his much more gritty "Ladies who Lunch" which really can only be sung Elaine Stritch. It's a song filled with mockery about the bitterness, boredom, wasteful lives and fondness for alcohol of rich society ladies who really have nothing meaningful in those lives. Just listen to the mournful opening phrases and then the biting satire of the lyric. Magical!

 

I wish I had seen more. I have several on CD but nothing beats the live stage experience for me. To say he was in a class by himself and that he revolutionised musical theatre is superfluous. He was quite simply a ground-breaking genius.

 

 

[mith]

On 11/27/2021 at 12:12 PM, InBangkok said:

Sad news. Stephen Sondheim has died aged 91.

 

Sondheim revolutionised the musicals genre even more I believe than Rodgers and Hammerstein II. Indeed it was Hammerstein who first noticed him and helped encourage him. I was fortunate in having a dear friend in London who adored musicals. He gave me my first Sondheim experience with the London production of Company featuring the Broadway original performers: Larry Kert in the lead role of Bobby and the legendary Elaine Stritch whose "Ladies Who Lunch" remains seared on my memory.  We then saw A Little Night Music with the wonderful pairing of Jean Simmons and Hermione Gingold. "Send in the Clowns" from that show became his one worldwide hit. Unlike Lloyd Webber Sondheim was not especially interested in beautiful melodies. Whereas Lloyd Webber always wrote the music first and then had lyrics added to it, for Sondheim the lyrics and the detail in those lyrics were the absolute key to how he wrote a song.

 

A struggling London producer who was to become a close friend and collaborator on future Sondheim shows, Cameron Mackintosh (later to produce the four great blockbusters CATS, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Miss Saigon), then mounted a low budget evening of songs by Sondheim titled Side by Side by Sondheim - a reference to one of the songs from Company. This was a total joy. On Broadway I was later to see Sweeney Todd with Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury. I enjoyed it so much I returned a second time. Although Company remains my favourite, a close second is Follies which I saw again on Broadway in the 2001 revival. A truly wonderful evening. It is a difficult show to produce almost anywhere requiring as it does effectively two casts - a group of 60/70 year old singer/dancers who used to perform in a variation of the famous Ziegfeld Follies and return for a reunion. They appear alongside a younger group performing as ghosts of their former selves.

 

Most will remember him with "Send in the Clowns". I prefer his much more gritty "Ladies who Lunch" which really can only be sung Elaine Stritch. It's a song filled with mockery about the bitterness, boredom, wasteful lives and fondness for alcohol of rich society ladies who really have nothing meaningful in those lives. Just listen to the mournful opening phrases and then the biting satire of the lyric. Magical!

 

I wish I had seen more. I have several on CD but nothing beats the live stage experience for me. To say he was in a class by himself and that he revolutionised musical theatre is superfluous. He was quite simply a ground-breaking genius.

 

 

 

 mr sondheim was definitely in a class of his own! 

 

i didnt experienced his songs LIVE, but had most of his work/songs on cds (live recording + studio versions) for most of my life, and enjoyed, inspired by, them last 30 years or so... i love his songs immensely!

 

with his passing, the musical stages have lost a giant!

[doncoin]

Yeah... RIP Sondheim. He was actually in audience recently when Company reopened on Broadway, and Patti Lupone introduced him. 

 

 

[doncoin]

On another topic, I am blown away by Netflix's Tick Tick Boom. I never saw the show while it was on stage and watching the movie, you can definitely see the early hints of Rent, and Jonathan Larson was definitely a brilliant composer/writer who passed too young. 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2021 by doncoin

[mith]

 

one of my favourite!

 

Bea's singing was so intense... i once has an affair with a married man, and this is exactly how i felt! i fell in love knowing i shouldn't have. as the lyric goes : I RATHER HAVE 50% OF HIM, OR ANY % OF HIM, THEN ALL OF SOMEBODY ELSE! so drastic! so self destructing! but YOU DONT PLAN TO FALL IN LOVE, WHEN YOU FALL, YOU FALL! 

 

anyone here watched her solo act on broadway JUST BETWEEN FRIENDS? 

Edited November 28, 2021 by mith

[mith]

On 10/2/2020 at 10:16 AM, InBangkok said:

Thanks for your comments mith. Look forward to your posts.

 

oh dear, its been a year since... much has happened to me.

 

broadway songs often reflect real life... above is my first contribution. i always thought it would be from BARBRA, instead its BEA. hahahah

[InBangkok]

Has anyone else seen the Spielberg remake of West Side Story? I went yesterday with my Thai partner. He's younger than me and soon after the start he leaned over and asked me "What is Puerto Rican?" When I explained, then he could not understand why people from a small island would move to New York for a better life only to start gang warfare with the locals! Apart from that he enjoyed the movie.

 

Unfortunately I didn't. It wasn't that I like the old 1960s movie better. Spielberg has the advantage of two great actor/singers in the roles of Maria and Tony. I just don't think he really understands how to translate a great stage musical into movie terms. The stage show hits you hard emotionally, as does the old movie in my view. I came out of the cinema having experienced little emotional involvement. I was really surprised that Spielberg had not moved the action into the 21st century, perhaps to a different location. It would be just as valid even though some of the lyrics would have to be changed. How many viewers today know that New York's upper West Side was undergoing massive regeneration in the 1950s/60s and why turf wars broke out?

 

My other concern is that the balance between the singers and the orchestra downplayed the orchestra too much. Bernstein's melodies and orchestrations are key to making the show work. If you go to the expense of hiring the entire New York Philharmonic Orchestra to play the score, why keep it too much in the background?

 

Seems the movie is likely to end up with a major loss. The opening weekend in North America grossed only US$10.5 million. West Side Story needs to gross $300 million before it reaches a profit. Such a shame!

[mith]

On 12/19/2021 at 11:48 AM, InBangkok said:

Has anyone else seen the Spielberg remake of West Side Story? I went yesterday with my Thai partner. He's younger than me and soon after the start he leaned over and asked me "What is Puerto Rican?" When I explained, then he could not understand why people from a small island would move to New York for a better life only to start gang warfare with the locals! Apart from that he enjoyed the movie.

 

Unfortunately I didn't. It wasn't that I like the old 1960s movie better. Spielberg has the advantage of two great actor/singers in the roles of Maria and Tony. I just don't think he really understands how to translate a great stage musical into movie terms. The stage show hits you hard emotionally, as does the old movie in my view. I came out of the cinema having experienced little emotional involvement. I was really surprised that Spielberg had not moved the action into the 21st century, perhaps to a different location. It would be just as valid even though some of the lyrics would have to be changed. How many viewers today know that New York's upper West Side was undergoing massive regeneration in the 1950s/60s and why turf wars broke out?

 

My other concern is that the balance between the singers and the orchestra downplayed the orchestra too much. Bernstein's melodies and orchestrations are key to making the show work. If you go to the expense of hiring the entire New York Philharmonic Orchestra to play the score, why keep it too much in the background?

 

Seems the movie is likely to end up with a major loss. The opening weekend in North America grossed only US$10.5 million. West Side Story needs to gross $300 million before it reaches a profit. Such a shame!

oh dear...