I was planning to do a history of musical theater (an honest one, rather than the nostalgia-blinded laments for a supposedly dead Broadway you generally get in published histories of the form). However, I realized that to start with the beginning of … [Continue reading]
“How Bad Can I Be?” vs. “Biggering” from The Lorax (2012)
The song "How Bad Can I Be?" is considered by many to be the relative highlight of the 2012 feature film version of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (although given the quality of the film as a whole, that's not a terribly difficult achievement). However, the … [Continue reading]
“Near To You” from Damn Yankees
This is the other ballad from Damn Yankees that didn't make it into the movie version, and it has significantly more defenders than "A Man Doesn't Know". Said defenders like to point out the undeniable fact that the situation that provides its setup … [Continue reading]
“A Man Doesn’t Know” from Damn Yankees
While Adler and Ross’ score for Damn Yankees has a great many items that are almost universally agreed to be absolutely delightful (“Heart”, “A Little Brains, A Little Talent”, “Whatever Lola Wants”, “Those Were the Good Old Days”), the ballads for … [Continue reading]
“Words, Words, Words (Martin’s Laughing Song)” from Candide
This was written for one of the later, Opera-house productions of Leonard Bernstein’s musicalization of Voltaire, and features lyrics by Bernstein himself (although there’s reason to believe a portion of the lyrics may have been cribbed from the … [Continue reading]
Cruel Intentions: The Musical
This show is, at least for official purposes, supposed to be a parody of the 1999 film Cruel Intentions. But unlike, say, Silence: The Musical, this is quite obviously a more-or-less straightforward musical adaptation that is only billing itself as a … [Continue reading]
The Fantasticks
It’s amazing that this tiny little Musical-Comedy trifle is both the longest-running and most widely-performed show in the whole history of the Musical-Theater genre, but it isn’t really all that surprising given its quality. The show works best in … [Continue reading]
Pacific Overtures
This show has a special distinction among the works of Stephen Sondheim: it is, by all accounts, Sondheim's favorite of his own musicals. Which of course begs the question of why it has consistently been one of his least popular works from his … [Continue reading]
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