Resurrecting this from the dead, having just gotten my hands on this after falling down a Turn Off the Dark rabbit hole.
Alas, I can't say there's a whole lot to be gleaned about the early days of Turn of the Dark's development, but since Brian Bendis's involvement predates Glen Berger's, you get a glimpse of the conceptual wrestling match that was already going on between Marvel and Julie Taymor. (Hard to believe now in the
There was that recent production in Houston for which the writers made some revisions, no? It'll be interesting to hear from the Psycho-faithful if any of those changes have stuck.
No. I was working on one, but it’s too much. The last time I won a Golden Globe, for “The Dropout,” I wasn’t there, because I was doing a workshop for a musical adaptation of “Thelma & Louise.” It was just like how Michelle Williams missed winning hers this year, because she’s in a play. I remember going over to my friend’s house that night and watching myself win on TV and thinking, You idiot. But I was just so devoted to the show. I worked on it for a year and a half. Then it moved to London, and I’m not doing it. I think I’ve aged out of it by now, and I don’t have the stamina. I also think I don’t have the emotional stability to do it. I have too much panic and stage fright. I think it’s safe to say that the best thing for the show would be for me to not be in it, but it’s going to be the best thing you’ve ever seen. Neko Case did the music.
Can you talk about the Thelma & Louise musical yet?
CASE: Well, I've been working on it for almost 10 years. We just did three workshop shows in London, and it went really well. It was the first time we ever got to see it on a stage with staging, lighting, and dancers. It was heavy. I feel it's a very different way to work. It's heavily collaborative, but the collaboration makes it a very sleek hovercraft in this weird way. We change things around all the time, and you can never be married to one thing. Like, man, I always understood and respected and even implemented the theory of killing your darlings, but this is a whole other level.
How does this stage version differ from the film?
CASE: One of the things we really wanted to do in the show was make the men less cartoonish. The men were kind of caricatures of aspects of men; they weren't full men. So we are working hard to make sure that the men in the story are not caricatures and that they're real people, and that they understand their part in what's happening and they realize how much they have to lose and how we all lose with patriarchy. And the women take credit for their part in the stupid dance of the relationships of men and women and, you know, playing hard to get, not telling somebody you're mad, or just those weird avoidance dances and how much time we waste not saying how we feel.
What's your background with musicals?
CASE: When Callie [Khouri, who wrote the original screenplay] called me to do this, I was like, "Callie, I don't know anything about ****ing musicals. I can't even read music." And she was like, "Nope, that's the reason I want you to do it." And I was like, "Okay, but I'll probably need lots of help." So all these years later, I haven't had to bend myself too hard. But if I get fired tomorrow — which I could, you know, and I've always known that since the beginning; this may also never happen, it could never make it to Broadway — it's been a masterclass in songwriting and storytelling.
The only thing about it that makes me really sad is what you're not told: It's not an accessible art form. You cannot do this job unless you are independently wealthy, which I am not. It has been a massive strain on my finances because it's years and years and years and years of not being paid, and having to spend up to a month at a time working on something, which doesn't hurt because you care so much about it.
But I can't stop thinking, "How are people who aren't independently wealthy going to get to tell those stories," you know? I guess there are scholarships and things like that, but why do we just want the same story over and over and over again? I want to know everybody's story, from every perspective. I don't want to just see one version of everything all the time. I want human beings to all have an equal chance. First of all, to just live, and then secondly, to tell their ****ing stories, because stories heal everything. Stories are how humans communicate and how we remember things.
Kad said: "I generally like the use of the historical figures in Ragtime. They add texture and context to the narrative and symbolize the social upheaval and rapid progress happening in the era. Radical or new ideas, technological innovation, celebrity, and wealth were affecting the lives of average people in new ways every day. Ragtime is an epic, almost allegorical story about America, not just an intimate melodrama about a handful of people, and the use of historical figures helps
Out of curiosity: in a universe where TITANIQUE were to sweep the Tonys, including Best Musical, would that be the first time that both a serious treatment and a spoof of the same subject matter ended up taking top prize?
EricMontreal22 said: "Man, I want to hear this newly included material."
Taking all the creators' talk at face value that the material performed here was closer to what got initially workshopped, the musical's demo recording theoretically should (at least textually) get you within kissing distance.
Not saying that there's a trend afoot, but in the last few seasons, we've had pop songwriters Jack Antonoff and Will Butler writing music for plays on Broadway, and now this guy.
That just about everyone in "42 Balloons" sings about themselves in the third person could be an interesting device, but, as it stands for me, it just feels like a novice composer-lyricist who doesn't (yet) have the juice to really inhabit his characters.
SteveSanders said: "I'm not quibbling with your point about the sometimes insular nature of creative teams, but to be fair, this show has been in development for more than a decade."
"[Re:] the long gestation of shows and the freelancer's continual speculation [:] one way that freelancers offset risk is by saying yes to several shows, then hoping they don't happen at the same time "
chrishuyen said: "I actually thought Jonathon Bailey as Fiyero looked the oldest (but that could be explained by him getting kicked out of a ton of schools)."
"Christ, seven years of college down the drain..."
'CATS: The Jellicle Ball' at PAC reviews Jun 23
2024, 04:08:26 PM
blaxx said: "chrishuyen said: "It is kind of annoying how much the "Cats is bad" discourse has grown in the past few yearsfor the general public who may have not even seen Cats(though of course it wasn't helped by the movie), but if anything I find it more impressive that those who hated Cats to begin with were able to enjoy the show so much. As for musical theater snobs, I feel like that's practically in the job description of being a critic ;)"
Auggie27 said: "I was there this afternoon. Rapturous. I must second Nyadgal's take on Eddie Cooper's Etches: for me, a standout in a company that had no weaknesses. These vocals - separately and together - areso elegantly handled, they raised the bar. But Cooper's work, played differently from the sublime Allan Corduner, turned Etches into a front and center major player, which changed the dynamic in every scene he was in: Cooper brings an unexpected agency - as if the s
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