Jane Withers Obit Fact Check Aug 9
2021, 10:48:32 AM
The article is a parody. No author credits, no theater listed, and a declaration that "75% of the audience" collapsed after Shirley's big number because the performance was a benefit for diabetics. It was tweaking the then-current craze for nostalgia. Not listed on IBDB or anywhere else. It was never meant to be taken seriously.
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Mack & Mabel City Center Encores! Feb 25
2020, 06:27:37 PM
You seem to miss the point of what Encores is all about and has been for a very long time. These are not concerts with narrators, they are concert productions that allow audiences to witness (and hopefully enjoy) the shows themselves, warts and all. Mack & Mabel is hardly the worst book they've ever dealt with. That might be 70, Girls, 70 or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or Cabin in the Sky. But many of us actually revel in seeing what it was, not trying to make it into something else. We
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Mack & Mabel City Center Encores! Feb 24
2020, 09:37:16 PM
What's changed is the contract -- which, like all other theatrical contracts, is re-negotiated every few years. This is hardly the first Encores in which the actors didn't carry books. There is a note in the Playbill saying that it is a concert production in which the actors "may" be carrying books".
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Mack & Mabel City Center Encores! Feb 22
2020, 10:57:56 PM
This production is pretty close to the original book. There have been many small revisions, but anyone who saw the original in '74 (as I did) would probably be hard-put to identify them. Some of the narration is new, and a few telling individual lines have been added. They all add up to a modest attempt to improve the believability of the romance, but they'e not earth-shattering. The Keystone Kop ballet was in the original but cut before Broadway, restored for the production at Paper
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Fish's Most Happy Fella Jan 11
2020, 11:05:52 PM
Will it have to be retitled THE MOST HAPPY PERSON? Or maybe THE MOST UNHAPPY PERSON?
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Brecht Pieces to Revive Dec 28
2019, 08:07:27 PM
I'm not a young person, but one of the advantages of that is that I am about the only person I know who saw the production of ARTURO UI that Christopher Plummer did in the '60s with a score of live incidental music by...Jule Styne. Tony Richardson directed, David Merrick produced, the cast was stuffed with great vaudevillians, some of whom had been in the original GUYS AND DOLLS, and it was simply spectacular in every way. It got bad reviews and ran a week. What I'd give to see th
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Has their ever been a good sequel to a musical? Sep 9
2019, 12:10:56 AM
Umm...FALSETTOLAND. Full stop. End of story.
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Hadestown Reviews Apr 18
2019, 11:21:53 PM
Peter Marks pretty much nails it I think. A tiresome (though sometimes effective) display of style over substance with a few really good songs. Not for me, I'm afraid.
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Flops of the season. Feb 17
2019, 05:49:39 PM
In the case of "Senator Joe" it was the only show in my memory to have its plastics up on two marquees at once -- right across the street from each other -- the Virginia (now the Wilson) and the Simon. The producer, Adela Holzer, couldn't post a bond to Jujamcyn, which owned the Wilson, and so made a deal for the Simon with the Nederlanders and moved across the street. By April of the following year she was incarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for
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! Jan 6
2019, 11:52:49 PM
But...Karen Morrow, great as she is, was never a big star. So how was that?
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Slave Play Dec 20
2018, 11:48:12 PM
I agree with everything you're saying. I think it's bold and throws down some big and really interesting questions in a very theatrical gesture. I just think the play that emerges is pretty bad and undisciplined. Doesn't mean he won't write better ones.
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Slave Play Dec 19
2018, 11:55:43 PM
I wonder if there are folks who have seen it and disliked it as much as I did who just don't want to say so. I found it almost intolerably dull, confused and self-indulgent. A very young writer's attempt to do something big and scary but with very little to really offer that's genuinely insightful and a great deal of patience for saying variations on the same thing over and over again. I realize it's virtual heresy to say so, but this isn't a good play -- and is
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Most shows playing on Broadway at once? Dec 2
2018, 10:54:38 PM
It al depends on you setting a time frame for your question. In 1927-28, the year SHOW BOAT opened, there were over 200 Broadway openings and I assume many more shows were running simultaneously than we have now. But for the last 5 years, you might be right.
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HADESTOWN to open in March at the Walter Kerr Nov 28
2018, 07:17:14 AM
Some interesting posts on the TB board from folks who loved it at NYTW and hated it at the National. I saw it in London last week -- my first-ever encounter with it -- and was mystified by all the enthusiasm on this board. What I saw was interminable, ugly, obvious, miscast and unbelievably pretentious. If this is what's coming, I'd temper my enthusiasm at least until you get a look at it. And while I don't like to predict awards, it's hard for me to picture Brooks Ashman
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NY Times review: A CHORUS LINE Nov 17
2018, 09:40:34 PM
Just_John said: "I saw it this afternoon and I loved it. I had seen the broadway revival over ten times and don’t think it was as strong as that, but with more rehearsal it could have been. It ran two hours and twenty minutes. It’s suppsoed to be one hour and 40 minutes."
I've seen a lot of productions, including the original, the revival, and his one, and a few around the country. None of them was an hour and 40 minutes. The show has, in my expe
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Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui @ CSC Nov 4
2018, 06:26:24 PM
wonkit said: "I am reading the play before seeing it. Is it as clunky in performance as on the page? There are a lot of "clever" paraphrases of Shakespeare, for example, but that could either work or fail miserably. Is there music? It seems like a speakeasy atmosphere and the text does suggest there may be background tunes. I guess I am trying to imagine how the production gets the audience involved, and whether any of the humor is being conveyed."
There sh
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re: Best Musical Theatre Song of All-Time (Pick ONLY One) Nov 1
2018, 12:08:20 AM
The Girls Upstairs.
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THE PROM Previews (possible spoiler ahead) Oct 25
2018, 02:46:56 PM
MauraLovesMusicals said:
what’s the “godspell” inspired number? i’m genuinely curious.
Part of the plot revolves around the "Broadway Stars" hitching a ride to Indiana on a bus with the cast of a non-Equity tour of Godspell, which results in...well, you can imagine. One thing no one seems to mention in these posts is that the show's score contains quite a number of pastiche numbers in tribute to
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THE PROM Previews Oct 24
2018, 11:47:00 PM
The producers and the creative staff and the cast. All of whom have done admirable work in the past, but their names don't sell tickets. At least not in any quantity.
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THE PROM Previews Oct 24
2018, 11:28:56 PM
Bwayfan292 said: "The show may not be “flop material” but it’snot selling well, so it could most definitely be a flop."
This feels like a non-sequitur to me. The show is not selling because, frankly, until it gets in front of an audience, it has nothing to sell -- no stars, no famous (Sondheim/Lloyd Webber) collaborators, no spectacular spectacle (King Kong) no famous title or beloved piece of underlying material (Pretty Woman) -- th
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