Profile for Shalfoard

I was in the rear orchestra for the Sunday matinee and couldn't see Baldwin on the tightrope.

I had listened to the BBC radio broadcast of the recent Opera North production and REALLY liked it; it worked for me.  I was looking forward to seeing the Encores production.  No reason to beat a dead horse.  IMHO, the Encores production was truly TERRIBLE.  Vincentelli in the NYT was spot on, actually too kind to the production.  Weill and Lerner deserved bett

Fosse's original production -- I didn't see t

The Goodman's MARTIN GUERRE was not the one written by Schonberg and Boubil.

Two musicals mentioned that I would never want to see again: BIG and THE GRAND TOUR.  While each had a good tune or two, their original productions, for me, were excruciatingly bad.  After it died on Broadway, BIG was extensively re-written for licensing.  The interminable GRAND TOUR has an unbelievably stupid ending, totally different from its source material.  Even Jerry Herman admitt

Dollypop said: "Obviously that theater was designed at a time when peaudiences.ople had different physical shaped and were much, much slimmer. The seats really have to be replaced to accommodate today's audiences.
 

 I doubt that the seats now in the Nederlander were installed when the theater opened more than 100 years ago.  The seats now in the theater are narrower so more can be crammed in a row.  Were it not for premium and dynamic pricing

Kad said: "It’s not so uncommon for some lyrics to be rewritten, but it’s usually not so seamless (see: the revised “Shipoopi” in The Music Man, Amanda Green’s new lyrics in On the Twentieth Century). I think generally people are reluctant to change the lyrics in better known shows because… well, audiences often know the original lyrics."

The dreadful revisal of GIGI re-wrote some of Lerner's lyrics.  The new lyrics for &

"The Once and Future King" is only one book, unlike the Chronicles of Narnia or the Lord of the Rings.  It was published in 1958 and became a bestseller.  It retells the King Arthur myth for a post-WWII audience.  It is made up of four parts or books, the first being the Sword in the Stone.  The Sword in the Stone, in a slightly different form, had been published in 1938 as a children's book.  "The Book of Merlyn" was published after T.H. White

Auggie27 said: "By contemporary standards, the show seems almost under-composed. Arthur has no decisive 11 o’clock spot - he doesn’t get Henry’s “Accustomed to her Face” - and the show loses interest in the singing and dancing citizens until “Guinevere.”

 

IMHO, Arthur's reprise of "Camelot" is as powerful as "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."  Read in Lerner's memoir how the aud

But i do disagree with the criticism of the removal of all the magic nonsense. Updating the book to be squarely in favor of justice, reason, fairness, science-- it strengthens the parable. It makes the ending pack a punch. It makes everyone more human.

Exactly.  Just like WICKED.

CAMELOT is (or,apparently now, was )about Arthur's attempt to lead England out of the superstitions, ignorance, and barbarity of the Middle Ages.  Hence the magicia

JAS said: "MCfan2 said: "If the cast album is anything to go by (there's a bit of speaking on it as well as singing), Andrews didn't use a French accent. I don't think her character was meant to be French -- she came from another kingdom, but I don't think it was ever specified which one."

Guinevere was from Wales, I believe."

She sings to St. Genevieve, her namesake, in "The Simple Joys of Maidenhood," but she&