Profile for Peter2

MUSIC CUE(KATHY sings: "SAD WAS THE DAY&quot(All men remove hats)KATHYMy man was a special kind of manWith a special kind of masculine appeal.I had not a dreamy sort of lad,He was down to earth, predictable and real.OTHERS(Poor man—gonePoor Billy Carey)KATHYI married a robust man and as a young brideCooked his meals, scrubbed his floors,Sewed the buttons on his draw'rs,Nursed him when he got ossified,Sad was the day that he lay down and died.OT'HERS(What a tragic dayJust lay down and passed a...

I'd like to see Encores! get back to putting on shows as they were originally made.

ddenoff2 said: "The sound mixer (not designer) must be deaf As on Tap Dance Kid she missed tons of cues and we constantly lose words. the EQ is harsh and almost painful or else everything is in the mud The orchestra sounds thin and it’s not just these arrangementsI miss Rob BermanI miss Jack Viertel and his vision and wisdomI pray they don’t screw up Into The Woods but they better get a new mixer by thenSad Very sad"Agree—bad sound design. The new funk arrangements were poorly mixed and over-...

ASOOS04 said: "Whatever “rewrites” they did were not clear and did not work because of…ummm, how shall I put this…nonexistent direction?”My reaction too: no direction. Still, go if you can. The performers are engaging, the orchestra sounds great, the dancing is energizing, the audience is overflowing with love and eager to have fun, tickets can be had cheaply—and it’s THE RETURN OF ENCORES!

Watching on CBS. So far it’s a string of pop rock golden oldies, like a PBS fundraiser.

Anybody else remember John Slattery in “The Lisbon Traviata”?

VintageSnarker said: "YES! MORE CUTS!"I know, right? And let's chop out the old-fashioned language in Romeo and Juliet, too.

Sfcp said: "Finally, there is no way that gang members in the present would use words like “buddy boy” and “daddy-o”. Anachronisms really bug me and thus was no exception."Gang members in the 1950s didn’t say those things either. As Sondheim has written, it’s not a street gang, it’s a musical theater gang. No way to fix it.

Irv Kostal, as quoted in Steven Suskin’s “The Sound of Broadway”:“One of the first things Lenny, Sid, and I did was to visit the Winter Garden Theatre to study the acoustics and also to hear the orchestra we might have to use. At that time, the Musicians’ Union insisted that each theatre designate four housemen, who had to play any show booked in that theatre. When Lenny heard the housemen at the Winter Garden, he groaned in despair. In particular, he could not stand the two cellists in the o...

Dolly80 said: "Does it sound good musically? Good singing ?"I too would like to hear more about the musical side of things (especially since the 2009 revival was sunk, for me, by insufficient attention to putting the score across with care and strength).

According to the West Side Rag, they weren't filming in Harlem last night but on West 107th between Broadway and Amsterdam. At least one of the photos in the Daily Mail article is clearly in front of 210 West 107th. (For non-New Yorker's, that the Upper West Side, bordering on Morningside Heights, but it's definitely not Harlem.)https://www.westsiderag.com/2019/07/24/spielberg-filming-west-side-story-remake-on-the-uws

joevitus said: "Also, for me,Sondheim's revised lyrics are simply superior to those originally used on Broadway."Tiny clarification that actually supports your point (which I agree with): The lyrics in the movie are the ones Sondheim wrote originally, before Robbins decided it had to be a number for the women only. Sondheim himself says the new lyrics weren’t as good, partly because he resented Robbins’s asking him to redo them.

I’ve been watching the show with interest, but mostly joylessly. Tonight, even “Nowadays” was turned into a complete downer. Where have wit, sly humor, vivacity gone? The show seems intent on showing us why we mustn’t love Fosse and Verdon, but it doesn’t even try to show us why we should love “Sweet Charity,” “Cabaret,” “Chicago.” I feel like it’s lost the thread, or maybe I just can’t follow what they’re trying to do.

I can see both sides of it, but personally, I think it's nice to wait until you're at the bar next door having drinks to start in with the heavy criticism. There might be that person next to you who spent their life's savings to come to New York and see one Broadway show before they die, and even if in their heart they knew it wasn't any good, they don't want to hear it said aloud. Why not wait a couple minutes until you're out of the crowd?

Roscoe said: "I can only echo the praise of Ms. Channing's performance in SIX DEGREES. She really was that good. I remember being disappointed in the film, which couldn't summon the cinematic equivalent of the energy happening on that stage. The film seemed rather earth-bound somehow."I know what you mean. The play is simply a better and livelier as a theater work than as a movie. But I have to say I think Schepisi did a great job overall, and I count it as one of the underrated films out the...

I like Jesse Green a lot, but sometimes I think he takes things too seriously. One of the charms of the Encores series is that occasionally, for a few days, with minimal preparation, they let us see what it’s like to watch a one-time hit show from another era that could never play Broadway again, a light whimsical piece meant for pre-television audience merely wanting a diverting couple of hours of tunes, jokes, and dancing after a long day at the office. Where else can you have that experien...

Sutton Foster is wonderful, but she’s a belter, and even the Think Method won’t turn her into the soprano The Music Man requires.

rattleNwoolypenguin said: "Every moment of Gypsy is in theatres, hotels, restaurants. All of these can be shown and replicated on a stage. The medium of film adds nothing to this story. "I agree. It's a great piece for live theater, and it gets revived all the time because of that. We really don't need a movie. I'd get more excited if some of the great names floated here came and did a Broadway production.

These discussions are good to have, but always make me worry that musicals as a genre are becoming defined in the popular imagination as children's entertainment; also, that for most people "family friendly" means only the most anodyne theater possible. I'm sure I'm not the only one here who's parents took me to lots of "grownup" theater when I was a kid, and it didn't ruin me or bore me (usually).

The lyrics just killed me. So stupid and hilarious. Meow, meow, meow.Meow, meow, meow.We’re not dogs. We’re cats.Meowww.Meowww.Meowww.Meowww.