Downton Abbey: The Musical
Downton Abbey: The Musical
Downton Abbey: The Musical#2
Posted: 11/28/12 at 2:05pmPJ, who would be your songwriters of choice? I can already see Ashford chomping at the bit to do some awful 20s flapper choreography for Season 3.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#2
Posted: 11/28/12 at 2:09pmThey better hurry up because Angela Lansbury is the only person who could play The Dowager Countess in the musical.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#3
Posted: 11/28/12 at 2:24pmOMG you guys--she would be SOOO good. I watched the "docu" on the show she hosted (which was basically a long trailer for season 3) and she did seem to be a big fan...
Downton Abbey: The Musical#6
Posted: 11/28/12 at 3:09pm
Wow, Cumpsty is a really unfortunate name.
I'd probably totally see this if it was a musical, but personally it's not screaming out for musicalization to me.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#8
Posted: 11/28/12 at 3:58pmYeah, I don't see where songs would help the story, unless it was some lame concept like the "downstairs" crew singing all the time and the more repressed "upstairs" group never singing--a concept which sounds even more annoying now that I've typed it out.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#9
Posted: 11/28/12 at 11:05pm
I can see numbers for all three of the daughters (a love ballad for Mary possibly with Matthew, a comic lament for Edith about being the "middle girl" and a rousing political march for Sybil and Tom) and possibly even a trio for the three sisters, a la "Matchmaker, Matchmaker."
While we're on the Fiddler theme, possibly an opening number for Robert like "Tradition."
I can see the Dowager having a second-act "liaisons"-like number or the first-act closer.
I'm not sure what Cora could sing, but I can see Isobel having a very boring number that is cut out of town.
And Aunt Rosamund, the bitchy one--she can also have a number that gets cut.
As for the downstairs staff, Carson gets to do the opening number (the "Tradition"-like number) with the Earl, because they are the two people who are upholding the old-world ways.
Mrs. Hughes and Anna and Mrs. Patmore and Daisy could do a great quartet about housework--maybe a quintet with O'Brien, who gets to be even bitchier in the musical version.
And maybe the quintet includes the men: Bates and Barrow and William and Jimmy.
Barrow, of course gets a number: slinky and sexy and nasty, more like a Kander and Ebb number from one of their darkest shows.
There's a Christmas number, of course, and there can be one or several dance numbers at parties and balls. The Sybil/Tom number can be a dance number, and maybe there can be a waltz that is danced by Cora and Robert, and then by Mary and Matthew, and then by Bates and Anna.
And of course the Shirley MacLaine character gets an "American" number.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#10
Posted: 11/28/12 at 11:11pm
"but I can see Isobel having a very boring number that is cut out of town."
LOL! Brilliant.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#11
Posted: 11/29/12 at 4:13pm
Okay - PJ for book and score.
However, I think the director has to be British....
Downton Abbey: The Musical#12
Posted: 11/29/12 at 5:19pm
Ugh. You know how I feel about British directors mis-directing American musicals...but I guess this can't really be considered an "American" musical, can it?
But since it was my idea, Scripps--can you make sure that the British director doesn't get all prissy and snippy about buttoning the end of the numbers for applause? An opening number must NOT "bleed" into the next scene just because some British wunderkind thinks it's "cheap and shoddy" to stop for ("beg for") applause.
So when the music slows down and Tevye says "Without tradition, our lives would be as shaky as..." and then he pauses and stretches his arm out to the man of the roof of the little house and continues:
"...a fiddler on the ROOF!"--and the orchestra goes BOOM! The audience applauds!
Tell the British Director we do that at the end of EVERY SONG--okay?
Or almost every one. The director can "kill the hand" at the end of one or two of the more solemn numbers, like the one in which Matthew comes back from the war or the one in which Lady Sybil gives birth.
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/18/04
Downton Abbey: The Musical#13
Posted: 11/29/12 at 10:34pm
Victor Garber as Lord Grantham
PJ, your ideas are brilliant.
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/18/04
Downton Abbey: The Musical#14
Posted: 11/29/12 at 10:40pm
Ben Davis could play Matthew Crawley.
He has a dreamy baritone voice!
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
Downton Abbey: The Musical#15
Posted: 11/30/12 at 11:08am
Like Garber, Davis, Lansbury.
Gillian Anderson as Cora.
Julie Walters as Isobel.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#16
Posted: 11/30/12 at 11:21am
Michael Crawford as Lord Grantham. ScarJo as Sybil.
I've always said the parallels between Downton and Fiddler are numerous, and musicalization would make the parallels more obvious.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#17
Posted: 11/30/12 at 12:11pmIf Julie Walters plays Isobel, they wouldn't DARE cut that song.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#18
Posted: 11/30/12 at 12:29pmCarrie Underwood for the Dowager Countess.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#20
Posted: 11/30/12 at 1:52pm
This thread wins.
I don't know what, but it wins.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#21
Posted: 11/30/12 at 2:28pmWho could play Lady Mary opposite Ben Davis?
Downton Abbey: The Musical#23
Posted: 11/30/12 at 2:51pmHmmm...maybe someone a little more ethereal.
Downton Abbey: The Musical#24
Posted: 11/30/12 at 3:05pmWell, Sutton may be the only singer with the eyebrows to play Lady Mary.
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