BEST Musicals that DIDN'T win BEST MUSICAL — Page 3

ozone-I don't see a movie version of Company or Follies anywhere, are they standard? Did they do nothing to revolutionize musical theatre then? Oh, but wait, alas there is a movie version of Phantom of the Opera! How could I be so dumb? Of course that means if a Broadway show has a movie version of itself than it is a revolutionary piece of work that has become groundbreaking to Broadway. Duh! Thanks for clearing me up.

---

Everyone needs to just go back, read LittleFish's post and understand that its 100% correct.

---

Don't get me started on RAGTIME v. LION KING!

I'll always come down on the side of the big cat!

---

Well said, best12!

"Where is the NINE film?"

It's called 8 1/2...it's the movie the musical is based on.

---

Updated On: 11/7/05 at 05:17 PM

I totally agree with the last post of best12bars. I could not have said it better myself.

---

love Avenue Q, but Wicked not winning was definitely a huge upset, i'm sure i can speak speak for a lot of people when i say that you should have seen my face when they called Avenue Q that night

I enjoy how this thread is supposed to be where everyone can post their own personal opinions about the topic but when they do, they get bashed. If anyone or anything is being juvinielle, its LittleFish. I'm sorry but why take the time to type that. Just keep it to yourself WE GET IT!!! You think Avenue Q deserved to win and it did. Well we beg to differ. And we have the right to show that. Move on.

It's interesting the way you put that, best12bars.

Because I will always consider DREAMGIRLS to be the best American pop-opera created. For all the grandeur of score, NINE just seemed to be much ado about a midlife crisis. Glorious to watch...terrific craft...but not wholly satisfying.

---

I saw the OBC of both DREAMGIRLS and NINE and for me there was no comparison -- DREAMGIRLS by a mile. NINE has a good score, but major book issues in Act II where the narrative is muddled and gets bogged down with psychobabble. I've always found rather cold, antiseptic and emotionally distant in many ways as well -- more like something to be admired than something that really hits you in the gut. I also could never stand the interminable Grand Canal scene. Tommy Tune gave it a brilliant staging (and Leveaux's was good, but not as inspired and clever) that was so amazing it obscured many of the flaws. A very good show, though.

DREAMGIRLS was on an entirely other level and Michael Bennett's staging is the single greatest piece of direction I've ever seen in 30+ years of theatregoing. So electrifying and cinematic and breathlessly paced that I literally couldn't believe what I was watching. Add to that some of the most epic, passionate, powerfully intense performances ever on the Broadway stage with music and design to match and you have an experience for the ages. It was so overwhelming at the time, I all, but wanted to scream and crawl out of my own skin from the tension Bennett was able to build and then release at will. A true masterpiece and an experience that, 1000 shows later, I'm still waiting to see topped or even equaled. Nothing in 24 years has even come close.

---

Updated On: 11/7/05 at 05:32 PM

"DREAMGIRLS was on an entirely other level and Michael Bennett's staging is the single greatest piece of direction I've ever seen in 30+ years of theatregoing. So electrifying and cinematic and breathlessly paced that I literally couldn't believe what I was watching. Add to that some of the most epic, passionate, powerfully intense performances ever on the Broadway stage with music and design to match and you have an experience for the ages. It was so overwhelming at the time, I all, but wanted to scream and crawl out of my own skin from the tension Bennett was able to build and then release at will. A true masterpiece and an experience that, 1000 shows later, I'm still waiting to see topped or even equaled. Nothing in 24 years has even come close."


So, so, so SO true.

NINE won.

---

WiCkEDrOcKS, was that even a serious question? Have you read any of this thread?

---

robbiej --- That could be a partial reason as to why people gravitate toward Dreamgirls as a subject more. The characters are of an era, country, and age that is more accessible to them. Nine is about a middle-aged Italian filmmaker, struggling with inner demons at a spa in Venice. The youth of America could have trouble with that one. Even if they can reach out to the "foreign" situations and characters, comprehending his complex emotions would be a tough one. Mid Life can be a scary thing when it hits you and you realize you're on the downside of mortality, and you're not a kid anymore.

Admittedly (or thankfully?), when I first saw NINE, I still was a relative "youth" myself. I grew up in Kansas, but my father was a filmmaker, and I was raised on Disney, but also Fellini and Truffaut as well. We went to art films regularly (I wasn't yet 10 years old), and they were a part of my early artistic exposure in life. That played into my experience when I saw NINE. I didn't have trouble understanding the character's emotions, even the mid-life crisis part. Perhaps I related it to my father? Who knows. We can only bring our own experiences into a theatre with us, and I won't presume to know what others were and are.

Now that I'm older (closer to Mid-life Crisis Land, hehe), I appreciate Guido's inner plight even more.

Not to say that I appreciate Dreamgirls any less. I actually agree with you about it being the "best American pop opera created." Although with quite a lot of spoken dialogue passages, I might classify it as a poperetta.

---

Updated On: 11/7/05 at 05:46 PM