Dimanche dans le Parc avec George

[Scripps2]

Posted: 11/20/11 at 6:00pm

Forgive the pigeon French.

Apparently Jean-Luc Choplin, the director of the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris , is planning a production of Sunday in the Park With George in the 2012-13 season. An official announcement will be made early in 2012.

This will be the third of Sondheim's musicals located in northern Europe to be staged by this theatre in as many years and I think its reception will prove particularly interesting due to its Paris location and French subject matter - the French not being particularly warm to musical theatre.

[After Eight]

Posted: 11/20/11 at 6:36pm

"the French not being particularly warm to musical theatre."

Offenbach, Messager, Audran, Planquette, Ganne, Lecocq, Hahn......

[chewy5000]

Posted: 11/20/11 at 7:04pm

All they want are dancing girls.

[After Eight]

Posted: 11/20/11 at 7:31pm

^

They like nice music, too.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 11/21/11 at 3:49am

"Offenbach, Messager, Audran, Planquette, Ganne, Lecocq, Hahn..."

I did, of course, mean the sort of musical theatre we come here to discuss.

If I've missed a significant percentage of threads about "Offenbach, Messager, Audran, Planquette, Ganne, Lecocq, Hahn..." then please post links - I can't recall having seen them.

[After Eight]

Posted: 11/21/11 at 6:31am

"I did, of course, mean the sort of musical theatre we come here to discuss."

You wrote simply,"musical theatre."

And I came here to discuss Offenbach, Audran, Planquette, etc.

"If I've missed a significant percentage of threads about "Offenbach, Messager, Audran, Planquette, Ganne, Lecocq, Hahn..." then please post links - I can't recall having seen them. "

Unless your memory is extremely short, you've just seen one. I don't suppose I need provide you with a link to this very thread.

And it doesn't matter if none of those composers has ever been discussed here before. That does not exclude their work from being musical theatre. I also don't recall discussions here of such musicals as Heaven on Earth, Happy As Larry, Hit the Trail, My Romance, or countless others. Yet these too are musical theatre.

You made an erroneous statement, and were corrected, that's all. Don't get all defensive about it.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 11/21/11 at 6:39am

the French not being particularly warm to anyone else's musical theatre.

I fixed it for you

[mrcacou]

Posted: 11/21/11 at 9:48am

What we call "Musical Theatre" is very different from what one would find on Broadway. If some of you recall Notre Dame de Paris in either Vegas or London, that's what the audience mostly expect. Poor music, bad lyrics, songs that do not help the story telling, bad actors ...... We are getting Broadway shows now like Lion King, Mamma Mia or Sister Act. We even have a French version of Young Frankenstein that started a couple months ago and that is far better UMHO than the Broadway one with a LOT less money. Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music with Leslie Carron were Fab but only lasted for either two weeks or a month. Dimanche au Parc avec Georges will last for a month I guess but should be worth it if they bring the same team they had for the two Sondheim shows I mentioned above.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/21/11 at 5:17pm

I hope you'll let us know how it fares, mrcacou. I don't know how (or if) the French feel about American dramatizations of the post-Impressionists.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 4:16am

Thanks for the fix Chewy.

And thank you mrcacou and Gaveston2 for objective and reasonable responses.

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 4:27am

Last I heard, they were planning to do PACIFIC OVERTURES at some point.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 4:40am

Also, I don't think Le Théâtre du Châtelet is really meant to be a commerical musical house in the same way. Aren't these productions treated more like operas in a season of shows? Not trasnalted except with subtitles, etc... By those standards, ALNM and Sweeney have been big successes. (I do admit to having a soft spot for the campy excesses of those Euro style French musicals--I saw Romeo et Juliette several times in Montreal).

The theatre's website describes themseleves like this: des opéras, des événements, de la danse, du jazz, des leçons de musique, au coeur de Paris.

[After Eight]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 8:05am

"By those standards, ALNM and Sweeney have been big successes."

By what standards, Eric?

If a show is booked to play only a few weeks, and it plays out those weeks, how does that constitute a success?

[mrcacou]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 1:34pm

Le Théâtre du Châtelet is indeed a non profit house, however, it is rumored that those lavish productions were so expensive to put on that they had to schedule The Sound of Music again this year for Christmas. We got the same production two years ago and they need to break even with the lavish sets and costumes.

[newintown]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 1:50pm

"Offenbach, Messager, Audran, Planquette, Ganne, Lecocq, Hahn......"

I may be as big a fan of La belle Hélène as the next guy, but that's a crew of (at best) operetta composers you've got there.

Now, sure, what we call musical theatre grew out of operetta (as operetta grew out of opera, which was, they tell us, a bizarre attempt to recreate what Sophocles and pals once did). But just as operetta isn't opera, it also isn't musical theatre. Even a crowd-pleaser like The Merry Widow has a pretty dismal book that needs a lot of punching up and schtick to keep the audience's eyes open.

So kudos to you for your extensive knowledge of arcane names, but I would go with the OP on this one. The musical theatre that comes out of France is so dismal (including, in my opinion, Les Miserables and Miss Saigon), one can only wonder about the quality of the stuff that stays there.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 2:32pm

newintown and I are in complete agreement here! It must be the holiday spirit wafting through!

I also use two different terms (though this is a very personal thing and I recogonize that not many people make this distinction):

Music theatre & musical theatre.

I'll use 'music theatre' to encompass everything from opera to Mamma Mia. I will use 'musical theatre' to refer to the art form invented and perfected over the last century and a half here in the United States. As the OP used the term 'musical theatre,' I knew exactly to what he/she was referring. And to pretend you didn't just to show how knowledgable you are about other composers kinda makes you look like an Asshole.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 2:42pm

newintown, the term "musical theater" can be an umbrella term that covers everything from Jerry Herman to Puccini to Sophocles (since Greek tragedy arose out of choral singing and always included a singing/dancing chorus).

You're right that in the U.S. we tend to use the term as shorthand for the Broadway-style mix of spoken lines and singing, but even there the lines get blurred. PHANTOM and LES MIZ are no less operettas than THE MERRY WIDOW. STREET SCENE and PORGY AND BESS are operas or just "musicals" largely depending on where they are performed, etc.

After Eight's use of the term was not only correct, but very much to the point. It's wrong to say the French don't create musical theater. What they don't do is create AMERICAN musicals, but why would they?

(ETA to sonofrobbie: it's fine to invent your own terms and define them, as you did, so the rest of us know what you mean. But to call someone an "asshole" because he doesn't use your narrow definitions for terms rather makes you the ass.) Updated On: 11/22/11 at 02:42 PM

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 2:51pm

That Americans insist the term "musical theater" be applied only to our own musicals (and sometimes those of the British) is rather like the way we crown a "world champion" in a sport (American football) the rest of the world doesn't play.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 2:55pm

I don't care if After Eight uses my definition or not. And I don't object to After Eight's argument. I object to his Assholish tone that was clearly meant to put down the original poster whose intent in that post could not have been clearer.

As for looking like an ass, well...I've looked worse.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 3:06pm

robbie, I've had my own quarrels with After Eight, but when he's right, he's right.

The reason the terminology matters is because in reserving the term "musical theater" for a specific American genre, we tend to forget that in most countries in most periods, musical theater was the norm, not the exception. (Totally non-musical theater is largely a creation of Naturalism.) Noh, kabuki, wayang kulit, Greek tragedy, medieval European church plays, Beijing opera, African choral drama, Native American theater: all of these used and use varying combinations of spoken lines, song and dance.

In recognizing that musical theater is a universal impulse, we greatly increase the number of conventions and stylistic devices we might bring to the American musical.
Updated On: 11/22/11 at 03:06 PM

[Scripps2]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 3:22pm

"I object to his Assholish tone that was clearly meant to put down the original poster"

For clarity, After Eight has carried an attitude problem towards me for several months since a difference of opinion on another thread; on that occasion a third party also intervened to my defence for which I was grateful.

Updated On: 11/22/11 at 03:22 PM

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 3:35pm

"but when he's right, he's right."

And when he's an Asshole...he's an asshole. Those two are not mutually exclusive.

Notice I never called you an Asshole, even though you're making the same general point as After Eight. It's because you're clearly a reasonable, knowledgable person who likes to share their ideas in a public forum in a respectful way.

There was a similar argument regarding The Lion King a few years ago. Lots of people consider it 'children's theatre'. I do not. I consider it a remarkable amalgam of world theatre techniques that makes something bracingly original. People questioned my assertion, and then I linked a couple of different websites that discussed the traditions of mask and puppetry from different cultures. It was a pretty great discussion.

I certainly don't know everything. And I'm grateful for the knowledge others here have. But when that knowledge comes with a helping of condescension and Assholish behavior...well...I'm gonna call someone out on it.

[Gaveston2]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 4:08pm

Fair enough, guys. I enjoy your posts and I didn't intend to start a quarrel with either one of you.

The terminology is a sticking point for me because as a retired theater educator, I've seen too many students miss the potential of non-American theater mostly because they couldn't recognize the kinship between other genres and the American musical comedy or musical play. Some of the influences from overseas are indirect--for example, African-American song and dance from African theater becomes spirituals and then minstrel shows before it ends up influencing the Broadway book musical--but the connections exist; so I don't want to inadvertently deny them by defining terms too narrowly.

THE LION KING is a great example, robbie, as is PACIFIC OVERTURES (whatever their faults) of what can be achieved when American artists realize that elements of other musical theater forms can be blended into American shows.

***

And just to get back on topic of French musical theater, I saw the stage version of Michel Legrand's UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG in Paris. Granted it was 30 years ago and I'm not the best witness since I didn't understand the language (I was given an English language synopsis at the box office), hadn't seen the film, and had never studied world theater at the time.

It was through-sung--like the film but unlike most American/British musicals in that day (EVITA had just opened in New York)--yet there was nothing about it that was so foreign to me as to make it incomprehensible. On the contrary, I very much enjoyed it.
Updated On: 11/22/11 at 04:08 PM

[mrcacou]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 4:24pm

We've had some strong musical theatre here the way you do it in the US. only a few though. We do not have that culture here. How many high school do produce a musical in France ? Well I would say not even a hundred. We had great shows like Starmania (Tycoon in English with lyrics by Time Rice), La Légende de Jimmy (a James Dean based show) or on a smaller scale Camille C. (a lot better than the one by Wildhorn IMHO).

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 11/22/11 at 4:36pm

Gaveston,

I think a lot of the reason so many theatre students miss out on other concepts of theatre from around the world is because we will mostly be asked to perform within the western tradition of theatre. Back in college, I took an elective in Ha Hoe mask technique (from South Korea). We were some of the first westerners to explore this tradition. I thought, at first, it was base and silly. But the response to the final performance our class gave was an experience I'll never forget. It was primal...it was at the very root of storytelling. And it was thrilling. So I do sympathize with your feelings regarding terminology. Which is why I make the distinction between music theatre and musical theatre. I do think it's important to remember the artform that is widely recognized as 'the musical' has its roots in many other music theatre traditions.