Discussion Topic RE: Broadway in the mid-90s

Wow, I am really burning up this message board with this hot topic! lol

Discuss online please, not by phone or text! :)

Sometimes people enjoy escaping to the message board so they don't have to use their brain.

(Sarcasm? Perhaps? Only I know.)

Seriously though... I have to say, your topics are very impressive and interesting. If it wasn't so late, I would love to discuss.

There's not really a topic there for discussion. I can't think of a single example of a successor to both "Beauty and the Beast" and "Rent" that came from films/corporations and off-Broadway/non-profits.

No.

So, Disney's first Broadway musical didn't pave the way for its second? And shows by unknown writers, developed in Manhattan non-profits before achieving Main Stem success, each just spontaneously sprang forth? Now I'm confused.

Where's LadyDramaturg2 to help me out!?

What happened to "very impressive and interesting?"

Well, I'll cancel my book deal, then!

I have always considered Wildhorn to be the American ALW, who unfortunately did not attain the same level of success because the 1980s-style through-sung, historical epic popera megamusical seems to have faded in popularity. (No new ALW on Broadway since "Sunset," the failures of "Jane Eyre," "Dracula," "Dance of the Vampires," "Tale of Two Cities," "Pirate Queen," etc.)

The rise of the songbook musical (trace the advancement in the form from "Smoky Joe's Cafe" to "Jersey Boys") mirrors the fade of the megamusical. The rise of the Golden Age "revisal" does too. Hmmmmmmm

Wildhorn writes terrible lyrics.

YAY for disussion!

You know, maybe both Disney and Wildhorn were building upon ALW and Mackintosh, but in different ways. Wildhorn was trying to write similar shows, but without the marketing dollars. Disney did similar marketing but to an audience that included "families" in addition to New Yorkers and tourists.

As for successors to "Rent," certainly "Funk" was one of them. I would also include "Urinetown" as well, in addition to the more recent "Spring Awakening" and "In the Heights."

Do you think that the works of Brown, Lippa, LaChiusa, Guettel and Tesori belong with Larson's "Rent?" Even though they don't necessarily share grittiness, they share their composers' similar ages, backgrounds (writers' workshops) and desire to create a viable post-Sondheim Broadway.

Here's another thought regarding film adaptations, revivals and songbook shows--if 42nd Street and the larger Times Square area hadn't been cleaned up and physically altered so significantly, if theaters hadn't been built/rebuilt/reopened starting in the mid-90s, would there have been audiences for these types of projects? Or would Broadway have stayed smaller, more select, more "hard core" musical theater??? Would it have survived?

Updated On: 2/13/09 at 01:04 PM

"I have always considered Wildhorn to be the American ALW, who unfortunately did not attain the same level of success because the 1980s-style through-sung, historical epic popera megamusical seems to have faded in popularity. (No new ALW on Broadway since "Sunset," the failures of "Jane Eyre," "Dracula," "Dance of the Vampires," "Tale of Two Cities," "Pirate Queen," etc.) "

Wildhorn never wrote a true sung-through musical. Jekyll had many dialogue scenes, and Pimpernel, although close, was still a book-musical. No doubt the music was attempted to be written in the same way. And Lloyd Webber was back on Broadway in November 2005 (until February 2006) with the Woman in White. WiW would have done wonders (IMO clearly) if it had opened in the late '80s/early '90s, but was such a bizarre opening...Fantastic show though: great scenic design (first true-3-D Projections), good music & lyrics, excellent source material & intriguing story...!



"Wildhorn writes terrible lyrics. "
I have absolutely NO idea where this comes from...and it's not just you; plenty of people seem to mix it up. Frank Wildhorn has wrote extremely minimal lyrics, primarily with the extreme early versions of "Jekyll & HYDE,"...I wouldn't be suprised if he was somehow involved with some of the songs that stuck around ("This is the Moment," "A New Life," & "Someone Like You"), but I honestly don't know how much of his own words went into them (The Jekyll songs cite Gregory Boyd, Steve Cuden, Frank & Leslie as lyrcists as well, so it's up to you to decide I suppose!). Leslie's lyrics are very bland and generic if we're sticking to Jekyll, and if Cyrano de Bergerac ~ The Musical ever comes around you'll see they're quite similarly written almost (Roxanne in the concept-version say a song called "Someone" and Roxanne was Linda Eder!).

I've happened to really like Nan Knighton's lyrics, who wrote the song "Gold" and the others for Camille Claudel; in fact she's a poet if I'm not mistaken. Don Black & Christopher Hampton are ... pretty generic also ("Life after Life," "If I Could Fly" and "The Heart is Slow to Learn" always pop in my head for those ones), and let's just not mention "The Civil War"!