"Fans" of Musicals Who Don't Like Golden Age Musicals — Page 4

Wasn't calling you ignorant dear.

See, I don't know if I can buy the whole "but they entered into musicals through Rent or Wicked or Ave. Q so it's not thier fault." So? I was brought into musicals through Phantom, Joseph..., Starlight Express and Cats. Doesn't make me an ALW freak today! I fell in love with those shows at the time, sure...(hey! I was 10.) but I loved the art form, and taught myself as much as I could about other musicals. (One of my friends was actually SHOCKED after he bought the new PJ Game and we were singing along and I knew all the words!)

I don't think you have to like ALL the Golden Age musicals in order to be a fan. But I don't think acknowledging thier existance is really enough either. It's like saying you like baseball but will ONLY watch a Yankees game. You're not a baseball fan, you're a Yankees fan.

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The way I see it....

Is there anything as daring today as R+H insisting on including "You've Got to be Carefully Taught" in South Pacific?

And before you all start screaming "Rent!", I dont think Rent having homeless people, homosexuality and AIDS is really comparable. Rent celebrates the old Village and a specific time. Yes it exposed some "edgey" material to a Broadway audience. But it never once confronts the audience with as hard a hometruth as Lt Cable did.

That songs speaks to the audience back then (and arguably still does in todays climate. Its not just race its religion too) and challenges their own attitudes.

.... and that is why the classics matter.

Here, Here!

I'm just grateful people are coming into theatres. I'll go and see anything and everything that goes into my local theatre, I may not like all of it, but I can pass a judgement on something that I've seen.

I've not seen all the "Golden Age" musicals because by the time I was old enough to appreciate them, they were either out of production or my parents had already seen them (they don't do repeated viewings). What I've seen I like - my rental list is full of old musical films that I want to see, and I'm broke because I buy theatre tickets with my spare cash. Thats the way I am, but not everyone is the same. I'm trying to get my boyfriend into theatre - his family just don't do it (whereas my family started taking me to panto when I was 6) - and it's difficult as I have to pick something accessible for him, that won't trigger all his prejudices (why are they just bursting into song? Why are they dancing? Are they all gay?) and so it forces me to look at things differently. His first musical was Joseph, because he had the cassette tape of the London Revival when he was little so he knew all the songs, so it was a little step from knowing the music to seeing it on stage. His second was The Producers, because I desparately wanted to see it, but also because he's a history student and he likes satire. He didn't get the theatre in jokes, but loved Springtime for Hitler and the premise of the show and he can still sing a few lines of "I want to be a producer" and will occasionnaly start saying "Bialystock and Bloom" in a faux Swedish accent. Next I plan on taking him to see Starlight Express - he likes trains and I think that and the skating may get past the fact that its all singing. Also when Avenue Q opens, I'll take him to that - puppets that are rude will be right up his street (and again I'm desparate to see it). What I'm trying to say from this, is that not everyone is conditioned to like theatre the same way. I'm hopeful that in years to come he'll be a great guy to go to the theatre with, but for now I have to be careful what he sees - he's not ready for the "traditional" musical.

I'm not even going to go into which musical sparked my new enthusiasm for theatre (because y'all will hate me for it) when I went from liking it to loving it, but the point is that it did, although for me, it was more of a re-awakening.

I'm not much of a Sondheim fan, though I like Company, but I'm willing to go and see more, because he's important and many do love hime and I want to see what it is that they love (all recommendations gratefully received), but I love me some Rogers and Hammerstein. I was in the band for a watered down version of Caberet at school (we kept the abortion, but lost some of the antisemetism and some of the secondary plotting) and when we first started it, I hated the music - all those off beats - but by the end I loved it, which is why I'm willing to give anything a chance, not just once, but on re-listening. I'm just gutted that I didn't get here sooner - there are so many shows that I wish I'd seen that are out of production now, or that I had the chance to see when I was younger but passed over.

Oops. Long post - Summary - Golden Age is important, but it's not for everyone straight away.

FoscasBohemianDream, I think you may be dating yourself as a youngin' by your comments on Rent. I HATE Rent, but people are forgetting it was written 15 years ago. Jonathan Larson was responding in the in a similar way as Tony Kushner. Of course one is leagues better, but to say that Rent wasn't new risky and edgy is to be ill informed. At the time it WAS something. It's just gotten old.

ANd Krigas there are plenty of playwrights and composers writing things that are waaay more confrontational than South Pacific. I say look at Anyone Can Whistle which deals with racism and sooo much more. Sure that was 1964, but there's a lot more of that work going on today. Just because it's not playing on Broadway now doesn't mean it's not being talked about.

I quite enjoy golden age musicals. It's the much older musicals that I have a hard time listening to. The scores are brilliant, but the cast can be very hard to listen to, espeicially the sopranos. (Gilbert and Sullivan shows are notorious for this problem; Rogers and Hart/Hammerstein can be accused too)

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Does this board echo my favorite board, Unpopular opinions you hold? I think it has sort of turned into that!
I agree with some of the people here, however.
Let's not murder people that don't like the things you do!
Sorry for offense.

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allofmylife, I too hate Rent with a passion, but aparantly the musical did SOMETHING to win the pulitzer prize. I don't think jonathan's death won them that. I mean musicals don't generally get that award so I say it's got something. What do YOU think it is?

A lot of the "Golden Age" musicals are brutally long. I really like a lot of the scores (ie. Okalahoma, King and I, My Fair Lady...etc.) But to actually sit through them starts to get taxing after a little while.

Isn't this topic like saying "I'm a movie fan" -- and then someone getting mad because you don't like old classic films... movies are movies, and musicals are musicals... if you are a fan of some of each you are a movie fan and you are a musical fan. Right?

Jazzysuite82, welcome to my rent-free world. A world where young kids dream of seeing Cervaris in Sweeney fourty-nine times and talk endlessly about who was the best Sally Bowles....

I really believe that the death of Jonathon Larson was so overwhelming that everyone got swept along. I just don't see what others see. I feel like John Adams, screaming at Congress. Does anyone see what I see?

Apparently, someone was heard to mutter at the funeral of Elvis Presley "wise career move." The death of the composer of Rent, as tragic as it was was the death of a man beloved by the small band of friends and actors in his new show. People die every day. And yet, this one death seems to have grown into a world-wide cult of grief. I think that in terrible times like these, when nothing seems to be going right, when 80% of the population thinks the country is heading in the wrong direction, when we have faceless godaweful governments running the FREE countries, the public finds some sort of communal satisfaction in outpourings of grief. The death of Dianna, usic stars dying in their 20's and 30's, and this unknown composer. It's contageous and perhaps this feeling of "Johnathon lives on in his music" that swept the world overwhelmed the Pulitzer committee as well.

How the heck else can you explain this? Frankly, I think Wicked is a better show than Rent and I think Wicked is isn't even up to Schwartz's usual standards (and if you know the Dorothy Parker joke I'm alluding to you'll know what I think about Wicked).

I just can't see what they see.

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I am lucky enough to live in the UK and see a lot of theatre.

For that reason I am VERY familiar with challenging theatre as we get a LOT of it in the UK. A topical example that mmmm pops into mind would be "My Name is Rachel Corrie" and we all know what happened to that in New York!

However there are very few challenging *new* musicals to be seen on Broadway or the West End. Plenty of theatre but not much in the way of musical theatre that has the same bite of Cabaret, South Pacific or indeed as you say Anyone Can Whistle.

Although there is something to be said for Billy Elliot raking in the box office in London while forcing the audience to confront the social horrors that the Thatcher Government inflicted on the North. During the 1980s the Government's majority was reliant on an almost clean sweep throughout the south and home counties with Scotland, Wales and the North of England voting for the opposition. So there is a hell of a lot of political subtext in that show.