How many musicals have had concert versions?

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How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 11:29am

How many Broadway musicals have had/are going to have professional semi-staged concert versions? Off the top of my head I can think of...

Les Miserables
Candide
South Pacific
Chess
My Fair Lady
A Little Night Music

Any more?

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 11:38am

How about every show done by Encores?

How about every Sondheim show?

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 12:00pm

Chicago
Dreamgirls
Follies
Hair

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 12:11pm

Sponsored by the BBC and live in Ireland as a semi-staged production, a concert version of SUNSET BOULEVARD with Michael Ball, Petula Clark, and Emma Williams.

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 12:34pm

The Actor's Fund has done:

DREAMGIRLS
HAIR
CHESS
THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS
FUNNY GIRL
ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Broadway productions that began as concerts (via Encores! Concert Series)

CHICAGO
WONDERFUL TOWN

The list of concert versions Encores! Concert Series has done is endless. Some shows they've done are (aside from CHICAGO and WONDERFUL TOWN):

PROMISES, PROMISES
DAMN YANKEES
BYE BYE BIRDIE
APPLAUSE
FOLLIES
BLOOMER GIRL
NO, NO NANETTE

Carnegie Hall did a benefit concert staging of ANYONE CAN WHISTLE.

Lincoln Center has done concert versions of:

PASSION
CANDIDE
FOLLIES

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 2:22pm

I've seen clips of a concert version of
SECRET GARDEN with Celia Keenan Bolger, Michael Arden, Laura Benanti and Steven Pasquale... I'm not sure what it was for.

Unless that counts as a staged reading?

My Music Classroom Giving Page: https://www.donorschoose.org/MrHMusicRoom

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 2:27pm

Sweeney Todd, which has been done several times.

When I see the phrase "the ____ estate", I imagine a vast mansion in the country full of monocled men and high-collared women receiving letters about productions across the country and doing spit-takes at whatever they contain. -Kad

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 3:42pm

As of next week....Tommy.

(formerly bronte604) "You really just love money and power and capitalism? You know they're never going to love you back." "Things happen for the best...I don't even believe that myself."

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/8/08 at 5:29pm

Oh, I didn't realize Encores! were concerts. I just glanced at the photos of 'On the Town' recently and saw they were in full costume, which they don't always do for concert versions.

Has anyone ever done 'West Side Story' that way? On the one hand it seems a likely idea since it's a vocally demanding and more 'operatic' show, but on the other hand it might not work so well since the dance is such a big part of it.

#10

re: How many musicals have had concert versions?

Posted: 12/9/08 at 7:34am

I was lucky enough to see fantastic concert versions of two shows last year.

One was They're Playing Our Song. It featured Robert Klein and Lucie Arnaz (who originated the leads on Broadway), and Marvin Hamlish. That was a really fun May night at The Kennedy Center.

A week earlier, I saw a concert version of Songs For A New World at Strathmore in Bethesda, Maryland. That concert featured Titus Burgess, Laura Griffith, Brian D'Arcy James and Alice Ripley (coincedentally, the last two went on to headline the cast of Next To Normal as 2ST only months later). The biggest treat of this show was the participation on the piano of the show's creator, Jason Robert Brown.

Drench yourself in words unspoken. Live your life with arms wide open. Today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten. "Unwritten" Natasha Bedingfield

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