Kander and Ebb's Influence on the Broadway Theatre.- Page 3

[PalJoey]

Posted: 4/10/15 at 1:45pm

Updated On: 4/10/15 at 01:45 PM

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/10/15 at 5:16pm

I always wondered why, after Cabaret, their first musical Golden Gate was not given a 2 nd look. Was it that bad that it was never produced or did K/E put in in a drawer & leave it there? Does anyone know?

Their influence is beyond huge. One hopes their last offering, Skin of Our Teeth, one day makes it to Broadway.

[Cesare2]

Posted: 4/10/15 at 8:20pm

The rights to musicalize "The Skin of Our Teeth" have reverted to the copyright holder, probably the Thornton Wilder Estate, so it's unlikely Broadway will ever see the musical. Same thing happened to Schmidt and Jones and their "Grover's Corners."

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/10/15 at 8:33pm

"I think much of the credit for CABARET should go to Hal Prince, as well as Masteroff, Kander, and Ebb, but the rest of the shows are K&E's brilliance."

Right.  Hal Prince literally instigated the show we now know and was as much a creator (some might argue even a bit more,) than everyone else.  For Zorba too.  (On the other hand it was Ebb who brought Prince in on Spider Woman.)  And Gaveston is right, Prince got a lot of the credit for the early Sondheim shows (although looking at reviews, by the mid 70s they definitely were getting spoken about together.)  And of course Company especially would simply not have existed without Prince's conception of it (Follies toa lesser extent but Sondheim already had The Girls Upstairs with Goldman in the works.)

I think K&E always have at least a few killer songs in every show--but they definitely do their best work under the guidance of a strong conceptual director, from their three shows with Prince to Chicago.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/10/15 at 8:36pm

"The fact that CHICAGO still holds up well without Fosse's original work is a testament to their great work. No disrespect to Fosse, of course. "

Though to be fair, it still ALWAYS uses the vaudeville concept--which was Fosse's idea (and the revival choreography is Fosse vocabulary.)

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 4/10/15 at 8:51pm

EEP I really should check dates--I didn't realize I was replying to a thread that was 3 years old...

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 4/10/15 at 9:15pm

Particularly with Prince and Fosse, I've always appreciated their sense of the darkly upbeat - the way, for example, Zorba avoids being an uplifting, carefree musical about just, golly, letting your problems go by underlining the desperation in the characters. I love that they give the 11 o'clock number to a dying old woman who has a fever dream of her childhood, highlighting the way life passes you by and unsettling the audience by demanding that they consider the way that they pass their own lives. At their worst, Kander and Ebb were merely generic, but at their best they turned the show on the audience and took them out of the role of mere spectators.