Life beyond Brigadoon — Page 2

"It's Lerner & Loewe for goodness sake!! How can you NOT like it?!?!"

Er---ever try sitting through CAMELOT (yes the score is pretty, but THAT BOOK???)? Or PAINT YOUR WAGON?

---

Are you through yet?

The tragedy is that they didn't write more, but the scores they did give us are terrific for the most part. Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Camelot constitute an astonishing output.

The Day Before Spring is good from the renditions of the eight or so songs I've heard. A studio cast of that with its original orchestrations--if they exist--would be most welcome. The Little Prince score is better than given credit for, although the picture overall is tepid. Lerner always blamed Donen for ruining it, and the demo recording made by Lerner & Loewe shows the score in a much better light (especially "Why Is The Desert?," an outstanding melody which is disgracefully arranged in the movie.)

I've only heard two or three songs from What's Up, but I understand it wasn't much. I've never heard anything from Life Of The Party, which I don't believe got to Broadway.

Updated On: 1/2/06 at 06:35 PM

Thanks Fiatlux

I thought I was alone for a while there in spotting that Briagadoon is patronising nonsense.

When I posted the original message I wasn't trying to have a pot at Brigadoon but was merely trying to point out that there are modern Scottish musicals that deal with real Scottish issues and that I have spent several years trying to add to that genre, culminating in the musical about the human cost of the Tay Bridge Rail Disaster from which the New CD Five Pound And Twa Bairns comes.

However in the light of some of the comments that have been made can I just say that Scots didn't dress like that or speak like that 200 years ago (or at any other point in this country's history). If you don't believe me read the work of Robert Burns or Sir Walter Scott. And yes it is patronising to depict Scots in that manner.

Did you stop and think that perhaps MOST musicals have cliche characters and ethnically questionable "style" in them?

Take another look at Oklahoma, Music Man, Carousel, The King & I, House of Flowers, South Pacific, Hello Dolly, Avenue Q, Show Boat, Guys and Dolls, Pacific Overtures, Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof, La Cage, The Producers, Funny Girl, Chess, The Color Purple... and on and on...

If you take a show like "Guys and Dolls," for instance, which is also a fantasy, should New Yorkers raise this same objection as to the misrepresented portrayal of their "cute and comical citizens?"

Do you think people in the Midwest (of the USA) EVER spoke like they do in "Oklahoma!" or Music Man?

Seems to me your comment is a bit short-sighted.

Unless, of course, you have this same standard for all musicals... in which case, I wonder why you're posting on this board?

---

"Did you stop and think that perhaps MOST musicals have cliche characters and ethnically questionable "style" in them? "

Well that's an interesting one...I'm not sure if you are attempting to be an apologist...

This is not a reason for accepting it it - your Guys & Dolls reasoning is a bit ridiculous - Runyon wrote in a style that Loesser emulated. The Brigadoon story was taken from a German story and foisted upon a "Scottish" idea, the point is that all the stories you mention started with those preconceptions; Brigadoon was a piece of manipulation. It is patronizing.

And what's more patronizing is this silly defence of it - on the grounds that some of us object to it.