Roninjoey -- Answer to random question: That's Montgomery Clift in my avatar. I chose him for a few personal reasons. Aside from carving a niche as a landmark actor on Broadway first and then in film, I can tell you I'm actually related to him by marriage. Also, someone recently asked me what the "best12bars" meant. It's an old theatre story. Back when I was pounding the pavements in New York a couple of decades ago, we'd be told every now and then at the ugly cattle calls to sing our "best 8 bars" of a song. Frustrated, I walked into an audition one time and suggested to them if I sang the blues could I get 12 bars? (Fortunately the musical director thought that was hilarious. He understood that "blues" is written in 12 bar phrases instead of 8, and it was my clever and pathetic way of trying to get 4 more bars out of it. He told me just for that, I could sing the whole damn song. I got a callback and almost landed the part... it was a replacement for a lead on Broadway. They narrowed it down to three of us and that's when I got cut. The point is, I decided to be gutsy, semi-clever... and ask for more time to be heard... and it paid off. So I decided to use that as my "name" on this board. It seemed like a personal but logical choice for me.
(end of thread-jack)
I have a few more thoughts today, based on more of these posts! I'm glad everyone is thinking... And I don't believe there are right and wrong answers here (including mine). Because it comes down to "perception." The way a show is perceived when it first opens, the way you and I perceive it now... and the way it is perceived by future generations decades after its original production. The recent shows are too early to judge, yet some as we've pointed out are already having changes in their impact early on. I find it fascinating that a mere 5 years after "A Chorus Line" opened, they had to change the program from "The Present" to "1975." It seems they already knew the material was SO immediate that it had to be frozen in time to work.
jacobtsf --- I love what you said about H2$. The Broadway revival was directed the same way as your approach. The men still ogled the women as scripted (in "A Secretary Is Not a Toy"), but the women's reaction was one of "empowerment" instead of "victim." In previous stagings the secretaries might have thrown up their hands and given us wide-eyed looks of surprise, as the men leered at them. In the revival, they raised a knowing eyebrow, wagged their fingers strongly at them and stood their ground forcefully, while the men turned into a helpless puddle of hormones at their feet. Nothing was changed in the writing, only the staging. It kept the show from being dated. Luba Mason played Hedy the same way. She was in on the "joke," rather than being a sex toy. She knew what her "selling points" were. It was a great way to approach the part. And I also agree with those who have said this show, like Guys & Dolls is a "stylized" satirical world, not a real one.
As far as "Guys & Dolls" it was actually billed originally as a "musical fable." That, in and of itself, is pretty damn funny. If you look up "fable" you get three meanings: The first is a story almost always told with talking animals as main characters, and they have a strong cautionary lesson to be learned. That's kinda funny if you think about the gangsters that way. The second meaning is "a story about legendary persons and exploits." These gangsters are legendary figures, not real ones. And the third meaning is "a falsehood, or a lie."
I think that's why they made the most recent Broadway revival even MORE stylized that the original production was in the '50s. The sets and costumes were candy-colored cartoons. Damon Runyon was from Manhattan KANSAS, not Manhattan, New York. He wrote about the legendary gangsters and their "dolls." Not the real ones.
The problem is that our perception of gangsters and the underground crime world has changed over the years, with films like The Godfather and Goodfellas... and stories about the Gotti family, etc. We are certainly fascinated by them, but we're not "charmed" by their "legend" as much any more. I can't help watching a production of Guys & Dolls without wondering how many of these cute, lovable characters might have stabbed somebody in an alley at one time, or thrown a cement-shoed corpse into the East River.
The same thing has happened with Westerns on TV and film... and even Annie Get Your Gun. We don't see the cowboy legends as terribly heroic anymore. We see them as pioneering, yes... but also land-robbing, Native American slaughtering rebels as well. Gone are the days (like the '50s) when kids idolized Jesse James. This is a good thing to see history more for what it was, but it also changes the way we look at these musical stories now.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
