THE KNIFE
THE KNIFE
WalkOn
Broadway Star Joined: 8/7/06
#2re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 3:01pmAnd if that doesn't make you chuckle, the picture in the Broadway Musicals book (the one with the shiny silver cover) should bring one out of you...
"A coherent existance after so many years of muddle" - Desiree' Armfelt, A Little Night Music
"Life keeps happening everyday, Say Yes" - 70, Girls, 70
"Life is what you do while you're waiting to die" - Zorba
#2re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 3:06pm
I didnt get the chance to see it, but remember the reviews being quite good for Patinkin and Mastrantonio, but not for the show.
Why doesnt she work more?
"Carson has combined his passion for helping children with his love for one of Cincinnati's favorite past times - cornhole - to create a unique and exciting event perfect for a corporate outing, entertaining clients or family fun."
"In Oz, the verb is douchifizzation." PRS
"In Oz, the verb is douchifizzation." PRS
Borstalboy
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/9/04
#3re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 3:10pmGood question! I always liked her.
"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
~ Muhammad Ali
#4re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 4:50pm
I know I'm in the minority, but I thought she was wonderful as Aldonza several seasons ago.
I believe David Hare wrote the libretto for THE KNIFE.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
#5re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 6:08pmThe thought of seeing Mandy in Drag is not pretty
Poster Emeritus
husk_charmer
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/19/06
#6re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 6:48pmwas a cast recording made?
http://www.youtube.com/huskcharmer
Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
husk_charmer
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/19/06
#8re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 7:15pm
According to castalbumdb.com there isn't one...which begs the question:
Why the hell did Breakfast at Tiffany's get a studio album and not "The Knife"?
http://www.youtube.com/huskcharmer
Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
#9re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 7:20pm
Tiffanys was a bigger bomb & thus there was more interest
The Knife was a stick of Dynamite whereas Tiffanys was an A Bomb
Poster Emeritus
#10re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 7:55pmThe Knife was produced by the Public Theater at its downtown complex. Therefore, it wasn't a bomb.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
husk_charmer
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/19/06
#11re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 8:09pmTiffany's had more interest? Amongst who, the Ear Bleeding Lovers Society??? (Confession time, I have the CD)
http://www.youtube.com/huskcharmer
Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
#12re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 8:15pm
So do I plus a liev recording made eons ago
I have no idea who sent it to me nut I have had it for a million years. It includeds dialog. Am I lucky or what ?
Poster Emeritus
husk_charmer
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/19/06
#13re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/22/07 at 8:28pmWasn't that released by Blue Pear??? If so I have the same one...either way, ear bleeding is caused usually.
http://www.youtube.com/huskcharmer
IssaMe
Broadway Star Joined: 5/15/03
#14re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/23/07 at 7:30am
It was a dismal show with a brilliant score. Mandy was bizarre. Others in the cast like Cass Morgan were wonderful.
It was indeed an "odd" experience - but the songs were terrific.
WalkOn
Broadway Star Joined: 8/7/06
#15re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/23/07 at 12:42pmI read the Time review and they mention that the score was good. I'm really interested in hearing it. Wonder if any of the songs were recorded individually?
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart; and you'll never walk alone.
Oliver Brownlow
Chorus Member Joined: 3/15/04
#16re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/23/07 at 2:56pm
I saw it and I remember being very impressed by it. It was beautifully produced and Mandy was great in it. I remember writing a postcard about it to someone in which I called it a "diamond" of a show, which I still think is a good metaphor -- it was beautiful and valuable and glittering, but also a little cold and hard and sharp. Short on music hall pleasures, to be sure. The score (music by Nicholas Bicat) was played by a sort of chamber ensemble, mostly strings, which at one point fascinatingly transformed its austere "classical" sound to create the ryhthmic background for a satirical "rap" number called "He Must Be Gay ('Cause Everybody's Gay)." Mandy's character was a cook in a restaurant, I think. I also remember the final number, which was compared by reviewers with "Father to Son" from William Finn's MARCH OF THE FALSETTOS, and was indeed very much the same sort of song, sung by Mandy's character to his young son -- a good little actor whose name I don't recall. The lyrics (by Hare) occasionally seemed a little needlessly repetitious, and one had the feeling they had been written without reference to the music, and set by the composer opera-style.
THE KNIFE played at the Public around the same time LES MISERABLES opened on Broadway. I saw them both in the same week, and I remember thinking that while the reviews tended to emphasize LES MIS' virtues and THE KNIFE's faults, to my mind they were of about equal quality, all things considered, each with significant faults, but each with considerable virtues. Of course, the subject matter of THE KNIFE was inevitably off-putting, especially to the general audience that made LES MIS a hit. But I deeply regret that the score was never recorded, for I'd have loved to have heard it again many times, especially with the original cast. Where was Blue Pear's infamous hidden micophone when we needed it? That LES MIS has been recorded half a dozen times -- a few more times, in my opinion, than was strictly necessary -- makes the loss of this equally interesting score all the more dismaying.
I also remember reading somewhat later that Mandy Patinkin said it was very lonely appearing in THE KNIFE, because no one ever came backstage to see him after the performance. That made me sorry that I didn't go backstage and try to see him, which I'd have loved to have done -- although maybe in saying this he was referring to and wishing for visits from his friends and peers in the theatrical community, rather than from complete strangers.
WalkOn
Broadway Star Joined: 8/7/06
#17re: THE KNIFE
Posted: 1/23/07 at 3:06pm
Thank you very much Oliver Brownlow!
I'm completely intrigued.
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart; and you'll never walk alone.
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