Tales Of The City

I've recently been on a Scissor Sister's kick and thought of the musical adaptation of Tales Of The City. Did anyone on here see it out in San Francisco? Is it working towards Broadway?

I think this sounds awesome, and no clue why it hasn't had a life outside of San Fran. Sure, it's a San Fran based story, but I live in NYC and I've read all the books and loved them. And the Scissor Sisters def. have a following here in NYC. Is there a recording of the music? I'd love to hear it.

Betty Buckley did the original workshop.

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I was in SF (for a Kylie Minogue concert, of course) when this was running in the city, so saw it probably a week before it was frozen. It was LONG. But I really liked it, and thought it had potential despite a set that didn't really work.

There's a LONG thread somewhere here with comments from myself and others. I'll try to look for it. I thought the music was great, as were most of the cast (Judy Kaye as Madrigal especially -- when I had bought tickets I was disappointed that Buckley was no longer in it, but I think Kaye was ultimately a better fit. Pamela Myers was her understudy and played various roles when I saw it which was thrilling for someone like me who never gets to NYC.)

Betsy Wolfe as Mary Ann was note perfect and sang the show's best song, Paper Faces. The problems with the show were, as expected, stitching all the stories together (they used stories from the first two books.) That said, I stand by my statement in the earlier thread that the show has promise and I listen to my "recording" quite often.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzLFRzGZljw

And this has more clips http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVTxMvC4gXs

It's funny the bit shown in the earlier clip of them rehearsing the whorehouse song "Ride them Hard" is a song and scene I would cut completely. It was a crowd pleaser, but not needed and just padded the show.

I saw it twice in SF, and though it was very flawed, I also enjoyed it a lot! The cast was stellar and it has a great score and pretty engaging story.

Since seeing it, I've talked with Judy Kaye, Betsy Wolfe and Andrew Samonsky at various stage-doors about the show, and all of them say that it is being worked on.

Yeah, if anything adding storylines from the second book may have been a mistake--except I guess they wanted to get Mother Mucca there and the whorehouse. I've said it before, but I agree with the two above posts about it having so much potential, a great score, and definitely needs a lot of work (I've listened to the bootleg countless times--I still think they should at least make a recording if they're trying to keep interest alive.) But I did think it sounded promising that Armistad admitted that the Norman subplot simply didn't work on stage (the audience reaction to when his clip on tie breaks and he falls to his death was one of laughter and confusion.)

Completely agreed.

I need to look back at the book, but I thought Anna's "secret" was revealed by the end of the first book? I know Maupin has talked about his editors telling him he couldn't reveal it in the first year of the serial until readers were more committed to it (then again he restructured and changed significant bits from the serialized version for publication, so...)

I was disappointed that Betty dropped out of the project, but having seen Judy, I think Betty may have seemed too cold for the role. (I wonder if am Myers, who was her understudy and in the chorus, ever went on?)

This musical was a lot of things, but a hot mess it wasn't. What impressed me was how they were able to delineate so many characters into one evening and allow most of them to become fully three dimensional. Besides the basic first production faults, there was NO real book problem (and let's face it, the Norman plotline doesn't work in the book or miniseries either). The direction wasn't bad either. I know there is much SS love, but that score was not good. A couple numbers here or there were okay, but the failure of this show was the music and lyrics.

I saw it and think the score was fantastic - and yes I'm a huge Scissor Sisters fan. Agree with most of the additional posters on what didn't work:

- that set
-Norman storyline (also didn't work in the book or miniseries)
- I do recall it being a tad long

Overall, loved the show and hoping that maybe it gets the chance to be seen and heard again

Seeds and Stems