The Broadway Musical Is Changing Its Key - nytimes.com

Hmmm... very interesting. I would have never have guessed that all those shows weren't "original" as they put it. I still like all those shows, and personally, I don't mind if the score is from somewhere else. I mean, one day, things borrowed will run out, but it's kind of like those tv shows that can't think of anything clever, so they take an old episode and change the plot just a little bit. Yet I still watch those "new" episodes that were "borrowed" from old ones, so i will watch new Broadway shows that were borrowed from somewhere else!

Those are just my thoughts about it.

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Updated On: 12/25/03 at 10:20 PM

I agree that it was a very insightful article and certainly thought provoking. However, i don't agree with the negative picture presented as the current broadway score . I happen to think that the Hairspray track was original and it did not become borrowed just because it wished to remain true to the time period in which it was set. I am listening to the Wicked cd right now and in my unprofessional opinion find it very original.... Now, that being said, I am not a fan of all the musicals based around the scores of famous singers/songwriters. Eventually, the brrowed material will be used up(hopefully) and the talented, aspiring writers will be heard.

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All I can say about the article is:

Bingo!
Bullseye!
Ringer!

Oh, wait...none of those thoughts is original....

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Well, the article undercuts its credibility by dismissing 'Wicked' simply because it doesn't seem the writer likes the score. It's a completely original score and, if the point is Broadway needs more original scores, it should be pointed to as an example of someone doing it right. Nothing's going to appeal to everyone but in a what wants to be an article about the big picture, dismissing what the writer doesn't like is trivial and unnecessary.

Really Marc Shaiman makes the best points. In the end, writers need to get their stories and emotions across first and worry a lot less about sucking up to Sondheim's legacy.

bestof..... what the hell is your issue?? all you do is bitch about how much you hate Hairspray and every person ever associated with it.. do you have ANY constructive commentary?? EVER????

I think a lot of mistakes in the article from factual errors about the scores of TABOO and MILLIE to the dismissal of the scores for WICKED, HAIRSPRAY and URINETOWN undercut the point he was trying to make. I think Shaiman makes a good point that too many gifted writers seem too interested in impressing an audience and need to remember to entertain them as well. You just have to catch WONDERFUL TOWN to see Bernstein, Comden and Green do both. It is possible to do something new and different and entertaining as well, isn't it?

This is an interesting, thought-provoking article, but if Weber is going to hold himself up as an expert and pontificate, there is no excuse for factual error. The fact that Boy George wrote original music for Taboo, for example, is highly relevant to the subject addressed in the article. For goodness sake, does the New York Times not have a fact checker or any editorial requirements for accuracy? Oh, wait....I forgot.....

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Updated On: 12/26/03 at 05:36 PM

BG himself has made it clear on several occasions, that if he had been approached 3 years ago, with the idea of using his back catalogue (Mamma Mia style) for Taboo, he would not have been interested in the project. There is NO excuse for the NYT to be so erroneous.

Updated On: 12/26/03 at 05:54 PM

Whatever Jason Robert Brown, Marx and Lopez, Guettel and LaChuisa are doing, they're doing it right and this the future of Broadway. The problem is as the critic said, money. I'm gonna be a realist as usual. It doesn't pay a producer to have meaningful theatre anymore. The days of small musicals, I believe are dead. You may argue that but the small musicals have fallen. Avenue Q is a small show with the heart of a large one. Producers can't take the risk right now on meaningful pieces of theatre with no splash unless there is a big star.

That's how it is.

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It's amazing that a professional journalist covering the Broadway season could be so sloppy as to report that Taboo consists of re-cycled material. He probably overheard that from somebody on the subway and then decided to print it as fact.

I'll bet that their fact-checking is no better when it comes to "real" news too.

I feel the article is highly irrelevant. Unoriginal material has existed in reviews and in the books of most shows. Rodgers and Hammerstein based their works on Green Grow the Lilacs, Liliom and Anna and the King. Kander and Ebb used I am a Camera and Zorba the Greek. Berstein based his works off Voltaire and Shakespeare. The list goes on. The phenomenon of using previously released pop music as the score is a new trend that will thrive and then probably fade, but it does not dominate Broadway in the least.

Kander and Ebb and Sondheim have excellent repuatations, but it doesn't necessarily mean teir new works are good. I saw the tryouts of The Visit and Bounce and did not see how they could survive Broadway. The Visit was a bit more appealing than Bounce, but is still very dark and surreal. Audiences are not big fans of dark and surreal unless you have some magnificant staging or choreography to dazzle them from the dreary subject. The Visit offers neither of these. Nor does it have a particularly memorable score. But both Bounce and The Visit will attract hardcore fans of musical theatre, but when this minority have viewed the show, there won't be much left.

I'm all for showcasing new composers, but producers aren't as interested in taking such high risks with other people's money. LaChiusa and Brown have not returned their investments on Broadway and only original satires like Avenue Q and Urinetown have proved new works profitable. Producers need to see an original dramatic work succeed before the will attempt to back the likes of Brown and LaChiusa again or mount a new composer like Guettel.

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yes he is aiming to be both. Perhaps if some of us didn't have teh need to feel superior to everything under the sun, you could see some of the cleverness in Hairspray writing and production....
And all of that aside, isn't it one of the BASIC purposes of what we do?? ENTERTAIN. Get off of your high hore and just enjoy something. Don't feel that everything you see has to be Shakespeare. Remove the stck from your @$$, sit in the theatre seat and allow yourself to be entertained.. Hairsprayd oes that quite well..


And WHY in God's name must people BITCH about pop music on Broadway?? It used to be that Broadwat songs and what you heard on the radio were VERY similar, if not the same songs by the same composers.. now.. anytime any score sounds REMOTELY like something you'd hear on the radio, people bitch that it has no place on broadway.. they want Sonheimesque score and the like that do NOT appeal at all to many of the younger POTENTIAL theatre goers and then wonder why the younger audience demographis is not bigger..