The Magic Show - Page 2

[RippedMan]

Posted: 5/29/13 at 3:57am

I think the songs are great. I'd love to see Schwartz go back and expand the score and the show. The synopsis I read doesn't sound too horrible.

Was Henning in for the 4 years or how long? 4 years, even today, would be considered a VERY healthy run.

I guess it's not the kind of a show a regional theater would do, etc.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/29/13 at 5:43am

Then your synopsis lied, RippedMan. The entire plot is (a) a well-known magician is trying to steal the illusions of hippy-magician Doug Henning (or his replacement) and (b) said magician's assistant is secretly in love with him. (Neal Patrick Harris wouldn't touch the role for love or money.)

The score makes for a great pop album, but, with the exception of Dale Soules' songs and Anita Morris' "Charmin's Lament", it is virtually incomprehensible in a theater.

Henning didn't do more than a year or 18 months of the run, I don't think. We took our kids several times and I don't remember seeing him. (He went on to TV, Vegas and then a very expensive flop with MERLIN.)

The show ran because it was perfect for children: G-rated illusions, music that sounded more or less like what was on the radio at the time, and a reasonably short running time.

Rather than wasting time revising the book, somebody should just take the best songs and add them to a Stephen Schwartz retrospective revue.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/29/13 at 4:07pm

I love the score as represented on the cast recording, but hate the changes made on the tour DVD. I do think a heavily revised book with some cutting-edge illusions and designs could be very doable today.

[evic]

Posted: 5/29/13 at 7:43pm

This show was a lot of fun from Doug's buck teeth to Anita Morris' incredible body. If I remember correctly, she did a big dance number with the boys with swords. I used to listen to the OBC album all the time. And now thanks to youtube, I can enjoy the great orchestrations and those accoustic guitars and the great cast again..

[jnb9872]

Posted: 5/29/13 at 8:07pm

No offense to the late Doug Henning, but they definitely would need to update some of the illusions.


Not exactly cutting edge stuff

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/30/13 at 5:59am

You may be right about Morris' dance number, but I will always remember her singing her heart out after having been sawed in half.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 5/31/13 at 7:34pm

The show has ome of Schwartz's best 70s style pop songs, and is a lot of fun, but I think it's unreviable.

But for anyone curious, the DVD is easy to find VERY cheap. It's a 1980 production at the Queen E theatre in Vancouver which was mounted just to be filmed (oddly, the next year they did thesame with Schwartz' Pippin in Toronto.) Apparently it was intended for a limited cinema run, but I think it only played on the CBC in Canada. Hemming was Canadian so maybe thats the connection. Didi Conn co-stars and is adorable, and it's worth seeing a rare filmed Anita Morris stage performance, but I suspect it's even worse than it was on Broadway.

It's quite edited (maybe re-written, but I wouldn't know.) Oddly Schwartz replaced a bunch of his best songs, or simply cut them (I don't have the DVD here so can't remember what the new songs were, but apparently Schwartz clamed he prefered them--from what I remember, I didn't.) I think some characters were cut too. Shockingly two of the cuts are "West End Avenue" and "Solid Silver Platform Shoes"!

In an of course glowing review of the DVD on Schwartz' website, these details are given:

"For the Canadian show in 1981[sic], the screenplay adjusted for the times and circumstances of television. Schwartz rewrote several songs for a younger and more varied audience, leaving out his popular piece "West End Avenue" that was very "New York," replacing it with a more universal "Where Did the Magic Go." He swapped "Solid Silver Platform Shoes (the shoes were no longer popular in the 80's) with a more contemporary rock song "It's Gonna Take a Magician," altered the risqué lyrics of Carmin's Lament, and swapped the original song for the antagonists with another whose lyrics introduce Doug's escape trick."

Still, anyone who loves the CD and is crious, I found the DVD new for $4 so you could do worse (Amazon has it at $9). I haven't checked, but I'm sure some of it at least is on youtube...

(And by all accounts the show was better than Hemmings' follow up, Merlin--even if that had Chita in her flop era.)

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 5/31/13 at 7:41pm

"Hemming was Canadian so maybe thats the connection."

Actually most of the original producing team was Canadian if I'm not mistaken, chief among them Ivan Reitman, who of course went on to fame as a movie director, huge philanthropist in support of all things Toronto, and father of Jason Reitman.
Updated On: 5/31/13 at 07:41 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/31/13 at 7:41pm

Film MAGIC SHOW but take out the only songs worth the trouble?

How high was Schwartz in the early 80s?

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 5/31/13 at 8:06pm

Someone--interesting, I didn't know the Reitman connection.

Gaveston--by 1980 NOBODY would know what platform shoes were--so write a wholenew song! And that site implies the tv version was more "family friendly" (unlike that adult original you apparently exposed your poor kids toseveral times) so maybe he had to replace West End Ave because it refernced gay bars...

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/31/13 at 8:10pm

My stepkids saw it at 6 and 10. I'll have to ask if they were scarred for life; thus far, I haven't seen any signs. When I worked the tour in Florida, we had school groups come to see it without incident.

And why would Schwartz assume people had FORGOTTEN platform shoes in 1980? They'd been in style just a year or two before.

He may be careless at times, but Schwartz is nothing if not glib. Surely he could have replaced a line about gay bars if that was what concerned him.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 5/31/13 at 8:41pm

Hope you know I was joking at possible reasons. Schwartz HAS had stranger reasoning behind other changes he's made to shows (though he seem to have come to terms with some--returning to some of the Fosse elements with Pippin).

I guess 1980 was the beginning of the Disco Sucks backlash, maybe he wanted his show to seem current :P

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/31/13 at 8:51pm

Of course, I knew you were joking, Eric.

But I bought my first pair of winter boots in the winter of 77/78. Since I'm already 6'3", I was used to wearing flats, but the lowest boot heels I could find were nearly 2" high!

So platform shoes hadn't been gone for long in 1980...

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 1:07am

"maybe he had to replace West End Ave because it refernced gay bars.."

This is a bit of an aside, but I loved The Magic Show in all it's hokiness. I think the song WEST END AVE is beautiful - but oy, the lyrics, however clever, just pissed me off.

"...but you were meant to really fly.
West End Avenue,
Good bye, good bye.

And then suddenly you're out there on your own.
But you forgot that free could also mean alone.
And when all that freedom gets too much for you,
What do you do?

You pack up your boots and blue jeans and your records and your pride,
And you tell yourself you ventured and you tell yourself you tried.
And it's back to the surly doormen and the canopies you go.
And the buses seem to chuckle and the towers seem to crow:
"We told you so."

West End Avenue,
Find me a golden cage to perch in.
West End Avenue,
Open your arms to one more urchin
Who's crawlin' back to mama's den.
West End Avenue,
You win again!"

It just pissed me off. Here's someone of some privilege, able to come and go as she pleased, and she keeps giving up that opportunity b/c she "forgot that free could also mean alone" and runs home to mama? How does "freedom get too much for you"? I had to scratch and fight to get here and get a place and a job to keep it, right at the time this show was popular. I didn't have "Mama's den" or a "golden cage to perch in". I didn't have the money to give up and run home.

In short, gorgeous song - didn't resonate with me. I still listen to it, but I try to ignore the lyrics.

[Someone in a Tree2]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 12:58pm

Yeah but getting to rhyme GAY bars with ZAY-bars was worth the whole song for that one brilliant rhyme.

Updated On: 6/1/13 at 12:58 PM

[goldenboy]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 1:47pm

People People People
Some things should not be revived because they weren't good the first time. This is one of them. Let sleeping musical magician's lie. They followed this up with Merlin...which was worse. (can't imagine how but it was)

[frontrowcentre2]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 2:13pm

I agree. It is NOT a show that cries out for a revival, especially when so many more worthy shows are being overlooked.

That said, Masterworks Broadway should look at re-releasing the OCR. It was originally on the Bell Label which Clive Davis later folded into Arista, now part of Sony Music Group. The previous CD edition was on a label called January Records which was distributed by DRG but not very well distributed and now copies sell on the Amazon marketplace for $250.

[ghostlight2]

Posted: 6/1/13 at 2:15pm

Geez. Wonder what the LP goes for? I still have my hexaflexagon.

[mybigsplash]

Posted: 12/4/13 at 3:59pm

Does anyone have a link to a video of Didi Conn singing Lion Tamer?

[jemjeb2]

Posted: 12/4/13 at 11:20pm

I loved it- not so much the silly magic stuff or Henning(whom I thought was actually a sweet presence) but the knock out singing of the ladies - especially Cheryl Barnes. It didn't hurt seeing the show a little high! Oops did I say that?

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 12/5/13 at 5:18pm

Have the CD, DVD and signed playbill from it.