"To Be With You" in Love's Labour's Lost

[tazber]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 2:10pm

WTF?

Right in the middle of a fantastic Friedman score they shoehorn in To Be With You by 80s hair metal band Mr. Big.

It seems so ridiculously random, but I didn't see the show.

Was there some reason behind this?

[brdway411]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 2:20pm

I saw it. There was a reason but I dont remember what it was. 

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 2:30pm

The whole show was kind of a cluster****. (Can I say that here?) It made little to no sense.

[JBroadway]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 2:34pm

If I remember correctly, it was during the part when the men disguise themselves. In Act 5 of the Shakespeare play, the men dress as Russians and entertain the ladies. In this version, instead of dressing us as Russians, they dressed up as a kind of Scandinavian boyband. I think that's when they sang To Be With You

[brdway411]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 2:37pm

That is it. I know there was a reason. 

[tazber]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 2:42pm

Yea, it's the song they preform for the ladies.

Sorry to hear the show was a mess. I love the score.

Thanks for your feedback guys!

[JBroadway]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 2:53pm

I didn't find the show to be a mess at all. I thought it was very funny, entertaining and well-performed. 

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 3:06pm

OK.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 3:33pm

I didn't see the show, but I love the recording.  And even though I had a sense of what was going on with the "disguise" and everything, I was still so pleasantly surprised when that song popped up.  It's both silly and delightful.

[JBroadway]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 3:50pm

EDIT: nevermind

Updated On: 5/14/15 at 03:50 PM

[Kad]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 4:27pm

There was no real reason that that particular song was chosen and not an original song.

I thought the production as a whole was kind of a more-is-more misfire, with an incredibly jarring tonal shift in the last minutes, but I do think Friedman's score is actually quite good.

Updated On: 5/14/15 at 04:27 PM

[JBroadway]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 4:44pm

"with an incredibly jarring tonal shift in the last minutes"

That was because Shakespeare's play ends the same way. Many people believe the play had a sequel which was lost. That's why the play (and subsequent musical) ends so weirdly - it's probably incomplete.

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 4:52pm

Your affection for the show is not going to change our minds. We can agree to disagree. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/theater/reviews/loves-labours-lost-loosely-speaking-in-central-park.html?_r=0

"Despite the fancy full-dress production, the whole enterprise starts to feel (perhaps appropriately, but not satisfyingly) like a college revue, slapped together by honors students during a Red Bull-fueled all-nighter."

Updated On: 5/14/15 at 04:52 PM

[JBroadway]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 5:27pm

I wasn't trying to change your mind. I didn't even say I disagreed with Kad. I was just remarking why the show had such a weird ending. I agree that it was weird and random, but it's the same as Shakespeare's ending. 

Neon, I'm pretty tired of your unnecessarily abrasive responses to my posts (including those in that thread about Off-broadway shows) so I'm going to put you on my "ignore user" list. Bye! :) 

[Kad]

Posted: 5/14/15 at 5:31pm

I'm familiar with the play and am aware of the ending. However, the play itself is not as anarchic and extravgant as the musical adaptation was. Anachronistic humor,  splashy production numbers, a goddamn marching band- all suddenly undercut by a jarring shift back to the original text, performed very straight and sober. 

Updated On: 5/15/15 at 05:31 PM

[StageStruckLad]

Posted: 5/15/15 at 8:54am

I'm with you JBroadway. It was one of my favorite shows from 2013. Great performances, fun staging, and a great original cast recording.

[tazber]

Posted: 5/15/15 at 9:58am

I wonder why Friedman didn't just write a boy-band type of song for that scene.

Weird.

But the guys do a great rendition of the song and I love it.

[Fantod]

Posted: 5/15/15 at 10:27am

Hoy a fan of the reocrding. Everything I didn't like about Andrew Jackson seemed to be what they repeated on that album. It just tried to hard to be quirky. I didn't know To Be With You wasn't an original song, but I think it actually was one of the best numbers on the album. Go figure. 

[Kad]

Posted: 5/15/15 at 10:48am

Incidentally, Brantley didn't know the song was not by Friedman in his initial review, either. It was subsequently corrected, of course.

[tazber]

Posted: 5/15/15 at 10:59am

It was a huge hit back when I was a kid. It was everywhere.

Westlife covered it more recently.

The original version

 

 

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 5/15/15 at 11:59am

Yeah, there was no song list in the playbill if I remember correctly.

 

JBroadway I literally could not care less.

[temms]

Posted: 5/15/15 at 12:26pm

I also didn't know the song and couldn't figure out why suddenly at the end of a lackluster score Michael Friedman pulled out a song a thousand times catchier than anything else. I sat there wondering if my ears were wrong, could a song in a Shakespeare In The Park show really be a radio hit? Because it sounded like it could be a radio hit. My whole perception of Friedman as a composer changed. 

Only after the the show when I mentioned to my friend that I had to give MF credit because he really can write a great pop song was I informed that he didn't write it. 

I did like the show, despite its faults. It felt like the perfect thing for a summer evening at the Delacorte with a great company.