What Broadway "Party" Do You Belong To

I am all of them...I enjoy mostly everything!

---

i'm totally into the B party!! its all about the Rock Musicals people! =D i appreciuate the old stuff, but thats not why I love musicals. oh, and also, (whispers) I *don't* like Heathers voice! ::ducks flames:::

Combo of A (need to examine some old stuff), B (Passion and talent is key), and D (NEED TO ENJOY YOURSELF)!!!!

Not C, Sondheim is great, but hardly the only great one today!

I am adding a new party from which I am apart of, though I do love Into the Woods and Aida at the same time.

E) The "We Don't Care, We Just Write What We Lived" Party - This includes great composers like Adam Guettel, Georgia Stitt, William Finn, and Jason Robert Brown who are best known for their details and simplicity in their songs. The performers who are now well known in the other parties got their starts here or ended up here once in their lives. (Sherie Rene Scott, Carolee Carmello, Chip Zien, Faith Prince, Lauren Kennedy, Christian Borle, Keith Byron Kirk) These type of musicals you can honestly connect with because each song is so universal and realistic. A mixture of romanticism and realism.

---

Updated On: 11/12/03 at 09:15 PM

I'm a strong C with a touch of B and some occasional A. I shove D's into their lockers or trip them when they're walking down the hall. And it's so funny because their 3-ring binders go sprawling! (Also, I don't think Hairspray is a D. And what would you call Urinetown? Where would A Chorus Line go? Surely it's not a conservative classic, but it's post-1970). I think you need a category for post-modern homage.

---

Updated On: 11/13/03 at 11:58 PM

I used to be a hardcore B. I mean, a woman belting her heart out on stage has identified some of my favorite theatrical moments - whether it's Dana Meller as Eponine in Les Miz, Idina Menzel as Elphaba in Wicked, or various women as Florence in Chess. And I sort of identify with the B group.

Then I became a sort of E, where I fell in love with the new crop of composers (like Jason Robert Brown and Andrew Lippa), then by degrees fell in love with Kander & Ebb and Sondheim's scores and the concept musical era, and that drew me further and further back to the point where I now like some old-school musicals, though not unreservedly. I often prefer them through the filter of Goddard Lieberson's magnificent cast recordings to actual live performances, because when today's actors perform yesterday's musicals, something always seems lacking that I'm convinced was there in the first place.

Nowadays, I have a belief that synthesizes some of the above. I believe that theatre exists at three fundamental levels - pandering, populist, and elitist. Pandering I associate with many of the hits of the last 20 years, where a show aims itself at pleasing the lowest common denominator of the audience and becomes (or tries to become) a sellout hit. I would include the less derogatory title of "entertainment piece" for the shows in this category that I like. I won't name names, because I'd probably tick a lot of people off by what I consider pandering, but I think I will mention Cats.

Then there's populist theatre, which I love. Populist theatre aims itself not at the low but at the average - and we are not speaking of pedestrian mediocrity here, but truly glorious, gripping theatre that embraces its audience as worthies while never stooping to pandering or haughtily flying over most peoples' heads. Populist theatre used to be really big - it's what musicals were during their golden era before they started to fetishize the "musical sound." It's also what the better of the mega-musicals are, and the best of the hits are generally from this crop. However, critics recently have taken to dismissing populist theatre out of hand.

Then there are the elitists - if the pandering shows have gone low and the populists for the heart, then elitist theatre tends to be cerebral and go for the mind. This is less good than you'd think. The true elite theatre started around the time of Ibsen; it moved into the musical stage by degrees during the late '60s and was in full bloom by the '70s. Then it died during the '80s, and the current attempts to revive it have met with mixed success. The king of the elitist musical, as I see it, is Sondheim; his shows have, by degrees, reached too far. Sunday in the Park with George is his only full-fledged success as a complete non-populist piece; while the score is glorious the story and characters are almost entirely too cerebral to relate to. The problem with the modern elitist crowd - the most elevated of them probably being Michael John LaChiusa - is that they don't have the sheer knowledge and understanding of what makes theatre tick that Sondheim does, because Sondheim so effectively deconstructed it in the '70s and '80s that reconstruction was made difficult.

I admire many elitist pieces, and I enjoy some entertainment pieces, but in the end I have to say the only hope is for a functioning populist theatre to be restored to the mainstream, and I'm not sure that it's happening.

-Wayne

I'm a liberal commercial classist.

I'm more a 'B' without having any affection whatsoever for any of those performers mentioned. I guess I lean toward 'D' more than 'A' or 'C.' I'd rather have dumb fun than be brilliantly bored.

So is the Green party fans of Elphaba in Wicked?

-Wayne

All I know is that "it's not easy being green."