some old show

I absolutely love "Scarlet Pimpernel." I never was fortunate enough to see it live, but I have the soundtrack and libretto, and I've seen high school productions and clips in youtube. My best friend, my sister, and my brother all dressed up as characters for Halloween.

But yeah, I can't hear the word 'Minskoff' without thinking 'Pimpernel' either. I even have a ridiculously touristy picture of me and one of my friends dueling with tiny plastic cocktail swords in front of the theatre.

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Scarlet Pimpernel (the first version) is my favorite musical. I saw the second version, which was also at the Minskoff, but didn't really like it, so I never saw the third version. I wish the show had just closed after the first version rather than being rewritten so many times that it became a complete joke. I think of SP everytime I pass the Minskoff too.

Well, you COULD say it ran two years, or you could say it had three incarnations over a period of two years - and all three versions lost money.

One thing that's so great about the SP1 cast is that Terrence Mann and Douglas Sills have such incredible voices, but such different voices. And, in equally different ways, they're both attractive men (well, I've always maintained that Terrence Mann is immeasurably creepy-looking, as much as I adore him as a performer, but he has a lot of charisma). They're both wonderful, and it's hard to compare them.

"Into The Fire" and "Falcon In The Dive" are two of my favourite songs in the world-- again, two incredibly different songs-- and it's fantastic to have them one after the other. And the show has such a mixture of comedy and tragedy, songs running the gamut in terms of style from "Creation of Man" to "Madame Guillotine" to "She Was There" to "Prayer" to "You Are My Home" to "When I Look At You" to "They Seek Him Here." The variation is the best thing about Pimpy.

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