Amph The Magic of Musicals - for lovers of shows on stage or screen: Revival of Sweeney Todd

As I sit here reading the past few posts, talking about Phantom of the Opera what comes on my Ipod?

Music of the Night.

it was like a clue I needed to post on this thread.

Les Mes is one of the musicals I wanna see, but I want to see Phantom, Avenue Q first.

I have seen Wicked, which I absolutely adore.

 

Only seen two stage musicals in my entire life: "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Showboat"

 

Then you must see more shows. Film adaptations are often not as good.

"Devil take the Hindmost" was a better song than Beauty Underneath to me. That song was too out of place in what was basically classical opera. Suddenly descending into the Rocky Horror Show at the end of Act 1 didn't work for me.

Raoul got the worse character wreck out of all of them, but they all got badly maimed by Ben Elton's writing. Phantom became Mr Darcy in a mask and Meg got more visits than the Coney Island Wonder Wheel

I didn't like the ending either. Surely the best way to end the Phantom's story was to kill him off. If he lives it simply means his story carries on in the future and Lloyd-Webber could do another dodgy sequel in 10 years when he gets bored.

 

I saw Peter Brooks' film adaptation of "The Beggar's Opera".

It was awful. He kept trying to open it up.

Query: Have you ever read "Not Since Carrie"? Book about just about every notable musical flop on Broadway. Often hilariously funny.

 

I have not, I will have a look sometime.

I was not very optimistic about new musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark when I heard of it being made, especially with music by U2. It seems it may be destined for failure after the Broadway preview had a number of technical issues.
Of course it is only the preview, but I don't really like the idea of the show myself.

 

Didn't Paul Simon's stage musical fail, despite reportedly good music?

 

Not everything works well as a musical, even with good songs and music. Engaging people to the characters and story is important too. Love Never Dies has this problem, fine music and some decent lyrics but bad storyline and poor characterisation.

I saw an adaptation of The Remains of the Day as a musical. it worked pretty well but some bits seemed a little out of place for the story it told.

 

Peter Billingsley will executive produce a musical adaptation of "A Christmas Story"

...I presume for the stage...

 

Could be good, I like Christmas-based musicals on the whole.

I see Love Never Dies has apparently undergone "significant changes". Apparently it closed for 4 days while new stuff was added and other stuff taken away. Charles hart, lyricist to Phantom of the Opera, was apparently brought in to redo parts and Bill Kenwright came in to oversee scene alterations.
Sounds interesting, and can only be an improvement. I can't find anything saying exactly what the changes are though. I may have to watch it to find out.

 

Broadway's "Spider-Man" is a dangerous production

 

In LND, I think Christine. She drove me nuts at times in the book and musical of POTO, but they completely departed from both in LND.

 

Christine's job is to look nice and sing well, which has been delivered by all the women I've ever seen play her on stage or screen. Never a very well acted part, but it doesn't need to be because she doesn't do much.

SpiderFail indeed, I hope that will teach Bono not to try writing stage shows. Then again, previews are a good time to work out all the kinks in the staging.
Phantom was beset with problems when it first began in the 80s, it's still going now.

But this Spider-Man show stinks of Fail.
Still, I wouldn't be suprised if it gets turned into a movie.

 

If you read "Not Since Carrie" it says that there was a Superman Broadway musical which was a giant flop.

 

There was also a Batman musical in the works as well, but it never got past the demo stage (I have a copy of this). It had the Joker, Catwoman, and Vicki Vale among the protagonists. I believe it was something of an attempt to cash in on the huge success of the 1989 film, but there were just too many problems for it to seriously progress.

 

I'm not sure Super-Hero musicals are the way to go, even Disney hasn't tried that. I don't think every genre can work in that format and it is to succeed it should be dark the way Sweeney Todd is.

 

It wouldn't be my first choice, but I suppose they are looking at the success of superheroes in the movies. The difference: the main movie audience and the main stage audience are very different.

 

New book out this year: "Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theatre" by Larry Sempel, 826 pages.

 

Well, that's a pretty hefty book.
But may be worth a read, there are some interesting books on the subject around. I usually look through the selection when I visit London's musical theatre shop, but like Forbidden Planet just down the road nothing there is particularly cheap

 

Reserve it at the library. Then at least you can see if you are likely to read and/or enjoy it first.

(I almost never buy books I haven't read first)

 

Robert Downey, Jr. attached to a musical

 

Interesting.....I didn't know Downey could sing. I know Hugh Jackman can, having another big name actor who can would be a bonus for the musical movie industry.

 

Neil Patrick Harris can sing, and to judge from the number of people on dance shows on TV dance shows, a lot of people dance very well. Musicals should be more common.

 

I agree, but they aren't as popular as in their hey-day.

There are a number of reasons for this I think:

Musicals are not that popular with males these days, guys are not into singing films and many view them as a bit "gay". Even a gothic violent movie with an 18 rating like Sweeney Todd put people off when they found out it was a musical.

Lack of big-name actors who can sing well. Hollywood is about star drawing power and if you make a musical with good singing/dancing talent that no-one has heard of you won't sell as many tickets. The result often means that big-names are thrown into musicals even if they aren't very good and edited to sound better.

Association with Disney putting off adults.

Lack of stuff to adapt and hollywood writers not being very good at adapting new stuff into musicals.

 

MGM used to have the Freed unit, which specialized in musicals. Some were very good..."Singing in the Rain", "The Band Wagon", "Meet Me in St. Louis" etc. etc. Some were not...if you haven't seen "Yolanda and the Thief" starring Fred Astaire, or "The Pirate" starring Kelly and Garland, all I can say is, don't. The Unit was disbanded in the mid to late 50's, though.

 

Disney have said they are moving away from musicals and "fairy tale" movies now. The last musical they did was Princess and the Frog and prior to that I think their last was before Pixar.
They have come to realise such movies are not as marketable anymore.

It seems like musicals are really only going to advance on stage, with only the big name ones succeeding on screen.