I am not a Maury Yeston fan. My favorite song of his, hands down, New Words. I've just been listening to Playbill.com's new radio station. And god bless they finally have one. I've been pretty happy with it up until today. I started listening when they were doing an artist profile or whatever on Mr. Yeston. Who I don't hate, but I don't think a lot of. And it's not a full biography or anything it's just, here are his shows and let's play a couple songs from each. So we start with Nine and I approve of all the choices, Guido's first song, "My Husband Makes Movies" and "A Call From the Vatican." Cool. Next, Phantom, one of the main reasons I'm not a huge fan. So they play "Home" which I will now have stuck in my head for the rest of the week. And then the guy hosting the program says "the Phantom in Yeston's version has a more Gothic love of Christine, here's a song he sings about his love for her." And they play Count Philips duet with Christine....no Phantom involved at all.....what? I mean she even says his name in the song...if the guy had listened to it before playing it he would have known that wasn't what the song was about....heck he could've read a synopsis online. Oh well. We move on.
Placido Domingo sings a popy song from a concept album. Then we get to "In the Beginning" which I knew we would get to and I knew we would only hear one song. "New Words" is really just about the only song of worth in the show, though there are a few others showcased in Yeston's Songbook album. But then this guy who I'm already a little ticked off at says that Liz Callaway is going to sing the song (from the Unsung Musicals recording) and then has the nerve to say that it is Eve singing it to the first baby. Maybe that was the case in 1-2-3-4-5 but it really isn't anywhere near what happens in In The Beginning. For those of you who missed it, and that should be just about everybody in the world, the plot of In the Beginning that's out there being licensed by MTI is about the "other" people in the beginning. Adam and Eve make an unspoken cameo in the opening number but the main characters are people not mentioned anywhere in Genesis. Except for Cain, who goes by a different name and hangs out with the main characters, falls in love with one of them, has a kid and sings this song to the baby. Really more moving I would say. But I'm not trying justify this show in any way....pretty lame. And I should know, I was in it once.
The best part of the presentation though is Betty Buckley's beautiful rendition of "I Had A Dream About You" from his song cycle, December Songs. Props for that, it's a lovely lyric and a moving melody. So yay I approve of that.
I'm starting to think that maybe I should rename this blog "Slightly obnoxious musical theatre snob speaks out" ...anybody?
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
3 is Company
If I wrote sit coms I would steal this real life converstaion I just had and write it into a very clever scene staring Jennifer Anisten, Debera Messing and David Hyde Pierce:
Girl 1: I don't like going to things with couples it's like 2 against 1.
Boy: The couple is 1 and you are 2?
Girl 1: No. I mean, 3 is a crowd.
Girl 2: No no no, 3 is company!
Boy: How many is a crowd?
Girl 1: 2 is company, 3 is a crowd.
Girl 2: sings 1's impossible, 2 is dreary, 3 is company safe and cheery.
Girl 1: No that's just because it's from that show.
Boy: So how many's a crowd? 3 is a crowd?
Girl 2: 3 is a few. 2 is a couple.
Boy: How many's a crowd?
Girl 2: When it's crowded.
Girl 1: Well it's no fun.
Scene
There is now toner in the copier and my life is so much better.
Pins.
Girl 1: I don't like going to things with couples it's like 2 against 1.
Boy: The couple is 1 and you are 2?
Girl 1: No. I mean, 3 is a crowd.
Girl 2: No no no, 3 is company!
Boy: How many is a crowd?
Girl 1: 2 is company, 3 is a crowd.
Girl 2: sings 1's impossible, 2 is dreary, 3 is company safe and cheery.
Girl 1: No that's just because it's from that show.
Boy: So how many's a crowd? 3 is a crowd?
Girl 2: 3 is a few. 2 is a couple.
Boy: How many's a crowd?
Girl 2: When it's crowded.
Girl 1: Well it's no fun.
Scene
There is now toner in the copier and my life is so much better.
Pins.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Once there was a spot
I never saw this place as an ends. But nobody expects you to want to leave, nobody but the people who know you. When you don't feel right in the room and you feel the walls bowing with the pressure, wouldn't you agree it's time to get out. When I think of other places I want to be there more. Other missions aren't sent out to crush you, other people make art and aren't burnt out. But I think the people that push and shove and never give in are the lucky ones. If you can do that then you will love the product. I am happy to go home and lay on the couch with a glass of cab and my man. It is indeed what makes me the happiest, followed closely by a low key rehearsal process and then here as my least favorite place to be. If I was happier at work would I be less happy at home? If I found a way to devote my daytime hours to something I was really passionate about would it take away from my loves? Possible. But in the here and now of the world you spend the majority of your waking hours at "work." Be it for profit or non, is there a way for an ordinary person, who perhaps lacks the drive to be extraordinary, to be happy? Happy in everything?
Bleh that was gross...could I write more soul numbing drivel?
Here's the burning question in my mind:
Spring Awakening, leap forward or giant step back to the 30s?
The musical theatre is a dying art form if you believe the age old adage that once there's a comprehensive PBS documentary the art form has officially passed on. But I don't believe it, merely because I don't want it to be so. I see plenty of evidence that the art form has come to a startling halt in all things creative but as a whole it seems somewhat commercial successful on some inane level.
The question then to address is are the musicals that are on the rise working toward a future. I'm reading Richard Rodgers autobiography right now and that man had a mission. His mission was to extend the art form into more that a silly play with songs. Musicals, as of 1943 had a benchmark thanks to he and Oscar Hammerstein (and we shan't forget what Show Boat did for the form either). A musical became a show propelled by music, and dance if you were really lucky. Songs flowed seamlessly in and out of dialogue (the Bench Scene, Carousel) to expressed the heightened emotion of the characters. This is where the art seemed to be going, in a direction of higher concept.
Spring Awakening is maybe looking at the whole thing too narrowly but I intend to point it out anyway. The score, utilizing popular sounding music, does almost nothing to propel the plot. Nice music, "pop"y music, but what do the lyrics mean?!!!!!! Anybody? "It's like I'm your lover or more like your ghost/ I spend the day wondering what you do, where you go" Does it rhyme with anything even? Nope. Larry Hart would roll in his grave.
There was a movement once that music would sound like where the show is set, and yes I realize that was not the concept for spring awakening, and maybe the concept was "this is how kids sing now so to make this 18th century German story of adolescence true lets set it to some kind of garage band music" but does it help? I guess some would argue it does. And even those that don't approve will say "at least it's not based on a movie. But in the words of Dorothy Fields "There's gotta be something better than this!"
Or is it that the time of Richard Rodgers has passed us by completely. I understand that nobody thinks Oklahoma is hip but it's more than the shows and the music that is being lost. It is the entire way one tells a story. Is it possible that culture has made it impossible to take the art form seriously. Songs that move the plot along has become passe? If that's what has happened I've outstayed my welcome and I am better off with my ibuds in humming On the Twentieth Century to myself, taking time to discuss music only with middle aged gay men who were there or other rejects of society whom I love more than life.
Even the age of Sondheim seems to have passed with a glimmering sparkle. Don't let it be forgot...oh AJL, I like to pretend I'm on an initial basis with Alan Jay Lerner, I like to think that in my past life I was one of his wives.
So wow, that went from depressing to really depressing and I'm still here wishing this was all. I guess I'm really just a Seth Rudesky want to be and since I'm not gay, middle aged, play the piano well, or in New York, I'm not making my Broadway debut doing one liners in a Terrance McNally play. Sigh.
But maybe one day I will be folks. Maybe one day.
Next one won't be so depressing I promise. Seeing as I think I've said everything sad I've ever thought in this one blog. I just want to get it out so I can start discovering if I really have enough passion to write a masters thesis about what I just established is a dying art form.
Woahoooo!
Pins.
Bleh that was gross...could I write more soul numbing drivel?
Here's the burning question in my mind:
Spring Awakening, leap forward or giant step back to the 30s?
The musical theatre is a dying art form if you believe the age old adage that once there's a comprehensive PBS documentary the art form has officially passed on. But I don't believe it, merely because I don't want it to be so. I see plenty of evidence that the art form has come to a startling halt in all things creative but as a whole it seems somewhat commercial successful on some inane level.
The question then to address is are the musicals that are on the rise working toward a future. I'm reading Richard Rodgers autobiography right now and that man had a mission. His mission was to extend the art form into more that a silly play with songs. Musicals, as of 1943 had a benchmark thanks to he and Oscar Hammerstein (and we shan't forget what Show Boat did for the form either). A musical became a show propelled by music, and dance if you were really lucky. Songs flowed seamlessly in and out of dialogue (the Bench Scene, Carousel) to expressed the heightened emotion of the characters. This is where the art seemed to be going, in a direction of higher concept.
Spring Awakening is maybe looking at the whole thing too narrowly but I intend to point it out anyway. The score, utilizing popular sounding music, does almost nothing to propel the plot. Nice music, "pop"y music, but what do the lyrics mean?!!!!!! Anybody? "It's like I'm your lover or more like your ghost/ I spend the day wondering what you do, where you go" Does it rhyme with anything even? Nope. Larry Hart would roll in his grave.
There was a movement once that music would sound like where the show is set, and yes I realize that was not the concept for spring awakening, and maybe the concept was "this is how kids sing now so to make this 18th century German story of adolescence true lets set it to some kind of garage band music" but does it help? I guess some would argue it does. And even those that don't approve will say "at least it's not based on a movie. But in the words of Dorothy Fields "There's gotta be something better than this!"
Or is it that the time of Richard Rodgers has passed us by completely. I understand that nobody thinks Oklahoma is hip but it's more than the shows and the music that is being lost. It is the entire way one tells a story. Is it possible that culture has made it impossible to take the art form seriously. Songs that move the plot along has become passe? If that's what has happened I've outstayed my welcome and I am better off with my ibuds in humming On the Twentieth Century to myself, taking time to discuss music only with middle aged gay men who were there or other rejects of society whom I love more than life.
Even the age of Sondheim seems to have passed with a glimmering sparkle. Don't let it be forgot...oh AJL, I like to pretend I'm on an initial basis with Alan Jay Lerner, I like to think that in my past life I was one of his wives.
So wow, that went from depressing to really depressing and I'm still here wishing this was all. I guess I'm really just a Seth Rudesky want to be and since I'm not gay, middle aged, play the piano well, or in New York, I'm not making my Broadway debut doing one liners in a Terrance McNally play. Sigh.
But maybe one day I will be folks. Maybe one day.
Next one won't be so depressing I promise. Seeing as I think I've said everything sad I've ever thought in this one blog. I just want to get it out so I can start discovering if I really have enough passion to write a masters thesis about what I just established is a dying art form.
Woahoooo!
Pins.
Monday, September 17, 2007
That Clinking Clanking Sound
Non-Profit. The phrase exudes goodness, greenness, and everything that is right about the world. If you're out to make a profit the very center of your goal is not to help others, so it you're a non-profit, wouldn't that indicate that you are there to help? It does. It truly does. The only thing in fact that makes my heart is that all I wanted to was to work for a non-profit theatre. To create new theatre that helps people, to create at all really. But I have found precious little of that here. And I am feeling how I am burnt out more everyday. The last thing I want in this world is to have theatre make me feel tired, anxious and depressed. And no I can't blame this on the non-profit status but non-profits need more money and it's money you have to scrap, beg, and plead for. And it's making me old at twice the speed of sound. I gave to KQED last week. But isn't pledge just the same thing. I listen to Forum and Fresh Air and think, wow wouldn't it be great to work for NPR, but they are just as hard up for cash as all of us. And maybe the money isn't what's making me tired. But something is, and I don't want to be tired anymore. I want to sparkle like Barbara Harris in that dress she wears in Gorgeous. I want to find some way to express the love and passion I feel for the art of musical theatre, but is that a job? We will see folks. I don't intend for anyone to read this. But if you do thoughts are encouraged. Especially if you see the light at the end of the dark tunnel. AKA you work for a Non-Profit.
Pins.
Pins.
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