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Popular Broadway Songs [Youtbe Clips]

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Current: Falsettos Revival

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...you don’t go to Falsettos for the décor and dancing. You go because it reminds you that the world can change — and how, at great cost, it once did. - Jesse Green, Vulture

The revival of William Finn's Falsettos has opened on Broadway to uniformly positive reviews. The cast is headed by two-time Tony Award winner Christian Borle (Something Rotten!, Peter and the Starcatcher) as Marvin, Tony nominee Stephanie J. Block (Wicked, Drood) as Trina, and Tony nominee Andrew Rannells (The Book of Mormon) as Whizzer.

More good news - there will be a cast album! The original 1992 production never got one - the only thing available were the two individual one-act musicals from the 1980s.


The 2016 revival of Falsettos opened at the Walter Kerr Theater on October 27.

From Adam Feldman's review on Vulture:
Part of what makes the musical so unusual is that it was written as two separate one-acts, nine years apart. Act I of the show, first presented in 1981 as March of the Falsettos, is a nervy, yappy exploration of masculinity and its discontents. Marvin has abandoned the tense, eager-to-please Trina (Stephanie J. Block) and their hypersmart prepubescent son, Jason (Anthony Rosenthal), to move in with Whizzer (a knowingly sinuous, almost snaky Andrew Rannells). But Whizzer is not the submissive caretaker that Marvin has come to expect as his prerogative; and when Trina finds love with a psychiatrist, Mendel (a scrappy Brandon Uranowitz), Marvin can’t handle the loss of a thing he had thrown away...

By Act II, Marvin has grown up a bit, but the more significant maturation is Finn’s. As enjoyable as the snaggletoothed and biting first half can be, it hardly prepares you for the extraordinary second, which premiered as Falsettoland in 1990 and may be the best gay-themed musical ever written. The arrival of AIDS—unnamed at the time, but inchoately looming as “something bad”—changes the games for everyone on stage, and for Finn’s writing as well. He rises to the challenge with a tremendously moving collection of songs: sparky, funny, wrenching and sweetly romantic, with frequent enough twists of melody and phrase to resist being maudlin. As the fractured blended family of March—expanded to include two lesbians (Tracie Thoms and Betsy Wolfe)—comes together in the face of grief, Falsettos brings us with them through a scarred yet healing depiction of collective loss and purpose.

Over and over, right up to Marvin and Whizzer’s rueful final duet, “What Would I Do?”, Finn pushes musical theater to the limits of what we can ask of it


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Appreciation: Oscar Hammerstein II

Oscar Hammerstein II

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Oscar Hammerstein (right) wrote lyrics with several composers, but the but his most famous partner was Richard Rodgers (left)

In the 1940's and 1950's Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein were the undisputed gold standard writing and producing musical theater on Broadway. Hammerstien wrote the lyrics and scripts while Rodgers wrote the melodies.

But Hammerstein had reinvented storytelling in musicals long before that in 1927 with Show Boat - a romantic musical that tackled race and prejudice for which he wrote the immortal lyrics to "Old Man River" and others.

Rodgers & Hammerstein first worked together on Oklahoma while the Second World War was raging in Europe and Asia. Oscar captured an essence of Americana in his lyrics that reminded the soldiers home on leave what they were fighting for.


Hugh Jackman and Josefina Gabrielle in the 1999 London production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!

Oscar invented a new kind of romantic song - the Conditional Love Song. It's not "I'm in Love", it's "People Will Say We're In Love". The dramatic problem is how do you get a love ballad in the first act? If the leading man and lady profess their love for each other, the story is over. Oscar let his characters play with the notion of love, without actually committing to it. He did this way back in Show Boat with "Only Make Believe I Love You".


Rehearsal of Bench Scene & If I Loved You from Carousel Featuring Laura Osnes and Steven Pasquale

He did it again in Carousel - with even more skill in the famous "Bench Scene" that goes on for almost 20 minutes and is mostly music - a series of short pieces leading into the big song "If I Loved You". You can really get a sense of the sophistication of the writing in this simple rehearsal with two of Broadway's current stars Laura Osnes (Cinderella) and Steven Pasquale (Bridges of Madison County). They find all the nuances in the scene in the way they navigate seamlessly between the song and dialog.

Oscar wrote mostly on his farm in Connecticut and that may be the inspiration for some of his famous images using nature in songs like "Younger than Springtime" and "Edelweiss". (To this day, many people still think that "Edelweiss" is the Austrian national anthem.)

Do you have any favorite lyrics from Oscar? Some of his most famous shows are:
  • Rose-Marie
  • Desert Song
  • Show Boat
  • Oklahoma
  • Carousel
  • The King and I
  • South Pacific
  • Cinderella
  • State Fair
  • Sound of Music
  • Carousel
 

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US Election Day 2016

The cast of Hamilton encourages Americans to vote.



 

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Current: Dear Evan Hansen

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"Historic" is an adjective I've rarely used to describe a performance, but a review that does not invoke it for Ben Platt's incandescent turn in the ravishingly bittersweet "Dear Evan Hansen" would be doing it less than justice. - Jesse Green, Vulture


Ben Platt performs Waving Through a Window on the Late Night TV show.

Broadway has it's first set of rave reviews and probably it's first big hit of the year in Dear Evan Hansen. Ben Platt is getting star-is-born level notices for his lead performance as the awkward teen who's mother has coaxed him in to writing letters to himself to try and get the things down on paper that he can't express to anyone else.


Ben Platt and the cast of Dear Evan Hansen on the high tech set that shows the conflict between the virtual and the real.

Dear Evan Hansen runs in to the topic of teen suicide but the brilliance of the piece is that it doesn't do it the way you think (the victim isn't depressed, anxious Evan). Instead a bully steals one of Evan's self-addressed letters and days later the school discovers that the bully killed himself. The kid's parents find Evan's letter and assume that Evan must have been their son's best friend. Evan lets them believe that and is showered with love and almost becomes a replacement for their lost son.

The show reveals what parents don't know about their kids, and what they want to believe. It also shows how the internet distorts and magnifies connections when Evan's story goes viral and he has to "feed the beast", so to speak, to keep the the lie going.

What's more, this gorgeous heartbreaker of a musical, which opened at the Music Box Theater on Sunday, has grown in emotional potency during its journey to the big leagues, after first being produced in Washington and Off Broadway. Rarely - scratch that - never have I heard so many stifled sobs and sniffles in the theater. - Charles Isherwood, The New York Times

DEH is already more than just a well-reviewed show. It has a devoted young fan base that threatens to rival those of their parents (!) who couldn't get enough of Wicked and Rent. Social media is already filling up with fan art, fan fiction, and endless discussions. (Take a look at this short video made up almost entirely of DEH fan art.)

Expect to see DEH at the Tony Awards next June. I think there is one statue with Ben Platt's name on it. And maybe another for Benj Pasek & Justin Paul who wrote the score.

Leaving a new musical with a great song or two running through your head is a rare but exciting thing. Leaving with about 10 great songs running through your head is pretty much unheard of. But that's the power of Dear Evan Hansen, which just opened on Broadway after a world premiere at Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage and a stint at Second Stage Off-Broadway. - Melissa Rose Bernardo, Entertainment Weekly

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Broadway on Television

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UPDATE ** Dec 8 2016 **
NBC did Hairspray, their annual live musical in the US on Wednesday December 8 at 8pm. (Check listings for rebroadcasts and expect it to soon show up on streaming sites.)

The production was lively, fun, and packed with talented performers. My major negative criticism is that the material is awfully similar to Fox's Grease Live last January and NBC's show suffered in comparison. Grease was better directed and conceived and squeezed extra vitality out of it's live audience. Hairspray's first half was entertaining but rough and didn't seem to hit it's pace until "Welcome to the 60s" about 40 minutes in. Jerry Mitchell recreated much of his iconic choreography from the Broadway show.

However it caught lightening in a bottle in it's last half hour once Jennifer Hudson went to church on "I Know Where I've Been", a song that is almost painfully still relevant.


"You Can't Stop the Beat"

This carried through to the finale "You Can't Stop the Beat", a song that probably felt mostly nostalgic in rehearsals a month ago, but now feels more like a blatant political statement that progress for gays and minorities can't be stopped.

Broadway vets Harvey Fierstein, Kristen Chenowith, and Martin Short delivered everything we knew they would. Dancing With the Stars favorite Dereck Hough was perfect as TV host Corny Collins, and surprised many with his singing as well as his dancing. And newcomer Maddie Baillio proved she was up to the task leading the show as Tracy.

Darren Criss did a pre-show and then served as audience host during the commercial breaks - a good idea that seemed awkwardly executed.

Side note for gay porn fans - Garrett Clayton who plays the teen heartthrob in Hairspray is also on screens as Brent Corrigan (aka James Franco and Christian Slater's boy toy) in the independent film King Cobra.

 
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Current: The Great Comet of 1812

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"Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812," with Josh Groban and Denee Benton in the title roles, is a luscious, 360-degree immersive experience that feels like being smothered in velvet. - Variety

Walk in to the Imperial Theater and you are in for a shock. There is no "stage" - just lights, people, tables, and playing spaces everywhere. The walls are swathed in vibrant red draperies and hung with gilded mirrors in ornate frames and reproductions of muddy 19th-century Russian landscapes. Dancers and band members in 19th century punk tatters are scattered about the stage, up the aisles, and at one point all the way to the balcony. No matter where you’re seated, you’re never far from the action because the action is all over the theater.

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Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 opened two weeks ago to very good reviews. It's a quirky, lovely self-referential opera cut from a chapter from Tolstoy's War and Peace. But the main draw is the Broadway debut of one Josh Groban. (Groban announced this week that he is extending his run in the show through July.)

The story centers around Natasha (Denee Benton), a beautiful ingenue visiting Moscow while she waits for her beloved fiance Andrey (Nicholas Belton) to return from the war. In a moment of indiscretion, she is seduced by the dashing (but already married) Anatole (Lucas Steele) and her position in society is ruined. Her only hope lies with Pierre (Groban), the lonely outsider whose love and compassion for Natasha may be the key to the renewal of his own soul.

While some reviewers complained that the characters were slight and the narrative stakes not all that high, everyone praised the production, music and performances, especially Benton and Groban.

Josh Groban - he of the mellifluous lung power so dynamic it could lift a tall ship's sails - is the marquee attraction of "Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812," the vivacious new musical that had its official opening Monday night at the Imperial Theatre. And as it turns out, he's neither an overbearing blowhard nor a star adrift. Rather, Groban proves to be a thoroughly winning team player in an offbeat pop opera that is ultimately more memorable for technical dexterity than emotional texture. - Peter Marks Washington Post

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Wicked

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“Overproduced, overblown, confusingly dark and laboriously ambitious jumble.” - Newsday
“The show’s twenty-two songs were written by Stephen Schwartz, and not one of them is memorable.” - The New Yorker
“Wicked does not, alas, speak hopefully for the future of the Broadway musical.” - New York Times

NBC/Universal Pictures has had some blockbuster movies in its history but its biggest money maker hasn't yet made it to the screen. In 2003 they put up most of the investment for Wicked on Broadway. And though it opened to so-so reviews (above), last month it passed 4 billion dollars in ticket sales worldwide.


That's Stephanie J. Block as Elphaba - she originated that part out-of-town, and then was replaced by Idina Menzel on Broadway. However, the producers gave Stephanie the part in the first National Tour where I saw her.

The National Tour (the Munchkinland Company) just arrived in town - I think this is the third visit. When I saw them on their first stop here, like the critics, I could see all the things that didn't quite fit together. For example, the tone shifts constantly and there seems to be a lot of gratuitous costumes and dancing when we could just be getting on with the story.

But what the creators got dead right was to shift the focus of the story to the two women, each with dreams but at the same time taking a different paths and each facing devastating costs.

When Elphaba closes the first act with "Defying Gravity" I felt the parallel with what I went through coming out, knowing that I would be rejected by family and friends and have to find my own path through the world.


Idina Menzel and Kristen Chenowith rehearse "For Good" with composer Stephen Schwartz and music director Michael Oremus.

Their first stroke of genius was casting Kristen Chenowith as Glinda. Kristen knew exactly what this girl was about from her Oklahoma suburban Bible belt roots. Once they saw what Kristen could do they expanded Glinda's part until she became equal to Elphaba. At the tryout in San Francisco, she tended to overwhelm the green girl - who the story was supposed to be about.

So when they went to New York the had to find someone who could stand up to Chenowith, which led them to Idina Menzel. Bingo! Idina was having a hard time finding roles to fit her huge performing style and this is exactly what balances the witches so beautifully.


Fieryo can be a lackluster part - just a Ken doll for the girls to fight over. But take note of the passion and sexuality original cast member Norbert Leo Butz brought to the role. After Norbert left they tended to cast the show with younger actors which lose some of the character's gravity (pardon the pun).

Norbert Leo Butz rounded out the love triangle. Although he was a bit over-qualified for the part, he found the way to play Fieryo as Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry IV: young man of intelligence who is choosing a lazier life style, but will be awakened back to his potential during the play.

Have you seen Wicked? How did it affect you?


Wicked: The Road To Broadway
This is a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Wicked from it's tryout in San Francisco to opening on Broadway.

Behind the Emerald Curtain
As part of the show's 10th anniversary, the Wicked team produced an in-depth look at the design, creative, and maintenance work that goes in to putting up Wicked on stage and keeping it running.
 

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Current: In Transit

InTransitPB400.jpg


In Transit is the modest a capella musical from the creators of Frozen and Pitch Perfect. Much of it takes place in the New York City subway system as we meet about 40 characters (some are interconnected) that are all in some stage of transition in their lives.



The cast performers multiple roles, but the main characters are Jane (Margo Seibert), an aspiring actress/temp on the verge of calling it quits on her dreams; Nate (James Snyder), a down-on-his-heels Wall Street guy who is discovering humility the hard way; his sister Ali (Erin Mackey), a young woman new to the city who is still obsessed with the guy who dumped her; and Jane’s agent Trent (Justin Guarini), who is unable to tell his fundamentalist Texan mother (Moya Angela) about his relationship with his “roommate” Steven (Telly Leung).

The music is phenomenal - after about ten minutes you forget there are no instruments - the sound is so full. This means that the performers (11 of them) are always singing whether they are on or off stage. The show employs a new state-of-the-art sound system and all the actors are wearing headsets with earphones. (A click-track is fed to their sets to keep them together and the music director cues them with their pitch - which the audience doesn't hear.) It's an amazing accomplishment and if you like groups like Pentatonix, or shows like Glee and The Sing Off, you will be in heaven.

However, most of the reviews have been tepid - praise for the performers and the a capella concept and score, but many not feeling all that engaged with the characters and the story.

"Every now and then, as yet another peppy cliché prances across the stage of the Circle in the Square Theater, you may pause to ponder the pioneering achievement of "In Transit," the singing portrait of New York City subway travelers, which opened on Sunday night. After all, what you're listening to often gleams with the blended polyphony of a good-size band. Yet not an instrument has been used in the performance of this a cappella musical, staged by the Tony-winning director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall. Everything we hear, as we are told in a (sung) preshow announcement, is created by human voices. Acknowledging this is rather like admiring the ingenuity that must have gone into a sentimental picture of a rainbow, perhaps with the Care Bears in the foreground, rendered entirely in bottle caps. It's definitely something to have achieved such visual specificity out of bottle caps. But it's still a picture of a rainbow with Care Bears." - Ben Brantley, The New York Times

You can hear a couple of the songs online and decide for yourself what you think of this new form of musical.

 
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Movies: La La Land

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When was the last time we had an original movie musical on the screen? Yesterday La La Land with Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone scooped up a ton of Golden Globe nominations. Thursday it opens across the US. Go see it and let me know what you think.


The film is written and directed by Damien Chazelle (Whiplash). Chazelle has been trying to get this made for years, but no studio was interested in a low-budget original musical, let alone a jazz musical. But after the success of Whiplash, producer Marc Platt (Wicked) came on board and increased the budget by about ten times saying "Good musicals don't come cheap." The original songs are composed by Chazelle's frequesnt collaborator and former college roommate, Justin Hurwitz with lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (writers of Dear Evan Hansen).

 

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Current: Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday at the Hudson with Gyllenhaal


Here is a bootleg audio of Gyllenhaal and Ashford doing the climactic number "Move On" last October.

In October I posted about the very well received concert version of Sunday in the Park with George featuring Jake Gyllenhaal. Yesterday the Ambassador Theater Group announced that Sunday will be the first production in the newly renovated Hudson Theater in February.

The October production was a special limited four night concert version with wonderful performances by Gyllenhaal and co-start Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford, as well as supporting work from stars like Phylicia Rashad and Zachary Levi. It was not put up as a pre-Broadway trial since Jake was already booked for a revival of the play Burn This in the spring of 2017. But right before the October performances of Sunday, the booking for Burn This fell through.

As I said in October, this role of the moody isolated painter is perfect for Jake. And his singing, while not at Mandy Patinkin levels is very good. This could easily sell out its limited run. (And Gyllenhaal could give Ben Platt of Dear Evan Hansen a run for that Best Actor in a Musical Tony award.)

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The Hudson Theater opened in 1903 with a Ethel Barrymore play. At that time the neighborhood was mostly residential, so the exterior is not unlike a typical brownstone. Inside, however, it was a Greco-Roman extravaganza, including friezes copied from Nero’s Golden House and the Baths of Titus over the proscenium and lining the walls of the lobby, respectively. Also, Tiffany glass covered the dome of the lobby ceiling and also faced the upper boxes and lower balcony.

The other story here is the rebirth of the historic Hudson Theater built in 1903 and once home to plays like Arsenic and Old Lace and Lillian Hellman’s Toys in the Attic. The Hudson's fate mirrored that of Broadway itself - when Times Square fell into squalor in the 1970's and fewer plays and musicals were produced the Hudson became a porn theater. In the days of Studio 54, it became a nightclub. In the 1990's it was scheduled for demolition, but was saved by New York preservation efforts and later sold along with a vacant lot next door which became the Millennium Broadway Hotel. The Hudson was preserved, but most of the seats were removed and it was used as a conference center for the hotel.

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The Hudson in the 1970s when the Theater District was not such a nice place to walk through.

Last year the Ambassador Theater Group, a British based theater owner, bought the Hudson and the Lyric to establish a foothold on Broadway. They began major renovations, a new more spacious seating plan, a restored lobby and high tech upgrades backstage to accommodate modern sets and projections. With a backup of productions wanting to come to Broadway, people have been speculating what would come in as the debut attraction, and now we know.

HudsonTodayCropped.jpg


The Hudson today getting ready for a new generation of opening night patrons.
 

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Rent

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When New York Theater Workshop prepared to debut a rock version of La Bohème set around the East Village in the late 1980's by unknown composer Jonathon Larson, I'm sure the expectations were modest. Certainly they had no idea that they were birthing a Broadway juggernaut that would run for more than 5000 performances and changed the way people experienced and interacted with a show.

Jonathon's cast of unknowns are now television and theater stars: Idinia Menzel, Taye Diggs, Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Daphne Rubin-Vega and Jesse L. Martin.

Then the unthinkable happened. On the morning of the first scheduled public performance of his new musical, Jonathon Larson collapsed in his apartment from a brain aneurysm and died. As word got around, the cast and crew gathered at the theater in shock. New York Theater Workshop decided to cancel the performance. In it's place director Michael Grief invited friends and family to gather at the theater for a read through of the show. Half way through the emotional evening, the cast set aside the chairs and scripts and performed the remainder of the show full out, letting the work speak for it's creator.

It is impossible now to separate the message of Rent from the tragedy of its creator. Songs like "No Day But Today" and "On Song Glory" seem to be bequeathed to the audience from an author that knew he had just a short time to leave something behind.


No Day But Today - The Story of Rent is Jonathon Larson's story. This documentary was made for the Rent movie DVD.

The show sold out it's short off-Broadway run in January 1996. The producers wanted to keep that cast and production together and go directly to Broadway - but the only available theater was the Nederlander - a Broadway house that had fallen into disrepair was was current in the middle of a significant renovation. The unfinished theater was actually the perfect environment for the rock musical set in derelict Alphabet City neighborhood.

The show became a mission for it's cast and crew, not just a gig, and the audience responded. Boy, did they ever. In order to make sure that young people could get in to see this show about their lives, the show reserved seats in the front rows for a $20 a seat lottery. Fans stood in line for hours and returned over and over again and became known as the Rent-heads.


Rare footage of the original Broadway cast recorded for use in TV promo stories.

Rent, like previous mega-successful shows such as A Chorus Line, became a farm club for Broadway talent. Veterans from the both the New York and touring companies now open new musicals. Norbet Leo Butz took over the role of Roger when Adam Pascal left the cast. Neil Patrick Harris played Mark in the first National Tour. In the Anniversary company (below) Roger is played by Will Chase (later seen in Smash on TV and now in Something Rotten! on Broadway) and Mark is played by Adam Kantor who is currently Motel the tailor in Fiddler on the Roof.


This is the full show - so if you've never seen it here is your chance. This is the 20th Anniversary Broadway company.
 

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Broadway 2016-2017 Season: Intermission

I'm going to have to take off for the holidays, but before I do I just wanted to sum up what's happening on Broadway - since I haven't done an overall look since the season really got going in September.

The Season So Far

The Broadway season is halfway over and New York has two new hits and a handful of strong shows to add to the mix of long runs.

The Hits
Usually in the fall you get a parade of revivals. But the surprise this year is that the two hits are two very original and creative works. Dear Evan Hansen is a clear critical and audience success – quite an accomplishment because it breaks all the usual expectations: no star, no pre-sold title, no familiar songs. To quote the old Smith Barney commercial, it came by its success the old-fashioned way – it earned it.

The second big hit is The Great Comet of 1812. It definitely has a star (Josh Groban) though not one that had ever led a musical before. But Groban also earned his reviews with hard work and taking what is essentially a character part – a past-his-prime, bearded, paunchy shell of man seeking redemption. Comet has become an almost impossible ticket to get and regularly pulls in what I call “Lion King” numbers – taking in nearly $1 million a week.

Behind the two big winners is one new show and two revivals – A Bronx Tale, Cats and Falsettos, are all doing well, if not quite selling out. Falsettos is a limited run (star Christian Borle has to leave mid-January to get ready to open Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in April). That should keep the demand for tickets high for the next six weeks. Cats could probably run another couple of years doing its current 70% capacity business – there is never a dearth of foreign tourists that will shell out the bucks for the kitty cat spectacle.

The Misses
Pulling up the rear, Holiday Inn is doing OK, but may face hard times during the traditionally bleak post-Christmas season. It may be a struggle keeping it going until the Tony Awards. In Transit, I’m afraid is probably not long for this earth. It was struggling to fill half its small house before it opened and those reviews aren’t likely to boost business. With several shows ready to bribe theater owners to get an empty house, they may not last into February.

What's Coming Up in the Spring?

Although an additional show may sneak in if In Transit closes, the rest of season seems pretty well set (although anything can fall apart at any moment - so this list is just a snapshot of current intentions). But here's the musicals coming up in the second half of the season.

  • Sunset Boulevard - (February) - Glenn Close comes back as Norma Desmond in this concert presentation that played in London back in March.
  • Sunday in the Park with George - (February) - Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford reprise the concert version they did in October.
  • Come From Away - (March) - A moving story about all the international flights forced to land in a small Canadian town on 9/11 and local people who put them up and took care of them over those anxious days.
  • Miss Saigon - (March) - The 2014 Cameron Mackintosh revival from London is coming back to the Broadway theater where it first played 20 years ago.
  • Amelie - (April) - Original musical by Dan Messe based on the 2001 film about a waitress with a wild imagination. This just opened at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles last week and stars former Hamilton leading lady Phillipa Soo.
  • War Paint - (April) - Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole! Musical based on the rivalry of cosmetics titans Helena Rubenstein (LuPone) and Elizabeth Arden (Ebersole). It played in Chicago this summer is now undergoing rewrites before starting rehearsals in the new year.
  • Groundhog Day - (April) - Music by Matilda writer Tim Minchin with a script by the original screenwriter Danny Rubin. This was a hit in London last year and is coming over with its star, Broadway's Andy Karl intact.
  • Hello, Dolly! - (April) - Bette Midler. Need I say more?
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - (April) - This was also a hit in London last year, but with a new star - Christian Borle as Willy Wonka.
  • Anastasia - (April) - Adaption of the animated musical with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, book by Terrence McNally. Stars Ramin Karimloo and Christy Altomare as the last surviving member of the Russian royal family.
  • Bandstand - (April) - Laura Osnes and Corey Cott in this “big-band musical” which played last year at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. With music by Richard Oberacker and book and lyrics by Robert Taylor it chronicles a mismatched band of WWII veterans who join forces to compete in a radio contest with dreams of stardom.

I have to say that this is a hell of an impressive list. Sunset, Saigon, Groundhog Day and Charlie are all West End hits that are sure to replicate that success here. Dolly seems impossible to screw up. Sunday is a known quantity having just been at Lincoln Center in October.

War Paint, Come from Away and Bandstand got fairly solid reviews out of town and are being improved. That just leaves Amelie and Anastasia as unknown quantities. It you were ever thinking of planning a theater trip to New York, March / April / May could be the ideal time to do it.
 

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Broadway Review 2016-2017

I'm going to have to take off for the holidays, but before I do I just wanted to sum up what's happening on Broadway - since I haven't done an overall look since the season really got going in September.

The Season So Far

The Broadway season is halfway over and New York has two new hits and a handful of strong shows to add to the mix of long runs.

The Hits
Usually in the fall you get a parade of revivals. But the surprise this year is that the two hits are two very original and creative works. Dear Evan Hansen is a clear critical and audience success – quite an accomplishment because it breaks all the usual expectations: no star, no pre-sold title, no familiar songs. To quote the old Smith Barney commercial, it came by its success the old-fashioned way – it earned it.

The second big hit is The Great Comet of 1812. It definitely has a star (Josh Groban) though not one that had ever led a musical before. But Groban also earned his reviews with hard work and taking what is essentially a character part – a past-his-prime, bearded, paunchy shell of man seeking redemption. Comet has become an almost impossible ticket to get and regularly pulls in what I call “Lion King” numbers – taking in nearly $1 million a week.

Behind the two big winners is one new show and two revivals – A Bronx Tale, Cats and Falsettos, are all doing well, if not quite selling out. Falsettos is a limited run (star Christian Borle has to leave mid-January to get ready to open Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in April). That should keep the demand for tickets high for the next six weeks. Cats could probably run another couple of years doing its current 70% capacity business – there is never a dearth of foreign tourists that will shell out the bucks for the kitty cat spectacle.

The Misses
Pulling up the rear, Holiday Inn is doing OK, but may face hard times during the traditionally bleak post-Christmas season. It may be a struggle keeping it going until the Tony Awards. In Transit, I’m afraid is probably not long for this earth. It was struggling to fill half its small house before it opened and those reviews aren’t likely to boost business. With several shows ready to bribe theater owners to get an empty house, they may not last into February.

What's Coming Up in the Spring?

Although an additional show may sneak in if In Transit closes, the rest of season seems pretty well set (although anything can fall apart at any moment - so this list is just a snapshot of current intentions). But here's the musicals coming up in the second half of the season.

  • Sunset Boulevard - (February) - Glenn Close comes back as Norma Desmond in this concert presentation that played in London back in March.
  • Sunday in the Park with George - (February) - Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford reprise the concert version they did in October.
  • Come From Away - (March) - A moving story about all the international flights forced to land in a small Canadian town on 9/11 and local people who put them up and took care of them over those anxious days.
  • Miss Saigon - (March) - The 2014 Cameron Mackintosh revival from London is coming back to the Broadway theater where it first played 20 years ago.
  • Amelie - (April) - Original musical by Dan Messe based on the 2001 film about a waitress with a wild imagination. This just opened at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles last week and stars former Hamilton leading lady Phillipa Soo.
  • War Paint - (April) - Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole! Musical based on the rivalry of cosmetics titans Helena Rubenstein (LuPone) and Elizabeth Arden (Ebersole). It played in Chicago this summer is now undergoing rewrites before starting rehearsals in the new year.
  • Groundhog Day - (April) - Music by Matilda writer Tim Minchin with a script by the original screenwriter Danny Rubin. This was a hit in London last year and is coming over with its star, Broadway's Andy Karl intact.
  • Hello, Dolly! - (April) - Bette Midler. Need I say more?
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - (April) - This was also a hit in London last year, but with a new star - Christian Borle as Willy Wonka.
  • Anastasia - (April) - Adaption of the animated musical with music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, book by Terrence McNally. Stars Ramin Karimloo and Christy Altomare as the last surviving member of the Russian royal family.
  • Bandstand - (April) - Laura Osnes and Corey Cott in this “big-band musical” which played last year at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. With music by Richard Oberacker and book and lyrics by Robert Taylor it chronicles a mismatched band of WWII veterans who join forces to compete in a radio contest with dreams of stardom.

I have to say that this is a hell of an impressive list. Sunset, Saigon, Groundhog Day and Charlie are all West End hits that are sure to replicate that success here. Dolly seems impossible to screw up. Sunday is a known quantity having just been at Lincoln Center in October.

War Paint, Come from Away and Bandstand got fairly solid reviews out of town and are being improved. That just leaves Amelie and Anastasia as unknown quantities. It you were ever thinking of planning a theater trip to New York, March / April / May could be the ideal time to do it.

Thank you TopDog for this wonderful review of whats to come on Broadway.
 

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Christmas

Merry Christmas, all! A little holiday music from a Broadway favorite.


Background: OK, this wasn't recorded at Christmas - it was mid June 1967 for a free concert in New York's Central Park. Streisand was busy filming Funny Girl in California, but the film let her slip away for this previous commitment. She flew overnight Thursday for rehearsals on Friday that went late into the night. (Ah! Here's a holiday connection - the cover for Barbra Streisand - A Christmas Album was taken at the Friday night rehearsal!)

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Saturday, it rained all afternoon - so Barbra and the musicians never got a sound check. It started clearing around 6pm so the technicians moved in and set up seven huge color television cameras along with the cables, tracks, and ramps. At 9:45pm, the director gave the signal, and conductor Mort Lindsey started his overture and Barbra appeared and 135,000 fans roared in approval.

The show was taped for a CBS television special that aired a year later, close to the release of the movie Funny Girl.
 
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Funny Girl

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This all started with a conversation I had with a friend about the TV show (from five years ago) Smash. Smash was about the process of putting up a Broadway musical from start to finish. The fictional musical in the TV show was Bombshell! about the life of Marilyn Monroe.

The idea for the TV show came from Garson Kanin's trashy 1980 novel Smash - also about mounting a musical based on obscure 1920's vaudeville performer Nora Bayes. But Kanin was only using Bayes as a stand-in so he could draw on his actual experiences directing the 1964 musical Funny Girl.

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So, if you know Smash you can pick out the similar details, but even if you don't here is an abbreviated (but annotated) look at how the sausage gets made in the business of show.

If a Girl Isn't Pretty

Funny Girl was a tortured production - the brain child of its producer Ray Stark, who was married to Fanny Brice's daughter. He was a successful B-movie producer who wanted to do a film musical based on his famous mother-in-law. He saw a Broadway musical as a cheaper first step to making that happen. Around 1961 he started getting articles in the trade papers that the his new show would soon be coming.

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Fanny Brice started as a singer but gained fame as a comic in the Zigfeld Follies. She went on to have a huge career in radio - most famous for her character of "Baby Snooks".

Since Stark was a movie producer with no theater experience (or union contracts), he partnered with the number one Broadway producer: David Merrick.

Ray Stark wanted a star in the role of Fanny and offered it to Anne Bancroft. But composer Jule Styne wanted the relatively unknown Barbra Streisand in the part. He deliberately wrote songs Bancroft couldn't sing.

After much bickering and an all-out year and a half campaign, Streisand's manager, Marty Erlichman, got all the entertainment columns talking about how perfect newcomer Barbra would be. She finally got the part in July 1963. Of course, after she signed, everyone pretended like she was the first choice.

The definitive version of this well-known song for me is the movie version; there were 14 versions before Streisand and the music director were satisfied.

Find Yourself a Director

She was hired by Stark, Merrick, and Jerome Robbins who was set to direct. That summer he was working with the creative team on script changes, sets, and staging ideas. But Robbins & David Merrick clashed constantly, and finally Robbins simply left town. He didn't tell anyone where he was - he just left and dropped off the grid.

Bob Fosse was brought in as replacement to get the show up for the Boston preview. However, Robbins threatened to sue if they used any of his ideas or choreography in the show. That meant that pretty much everything that had already been prepared had to be thrown out.

Jule Styne was adamant that the score be 100% original - which meant avoiding songs closely identified with Fanny Brice like "Second Hand Rose" and "My Man". (He won that argument for the Broadway show, but if you've seen the movie you know those songs went back in.)

Fosse went to work with the principals, and brought in Carol Haney as choreographer to make the work go faster. He was well respected by Barbra and the ensemble and worked hard to eliminate the Jerome Robbins material. But he hadn't yet signed a contract, and Ray Stark was nickel and diming his agent in negotiations. Ultimately, Fosse felt he couldn't trust Stark, so he bailed out.

Enter Garson Kanin, along with his wife Ruth Gordon. Kanin had to get the show up out of town. His style was the complete opposite of Robbins and Fosse - Kanin was a gentle man who would listen patiently and then consider his choices. This made some happy, but Streisand preferred the more forceful style of her previous directors, and setting a pattern that would continue throughout her career, took it upon herself to make decisions when Kanin dallied, or tried to placate all sides.

Barbra Streisand cut the single for "People" before the show went out-of-town, and it became her first Top 10 single.

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Lainie Kazan was a veteran chorus girl who desperately wanted the part of Fanny. She auditioned several times for Robbins and Stark, but wasn't surprised when the part went to Streisand. Still, Ray Stark pursued the buxom brunette for the ensemble, even inviting her to his hotel room for some personal negotiations. Kazan was reluctant to go back to the chorus, but Stark sweetened the deal by making her an employee of his production company (giving her two paychecks), free singing and acting coaches, and making her Barbra's understudy.

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Lanie Kazan (left) at the recording session for Funny Girl. Barbra was not happy with Ray Stark's protege. Kazan fell in love with Barbra's pianist and arranger Peter Daniels. That was the end of Daniels working for Streisand. When Lanie alerted the press that she would be going on for Streisand, Barbra had her fired when she returned.

Meanwhile David Merrick's other show that season was Hello, Dolly!. (Here is a clip from the 1967 Pearl Bailey company that shows off Gower Champoins brilliant staging.) Dolly was premiering out-of-town in Philadelphia. Stark felt that Merrick was betting against Funny Girl and they came to a parting of the ways. Merrick left the production.

Out of Town

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Ah, the glamour of the out-of-town tryout. This is typical - actors on the floor with the writer and stage manager trying to insert new pages into the script so changes can go in that night's performance. From left to right: Sydney Chaplin (Arnstein), Isobel Lennart (Writer), Barbra Streisand (Fanny), Richard Evans (Stage Manager)

Funny Girl opened during a blizzard in Boston to somewhat poor reviews (but raves for Streisand). Still, she was enough to put butts in seats and they nearly sold out. However, the show was also three and a half hours long. They started making cuts and replacing numbers (a very expensive proposition - throwing out orchestrations, sets, and costumes) driving everyone crazy, especially choreographer Haney. Stark decided he couldn't bring the show into New York in that condition, so he postponed the opening, and then scheduled a second out-of-town tryout in Philadelphia.

Despite the creaky script, Funny Girl ran on the strength of it's star and it's music. This is audio from one of Barbra's final performances on Broadway.

Plenty of hanky-panky went on backstage, most notably between Streisand and her co-star Sydney Chaplin.

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Sydney Chaplin (son of Charlie Chaplin) and Barbra had a passionate affair out-of-town with the show. But the glowing notices for Streisand and lukewarm reviews for Chaplin pretty much killed that relationship. (And of course, both were married to other people.) By the time the show opened in New York, the love had turned into a vicious battle. The future Edith Bunker, Jean Stapleton is between them in the photo.

By the end of the Boston run Stark finally lost faith in Garson Kanin to fix the troubled show, and so he went back to Jerome Robbins on bended knee and with open wallet to beg for help. Robbins agreed. He met the cast in Philadelphia and began revisions there.

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Supervised By Jerome Robbins

After Philadelphia the show went in to rehearsal at the Winter Garden theater. They had three weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of previews as Robbins reformed the show. Everyone who was not named Barbra Streisand found their roles reduced or even eliminated. While Carol Haney was still officially the choreographer, her services were no longer required and much of her work was replaced by Jerome Robbins numbers. Her alcoholism got worse, and within three months she was dead.

After half a dozen postponements (a Broadway record, until Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark), Funny Girl opened with positive to mixed reviews. In the end it was considerably better than it was out-of-town. The first act was always pretty strong watching Fanny rise to success. The second act is just the break-up of the Arnstein marriage, and it isn't much different than anyone else's divorce. All of Nick's Act 2 songs were cut. The thing that makes the final act bearable is the concentration of Barbra Streisand numbers.

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From left to right: Ray Stark (Producer), Isobel Lennart (Writer), Barbra Streisand, Jule Styne (Composer), Jerome Robbins (Director), Bob Merrill (Lyrics)

Kanin was still in the program as the director and Chaney as choreographer, while the production was listed as being "under the supervision of Jerome Robbins".

Tony Awards

Ray Stark campaigned hard for his show, but he was up against two of the best mid-century book/music packages ever: Dolly and She Loves Me. Clearly the main competition, especially for Streisand was Dolly. Both shows had hit songs, and had shared a producer. Behind the scenes Funny Girl lyricist Bob Merrill passed on a rejected lyric for a song he had written for the Fosse version of his show over to friend Jerry Herman who used it to open Dolly's second act: "Elegance". On the big night Dolly took everything. Even Barbra couldn't prevail over Carol Channing.

Revival?

Funny Girl only worked in 1964 by merging the characters of Fanny Brice and Barbra Streisand in the script. Anyone taking on the role today is has two ghosts following her. Even so, there is a feeling out here 50 years later that it is time to revisit and perhaps revise the material.


In 2012 Bartlett Sher, who has recently helmed revivals of Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I, and South Pacific, was starting rehearsals for a new Funny Girl revival for Broadway. Unfortunately, a big investor had to withdraw, beaten back by the credit crunch and no new partner could be found.

This year two successful revivals appeared. The first in London with Sheridan Smith in the lead role. That show just completed it's run and is about to start a UK tour. The second was at North Shore Music Theater with Shoshana Bean as Fanny. They made some structural alterations in the book that look interesting, including having Fanny surrounded by the "ghosts" of her past (Eddie Ryan, Mrs. Strakosh, Vera the showgirl) that initiate the flashbacks. (Shades of Follies.)

I've done Funny Girl myself and I can attest first hand that it is still a fun audience-pleasing show with a powerful score. But it has no gravity to it, and retains only the barest outlines of the Fanny Brice Story on which it is supposedly based. It would probably need a strong director like Bartlett Sher or Sam Mendes to make us feel like the story matters again.

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For more information

Really? You want more information? You're worse than I am. OK - you want it, I got it.

 
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Movies: Carousel


Tonight and next Wednesday (January 8 & 11) Fathom events is presenting a special showing of the restored 60th Anniversary print of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Carousel in movie theaters across the US. Check your local listings or the Fathom Web Site for times and theaters.

The Classic Film & TV Cafe has a good write-up on the history of the making of this classic film adaption.

The Genius of Rodgers and Hammerstein: Carousel

It is impossible to describe Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel without using the word “haunting”. Considered by most critics and admirers to be their darkest musical, Carousel is a blend of beautiful and memorable music, a story of love unspoken, feelings unexpressed, disappointment, joy and death. ..

Originally, the part of Billy Bigelow was to be played by Frank Sinatra... He left the production after learning that for the technique of Cinemascope each scene would have to be filmed twice. McRae was hired and filming continued. Interestingly, immediately after Sinatra’s departure, the filming process was changed and the need for that technique was no longer necessary...

The part of Julie was originally offered to Judy Garland... However, that never materialized, and popular Shirley Jones took over...

The New York Post has a 2014 article with a different take on why Frank Sinatra left the picture.

Here is a clip from the ballet sequence featuring Jacques d'Amboise - a favorite dancer of mine who after his professional ballet career founded the National Dance Institute which teaches dance to New York City School kids.


UPDATE January 9 2017

I saw the movie tonight and the first thing you notice is that the film very faithfully follows the stage play. There is some additional setup material in "heaven" at the beginning, and a couple of minor songs are cut. But other than that it is word for word the stage musical you may have seen or even done in high school.

The music is one of R&H's best scores, and is under the supervision of the legendary Alfred Newman at 20th Century Fox. Alongside Newman is the top Hollywood choral arranger and conductor, Ken Darby who would later move to Warner Brothers assemble the voices for My Fair Lady, Camelot, and Finian's Rainbow. Every piece of music sounds glorious, especially the big numbers "June is Bustin' Out All Over", "The Carousel Waltz" and "What's the Use of Wonderin'". All the singing is top notch - it's hard to beat Shirley Jones and Gordon McRea who repeat their paring from Oklahoma!.

However, the story is tough to pull off. The dramatic death scene does not come at the end, like in West Side Story - but about 3/4 of the way through the picture. The action then goes back up to heaven before returning back to earth for the last two scenes. The key to making this all work is you have to be rooting for Billy Bigelow, and for me, Gordon McRea doesn't have the acting ability to give the anti-hero a sympathetic side. I watched those last 20 minutes enjoying the music and the final ballet - but somewhat detached from the story.

Still, you have to give Mr. McRea his due - he was dropped into the film with no preparation whatsoever. Frank Sinatra worked with the director and recorded all his songs with Shirley Jones, then abandoned the project on the first day of location filming in Maine. The producers scrambled for a replacement, and within a few days Gordon was filming with the company - so my hat is off to him and what he was able to pull off.

The other disappointment in the film is that it looks like it had half the budget of its predecessor, Oklahoma!. That film looked like it was out on the prairie - and the color and cinematography was first rate. Carousel doesn't look all that good on location, and it really looks bad once they start substituting sound stage sets for the outdoor scenes. The worst example is the Bench Scene where Billy and Julie sing "If I Loved You" - we spend almost 20 minutes on a tiny corner of a set - it looks like it was a TV studio. (Really! I saw better sets on The Sound of Music Live on NBC a few years ago.)

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Great singing; cheap set. Billy Bigelow (Gordon McRea) and Julie Jordan (Shirley Jones) fall in love with the help of Rodgers & Hammerstein in the "Bench Scene" from Carousel.

Shirley Jones mentions in an interview that preceded the picture that they had no rehearsal time - another sign of a cut budget. In contrast, both the 1965 Sound of Music, Chicago in 2002 and this year's La La Land rehearsed for a month before filming. You need that extra time on a musical to get everyone - actors, dancers, sets, cameras - all on the same page before the film rolls.

While it's not a great piece of film-making, it is still a very good production of the play. It's hard to keep from imagining what this would have been like with Frank Sinatra playing Billy, but as Julie Jordan sings: "What's the use of Wonderin'?".
 
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TV: Submissions Only

Ever wanted to experience the life of working in the theater in New York? Submissions Only is a tiny independent web sit-com that brought a funny but realistic take on the ups and downs of making a career in show business.


In three seasons the web series went behind the scenes of the life of professional actors. Throughout the web-series, we follow the misadventures of Penny and her work and love life. The shows include the very real process of trying to cast and put up a show and includes cameos by working Broadway stars like Audra McDonald, Kelli O'Hara, Joel Grey, and Linda Lavin.

  • Penny Reilly (Kate Wetherhead) is a working New York actress, but between jobs.
  • Tim Trull (Colin Hanlon) is her best friend - a casting director who gives her a job as a reader in his auditions while she looks for her next show.
  • Steven Ferrell (Stephen Bienskie) is Penny's agent and Tim's ex-boyfriend
  • Aaron Miller (Santino Fontana) is a talented but blasé actor, and Penny's occasional love interest
  • Gail Liner (Lindsay Nicole Chambers) is Tim's secretary, who is disdainful of nearly everyone, including Tim
  • Cameron Dante (Max von Essen) is a former actor and becomes Steven's boyfriend
  • Linda Avery (Anne L. Nathan) is a lascivious director who doesn't realize that most of the men she flirts with are gay

Just like the series Six Feet Under started each episode with a death, Submissions Only starts each episode with an audition - usually involving a celebrity guest star.


A typical opening audtion, this one features four time Tony winner Audra MacDonald.

The series also created it's own world of plays and musicals that the characters work on including Mean Girls: The Musical, the psycho-musical Jeremy's Fort, and the play Iron Dog and an unnamed show about the invention of the Snuggie. In addition, most episodes feature at least one original song sung by the characters or played in the background.

Kate Weatherhead and Andrew Keenan-Bolger conceived the series when they were on tour, bored, and looking for something more creative to do. Sticking with the mantra "write what you know" they came up with a backstage sit-com built around the New York casting and audition process. Kate plays Penny who the show follows as she moves in and out of work. She also wrote the episodes. Andrew directed and edited the shows, and also played a small recurring role as an assistant to a casting director who is more successful than Penny's friend, Tim.

Since the web series wrapped they have gone on to other projects including a series of books aimed at middle-school theater nerds, the Jack & Louisa series.


Kate Weatherhead and Andrew Keenan-Bolger created the series. Kate was a featured actress in Legally Blond and Andrew a featured actor in Mary Poppins, Newsies, and Tuck Everlasting.

The first season of Submissions Only was done on a shoestring budget, calling in a lot of favors from friends. The episodes are short and the series starts to find it's balance around the fourth episode.

However, the second and third seasons sparkle from beginning to end. BroadwayWorld.com partnered with them the second season and a Kickstarter campaign boosted the budget. In the third season Broadway producer Kevin McCollum came on board and the quality went up again.

If you are looking for some free entertainment while stuck inside by blustery winter weather or a subway strike, this show is a theater nerd's paradise.

 
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TV: James Cordon

James Cordon and Neil Patrick Harris have a "Broadway Riff-Off". How many tunes can you identify?

 

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I recognized only one song: ''Sit down, you're rocking the boat'' from Guys and Dolls. ;)

Yeah - great song! Here is the version done by Richard Eyere for London's National Theater. I love the minimalist choreography - I could teach this to a high school and they would look just as great.

 
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