Everything I Know I Learned from Musicals

Is Paulo Szot Gay?

I've been getting a lot of search activity recently from people wondering whether South Pacific star and Tony Award nominee Paulo Szot is gay.

I have no idea.

Did Ben Brantley Like It? Check This Site

Proposition #1: It's fun to hate Ben Brantley. There's something about the position of lead drama critic at the New York Times that seems to invite scorn, but there's also something about Brantley himself that makes him that much easier to hate. I mean, check out his NYT headshot. This is the photo that he chose to portray himself to his reading public. Even so, he's the most powerful theater critic in the country, and whether he's spot-on or way off base, what he says can have a huge impact on the success of a particular show.

Proposition #2: Yeah, Brantley's powerful, but that doesn't mean I want to read his every word in order to find out whether he liked the show. Also, he's not the only theater critic out there, and it's always fruitful to seek out a variety of opinions rather than relying on one dyspeptic scribe. Wouldn't it be great if there was a Web site that collected the opinions of all the different drama critics into one easy-to-understand format? Kind of like what Metacritic does for movies, books, DVDs, and video games.

Well, now there is. It's called www.didhelikeit.com. The site collects the available reviews from the major critics and represents the basic upshot for each with a simple graphic element -- the Ben-ometer, modeled after old Benny boy. The site appears to be a work in progress: the site's creator apparently has plans to eventually include Off-Broadway shows as well. But it's a valiant effort overall, and a welcome addition to my list of must-see theater sites.

What to Do When You Miss Curtain Time

How annoying is this?

Last weekend, I was heading down to New York City for one of my regular theater weekends. I don't usually see shows on Friday night, mostly because I don't want to contend with Friday-night traffic. But I was using a discount code to see The Color Purple, and it wasn't good for Saturdays. So I figured I'd break with tradition and get a ticket for Friday night. I mean, how bad could the traffic be?

Bad. Really really bad. I left Boston 1:30 PM, and I didn't make it to New Rochelle until 6:30 PM, which is bad enough. But then it took me TWO AND A HALF HOURS to get from New Rochelle to the George Washington Bridge (which should only really take about 20 minutes), only to find out that the GWB doesn't go into Manhattan from route 95, it goes to New Jersey.

Grrrr...

Needless to say, I missed my Friday night show, which was actually to be my first visit to The Color Purple. I had heard great things about Fantasia Barrino, so I was kinda looking forward to it. It was also to be my first time ever in the Broadway Theater, which I was actually a bit more excited about than seeing the show. There are only four Broadway theaters that I've never been in -- the Lyceum, the Longacre, the Winter Garden, and the Broadway -- and I was looking forward to crossing that last one off my list.

Of course, as for missing curtain time, I was pissed, and I cursed the theater gods repeatedly from the front seat of my Jetta. But then I remembered an article that I read on Playbill.com: a recent Ask Playbill column focused on the issue of what you can do when you miss a show that you have tickets for. It's called "past dating," it's not really an official policy, and it varies from theater to theater. For some shows, you can call the theater on the day of the performance and see if the show is sold out. If not, you might be able to snag a ticket.

I called Ticketmaster and told them my tale of whoa, and they mentioned a similar policy. I told them I come from out of town and that I'd really rather have a set date. So they told me to write a letter and explain my situation, and to give a number of alternate dates when I could see the show, as long as those dates are on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Given that the official policy is "no refunds or exchanges," I think that such courtesy arrangements are more than fair. They don't have to replace my ticket, so the fact that I will need to see the show on a weekday seems a minor inconvenience at best.

So, if you should ever get caught in traffic on a rainy Friday afternoon, or if your dog starts barfing his brains out on a show night, don't despair. Depending on the show that you have tickets for, you might still be able to see the show at a later date. If it's a big hit like Jersey Boys or Wicked, it might be much much later. But it's better than eating a $120 loss.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Les Miserables?

Saw the following Google link while reading another theater blog:

Les Miserables
Lloyd Webber's Sensational Classic
Tickets to the Hit Broadway Show
www.eazydealz.com

Um...shouldn't someone selling tickets to a show know who actually wrote the damn thing? I'm sure that over the years there have been many people sans clue who have erroneously assumed that Andrew Lloyd Webber was responsible for every over-bloated blockbuster to hit Broadway in the 1980s.

But even the Broadway dilettante could tell you that Les Miserables is the work of Claude-Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil, with English lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer. As far as I know, the only connection Lloyd Webber has to Les Miserables is that the show played the Palace Theater in London, which Lloyd Webber happens to own.

But to give credit where it's due, I must point out that EasyDealz.com at least got Andrew Lloyd Webber's last name right: it's "Lloyd Webber," not "Webber," as many of my Boston Conservatory students refer to him in their papers and essays that skewer the man's work.

Cat Destroys Phantom 2 Score

It sounds like something out of The Onion, but apparently, Andrew Lloyd Webber's six-month-old cat Otto has managed to delete the entire score to the composer's proposed sequel to Phantom of the Opera. Lloyd Webber had apparently programmed the score into the memory of his electronic grand piano, and a frisky Otto somehow pressed the right buttons to delete the whole damned thing.

So the cats are striking back at the phantom, now that the latter has surpassed the former.

Poetic justice? A message from the gods? You be the judge.

Happy Liza Doolittle Day!

ELIZA
One day I'll be famous!
I'll be proper and prim!
Go to Saint James so often I will call it Saint Jim.
One evening the King will say,
"Oh Liza, old thing,
I want all of England your praises to sing."

KING
"Next week, on the twentieth of May,
I proclaim Liza Doolittle Day!
All the people will celebrate the glory of you,
And whatever you wish and want
I gladly will do."

ELIZA
"Thanks a lot, King," says I, in a manner well bred. But all I want is 'enry 'iggins 'ead!"

From "Just You Wait," My Fair Lady

Happy Liza Doolittle Day, everyone!

Ben Brantley and I Agree: Film at Eleven

Ben Brantley and I agreed on both Legally Blonde and 110 in the Shade.

I'm frightened, Auntie Em, I'm frightened.

Brantley and I were in almost complete accord on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the above productions. I found Legally Blonde blunt and shrill, as did he. And he thought the performances were the best thing in the Roundabout revival of 110 in the Shade, which opened last night at Studio 54. He positively, and justifiably, gushed about the divine Audra McDonald. He also found Steve Kazee as Starbuck underwhelming, while he characterized Christopher Innvar's performance as File as "smoldering."

What's more, we came very close to agreeing on the merits of LoveMusik, which Brantley found "tedious" and "unmissable." Nice as it is to have my views validated by so august a news outlet as the New York Times, I'm a little uncomfortable with being consistently in the same camp as Brantley. 

Hmm...maybe Brantley's not such a bad critic after all. Because the true mark of someone's professional quality is to what extent that person reinforces one's personal views and prejudices.

Right?

Spamalot World Record

There's nothing like a good publicity stunt.

Last March, the producers of the hit Broadway version of Spamalot gathered 1,789 Monty Python fans together in New York's Shubert Alley to create what was then the biggest-ever, and presumably the first-ever, all-coconut orchestra.

Participants banged together empty halves of coconut shells, an homage to the preferred mode of transportation in the classic "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," to the tune of "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." (Which is actually from "Life of Brian," but I digress.)

In a case of friendly oneupmanship, members of the London production amassed 5,567 coconut-wielding enthusiasts in London's Trafalgar Square, handily breaking the world record. Original Python members Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam were on hand to conduct the proceedings.

The event got tons of press. At this writing, Google lists about 339,000 Internet references to the event. Even NPR included a blurb on the event on Monday's "All Things Considered."

As I've posted before, I'm a huge Monty Python fan, so I was ecstatic when I heard about Spamalot. But I was a bit disappointed in the actual show. It's a tremendous amount of fun, but it's not great musical theater. The book and the staging are hysterical, but the score is just awful: puerile melodies, bad scansion, too much assonance. It works in the theater, but it doesn't hold up on repeated listenings.

But I'm glad that the show has become and international hit. Currently there are productions on in New York, London, Las Vegas, as well as a U.S. touring production. Blockbusters tend raise the profile of musical theater in the eyes of potential ticket buyers, and a rising tide, to a certain extent, lifts all boats.

The Death of Lloyd Webber?

In class the other day, I was defending Andrew Lloyd Webber to my students, as I always do at this point in the course. For me, Lloyd Webber is a double-edged sword: yes his shows are of often questionable quality, but there's no denying the influence he has over the general theater-going public.

Each year, I ask my students to raise their hands if the first professional show they ever saw was a Disney show or an Andrew Lloyd Webber show, and usually about 95% of them do so. Say what you want about the spectacle-mongers, they've certainly brought a new generation of theater queens to the fore.

On the heels of that hand-raising exercise, someone sent me this YouTube clip lampooning Andrew Lloyd Webber, which had me in hysterics. Check it out.

Yeah, it's pretty mean. Sometimes, funny hurts.

April Makes Such Fools of Us All

OK, I almost bought this.

On Sunday, April 1st, I read an item on BroadwayWorld.com about a proposed TV reality show to cast an upcoming revival of The Who's Tommy. I was in the process of writing up a blog post about same, when I noticed the following:

• The fact that no other site had posted news about this event
• Another post on BroadwayWorld.com about Dakota Fanning supposedly making her Broadway debut in Spring Awakening
• Yet another post about Raul Esparza and Julia Murney in a Dead Kennedys jukebox musical.
• The posting date of the all the articles

In other words: April Fool's.

Here's the problem though: it's not funny. At least the Tommy article isn't. A thirteen-year-old Dakota Fanning in a hard-rocking teen-sex tragedy: somewhat funny. A Dead Kennedys jukebox show: pretty darned funny. But a Tommy reality show? Not even remotely humorous.

Evidently, I wasn't the only one fooled, however temporarily. One of my students in my Boston Conservatory course announced with disbelief that someone was planning a Tommy-based reality show. I gently disabused him.

I'm including my originally intended post in the interest of full disclosure and profound humility. Keep in mind that at the time, I thought it was in earnest:

Once again, my prognostication skills prove non-existent.

Forget the shows that I've listed to the left in my most recent poll. Fox TV, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that the next show to receive that "You're The One That I Want" reality-show treatment a la Grease will be...get this...The Who's Tommy.

My reaction to the show's first incarnation was that it was a terrific production looking for a show to do: great staging and visuals, but the show itself didn't add up to much. Maybe this time the show will have an actual second act.

As Forbidden Broadway's Gerard Alessandrini put it: "Though it's exciting, what does it mean?" By all accounts, Des McAnuff's latest Broadway outing, Jersey Boys, would seem to fall into the same less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts category.