Jump to content
This Site Uses Cookies. If You Want to Disable Cookies, Please See Your Browser Documentation. ×

sidwich

Senior Member
  • Posts

    441
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Recent Profile Visitors

872 profile views
  1. The Broadway requirement (per Actors Equity and the Broadway League) is a minimum of once a week testing for vaccinated cast and crew. That's the minimum and it's up to the production if they want to do more (which is what Disney is/was doing). I think reports were that Aladdin (and I presume all the Disney productions) were testing every day, and I think in the wake of the positive test at re-opening, they were testing twice a day. Other productions are doing 2-3 tests a week. There is DEFINITELY no "Don't ask. Don't tell." Live theatre, and especially anything requiring singing is considered very high-risk for COVID, and a number of productions had outbreaks in February/March 2020, some with very serious consequences. Nobody wants to go back to a situation where Broadway has to shut down again, so better to nip any outbreaks in the bud quickly.
  2. I thought Megan Fairchild did a wonderful job hosting as well, both educational and fun. Based on her eye movements during the intros, I think she was using a teleprompter, probably on a tablet. I noticed because I use a teleprompter app when I make speaking videos as well, and I've had to learn to make the eye movement not too obvious and distracting. I know for myself, I'm much more relaxed having that little "help" when I'm recording myself (as well as much less likely to forget something I wanted to say, LOL!), so perhaps that's something that more of the hosts may want to consider in the future.
  3. Elizabeth was also exceptionally savvy in using her unmarried status as a tease (Was she finally going to marry this time? Who was it going to be?). She would play one royal/nobleman against another constantly with hints about possible intentions about who she would finally marry while maintaining her independence all the while.
  4. Well, It's hard for me to imagine anyone currently working who could attain the stature of John Ford, but I think it's well within Saoirse Ronan's potential to reach the stratosphere of Hepburn and Redgrave. I'm not entirely sure of Margot Robbie yet, but she makes interesting career choices as well. I think Ronan is definitely one of the most talented and interesting young, white, English-speaking actresses working in film today, though.
  5. Not exactly classical, but I like "Make Our Garden Grow" by Bernstein for weddings.
  6. WSS is hard to do justice to AND make the economics work for a long for-profit run. Besides the large cast, the score is complex and require a real orchestra. I think the original orchestrations are for more than 30 musicians and anything like that that's hard to make work with the economics of a Broadway house now. Please note: I have no idea what orchestrations they're going to use for this production, although if they use one of those cut-rate synthesizer things like in the last "Sunday in the Park with George" revival, I will probably be a great deal of pain...
  7. Spain was a very conservative country under Franco, and divorce didn't even become legal until the early 1980s, at which point the Domingos would already have been married for 20 years or so. It's not hard to imagine that that could be a difficult decision to make culturally and socioeconomically. And yes, I'm sure there were certain perks to being Mrs. Placido Domingo as well.
  8. I don't think that this section looks all that similar to the original Gennaro/Robbins choreography. You can see recreations of the original in these videos of Debbie Allen (in the 1980 Revival) and Charlotte d'Amboise (Jerome Robbins' Broadway). I think the section in the video would be the eights with the big sissone toward the end of the music: I'm actually more curious about what Peck is going to do about the Dance at the Gym. I don't think I've seen a major revival get very far away from the segue from the Mambo the "Maria" choreography with the back-to-back finger snaps.
  9. As I said before, Carousel is very hard to do well, and the subject is problematic, especially to modern audiences. But even in its original run, it only did about half the run of the other "big" R&H musicals. More generally, musicals are expensive to run, and it's hard to make profit on Broadway. A big reason why "Chicago's" been able to run so long is that it's orchestrated for a handful of musicians, and sets and costumes are so minimal. (Also, the Weisslers are notoriously cheap, but that's a whole other thing). I took a quick peek at the Broadway grosses, and Carousel's only running at a little over 40% of potential gross and trending down. It makes total sense that they close after summer tourist season, and get the show on the road in a tour as quickly as possible to try to recoup their losses on tour. I'm sure they want to open the house to another show that has potential to do better. (40%? Yeesh!)
  10. I was glad to finally get to hear Lauren Ambrose sing some of the score. I'd heard some mixed things about her singing in MFL, mostly about how well her voice was really carrying live. The production was really keeping clips of her singing under wraps. I think the issue has turned out to be not so much whether Ambrose can sing the part competently, but whether her voice is really in shape to sing 8 times a week. Eliza is no joke vocally, and Kerstin Anderson has already gone on for Ambrose quite a bit. Hopefully, it's not going to turn into another Martine McCutcheon situation where an unseasoned musical theatre performer turns in a beautiful dramatic performance, but can't keep up with the vocal demands of Eliza.
  11. That's a shame. Jessie Mueller is actually a quite good legit soprano, and has played quite a few of the classic legit soprano roles in the past very well: Amalia in "She Loves Me," Cinderella in "Into the Woods," and of course, Carrie in "Carousel." I think she still does "Ice Cream" in concert, and sings the high B very capably.
  12. I concur. I've done standing room in the orchestra a number of times and it's actually quite good view-wise (the orchestra has a nice downward slope, so standing room is a bit elevated). But if you're short (I'm ... uh ... Sarah Lane size), you need to be in the first row. I think I did Dress Circle standing room for one of Nina's Swan Lakes, and it was still pretty good.
  13. This is the scene: (Yes, for some reason, Tiler Peck's book scene is on Youtube, but the ballet is not.) And yes, I would agree that the challenge now with interpreting Carousel is not the portrayal of the flawed Billy. It's the interpretation of Julie. How do you interpret "What's the Use of Wondrin'?" Do you still underscore the "he hit me, but it felt like a kiss" scene (above) with "If I Loved You" and what does that say? It's like the Shylock question. The original writer clearly viewed the situation one way ("Yes, of course the best resolution is to force Shylock to convert!"), and that's very uncomfortable for contemporary audiences. Our local Shakespeare company did a beautiful production of "Two Gentlemen of Verona" last year. I don't think there is any way that they would do it this year for the same reasons.
  14. When Billy tries to give Louise the star he's stolen, he frightens her and when she tries to get away, he hits her. Louise tells her mother that a man hit her, hit her really hard, but it felt like he kissed her. She then asks her mother if it was possible for someone to hit you, but for it not to hurt. Julie says, yes, it's possible for someone to hit you and for it not to hurt. As you can imagine, this is more than little problematic post #metoo. Actually, it was problematic even pre-#metoo. There was quite a bit of writing about this scene when the Lyric Opera of Chicago did Carousel last year. (Yes, in the current Broadway production, Julie's response has been cut.) As I get older, I understand more Nicholas Hytner's decision to cast Billy and Julie in what would become the acclaimed National Theatre production from the early 1990's first for acting, and second for singing. I saw the production at both the National in London and then on Broadway, and at the time I was disappointed with Michael Hayden's voice which was relatively weak by the standards of previous Billys. (I thought Sally Murphy's singing was fine, although she's much better known for her straight dramatic work). But I've revised my opinion, and now I think that it's the right call with the challenges of this material. There's actually some video of Hayden and Murphy doing "If I Loved You" (hidden as "a couple of really talented kids", LOL): Interestingly, the revival of My Fair Lady that's about to open is dealing with some of the same issues, and has chosen to ... well, let's say, Bart Scher is re-interpreting the final scene of the musical to be more in line with George Bernard Shaw's ending of Pygmalion.
  15. It's still in previews, and doesn't open until next Thursday. Hopefully, some of the issues that I've been hearing about will be fixed. But it's already posting 50% tickets for all performances at the TKTS booth which doesn't bode well. (For comparison, Phantom which has been running for 30ish years has tickets in a range of discounts throughout the week). Let's see what the reviews look like. We'll probably have a better idea then.
×
×
  • Create New...