50 Shades Musicals

The people get the rom-com they deserve and before the film opened three musical parodies of 50 Shades of Grey toured the world.

Spank! The Fifty Shades Parody by Jon Blair, Ian MacIntyre, Jim Millan, Alice Moran, Colin Munch, Anne Marie Scheffler and Patrick Whalen.

Cuff Me: An Unauthroized Fifty Shades of Grey Musical Parody by Bradford McMurran, Jeremiah Albers and Sean Michael Devereux of the improv group The Pushers.

and

50 Shades! The Musical Parody by Amanda Blake-Davis, Emily Dorezas, Ashley Ward, Dan Wessels, Jody Shelton, and Albert Samuels.

There's little mention of the songs but according to reviews the first two use a mix of Gilbert and Sullivan and modern pop. The third, 50 Shades! has an original score. No one seems to want to take credit for writing it. The librettos for all three were written by committees.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

And my Sondheim series concludes with his first commercial hit.

"It's noisy, coarse, blue and obvious like the putty nose on a burlesque comedian. Resist these slickly paced old comic routines if you can." ~ Howard Taubman. New York Times. 1962.

"Yet for all of its disguises, mistaken identities, pratfalls and leering jokes, "A Funny Thing" is as sophisticated as anything now on Broadway. In its own lunatic way, it's both wise and rigorously disciplined. Easy sentimentality is nowhere to be found here; in its place: the kind of organized chaos that leads to sheer, extremely contagious high spirits." ~ Vincent Canby. New York Times. 1996.