The Addams Family

So producers ask you to write an Addams Family musical. What story do you tell? The films contrasted the Addam's with "normal" criminals who wanted to harm them. The stage show introduces a fiancee and conservative in-laws. The device has fueled many comedies including You Can't Take It With You, Auntie Mame and La Cage Aux Folles. So that's your spine. But what do you do with the details?

Who are the Addams's? Are they undead? If so are they zombies, ghosts or vampires? Are they just unusually morbid mortals? How much of their BDSM leanings can you mention in a family show? If you put them onstage do you use the personalities from the comics, cartoons, TV sitcom or films?

The stage show went through multiple rewrites before and after the Broadway engagement. The squid was cut for the tour. She certainly isn't in the school version. But the song about squid molestation was in the Chicago tryout and made it to Broadway.

The Fan

Lauren Bacall started a new chapter of her career by starring in the musical Applause. She followed this up with two less successful musical projects. The Fan opened a few months after the opening of Lauren's next musical, Woman of the Year. Unfortunately it also opened after the murder of John Lennon. The grim ending was quickly re-written and re-filmed. A happy ending and an award bait song weren't enough. The film was a box office bomb.

Lauren Bacall's musicals cast her as fairly passive figures. Margo Channing, Tess Harding and Sally Ross start off with thriving careers. The active supporting characters harm that success and leave them reeling. We watch them cope with the loss rather than strive to recover.

A similar plot would have more success in the 1992 film The Bodyguard... which has just been made into another terrible musical.

300 Comics. 900 Panels.

Somewhere along the way I've passed 300 comics. The 2 in 1 posts make it hard to pinpoint the spot but my counter says it's happened.

So why do I do this? Why obscure (and sometimes not so obscure) musicals? I fell in love with my grandmothers' vinyl cast album collection at a young age. Soon my noisy toddler self was singing Jerry Herman, Lerner and Lowe, Frank Loesser and some inappropriate lyrics from The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. 

Since then I've studied, attended, performed in musicals. Reading the behind the scenes books of Ken Mandelbaum and Ethan Mordden taught me that every musical, hit or flop, took a great deal of blood, sweat, tears and cash to create. High schools are still producing shows that succeeded 60 years ago. Other shows opened to bad reviews and quickly shuttered. The musicals without cast albums have all but vanished. That so much time and effort would be put into a work of art only for it to vanish in days is tragic. Even the worst shows can still bring pleasure to people but it's up to the super fans to record the history, retell the stories and keep the memories alive.

Bring It On: The Musical

Lin-Manuel Miranda: I'm sorry I haven't gotten the chance to see Bombshell but I hear the tourists love it.
Christian Borle: Thanks. I tried to see Bring It On but it closed so fast I didn't get the chance.
~ Smash, episode 2.15

Bring It On: The Musical does not retell the plot of the 2000 film. Instead they mix plot points from the direct-to-DVD sequels with subplots from Hairspray and All About Eve. With 12 principal characters the show could have been a mess. Instead we get a well a perfectly serviceable pop musical. The plot is more teen friendly than Lysistrata Jones. Lysistrata's cheerleaders wanted their peers to learn the importance of competition... and sex. Bring It On’s ruthless cheerleaders need to learn the importance of friendship.The Broadway run was short but the show toured well and was quickly licensed to high schools.

Lysistrata Jones

It's not a war. It's a basketball game. Stakes are low. Why exactly do the men want to play basketball if they're choosing to throw the games? Why do the gay players care about the cheerleader sex strike? Don't overthink it. Lysistrata Jones wants to be an old fashioned tired businessman musical with lotsa jokes and legs. There will always be an audience for that, though not always at Broadway prices.

The Drowsy Chaperone

Molina has the Spider Woman. Trevor has Diana Ross. The Man in the Chair has Janet Van de Graaff. Each glamorous muse welcomes you to forget your troubles.

What are the Man in the Chair's troubles? He never says outright though he admits he's "feeling a little blue." He's been married and divorced. He reads as gay (Well, not so much when Bob Saget played him) but denies it. ("I'm a very complicated person.") Now he's a recluse.

Why is The Drowsy Chaperone his favorite musical? He claims it's just "fun." And it is. Janet retires from the stage to marry Robert. Her former producer wants her back. Fidelity is tested and Janet's alcoholic drowsy Chaperone foils the producers schemes. One deus ex machina later we have a happy ending.

Purists have griped that the score sounds more 50's than 20's, particularly in Janet's homage to "Rose's Turn," while others have dismissed the show as mindless fluff. Those of us who like a darkness for flavor can see the Man in the Chair's fate as a sad one. But at the end of the day The Drowsy Chaperone remains fun. It also won Beth Leavel a Tony and provided Sutton Foster with one of her best numbers.

Kiss of the Spider Woman

This show isn't great but at times it's very good. If you're familiar with the novel the very idea of adapting this into a musical sounds silly. To the show's credit it dances the fine line for most of the run time.

The seduction of the straight cell mate is a touchy subject for many. In the book this is an act of vulnerable affection. ("You are the one who is kind.") In the musical it is a cynical manipulation. ("If we touch before he goes he'll make that call.")  Which is more believable? You decide.

The Spider Woman, Aurora, is Molina's muse. Her tunes provide comical commentary on a dark story in a manner similar to the Emcee in Cabaret though her films are much cheerier than the propaganda film in the novel. Two performances were recorded: Chita Rivera's and Vanessa Williams'. I've heard it said that Chita plays a gay man's fantasy and Vanessa plays a straight man's fantasy. Simplistic but funny. Chita brings out the scary gravitas of the character. She's there to kill. Vanessa brings out the sex appeal and the comedy. She's there to party.

Trevor the musical

In 2017 the short film In a Heartbeat made me cry. The adorable story of a middle school boy falling for his peer was a sweet piece of wish fulfillment with a hint of darkness for flavor. It's a fairy tale that would have been unthinkable to me in 1994. Back then I got the film Trevor.

Much of the humor stems from Trevor's obliviousness to his budding homosexuality. His peers figure things out before he does. When he's outed he *** spoiler *** attempts suicide. One pep talk later he is strutting home to Diana Ross's "I'm Coming Out." It was an upbeat capper to a film that tackled some dark subject matter. The film won an Academy Award and inspired The Trevor Project. The organization provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to LGBTQ+ youth.

Today marks the closing performances of Trevor the musical at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, IL. The show features a talented cast and has received positive reviews. I felt it was a work in progress but am eager to see where it goes next. Act One is wisely structures around the school talent show. The moment was a throwaway joke in the film but on stage it provides the spine for Trevor's relationships with the boy he likes, the girl who likes him and his showbiz dreams. Act Two feels a bit shapeless at present. The students shun him and *** spoiler *** his crush writes him a letter calling him a fairy.

As a target of school bullying myself I know that your peers don't shun you. They attack you. They call you worse than "fairy" and they do it to your face. I'll bet the writers know this too. Right now they're pulling their punches for the sake of their audience. I say tell us the truth. We can take it.

Marie Christine

If you've heard of Medea you know what she did. The question of any adaptation is why. The cast album did not make this clear to me. Audra MacDonald's Marie sounds remarkably self-possessed, boasts of her magic powers and is clearly too good for Dante Keyes. The libretto told me more.

In Marie Christine LaChuisa spends time developing the world Marie is fleeing from. Act One's Louisiana is no more home to her than Act Two's Chicago. Her magic is questionable as well. She boasts of her power to seduce men but uses her magic to manipulate and murder other women. She has no biscuit or ribbon to hold on to Dante. Her obsession with Dante becomes a fatal flaw. She "will not let go" and she cannot change enough to fit the new life he leaves her in. 

Children complicate the matter. If she simply fled with them she'd have no means to support them. If she left them to Dante they'd become servants. Perhaps that would have been better but she'll never know.