High School Musical

How did a low budget TV movie launch a franchise and a film career? Today's high school themed musicals are loaded with snark and angst. High School Musical has a mean girl and with a coded-gay brother but the overarching tone is earnest.

Quick. What's the hit song from High School Musical? I'm not sure either... but it has four compelling lead players who Disney was able to contractually secure for two sequels.

Oh and my favorite song? I like "Bet On It", Efron's campy nervous breakdown in part 2.

Grease 2

"There's gotta be more to life than making out... I'm tired of being someone's chick." ~ Grease 2

The little Chicago musical about teen class war became a record breaking film in 1978. Three sequels and a TV series were proposed. A script was hastily written, the film tanked, and the franchise was scrapped. Grease 2 is no gem but Michelle Pfeiffer's solo, “Cool Rider,” is a camp classic. By the end of the film she learns, unlike Danny Zuko, to appreciate her partner’s nerdy side as well as the sexy persona.  

It's Always Fair Weather

Why hello pen and ink! It's been a while. Yes I still love you. No you aren't as easy to correct as digital art.

Betty Comden described this cynical follow up to On The Town as a study of "the corrosive nature of time on friendship." This forgotten musical flopped in 1955 but fascinates in 2016. Several of the creatives hate each other off screen as well as on and the tension is palpable.

Dolores Gray plays Madeline Bradville, the self-absorbed host of a reality television show. She's introduced with a bland ballad titled "Music is Better than Words," than vanishes. The story isn't about her. It's about the three unhappy soldiers and Gene Kelly's romance with Cyd Charisse. Then, at the last minute Dolores Gray re-appears to sing the bizarre and fascinating 11 o'clock number "Thanks a Lot but No Thanks." Any fan of musical theatre and/or camp should click the link and watch it right now. Gray complained that the role was "an ageless, sexless caricature" but she scorches the screen in this song.

Now. Here. This.

Another shout out to Peanuts this week, inspired by Bowen's joke about Linus Van Pelt.

When Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen wrote [title of show] they gave the character arcs to their friends Heidi Blickenstaff and Susan Blackwell. In the sequel, Now. Here. This., they reveal a little more of themselves. Jeff talks about his closeted youth and Hunter shares the self-loathing logic behind his comic persona. Meanwhile sweet Heidi and salty Susan recall childhood events that shaped their careers.

It helps to have seen [title of show]. The work provides context for these 40-somethings in various states of arrested development. Revues with plots are usually about romance (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change or Putting It Together). Now. Here. This. is focused on families, high school, and mid-life crisis. I hope Now. Here. This. isn't meant as Bowen and Bell's goodbye to musical theater. I'd like to hear what they come up with next.

Shock Treatment

In 1981 the team behind the cult smash The Rocky Horror Show gathered as much of the original cast as they could for a sequel. Tim Curry was unwilling or unavailable to reprise Dr. Frank-N-Furter so a new set of villains were invented to torment Brad and Janet in Shock Treatment. A Screen Actors Guild Strike, limited distribution and mixed reviews plagued the film and it disappeared from memory.

In 2015 Richard O'Brien finally allowed a stage adaptation which premiered at the King’s Head Theatre in Islington, London. This version kept the songs, cut some of the extraneous characters and added more nudity. Reviews were enthusiastic.

[title of show]

Me: How do we draw a comic about [title of show]?
Me: Well the show is meta. Maybe a meta comic where the characters complain about how they're drawn?
Me: That could be insufferable.
Me: No more time! That's what we're going with.
Me: We need a writing partner.

[title of show] is a deceptive creature. It starts as a Forbidden Broadway type spoof of musical conventions then morphs into a heartfelt look at the pains of being an artist when you fear no one wants your art. The creators left their characters thinly sketched allowing other artists to step into the roles in future productions. In 2012 they wrote a prequel of sorts, titled Now. Here. This. where they shared some stories from their personal backgrounds that led to the creation of nine people's favorite thing.

Happy End

Legends say that Bertolt Brecht and his wife, Helene Weigel, sabotaged the opening of their own show to prevent the career of writing partner Elisabeth Hauptmann. Brecht scholars would debate the uncredited role she played in Brecht's prior work and whether she'd meant Happy End to launch an independent career. Helen Weigel staged a political protest in the middle of the performance, audiences booed, and Happy End was temporarily forgotten.

Several songs, including the Bilboa Song and Surabaya Johnny, gained some airplay on their own. The full show would find a new life in 1977 for a short lived Broadway production with Christopher Lloyd and Meryl Streep.

The slight gangsters vs. salvation army plot has been considered a sequel to The Threepenny Opera and a spiritual precursor to Guys and Dolls.

Fiddler on the Roof vs. The Rothschilds

With a time crunch this week I've decided to pay homage to (ie steal) the art style of the site that inspired this blog: Three Panel Shakespeare.

Fiddler on the Roof remains Bock and Harnick's biggest hit show. Six years afterwards they would attempt a spiritual successor. Where Tevye fought to hold on to home and tradition Mayer Rothschild wants to break free. He dies with the ghetto walls still standing but his sons carry on the family business and buy their freedom. Losing three quarters through the show bothered some audiences. The show ran a respectable 505 performances but did not capture the international acclaim of Fiddler.

Falsettos

William Finn wrote three short musicals about the bisexual Marvin and his family (In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, Falsettoland), before combining the latter two into the full length Falsettos. While the AIDS crisis had been addressed on stage Falsettos was the first musical to deal with the topic, two years before Rent.

The Broadway production was nominated for 7 Tony Awards. It won best book and best score but lost best musical to the fizzy Gershwin scored Crazy for You. In Peter Filichia's novel Strippers, Showgirls, and Sharks: A Very Opinionated History of the Broadway Musicals That Did Not Win the Tony Award he suggests that it was the adultery, rather than the homosexuality, that upset the Tony voters. The monogamous gay couple in La Cage Aux Folles won best musical in 1984 but Marvin leaves his wife in Falsettos and nobody is punished. In Crazy For You boy leaves upper class girlfriend for cowgirl but no one felt threatened by that.

Falsettos on the Tony Awards.
Scott Miller's Analysis of March of the Falsettos.
Background reading.

A Doll's Life

She's come a long way baby?

Sequel's to self-contained stories can sound like parodies but A Doll's Life took itself very seriously. Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House ends with the faint hope of a better life for Nora. The musical expands the what-if scenario to implausible degrees having Nora achieve, and sing about, power. While Hal Prince's production was expertly done there was little in the story to interest audiences and the show closed after 5 performances.

Background reading.

New York Times review.

Love Never Dies

More musical sequels this week now that the Tony Awards have passed.

One challenge in writing a sequel to Phantom of the Opera is that the Phantom had tarnished has chances as a love interest in Part 1 by going on a killing spree. In order to restore his romantic lead status in Part 2 they had to reboot other characters, retroactively undoing the arc of Part 1. Male ingenue Raul is now a drunken gambler who mistreats Christine. Confidante Meg Giry ("who is this new tutor?") has been turned into Carlotta 2.0 as a homicidally jealous burlesque singer. It's a bit jarring.

Stranger still is the revelation that the Phantom and Christine conceived a child. We saw the extent of their few interactions in Part 1. Did it happen on the boat while they sang the title song? In the bed after she passed out? On stage in front of an audience singing Point of No Return? 

Read the plot synopsis here.

And some reviews here.

Annie Warbucks

Bring Back Birdie didn't dissuade Charles Strouse from attempting another sequel. Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge was going to be a triumphant comeback for Dorothy Loudon. Her Tony Winning Miss Hannigan would break out of jail, replace Annie with a doppleganger, and take on wacky disguises as she attempted to seduce Oliver Warbucks for his money. One disastrous out-of-town try out later the show cancelled its Broadway engagement.

In 1993 Annie Warbucks settled for Off-Broadway. The show replaced Miss Hannigan with two new villains. Donna McKecknie's gold-digger got the best reviews and the show lasted 200 performances.

The cast album has some fun moments, and this wouldn't be the last time Annie would receive a sequel or a re-imagining.

Bring Back Birdie

Or just revive him.

Bye Bye Birdie made a lot of money and folks were convinced that a sequel would do the same. Enough time had passed that there was a new generation of pop music to satirize but the show seemed content to simply repeat jokes and plot points from the original. Rose still wants to settle down, Albert still wants to be in showbiz, Mrs. Petersen's racism is still supposedly hilarious, and the new generation of kids are as crazy-mixed-up as the old.

They were awfully luck to have Chita Rivera reprise her role as Rose but she couldn't stop Bring Back Birdie from closing after 4 performances.

Read Frank Rich's review here. "If the first ''Birdie'' was invigorating, the new one is depressing right up until that curtain call...as if everyone involved had abandoned hope."

You'd think that would scare Charles Strouse off of sequels...

Let 'Em Eat Cake

In 1931 the Gershwin's wrote Of Thee I Sing, a musical about about the fictional Wintergreen's run for president. It was a hit. Two years later they wrote a musical about Wintergreen becoming a fascist dictator. It didn't go over so well.

Learn more about the show here!