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.

Football Musicals: All American and Good News

Good News was a hit. It got a film, revivals and revisals. The football hero can't play in the big game unless he passes the big test. His pretty new tutor helps him but his chance at romance is nearly dashed by a clingy ex.

All American was a flop. The football hero got the romantic subplot while the focus went to Ray Bolger (The Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz) as his zany Engineering teacher. Ray nearly loses his love interest and his self respect when he sells out to a corrupt corporate sponsor.

Other singing football players include the washed up Wreck of Wonderful Town and the beefcakey Aggies of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Hey, just realized I finally got a 20's show in here! 

Happy Super-Bowl!

Pacific Overtures

But no amount of performing, or of incidental charm, can salvage "Pacific Overtures." The occasion is essentially dull and immobile because we are never properly placed in it, drawn neither East nor West, given no specific emotional or cultural bearings. The evening is a Japanese artifact with a stamp on the back of it that says "Made in America." And perhaps turnabout is fair play. But it does raise a basic question, for us if not for the Japanese. Why tell their story their way, when they'd do it better? ~ Walter Kerr. New York Times. 1976.

Eschewing visual spectacle, director Gary Griffin employs a formal, minimalist approach perfectly suited to the show's key influences, Kabuki and haiku... The result is riveting theater--and a thought-provoking illustration of how a society sure of its own righteousness and invulnerability can be reshaped, even undone in a moment. ~ Albert Williams. Chicago Reader. 2001.

Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday in the Park with George sits precariously on the edge between traditional plot-driven musicals and the concept musicals developed mostly by Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince. Like concept musicals, Sunday explores an idea more than telling a story, and yet it does still tell a story. The difference is that the exposition and conflicts are established in the 1880s but the resolution comes a hundred years later to a protagonist who is a different man and yet the same. ~ Scott Miller

Seurat, the authors remind us, never sold a painting; it's anyone's guess whether the public will be shocked or delighted by ''Sunday in the Park.'' What I do know is that Mr. Sondheim and Mr. Lapine have created an audacious, haunting and, in its own intensely personal way, touching work. Even when it fails - as it does on occasion - ''Sunday in the Park'' is setting the stage for even more sustained theatrical innovations yet to come.' ~ Frank Rich, New York Times, 1984.

Anyone Can Whistle

Anyone Can Whistle is really two musicals, two very different, not entirely compatible musicals. It's part absurdist social satire, breaking the fourth wall, acknowledging itself as theatre, rejecting naturalism and sometimes even logic; and part romantic musical comedy, complete with love songs and a happily ever after for the hero and heroine (and even the villains). So many people have tried to stage the show but have crashed and burned because they couldn't reconcile the two distinct styles. ~ Scott Miller


The idea that it’s the wackos who are sane, and vice versa, was a cornerstone of 1960s counterculture. (That was a decade when “You’re crazy” became the highest of compliments.) And I suppose that it could be argued that “Anyone Can Whistle” was ahead of its time in advancing this notion, given that movies with similar themes, like “King of Hearts” and “The Graduate,” would soon become talismanic favorites of young Americans. ~ Ben Brantley, New York Times.

Road Show

“Sooner or later we’re bound to get it right.”

Stephen Sondheim devoted over a decade to writing a musical about the Mizner brothers. He’d read their story at age 22 and held onto the obsession till the rights were available. The piece went through several collaborators, tones and titles (Wise Guys, Gold!, Bounce) before settling into Road Show. What was once intended to be a vaudeville tinged musical comedy became a somber piece and received mixed reviews.

Some critics felt the brothers were underdeveloped and that Addie’s devotion to Willy remained unexplained. Others saw the characters as archetypes representing conflicting sides of the American dream. Another group saw the beleaguered gay artist Addison as a stand in for Stephen Sondheim battling a lifetime of inner demons.

Will the next revival of Road Show convince critics they finally “understand it?” Will songs like "The Best Thing That Ever Happened," “Talent” and “Isn’t He Something” get the same concert and cabaret attention as Sondheim’s other ballads? Will this be Sondheim’s last musical?

“And doesn't he sparkle?

See how he glides!

Isn't he something!”