All tagged Chess

When the West End and Broadway Came Together for Christmas

This week I was thinking about a holiday special that ran on Britain’s ITV that captured the beauty and spectacle of musical theatre in the late 1980s. Save the Children was the name of the program, and the piece was created as a benefit for the Save the Children Foundation, an organization dedicated to make the lives better for children the world over. It brought together the stars and casts of the West End and Broadway musicals that were the hits of the day, and, with the performers in costume and playing on the impressive sets of their respective shows, they sang beloved Christmas carols with a splendor and glory that stuck with this Broadway enthusiast for three decades.

Answers: Broadway Musical Geography Quiz

We had many readers participate in the Broadway Musical Geography Quiz. One question in particular stumped many of you, but most of you came within one or two questions of getting all the answers correct. Congratulations to Cheryl Sebrell, the first person to get all 40. She doggedly persevered until she figured out the pitfalls. For her efforts, she will receive an autographed CD of Anastasia, courtesy of Broadway Records.

Read on for the answers...

Broadway Playlist for the Ultimate Road Trip

Last week, while I was enjoying some time off, I decided to take a little sojourn to Pennsylvania. I gathered a few old theatre friends from my college days to accompany me, musical theatre folk who love to blast a showtune in the car and sing along. Knowing that they would expect me to be the DJ for this outing, I assembled a playlist full of the perfect songs for this kind of thing. I find the best songs for a road trip fall into one of three categories...

    Was That Broadway Musical REALLY Awful?

    Have you ever picked up a Broadway cast recording that you’d only vaguely heard of (or had never heard of), listened to it and said “This score is so good! Why isn’t this show being performed all the time?”. Just because a Broadway show has problems, it doesn’t always mean that the score is bad. In fact, many flop or troubled musicals have superior scores that will make you keep wondering “Was that musical AWFUL or WONDERFUL?”. Here are nine cast albums that will keep you wondering why that musical wasn’t a bigger hit.