All tagged The Light in the Piazza
The 2005 Tony Awards represented a season where all four Best Musical nominees could have easily walked away with the Best Musical prize, each show offering something very different and special. It will make for a great debate. The nominees that season were Monty Python’s Spamalot, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Light in the Piazza, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, so you can see how this would be a contentious season. I’m also going to say in advance of discussion that I definitely have my favorite amongst these shows and I will try to remain unbiased.
Broadway musical sequels are seldom successful (or a good idea) so I’d like to preface this article by asserting that I, in no way, suggest that creating a sequel to any of these shows should happen (see my piece this coming Sunday on musical sequels for further debate on that topic). What I will suggest is that there are certain musicals that ended in a way that made us curious about what comes next. Whether the characters’ stories still have some journey left in them, or we are left with burning questions that we want answered, these are the ten musicals that have made me ponder their fates past the curtain call.
A few years ago, I wrote a piece on Broadway poster art, an assessment of the ten most effective posters that advertised their products well. It turns out that this has been one of the most popular articles to run in my blog. It appears that my readership is as excited about this topic as I am.
Since the piece's popularity continues to astound me, I decided to write a part 2. For this round, I am assessing poster art that may or may not be effective, but is so stunningly gorgeous that its effectiveness is irrelevant. The poster is a stunning piece of art.
Last week, there was an interesting discussion and debate on the Cast Recordings Facebook page over an article titled Twelve Cast Recordings That Will Change Your Life. There was a lot of back and forth over the piece since it mostly discussed newer musicals and one film soundtrack and seemed to dismiss almost everything in the pre-Rent era. There is nothing wrong in having your life changed by newer cast recordings. Indeed, musical theatre would be a very limited genre if we established some sort of cutoff point for musicals worthy of our attentions. The piece was obviously written by someone young and enthusiastic and it's easy to see how he'd be attracted to the contemporary pieces of his lifetime. That being said, the article was titled "Cast Recordings that will Change YOUR Life", so the author makes the egregious assumption that all of us will be taken with the titles he mentions. This proved not to be so when a variety of enthusiasts weighed in and admonished the absence of many classic titles on this list.
