We love Jerry Herman, especially his devotion to creating music and lyrics that make larger-than-life ladies shine: Hello, Dolly!, Mame, Dear World, La Cage aux Folles. These are all sparkling examples of Herman's ability to create a pedestal for the great ladies of the musical stage to explode with verve and personality. It has always been what he has done best.
My piece ranking the musicals of Stephen Sondheim was very popular and it incited some great dialogue on how opinions differ depending on our experiences, emotions, and the criteria that draws us to musicals in the first place. Several of you wrote to me asking that I unleash my same ranking process on the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I will gratefully oblige, though I must warn you that my opinions on Sir Andrew are more extreme than those I have for Sondheim. Webber tends to only be as good as his lyricist at the moment, an ever-changing array of collaborators who have come and gone. Stephen Ward aside (which I don't know enough about yet to weigh-in), here are my opinions of his work, from worst to the best.
Well, Hairspray Live!, the eagerly anticipated live-television event of this December has come and gone and I am thrilled to report that this one was better than most. It hit many of its marks and remained true to the beloved stage production on which it is based, yet I still feel like there were too many missteps to claim joyous rapture.
Irving Berlin's “White Christmas” is one of the most-recorded Christmas carols of all-time and the most-recorded of the Twentieth Century. Irving Berlin was one of the greatest composers of songs for film and Broadway musicals, many of which are associated with Christmas. With the holidays approaching, I thought I'd put together my top-ten favorite Irving Berlin songs from musicals. Are your favorites on this list?
