And I’m Telling You…I’m Not Understanding Jennifer Holliday and Inauguration

Theatre fans were most-assuredly shocked to hear that Jennifer Holliday will be singing at the inauguration ceremonies of President-elect Trump. Regardless of your political leanings, one has to admit that Ms. Holliday is her own person and that she will make her own artistic decisions as she sees fit. Will her performance affect her popularity? That remains to be seen, but by the outcry on social media, it appears that she will take a bit of a hit from many of the people who make up her fan base.

Carousel: How Does the Film of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Classic Hold-up?

There is nothing like going into a movie theatre and seeing an old Hollywood classic on the big screen. Oftentimes, what we have been looking at on our television for years, looks and feels very differently when we see how its proportions, framing and colors were meant to be seen. I am so grateful to cinemas and film distributors who get this concept and who make the concerted effort to bring the films of “days gone by” to new audiences while availing those of us who have been around for a while a chance to swim in our nostalgia.

The Broadway Musical Troublemaker of 1947

Every once and a while, a musical comes along that stirs up the pot, shocking us with its audacity to speak the truth. In recent years, musicals such as HamiltonNext to NormalThe Scottsboro Boys, and Fun Home come to mind as examples of musicals that were not afraid to look societal and artistic norms in the face and thumb their nose as what is comfortable or conventional. This was done in-an-effort to cast some light on overlooked subject matter, issues that demanded a new perspective, or inconvenient truths that may have been glossed over. It might be hard to believe, but musical theatre has typically been at the forefront of performance mediums in addressing controversial topics. In fact, Finian's Rainbow, which opened on Broadway in 1947 (and celebrated the 70th Anniversary of that premiere on January 10th), may have been one of the nerviest of all Broadway productions. It subversively confronted race issues by addressing bigotry, head-on, and by taking steps within its production to demonstrate active change. Finian's Rainbow was (and remains to be) one of Broadway's bravest shows. 

La La Land: Did I La-La-Love It or Did It La-La-Lose Me?

Going into the film La La Land, I had a narrow understanding of what it was exactly going to be. Previews did very little to let on that that the film was going to be a musical, and not much was hinted-at in the way of a plot. It looked colorful and magical and that was all I had to go on. The imagery must have captured me somehow because I knew immediately that I wanted to see it. When I learned that it was, in fact, a musical, I was all-the-more interested in this intangible La La Land.