Remembering My Favorite Year

Remembering My Favorite Year

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance

The composing team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty currently have two big hits running on Broadway: a revival of their 1990 musical Once on This Island that won the 2018 Tony Award for Best Revival, and Anastasia, which features an augmented score adapted from their 1997 film score. They’ve had their revered hit Ragtime which garnered the duo a Tony Award for Best Score, their flop-turned-oft-performed Seussical, and they even managed to effectively (if not financially successful) adapt the film Rocky for the musical stage. They have been just as present in the Off-Broadway scene with terrific score for musicals such as Lucky Stiff,  A Man of No Importance, The Glorious Ones, and Dessa Rose. Their in-the-works musical Little Dancerkeeps inching its way toward Broadway. The team, however, wrote the score for another musical that featured a delightful score even though the show refused to work. That musical was the Lincoln Center-produced 1992 flop My Favorite Year.   

Remembering One Touch of Venus

Remembering One Touch of Venus

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance

A musical that we don’t hear much about these days, but one that features a glorious score, is the 1943 classic One Touch of Venus. Based on a story by Thomas Anstey Guthrie, One Touch of Venus loosely draws from the Pygmalion myth with a book by poet Ogden Nash and S.J. Perelman, lyrics by Nash, and music by Kurt Weill (debatably his most accessible and traditional in terms of musical comedy, save perhaps Lady in the Dark). Of the musicals Kurt Weill wrote for Broadway, it would be his longest-running, though arguably his least innovative. 

Broadway Musical Mash-Ups: Combining Two Shows Into One

Broadway Musical Mash-Ups: Combining Two Shows Into One

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance

To start, this article has no intention of being serious. I was just sitting in my car musing about how you could take two Broadway shows and splice them together into one evening of entertainment. This would certainly cut back on my ticket expenditures and double the amount of Broadway musical viewing I can afford each year. So, strap on your sense of humor, get in the mood for corny ridiculousness, and see how I mashed-up Broadway musicals currently running (or set to open) on the Great White Way. 

Remembering High Spirits

Remembering High Spirits

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance

There is not all that much about Noël Coward’s brilliant 1941 play Blithe Spirit that would initially make you think “this needs to be a musical.” It’s a drawing room comedy, with a relatively small cast, and tightly-written That doesn’t leave itself room for opening up or expanding in the way that musicals traditionally are. On the other hand, Blithe Spirit features an array of colorful, larger-than-life characters, including a wacky medium and an insane diva who happens to be a ghost. Suddenly, the prospects for musical comedy seem just a bit more accessible. That must be what Timothy Gray and Hugh Martin had in the front of their minds when they conjured up the musical High Spirits, adapted for the musical stage from Coward’s Blithe Spirit. 

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