All tagged A Little Night Music
Nowadays, it has become the go-to fashion on Broadway to adapt films for the musical stage. Such movies asMoulin Rouge!, Back to the Future, and The Lion King have proven to be hits of this ilk. Most, however, have been terrible, pale replications of their screen counterparts. A handful, however, are truly amazing: artistic re-thinkings that improve upon their source material. This article is a celebration of the 10 best musicals that started as films … and three that surprisingly (for some of you) that didn’t make my list.
This week’s debate takes us back to 1973, a year were anything was likely to happen and where two musicals (out of four nominees) were really the chief contenders for Best Musical, and two others that had much to offer but would ultimately be outshined. This was, after all, the decade where the team of composer Stephen Sondheim and director Harold Prince would revolutionize musical theatre.
Angela Lansbury is a treasure of the American Theatre. Though she was born in London, she has enjoyed a long and auspicious career on American soil, first as an actress in the old Hollywood movies system in films such as Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Harvey Girls, and also as a television star for 12 seasons of Murder, She Wrote. It is, however, for the Broadway stage that Lansbury has been her most daring and sparkling. Today, we celebrate the Broadway musicals that starred Angela Lansbury.
By 1973, the combination of composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and director Harold Prince had revolutionized Broadway with two compelling musicals, both featuring non-linear storytelling and taking a brutally honest look at life, its trials and tribulations, and everything in-between. Those musicals were (of course) Company and Follies. For their next Broadway outing, Sondheim and Prince would venture into less groundbreaking territory structurally, but with no less artistry and impact.
