All tagged Bells Are Ringing
A Broadway hit doesn’t always necessarily translate to a universal hit. There have been many musicals that opened in New York City, but when they premiered in London’s West End, they failed to ignite with audiences. In some cases, it was the production that floundered and the show proved to be a hit at a later date. Here are some musicals that were hits in NYC, but initially failed in the West End.
What is an "I Am" song, you might ask? Many people also know it as the "I Want" song, a song that comes early in the first act of a musical and that establishes our catalyst's point of view and sometimes their goal. The term "I Want" is not one I feel truly encapsulates what this song is and how it's placement in the musical affects the story to come. I Am", which used to be how these songs were identified by scholars, can include "I Want", but not vice versa. What you "want" is a subcategory of who you "are". Not every song that introduces a catalyst tells us what they want, but it most-definitely tells us who they are. So I choose the older term of "I Am" because I find it all-encompassing. I'm not trying to be difficult here, I simply prefer "I Am" because it better explains what the song achieves, especially to those just learning about musical theatre structure. But all semantics aside, some of the most-memorable and most impactful musical theatre songs are the "I Am" song and today's blog is a celebration of some of the best.
Mashups of songs are a lot of fun. You take two songs with similar themes (or perhaps opposing viewpoints) and splice them together to create a richer experience for how they compliment one another. They did this a lot on the TV show Glee, but the idea has been around much longer than that, and employed to great effect.
With the Tony Award nominations announced and the race setting in to be a pretty uneventful one since Hamilton appears to be poised to win most of the prizes, I started thinking about what these awards would look like if Hamilton were not in the equation. For the Best Musical prize, I think it is fair to say that the race would come down to a dead heat between Waitress and Bright Star, with Bright Star edging out the win on Tony night. This got me thinking about other years where juggernauts like Hamilton were a foregone conclusion, and what might have happened if those titles had never been in play. Read along and debate with me.
