All tagged Fred Ebb

Remembering Steel Pier

Remembering Steel Pier

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance

The composing team of Kander and Ebb were often attracted to properties that allowed them to tell a show-within-a-show story, often using the show or entertainment style within to provide commentary on the show the theatre audience is watching. Cabaret (cabaret), Chicago (vaudeville), Kiss of the Spider Woman (film), Curtains (musical theatre), The Scottsboro Boys (minstrel shows) and, even to a degree the village storytellers in Zorba employ this conceit. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that the team found a way to utilize the dance marathons in Atlantic City of the 1930s to similar effect in the short-lived musical Steel Pier. 

Remembering The Happy Time

Remembering The Happy Time

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance

The composing team of Kander and Ebb are typically first remembered as the creators of the edgy, flashy, razzle-dazzle music of such shows as Cabaret and Chicago. It would be wrong, however, to think that this was all that they were capable of. In fact, the team’s work often tended towards a reflective, gentler style of musical comedy found in such shows as Zorba and The Rink. One show that really seemed to embrace this subtler, character-driven approach to storytelling was 1968’s The Happy Time.  

Broadway’s Chicago Looking for Its Next Roxie Hart

Broadway’s Chicago Looking for Its Next Roxie Hart

Mark Robinson
Odds & Ends

Do you have what it takes to be a Broadway star? Now might be your chance. Producers of the record-breaking hit musical Chicago are, in partnership with Broadway.com, hosting a national casting call to find the next Roxie Hart. The musical revival, which is celebrating its 22nd Anniversary on Broadway, will launch “The Search for Roxie!” in January of 2019. 

Broadway Blip: 70, Girls, 70

Broadway Blip: 70, Girls, 70

Mark Robinson
Music That Makes Me Dance

In the spring of 1971, a musical was readying to open on Broadway that featured a cast of older performers, singing and dancing, looking back on life, many exploring regrets and old memories shaded by the perspective of time. This musical would go on to become one of Broadway’s greatest classics of all time. That musical was Follies. 

Opening within ten days of Follies was another musical that featured a cast of older performers, singing and dancing, exploring memories but focused on an entirely different set of circumstances. 70, Girls, 70, with a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb and a book by Norman L. Martin and Ebb, is not a musical you hear much about these days, though it does deserve a second look and listen.

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