All tagged Xanadu
Last week, while I was enjoying some time off, I decided to take a little sojourn to Pennsylvania. I gathered a few old theatre friends from my college days to accompany me, musical theatre folk who love to blast a showtune in the car and sing along. Knowing that they would expect me to be the DJ for this outing, I assembled a playlist full of the perfect songs for this kind of thing. I find the best songs for a road trip fall into one of three categories...
Musical theatre fans often love their movie musicals as well. We are, however, skeptical of the movie musical format, since it often disappoints. Do we set our expectations too high? Probably. There are, however, a handful of movie musicals that are deeply flawed, but that we will return to again and again. Here are some titles that fit that description.
Every season, we are inundated with a long list of musicals that are in development and that are based on famous source material. We speculate about their potential and wonder if they will work, often resigning ourselves to the fact that they will never live up to the movie, play or book that we adore. Sometimes, we are surprised when we enter the theatre and find that the music and lyrics, along with a fresh viewpoint, concept and/or casting choice can illuminate the piece in ways we hadn't imagined. This article is a valentine to the musicals that DID work and either captured their source material beautifully, or improved up them. I am limiting my list to pieces that I personally saw AFTER I had read the play, book or watched the movie from which they derived.
