Broadway Show Quotes

Michael has never cried during a Broadway show. Except in that scene where Tarzan's ape father is brutally murdered. And that was only because he was laughing so hard.

I'd rather be thin than famous but I'm fat paste that in your broadway show

By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

Popular, You're gonna be Popular! I'll teach you the proper ploys when you talk to boys! Little ways to flirt and flounce! I'll show you what shoes to wear, how to fix your hair, everything that really counts, to be POPULAR!!

The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.

Let us roam then, you and I, When the evening is splayed out across the sky [...] Paths that follow like a nagging accusation Of a minor violation To lead you to the ultimate reproof ... Oh, do not say, 'Bad kitty!' Let us go and prowl the city. In the rooms the cats run to and fro Auditioning for a Broadway show." (From The Love Song of J. Morris Housecat)

Her name is Feather. Feather is apparently very famous for choreographing several hit Broadway shows. She also must be pretty hard up for cash if she’d agree to choreograph a snoozer like Braid! But whatever.

everything from Hairspray to the Academy Awards. They were also my co-conspirators on my 2006 Broadway show, Fame

Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

Back in the summer of 1941, they had stood to lose so much, it seemed, through the shame and ruination of exposure. Sammy could not have known that one day he would come to regard all the things that their loving each other had seemed to put at so much risk – his career in comic books, his relations with his family, his place in the world – as the walls of a prison, an airless, lightless keep from which there was no hope of escape….He recalled his and Tracy’s parting at Penn Station on the morning of Pearl Harbor, in the first-class compartment of the Broadway Limited, their show of ordinary mute male farewell, the handshake, the pat on the shoulder, carefully tailoring and modulating their behavior through there was no one at all watching, so finely attuned to the danger of what they might lose that they could not permit themselves to notice what they had

The Trump campaign had, perhaps less than inadvertently, replicated the scheme from Mel Brooks’s The Producers. In that classic, Brooks’s larcenous and dopey heroes, Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, set out to sell more than 100 percent of the ownership stakes in the Broadway show they are producing. Since they will be found out only if the show is a hit, everything about the show is premised on its being a flop. Accordingly, they create a show so outlandish that it actually succeeds, thus dooming our heroes.

My life is more than my marks show, surely? I more to tell than this. My skin tells of the tale the government has chosen for me. I have a sudden yearning to fill every inch so that nothing is lost.

The passions and pain of the Vietnam War have subsided to a degree to which we are now able to look at the broader achievements of the Johnson administration,” said playwright Robert Schenkkan, whose Broadway show about the president, “All the Way,” is playing to packed houses.

What to one person is common courtesy is to another tender words of life - and by the same token, what one person intends to show as great affection may be to his beloved an irrelevant show of frivolousness compared to the kindness of simply doing the laundry sometimes.

But the truth is there’s no such thing as a bad house—just a bad show.

Oh, well this month we're sold out. Completely. You could go all over town, you won't find a ticket to the show... Unless you go to the box office. He's got racks of seats.

Selling is a Broadway show played by a psychiatrist.

In January 2006, Phantom of The Opera broke the record for the longest-running show in Broadway history, overtaking Cats and reminding us what real entertainment is about: candles, dry ice, big hair, and the sort of synthesized chord progressions only achieved by a collapse at the keyboard.

Rarely offstage, rarely on hiatus, Fiddler on the Roof has already been back on Broadway for four revivals, played London's West End four times, and remains among Broadway's longest-running shows ever.

Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

So if I tell you I want to re-do our senior year in one day…to go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center and let you get to second base like two teenagers…” I erased the gap between us, kissing a sliver of his exposed neck, and his breath stilled. “And go eat at P.J. Clarke’s and move to third base in the bathroom…” I rasped the words against his hot flesh and dragged my eyes up to meet his stormy ones. “And end the day at a Broadway show where I’d do something very inappropriate under your seat…” We melted into each other, and sure enough, I felt the swelling in his slacks getting bigger against my stomach. “You’d say…no?” His face was the funniest thing on earth as it moved from surprised to eager, then finally to turned on. “Fuck,” he muttered, pressing his hard cock against me. From the outside, it must’ve looked like we were sharing the dirtiest hug ever. “I’m about to go ice-skating for a hand job, and I’m not even sixteen anymore.” “You’re totally going on a day date,” I joked. He rolled his eyes but followed me back outside and into the nearest subway station, buttoning his pea coat to cover the massive bulge between his legs. “Lead the way.

It's a good thing we don't know when we start out that when we arrive we haven't gone anyplace." "What's wrong with success?" Kelly asked, exasperated. "You just walked out on the biggest hit show on Broadway, something you'd always wanted. Why did you leave?" "Because, Kelly," I said slowly, "nothing, but nothing is half as good as you expect it to be.

It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can still do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show.

After graduation I probably won’t see any of these people again.” I throw him a hurt look. “Hey! What about me?” “Not you. You’re coming to visit me in New York.” “Ooh! Yes, please.” “Sarah Lawrence is so close to the city. I’ll be able to go to Broadway shows whenever I want. There’s an app for same-day student tickets.” He gets a faraway look in his eyes. “You’re so lucky,” I say. “I’ll take you. We’ll go to a gay bar, too. It’ll be amazing.” “Thank you!” “But everybody else I can take or leave.” “We still have Beach Week,” I remind him, and he nods. “For the rest of our lives, we’ll always have Beach Week,” he says mockingly, and I throw a hair tie at him.

Everybody needs somebody. Sorry. If you were thinking you could get through life completely on your own, you're wrong. It's a proven fact that people need people. Sure, there are those who try to stuff their lives full of cats in an effort to fill the void, but, for the most part, people thrive, live, and do better if their existences are full of interaction with other humans. Some people find people to interact with at school. Some people run with people they meet at church. Work is a half-decent place to find acquaintances. Or maybe one day last May you were flying a kite in Central Park and a couple of nice people commented on how high the kite was, and that sparked a conversation that led to the three of you having dinner together at a small restaurant in Times Square and then catching a Broadway show about friendly cats. That could have happened -- which just goes to show you that, either way, you are going to end up surround by cats. Let's hope you're not allergic.

Actors who hung out there gossiping about other actors discovered that Broadway shows that lasted for, say, one hundred days, had a future life expectancy of a hundred more. For those that lasted two hundred days, two hundred more. The heuristic became known as the Lindy effect. Let me warn the reader: while the Lindy effect is one of the most useful, robust, and universal heuristics I know, Lindy’s cheesecake is…much less distinguished. Odds are the deli will not survive, by the Lindy effect.

I had nothing against Broadway shows, but when one was standing in the way of me and her long-awaited pussy, I was just about willing to burn the whole fucking street down. I’d already started doing the math in my head. Calculating the sentence for setting an occupied building on fire. Arson, possibly attempted murder. Those were heavy felonies. What was I looking at here? Hard time. Fifteen years, minimum. Different states varied, but New York was hard on its criminals. Fifteen years. Still fucking worth it.

I was struck by how life moved so fast, almost cruelly, on Broadway. Fiorello! had fled the Broadhurst to make way for Sail Away, as if it had never existed. I studied each such metamorphosis with contradictory emotions of excitement and loss. With their new marquees and posters and glass-encased displays of fresh photos, the theaters promised a teeming bounty of surprises. But there remained not a shred of their previous tenants, who were gone forever and mourned by no one, perhaps, except me. When shows left the National, I knew they were going on to Broadway or at least to another town on the road. Where did the plays that left New York go?

Two Smartass Jews Walk into a Bar... Two smartass Jews walk into a bar in Hell's Kitchen, New York. The Irish bartender asks the first Jew, 'What will you have?' The first Jew points to the second Jew and says, 'I'll have what's he's having.' The bartender then asks the second Jew, ''So, what will you have?' The second Jew points to his friend the first Jew and says, 'I'll have what's he's having.' The bartender becomes so discombobulated, he drinks himself to death. This story has no moral ~ all we have is one dead drunken Irish bartender on the floor and two smartass New York Jews high-fiving each other on their way to a Broadway show.

In 2005, The Color Purple became a phenomenally successful Broadway musical, playing to packed houses every night for over a year. In the process it transformed the “Great White Way” into a place where people of all colors, orientations and identities gathered to experience the show and to celebrate “God” as Life and Love, Perseverance, Hope, Creativity and Joy.

The firm’s fourth partner, Jeff Nussbaum, had carved out a niche writing jokes for public figures. It was he who taught me about the delicate balance all public-sector humorists hope to strike. Writing something funny for a politician, I learned, is like designing something stunning for Marlon Brando past his prime. The qualifier is everything. At first I didn’t understand this. In June, President Obama’s speechwriters asked Jeff to pitch jokes for an upcoming appearance at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Dinner. I sent him a few ideas, including one about the president and First Lady’s recent trip to see a Broadway show: “My critics are upset it cost taxpayer dollars to fly me and Michelle to New York for date night. But let me be clear. That wasn’t spending. It was stimulus.” Unsurprisingly, my line about stimulating America’s first couple didn’t make it into the script. But others did. The morning after the speech, I watched on YouTube as President Obama turned to NBC reporter Chuck Todd. “Chuck embodies the best of both worlds: he has the rapid-fire style of a television correspondent, and the facial hair of a radio correspondent.” That was my joke! I grabbed the scroll bar and watched again. The line wasn’t genius. The applause was largely polite. Still, I was dumbfounded. A thought entered my brain, and then, just a few days later, exited the mouth of the president of the United States. This was magic. Still, even then, I had no illusions of becoming a presidential speechwriter. When friends asked if I hoped to work in the White House, I told them Obama had more than enough writers already. I meant it.

​LORENZO :-) So I've been told," Lorenzo says. "Word around town is you're a bit of a dick-tator." --------------------------------------------------------------- "Honestly? I don't know. All of this, if you ask me, is total bullshit. You're just whacking yourselves off under the table, getting off on the theatrics, like we're on fucking Broadway. Dance, little soldier, dance. It's a joke. I'll never understand it. But Ignazio here requested a meeting, and what kind of friend would I be if I didn't show up?

LONG, LONG AGO IN the Incubation Period of Man—long before booking agents, five-a-days, theatrical boarding houses, subway circuits, and Variety—when Megatherium roamed the trees, when Broadway was going through its First Glacial Period, and when the first vaudeville show was planned by the first lop-eared, low-browed, hairy impresario, it was decreed: “The acrobat shall be first.” Why the acrobat should be first no one ever explained; but that this was a dubious honor every one on the bill—including the acrobat—realized only too well. For it was recognized even then, in the infancy of Show Business, that the first shall be last in the applause of the audience. And all through the ages, in courts and courtyards and feeble theatres, it was the acrobat—whether he was called buffoon, farceur, merry-andrew, tumbler, mountebank, Harlequin, or punchinello—who was thrown, first among his fellow-mimes, to the lions of entertainment to whet their appetites for the more luscious feasts to come. So that to this day their muscular miracles are performed hard on the overture’s last wall shaking blare, performed with a simple resignation that speaks well for the mildness and resilience of the whole acrobatic tribe.

The time he spent could have been more usefully applied, it might seem, to finishing the Adoration of the Magi or Saint Jerome. But just as today we love halftime shows and Broadway extravaganzas, fireworks displays and choreographed performances, the events staged by the Sforza court were considered vital, and their producers, including Leonardo, were highly valued. The entertainments were even educational at times, like an ideas festival; there were demonstrations of science, debates over the relative merits of various art forms, and displays of ingenious devices, all of which were a precursor to the public science and edifying discourse that later became popular during the Enlightenment.

New York is a city of eight million people, approximately seven million of whom will be furious when they hear you were in town and didn’t meet them for an expensive dinner, five million furious you didn’t visit their new baby, three million furious you didn’t see their new show, one million furious you didn’t call for sex, but only five actually available to meet you. It is completely reasonable to call none of them. You could instead sneak off to a terrible, treacly Broadway show that you will never admit you paid two hundred dollars to see. This is what Less does on his first night, eating a hot dog dinner to make up for the extravagance. You cannot call it a guilty pleasure when the lights go down and the curtain goes up, when the adolescent heart begins to beat along with the orchestra, not when you feel no guilt. And he feels none; he feels only the shiver of delight when there is nobody around to judge you. It is a bad musical, but, like a bad lay, a bad musical can still do its job perfectly well. By the end, Arthur Less is in tears, sobbing in his seat, and he thinks he has been sobbing quietly until the lights come up and the woman seated beside him turns and says, “Honey, I don’t know what happened in your life, but I am so so sorry,” and gives him a lilac-scented embrace. Nothing happened to me, he wants to say to her. Nothing happened to me. I’m just a homosexual at a Broadway show

The show is said to have originated on WCAU, Philadelphia, the sponsor’s home city, in 1927. Its arrival in New York in 1931 kicked off an unusual commercial identity—a children’s song-dance-and-story hour sponsored by one of the strongest symbols of New York city life, the automat (where nickel coffee and a piece of pie was a Broadway tradition). With its first New York broadcast, Horn and Hardart admitted it had nothing to sell to kids but reasoned that a strong appeal to children would reach adults as well. A sample of its fare was the show of Dec. 7, 1941, a few hours before Pearl Harbor. The entire hour was a tribute to ailing George M. Cohan, with the kids singing such favorites as Give My Regards to Broadway, Yankee Doodle Dandy, and Harrigan.

What do you think, Jemma” It takes a second to realize that she’s talking to me. I’m too focused on the fact that Ryder’s sitting beside me--just inches away--holding my hand beneath the table. “What?” I ask, glancing around at the expected faces. “Oh, the train. Yeah, maybe.” “They should go up a week early,” Laura Grace declares. “Take some time to see the city. Maybe catch a couple of Broadway shows or ball games or something. We could go with them!” “No,” Ryder says, a little too loudly. “I just meant…we should probably do it on our own, me and Jemma. Learn our way around and all that. Y’all can come up for Thanksgiving break, once we get settled and everything.” Laura Grace nods. “That’s a great idea. We could get rooms at the Plaza, watch the Macy’s Parade. And the two of you can show us around.” Ryder nods. “Exactly.” Beneath the table, I give his hand a squeeze. Laura Grace eyes my plate suspiciously. “You’re just pushing your food around, aren’t you? You’ve barely taken two bites. I thought you loved Lou’s Cornish hens.” “I do. I’m sorry. All I can think about is that English project due this week.” I look over at Ryder with a faux scowl. “We’re already way behind--you’ve always got some excuse. We should probably work on it tonight.” “Probably so,” Ryder says with an exasperated-sounding sigh. “That’s the third project the two of you have been paired up on,” Mama says, shaking her head. “I hope you two can behave well enough to get your work done properly. No more arguing like the last time.” We’d pretended to fight over a calculus project. Yes, a calculus project. Is there really any such thing? “We’re trying really hard to behave,” I say, shooting Ryder a sidelong glance. “Right?” His cheeks pinken deliciously at the innuendo. I love it when Ryder blushes. Totally adorable. “Right,” he mumbles, his gaze fixed on his lap.

Recently, I was in New York with most of the Robertson family promoting the season-four premiere of Duck Dynasty. We were staying at the Trump International Hotel, which is a really nice place near Central Park. I was already uncomfortable being in the big city. I don’t like traffic or concrete, and there are a lot of both in New York. After we checked in, we gathered downstairs to go to a Broadway musical show. I know it might seem bizarre for me to be going to a musical, but my very attractive wife can be mightily persuasive, especially when I have nothing else to do. As we were waiting or the others in the lobby, I asked a doorman if there was a nearby bathroom. He gave me directions to the nearest restroom, which included a walk through the hotel restaurant. As I entered the restaurant, a well-dressed staffer offered his assistance. I informed him I was only going to the restroom. But he very nicely continued to offer assistance and took the role of my escort, which I thought was quite courteous and professional. At his direction, we took a quick left turn and walked out of the hotel. Befuddled, I asked him, “Where is the bathroom?” He painted down the street or maybe toward Central Park and said, “Good luck to you, sir. Have a nice day.” I circled back around to the main entrance of the hotel, where I found Missy, who had witnessed the entire episode. “I thought you had to go to the bathroom,” she said. I laughed and told her I had been escorted out of the hotel because of the way I looked. It was no big deal to us, and I laughed about the incident later that night with my family over dinner. I shared the story the next day with Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan on Live! with Kelly and Michael because I thought it was funny. Well, the story went viral and was all over the news and Internet the next few days. My phone wouldn’t stop ringing and various media outlets were trying to contact me. I’d jokingly labeled the incident “facial profiling” because in my mind that’s exactly what it was. People were surprised that it didn’t bother me, but my family and I have endured those kinds of things our entire lives. I figured the hotel employee was only trying to protect other hotel guests. The incident culminated with a call from Donald Trump’s office. They offered an apology for any inconvenience. I assured them that no apology was needed, and I asked them not to punish my courteous escort.

In most respects, Barbara [Stanwyck] was a man's woman, although her home was lovely. Like me, she was an animal lover—she kept poodles. Her son, Dion, was in the service at this point—I never actually met him—and she was hopeful that the Army might help him. She had adopted Dion when she was married to Frank Fay, one of the most dreadful men in the history of show business. Fay was a drunk, an anti-Semite, and a wife-beater, and Barbara had had to endure all of that. I don't think she was going to an analyst at this point, but she did make regular visits to a man who gave her sodium pentothal. It wasn't like the LSD therapy that came later, which Cary Grant tried and got so much out of. Barbara had a lot of things going on in her head, but she didn't put it out there for conversation, let alone public consumption. When I was with her, it was all about us. There wasn't a lot about anybody else, not Frank Fay, or even Bob Taylor. She had a small scar on her chest, where someone had once put out a cigarette on her. I think it was Al Jolson, speaking of sons of bitches. Jolson had been crazy about her back in the New York days, when she was a young actress on Broadway. She would talk about him once in a while, mainly about what an asshole he had been.

Robert Askins Brings ‘Hand to God’ to Broadway Chad Batka for The New York Times Robert Askins at the Booth Theater, where his play “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday. By MICHAEL PAULSON The conceit is zany: In a church basement, a group of adolescents gathers (mostly at the insistence of their parents) to make puppets that will spread the Christian message, but one of the puppets turns out to be more demonic than divine. The result — a dark comedy with the can-puppets-really-do-that raunchiness of “Avenue Q” and can-people-really-say-that outrageousness of “The Book of Mormon” — is “Hand to God,” a new play that is among the more improbable entrants in the packed competition for Broadway audiences over the next few weeks. Given the irreverence of some of the material — at one point stuffed animals are mutilated in ways that replicate the torments of Catholic martyrs — it is perhaps not a surprise to discover that the play’s author, Robert Askins, was nicknamed “Dirty Rob” as an undergraduate at Baylor, a Baptist-affiliated university where the sexual explicitness and violence of his early scripts raised eyebrows. But Mr. Askins had also been a lone male soloist in the children’s choir at St. John Lutheran of Cypress, Tex. — a child who discovered early that singing was a way to make the stern church ladies smile. His earliest performances were in a deeply religious world, and his writings since then have been a complex reaction to that upbringing. “It’s kind of frustrating in life to be like, ‘I’m a playwright,’ and watch people’s face fall, because they associate plays with phenomenally dull, didactic, poetic grad-schoolery, where everything takes too long and tediously explores the beauty in ourselves,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s not church, even though it feels like church a lot when we go these days.” The journey to Broadway, where “Hand to God” opens on Tuesday at the Booth Theater, still seems unlikely to Mr. Askins, 34, who works as a bartender in Brooklyn and says he can’t afford to see Broadway shows, despite his newfound prominence. He seems simultaneously enthralled by and contemptuous of contemporary theater, the world in which he has chosen to make his life; during a walk from the Cobble Hill coffee shop where he sometimes writes to the Park Slope restaurant where he tends bar, he quoted Nietzsche and Derrida, described himself as “deeply weird,” and swore like, well, a satanic sock-puppet. “If there were no laughs in the show, I’d think there was something wrong with him,” said the actor Steven Boyer, who won raves in earlier “Hand to God” productions as Jason, a grief-stricken adolescent with a meek demeanor and an angry-puppet pal. “But anybody who is able to write about such serious stuff and be as hilarious as it is, I’m not worried about their mental health.” Mr. Askins’s interest in the performing arts began when he was a boy attending rural Texas churches affiliated with the conservative Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod denomination; he recalls the worshipers as “deeply conservative, old farm folks, stone-faced, pride and suffering, and the only time anybody ever really livened up was when the children’s choir would perform.” “My grandmother had a cross-stitch that said, ‘God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing,’ and so I got into that,” he said. “For somebody who enjoys performance, that was the way in.” The church also had a puppet ministry — an effort to teach children about the Bible by use of puppets — and when Mr. Askins’s mother, a nurse, began running the program, he enlisted to help. He would perform shows for other children at preschools and vacation Bible camps. “The shows are wacky, but it was fun,” he said. “They’re badly written attempts to bring children to Jesus.” Not all of his formative encounters with puppets were positive. Particularly scarring: D

Gary Cooper called to invite me to a dinner party he was giving for Clark Gable at his house. When I accepted and he asked if I would mind picking up Barbara Stanwyck, I was delighted. I had always thought she was one of the greatest. The Lady Eve and Double Indemnity are two of my favorite films and feature two of the many terrific performances she gave through the years. I arrived at her door promptly at 6:30 P.M., a huge bouquet of pink peonies in hand. The maid said she would be right down, took the flowers, and offered me a glass of champagne. Barbara came down a few minutes later, looking terrific in something silver and slinky. She carried on about the flowers as the maid brought them in and joined me for some champagne. I was anxious to get things off to a good start with the right kind of small talk, but unfortunately I was out of touch with the latest gossip. I asked how and where her husband was. An expletive told me how she felt about her husband: “That son of a bitch ran off with some kraut starlet.” As I struggled to pull my foot out of my mouth, she started to laugh and said, “Don’t worry about it, baby, he’s not worth sweating over,” and the rest of the evening went like gangbusters. We arrived at 7:30 on the dot and were met at the door by Rocky, Mrs. Gary Cooper, who hugged Barbara and said, “He’s going to be so glad to see you.” Cooper and Stanwyck had made a couple of great films together, Meet John Doe and Ball of Fire, the latter for Sam Goldwyn, whom she liked even though she referred to him as “that tough old bastard.” Rocky sent Barbara out to the garden to see Coop, took my arm, and showed me around their lovely home. As we walked into the garden, I spotted him laughing with Barbara. Rocky took me over to meet him. He was tall, lean, warm, and friendly. The thing I remember most about him is the twinkle in his deep blue eyes, which were framed by thick dark lashes. He was a movie star.

Finian’s Rainbow was arguably one of the most controversial and racially provocative shows of its time. It was written in 1947, before Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement brought the fight for equality to the forefront of social issues. In the show, blacks, whites, and immigrants live happily together. Black and white performers in the chorus shared the stage and even held hands, breaking barriers still in place in the 1940s. In addition to racism, Finian’s Rainbow took on the U.S. economic system, consumerism, and political corruption.

What IS this place? I have arrhythmia. My arms are prickling. I thought I was so smart. I was going to save the show. But there IS no show! Spider-Man the Musical was never Spider-Man the Musical. I see that now. It’s always been nothing more than a diabolical machine built by the gods to teach humility. And I’m trapped in the dead center of its workings .

Lerner held that Brigadoon was one of Minnelli’s least vivacious efforts, despite the potential offered by CinemaScope. Only the wedding scene and the chase that follows reveal Minnelli’s unique touch. Before shooting began, Freed rushed to inform Lerner that “Vincente is bubbling over with enthusiasm about Brigadoon.” But, evidently, his heart was not in this film. Early on, Minnelli made a mistake and confessed to Kelly that he really hadn’t liked the Broadway show. As a film, Brigadoon was curiously flat and rambling, lacking in warmth or charm, and the direction lacks Minnelli’s usual vitality and smooth flow. Admittedly, Lerner’s fairy-tale story was too much of a wistful fancy. Two American hunters go astray in the Scottish hills, landing in a remote village that seems to be lost in time. One of the fellows falls in love with a bonnie lass from the past, which naturally leads to some complications. Minnelli thought that it would be better to set the story in 1774, after the revolts against English rule had ended. For research about the look of the cottages, he consulted with the Scottish Tourist Board in Edinburgh. But the resulting set of the old highland village looks artificial, despite the décor, the Scottish costumes, the heather blossoms, and the scenic backdrops. Inexplicably, some of the good songs that made the stage show stand out, such as “Come to Me, Bend to Me,” “My Mother’s Wedding Day,” and “There But for You Go I,” were omitted from the film. Other songs, such as “The Heather on the Hill” and “Almost Like Being in Love,” had some charm, though not enough to sustain the musical as a whole. Moreover, the energy of the stage dances was lost in the transfer to the screen, which was odd, considering that Kelly and Charisse were the dancers. For some reason, their individual numbers were too mechanical. What should have been wistful and lyrical became an exercise in trickery and by-now-predictable style. With the exception of “The Chase,” wherein the wild Scots pursue a fugitive from their village, the ensemble dances were dull. Onstage, Agnes de Mille’s choreography gave the dance a special energetic touch, whereas Kelly’s choreography in the film was mediocre at best and uninspired at worst. It didn’t help that Kelly and Charisse made an odd, unappealing couple. While he looks thin and metallic, she seems too solemn and often just frozen. The rest of the cast was not much better. Van Johnson, as Kelly’s friend, pouts too much. As Scottish villagers, Barry Jones, Hugh Laing, and Jimmy Thompson act peculiarly, to say the least.

go to the “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” Broadway show in the costume of Lord Voldemort

The show got mixed review, but LuPone was beloved by the critics, though she revealed in a 2007 interview in the New York Times, "'Evita' was the worst experience of my life. I was screaming my way through the part. And I had no support from the producers, who wanted a star performance onstage, but treated me as an unknown backstage. It was like Beirut, and I fought like a banshee.

the extant manuscript evidence reveals that from the time he began work on Kiss Me, Kate Porter was greatly concerned with creating a musical that integrated music with the book.

Unlike Grand Hotel and Titanic, but like The Wild Party and Sweet Smell of Success, our last special show was a failure. However, the previous two titles at least ran a few months. Amour (2002) lasted two weeks. This is a historically instructive show even so in its return to first principles, as a modern version of what Jacques Offenbach was doing when he invented musical comedy in the 1850s and ’60s: not in his format but in his spirit.

There was virtually nothing from some shows in which Fosse developed his history—the erotic Dream Ballet from New Girl in Town (1957), for whose integrity he had to fight the entire production team; the “Uncle Sam Rag” from Redhead (1959), in which Fosse embodied the music’s counterpoint in groupings of “counterpointed” dancers; “Coffee Break” or “A Secretary Is Not a Toy” from How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961);2 “Rich Kids’ Rag” from Little Me (1962).

And this is not Fosse. Yes, he made it: but it turns on one of those stupid frauds that American show biz can’t get enough of, that “You haven’t lived until you’ve played the Palace,” that “You’ll never make the big time because you’re small-time in your heart,” that MGM dream of a culture made entirely of show biz, for which Mickey and Judy filmed manuals for do-it-yourself stardom while, behind a prop tree, little Jackie Cooper was fucking Joan Crawford. It’s naïve—a condition that has nothing to do with Bob Fosse. Yet, came Fosse’s third act, there was “Mr. Bojangles,” again from Dancin’, and another risibly sentimental number. Fosse wasn’t a romantic; Fosse was a satirist. Fosse was enjoyable, of course, and a thrilling showcase for the dancers. But it was an incorrect piece, not dishonest but concentrating on rather a lot of irrelevant material.

the corporate investor became an almost essential part of Broadway--which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But when the money tries to protect it's investment...by getting involved with the creative content of the shows, unhealthy mutations occur. ...Our times encourage another sort of people--people with new money who are essentially interested in more money, not the arts.

Despite my misgivings, I was addicted to the cachet and perks of my job. Cold-pressed fruit juices lined up in neat colourful rows in the office drinks fridge, free gym membership, vouchers for massages and facials that would suddenly appear on my desk as part of the employee welfare program. The never-ending supply of free tickets to Broadway shows or prime seats at sports games. And, most importantly, the money they dangled in front of us. It all gave me temporary amnesia, or perhaps wilful blindness, at the damage we wrought on the lives of the nameless people at that factory in Michigan, or a hundred other places affected by our decisions. We used profit as justification for shattering lives. It was that simple.

Those who see Show Boat as the progenitor of the form mistake its epic grandeur for its essence. No: most of Show Boat inheres in the zany frivolity of musical comedy, though revisions have been stamping out much of the fun since 1946. Still, the comic nature of Captain Andy and other leads and the use of dance as decoration rather than interpretation place Show Boat in a category of its own.

Swados’ sound was no more ingratiating in the more commercial Doonesbury (1983), which Swados wrote with Garry Trudeau, the creator of the familiar comic strip. The comics have been singing on The Street for a century—Victor Herbert and Harry B. Smith turned Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo into a musical in 1908, and Maggie and Jiggs of George McManus’ Bringing Up Father provisioned a series of shows in the following decade and into the 1920s, though few were seen in New York. George Herriman’s Krazy Kat went not to Broadway but Town Hall, as a ballet-pantomime, with scenery by Herriman, in 1922. More recently, Li’l Abner, Peanuts, and Little Orphan Annie have had notable success as musical theatre. Doonesbury, which lasted three months, was seldom theatre and never musical. This pop material might have worked as a television series or a comedy disc; nothing of what made the strip amusing was transformed into what makes musicals amusing. Li’l Abner came to Broadway in 1956 in the form of a fifties musical with fifties musical-comedy talent, the whole made on Al Capp’s characters and attitudes. Doonesbury played Broadway but never came to it in any real sense.

The former are given musical characteristics loosely associated with music of the Italian Renaissance. Bianca and her suitors are given an a cappella pseudo-madrigal in “Tom, Dick or Harry,” the bluesy “Why Can’t You Behave?” is transformed into a Renaissance dance (the pavane), and several of the Shrew songs display the long-short-short figure () characteristic of the sixteenth-century Italian canzona

his analysis of Kiss Me, Kate, Joseph P. Swain notes Porter’s technique of moving from the major mode to the minor mode or vice versa to distinguish the Padua songs from their Baltimore counterparts.

Although the degree to which Kiss Me, Kate employs the major-minor juxtapositions is perhaps unprecedented in a Porter show, the roots of this idea can be found in Porter’s pre–Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Anything Goes (and many other songs;

We see this even more in Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954), with Mercer again at MGM, collaborating with composer Gene De Paul. This one has a real Broadway score, every number embedded in the characters’ attitudes. Ragged, bearded, buckskinned Howard Keel has come to town to take a wife, and a local belle addresses him as “Backwoodsman”: it’s the film’s central image, of rough men who must learn to be civilized in the company of women. The entire score has that flavor—western again, rustic, primitive, lusty. “Bless Yore Beautiful Hide,” treating Keel’s tour of the Oregon town where he seeks his bride, sounds like something Pecos Bill wrote with Calamity Jane. When the song sheet came out, the tune was marked “Lazily”—but that isn’t how Keel sings it. He’s on the hunt and he wants results, and, right in the middle of the number, he spots Jane Powell chopping wood and realizes that he has found his mate. But he hasn’t, not yet. True, she goes with him, looking forward to love and marriage. But her number, “Wonderful, Wonderful Day,” warns us that she is of a different temperament than he: romantic, vulnerable, poetic. They don’t suit each other, especially when he incites his six brothers to snatch their intended mates. Not court them: kidnap them. “Sobbin’ Women” (a pun on the Sabine Women of the ancient Roman legend, which the film retells, via a story by Stephen Vincent Benét) is the number outlining the plan, in more of Keel’s demanding musical tone. But the six “brides” are horrified. Their number, in Powell’s pacifying tone, is “June Bride,” and the brothers in turn offer “Lament” (usually called “Lonesome Polecat”), which reveals that they, too, have feelings. That—and the promise of good behavior—shows that they at last deserve their partners, whereupon each brother duets with each bride, in “Spring, Spring, Spring.” And we note that this number completes the boys’ surrender, in music that gives rather than takes. Isn’t

In fact, there were no movie stars in view, though Finian himself was a talent star, one of the last of the Golden Age, Fred Astaire. He hadn’t filmed a musical since Silk Stockings, in 1957, but it was a frustrating return, for Astaire felt Coppola had no feeling for the form. And Coppola didn’t—not the form of musical Astaire was used to making. For instance, some of the show’s many dance sequences became choreography by other means—a festive picnic with a tug-of-war and other contests for “If This Isn’t Love.” Then, too, Astaire was working with his old RKO assistant, Hermes Pan, who was suddenly fired from the picture, offending Astaire’s deep-rooted sense of loyalty—to his profession, to the great songwriters who had made songs on him, and to his colleagues. Still, the movie flows along nicely with a likable confidence, not easy to bring off when the plot takes in a pot of gold that grants wishes.

The feeling that I was not worthy of her finished me.

She was now very rich and employed posses of lawyers to attack the slightest opposition or infringement of her rights. Sycophants who thought they were merely worshipping at her shrine might get a nasty shock. When Eric Bentley, Brecht’s friend, put on an off-Broadway anti-witch-hunt play, Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?, which involved actresses reading from her letters, Hellman demanded royalties and said she would close the show down unless the owners complied. She was a fast woman with a writ. Most people preferred to settle.

He met me at the train like usual, and that night he surprised me by taking me to see a Broadway show.

...the history of the Broadway musical is the history of short Jewish men yelling at each other.

Yesterday evening Mickey and I and other deluded WAAFs went through the blackout and into the wilds of Hammersmith enduring the journey with the thought of the rollicking, witty West End show, Broadway Follies, studded with stars, to which we WAAFs had been invited free. I might say frightful, I might say terrible, awful, boring, tedious, but they only reveal the inadequacy of words. After the third hour, or so it seemed, I was convinced that I had died and was in hell, watching turn after turn in unending procession, each longer, each less funny, each more unbelievably bad than the last. During the interval, Hendon WAAFs rushed to the bar, scruffy WAAFs, obviously from West Drayton, sat still rollicking with mirth in the Stalls. We tossed back whisky and ginger beer and watched in a stupor the longer, duller, apparently unending second half. After came the journey back in the blackout made blue by our opinions of the evening.

Once the apartment was ready, Portia had begun to plan out what foods they would showcase in this little glimpse into a Glass Kitchen world. Her sisters couldn't help her with this part. Portia had let go, and dishes had come to her, all of which she wrote down and prepared to make. Then, at eight that morning, she got to work. Olivia and Cordelia served as sous-chefs; they started by making a decadent beef bourguignon. Olivia and Cordelia washed and chopped as Portia browned layer after layer of beef, bacon, carrots, and onion, folding in the beef stock and wine, then putting it in to slow bake as they dove into the remaining dishes. They opened all the windows and ran four swiveling fans Portia had bought and found that pushed the scent of the baking and cooking out onto the sidewalk. Then they had put up a fairly discreet sign in the window, hand-painted by Olivia: THE GLASS KITCHEN. Portia had gotten the idea while walking down Broadway and passing the French soap store. Scents had spilled into the street from the shop- lavender and primrose, musk and sandalwood- luring passersby inside. Portia had realized that the best way to get investors interested was to show them a version of The Glass Kitchen. The food. The aromas. She had realized, standing there on Broadway, that she needed to create a mini version of her grandmother's restaurant to lure people in.

I’d like to quote the lyrics of Rodgers and Hammerstein—something that’s extremely easy to do when you’re in a library near 782.14 and all those magnificent Broadway show tunes—‘I flit, I float, I fleetly flee, I fly!’ 

His album that year was Sign O’ the Times. I took the fact that the gang in the title track was named the Disciples as a personal tribute. The tour behind that record was the best Rock show I’ve ever seen. I went three times, and it blew my mind every time. The production was the highest evolution of the live, physical part of our Artform I have ever seen. It was Prince’s vision, but his production designer, LeRoy Bennett, deserves much of the credit for pulling it off. It was Rock, it was Theater, it was Soul, it was Cinema, it was Jazz, it was Broadway. The stage metamorphized into different scenes and configurations right before your eyes, transforming itself into whatever emotional setting was appropriate for each song. On top of that, the music never stopped, for three solid hours. Prince wrote various pieces, or covered Jazz, as interstitial transitions for those moments when the stage was shifting or the musicians were changing clothes. At one point, he even had a craps game break out, which made me laugh—it brought me back to Dr. Zoom and the Sonic Boom and our onstage Monopoly games. They captured it pretty well on film, but it can’t compare. When you’re watching a movie, your mind is used to scene changes, different sets and lighting. Live, it’s something else. That kind of legerdemain before your eyes is mind-boggling.

Lerner had never been happy with the 1951 stage show, his and Loewe’s entry between Brigadoon and My Fair Lady. He revised it a bit for the national tour, and now decided to give it a completely different storyline and some new numbers to match. The results might, at least, have been a bargain, as the whole thing takes place in and around a single spot, a gold-rush town in more or less everyday (if period) clothes. As opposed to the castles in Spain where Camelot did much of its filming, not to mention the gargoyles and falconry. However, anticipating the disaster-film cycle, Lerner wanted Paint Your Wagon’s mining town (“No-Name City. Population: Male”) to sink into the earth in a catastrophe finale. Worse, production built the place from scratch in the wilds of Oregon, with no nearby living quarters for cast and crew; they had to be trucked and helicoptered in and out each day in a long and pricey commute, greatly protracting the shooting schedule. Back as director again after Camelot, Joshua Logan fretted about all this, but Lerner didn’t care how much of Paramount’s money he spent. He even hired Camelot’s spendthrift designer, John Truscott. In the end, it would appear that no one knows exactly how much Paint Your Wagon cost, but there is no doubt that it lost a vast fortune. It deserved to. Cynically, Lerner took note of changing times and filled the film with a “youth now!” attitude and sexual freedom—refreshing if they didn’t feel so commercially opportunistic. But after all, Hair (1967) had happened. Was Broadway urging Hollywood to go hippie, too, or would Lerner have done this anyway?

If you consider yourself to be an introvert, I’m about to give you three words That are going to change the way you think of attraction forever. Peak-End Rule The Peak-End Rule: The psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at it’s peak and at it’s end, rather than based on the total sum or average. To understand this rule … you need only think of a Broadway show, a movie, or a concert, and how there are moments in these shows that can actually be quite boring. There are moments in a concert where there are 5 songs in a row that you don’t care about. But if the concert, if the movie, if that Broadway show, ends with a bang, or has a really emotional peak moment somewhere within it … that tends to be the part that we remember. It colors our entire experience of the thing. If you are an introvert the psychology of this is gold to you.

the song and dance musical comedies that prevailed in the 1920s and ’30s and the integrated musicals that became more influential in the 1940s and ’50s both allow a meaningful dramatic relationship between songs and their shows.

the struggle between authenticity and accessibility

New York City wanted to honor the players, too. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city would hold a ticker-tape parade for the players, making them the first women’s team ever to be given the historic celebration. Within two days, there the players were at Battery Park on their respective floats, waiting for the parade to start. They couldn’t see up Broadway and had no idea just how many people were waiting to catch a glimpse of them. Then, the procession turned the corner. The sidewalks were packed 30-people deep in places—and it continued all the way up Broadway as far as the eye could see. There were thousands and thousands of people lining Broadway into the horizon. “We turned onto the street and it was like, Are you fucking kidding me? All these people are here for us?” Ali Krieger says, laughing. None of the players had seen anything quite like it. Office workers on Broadway were opening their windows and throwing paper shreds out. The air was filled with paper, floating over the parade route like some sort of festive fog. When the parade reached its destination, City Hall, the players got off the 12 floats they had been riding. They waited in a room at City Hall, finally together again and able to talk about what they’d just seen, and the players became emotional. Some players were crying. Some were in shock. “I never quite understand the following this team has until it’s thrown in my face, and the ticker-tape parade epitomizes that,” says Becky Sauerbrunn, who has nearly 150 caps for the USA. “I was like, Is anyone going to be at this parade? What if no one shows up? It blew me away.” CHAPTER 19 “It Is Our Job to Keep on Fighting” In the days after the national team won the World Cup, the players were the most in-demand athletes in the entire country.

I'd rather be 9 people's favorite thing than 100 people's 9th favorite thing

It was like marble or quartz, but cut through to show the layers of black and white, with sometimes just a hint of red or brown. “What’s this edge made of?” “Onyx. My first big play on Broadway was The Onyx Ring. The pool is one of my few luxuries.

Those millions of other people are—are our family. And the museums, and the galleries, and the High Line, skating at Rockefeller Center—the Broadway shows? You’re fine just giving all that up?” Giving me up.

Not only could it have been a significant commercial disaster, West Side Story could very well have been one of the worst musicals ever written. Our familiarity with the work makes it difficult to imagine the dubious qualities of the original concept: based on a regional and topical subject which would become quickly dated, exploiting a Hispanic musical style which was already overused and stereotyped, and written by four privileged middle-class men who, as Sondheim drily put it, “had never even met a Puerto Rican,” this dark and tragic Broadway show about working-class juvenile delinquents would neither

The film version of Chicago is a milestone in the still-being-written history of film musicals. It resurrected the genre, winning the Oscar for Best Picture, but its long-term impact remains unclear. Rob Marshall, who achieved such success as the co-director of the 1998 stage revival of Cabaret, began his career as a choreographer, and hence was well suited to direct as well as choreograph the dance-focused Chicago film. The screen version is indeed filled with dancing (in a style reminiscent of original choreographer Bob Fosse, with plenty of modern touches) and retains much of the music and the book of the stage version. But Marshall made several bold moves. First, he cast three movie stars – Catherine Zeta-Jones (former vaudeville star turned murderess Velma Kelly), Renée Zellweger (fame-hungry Roxie Hart), and Richard Gere (celebrity lawyer Billy Flynn) – rather than Broadway veterans. Of these, only Zeta-Jones had training as a singer and dancer. Zellweger’s character did not need to be an expert singer or dancer, she simply needed to want to be, and Zellweger’s own Hollywood persona of vulnerability and stardom blended in many critics’ minds with that of Roxie.8 Since the show is about celebrity, casting three Hollywood icons seemed appropriate, even if the show’s cynical tone and violent plotlines do not shed the best light on how stars achieve fame. Marshall’s boldest move, though, was in his conception of the film itself. Virtually every song in the film – with the exception of Amos’s ‘Mr Cellophane’ and a few on-stage numbers like Velma’s ‘All That Jazz’ – takes place inside Roxie’s mind. The heroine escapes from her grim reality by envisioning entire production numbers in her head. Some film critics and theatre scholars found this to be a cheap trick, a cop-out by a director afraid to let his characters burst into song during the course of their normal lives, but other critics – and movie-goers – embraced this technique as one that made the musical palatable for modern audiences not accustomed to musicals. Marshall also chose a rapid-cut editing style, filled with close-ups that never allow the viewer to see a group of dancers from a distance, nor often even an entire dancer’s body. Arms curve, legs extend, but only a few numbers such as ‘Razzle Dazzle’ and ‘Cell Block Tango’ are treated like fully staged group numbers that one can take in as a whole.

Indeed, this is the sort of show critics love to ghoul out on. It’s so romantic, so twice-told, so … yes: so corny. That’s the worst insult possible in a rock culture. The American Gone With the Wind, still in the Layton production but wholly recast with Lesley Ann Warren and Pernell Roberts in the leads, was to have opened in Los Angeles, toured for the better part of a year, then hit Broadway. But the California showing did not go over, and after San Francisco the show folded. We are losing important history here. Harold Rome’s career typifies the evolution of theatre music in the Golden Age, from hi-ho ditties to the dramatic sophistication of the “musical scene.” An invention of twenties operetta but not popularized till Rodgers and Hammerstein, the musical scene is what gives modern shows their depth and point. Isolated song spots are mostly gone; now the music breathes with the story.

Ted L. Nancy 560 N. Moorpark Rd., #236 Thousand Oaks, CA 91360 July 10th, 1995 MR. ALBERT H. MEYER, PRESIDENT AMERICAN SEATING COMPANY 901 Broadway Grand Rapids, Michigan 49504 Dear Mr. Meyer: I had a seating question and I was referred to you because I understand you manufacture stadium and arena seating. My question: When entering or exiting a seat in a stadium which is the proper side to face the person sitting down? Rear to them or crotch to them? I am always at a quandry when this problem comes up. To hence: last week at a sporting event I had to leave my seat. There were a row of people - ALL FROM THE SAME FAMILY - that were sitting down the row. I exited my seat, stood up and faced away from this family. Then I moved down the row realizing my buttocks were not 2 inches from this whole guy’s family. I had shown an entire family my rear end! But then again If I had turned around and moved down the aisel THAT WAY, wouldn’t that be worse? Stadium seating is the only situation in life where you can show whole rows of people your butt or crotch. And it’s acceptable! Can something be done about this seating? Should the rows be changed? I suggest a single row straight up to the top. You walk into the stadium you simply find your seat number and go up until you get it. Question: Is there a gracious way to exit? Thank you, Sir, for your response. Ted L. Nancy

Wait. I replaced a guy in a chicken suit who sang songs from Broadway shows? THAT’S WHO I REPLACED IN YOUR LIFE?

Are you kidding? It was beautiful!' exclaimed the janitor. 'Just because you did something when you were younger doesn’t make it stupid. It doesn’t matter if it was a little college show or Broadway, meaningful things are still meaningful things. People can make fun of you for it, sour people, call you childish, but I been around a long time. Both of your two lives combined. And there’s no guarantee people get to do a great show of A Doll’s House ever again. Either life happens or death happens and we may never get another chance. Least thing we can do is to wake up in the morning and protect the good things that were. The past deserves it.

The dramatic strategy of the show provides a simple and effective means to blend melodrama with farce (which Sondheim claims as his “two favorite forms of theatre because … they are obverse sides of the same coin”).37 Starkly put, the show develops a pattern of first scaring the hell out of its audience and then rescuing the situation through humor, each time by introducing Mrs. Lovett into a situation saturated with Sweeney Todd’s wrenching angst. This scare-rescue pattern happens twice to great effect, at the beginning and end of Act I, but its real payoff is the devastating conclusion, where there is no comic rescue. The denial of this previous pattern greatly intensifies the darkness of the supremely bleak ending, making the show’s musical profile seem operatic to Broadway audiences even though, ironically in this respect, the denouement unfolds with only intermittent singing.38 But the musical dimension of the show is also deliberately operatic, as it interweaves, Wagner-like, a host of recurring motives, mostly related to each other through a common origin in the Dies Irae, from the Catholic requiem mass. The Dies Irae (literally, “Day of Wrath”; see example 7.1) was taken up as a symbol of death and retribution in music throughout the nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth (the most important early such use was by Berlioz in his 1830 Symphonie fantastique). Most scene changes bring back “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” which includes both fast and slow versions of the Dies Irae (example 7.1) and builds up to a frenetic, obsessive chorus of “Sweeney, Sweeney.

When did it happen? When did a form mocked as insipid, bland ‘family entertainment’ come to be associated with homosexuality? There are no statistics for these things, but, on the basis of my own unscientific research, I would say that, of the longest-running shows of the 1940s, some two-thirds had a homosexual contribution in the writing/staging/ producing department. By the 1960s, the proportion of long-runners with a major homosexual contribution was up to about 90 per cent. Certainly, it’s hard to take issue with Leonard Bernstein, who once told a friend: ‘To be a successful composer of musicals, you either have to be Jewish or gay. And I’m both.

Lieutenant Commander Thomas McWhorter of the navy, who fired off an early broadside against the song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” asking that it be cut. “It is like drinking a scotch and soda and suddenly swallowing the ice cube!” McWhorter wrote. “You could not have interrupted the beautiful flow of entertainment any more effectively had you stopped the show for a VD lecture.” Oscar wrote back, “I believe I get the point of your letter very clearly, and I realize very well the dangers of overstating the case. But I just feel that the case is not fully stated without this song. I wish it were true that all these things are accepted by the public. You say, ‘the theme is wearing very thin,’ but in spite of this, I see progress being made only very slowly.

He didn’t have much back then, but he always made sure I knew how much he adored me. It was little things, you know? Bringing me bouquets of wildflowers to the art gallery I worked at, booking little weekend getaways here and there. We’d go wine tasting, or to see Broadway shows. I’m not sure theater was Vince’s thing really, but he knew I loved it.

Crazy for You opens backstage at the Zangler Theatre, New York, where Bobby, desperate to break into showbusiness, performs an impromptu audition for the great impresario Bella Zangler. This is not a ‘book number’ – that’s to say, the music is not an expression of character or plot point arising from the dialogue, the defining convention of musical theatre. Instead, more prosaically, it’s a real number, a ‘prop number’: Bobby is backstage and doing the song for Zangler. So it’s sparely orchestrated – little more than a rehearsal piano and some support; it’s one chorus; and its tap-break ends with Bobby stamping on Zangler’s foot. This is grim reality: Bobby is expelled from the theatre. Outside, he makes a decision, and sings ‘I Can’t Be Bothered Now’ – the second song, but the real opening number: the first ‘book number’ in the show. There is an automobile onstage (it’s the 1930s) and, as Bobby opens the door, one showgirl, pretty in pink, steps out, then another, and another, and more and more, far more than could fit in any motor car; finally, Bobby raises the hood of the vehicle and the last chorine emerges. The audience leans back, reassured and content: Susan Stroman’s fizzy, inventive choreography has told them that what’s about to follow is romantic fantasy. More to the point, it’s true to the character of the song, and the choice of song is true to Bobby’s character and the engine of the drama: My bonds and shares May fall downstairs Who cares? Who cares? I’m dancing and I Can’t Be Bothered Now … This lyric captures the philosophy of Ira Gershwin’s entire oeuvre – which is important: the show is a celebration of Gershwin. But it’s also an exact expression of Bobby’s feelings and the reason why he heads to Dead Rock, Arkansas. So the number does everything it should: it defines the principal’s motivation; it kick-starts the plot; and it communicates the spirit of the score and the staging. Audiences don’t reason it out like that; we just eat it up. But that’s why.

If you are all set for an enjoyable weekend then simply head towards the magnificent Her Majesty’s Theatre! The popular London Westend theatre is running the award winning London show, The Phantom of the Opera with packed houses. The show has already made its remarkable entry into its third decade. The blockbuster London show by Andrew Lloyd Webber is a complete treat for music lovers. The popular show has won several prestigious awards. The show is set against the backdrop of gothic Paris Opera House. The show revolves around soprano Christine Daae who is enticed by the voice of Phantom. The show features some of the heart touching and spell binding musical numbers such as 'The Music of the Night', 'All I Ask of You' and the infamous title track, The Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom of the Opera is a complete audio visual treat for theatre lovers. In the year 1986, the original production made its debut at the Her Majesty's Theatre featuring Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. Sarah was then wife of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber. The popular London musical, The Phantom of the Opera went on becoming a popular show and still London's hottest ticket. The award winning show is a brilliant amalgamation of outstanding design, special effects and memorable score. The show has earned critical acclamation from both the critics and audiences. The show has been transferred to Broadway and is currently the longest running musical. The show is running at the Majestic Theatre and enjoyed brilliant performance across the globe. For Instance, the Las Vegas production was designed specifically with a real lake. In order to celebrate its silver jubilee, there was a glorious concert production at the Royal Albert Hall. The phenomenal production featured Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess as Phantom and Christine. If you are looking for some heart touching love musical the Phantom of the Opera is a must watch. With its wonderfully designed sets, costumes and special effects, the show is a must watch for theatre lovers. The show is recommended for 10+ kids and run for two hours and thirty minutes.

She won an amateur night at Keeney’s Theater in Brooklyn, singing When You Know You’re Not Forgotten by the Girl You Can’t Forget. Her prize was $10, and she gathered $23 in coins from the floor of the stage. She worked for George M. Cohan but was fired when Cohan learned that she couldn’t dance. After singing with a road show, she appeared in New York musical revues. A struggling young songwriter, Irving Berlin, gave her a musical piece called Sadie Salome and suggested she sing it in Yiddish dialect at the Columbia Burlesque House, where she was working. In the audience that night was Florenz Ziegfeld, whose Follies were at the pinnacle of Broadway entertainment.

Life wasn’t like a movie or a Broadway show, where you could have multiple takes,

go to the “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” Broadway show in the costume of Lord Voldemort or attend Disney’s “Aladdin” musical in the costume of the genie?

Only now are art critics, scholars of children’s literature, historians of book-cover design and commercial illustration, and chroniclers of the gay experience in postwar America waking up to the fact that Gorey is a critically neglected genius. His consummately original vision--expressed in virtuosic illustrations and poetic texts but articulated with equal verve in book-jacket design, verse plays, puppet shows, and costumes and sets for ballets and Broadway productions--has earned him a place in the history of American art and letters.

There were no do-overs, and no second chances sometimes. Life wasn’t like a movie or a Broadway show, where you could have multiple takes, rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and then, hopefully, a perfect opening night, or a polished, finished movie after an incredible amount of preparation. Life was finite and unpredictable.

The listener was absorbed by the sounds of Broadway: the car horns, police whistles, the people milling about. Up Broadway to 42nd Street, where an attendant shouted, “Have your tickets ready, please! have your tickets ready, please! … Good evening, Mr. First Nighter, the usher will show you to your box.” Then, in the “fourth-row center” seats, the First Nighter gave a quick reading of the program—title, cast, author—and the “famous First Nighter orchestra” played a few bars of music. An usher came down the aisle, shouting “Curtain! Curtain!” Buzzers sounded. Ushers reminded people that smoking was permitted in the lobby only. Then, listeners were told, the lights were dimmed and the play began. Afterward, the effect was reversed, with Mr. First Nighter weaving his way through the still-humming crowd and melting away into the street.

Andy and his manager, Dick Linke, set up a meeting with Abe Lastfogel at William Morris. Andy told him, “Mr. Lastfogel, I’ve struck out in movies and now on Broadway, and I don’t want to go back to nightclubs, so maybe I’d better try television.” Lastfogel went to see Sheldon Leonard, the powerful producer of television’s Danny Thomas Show. He asked if Sheldon knew of Andy. Sheldon replied, “Yeah, he did a record, a funny record.” Lastfogel said, “He’d like to do television. Can you think of something for him?

substance. Serbia, Macedonia and San Marino are all landlocked countries but participate in the Mediterranean Games. Israel does not. Historically, in many North American cities, 1 May used to be ‘moving day’ and the only possible date on which one could change dwelling. As of mid-2016, the Phantom of the Opera is the longest running Broadway show, with almost 12 000 performances. In 2013, a single tuna fish was sold in Japan for $1.76 million. A widely

By 1932 he was a vaudeville headliner. He was on Broadway as part of Earl Carroll’s Vanities when newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan invited him to appear on a radio interview and gossip show. At the time he had no great interest in the new medium, but he went on Sullivan’s quarter-hour show March 19, 1932, as a favor. His first words on the air were these: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares?’ I am here tonight as a scenario writer. There is quite a lot of money in writing scenarios for the pictures. Well, there would be if I could sell one. That seems to be my only trouble right now, but I’m going back to pictures in about ten weeks. I’m going to be in a new film with Greta Garbo. They sent me the story last week. When the picture opens, I’m found dead in the bathroom.…

A 2010 Los Angeles Opera production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle cost $31 million to produce.24 Broadway shows don’t usually cost that much, unless you’re talking about the recent Spider-Man debacle. U2’s last concert-tour budget might be in that range, but those were stadium shows attracting huge numbers of people. And in those latter two instances, the people who wrote the music are still alive, and presumably they get paid a piece out of every ticket sold, which is part of what keeps those production costs up. Wagner has been dead for a long time, so one assumes it’s not his agent who is charging the moon and driving up the cost of these Ring productions. (Granted, it is a four-part epic.) The Los Angeles Opera ended up with a $6 million deficit due to “slack demand for expensive tickets.