Broadway Theatre Quotes

I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret — Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

I may have done some other things as good but I am sure none better. I haven't matured, progressed, grown, become deeper, wiser, or funnier. But then, I never thought I would. (Peter Cook about Beyond the Fringe)

The Theatre of the Absurd, in the sense that it is truly the contemporary theatre, facing as it does man's condition as it is, is the Realistic theatre of our time; and that the supposed Realistic theatre—the term used here to mean most of what is done on Broadway—in the sense that it panders to the public need for self-congratulation and reassurance and presents a false picture of ourselves to ourselves is … really and truly The Theatre of the Absurd.

The word was out that maybe, just maybe, a British accent would fit. The hair, the skin tone and the bridgework would have to be up to American network standards, but there had been a lot of British accents up there thanking their mothers for their Oscars, a lot of British accents singing on Broadway, and some unusually big audiences tuning in to British accents in wig on Masterpiece Theatre.

What would Samuel Becket say if he knew that Broadway musicals are all that survived of the theatre world?

Collins wrote a dramatic version of The Woman in White that made its London debut at the Olympic Theatre on October 9, 1871. It ran on Broadway for three weeks in 1873.

My mother owns the Drama Queen bookstore in the theatre district and has the Midas touch when it comes to producing off-Broadway gay theatre. Her most recent success was with the all-male musical Oklahomo! The entire cast was clad in tight leather overalls or fringed chaps.

But you'll see producers and theatre owners with a billion dollars worth of theaters come in here for lunch and you know why? Because it's cheap. You see those pictures on the wall? All young actors and actresses who you will never hear about in your life... And when 'dis place is gone, the entire Broadway will slide into the East River.

It was right then that I realized truly what the theatre is all about, which is that it’s a prayer circle. It’s just a big circle: we tell stories, and maybe we heal a heart or two, and we put something positive into the world, and we just do it—you know, we just create our circle with actors and collaborators and friends who take part in this art form.

I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, it can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret—Are you listening to me? There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. That includes your Professor Tupper, buddy. And all his goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone anywhere that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know—listen to me, now—don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

I watched, for the umpteenth time, James Dean in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Man oh man, I'm trying my damnedest to recreate the impact that cool cat, Dean, had on the world with the use of ONLY my words. Why? Because I (full disclosure) was an actor at one time in my life and though theatre didn't pay the bills, off-Broadway productions were (and maybe still are) my thing.

February 1: Photographer Sam Shaw escorts Marilyn to a party at the home of Paul Bigelow, an assistant to Broadway producer Cheryl Crawford, an original member of the Group Theatre, where Kazan, Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and other important theater professionals made their mark in the 1930s. Crawford invites Marilyn to accompany her to the Actors Studio, formed some years after the dissolution of the Group Theatre.

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.

«Ben, milioni di persone potranno dire di essere stati al Richard Rodgers Theatre per vedere Hamilton. Noi siamo gli unici che possono dire di essersi seduti sul marciapiede e di essersi fatti una scorpacciata di pezzi di Broadway in una sola sera.» «E tu sei sicuro che sia meglio? Perché...» Arthur mi zittisce con un bacio. «Ben giocata» dico. Ci alziamo. «Davvero, mi dispiace...» Altro bacio. «Okay, ma ho rovinat...» Altro bacio. «Lasciami dir...» Altro bacio. «Che mi baci ogni volta che cerco di scusarmi non è male, come problema di coppia.» «Ben, sono felice. È stato meraviglioso e romantico e perfetto. Sei il re delle riparazioni.» Ci tuffiamo nel cuore di Times Square. Valanghe di pedoni continuano a separarci, ma noi troviamo sempre il modo di riunirci, senza permettere ai passanti o ai selfie di gruppo di tenerci lontani. Quando ritrovo la sua mano per l’ennesima volta, me lo tengo vicino. Non voglio più lasciarlo andare. Né stasera. Né mai più

Helene Hanff, an aspiring playwright who had been put to work in the Theatre Guild press office, remembered trying to generate some effective publicity for Away We Go! “This was, they told us, the damndest musical ever thought up for a sophisticated Broadway audience,” Hanff wrote. “It was so pure you could put it on at a church social. It opened with a middle-aged farm woman sitting alone on a bare stage churning butter, and from then on it got cleaner.”16 It was the kind of Americana that Larry Hart distrusted. But at the New Haven tryout he tried to keep an open mind. Of the songs in Away We Go!’s first act, five of them—“Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” “Many a New Day,” “People Will Say We’re in Love,” and “Out of My Dreams”—were destined to become instant classics, with “All Er Nuthin’” and “Oklahoma!” delighting the audience in the second act. But Larry wasn’t so delighted. He might have regarded “We know we belong to the land” as a professionally crafted line, as resonant to recent immigrants as to Mayflower descendants; but “The land we belong to is grand”?

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms*, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember about the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' coming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms*, not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember about the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than one just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my time. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

One other thing. And that's all. I promise you. But the thing is, you raved and you bitched when you came home about the stupidity of audiences. The goddam `unskilled laughter' comming from the fifth row. And that's right, that's right - God knows it's depressing. I'm not saying it isn't. But that's none of your business, really. That's none of your business, Franny. An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and *on his own terms", not anyone else's. You have no right to think about those things. I swear to you. Not in any real sense, anyway. You know what I mean?" ... The voice at the other end came through again. "I remember abouut the fifth time I ever went on `Wise Child'. I subbbed for Walt a few times when he was in a cast - remember when he was in the case? Anyway. I started bitching one night before broadcast. Seymour'd told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I sais they couldn't see them anyway, where we sat. He said to shine them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes for the Fat Lady every time I ever went on the air again - all the years you and I were on the program together, if you remember. I don't think I missed more than one just a couple of times. This terribly clear, clear picture of the Fat Lady formed in my time. I had her sitting on this porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio goin full-blast from morning till night. I figured the heat was terrible, and she probably had cancer, and - I don't know. Anyway, seemed goddam clear why Seymour wanted me to shine my shoes when I went on air. It made *sense*." ... "... Let me tell you something now, buddy ... Are you listening?" ... "I don't care where an actor acts. It can be in summer stock, in can be over a radio, it can be over television, it can be in a goddam Broadway theatre, complete with the most fashionable, most well-fed, most sunburned-looking audience you can imagine. But I'll tell you a terrible secret - Are you listening to me? *There isn't anyone out there who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady.* That goddam cousins by the dozens. There isn't anyone *any*where that isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - *don't you know who that Fat Lady really is?*... Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.

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.

The 2017-18 Broadway season offered a perfect example of the difference between the performative and psychological styles of acting in musicals. At the Shubert Theatre, veteran singer and comedienne Bette Midler returned to Broadway in a revival of Hello, Dolly!, a musical that demands above all star presence. To the delight of her fans, Midler played Bette Midler as Dolly. No one in the audience wanted her to be anyone else and the part didn’t demand the plumbing of psychological depth. A block away, young Ben Platt offered a powerful example of how a talented acting singer can create a believable character through speech and song in a musical. Platt’s performance in Dear Evan Hansen (Book, Steven Levenson; Music and lyrics, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), has made him a star but Platt never breaks character, never acknowledges the audience. Ben Platt convincingly becomes Evan Hansen in both dialogue and song. Dear Evan Hansen is a post-Sondheim musical that demands intense acting as well as singing; Hello, Dolly! demands personality.

In New York City alone, three different imaginary bombs were to drop, one of which was to land imaginarily at the intersection of Fifty-Seventh Street and Fifth Avenue—right in front of Tiffany’s, of all places. As part of the test, when the warning alarm sounded, all normal activities in the fifty-four cities were to be suspended for ten minutes. —All normal activities suspended for ten minutes, read Woolly out loud. Can you imagine? Somewhat breathlessly, Woolly turned to yesterday’s paper in order to see what had happened. And there on the front page—above the fold, as they say—was a photograph of Times Square with two police officers looking up the length of Broadway and not another living soul in sight. No one gazing in the window of the tobacconist. No one coming out of the Criterion Theatre or going into the Astor Hotel. No one ringing a cash register or dialing a telephone. Not one single person hustling, or bustling, or hailing a cab. What a strange and beautiful sight, thought Woolly. The city of New York silent, motionless, and virtually uninhabited, sitting perfectly idle, without the hum of a single expectation for the very first time since its founding.

I was at the Duke of York's Theatre with a great aisle seat, happy that champagne was allowed inside the auditorium. In America, ladies have to chug chardonnay and do white wine spritzer funnels during intermission in some of the lobbies on Broadway.

Sister Act opened in the large Broadway Theatre on April 20, 2011, to mostly favorable reviews. Critics agreed that Goldberg’s absence was a detriment and that Miller was no comedienne but she had the pipes and the energy to carry the musical. Also applauded were the vivacious score, the fine supporting cast, and the flashy costumes by Lez Brotherston. The naysayers pointed out the weaknesses in the script, how many of the crass jokes fail to land, and the way the nuns were turned into stereotyped diva wannabes. But for the most part, the reviews were encouraging and Sister Act ran well over a year.

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.

Astaire had been told by the studio brass that he could have all the time he needed, so he planned for six weeks of rehearsal on the more difficult numbers (“Night and Day” and “The Table Dance”) that he imported from the stage production. Even though Astaire had played the role of Guy Holden, the man mistaken for Mimi’s (Ginger Rogers) divorce correspondent, on Broadway and in London, he was too much of a perfectionist to assume that he could reprise the dances on film without sufficient rehearsal. In addition, the Cole Porter score that he had sung in the theatre was, with the exception of “Night and Day,” completely scrapped and replaced with songs by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel, and Con Conrad and Herb Magidson (after Porter refused producer Pandro Berman’s request to write new ones). Astaire wanted, and was given, the time to master the new material.

Coward and Rattigan are often “twinned” in English theatre histories. But besides Coward’s status as performer and songwriter, they are also very unalike in that Rattigan wrote of strong women and Coward wrote of weak men.

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.

Not simply every number is tuneful, as in, say, The Boys From Syracuse. Not even every number exhilarates character, as in My Fair Lady. Rather: every number makes the experience so vivid that we are reminded that music theatre is our highest—our most complete—art.

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.

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.

Srinagar is a city of bunkers. Of the world’s cities, it has the highest military presence. But Srinagar is also a city of absences. It has lost its nights to a decade and a half of curfews, and de facto curfews. It has lost its theatres. Regal, Shiraz, Neelam, Broadway — magical names I longed for throughout my childhood. They were closed before I had grown up enough to walk to a ticket counter on my own, to watch a bad Hindi movie. Srinagar has also lost its multi- religious character, with the migration of the Kashmiri Pandits in the early nineties.

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.

And I audition and I see people in the waiting room. And I can’t help but think: there’s a very slim chance people like acting,' said Eden. 'It has too many other things. Attention. Escape. People. Spotlight. But the actual thing of acting, the kernel, has to belong to fewer people than there are actors in this city. They were kids lacking something at a young age and the splendid world of the theatre offered them that, but as soon as they found love, drama, stability, or attention from another source, they abandoned the Theatre. Imagine how sad that feels—to be abandoned. To be told you are loved, again and again, and then be told it was never the case.

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.