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re: Daily Beast: Is Broadway Brain-Dead?

Posted by:	garyd 09:48 pm EDT 03/17/14
In reply to:	re: Daily Beast: Is Broadway Brain-Dead? - Ann 09:14 pm EDT 03/17/14

There are examples on both sides of this argument. Decent, even great, iconic, musical theatre has some basic, if not total, basis in film. "Purlie", "Promises, Promises', " A Little Night Music", "Sweet Charity", "Nine" and many others. And, as has been noted, there also exists an extensive list of dreck. As for spectacle, it has also been around forever. (think Ziegfield) While it seldom appeals to me, there is a place for it to exist. "Sweeney Todd", "Follies", and certainly POTO, all have elements of spectacle. I make the argument that in these three examples the spectacle elements serve the story and are not incorporated for simple entertainment value but maybe I am rationalizing. Though I find real pleasure in some productions I have witnessed of both Todd and Follies minus the original spectacle elements.

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Golden musicals from movies

Posted by:	peter3053 01:19 am EDT 03/18/14
In reply to:	re: Daily Beast: Is Broadway Brain-Dead? - garyd 09:48 pm EDT 03/17/14

I think the difference is that the great movie-to-musical adaptations have been done by people who understood that the theatre is a more intensive word-, as well as imagination-, experience than visual one. Consider the literacy of A Little Night Music, and Nine, and even, arguably, Phantom of the Opera - there is a coherent theatrical dramaturgy grounded in language, a poetic heightening of the words. Musicals which take from the visual medium of film and then simply try to revisualise them on stage often come off as smaller in dimension and more simplistic. (Consider how the magic carpet ride in Aladdin the movie seemed larger than life but on stage seems trite). Somehow theatre shows up vacuousness of language, perhaps because it is staged on a platform, and whatever is on a platform, from earliest cultures, audiences attend to listen to more than to see. This does not mean that, once the fundamental difference in medium is acknowledged, a great designer and director and lighting and costume designer can't further enrich the experience visually. But the essential force at work will always be different, and straight movie-to-stage transfers will always wind up, erm, rocky.

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