| On CHESS, SPIDER MAN, SPRING AWAKENING and TOMMY |
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| Posted by: |
GrumpyMorningBoy 05:52 pm EST 11/24/14 |
| In reply to: |
re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - MarcoBarco 05:18 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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I was looking forward to this part of the conversation. I think most all of us would agree with the classic truism that a great book is what makes for a great musical.
But with a few of these, we're gonna have to look at the exceptions. Does TOMMY have a great book?!?
I really don't know if we can say that it does. If you're not tripping on something, it's gotta seem downright bizarre. I suppose there's an interesting premise at the start, and a somewhat satisfying ending... but egads. The middle is nearly in Lewis Carroll territory. Thankfully, Des McAnuff took pop songs that go absolutely NOWHERE dramatically -- how many times can a person sing "Tommy can you hear me?" without it being repetitive -- and staged them so well that the plot kept propelling forward.
Same for Michael Mayer on SPRING AWAKENING. By and large, those are pretty much pop songs with pop lyrics -- look at "My Junk" -- and yet things rarely felt static in the Bway production. The anachronistic microphones, profanity and dance probably helped a great deal, but...
... the actual story and setting was what kept us hooked. And you could subtract any number of songs and the show would have still worked.
We can only wonder if Michael Bennett might have been able to pull a better plot out of the mishmash book for CHESS in London, via some brilliant staging, but I think CHESS is a perfect example of a beautiful score done in by its dumb book.
But among all the post-mortem analysis on SPIDER MAN, I think many would agree that if the show had had a stronger script and story, the ho-hum score by Bono & the Edge might not have mattered so much.
- GMB
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re: THE LAST SHIP, KINKY BOOTS, CAPEMAN, TOMMY... and other Bway musicals by pop composers - PizzaRoll 06:05 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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re: On TOMMY - jero 07:26 pm EST 11/24/14 |
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