| Bway - this TONY Season | |
| Posted by: bearcat 03:34 pm EDT 06/05/18 | |
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| this might seem a rehash of what so many of us have been thinking and posting over the years, but I am struck in particular this theatre season how de trope so many Bway productions are. Shoo in for Best Play: Harry Potter. This is a "brand" in the public eye for at least two decades now. The fact that this permutation of the epic is written specifically for "the theatre" does not negate the regurgitation element here. Best Musical nominees: Spongebob, a redo of some prepubescent character who has a particular resonance with barely potty trained tween males; Mean Girls, based on an almost two decades old film, but a "property" that has been in the consciousness of tween females since as some sort of right of passage; Frozen, another Disney plop down with shoddy narrative progression and blithe (calculating) assurance that it would audiences are eager to see basically just a stage facsimile of the film. All of these "originating works" appear to be in the canon of what young people are reading and seeing for some time now. As for The Band's Visit: yes, it's based on a film; but the film is not that well known and the stage adaption appears to have a perspective particular to the theatre, so there is something fresh here (so many good musicals have been based on films, but truly 'adapted' not transcribed) I am speculating about a conversation between a married couple east of the Mississippi circa 1970. "you should have stayed up for Carson last night. He had some people on from a Bway show called Company, there were some girls singing like the Andrews sisters, but about their relationship with some guy with real problems in this day and age, it sounded a bit 'risque'. sounded really interesting. Maybe we can see it when we visit your sister in Connecticut. could be fun" I am also thinking about a season like the one in which Cabaret, I Do! I Do!, The Apple Tree, and Walking Happy were nominated for best musical. You had an innovative big musical, an innovative small musical with strong traditional elements, an innovative musical with elements of the zeitgeist and traditions of a smaller dimension, and a standard also ran which had its professionally diverting components. before Bway was the place where work got tested for its quality and appeal and then fanned out to the rest of the country-world. Now, it's the last stop on the road to some kind of overreaching cultural commodity before a property exhales its ultimate breaths. It confirms public tastes rather than expands them... |
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