| Jerome Robbins' Broadway at the Muny: a lost Broadway comes back again | |
| Last Edit: mikem 09:21 am EDT 06/19/18 | |
| Posted by: mikem 09:20 am EDT 06/19/18 | |
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| Unlike dramedy, I still have about 10 more Tony-winning musicals to see. But Jerome Robbins’ Broadway was the one I had missed that felt completely out of reach. So I felt a lot of excitement as the curtain went up. As the show went on, I felt a different emotion. I started to feel saddened that Jerome Robbins’ Broadway is a show that is trapped in the past. It’s a type of show that just doesn’t happen anymore. The cast size is huge. There are 38 kids dancing in the gym in the West Side Story number, and the rumble really feels like a chaotic rumble. There are 15 sailors dancing in On the Town. Those are small bumps in number from the recent revivals, but the extra dancers make a difference. More importantly, Robbins used dance as a mechanism for the audience to learn about the characters. They are showing us who they are through their dance. I am having trouble thinking of the last non-revival on Broadway that used the ensemble in that way rather than as backdrops for the stars. Meanwhile, few top Broadway stars are strong dancers, and few new shows give them any reason to be. Norbert Leo Butz is a great performer, but there is no way he should have won an Astaire Award for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. But there weren’t really any other options that year. And the situation hasn’t gotten any better in the years since. So I was thankful for having finally seen the show, but it seemed like a relic of a bygone era. And I wish that era would come back again. I also wanted to add that there’s something really special about watching a show outdoors on a beautiful night. I was very lucky with the weather, because a thunderstorm had stopped about fifteen minutes before showtime, leaving the temperature in the low 70s. Now, can someone tell me how I can see Kismet, Raisin, and Redhead? |
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