Threaded Order Chronological Order
| MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS | |
| Posted by: LivingMyDream 05:23 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| MERMAN in Annie Get Your Gun 1996 - Magnificent. PETERS in Annie Get Your Gun - Horribly miscast, thank the powers that be for Reba replacing Peters/ I would go see Channing do Dolly now before Peters. | |
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| MIDLER, MURPHY, AND PETERS (with a lot more about Peters) | |
| Posted by: GabbyGerard 12:13 am EDT 06/27/18 | |
| In reply to: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - LivingMyDream 05:23 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Let me start by saying that I am not a Peters acolyte. I find her very hit-or-miss, and don't quite understand how she ascended to the same level as (and, in many cases, even surpassed) her musical theatre contemporaries, including Buckley, Paige, and especially LuPone. Perhaps her status was solidified by her having the most successful crossover career in film and television--which probably had more to do with her having a more telegenic face than the other women--while still remaining active in theatre. The peak of her fame in "mainstream" America probably came in the years between 1976 and 1982 with her notable roles in Silent Movie, The Jerk, Pennies From Heaven, and Annie. These roles increased her visibility, won her some new fans, and garnered her some significant accolades, including a Golden Globe nomination. If I'm not mistaken, they also took her away from Broadway for ten years--the time between Mack and Mabel and Sunday in the Park With George. I believe this was the longest interim of time between her appearances on the Great White Way after having made her debut in The Most Happy Fela. This is quite the contrast to LuPone whose longest spell between appearances in a musical on Broadway is the eighteen years between Anything Goes and Sweeney Todd. (I'm not counting her solo shows or straight plays.) It has been over 20 years since Buckley last did a a musical on Broadway (Triumph of Love); she also had ten years between Pippin and Cats. I've digressed, but this is all to say that I wonder if Bernadette has solidified the reputation she has because, in addition to having enjoyed a reasonable amount of crossover success, she's prolific. I can divide my experiences of seeing Bernadette in book musicals into three categories. The first category is unqualified triumphs. This is the category in which I would place her performances as Dot and the Witch. The second is "problem performances" where there were, at the very least, flashes of brilliance, but also issues that were impossible to ignore. The most notable entry in this category is her performance as Rose in Gypsy. I saw her five times throughout the run. When she was good, she was BEYOND BRILLIANT, reinventing the role while still honoring the text, and more thrilling than I could ever describe. But when she struggled, she was sloppy--not just with the widely discussed vocal challenges she experienced at the beginning of the run, but, more frequently and more problematically, messing up lyrics and seemingly breaking character to express her frustrations with herself. On this category, I would also place her Desiree. I wish I could have Frankenstein-ed her and Catherine Zeta-Jones's performances, using CZJ's first act and Bernadette's second. The glamorous hauteur that CZJ brought to the first act sold her as a diva and unforgettable object of erotic affection, but Bernadette sold the "me here at last on the ground" factor with heartbreaking vulnerability and sincerity. In this category, I also place her Sally and her Dolly...which, for anyone who's still reading, I promise I'll get to soon. The third and last category is "flabbergasting flops." There is only one entry in this category and it's her Annie Oakley. She was miscast, always reading as a caricature performed by one of those gals with umbrellas who's always out with fellas that Annie so envies. I can't imagine who first thought to put her in AGYG, but, despite the disdain you and I share for the performance, they couldn't have been complete morons because she won a Tony and the production recouped. I maintain that it was more of a career Tony than anything else, honoring her body of work and dedication to the musical stage. Which brings me to Dolly. At this point, I have seen Midler twice, Murphy twice, and Peters once. Though there are some highly insightful dissenting voices (in this thread alone), count me among the majority who thought Midler played Midler--and still found it glorious. Hello Dolly was written for the type of outsized personality that Midler has. It's, as John Clum says, a "big lady" show, built around the persona of the diva whom we've showed up to see. Midler has persona for days. DOLLY BECAME MIDLER. That's what we wanted. That's what we got. And it was wonderful. Donna Murphy was not a lightning rod for the same sort of rock concert electricity. She could not be. She is not a celebrity the way Midler is. She is, however, one of musical theatre's greatest actresses and chameleons. And so MURPHY BECAME DOLLY, an exhausted widow who's tired of living hand-to-mouth, swindling, and improvising, and who is desperate to rejoin the human race. And yet--and here's the real brilliance of her performance--she did not lose a single laugh. Maybe the crowd didn't roar the way they did with Midler or, probably, Channing, but they laughed and they laughed hard, particularly when Murphy used her considerable knack for period styles/pastiche. If Midler's performance exemplifies one extreme, and Murphy's the other, I felt like BERNADETTE WAS LOST SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE. She didn't transform herself enough to disappear into the role, employing many of the token Bernadette-isms that repeated viewers of her work will notice and maybe even want to see (e.g., cute, kewpie doll squeals). At the same time, those Bernadette-isms don't add up to a strong enough persona to make the whole show bend to her will, at least not when tempered with the character work she is doing. It seems like she's wandering in some non-committal mid-ground between the Murphy and Midler approaches. She's also not helped by Garber who lacks David Hyde Pierce's specificity and ends up turning in a thoroughly general performance. Even with my highly mixed feelings about her Dolly, I think her work merits more examination than your original post insunates. |
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| Your Loss | |
| Posted by: winters 06:42 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - LivingMyDream 05:23 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Sad. :( | |
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| re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS | |
| Posted by: Roman 05:49 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - LivingMyDream 05:23 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Then you’re missing a glorious performance. And you missed another in “A Little Night Music”. She is sensational in Dolly. It’s a genuine joy. She lacks Midlers huge star power and persona, but she’s giving a better performance overall. And her Desiree was sublime. | |
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| re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS | |
| Posted by: LivingMyDream 07:29 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - Roman 05:49 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| I agree, Peters was brilliant in Night Music. But I think she is limited in the parts she can make work. | |
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| re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS | |
| Posted by: Roman 10:58 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - LivingMyDream 07:29 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| As are MOST performers. I agree, she’s not right for every part. She really, really surprised me in Gypsy. She was an absolute revelation. Where Lupone really added nothing new, Peters got all the humor and more nuance than any of the 47 Roses I’d seen before.i was staggered. This is where I began to really take her seriously. And she’s currently giving an uproarious performance on the very same stage. She’s nothing short of glorious. Truly. Don’t miss it. Mabel, the Witch, Desiree, Rose, Dolly. That’s an incredible resume. She was also very underrated in the dreck that was The Goodby Girl. I hated the Follies revival(s), save for Papermill (which I ADORED). And Song & Dance was just ... unnecessary. Buckley (her replacement) made Peters look better than she was. She really sparked through lousy material, but what a crappy show. Ugh. I’d rank her Dolly, her Witch, her Desiree and her Rose as her best work. With Dot right behind. She’s terrifically versatilr. Reconsider your position. See her Dolly. She’s dynamic. You’ll be very glad you did. |
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| re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 05:59 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 05:56 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - Roman 05:49 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| I think Peters is giving a great star performance as Dolly -- it's just Midler is so rare to see in a theatrical setting, hence the big prices and "big event" aura. Peters was fabulous in "A Little Night Music", though a bit problematic for me in "Follies" (I think the director had her play her as crazed and desperate from the beginning when I saw it), and terrific in "Gypsy" when I saw it later in her run. She has had some recurrent vocal problems at times; when she did "Song and Dance" the joke was "See It on a Monday, please" a la "Tell Me on A Sunday", since her voice was fresher/less tired in the beginning of the week in that demanding, basically one-woman first act song cycle. But I loved her Dolly -- she was hysterically funny, her voice was in good estate, and her chemistry with Victor Garber was marvelous. I agree that her Annie Oakley might have been better cast with the more authentic Donna Douglas of "The Beverly Hillbillies" who Peters seemed to be going for, while Reba was absolutely brilliant and seemed born for the role. | |
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| re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS | |
| Posted by: BruceinIthaca 07:41 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - PlayWiz 05:56 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| I keep reading how terrible people thought Peters was in AGYG. I thought she was perfectly fine, but that it was an odd choice of show for her. I'm not sure I needed to see another production of it in any case (though I bet Reba was excellent--if ever there were a role for her, that would be it--I was less taken with her Nellie Forbush). I've seen Peters in a number of other shows--Into the Woods, Song and Dance, A Little Night Music, and Follies. The biggest surprise for me was her Desiree--I thought she was far better than Jean Simmons (who I saw in the National Tour back when I was in high school) and much more convincing than Patti LuPone, who I saw do it in a "concert" production at Ravinia. I went mainly because I wanted to see Stritch in what I thought might her final role (was it? other than her TV work) and I lucked out, as she was practically letter-perfect the night I saw her. But Peters broke my heart in "Send in the Clowns," and made me believe in her as the still vital, yet growing weary actress. And I've never seen her less than interesting, even if the vehicle was second-rate, such as Song and Dance (and knew I didn't need to see The Goodbye Girl). I missed her Rose--I had seen Lansbury, Daly, and Buckley (as well as Russell and Midler in the film/video versions) and just didn't have it in me for another go at the time (I did see LuPone). A friend of mine, who is a professional actress, said she saw Peters and liked the show for the first time, which is interesting. Anyway, I loved seeing Channing as Dolly in 94--she wasn't where she was in 64, no doubt ( was too young to see her then), but I was very grateful to get to be in the same space and get a sense of the craft and inspiration she brought to the role--the acting was still superb and the singing and dancing were good enough to warrant seeing her do it. I saw Midler and her company last year--it was a very different experience, but equally enjoyable in its own way. I never got the complaint that Midler was just playing Midler. I thought what she was doing was using her instrument (and the habitus of her body, style, etc.) to create yet another version of Wilder and Herman's indestructible Doll(y). And I bet Peters is just as good, but in a different way--with the possibility of romance still there. I'm a big fan of Betty Buckley, and I hope to see what she does with it (I'll have to find her on the road). Comedy has never struck me as her forte, but wistfulness and wisdom are, and she may find another variation. People say Rose is the Lear of musical theatre for women--I think it may be Dolly. | |
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| re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS | |
| Posted by: LivingMyDream 05:31 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - LivingMyDream 05:23 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| Also Merman was magnificent in Dolly 1970 | |
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| re: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS | |
| Posted by: LivingMyDream 05:27 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
| In reply to: MERMAN, CHANNING, PETERS - LivingMyDream 05:23 pm EDT 06/26/18 | |
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| OOPS - Merman 1966 | |
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