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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 09:03 pm EST 01/02/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Michael_Portantiere 07:20 pm EST 01/02/19 | |
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| It would definitely be that - Sondheim, sadly, has no interest in the old version being produced professionally. And it kills me because I could disagree with him more and I think it's terribly short-sighted. I know it's his right, but the new revised Merrily isn't half the musical that the original was, flaws and all. | |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 12:21 am EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Chazwaza 09:03 pm EST 01/02/19 | |
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| I suspect that Furth, in this case, was perhaps more opposed than Sondheim to allowing the old version to be performed. Furth would not even show up for the reunion concert, and it was at least rumored that the reason he wouldn't attend was because they were mostly using the old version. Minimal dialogue was used, and that may have been because he wouldn't allow the old dialogue to be used. But Sondheim and Prince were both there. They did include "Growing Up," but otherwise it was pretty much based on what opened at the Alvin in November 1981, except for giving the act-one "Not a Day Goes By" back to Beth, and restoring a couple of shortish songs — "The Blob" and "Thank You for Coming" — that were cut during previews. "The Blob," of course, was later put back in the show. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: lordofspeech 04:01 am EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - AlanScott 12:21 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| You, Alan, wrote the following: “....it was pretty much based on what opened at the Alvin in November 1981, except for giving the act-one "Not a Day Goes By" back to Beth,...” I think this solves a discussion I was having with a friend. She insisted that the original “Merrily” had Frank singing “Not a Day Goes By.” I, however, saw the original in previews and remember Beth sang that song near or at the end of Act One. So, from what you say, we could both be right. Beth initially had the song but then, before opening, it was given to Frank. (PS: I loved Beth singing it.) |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 02:52 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - lordofspeech 04:01 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| Not to be repetitive, since others have already responded, but, yes, Beth sang it in early previews, then it was given to Frank. I think it may have actually been given back to Beth for a few days during previews after having been given to Frank, but I'm not sure. In any case, it definitely started as Beth's song, and it ended up as Frank's. | |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 04:05 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - AlanScott 02:52 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
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| I'm gonna side with Hal Prince on this one... giving it to Beth, while in theory a great idea, is actually dramatically unsatisfying. She is never a character we get to know well, and when the song comes we've only just met her. What we need at that moment is more depth and emotional nuance from Frank, and that song gave him some of that. Giving it to Beth takes an important song and color of his character away from him and gives it to a character we don't know -- not to mention that she then really just has an anthem saying she will always love this man who cheated on her and broke up her family. It's only intellectually satisfying a little when, in act two, we realize she was singing back to him the vows he made on their wedding night. I don't think robbing Peter to pay Paul in this sense is worth it what you get from it. Also the Act Two version of NADGB already has its own new element with Mary joining in singing it to/about Frank while Frank and Beth sing it to each other. That's enough for the audience. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: larry13 11:59 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Chazwaza 04:05 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
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| I totally agree with you(and, I guess, with Prince)about Beth singing this incandescent song the moment she first appears. It has never worked for me. I'd be interested in seeing Frank sing it. When Mary sings it in the second act, it IS heartbreaking. SHE is a developed character we care about. Not Beth, at least not for me. Maybe this is one of the(many)problems that the whole structure of the musical imposes. Too many nasty, unappealing and/or undeveloped characters in the first act. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Last Edit: lordofspeech 08:51 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| Posted by: lordofspeech 08:49 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Chazwaza 04:05 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
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| Wow. Thank you all. I guess these responses clarify who started out singing NOT A DAY GOES BY. I guess I saw a very early preview, if not the first....because I saw Beth sing it. Beth singing it was heart-wrenching. I guess I don’t think Frank needs character development; at least he doesn’t need that song. His story (told forward) is about an idealistic innocent jettisoning the ideals and the people he once held dear. In that sense, it works for me that Charlie and Beth have the emotional breakdowns. Frank is, like Benjamin Stone (and perhaps Sweeney Todd, too) a study in calcification of what was once a human being into a worshipper of power over others. If the story were told forward, it would be too too grim. But, in backwards time, we go from dark to light. Beth should sing it. We need to feel the cost of Frank’s destroying people. It’s a play about a monster who started with ambition. Is ambition necessarily evil? Maybe. Unfortunately, in every version, Mary stays too on the periphery. Trying to emphasize her tragedy by inserting her singing “Not a Day Goes By” doesn’t work. It might be better if she had a crush on Beth, so that the dissolution of the marriage would impact her. Maybe. The t-shirts were not a good idea. You couldn’t really read them and they undermined any power the narrative might have had. |
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| Beth sang it for the first two or three weeks | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 07:29 am EST 01/07/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - lordofspeech 08:49 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
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| Sorry it's taken me a few days to reply. Beth definitely sang "Not a Day Goes By" for more than two weeks. I'm not sure exactly when it was given to Frank, but Beth sang it for at least two-and-a-half weeks, maybe more than three. It's possible that one point it was given to Frank for a few days, then it was given back to Beth, and then back to Frank again. At the moment, I don't have the time to respond in a lot of detail about my feelings on all these questions, except to say that I think Beth should sing it. I think it was a mistake to take it away from her. I have heard that it was taken away from her because some people felt that Sally Klein didn't sing it well enough. If that was the reason, I think it was crazy. And so does most everyone I know who saw Sally Klein do the song. Maybe her singing wasn't thrilling, but it was good enough, and her acting of the song was so beautiful. Her acting was beautiful throughout. For me, no later Beth I've seen has come close. She was just so likable up there, so endearing, so simple, real, funny, delightful and touching. Has anyone been nearly as funny in "Bobby and Jackie and Jack"? No (or at least no one I've seen). |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 12:27 am EST 01/04/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - lordofspeech 08:49 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
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| "Beth singing it was heart-wrenching.....Beth should sing it. We need to feel the cost of Frank’s destroying people. " But isn't it true that, in the original version of MERRILY, the "Not a Day Goes By" scene is the first time we see Beth in the show, and doesn't she only have a very few lines before she starts singing? I'm rather surprised that you found it heart-wrenching under those circumstances, and yes, it makes sense to me to switch the song to Frank for that reason. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 12:43 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Michael_Portantiere 12:27 am EST 01/04/19 | |
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| I've always wondered why we didn't have, at least, one scene with Beth earlier in the show, after her divorce from Frank, to introduce the character, specifically so that "Not A Day Goes By" doesn't come out of the blue in the divorce scene. Just because people divorce doesn't mean that they disappear from one another's stories, although, in this case, I believe the reason for that is that Beth is so devastated that she takes the son and leaves the city to return to her hometown. I would love to see a post-divorce/pre-ballad Beth who has survived crossing paths with Frank in a way that we're not sure Charlie or Mary will. Perhaps she went back to performing or maybe she got remarried to someone who makes her happy or maybe something entirely different. I imagine that, no matter what, Beth would have a private sadness that her marriage to Frank failed and that she will always love him in some small way, even though she would only show that to the audience or, perhaps, Charlie or Mary, but never to Frank. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 01:18 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - JereNYC 12:43 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
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| JereNYC, I don't know the revised version of MERRILY well enough to say, but doesn't it include at least one brief scene of Beth before (i.e., after) the "Not a Day Goes By" scene? This is an honest question, I really don't remember. If such a scene was NOT added, I completely agree that it should have been. | |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: bmc 10:16 am EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - lordofspeech 04:01 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| I went to the first preview and Beth sang "Not a Day Goes By", I preferred her singing the song. We also got the school anthem < " Behold the Hills of Tomorrow, which was on the cast album but in a shortened version. | |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 05:06 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - bmc 10:16 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| "We also got the school anthem < " Behold the Hills of Tomorrow, which was on the cast album but in a shortened version." Are you sure the album version is shortened? I can't imagine that song was any longer in the actual show, and if it was, it seems to me that would have been a mistake. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 09:00 am EST 01/04/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Michael_Portantiere 05:06 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
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| I saw a production in May, '97 at DePaul University in Chicago. There were no bookending graduation scenes but "The Hills of Tomorrow" was performed at the show's end sort of like an epilogue. | |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: bicoastal 04:16 pm EST 01/04/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - BroadwayTonyJ 09:00 am EST 01/04/19 | |
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| Personally, I love the bookends on the OBC album. The framing device works. I was once able to ask Sondheim about that, and he was very dismissive of it. He said it was something that would be on a concept album but should never have been in the show. I pushed back a little on that but he was not hearing it. Hey, it's his show, so he has a right to his opinion! I did not see the original Bway production, but I did see the first L.A. production, then La Jolla and then many more (including the York, Kennedy Center, Encores, London, etc) and every time the book was meddled with, it got worse. The show became loaded with cliched melodrama and the characters became increasingly hard to care about. Isn't the point of the show to see how Frank's self-involvement impacted others? Not necessarily to make everyone horrible people? The book is problematic because the structure is so problematic. It's not like the original was a cherished hit--it flopped--but I understand the lure of the structure, particularly to Sondheim. In general, I think the best Sondheim shows have two things going for them: solid source material (Romeo and Juliet, an autiobiography, an existing film) and/or an amazing writer (Arthur Laurents, Larry Gelbart, etc). I do not think George Furth or even James Lapine are great writers and sometimes I don't think Sondheim "gets" the book problems. Lord knows his scores soar way above and beyond even the weakest books of his shows. One final note--I saw the Michael Arden production and really did not care for it, although I do agree with the post about the final scene and its effectiveness. But the staging, the dancing, all that was a mess IMHO. |
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| One of the first scenes (Spoiler) | |
| Posted by: Indavidzopinion 03:40 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - bmc 10:16 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| Will Gussie hurl iodine into a starlet's eye? This detail is "justified" because it was in the original, non-musical stage play, but potentially blinding someone out of malice or pique casts a pall over the rest of the play. | |
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| re: One of the first scenes (Spoiler) | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 04:06 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: One of the first scenes (Spoiler) - Indavidzopinion 03:40 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
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| one of the many additions to the book that makes the show play more like a soap opera than it ever did originally, and it really hurts the show to me, irreparably when you loose the impact that is lost when you cut the bookending scenes at the graduation. | |
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| How does all of this correspond to what was performed in Michael Arden's production in LA? | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 04:11 am EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - lordofspeech 04:01 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| Twas the only production I've ever seen... - GMB, who loved it |
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| re: How does all of this correspond to what was performed in Michael Arden's production in LA? | |
| Posted by: dlevy 02:00 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: How does all of this correspond to what was performed in Michael Arden's production in LA? - GrumpyMorningBoy 04:11 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| Arden's production (which I also loved) used the standard version of the revised book, to the best of my recollection. His use of dancers as the younger versions of the characters was his innovation, as was the scenic idea of using on-stage dressing-room vanities for characters to be present at when they aren't in the scenes. | |
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| re: How does all of this correspond to what was performed in Michael Arden's production in LA? | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 04:11 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: How does all of this correspond to what was performed in Michael Arden's production in LA? - dlevy 02:00 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
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| I also saw it and did not love it. I thought his heavy and lazy focus on the theme of hollywood to dictate the set/settings didn't help tell the story or illuminate what the show is about, and i thought the 3 dancing young Mary/Charlie/Frank were incredibly distracting and out of place and annoying, and also their choreography was often desperately trying to tell its own (distracting) story which was rarely clear, until it came to its conceptual conclusion at the rooftop scene where it was finally worthwhile, but by then I'd seen it coming and it didn't have the impact it was clearly meant to. But even if it had, having them dance their way through the show (in what very much seemed like a directorial vision IMPOSED on the text and not at all something the show seems built to carry) was not worth the impact of the end. For what it's worth, the rooftop scene played by the 3 young actors was probably my favorite of the production. Made me wish they'd been playing the characters all night. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 11:13 pm EST 01/02/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Chazwaza 09:03 pm EST 01/02/19 | |
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| I think there are perhaps a few minor improvements in the newer version, but for the most part, I strongly agree with you. Aren't most or all of the changes credited (or uncredited) to James Lapine? I think that would explain a lot. | |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 12:16 am EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Michael_Portantiere 11:13 pm EST 01/02/19 | |
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| None of the revision is credited to James Lapine, and I think George Furth might be upset if he knew someone thought that. Lapine was allowed to make some changes for Encores! I wonder if Sondheim was given the power by Furth to make all these types of decisions for the shows they wrote together. Most of the changes were just cuts and perhaps some slight restructuring within scenes, but there was the one big change in the last scene, which Sondheim, rightly, seems to have decided was a mistake. I wonder what Furth would think of the new Company. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 10:12 am EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - AlanScott 12:16 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| I put "uncredited" in parentheses because I'm pretty sure I remember someone who should know insisting to me that at least some of the script revisions to MERRILY were made by, but not credited to, Lapine -- rather than Furth -- either for or pursuant to the production he directed at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1985. Is that completely untrue? | |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 02:49 pm EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Michael_Portantiere 10:12 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| And it's possible that he did. He clearly made suggestions. I just think that Furth would be annoyed that people said that or thought that. Still, I suspect that Furth was not the type to let other writers actually write any dialogue for him, although he did sort of steal a line in Company from a Julius Monk revue, but he rephrased it, and perhaps did not remember where he had gotten it. |
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| re: Questions about the new MERRILY | |
| Posted by: NewtonUK 10:20 am EST 01/03/19 | |
| In reply to: re: Questions about the new MERRILY - Michael_Portantiere 10:12 am EST 01/03/19 | |
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| I seem to recall once upon a time that collaborator agreements usually only required a majority of collaborators to agree to changes, not all of them. I know on a musical that I am rewriting the book of , I needed just the consent of 2 of 3 book writers, but not composer (whose estate was elusive and still is - and we're talking a major composer)... | |
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