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| re: NEW - LOLITA, MY LOVE - Talkin' Broadway's Review | |
| Posted by: NewtonUK 11:21 am EST 02/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: NEW - LOLITA, MY LOVE - Talkin' Broadway's Review - AlanScott 09:55 am EST 02/26/19 | |
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| Whats interesting is that Alan Jay Lerner keeps being held up as a major librettist and lyricist - which I would argue is far from the truth. His masterpiece is indeed MY FAIR LADY - thanks mostly to Bernard Shaw who supplied 99% of the good dialogue, and lots of song ideas, and great characters and structure. BRIGADOON has a good score, but the book is from a simpler time, and not great even by those standards. PAINT YOUR WAGON is even a weaker book, and the wind has a name and the trees talk. GIGI (the film) was quite good, inarguably IMHO Lerner's only other very good show. The book of CAMELOT is endless and tedious, but there are some good lyrics for great Fritz Loewe tunes. And then? WHATS UP, THE DAY BEFORE SPRING, LOVE/LIFE, ON A CLEAR DAY, 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, CARMELINA, and DANCE A LITTLE CLOSER |
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| re: NEW - LOLITA, MY LOVE - Talkin' Broadway's Review | |
| Posted by: Billhaven 09:41 pm EST 02/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: NEW - LOLITA, MY LOVE - Talkin' Broadway's Review - NewtonUK 11:21 am EST 02/26/19 | |
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| You’ve so easily dismissed Lerner’ work on My Fair Lady. One prime example of his theatrical knowhow is The Rain in Spain- a moment totally missing from Pygmalion and one of the great moments in musicals theater. A unique and charming confection- Brigadoon. It may be from a “simpler time” - so what? It is still revived and can still charm. There multiple delights in Clear Day, Carmelina, Dance a Little Closer and brilliance in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. More than pretty melodies. Lyrics of wit and human understanding. I’ve grown accustomed to her face, it almost makes the day begin. That’s not Shaw, it’s Alan J.! He had demons and failures but his best is timeless. |
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| re: NEW - LOLITA, MY LOVE - Talkin' Broadway's Review | |
| Posted by: keikekaze 05:26 pm EST 02/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: NEW - LOLITA, MY LOVE - Talkin' Broadway's Review - NewtonUK 11:21 am EST 02/26/19 | |
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| The trees do not talk in Paint Your Wagon; Julio sings that HE talks TO the trees, "but they never listen to me." The same goes for the stars and the breeze. And I don't know what's wrong with someone who can't or won't respond emotionally to "Out here they've got a name for things like wind and rain and fire/ The rain is Tess, the fire's Joe, and they call the wind Mariah." People often personify elemental forces when they are living close to nature, and especially when they're living alone or nearly alone, with no one else to talk to or share their feelings with. That applies to Julio's song, too. Love Life was an ambitiously experimental musical that didn't quite work, but is nothing to be sneezed at. There is nothing wrong with the book of On a Clear Day that couldn't be fixed within an hour. As I've said before, all you have to do is eliminate the doctor's wife--already an offstage character anyway--and have the doctor fall in love with Daisy when he eventually realizes that Daisy IS Melinda and Melinda IS Daisy. (That, after all, is how reincarnation works.) And I believe Ken Mandelbaum called the book of Lolita, My Love the best musical adaptation of a novel he'd ever seen, or something very close to that. I trust Mandelbaum's judgment enough to suppose that he's probably right. |
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| Again? | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 12:44 pm EST 02/26/19 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 12:40 pm EST 02/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: NEW - LOLITA, MY LOVE - Talkin' Broadway's Review - NewtonUK 11:21 am EST 02/26/19 | |
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| Really, why are you posting basically the same thing in reply to me that you posted a few days ago, and I responded to that post of yours (which was not in reply to a post of mine) with a very long and detailed reply? I refer you to your earlier post, which is linked, and my earlier reply is easy to find from there. I really can't figure out what you are trying to accomplish with your post here since you posted it specifically in response to my post, and I said nothing about Lerner in my post. It's like a belated reply to my reply to your Day Before Spring reply post, but posted in a different place and with nothing substantive to say. Just a way for you to perhaps indirectly say, "Nothing you said the other day has made me change my mind about Lerner." If that was your intent, I wasn't trying to get you to change your mind about Lerner. I just thought that if you were going to dismiss Lerner, you should get things right and display a more thorough and accurate knowledge of the work you were dismissing. |
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| Link | Day Before Spring reply post of NewtonUK |
| reply to this message | reply to first message | |
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