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| re: Gilbert & Sullivan | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 11:19 pm EDT 08/29/20 | |
| In reply to: Gilbert & Sullivan - SUBRCCS 10:57 pm EDT 08/29/20 | |
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| I would think they probably feel a little too stylized for Broadway. The most common pastiche "throwback" for Broadway musicals is the 20's/30's (think Drowsy Chaperone), but anything much older than that in style isn't very common, and also there's a certain perceived "rigidity" to G&S that might just not play right to a general audience. Certainly the most successful "mainstream" G&S production was the Joe Papp Pirates Of Penzance, which kept the score intact but played with the performance style and the orchestrations to make it more "American musical theatre"-ish to the audience. (Other attempts, like A Gordon Greenberg/Nell Benjamin update of the same operetta - a seeming attempt to capitalize on that same kind of updating - was IMO much more crass, less thought through, and not nearly as entertaining on the whole.) There have also been versions like The Hot Mikado which have hung around a little - but I think the general idea is that audiences won't trust the originals as much as they would an updated take on the music and style. | |
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| Joe Papp/Public Theatre Production | |
| Posted by: JereNYC (JereNYC@aol.com) 04:15 pm EDT 08/31/20 | |
| In reply to: re: Gilbert & Sullivan - Chromolume 11:19 pm EDT 08/29/20 | |
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| The surprising success of that revival in the early 1980's is still something to behold, the likes of which we will probably never see again. The original incarnation at the Delacorte was preserved on a commercially available video. The production transferred for a nice run on Broadway and toured. It was even made into a movie with most of the original leads returning. That's really the jaw-dropper for me. How does that even happen? Then, of course, it also inspired THE PIRATE MOVIE, which was...a less successful adaptation. But the fact that it got made at all is, again, jaw-dropping. I cannot imagine a 100 year old piece of theatre, being revived for a limited run, taking the world by storm today, as that production did then. It must have just hit the zeitgeist in exactly the right way and audiences went wild for it. And, since there were no author royalties to pay, Joe Papp must have been laughing all the way to the bank. |
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