| re: probably best to divide up by era, but here's a list | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 01:34 am EST 01/30/21 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 01:31 am EST 01/30/21 | |
| In reply to: probably best to divide up by era, but here's a list - Chazwaza 07:39 pm EST 01/29/21 | |
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| I have not seen a good number of the best musical winners of the last 20 years. In fact, if I even go back to the winners for the 30 years before that, which takes us back to 1970, when I started going to Broadway shows on a regular basis, there are a good many that just didn't interest me enough to see. But I will say a few things specifically in response to your post. Raisin was not a great show, but it was a solid piece of work that did a reasonable amount of honor to its source material. It was a fine piece of theatre that simply didn't transcend the source material, which is much easier to produce and so Raisin has rarely been done. Two Gentlemen of Verona (which I saw only at the Delacorte) was a huge amount of fun. The creators knew what they wanted to do, and they did it well. Applause would certainly be on my list of least good winners that had original scores. It's an almost astoundingly mediocre piece of writing coming from people who were certainly capable of much better work, but it's always or almost always at least competently written and it makes sense. Kismet, which I've seen live only at Encores!, is, or at least can be, a very entertaining show. It got done a lot in stock, into the 1970s. It has a great score (even if some of the lyrics "comprise some of the most fearful poetry of our time," as Brooks Atkinson wrote), and if well-played, the book is fun. It just needs a brilliant leading man, with a great cast around him and terrific choreography. That's all. It's also something of a myth that the reviews were not good. Atkinson and Kerr, the two most respected critics, did not like it, but pretty much all the other major critics did. There were seven major dailies at the time (and various less-major ones) and the five other critics liked it. This may surprise people but I would rank La Cage aux Folles below any of those. This may not surprise people, but I would also rank Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard below them. As you may have guessed, I did not see Memphis or KInky Boots. And then there are the surprisingly large number that I didn’t see, as well as those that won but that I don’t feel should have been eligible, going back to Ain’t Misbehavin’ and including Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, Contact and Fosse, all good shows (to varying degrees) but I think they should not have been eligible in that category. |
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