Random Notes on This and That: 10/3/05
Too bad about All Shook Up: It was a flop that played like a hit. What happened? Well, a strongly negative review in The New York Times didn't help. The show was severely damaged by its lack of a Tony nomination and its resulting non-appearance on the Tony telecast. And Good Vibrations aroused prejudice against jukebox musicals in general. But All Shook Up certainly looked like a crowd-pleaser when I saw it back in March. Everyone I know seemed to like the show, so one assumed that word of mouth would be strong enough to keep it afloat.
The Broadway failure of Good Vibrations, Lennon, and All Shook Up indicates to some the demise of the jukebox musical, or at least its falling out of favor. But like all Broadway trends, one hit could resuscitate the genre. Some believe that Jersey Boys, a jukebox show that's stylistically unlike any of the recent flop trio, will be the one that turns things around.
It's hard to get excited about Nonesuch's announced cast recording of the new Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd. That's because this will rank as Patti LuPone's third recorded Mrs. Lovett, the first being the two-CD New York Philharmonic recording, the second the San Francisco concert DVD. Perhaps the rest of the new Sweeney cast will be sufficiently strong to justify the new recording.
Rarely has a smash hit musical taken so long to issue its cast recording as Billy Elliot. Yes, it has been recorded. But Billy Elliot began performances at London's Victoria Palace back in March, and as of this writing, there's still no official release date for the CD, and still no definitive word on which or how many of the three original Billys Liam Mower, George Maguire, and the already departed James Lomas will be heard on the released recording. Rumor has it that all three Billys were recorded, although it's not clear if all three recorded the entire role. The Billy Elliot CD will eventually appear, but it certainly is taking its time.
And speaking of Billy Elliot, a great deal has been written about possible changes in the material for the Broadway production, with an eye toward making the Northern England accents more readily comprehensible and explaining the mid-'80s miners' strike that's central to the action. But surely the show will not change substantially for New York. That would run the risk of New York Times critic Ben Brantley, who raved over Billy in London, pulling another Oklahoma! and finding the New York version inferior to the London original. For that reason alone, I suspect that Billy will come to Broadway more or less intact.
The creation of a new Tony category honoring replacements raises a number of questions. Won't it be a tall order for the Tony nominators to have to attend every old or recent Broadway show for which the management submits two replacements? Can they possibly get all of the Tony voters to revisit every production that features a nominated replacement, particularly during the busy Tony season? Won't the prize tend to favor star takeovers and therefore tend to go to the biggest names? And what about the six-month ruling? Not all top-notch replacements have played a full six months. This stipulation would rule out the Tony chances of such recent high-profile replacements as Brooke Shields in Wonderful Town and Melanie Griffith in Chicago. But then that's likely to become a new bargaining issue in terms of contracts, with stars encouraged to sign on for at least six months with the added inducement of a possible Tony nomination.
I confess to being mildly surprised about the announcement that the musical Sunset Boulevard is going to be turned into a theatrical film. After all, the film version of the most successful musical in stage history, The Phantom of the Opera, wasn't a blockbuster, and Sunset on stage was a financial failure in several countries. Then too, a film version of the musical will inevitably be compared with the musical's source, Billy Wilder's great 1950 film. Sunset would surely have been a good bet for a television-style film along the lines of the ones accorded such other Lloyd Webber musicals as Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph.... But a full-scale theatrical film of Sunset seems risky, even if I'll be the first in line to see it.
I would have thought that we had heard the last from James Kirkwood's play Legends!, so I'm surprised that it's coming back to life, in the form of a national tour co-starring Joan Collins and Linda Evans. True, that pairing makes sense in terms of the play's comic rivalry between two former screen stars. But as one who saw Legends! in Boston in 1986, in the touring version that co-starred Mary Martin and Carol Channing, I have to wonder if the play is worth reviving. In his fascinating book about his experiences with the show, Diary of a Mad Playwright, Kirkwood blames any number of factors for the show's failure to make it to Broadway. What he doesn't say, of course, is that the play simply wasn't very good, and would surely not have been well received in New York.
The Public Theatre's summer revival of the musical version of Two Gentlemen of Verona served to revive that old debate about the relative merits of Verona and Follies. That's because Verona beat Follies for the best musical Tony in 1972, even if Verona was rarely mounted thereafter, while Follies seems to be staged constantly.
There were reasons why Follies lost the Tony to Verona. Follies was scary and somewhat grim, while Verona was nothing but fizzy fun. Not all audiences were able to assimilate the complex, upsetting Follies, while Verona played like a giddy spree. Seen now, however, Verona feels like a period piece; it has aged much less well than Follies.
Some of the problem came from the new production. The first hour was hindered by the disappointing performances of the Julia and Proteus, Rosario Dawson and Oscar Isaac, the latter sounding in the music a great deal like Raul Julia, but otherwise lacking his predecessor's charisma. A fairly sleepy first act awoke after nearly an hour when the scene shifted to Milan and the arrival of the glamorous Renee Elise Goldsberry to be seen in The Color Purple as Silvia. Norm Lewis' singing was ravishing as always, and the score gave him plenty of opportunities.
Verona is one of the most "of its time" musicals, so no revival can have quite the same effect as the original. Marshall's staging disappointed in the first act but picked up in a spotty but livelier second act. But if Verona was worth reviving in the park as a curiosity piece, it was clearly not meant for a Broadway transfer this time around.