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The [theater] geek thread: Overture
Hahnsoo1
Make Ready.We Hunt.Registered User regular
Make Ready.We Hunt.Registered User regular
I haven't seen one of these in a while here in D&D, so I thought I'd start one and see if there are any bites. This thread is for discussing and debating about your favorite musicals and plays. Maybe you were in the orchestra pit (like me!), or maybe you are singing on Broadway right now (I wish!). If Sondheim is your god, or you simply like watching people disrobe on stage, this is the thread for you.
Have I got a thread for you... wait 'til you meet her!
https://youtu.be/loPLKYou9GE
Do you have interesting stories from when you were in a show or involved in a production? Are you squee-ing about your latest OBCR?
As for me, I recently saw a friend of mine in Indianapolis play Leon Csolgosz in "Assassins" (one of my top 10 musicals). He was SO good. Kept the Polish accent throughout the entire production, including singing, but I wouldn't expect less from him. My brother was complaining about the accuracy of the fake stage firearms, though, but he's a bit of a gun nut.
Have I got a thread for you... wait 'til you meet her!
https://youtu.be/loPLKYou9GEDo you have interesting stories from when you were in a show or involved in a production? Are you squee-ing about your latest OBCR?
As for me, I recently saw a friend of mine in Indianapolis play Leon Csolgosz in "Assassins" (one of my top 10 musicals). He was SO good. Kept the Polish accent throughout the entire production, including singing, but I wouldn't expect less from him. My brother was complaining about the accuracy of the fake stage firearms, though, but he's a bit of a gun nut.
+1
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The thing I was doing after listening to the atrocious sound quality of the songs on the bootleg (well, it's a bootleg... duh!) was going to my Amazon Music library, muting the sound from the bootleg, and playing the song from my archive instead. I was amazed at how well the timing worked when playing back the cast album and sync'ing it (manually, mind you) with the video. It greatly improved my enjoyment of the bootleg.
Also, I was watching this clip (cross-posted from the SE++ Hamilton thread):
The Schuyler Sisters sing For the Longest Time.
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I saw the 1999 production of Macbeth that starred Antony Sher and Harriet Walter; I liked it a lot. I can very much recommend Sher's two books Year of the King and Woza Shakespeare!
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
When we used to live in Chicago, she worked with a local theater doing props and stage management. The best thing I ever saw during that period was a show called Never the Sinner, which was about Leopold and Loeb's 1924 act of murder and subsequent trial. I was fucking riveted, let me tell you.
We've also been to see Avenue Q three times. I love bringing people who are unused to theater to that show
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
lemme stress community theater since I'm sure a lot of really quality stuff is gonna be in this thread.
and a cut down Last Supper
I wish I was more of a theater geek, I did this show because I've always wanted to do JCS and was lucky enough to get the dream part as far as I'm concerned. I will probably do more with this group in the coming months/years (I think they do 2 or 3 shows a year and this was not yet a month ago so it'll be a little bit before the next one is announced). But I wish I knew more shows! Very unlikely they'll be doing another one I know or love like this one.
I only really know the big ones, les mis, phantom, in my world jcs is big not sure how popular it is really.
At the cast party they were singing showtunes (of course) and I was so lost!
... there is word the next show might be 1776 though which I would jump at hard.
I play the violin. My brother is more musically talented and plays the violin, guitar, bass, and drums (basically a one-man rock band), but I just stuck with one instrument (aside from a stint in middle school where I played and hated the clarinet). I've been in a few orchestra pits (Pippin in High School, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying AKA H2S for short and Into the Woods in College). I failed a class because I was commuting to the theater for H2S instead of studying.
I did a fair amount of singing in Undergrad, and I was in a few musicals as part of the cast, like South Pacific (I was both the Bass Sailor who sings a really low note in "Nothing Like a Dame" and Random Asian Islander. Yay, racial typecasting?). I think my favorite part was the aforementioned 1776. I played the Secretary, and I had a solo and a lot of speaking parts! I was the multi-ethnic cast of a patriotic musical before it was cool!
Sondheim is a god for theater geeks, but a lot of his music obtuse and dense, and it doesn't have the immediate appeal of, say, Phantom of the Opera or Hamilton. I generally start people off with Sweeney Todd, Company, or Assassins (depending on their personality), and work my way up to the harder stuff like Sunday in the Park with George. He definitely writes a lot of "inside baseball" for musical enthusiasts... for example, Into the Woods starts off with the Mother of All "I Want/Wish" songs, by literally layering 5 or 6 "I Want" songs all into one (a feat that most people don't notice unless they are familiar with a lot of musicals). And, of course, stuff like "Merrily We Roll Along" are all about the theater (Much Reference. So Meta.).
Hmm. I'll have to check that one out! I haven't seen/heard it.
I find that Avenue Q, Rent, Book of Mormon, and Company are good starting points for bringing folks into theater.
EDIT: Oh, and Little Shop of Horrors!
When I was in high school I ran lights for a comedy theater. My dad has been their resident lighting designer since I was probably 9. Their main thing they did was a series of a black and white murder mysteries, written, usually directed by, and starring the guy who ran the place. They're pretty great. I had to sign an NDA when I started that I wouldn't reveal how they do the makeup as it's a trade secret. Not that I knew how anyway.
Anyway, that guy is retiring from playing that role, and the play they're doing this July is his final one and it was one of the ones they did while I worked there, so I'm gonna go down, visit my family and say hi to the group. A lot of them have been part of that company for 20 years.
As far as my own accomplishments, I sang in the chorus for a couple of operas in college (The Bartered Bride and Faust) and did a couple musicals with the local community theater. The first year we did Into The Woods and it was a ton of fun, and one of my favorite shows because of that. I was cast as the Steward, but the guy playing the Old Man/Narrator got removed a week before opening so I got promoted and had to cram my ass off. Fortunately that was just after I graduated and didn't yet have a job so I had pretty much nothing to do but run lines.
The next year we were paired up the childrens' theatre and did Oliver and was Bill Sykes. Which was a lot less fun. Soooo many children running around.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
He also seems to have some blind spots on his musical lists. There are very few (if any) jukebox musicals, which I don't mind, per se... I hate most jukebox musicals, but it is a notable omission, especially given the success of "Mamma Mia". He also doesn't mention "Rent" anywhere that I've seen (so far), which was basically the definitive musical of Generation X (if there is such a thing). I'm not seeing any Stephen Schwartz musicals in any of the lists, either. "Pippin" and "Godspell" are well-loved, and "Wicked" was a spectacular mega-hit.
The actual trivia information about the different performances and roles is pretty sound and entertaining. But it seems overall woefully incomplete and full of technical writing errors, like a CRACKED article.
I was similarly amazed at a production of Gypsy, which I saw in London last year. The film's pretty good, considering when it was made, and it's brilliant in a key scene, but Imelda Staunton made the final big number, "Rose's Turn", both psychologically frightening and heartbreaking. Really glad I saw that one - especially since it was pretty much a random pick when we decided to go to London for a week.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
It lacks the goofy earnestness of the original movie and essentially loses the heart of the story in an endless wash of 80s references. There are so many things about it that just don't work, at least as a cast album.
Also as a stagehand, I never want to see live theatre ever again.
Newsweek has a Hamilton special edition on the stands right now! It's been ages since I bought an actual physical magazine, but this will go nicely with my Hamiltome.
The Crucible Cast Party. This skit is so accurate, it hurts with the twinge of regret.
Reposted from the [chat] thread courtesy of Casual Eddy.
EDIT: Posted the YouTube link.
I can't really say all that much about The Tempest, because after an exhausting week at work, little sleep and a long trip from Switzerland to Stratford-upon-Avon I would probably have found Rogue One too long and slow-moving. King Lear, though, while it had good actors (and a standout Edgar), felt too boring by half, and that was mainly because almost none of the lines felt fresh. Shakespeare actors especially talk about fresh-minting the lines, but this felt a lot more like there was a specific RSC school of delivering Shakespeare's language and they were following it to a T. Edgar was really the only one that made the lines his own. There were some interesting visual flourishes, but I mainly came away from both productions thinking that you need to do much, much better if you do Shakespeare without extensive cuts these days.
On our last day in London, though, we found out that a production of Sam Shepard's Buried Child was about to start, starring Ed Harris and Amy Madigan. I was certain there wouldn't be any tickets or only bad and overpriced ones, but my wife suggested we'd at least check - and we got reasonably priced tickets that were right in the middle of the auditorium, with a good view of the stage. Shepard's obviously a very different beast from Shakespeare, and in terms of staging you won't get as much variation, but it was a strong, well-performed performance and Harris especially was absolutely worth seeing. The play has certain lengths, especially towards the end, but it was by far the most enjoyable play we saw during our vacation.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Robert Stephens remains the best Lear I've ever seen, though I'm kicking myself I didn't go and see Glenda Jackson.
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"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
We were in London last week, primarily to visit some friends and see Hamilton (a Christmas present for my wife). The day before we left for the UK, I saw that there's currently a production of Uncle Vanya, starring Toby Jones, Ciáran Hinds and Richard Armitage, so we decided at very short notice to get some tickets for that one. While the production was pretty traditional, it was a very well crafted example of that sort of production. Jones was very good, as was Hinds (with a less important part), but I was surprised by how much I liked Armitage, who I'd mainly seen as Thorin Oakenshield and as Hannibal's version of Francis Dolarhyde. Not that he was bad in either, but he was very good as Dr Astrov in this.
We might return to London later this year; Jake Gyllenhaal will be starring in a production of Sunday in the Park with George, and I've been wanting to see a professional production of Sondheim for a while now, ever since seeing an amateur Assassins at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years ago and absolutely loving it, and doubly so after loving the Sondheim bits in Marriage Story.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
We saw Anthony And Cleopatra with Ralph Fiennes and Sophie Okonedo a year or two ago as well, and they were very, very good. The play does drag a bit in places, especially during Cleopatra's endless death scene, but they kept it pretty lively throughout.
I am sorely tempted by Uncle Vanya.
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My main issue with Uncle Vanya wasn't the production but the audience. It's one of those plays where several of the characters are faintly (or not so faintly) ridiculous, so while it's not jam packed with jokes, the audience's main reaction was to laugh. That's even more the case with a reasonably large audience, I think; if an audience has various different reactions to choose from, they will tend to go for being amused, and the more people laugh, the more others will laugh too. Thing with Uncle Vanya is that these characters are fundamentally quite sad, but their sadness expresses itself in ways that get a laugh first and foremost. Those nuances tend to get covered somewhat by an audience having a good time. If that isn't something that bothers you, then I'd say it's well worth going to see this production, especially if you like Chekhov and the actors.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods