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By Robin S. Rosenberg

I recently saw a preview for the musical Spider-Man: Turn Out the Dark. It’s not really a musical; it’s a spectacle. It succeeds as a spectacle, fails as a musical, and hangs itself as a Spider-Man origin story. It’s easier to find good things to say about the spectacle aspect, so I’ll start by reviewing that aspect of the play.

Spider-Man: The Spectacle

Director/writer Julie Taymor and co-writer Glen Berger wanted to create a spectacle-something that was more than a musical. They succeeded. The sets were a wonder to behold (especially in the first half of the show). Aerialists, dressed as Spider-Man, the Green Goblin, and Arachne, flew about the stage and balcony, allowing viewers to feel a part of the production. In fact, because of the numerous injuries suffered by actors during rehearsals and previews, when the aerialists flew overhead it made me wonder-what if their cables broke and they fell on the audience? (And wouldn’t that be analogous to what New York’s pedestrians would wonder if an actual Spidey and actual Green Goblin were duking it out in the skies above Manhattan, without the cables?)

Even as a spectacle, though, the pacing of it didn’t work for me. Most of the spectacular elements were in the first half of the show, so when the effects and wow elements were fewer (and repeating) in the second half, it was a let down. During the last hour of the play, I kept looking at my watch. If you see the play and leave at intermission, you’ll see the best parts. Grade for spectacle (especially the first half): A.

Spider-Man: The Musical

In a good musical, the songs move the story forward. Unfortunately, the music in this play didn’t do this very effectively. The actors often spoke a “recap” of the gist of the song in order to transition to the next scene or to move the story along. (If you see this play, bring along some tissues or napkins to stuff into your ears: some songs were so loud that I had to cover my ears with my hands; I didn’t enjoy those.)

As you may know, the songs were written by Bono and The Edge, and it showed. The songs didn’t have the structure or feel of a “Broadway musical,” which is okay in theory, but not in this execution. Sad to say, none of the songs were memorable – they didn’t have a great “hook” as do many Broadway songs or even U2 songs. Plus the feel of the music didn’t match up with Spider-Man’s character or story. Grade for music: B- (I’m being generous here, taking effort into consideration in my grade)

Spider-Man: The Origin Story

I’ve read (or seen) almost every Spider-Man origin story there is because I’m writing a book on origin stories that includes a chapter on Spider-Man’s origins. I was looking forward to this musical to see how it compared with previous origin stories of the Webbed Wonder. I was disappointed. There isn’t a whole lot of character development here, and there isn’t much more of a plot; what plot there is focuses too much on Mary Jane and not enough on Peter. Even though Peter/Spider-Man is a comic book character, his story is rich in the human drama of shouldering the burden of

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Earlier this week, Jerry Bock (perhaps best known for Fiddler on the Roof) passed away, the day after he was honored with Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild. Below, Philip Lambert remembers the great composer.

By Philip Lambert

After an apprenticeship in early television, and at Camp Tamiment, a summer camp for adults, in the early 1950s, Bock made his Broadway debut with three songs in a revue, Catch a Star! (1955). At that time he wrote mostly with Larry Holofcener, whom he had met at the University of Wisconsin. Bock and Holofcener also teamed with George David Weiss to create a star vehicle for Sammy Davis, Jr., Mr. Wonderful in 1956. But when Bock began working with Sheldon Harnick in 1957 – they were introduced by a mutual friend, Jack Cassidy – his music began truly to blossom and sparkle. Bock and Harnick wrote hundreds of songs of infinite variety in support of disparate stories and characters. Feeding off each other’s formidable talents, the partnership thrived until an array of forces sent them their separate ways in the early 1970s. After that Bock mostly wrote his own lyrics for other new shows, including a very successful series of musicals for young audiences between 2000 and 2007, and music for a feature film (Sidney Lumet’s A Stranger Among Us, 1992). He also worked on personal, private songwriting projects during the last four decades, yielding autobiographical song cycles (Album Leaves, Trading Places) and thematic collections (Noblesse O’ Blues, Three/Four All).

Jerry Bock was the master of what Lehman Engel called the “musical costume.” He could dress up a song in any style, from the nineteenth-century parlor song (for Tenderloin) to the jazz shouter (in The Apple Tree). He would immerse himself in the style and culture of the story he was helping to tell and then transport the audience there with musical references and flavorings. In She Loves Me he took us to Hungary, in The Rothschilds to the power centers of eighteenth-century Europe. In his most successful show, Fiddler on the Roof, he drew from his own background and heritage to evoke a turn-of-the-century Russian shtetl. Of that experience, he said in 2008, “I simply could not stop the brood of melodies and harmonies that waited to be born.”

There was, in other words, no single Jerry Bock “style.” His style was simply an acute sensitivity to the dramatic requirements of the project at hand. He and Harnick would work tirelessly on each of their scores searching for perfect dramatic support, during development, rehearsals, and pre-Broadway tours, usually producing two or three times the number of songs a

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By Keith Gandal

Want a quick, but apparently reliable measure of how elitist you are?  Go see the 7-hour production of Gatz, in which all 47,000 words of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are, in the course of the play, enunciated on stage.  (If you dare and can afford to.)  If you love every minute of it and find time flying by, you’re probably, well, an arts snob; if you find your reaction mixed, your mind drifting in and out, and your body just plain giving out, well, you’re likely more of a populist.

Consider the following small, statistically meaningless, but provocative sample of reviews you instantly encounter on the web: the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Theatremania all give the play rave reviews, while the New York Post and the New York Daily News both give it 2½ stars (out of 4 and 5 respectively).  Ben Brantley of the New York Times describes the play as “work of singular imagination and intelligence.” Jeremy Gerard of Bloomberg calls it “remarkable,” “as powerful a piece of stagecraft as you may ever see.”  David Finkle of Theatremania finds the play “mesmerizing” and declares, “the lengthy production goes by in what seems like a blink of an eye.”  Meanwhile, Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post gives it a mixed review, asserting that the director “has come up with an inspired concept” and that Gatz is “great, but [it] also grates.” “There are the deadly boring stretches. Very long ones.”  She concludes: “It’s as maddeningly tedious as it is brilliant. By the end, my mind was as numb as my butt.”  And Joe Dziemianowicz of the New York Daily News recommends the play, but also calls it a “fanny-numbing readathon.”

In other words, this small sample of reviews breaks down across class lines.  Higher-brow papers or websites are raving, and the lower-brow papers have mixed feelings, including uncomfortable feelings in their behinds.

But is this breakdown really surprising?  A 7-hour production at a cost of $140 seems to demand of its audience members that they have a lot of time and money to spare.  This is at the Public by the way, which was presumably once more public than it is now.  In fact, one thing the play Gatz does quite effectively is to restore Fitzgerald’s now very accessible novel to the inaccessibility, along class lines, that it would have had back in the 1920s.

I want to make clear that I haven’t seen the play and, thus, that my perceptions of its length, its cost, and its reviews are not colored by my having sat through it.  I’m actually quite curious to see it – I’m teaching the novel this term at City College, and I’ve written a recent book that devotes the longest chapter to Fitzgerald’s novel.  Well-meaning colleagues and friends have even suggested I take my class to see the play, given that some reviewers are calling it a major theatrical event, but with regular tickets starting at $140, who c

Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber.  The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history.  In the original post Block challenges readers to test their Tony knowledge.  We will post the answers next Wednesday so be sure to check back.

1. Who is Tony?

2. What was the first musical to win the Tony for Best Score?

3. What was the first musical to win the Tony for Best Musical?

4. What was the second musical to win the Tony for Best Musical?

Hint: This show made its debut only a little more than three months after the first winner.

5. In what year were the Tony Awards first nationally televised?

6. Who has the most Tony Award wins in the Best Score category?

7. What other lyricists and composers (or lyricist-composers) have won two or more Tony’s in the Best Score category?

8. Who has received more Tony’s than anyone else since the awards were established?

9. One winning musical in the Best Score category was the only musical nominated that year.

10. What year produced arguably the most impressive line-up of Tony nominated musicals?

11. So far there has been only one tie in the Best Musical category? Name the two shows.

12. Fourteen times in the last fifty years the Best Musical and Best Score winners were not the same. No less than half of these disparities have occurred in the past twelve years. What are the names of these last seven shows that won the Tony for Best Musical but not Best Score? What shows did win for Best Score in those years?

13. Name the two Best Musicals that went on to win Best Picture Oscars.

14. Name the three Best Musicals losers that went on to win Best Picture Oscars.

15. Starting in 1994, the Tony Awards decided to make the Best Musical Revival its own category instead of forcing musicals to share the award with revivals of plays. In the years since, the Best Musical Revival category has often proven to be fiercely competitive. Name the three winning revivals that first appeared before the launching of the Tony Awards and the four winning revivals that did not win a Tony Award for Best Musical the season of their Broadway debut.

16. The Four Questions: What show won the Tony for Best Musical in 1984? What Pulitzer Prize winning show lost that year? Who wrote the winning score? What controversial remarks did the winner utter on national television?

17. One composer had been dead for nearly 70 years when he won for Best Score. Who was this composer and what musical did he write?

Little Diva by LaChanze, illustrated by Brian Pinkney

Tony Award-winning actress LaChanze brings us the story of Nena, a little girl who wants to be a diva.  Right now she is a D.I.T.: a Diva In Training.  She wears stylish clothes, does vocal exercises, and even helps her mother with her yoga.  Her mother is a diva already, a Broadway star.  Nena gets to accompany her mother to the theater where there are costumes, wigs, and makeup and much more backstage.  Nena sits in her special place to watch her mother onstage.  Then she has to go home where she tells her Nana all about the show before heading to bed to plan her own performance for tomorrow.

LaChanze brings a breezy tone to this picture book that really captures the dreams of a youngster wanting to be just like her mother.  The allure of the stage is brought to life in the book.  I particularly enjoy the fact that diva is meant positively.  It doesn’t mean tantrums and drama, rather it is art, craft and the theater.  Pinkney’s art matches the breezy style of the text so well.  He uses free-flowing lines and swirls of color to show this young diva’s life.  There is an effortlessness to this book that makes it a pleasure to read.

Perfect for any little divas in your life that would have problems taking a short bow.  Appropriate for ages 4-7.

Reviewed from copy received from Feiwel and Friends.

Lights on Broadway: A Theatrical Tour from A to Z by Harriet Ziefert, illustrated by Elliot Kreloff, with Brian Stokes Mitchell

This A to Z book takes readers into the world of the theater, teaching the words that go with the shows.  From grip to marquee, readers will find plenty of words they don’t know.  But this book is much more than vocabulary because alongside each definition, there are quotes from Broadway actors, directors, choreographers, composers, writers and more.  This book is pure inspiration for those who have the acting bug and who long to be on stage. 

Ziefert and Kreloff have created a book that captures the excitement, glitz and joy of the stage.  Ziefert offers definitions that convey an excitement about the subject, always avoiding being dry.  Kreloff’s art is loud, bright and nicely stylized, suiting the subject matter perfectly. 

Give this to young actors and class clowns. It could also be used when doing a production in class to give a sense of what the larger picture of performing is.  A joyful riot of a picture book, this book will serve as the basis for many big dreams.  Appropriate for ages 5-8.

Reviewed from library copy.

Also reviewed by Sommer Reading and Read Along with Biblio.

Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber.  The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history.  In the original post below we learn five new things about West Side Story.

1. Did you know that choreographer Jerome Robbins insisted on making the Jets snap their thumbs against their index fingers instead of their middle fingers? Try it, it’s much harder. That’s the point. Robbins wanted to make the Jets stand out from other finger snapper.

2. Did you know that in Arthur Laurents first two libretto drafts Maria kills herself with dressmaking shears. Starting with the third draft, five more drafts, and the final draft, a mortally wounded Tony finds Maria alive, and the lovers are able to share a few final moments together.

3. Did you know that some of the great tunes in West Side Story contain recognizable connections with famous classical melodies? My favorites are the allusions to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and the theme Wagner created to depict the Redemption through Love in his Ring cycle, since in these cases Bernstein’s references are so interesting dramatically as well as musically.

4. Did you know that Sondheim was originally listed as a co-lyricist with Leonard Bernstein? When the early reviews ignored Sondheim’s contribution, Bernstein offered the Broadway newcomer sole lyricist billing and the royalty split that went with it. In an unthinking moment he would always regret Sondheim replied, “Don’t be silly. I don’t care about the money,” and turned down the opportunity to split the 4% lyric royalties. Instead of receiving 2% of the lyric royalties, Sondheim thus retained his original 1%.

5. Did you know that the film soundtrack of West Side Story was the Number 1 best selling album of 1962 from May 5 to June 16 and again for the week of October 6-13?

By Cassie Ammerman- Publicity Assistant

Thomas Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical, Hischak offers over two thousand entries on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more.

We asked Hischak what he thought of Off Broadway musicals making the leap to Broadway, and he gave quite an impassioned argument for keeping them Off Broadway. Watch the video after the jump.

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Where do the wonderful world of theatre and the world of film collide?  Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television is here to document the scene. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entries on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more.

There are only two shows that have won the Best Musical Tony Award and gone on to win the Best Picture Oscar in their film versions: My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music. What does this say about the compatibility of the two awards? Well, it points out once again that theatre and film are two very different media. It also suggests that many great stage musicals were turned into less-than-satisfying movies. You might even go so far as conclude that Tony voters and Oscar voters have very different ideas about what makes an exceptional musical.

Let’s look at the champs in each medium. The Producers holds the record for winning the most Tony Awards, 12 including Best Musical. The film version however, which was a scene-by-scene replica of the Broadway production, won no Oscars. In Hollywood, the musical that won more Academy Awards (10) than any other is West Side Story. Yet on Broadway the original stage production only earned one Tony, for the choreography of Jerome Robbins. The Tony voters that season favored The Music Man in most categories; yet when it was faithfully filmed the year after West Side Story, it only won a lone Oscar, for best scoring. Of course the competition must be considered. The Music Man was up against Lawrence of Arabia (the Best Picture winner), To Kill a Mockingbird, The Longest Day, and Mutiny on the Bounty. West Side Story only had to contend with Fanny, The Hustler, Judgment at Nuremberg and The Guns of Navarone.

The obvious disadvantage in Hollywood is that musicals are nominated against all kinds of movies whereas on Broadway they compete against other musicals. Tony-winning musicals must be turned into satisfying films (no easy task, that) and then hope they open in a year when the comedies, dramas, and even Hollywood-grown musicals aren’t so impressive. Consider these well-made but unlucky movie versions of Tony Award musicals: The King and I lost to Around the World in 80 Days, Hello, Dolly! to Midnight Cowboy, Fiddler on the Roof was defeated by The French Connection, and The Godfather beat Cabaret. The many outstanding film versions of Tony musicals that were not even nominated for Best Picture include The Pajama Game, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Evita, Hairspray and Sweeney Todd.

Aside from My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, which stage-based musicals has Hollywood liked? The only others to win the Best Picture Oscar are the aforementioned West Side Story, the British Oliver!, and the surprise hit Chicago. While none of their stage versions won the Tony Award, they were all Tony-quality shows so it’s not too surprising that they made excellent films and won Oscars. Also, each was done on quite an impressive scaled, having been “opened up” for the screen. Oliver! managed to beat out such worthwhile films as The Lion in Winter, Rachel, Rachel, Romeo and Juliet, and Funny Girl (a Broadway hit but not a Tony winner). Chicago won over the less-impressive competition of The Pianist, Gangs of New York, The Hours, and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

Finally, one can’t help but heave a sigh of regret and look at all the Tony-winning musicals that were turned into disappointing films. No one spends much time wondering why Oscar nominations didn’t go to South Pacific, Guys and Dolls, Kismet, Bye Bye Birdie, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Man of La Mancha, A Little Night Music, The Wiz, A Chorus Line, Annie, The Phantom of the Opera, or Rent. As much as these stage works were (and are) beloved by audiences, theatre goers would probably agree with Oscar that the screen versions were lacking.

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. Below are the answers to this morning’s quiz.

1. Harvey (1944). It was also her last Broadway credit.

2. Liza Minnelli in The Act.

3. Into the Woods. Book by James Lapine, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

4. Pipe Dream.

5. South Pacific (1949). The four winning performers were Mary Martin, Ezio Pinza, Juanita Hall, and Myron McCormick.

6. Fosse was the winner. The other revues were The Civil War and It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues.

7. Wonderful Town (1953).

8. Les Misérables and Starlight Express. He won for the first.

9. The Sound of Music (1959). Six of the seven Von Trapp kids were nominated for Best Featured Actress and the eldest Von Trapp, Lauri Peters, was nominated separately. They all lost to Patricia Neway as the Mother Abbess in the same show.

10. Angela Lansbury.

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. In the quiz below Hischak questions your Tony knowledge. Post your answers in the comments section. We will post the answer sheet later today.

1. The Tony Awards are named after actress and director Antoinette Perry (1888-1946), founder of the American Theatre Wing. What was her long-running comedy hit, later turned into a successful feature film starring Jimmy Stewart?
2. Name the musical star, ever a tabloid presence for her many marriages, battles with substance abuse, and ability to poke fun at her own image, who caused quite a stir in 1977 when it was discovered that, due to the strenuous dancing in the show, parts of her singing were prerecorded. She won the Tony anyway.

3. Although The Phantom of the Opera won the Best Musical and six other Tonys in 1988, the Best Book and Best Score went to another musical that season. A 2002 revival, which added three little pigs, won Best Revival of a Musical. Name the musical.

4. The 1956 Tonys were the first in which musicals were nominated. Before that only a winner was announced. Damn Yankees won over what Rodgers and Hammerstein musical? Maybe if Julie Andrews—who auditioned but was told by Richard Rodgers to focus on getting the part of Eliza Doolittle instead—had stayed with the production, it would have had better luck.

5. Although The Producers cleaned up at the 2001 Tony Awards, winning most of the major awards, an earlier musical is the only one to win Best Musical, Best Score, Best Book, Best Director and all four musical performance Tonys for a musical. The earlier show could clean up again at the 2008 Tonys, in a different incarnation. Name that show.

6. In 1999, Parade was the only nominated musical with a book; the other three nominees were revues. Which one won? Hint: Ann Reinking and Chet Walker channeled another choreographer in numbers such as “Razzle Dazzle”, “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “Big Spender”.

7. What 1950s musicals won eight Tony Awards but was not revived on Broadway for fifty years? When it was, Donna Murphy lost to Idina Menzel for Best Actress in a musical.

8. It sometimes happens that someone is nominated for two different musicals in one season. For what two shows, impressive in very different ways, was Trevor Nunn nominated for Best Director of a Musical at the same Tony Awards ceremony?

9. Four girls and two boys were nominated together for the Best Featured Actress Tony for what 1959 musical?

10. “What worst piemaker in London has hosted the most Tony telecasts?”

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. Below are the answers to this morning’s quiz. Be sure to check back next week on Tuesday for another quiz about the Tonys.

1. The musical Passion (1994) ran only 280 performances, the shortest run on record for a Best Musical winner. Hallelujah, Baby! (1967) ran only two weeks longer but it had closed before it won the Tony so the award could not help business.

2. Poet T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) won when his light verse was set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber for Cats (1982).

3. Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Mostel won for the original 1962 production, Silvers and Lane won for the 1972 and 1996 revivals, and Alexander won when he played Pseudolus and other roles in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (1989).

4. The Threepenny Opera (1954). In 1956 the American Theatre Wing gave a special Tony to the long-running Off Broadway musical.

5. It was their Broadway debut. Bosley in Fiorello! (1959), Smith in Follies (1971), Holliday in Dreamgirls (1981), Martin in My Favorite Year (1992), McDonald in Carousel (1994), Heredia in Rent (1996) and Foster in Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002).

6. Chicago. The 1997 production won the Revival Tony and is still running.

7. Ethel Merman lost to Mary Martin in The Sound of Music in 1960. Bernadette Peters lost in 2004. Angela Lansbury won in 1975, Tyne Daly in 1990. Will Patti LuPone follow suit?

8. Best Orchestrations. Jonathan Tunick won for Titanic.

9. Frankie Michaels as Young Patrick in Mame and Daisy Eagan as Mary Lenox in The Secret Garden.

10. Tommy Tune. He has Tonys for Best Leading Actor in a Musical, Best Featured Actor in a Musical, Best Director of a Musical, and Best Choreographer. Harvey Fierstein has also won Tonys in four different categories but half were for nonmusicals: as author of Best Play, Best Actor in a Play, Best Actor in a Musical, and Best Book for a Musical.

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. In the original post below Hishak reflects on past Tony losers. Be sure to check back every week on Tuesday for more from Hischak on Tony.

The Tony nominations are made by a relatively small group of individuals who come up with the candidates for each category. The voters are a few hundred people in the theatre profession who then choose from the nominated names and titles. So while a person can be nominated many times over the years, only the voters can create winners and losers. Nonetheless, shortsightedness can sometimes be seen in the nominations. In 1963 the committee nominated A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum for best musical, actor (Zero Mostel), featured actors (David Burns and Jack Gilford), featured actress (Ruth Kobart), book (Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart), producer (Hal Prince), and director (George Abbott). Yet Stephen Sondheim‘s score was absent. Did the committee dislike him? No, they felt the show’s success had little to do with the score. They nominated two British scores (Oliver! and Stop the World – I Want to Get Off), Little Me, and the forgettable Bravo Giovanni. They should be embarrassed.

Another embarrassment occurred in 1996 when it was clear this small group strongly disliked Big and Victor/Victoria. Certainly not musical theatre classics, but the committee nominated anything rather than those two shows. Rent and Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk were both refreshing picks (Rent won) but to round out the category they added the widely panned revue Swinging on a Star and the dark and forgotten Chronicle of a Death Foretold. With nominations like that, the voters could hardly be faulted for the outcome. Yet who else is to blame for the bizarre and oddly opinionated results over the years? Let’s look at three people Tony has no love for.

1. Walt Disney. I know he’s dead and never produced a New York show in his lifetime, but his name on a Broadway marquee is enough to send most Tony voters into a snit. Remember, the voters are people in the theatre profession. The Disney Company, even after six musicals, is considered an upstart outsider. They call the Disney offerings “theme park” shows, which proves that they’ve only visited Six Flags. When the very conventional Beauty and the Beast opened in 1994, it was in the grand tradition of British pantomime and Broadway family spectacle that has been around since Babes in Toyland (1903). The nominating committee included Beauty and the Beast in nine categories, including Best Musical. But the voters gave the Best Musical Tony to the poorly-reviewed and unpopular Passion. The lone Tony for Beauty and the Beast went to the costumes because Ann Hould-Ward was a Broadway designer, not a Disney person. Of course, the joke was on the voters. Passion closed six months after the ceremony while Beauty and the Beast ran 14 years. The Tony voters have similarly rejected all the subsequent Disney musicals except The Lion King which they correctly saw as theatre auteur director Julie Taymor’s re-imagining of the popular film. More simply put: they liked The Lion King on stage because it didn’t resemble the movie. The Little Mermaid on Broadway is a popular recent entry but if it walks away with more than one or two minor awards, I’ll be very surprised. The Tony voters still aren’t ready to allow the interloping Disney Company to run Broadway.

2. Stephen Schwartz. With such long-run hits as Godspell, Pippin, The Magic Show and Wicked to his credit, Schwartz doesn’t really need a Tony. So is it mere coincidence that Tony has overlooked Schwartz? Doubtful. I believe many Tony voters see Schwartz as an American version of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, a songwriter who is rich and popular because he’s more “pop” than Broadway. Ask voters what their favorite Schwartz score is, they’ll probably say The Baker’s Wife, a beautiful if conventional romantic musical that never made it to Broadway. Schwartz’s score for Pippin lost to Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. Understandable, even if it’s a case of apples and oranges. And The Magic Show nominations were odd, to say the least. Non-acting magician Doug Henning was put up for best featured actor (!) but the lively, delightful score was ignored. What was nominated instead? The Wiz (which won), Shenandoah, The Lieutenant and Letter for Queen Victoria. Not exactly tough competition. When the Off-Broadway Godspell was finally a contender in 1977, the Schwartz score was considered a familiar classic so everyone voted for Annie. On the Twentieth Century beat his score for the short-lived Working. He also wrote the lyrics for another admired but shorter-lived musical, Rags, which lost to Les Misérables. In 2004 it looked like Schwartz might win a well-deserved Tony at last when he made a sensational comeback to Broadway with his score for Wicked. The fact that the voters opted for the non-score of Avenue Q is incredible. Maybe they were trying to be hip, but overlooking the score of the big show was an embarrassment that will be laughed about for decades.

3. Julie Andrews. Everybody loves Julie Andrews. I mean everybody. Except Tony. The fact that she’s never won a Tony Award is even odder because to many she represents the best of American musical theatre. Andrews’ indelible Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady lost to Judy Holliday in Bells Are Ringing, another legendary performance. Camelot was not even nominated for Best Musical (Bye Bye Birdie won that year) and Andrews’ Guenevere lost to Elizabeth Seal in Irma la Douce. Is this suspicious or what? When Andrews finally returned to Broadway in the problematic Victor/Victoria, her performance was the only nomination the musical received. Miffed at the committee for they way they ignored every other aspect of the show, she announced she wouldn’t accept the award if she was voted Best Actress. Equally annoyed, the voters gave it to Donna Murphy for The King and I. Murphy had already won a Tony for Passion and here was a chance to make up for past errors. But it was not to be. Everybody else still loves Julie Andrews though.

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It’s Tony season and who better to educate us about the wonderful world of theatre than Thomas S. Hischak, author of The Oxford Companion To The American Musical: Theatre, Film and Television. Hischak is a Professor of Theatre at the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is the author of sixteen books on theater, film, and popular music as well as the author of twenty published plays. In The Oxford Companion To The American Musical Hischak offers over two thousand entires on musicals, performers, composers, lyricists, producers, choreographers and much more. In the original post below Hishak reflects on past Tony award winners and losers. Be sure to check back every week on Tuesday for more from Hischak on Tony.

Looking back over the past 59 years of Tony Award winners and losers, two lists cause a great deal of lament for musical theatre lovers: those undeserving shows that won, particularly in a season when there were superior offerings, and the outstanding musicals that were passed over by the Tony voters. Over the years there have been seasons in which the offerings were so mediocre that an undeserving musical won, just as there were years in which too many good shows opened and only one could carry home the Tony. (Actually, in 1960 there was a tie between Fiorello! and The Sound of Music.) So let’s revisit some cases of musicals that were, as Julie Andrews would say, egregiously overlooked.

While no two fans of American musical theatre will completely agree on what constitutes a superior musical, some titles recur so frequently that you can say they’re the popular choices. Keeping that in mind, I offer a list of the ten most acclaimed Americans musicals that didn’t win the Tony Award for Best Musical. In order of their Broadway bow, they are:

The Most Happy Fella
West Side Story
Gypsy
She Loves Me
Hair
Follies
Chicago
Dreamgirls
Sunday in the Park With George
Ragtime

In some cases these outstanding shows had some stiff competition. The Most Happy Fella lost to My Fair Lady, West Side Story to The Music Man, and Gypsy to those double winners Fiorello! and The Sound of Music. She Loves Me had to compete with Hello, Dolly!, the radical Hair bumped heads with the patriotic 1776, Chicago could not survive the avalanche of awards for A Chorus Line, and Ragtime was up against The Lion King. Other seasons the contest was close and the Tony voters’ selection of Nine over Dreamgirls or Sunday in the Park With George‘s loss to La Cage aux Folles is understandable even if most theatre lovers today might disagree. Then there is Two Gentlemen of Verona‘s win over Follies, a decision that seems ridiculous today and wasn’t even all that popular in 1971. Many of these shows were just unlucky, opening in the wrong season; Follies, put simply, was robbed.

Looking at the musicals that were giant hits without benefit of a Tony Award for Best Musical is a less subjective exercise. This list tends to favor more recent shows since the definition of a box office hit has changed in the last 20 years and the newer moneymakers are earning more than anyone in the 1950s could’ve imagined. Here then are the top ten Tony-less Broadway success stories in the order of their opening gross:

Grease
Pippin
The Magic Show
Dancin’
Miss Saigon
Beauty and the Beast
Smokey Joe’s Cafe
Aida
Mamma Mia!
Wicked

Some may want to include one or two of these titles on the first list and only history will tell if they are right. But let’s face it, you don’t see many revivals of The Magic Show or Dancin’ anymore. On the other hand, Grease has returned to Broadway twice and is probably the champ, winning no Tony Awards in 1972 and crying all the way to the bank ever since. It’s also interesting to note that the scores of three of the above, Pippin, The Magic Show, and Wicked, are by Stephen Schwartz. The Tony voters have never been kind to Schwartz. But that’s a story for another time.

If choosing a superior musical is contentious, deciding which shows simply did not deserve the Best Musical Tony is even more fraught with controversy. Traditionalists might argue that the Tony Winners from the past six years all qualify as undeserving. Younger viewers will point to old favorites such as Wonderful Town or Kismet as over-praised winners. Then there are those not-really-a-musical shows like Fosse and Contact that seem to have won unfairly, not because of quality but because of definition. Recognizing that no one can agree completely, here’s my list of the ten Best Musical Tony winners that ought not to have won, regardless of the competition:

Redhead
Hallelujah, Baby!
Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Will Rogers Follies
Crazy for You
Passion
Fosse
Contact
Avenue Q
Jersey Boys

The upcoming 2008 Tony Awards will probably add a title to two or even all three of these lists. Will The Little Mermaid become the next Tony-less box office bonanza? Will In the Heights be added to your “should have won” list? Stay tuned.

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One of the best things about working at Oxford University Press is finding older books you didn’t know about. A couple of days ago I came across The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales: The Western Fairy Tale Tradition from Medieval to Modern, edited by Jack Zipes. I decided to put the volume to the test. Would it have the modern musical interpretation of fairy tales? It did! Below is the entry about one of my favorite shows, Into the Woods.

(more…)

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Click HERE to read "Topsy Turvy Christmas" on CWAHM.com!________

An Introduction to the Theater by Thomas Schumacher with Jeff Kurtti Disney Editions 2007 This one is killing me. This handsome book provides a fantastic window into the production of a modern Broadway musical with a solid background in theatre production aimed at the middle grade and early teen set. The book starts at the front of the house explaining how the theatre staff keep things

BROADWAY STAGE HANDS GO ON STRIKE.

Seems that strikes are definitely in the air and the newest group to join is the stagehands union. Terrible timing with the holiday season here.

"After a morning of confusion and anxiety during which members of Local One, the stagehands union, met and the producers waited to see what would happen, the stagehands strike has officially begun. Union members are holding picket signs in front of theaters and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the parent union of Local One, issued a statement confirming the walkout.

The stagehands took their picket signs to the wet sidewalks around 10 a.m. today, after a meeting of Local One, their union, at the Westin New York on West 43rd Street.

The Saturday matinee traffic of tourists and theatergoers was thrown into chaos, with busloads of students sitting unhappily outside of “The Color Purple,” and nervous restaurant workers contemplating a Saturday night with no dinner rush..."


Read the full story and background info. about the strike here:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=av0pFpnkOdrA&refer=muse
(Update 3)

www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/theater/10cnd-theater.html?_r=38&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=11947253

Mind you if you're looking for a new contract, this would be the perfect time to negociate one. Still too bad for everyone concerned. Let's hope that it doesn't drag on and that a fair and equitable settlement is reached.

The February Devo for Kids is up on CWAHM. Click HERE for Topsy Turvy Time! ______________

The August Devo for Kids is up. Click HERE for Topsy Turvy Time!

Something new! Devos for Kids! Click HERE for Topsy Turvy Time!