LET'S TALK ABOUT PLAYS ! BROADWAY & BEYOND !

[beano]

I am a HUGE play lover ! Saw my 1st play in 1978 ( P.S. Your Cat Is Dead @ Circle In The Square Theater on Bleeker St. NYC ) and have gone on to see 87 thus far !! Musicals to Drama's, Broadway, Off Broadway, Off Off Broadway, Regional & Touring ...
I have 3 upcoming in my area (Charlotte NC)and heading back to The Great White Way* yet again in November ! *On a typical visit, I usually see 5 plays in 4 days(2 on Wednesday)..And 99 % percent have been discounted, In person/Digital Rush(not the Trio, lol), TKTS, Freebies etc. ...Also, I have saved every single ticket stub from that 1978 play to present from my plays, concerts etc...

BREAK A LEG !!!Handwritten_2024-09-13_083141.jpg

[Steve F.]

^ ^ ^ ^ ^

Well, I am not a play 'fan' per se, but it was Michael Bass (early Muffin member and interesting musician) who was the first cool person that *I* met who liked the music I liked and ALSO had an appreciation of musicals.

He pointed out to me in the mid / late 70s that some musicals that were quite popular (think Sondheim and especially Sweeny Todd) had very good, interesting music that I should pay attention to and not dismiss just because they were big stage hits.

[SteveSly]

I have seen a lot of theater over the years both musical and non-musical. When I was young I played French Horn in pit orchestra’s for several classics including “Annie Get Your Gun” and “Oklahoma.” I have to admit though that I have gotten a bit burned out on theater over the years. It seems that much of what comes out today is either revivals of old already done works, plays / musicals based on movies, TV, Comic Books, or other already well-known source material, or just the same old cliched storylines that have been done over and over. Bottom line is there does not seem to be a lot of really original stuff being done today.

I don’t live near New York, so do not have access to Broadway, but we do have a fair number of touring plays / musicals that come through our town. We also have several great local theaters. The Barn Theater is a summer stock theater that launched the careers of people like Jennifer Garner, Stephen Lynch, Becky Baker, Dana Delany, Lauren Grahm, Robert Newman, Tom Wopat and quite a few others. We also have Famer’s Alley theater that tends to do more offbeat productions that personally appeal to me. We also have both Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College who both have great theater departments. Stephen Yuen, Terry Crews, Tim Allen, Bruce Campbell, Luther Vandross, are a few famous people who came through WMU or K-College theater departments. We live about 2 hours from Chicago and will occasionally go there to see big theatrical productions like “Hamilton” too.

I guess the bottom line is, I used to see a lot more theater than I do these days, but still enjoy it on occasion.

[Mister Triscuits]

The music I heard around the house as a child was the likes of Camelot, South Pacific, My Fair Lady, and so on. (That, and Harry Belafonte.) My favorite was Wildcat, which was a vehicle for Lucille Ball in between I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show. I always loved the clever wordplay and elaborate rhyming in the songs from these musicals. That's one reason I'm such a big fan of Elvis Costello; he clearly took a page or two from the likes of Oscar Hammerstein and Alan Lerner. I've seen very few of these shows onstage, unfortunately. My younger brother is a big musical theater guy, and living in L.A. gets to see a lot of them.

[markwoll]

I have been to a good number of plays. I enjoy most of them. Broadway and off.
There are a wealth of stages in the DC area and from tiny black boxes/garages to the Kennedy Center.
The costs of tickets for some of the revivals are astronomical , but when my wife was alive we enjoyed seeing many. In DC and NYC.
Over time I got a bit of attitude about sitting in a room and having someones issues played out. Kind of cooled me to a lot of modern stuff ( last 80 years or so ).
Can't go wrong with the old stuff, although sometimes the staging can be a little wack in an attempt to appeal to a current audience.
I do love a slapstick comedy.

[helicase]

I'm reading a collection of some of Nobel Laureate Dario Fo's plays at the moment. Deliciously ridiculous stuff. I'm keeping an eye out for a performance, should be a great night out.

[JKL2000]

I grew up seeing loads of Broadway shows, but unfortunately I hardly ever go now, because I can't justify the astronomical ticket prices. I've been thinking recently that I need to see if there's anything good off-Broadway now, because I'd like to see something, but I agree with Steve's overall assessment that there's not much good happening on Broadway these days. At least, nothing where I want to invest $1000+ to take my family, and hope I feel like it was worth it in the end. The way going to a Broadway show has changed from being not THAT different from going to see a movie, into a tourist event akin to spending two-to-three hours at Disneyworld. I'd rather spend much, much less than that on a great meal that I KNOW will be great - I don't have to gamble on the hope that we'll have a good time. The last time I bought Broadway tickets, I was sorely disappointed. It was David Byrne's "Here Lies Love." I liked the original album, but for some reason they wrote almost all NEW songs for the show, and they're not nearly as good as the original songs. The whole production was gimmicky in a juvenile and disappointing way.

Anyway, sorry to be Debbie Downer! I've seen lots of great shows and amazing performances, but very few since the twenty-aughts or whatever.

[beano]

I only do Digital lotteries & In person RUSH shows in NYC, the most I ever paid is $45 and have gotten great seats every time ! (including FRONT row !) In fact, last trip in, I saw Tommy for $35 ! And here in NC, I am a season patron for a local community theater, 5 shows for the year run me about $150...

https://playbill.com/article/broadwa...ies-com-116003

[rickawakeman]

Grew up in Newark NJ so mom took us to many plays and musicals in the city. I saw some great off-Broadway rock musicals in the late '60s that are barely remembered ("Your Own Thing"? "Peace"?) and the greats ("Hair", saw Jesus Christ Superstar" with original cast shortly after opening; in later years we saw "Phantom" with the original Broadway cast, same with "Beautiful", the Carole King musical. A few years ago I fulfilled my bucket list dream and played Caiaphas in JCS for five performances at the illustrious Academy of Music. I love musical theatre more than plays but did see Bowie in Elephant Man and Richard Burton in Equus...

My love of musicals informs my love of over-the-top offerings by Kayak, Clive Nolan, Ayreon...

[Trane]

Grew up in Newark NJ so mom took us to many plays and musicals in the city. I saw some great off-Broadway rock musicals in the late '60s that are barely remembered ("Your Own Thing"? "Peace"?) and the greats ("Hair", saw Jesus Christ Superstar" with original cast shortly after opening; in later years we saw "Phantom" with the original Broadway cast, same with "Beautiful", the Carole King musical. A few years ago I fulfilled my bucket list dream and played Caiaphas in JCS for five performances at the illustrious Academy of Music. I love musical theatre more than plays but did see Bowie in Elephant Man and Richard Burton in Equus...

You just mentionned the only Broadway musical that I'd love to have seen (maybe Rocky horror as well), but TBH, musicals have never appealed to me. I was far too young for FAIR and JCS anyways.

Can you give us some details about Peace and Own Thing, please?

==============

As for theatre play (the Shakes-Molière stuff), I've seen many of the renaissance classics (if only though schooling), but TBH, I prefer some XXth C stuff much more - though not really when it's farcical. I do enjoy humour in theatre, but more the grinding type that the slapstick stuff.

The best memory would be Jean Anouilh's reworking of Antigone (Sophocles' play) set under a Palestinian background back in the 80's.

[wilcox660]

From 2004 - 2019 I volunteered at my local theatre ushering, painting sets & being prop master at one point. My disabilities ended that in 2019, but I love the theatre. Godspell is my fave. Back in the 70s/80s, I got to see Vincent Price in a 1 man show as Oscar Wilde, Julie Harris as Emily Dickenson, and so much more! Other plays I loved - The Gin Game, Man Of LaMancha, Proof, Doubt. Also, in the mid-80s I saw Acting Shakespeare on Broadway - a 1 man show with not yet sir Ian McKellan. I even got called up onstage as a dead soldier. So, technically, I acted in Shakespeare on Broadway directed by Ian McKellan!

[Sturgeon's Lawyer]

A few years ago I fulfilled my bucket list dream and played Caiaphas in JCS...

Interesting. I've always wanted to play Pilate in that show. "Who... is... this broken man, cluttering up... my hallway?"

I do love musicals. Favorites? Well, aside from the complete works of Gilbert and Sullivan and some of the Disney animated shows ... Fiddler, West Side Story, Wicked, The Wizard of Oz, Little Shop, Spamalot, and Avenue Q are floating to the top of my mind just now, but if you asked me another day the list would probably be somewhat different.

(Oh, and Cats if that's really a musical. Don't musicals have to have some spoken dialogue?)

[SteveSly]

Off the top of my head, some of my favorite musicals would be:

Hamilton (totally lived up to the hype), Evita (ALW’s best IMO), American Idiot (great interpretation of the Green Day album), Sweeny Todd, Spamalot, Next To Normal (great one that is not that well known), Pippin, American Trailer Park Musical, Tommy.

[rickawakeman]

Can you give us some details about Peace and Own Thing, please?

Loved this original cast album after seeing the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMFp...Apolinar-Topic

I can find nothing about Peace. Downtown, '68?

[Trane]

Loved this original cast album after seeing the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMFp...Apolinar-Topic

Not my thing , but thanks anyway

[Baribrotzer]

.....think Sondheim.....

One of the best songwriters of the 20th Century - but most of his songs are so inseparable from the musicals they're part of, that he's underappreciated outside the theater world.

Assassins, Sondheim's version of musical Americana, is a favorite; it concerns the lives and motivations of various Presidential assassins. I've seen it on stage several times. The 1991 original production has the best performances, IMO; the others all seem overdone and full of scenery-chewing. The actors don't need to throw it in the audiences' faces that these people are enraged crazies - the script and lyrics say enough already.



The first, and principal singer is "The Proprietor"; some productions have equated him with the Devil. The second is John Wilkes Booth.

[Steve F.]

^^^^^^^^^


Hahaha

Didn’t know this one.

“If you can shoot the President, you can win the prize”

[Baribrotzer]

“If you can shoot the President, you can win the prize”

At this point, the Proprietor is singing to John Hinckley; the "prize" he's promising him is Jodie Foster.
Almost all the songs from this are musical and lyric knockouts.

[beano]

Saw The Humans at a local Black Box theater in Davidson NC....Dramedy/Tragedy...