A Question for Ms. Klausner

[John Junk 2.0]

Can I get a Top 5 musicals, please?  If that's too stringent, how about a Top 10?

I'm kinda with Paul F. Tompkins: the only musical I really like is The Music Man, and seeing as it was the only musical Meredith Wilson ever wrote, it's kinda hard to come up with something to match it.   I'm embarking on a huge project and I need to research the musical medium.  I need suggestions and guidance from someone who isn't a my-love-is-blind-and-deaf fan of the genre. 

 Here's my top 5.

1.  The Music Man

2.  The Sound of Music ( At least watchable for the duration)

3.Oaklahoma! (only 'cause of the Surrey song and the Freudian Nightmare Sequence and ludicrous Frontier Justice conclusion),

4. Into The Woods (for complicated time signatures and post-modern themes --though I'll admit embarrassing to watch after age 13),

5. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (actually good  ...I think).

I wish I liked South Pacific more, but I only like that song "Happy Talk" 'cause it's funny, catchy, and racist,  and I think the repressed "There Is Nothing Like A Dame" is fun more in concept than in reality. 

Please Help. 

[yesno]

I don't know much about musicals, but I really like tapdance movies.  I don't have any recommendations you haven't already heard of.  Singing in the Rain and Swing Time are both great.

I agree with Tom that old comedy doesn't age, but I think that the 1930s-50s were a great time for movies.

[Dorvid Barnas]

I like Hedwig and the Angry Inch and most of Sondheim's stuff, like Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Assassins.

And yes, I'm going to post this Grand Hotel clip again. 
[youtube]GPl5ePNppNY[/youtube]

[JonFromMaplewood]

Sondheim's Company? Anyone? I love it.

[emma]

Sondheim's Company? Anyone? I love it.

YES

[Julie Klausner]

Okay, hello. This is a huge question. I am going to have a panic attack if I keep thinking about it being definitive, so I will just flow with it like jazz.

First of all, The Music Man is horrible. I'M NOT SAYING I DON'T ENJOY IT. But it's not good. There's a song and accompanying garish dance number in the second act called "Shipoopi." Again: just saying. Do I thrill when that gayest of all gay men that ever darkened a doorway (not a euphemism), Robert Preston, admonishes River City about the trouble it's got? Of course I do. But is it a good show? Define "good."

Here are ten fantastic shows, four of which I'll allot to Stephen Sondheim, the Picasso of Musical Theater in that the lay-listener not think his melodies are pretty, but all who are even semi-learned in the matter must concede that he's responsible for singlehandedly modernizing the artform.

Essentials of the Sondheim Canon (my favorites)

Assassins
Sunday In The Park with George
Sweeney Todd
Company

I am not the world's biggest R&H fan, but I appreciate them. I'll cast my vote with Oklahoma! as my fave of their oeuvre, but I'm not putting it in the top ten. MOVING ON!

I will add

Guys & Dolls
as well as
Gypsy

here, because they are timeless Americana, and Gypsy is arguably the best musical of all time; also a Sondheim effort, but collaborative.

What do I have, four left? Hedwig is great. If you like Hedwig, and you're in NYC, get yourself tickets to see Passing Strange. The book packs a wallop, and I swear you will love Stew's songs. I will, however, hedge my bets on Jesus Christ Superstar as my pick for rep rock opera on the top ten.

Final three, huh. Well, assuming these are shows and not films (that's a whole other list), I have to include A Chorus Line, my only dance-heavy pick. And I'll do two modern shows just to show that theater's not dead, despite Duncan Sheik's Yerba Mate-fueled efforts. I'll include The Drowsy Chaperone, which is crisp, smart and actually funny, not just "theater-funny," and David Yazbek's adaptation of The Full Monty, which imported the heart of that film from working-class Britain to working-class Buffalo, lyrically articulated the confusion between Carly Simon & Carole King, and had full frontal male nudity at the end of the show, which is more than you can say for Jersey Boys.

THANK YOU FOR ASKING ME THIS QUESTION!

[John Junk 2.0]

Julie,
Thanks for your guidance!

I'm in L.A. and so am unable to catch some of these shows but they'll probably end up in Vegas if they're any good, right?

There's a song and accompanying garish dance number in the second act called "Shipoopi." Again: just saying.

Yeah, I know!  When I was a lad of but 12 years old, the school did a production of the Music Man and I desperately wanted to be Harold Hill.  They had a box you can fill in when you're writing out your application for who you're going to try out for that says "Who would you NOT want to play?" (I hear this is exactly what they do in Hollywood.)  So I wrote "I'll be Anyone but that Buddy Hackett character." ...and guess who ended up with the task of delivering "Shipoopi"?  I was not up to this challenge and, in fact, ended up having an onstage meltdown during rehearsals that resulted in the entire chorus singing every line of the song with me because of my adamant refusal to die up there just so people who are too dumb to get the subtle critique of Iowa moors can have something to laugh at at hour 1.5.

Phew, anyway, I seriously haven't seen 90% of what's on your list!  I have seen JC Superstar and I forgot, and of course that would bump off either Oaklahoma! or the Sound of Music.  Man, I got some homework to do.

THANK YOU FOR ANSWERING MY QUESTION!

[buffcoat]

For music and dancin' I like Gene Kelly: "An American in Paris" and "Singin' in the Rain."

I don't much like musicals, tho.

[gravy boat]

I saw Christopher Walken sing (and dance, of course) in the musical adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead.  I think it beat out Paul Simon's Cavemen for a longer run but not by much.

[todd]

I'll include The Drowsy Chaperone, which is crisp, smart and actually funny, not just "theater-funny,"

Can you explain what you mean? I'd be interested to hear a genuinely funny person's take on "theater-funny." I haven't seen many musicals, but thats because the few I have seen have been horrendously unfunny.

[Laurie]

Julie K, will you stand by "The Drowsy Chaperone" with Bob Saget?

[ughwhy]

Assassins

YES X100. Also ditto on "Guys and Dolls" & its soul cousin, "The Full Monty."

Also "Floyd Collins," the Adam Guettel musical that I totally thought would make Adam Guettel the best new musical theater guy except then he did "Light in the Piazza," which I think was a big ol ball of eh.

[Julie Klausner]

Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris are perfect movie musicals. They don't work as well on stage. Gene Kelly, to me, is the human personification of American optimism. Again: whole other list of best movie musicals. Cabaret is on there, Tommy, All That Jazz, West Side Story. Chicago and Hairspray are successful on both counts, in my opinion.

Funny versus Theater Funny is, sadly, all over the place, example-wise, on stage. Traditional musical comedy books give actors way too much power: they have to "sell" a mediocre joke with over-the-top energy or a funny "character voice" when the writer just should have worked harder. There are parallels to certain sitcoms here for sure. Drowsy was written by Toronto Second City and "Slings & Arrows" alum Bob Martin, a genuinely brilliant comic writer and actor. It's so good, satirically as well as just for pure entertainment value. I was lucky enough to have missed Saget's stint in its run.

NOT an Adam Guettel fan. Sitting through "Light in the Piazza" made me feel like I was dying of a yeast infection. The "spoiler" of that show is that it's all artsy-fartsy operatic, high brow falutin' and frou-frou, and then we find out that the daughter, who seems a little slow, is like that because when she was a little girl, her mom had a pony at her birthday party, and the horse kicked her in the head while the mother was on the phone. So she's retarded now, and the mom feels bad, because she was chatting to her pal Marge while a horse kicked her daughter in the face. That's the show. WHAT? I know.

[dave from knoxville]

Andy from Knoxville just finished his run in the role of Adam Pontipee in his high school's production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. (Of course, the joke around here is that we do Seven Brides for Seventeen Brothers.)

Someday soon I will post a Youtube link of one of his feature pieces.

Any love for 7 Brides, Ms Klausner?

[Julie Klausner]

Emma Brockes wrote about 7BF7B in her great essay anthology, What Would Barbra Do?

Brockes wonders whether anybody on the set of the film in 1954 ever considered that the retelling of the legend of the rape of the Sabine women via a song called "Sobbin' Women" was in slightly bad taste.

She writes,

"In a sort of anthem to no-means-yes, [Howard Keel] sang of how, although the women acted 'angry' and 'annoyed,' when it came down to it they were secretly 'overjoyed.'"