Musicals

Can ‘School of Rock’ reverse two decades of flops for the man who used to rule musical theatre?

Marketing a musical to the current crop of moviegoers means being a bit evasive about what it is

Celebrating the golden age of corporate Broadway-style musicals

Pop-style lyrics invade that last bastion of proper rhyming: musical theatre

Three Gaga tributes are under way, though a Toronto show is first, and most ambitious

Starring Robert Goulet, Elizabeth Taylor and, well, Garth Drabinsky

Watching Smash, and thinking about untold stories about the making of a musical, reminded me that I recently enjoyed reading William Goldman’s book The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway. He saw and wrote about every Broadway show in the 1967-8 season, incorporating his own opinions about what was wrong with Broadway as well as interviews with many insiders (some anonymous, some not, all with axes to grind). I recommend the book both as a snapshot of the attitudes of the time and as a repository of Broadway gossip. It includes at least two fascinating stories of how highly anticipated musicals, The Happy Time and Golden Rainbow (hopefully you haven’t heard of them; they weren’t very successful) arrived on Broadway with their original stories distorted completely beyond recognition by the “Muscle” of the production, the person with the power to shape the show: a powerful director-choreographer in the first case, a powerful star in the other case.

Musicals are breaking box-office records even as reviewers pour on the vitriol

At 83, with more recognition than ever, the lyricist hints at a comeback

Musicals are making an appearance on opera stages: be careful what you pick.

The legendary 1988 flop Carrie is coming back to the stage, pig blood and all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkBZ0-r_M-8