Cool, Don.You look quite serious!
the shows that go on...
That must have been a lot of fun, Don!
i love being a stage manager and i know i am good at it, but lighting is magic to me!
Don, you "do the orchestrations" means what, exactly? Orchestrating friom a piano score? Playing piano from an orchestral score? Adapting a score to fit the instruments you have, copying over the part for "C trumpet" because the trumpet player only has a B-flat instrument and can't transpose in his head?
Fascinated - I could do that. . . . do they pay you? x, Carrie
Don, So sorry I missed you. We meant to go to that. How did you get involved? I know the people that work at the agency that sponsored it.
Great shot Don! Very kingly.
Carrie:
Yes, creating orchestra parts from a piano score to fit instruments we have, and no pay, I do it for the fun of it. Two years ago I wrote both the libretto and adapted Herbert's music to an entire operetta, "Toyland", produced at Ivoryton. (Inquiries from impressarios gleefully considered.)
Dave:
I knew the director. And you might have missed it anyway if you were going to the second performance which was called off because of a mere 3 inches of snow.
Don, if you get any inquiries from impresarios in the Boston area, please refer them to me. :) Any gig in a storm, right? xx, Carrie
a messenger comes to tell the gruesome story of the success of Medea's poisoned wedding gifts.
Jason demands to see Medea, but she is now under the protection of her grandfather the sun, and cannot be touched.
That is beautiful Amy.
thank you - Eric and i make a good team.
SCSU's production of Anything Goes opens tomorrow night, and runs through Sunday.
Last shots from Medea:
Jason pleads to be allowed to bury the children, but Medea refuses, and his world collapses around him.
Great shots, Amy! Thanks for sharing.
The play ends with Jason abandoned and alone, bereft of everything he cared about, his future doom prophesied by Medea.
(Just another feel-good hit of Greek drama!)
Not much slap-stick, I assume?
Slapping and sticking (with a knife), but not at the same time.
: )
I think part of the reason I never got into plays and such is because every one I have ever seen is depressing. It is a beautiful setting, and im sure the actors are great, but I really feel depressed after watching one and have yet to return because of that. There is enough sorrow and tradgeity in the streets and schools that I don't need an extra dose. Any suggestions to a happy one? Maybe it would get me over this feeling if I saw one with happiness and a nice ending.
That's why I go to see primarily musicals.
Yes Victor, I was told my a good friend to go see Cats and I would most likely love it!
Anything Goes is about as happy as it gets. The only way i could imagine being depressed by it is if it was a truly terrible production. Cole Porter songs, tap dancing, inept gangsters, fake clergy, and everyone finds love in the end. But then, most of the old classic "musical comedies" are happy.
i don't really think that plays are more depressing as a group than movies, or books, or tv...
Anything Goes synopsis from Wikipedia (and edits by me):
Billy Crocker, a young love-sick Wall Street broker, stows away on the S.S. American, in hopes of winning the heart of his beloved Hope Harcourt. His boss, Yale graduate Elisha J. Whitney, is also on board. He plans to relax before the tremendous sale of his own company's stock. Hope is on her way to England to be married to Sir Evelyn Oakleigh, a stuffy, hapless British nobleman. Also on the boat are "Moonface" Martin, a second-rate gangster on the lam labeled "Public Enemy #13," and his friend Erma; the two have disguised themselves as a minister and a missionary, respectively, after stranding the ship's real chaplain back at the port. They also, mistakenly, left behind their leader, "Snake Eyes" Johnson, Public Enemy #1.
On board, Crocker runs into his friend, Reno Sweeney, an evangelizing nightclub singer, who resolves to help Billy win over Hope, to the dismay of Hope's mother, Mrs. Harcourt, who insists she marry Evelyn. Billy simultaneously learns the true identities of Moonface and Erma, and in exchange for his silence, they join the plot to break up Hope and Evelyn. However, as Billy doesn't have a ticket or passport, Erma and Moonface let him have Snake Eyes Johnson's, without telling him to whom it belongs. But the ships crew figure out that Public Enemy number 1 is on board, and Billy has to take on a number of hilarious disguises to hide from them--which at first makes Hope angry with him. As the show progresses, Hope, Evelyn, Billy, Reno, Elisha, Mrs. Harcourt, Erma, and Moonface all end up in a variety of compromising positions with members of the opposite sex, with Reno seducing Evelyn Oakleigh, originally just so Hope or Mrs. Harcourt would reject him, but eventually they fall in love. In the finale, there is a triple wedding - Hope and Billy, Mrs. Harcourt (divorced) and Mr. Whitney, and Reno and Sir Evelyn. Moonface Martin receives a notice on board that the government considers him "harmless."
Some of the show's most popular songs are:
I Get a Kick Out of You
Anything Goes
Easy to Love
You're the Top
It's DeLovely
Blow, Gabriel, Blow
Goodbye, Little Dream, Goodbye
All Through the Night
Friendship
My brother was Sir Evelyn Oakleigh in a local production of Anything Goes. It's definitely not dreary or depressing, the way Medea might be, if you're not into Greek tragedy (LOL). The plot is quite absurd, but it's remarkable how many long lasting classic songs came from that one show. xx, Carrie
I have fond memories for Anything Goes. In college I had written a silly musical for a drama club, and when the university theater put on AG they didn't like the opening number and substituted one from my show. Imagine my feelings...substituting for Cole Porter! There are two commercial versions of AG available, unfortunately neither of them includes my song.
Carrie, Great songs from Medea? It's a real toe tapper! ;^)
Pixie, Even short of musicals, there are non-depressing plays. Not all of Shakespeare is depressing. Then there is everything Neil Simon: The Odd Couple, Brighton Beach memoirs, Goodbye Girl. Barefoot in the Park.
One of my favorites is Watch on the Rhine, not funny but inspiring.
David! I was talking about AG, as Don puts it (which I have to think I prefer with Cole Porter's score than with the Shirer improvement). However, Medea, the Musical! might keep either of us busy next winter....
Actually, now that you mention it, opera was the musicals of the 17th - 19th centuries, and to a lesser extent the 20th. (As well as the TV, MTV, itunes, etc, etc, etc.) There are some great tragic and comic operas, and some are even in English. i guess I got to thinking about this because of all the settings of Greek tragedies by composers, either staged or just sung. I remember writing a paper about Stravinsky's setting of _____. I can remember many of the key bits, the way somebody kept screaming/singing "Agamemnon" and the way the B-flat changes to A-sharp for an aria but what was the title? I dunno.
None of which helps shed any light on non-depressing shows to go see. Celeste, you can almost always find local High School productions of Gilbert & Sullivan, Rodgers & Hammerstein, etc. Check with us, we'll steer you straight! critic at large, Carrie
Thanks for all the great suggestions...I may try one again at some point.
(I think I talked too much about opera, which has gotten a bad rep.) (♫♫♫)
You think opera has a bad rep? you should meet my agent!
did you ever see the musical version of Waiting for Godot ? Children of a Lesser God?
groan.
There was a musical version of Carrie, one of the most notorious flops ever.
Our Carrie? It must be because she has those music notes.
Link to sign up for NY Times.com?
Link to review of Carrie. i didn't even think, sorry. It doesn't cost anything (well this doesn't - some things do but it always tells you - and you can read theTimes online when it comes out and for 7 days after).
i figured something like that.
But the idea of a musical Carrie is funny.
Did they sing, 'Plug it up!'??
i don't think so, but the big pig's blood number must've been something to see!
Quoting:
New York Times
Review/Theatre
By FRANK RICH
Published: May 13, 1988, Friday
Those who have the time and money to waste on only one Anglo-American musical wreck on Broadway this year might well choose ''Carrie,'' the new Royal Shakespeare Company co-production at the Virginia Theater. If ''Chess'' slides to its final scene as solemnly and pompously as the Titanic, then ''Carrie'' expires with fireworks like the Hindenberg. True, the fireworks aren't the greatest; the intended Stephen King pyrotechnics wouldn't frighten the mai-tai drinkers at a Polynesian restaurant. But when was the last time you saw a Broadway song and dance about the slaughtering of a pig? They've got one to open Act II of ''Carrie,'' and no expense has been spared in bringing the audience some of the loudest oinking this side of Old McDonald's Farm.
Fans of this musical's source material, Mr. King's Gothic novel of the same title, will remember why a horde of mean-spirited high-school students ends up at a pig sty. They want to pull a blood-splattering practical joke on Carrie, the class loser, at the senior prom. But why would the kids perform an exuberant number titled ''Out for Blood'' - leaping over the trough under flashing red disco lights - while carrying out the butchery?[...]
Were the rest of the evening as consistent in its uninhibited tastelessness, ''Carrie'' would be a camp masterpiece - a big-budget excursion into the Theater of the Ridiculous. Even so, one is grateful for the other second-half pockets of delirium, including a song in which the telekinetically empowered Carrie (Linzi Hateley) cutely serenades her ambulatory powder puff, hairbrush and prom shoes. As Carrie's stern mom, a religious fanatic dressed up in dominatrix black from wig to boots, even the exemplary Betty Buckley earns one of the show's bigger unwanted laughs. ''Baby, don't cry,'' she gently tells her daughter after stabbing her with a dagger.
Most of ''Carrie'' is just a typical musical-theater botch, albeit in the echt West End style (lots of smoke, laser and hydraulic effects). The disaster was not inevitable, [...] as demonstrated in [the film], ''Carrie'' can make for scary, funny and sexy pulp entertainment - provided the thrills, wit and post-pubescent sensuality are as sharp as that knife.
The musical ''Carrie'' fails in all these areas. It's no surprise that the visual scare tactics concocted by Mr. Hands and the set designer Ralph Koltai can't compete with those on film, but surely someone might have found stage blood (porcine or human) that doesn't look like strawberry ice-cream topping. Though the author of the musical's book, Lawrence D. Cohen, also wrote the film script, his work here is just a plodding series of song-and-scenery cues. The only laughs in the text of this ''Carrie'' are the whopping cliches in Dean Pitchford's lax, pseudo-''Bye Bye Birdie'' lyrics. ''Was it his voice? Was it his smile? I haven't felt so wonderful in quite a while,'' sings the lovesick heroine.
What is most fatal to ''Carrie'' is its inability to deliver its Cinderella story and the encompassing hothouse high-school atmosphere. Oppressed by her Bible-toting mom, Carrie is a naive, awkward shut-in - so unworldly that she has a near-breakdown during her first (and perhaps a Broadway musical's first) menstrual period. When Carrie later blossoms into womanhood under the loving ministrations of a kindly gym teacher (the warm-voiced Darlene Love) and her class's foremost prince charming, the transformation should be real and moving - thereby making Carrie's eventual sadistic humiliation all the more horrifying. But if Ms. Hateley has a belter's voice in the reigning (and amplified) English rock-musical manner, she has none of the vulnerability of Sissy Spacek's film Carrie. Love and acceptance do not transform Ms. Hateley into a romantic prom queen; she still begs cloyingly for our sympathy, as one might expect from an actress whose primary previous stage experience was as an orphan in ''Annie.''
Carrie's classmates are even less convincing. In the opening gym sequence, the high-school ''girls'' are dressed like suburban aerobics instructors and look old enough to be guidance counselors. Carrie's immediate friends and enemies - roles vibrantly played in the movie by Amy Irving, Nancy Allen, William Katt and John Travolta - are amateurishly caricatured on stage (by the hideously misused dancer Charlotte d'Amboise, among others). When the casting errors are compounded by uncertain American accents, Mr. Koltai's abstract black-and-white Mondrian box of a set and Alexander Reid's grotesque sub-Atlantic City costumes, one often isn't sure where or when ''Carrie'' is taking place. Though one scene is set in a ''Grease''-era drive-in, we also visit a teen-age ''night spot'' where the boys and girls dress in black leather and studs suitable for ''Cruising.'' As choreographed by Debbie Allen, who shouldn't wait another moment to return to her performing career, Carrie's senior prom looks like the sort of cheesy foreign-language floor show one flips past in the nether reaches of cable television.
What burning passion is to be found in this ''Carrie'' has little to do with teen-age eroticism or Gothic horror and everything to do with a more traditional Broadway subject - settling scores with a domineering mom. The only surge in Michael Gore's otherwise faceless bubble-gum music is in those songs in which Carrie and her mother do battle. Though the matriarch remains a misogynic cartoon, the fiercely concentrated Ms. Buckley brings theatrical heat to every slap-happy bout of corporal punishment, every hand gesture indicating her sexual repression, and every aria invoking Jesus and Satan. After a theatrical decade that has taken her from ''Cats'' to pigs, the time has come for Betty Buckley to receive a human musical as her heavenly reward.
This message was edited Mar 10, 2008 12:55 PM
I am musical and require no additional links!
Did I ever tell you that my father (my dear misguided Dad) gave me the book Carrie for a 13th birthday birthday present. That's ONE of the reasons I always check out what my kids are reading. Yucko!
Then for years after, I would be introducing myself, and the other person would say "Hi, Karen." And I say "actually, it's Carrie" and the person would say"oh, I'm sorry, Carol." And I would say "no, Carrie" and I'd hear "Oh, Carrie, LIKE THE MOVIE, I GET IT, CARRIE!" By which point I would be ready to change my name to Fred or Anon. or anything but Carrie.
xx, Fred
What an, um, interesting present...
When i was a kid, i got to hear, "Amy - oh, just like Amy Carter!" a little too often, but i have to agree, "Carrie-like-the-movie" is worse.
Like Davey Crocket