Monday, April 29, 2013
So, Motown: The Musical. OK, let's do this. Yes, it's bad. But we knew that was going to be true. But the genuinely surprising thing about Motown is that it's not entirely disastrous. Sure, …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:52PMSaturday, April 27, 2013
Yeah, I don't get it. I saw the new musical Here Lies Love recently at The Public Theater, and found it reasonably diverting, if shallow and repetitive. But the reviews were overwhelmingly p…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:53PMFriday, April 26, 2013
I don't often get the chance to see Broadway shows twice. By the end of the season, I'm lucky if I have time to see things once. But I recently had the opportunity to see the current Broadwa…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 09:23PMSaturday, April 20, 2013
I don't know how my fellow critics feel about this, but I find it much harder to write a rave than to write a pan. I guess that says something about me as a person, but I think it's also...
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 07:05PMTuesday, April 16, 2013
Let dreamers dream what worlds they please; Those Edens can't be found. The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees Are grown in solid ground. We're neither pure nor wise nor good; We'll do the …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:20AMFriday, April 12, 2013
I've been a bit disheartened of late by crowds going full-tilt bug-nutty during, and at the end of, shows that, at least from my perspective, are seriously deficient in quality. It happened …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 09:56AMTuesday, April 9, 2013
One of the hottest tickets in New York right now is the Classic Stage Company revival of Passion, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. (The show has been ext…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 11:50AMSaturday, April 6, 2013
Who turns documentaries into musicals? Why, Doug Wright does, that's who. In collaboration with Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, Wright trandformed the the cult documentary Grey Gardens into…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:32PMThursday, April 4, 2013
Dear Reader: My humblest apologies for my extended absence from the blogosphere. I've been caught up in teaching, and the semester has really gone into high gear. But one of the things that …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:41PMSunday, February 17, 2013
A confession: I love Annie. Yes, it's sappy. Yes, the characters are two-dimensional. Yes, there are songs that serve no purpose except to cover a costume change. And yet it gives me joy. It…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:58PMSunday, February 3, 2013
One of my favorite theatrical experiences last season was One Man, Two Guvnors, a British import that rollicked at the good old Music Box Theatre for 159 performances, three at which I was i…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:43PMWednesday, January 30, 2013
Last week, the Off-Broadway production of the musical Bare announced that it would be closing this coming weekend after 21 previews and 65 regular performances. I wish I could say I was eith…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:29PMTuesday, January 15, 2013
Bad theater is a gift. I genuinely believe that. I know plenty of people who only go to see shows that they're already pretty sure they're going to like, or that have received strong reviews…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:11PMFriday, January 11, 2013
In the arts-criticism course that I teach at the Boston Conservatory, one of the DVDs that I've had my students watch almost every semester is Pippin. This isn't because I necessarily like t…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:29PMThursday, January 10, 2013
When I was in eighth grade, our class produced a little mimeographed yearbook, of which I was the editor. The yearbook contained individual student profiles, essays about class trips, a clas…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:20PMSunday, January 6, 2013
Dear Reader: With this post, I've finally caught up on my blogging backlog. I've still got some posts in the pipeline (including my Best and Worst Musicals of 2012, as well as my review of P…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:11PMTuesday, January 1, 2013
[Dear reader: The musical Giant played an extended run at the Public Theater from October 26th to December 16th, 2012. I saw the show twice, once in previews and once after it opened. Then I…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:35PMThursday, December 27, 2012
During the build-up to Christmas 2012, there was something very actively on the minds of theater fans across the country and around the world, and it didn't have anything to do with the usua…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 04:26PMThursday, December 20, 2012
I love blogging. I love teaching. But they do tend to conflict with each other. The two busiest times of the year for New York theater tend to be right before Christmas and then right before…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:11PMFriday, November 23, 2012
Shortly after I saw the new musical Scandalous on Broadway, I received an email asking me to "spread the word" about the show. Nothing strange there, I suppose. But the show was still in pre…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:05PMTuesday, November 20, 2012
I guess we're running out of musicals worth reviving. That's what has been going through my mind recently as I've contemplated recent announcements of upcoming musical revivals on Broadway. …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:34PMWednesday, November 7, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
Here's my latest review for TheaterMania: Something's Afoot at the venerable Goodspeed Opera House. Did I find the comic murder mystery either funny or mysterious? Click here to find out.
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 10:36AMGee, you folks really like lists, don't you? Well, I'm more than happy to comply. I recently posted this semester's list of the "most overrated" musicals, as selected and defended by my curr…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 10:23AMWhodunnit? Who cares?
That's the impression I was left with at the end of
Something's Afoot a a trifle of a musical murder mystery by James McDonald, David Vos, and Robert Gerlach, current…
SOURCE: TheaterMania at 09:48AMSaturday, October 13, 2012
"Oh, my God. That show is soooooo overrated." One thing that musical-theater majors are never short on is attitude. And when I started teaching musical-theater history at the Boston Conserva…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 03:36PMThursday, October 11, 2012
Dear Reader: As part of my course on the history of msuical theater at the Boston Conservatory, I'm currently directing a staged reading of the Rodgers and Hart musical A Connecticut Yankee.…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 12:30PMMonday, September 17, 2012
I love the fall. I've always been the type of nerd who couldn't wait to get back to school. And now that I teach full-time, that nerd-liness continues unabated. Of course, one of the things …
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 06:44PMThursday, September 13, 2012
Some bad musicals make you angry. Ghost was one, mostly due to the arrogance of the pop-music dilettantes who blithely thought that, just because they could write hit songs, they could autom…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 08:20PMThursday, August 23, 2012
Like many of you, I'm sure, I was skeptical when I first heard that Bring It On: The Musical was to become a musical. "Great," I thought. "Another movie-to-musical franchise show." And we're…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 11:13AMThursday, August 16, 2012
Because I spent so much time at NYMF this summer, I didn't really have plans to take in any shows at the NY Fringe Festival. I think it's partly because I'm kind of over the four-hour bus ri…
SOURCE: Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals at 02:13PM 
