179 stories from Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals
Ah, spring break. Time for me to catch up on some long-overdue blogging. Towards the start of each semester, the students in my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory emba…
Papers, papers, papers. I recently sat down to calculate how many pages I would be reading and grading this semester. I have 79 students, who will engage in a total of 15 writing projects. T…
Yeah, I know. I've been greatly remiss in my blogging duties. Mea culpa. I'm wearing a hair shirt even as I type. But the semester is in full swing here at The Boston Conservatory, and this …
Snow day here at the BoCo. Gives me a chance to catch up on some blogging. Here goes... Each semester, I begin my musical-theater history course at the Boston Conservatory by asking students…
Certain musicals just keep coming back into my field of vision, offering me opportunities to consider the shows afresh. Most of the time, I see new things to appreciate, if not always enjoy.…
On Twitter yesterday, you'd think someone had died. Or lots of people. Or perhaps there had been a bloody massacre of unprecedented proportions. But what really happened was that nine shows …
I've seen a lot of boxing puns in the reviews of the new Broadway musical Rocky, based on the 1976 film of the same name. Rocky is a "contender," some contend. Others say Rocky "goes the dis…
The Walt Disney Company continues to comb its catalog for stage-musical candidates. You can hardly blame them: The Lion King has become a license to print money, Newsies is still going stron…
I somehow made it through the '90s, the '00s, and nearly half of the '10s without reading The Bridges of Madison County. Nor have I seen the 1995 film of the same name, despite an abiding pa…
Here are three things that I learned from seeing Beautiful: The Carol King Musical: 1. Jukebox musicals don't automatically have to be atrocious 2. Pandering to baby boomers isn't necessaril…
You may have heard that the new musical Murder for Two, now playing at the New World Stages, announced today that the production is now selling tickets through July. Take it from me, that's …
As I pointed out in my recent post of The Best Musicals of 2013, it was a darned good year for musicals, but it was also a doozy for not-so-great musicals. Try as I might, I just couldn't ge…
Hey, you know what? The year 2013 was a pretty good one for musicals. And I'm not even talking about the crowd-pleasers that seemed to please everyone in the crowd except me (Kinky Boots, He…
The musical Working has always held a sort of fascination for me. Opportunities to see it staged live are somewhat rare, but it's one of those shows that, when I listen to the original cast …
Every few seasons or so, a musical comes to Broadway that just warms the cockles of my heart. (And as Woody Allen says in Love and Death, "Nothing like hot cockles.") Avenue Q was …
If any of you happened to be in the Times Square area on the night of Saturday, December 14th, 2013, you may have heard some blood-curdling screams emanating from the Lyceum Theatre. But it …
OK, now I can breathe. It has been one busy semester here at The Boston Conservatory, let me tell you. Of course, amid the hullabaloo, I continually remind myself that I'm teaching what I lo…
The end-of-the-semester crush is upon me, and I find myself scrambling to grade papers, plan finals, meet with students, and yet still keep up with my blogging backlog. As Tevye said, "…
One of the great unexpected pleasures of the new Broadway season is After Midnight, an effervescent tribute to the joys and spirit of Harlem in the 1920s and '30s, in particular the fabled C…
Every once in a while, a musical comes along that restores my faith in the art form. Fun Home, the shattering new musical now playing an extended engagement at The Public Theater, is one of …
If you're going to create a musical about the magic of storytelling, you had better have some genuine magic on display, either in the piece itself, or in the presentation. Unfortunately, the…
When I started this blog in April of 2006, it was really just an effort to find an alternate outlet for my theatrical rants and ravings. My friends were sort of sick of my posturing and peda…
The Huntington Theatre Company in Boston announced today that its current production of The Jungle Book is now the highest-grossing production in the company's history, with three weeks stil…
Every few seasons or so, Broadway seems to attract a WTF musical. You know, as in, "WTF were they thinking bringing this to Broadway?" The kind of show that, even if it was any good, just di…
One thing I've noticed lately is that my tolerance for flaws in a musical depends on the overall feeling that I'm developing as I'm watching a performance. When a musical, overall, is well-c…
