Theatre

[fritzkep]

^^^I've grown to love the song Make Them Hear You, especially the way various gay men's choruses have sung it, and used it to combat haters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmsy6w0r7q0

[Lyle (Mooska)]

^^^

Very nice, Fritz. I didn't actually know this before!

[Jeff Wrangler]

A road company of Miss Saigon is playing here now. The young woman playing the leading female role was interviewed in this morning's newspaper, and she's so young she remembers watching parts of the show on YouTube.

I read the article wondering if anybody in the current cast realizes the plot is derived from the opera Madama Butterfly. They've probably never even heard of Madama Butterfly.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Yesterday I viewed an illicit copy of THE CHER SHOW, currently playing on Broadway. I have to say that if one is a person that just likes Cher, I don't know how you wouldn't just love watching this show.

I haven't read the reviews, but I can say that because of a show based on a musician's life a couple/few years ago was extremely popular, there has been a spate of the same kinds of shows on Broadway and the Broadway critics are taking to just not liking any of them in hopes they'll stop making these kinds of shows. Recent ones off the top of my head were "Beautiful" (about Carole King), "Summer" (Donna Summer) and The Temptations musical, which I saw here in Los Angeles, titled "Ain't too Proud."

While watching THE CHER SHOW, I realized how she has been in the background of my entire life. I remember listening to Cher sing on the radio in the car as a ten year old on the way home on a warm summer afternoon. Her appearances on Laugh-In and her big hit "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" when I was in high school. Her and Sonny's TV show in the 70's, into the disco era when I came to Los Angeles and saw her in concert. Then her music video phase and burgeoning acting career in the 80's and 90's. Then her first Grammy (if you can believe that) with the popular "Do You Believe in Life After Love" in early 2000's. While watching "her" show I was having memories of all the places and people I was with when I heard or watched her all those times.

Cher!

[Lyle (Mooska)]

In other Broadway news I found out that Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow play the title roles in a show called "Hillary and Clinton." Takes place around the time of the Democratic convention in 2008. I don't know if I'm in the mood for something like that.

[Jeff Wrangler]

While watching THE CHER SHOW, I realized how she has been in the background of my entire life. I remember listening to Cher sing on the radio in the car as a ten year old on the way home on a warm summer afternoon. Her appearances on Laugh-In and her big hit "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" when I was in high school. Her and Sonny's TV show in the 70's, into the disco era when I came to Los Angeles and saw her in concert. Then her music video phase and burgeoning acting career in the 80's and 90's. Then her first Grammy (if you can believe that) with the popular "Do You Believe in Life After Love" in early 2000's. While watching "her" show I was having memories of all the places and people I was with when I heard or watched her all those times.

Cher!

I well remember watching The Sonny and Cher Show when I was a kid. The title of the Broadway show immediately reminded me of a routine she and Sonny did once on the show: Sonny kept referring to it as The Sonny and Cher Show, and she kept interrupting him to say, The Cher Show. And I can still see her sitting (it seemed) nearly naked on a white horse, wearing a full headdress of white feathers, singing "Half-Breed."

[Lyle (Mooska)]

I remember that, too, Jeff!

She and Carol had the best costume designer for their talents, Bob Mackie. He is even portrayed by an actor in The Cher Show. They've recreated a whole slew of his Cher creations for the show and during the production there's even a mini-fashion show segment!

It's amazing to think, but at one time The Carol Burnett Show, The Red Skelton Hour and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour were all taping at CBS Television City at the same time!

The Smothers Brothers got notoriously fired by CBS in Spring, 1969, and even though Red Skelton's show was still in the Top Ten in 1970, CBS cancelled it. (He then went to NBC for one more year in a half-hour version, but that didn't work so well.) So then in the summer of 1971 The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour moved in while Carol Burnett was still there. Not to mention All in the Family, too, which began taping there in 1971. (After a few years All in the Family relocated to Metromedia Studios.)

Who can forget the beginning of some of those shows: "From Television City in Hollywood..."

Last December CBS sold Television City after 69 years!  Read about it, here:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cbs-sells-television-city-property-750-million-1168095

And Metromedia, where all of Norman Lear's Shows ended up taping, was sold and bulldozed some time ago. It's now a large high school and where the sound stages were is a large track and football field. (Glee filmed many exteriors at the high school.)

I saw tapings of several shows at Metromedia from around 1977-80.  I saw The Jefferson's, Three's Company (2), Apple Pie (3), Hello, Larry,  and an All in the Family. If I saw anything else I'm not remembering it right now.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

I actually saw one of the musicals nominated for 12 Tony Awards today, because it was in Los Angeles before it went to Broadway.

Ain’t Too Proud—The Life and Times of The Temptations.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

New York City Opera’s Stonewall, The New Opera from Iain Bell and Mark Campbell Premieres June 21-28.
See a Sneak Peek Here
by Ryan McPhee
Playbill
http://www.playbill.com/article/watch-a-sneak-peek-of-new-york-city-operas-stonewall

The opera is the third presented as part of NYCO’s ongoing initiative to present an LGBT-focused work each June,
following last year’s Brokeback Mountain and 2017’s Angels in America.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I'll put this under Theatre, but I suppose it might just as well have gone under Movies.

Over lunch today I read a short New Yorker article. The night before the Tony Awards, Shirley Jones and her son Shaun Cassidy attended the current Broadway revival of Oklahoma! I've been in love with Shirley Jones since, as a kid, I saw The Music Man for the first time. She was 21 years old when she starred as Laurey in the film of Oklahoma! Impossible to believe she is now 85. And Shaun is 60! That's impossible to believe, too. I remember his teen heartthrob days.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Shirley presented (introduced) the number they did from Oklahoma! on the Tony's.
I really don't know, nor have I read, what the idea behind this revival is but watching
the number I was alternately intrigued and appalled.

My favorite thing Shaun Cassidy did was a slight footnote in his career.
In 1980 they made a TV series of the Best Picture nominated film from
1979, Breaking Away.

He played the Dennis Christopher role. Barbara Barrie and Jackie Earle Haley
reprised their roles from the film. If I recall correctly the critics liked it, but it
got low ratings in its Saturday night time slot. I thought it was going to be a
huge hit, but it only lasted 8 episodes.



L to R: Tom Wiggin, Haley, Cassidy, Thom Bray

[Jeff Wrangler]

Shirley presented (introduced) the number they did from Oklahoma! on the Tony's.
I really don't know, nor have I read, what the idea behind this revival is but watching
the number I was alternately intrigued and appalled.

What goes around comes around. Critics seem to like it.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Yes, but I haven't seen a synopsis where it explains what the idea was behind it.

I know that they haven't changed any of the words or lyrics etc.
The number they showed looked like it could be a contemporary
setting. The cast is integrated, white, black, Latino. There's a girl
who is in a wheelchair. (She won a Tony for this.) It's not your
Grandmama's Oklahoma, that's for sure.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Yes, but I haven't seen a synopsis where it explains what the idea was behind it.

I know that they haven't changed any of the words or lyrics etc.
The number they showed looked like it could be a contemporary
setting. The cast is integrated, white, black, Latino. There's a girl
who is in a wheelchair. (She won a Tony for this.) It's not your
Grandmama's Oklahoma, that's for sure.

That may have been addressed in the review in The New Yorker, but that review appeared months ago, and I'm not sure I remember that correctly.

[Lyle (Mooska)]

Matthew Bourne has a new ballet production, that recently started touring in Britain,
of Prokoviev's Romeo & Juliet.

This review from Manchester makes it sound exciting:
https://ilovemanchester.com/review-matthew-bournes-romeo-and-juliet-at-the-lowry/

Yay! Another Matthew Bourne!

I wonder what it means on the New Adventures website when it says:
              Which company will you be seeing
                  The Capulets or Montagues?


The article is really good, too: New Adventures Celebrates Pride Month
https://new-adventures.net/news/new-adventures-celebrates-pride-month