elsewhere/random: a musical moment
There's nothing quite like watching someone being totally and completely scandalized by hot muppet(ish) sex. Especially considering that from the waist down, there's nothing but wrist.
Which is to say, I saw Avenue Q this weekend. (Media Relations piece below included in its entirety; more fun stuff continues afterward!)
Media Relations: a brief musical moment
Avenue Q played its local swan song matinee at the Cadillac Palace Theater this past Saturday. It's very good, although you really do have to have seen Sesame Street and the Electric Company to quite "get" it -- but having seen it, I now understand why Wicked, despite losing the 2004 Tony Awards to Avenue Q for best book, best score and best musical -- an impressively complete rout, that -- has seriously outlasted it here as a road company. Avenue Q barely made its month-long run here, while a few blocks away at the Ford Center's Oriental Theater, Wicked -- closing at the end of the year -- went for three years of overtime past the original scheduled run. Wicked is bizarrely depressing yet somehow uplifting, while Avenue Q is a happy bouncy musical about people seeming to overcome that throws a perky yet downbeat ending at you out of nowhere. Funny, and yet a general message of "Life sucks and you just have to give up your dreams for a while and deal like a grown-up (unless you luck into someone with ten million to spare)" just isn't likely to bring in the teenaged girl repeat audience the same way that the (seriously altered from the book) "girl empowerment" message of Wicked will -- or the grownups either, for that matter. And it's easier to accept, or even ignore, the fact that Elphaba doesn't precisely come to a good end because ... well, by god, she got her dream, more or less. She found her purpose. It may have killed her, but she found it. "Go for your dream, whatever the cost" is a much more palatable message than "give up your dream, it costs too much."
In the DVD documentary Show Business, they show the path to Broadway taken by both Wicked and by Avenue Q, as well as the ill-fated Taboo and Caroline, or Change. What they didn't show, and I wish they had because it must have happened, is the increasingly intense discussion between the composers and the producers of Avenue Q, who would have been looking at the final song and thinking, "Are you SURE you want to do this to this weirdly fun musical? Really? REALLY?" Because it really is seriously weird fun, and the moments just before the last song can only be described as Happy Endings Gone Seriously Weird, Yet Still Happy, and then the main character realizes that he hasn't yet found his purpose in life, and the entire cast sings a song that basically says, "Yeah, well, a lot of people never find their purpose, so suck it up and deal and settle like they do." And, well ... that's a freaky weird ending to stick on a show. It leaves you feeling sort of ... "Ha ha ha! Oh, my goodness, that was fun ... and now I never want to think about it again."
EDIT: And, as everything is on Youtube, I present the closing song from Avenue Q, "For Now":
"George Bush" gets a tremendous cheer from the audience, by the by.
Second: recently saw the DVD of Sondheim's Company, the restaging featuring Raul Esparza. Really interesting, and I kind of sort of understand why it would have been such a big deal in its day. And I really admire the restaging of "The Ladies who Lunch" in the current version; it takes a certain sort of chutzpah to restage a number specifically designed to be a show stopper in a way that absolutely does not allow it to stop the show -- it flows into the following scene in such a way that the audience not only doesn't get a chance to applaud, but kind of recoils because the character seems like she's about to have a bit of a breakdown.
EDIT: And, of course, this version of "The Ladies Who Lunch" is available on Youtube, as is everything else in the world these days.
Watching this production also made me feel a bit sorry for Esparza; given the particular way he was rebuilding his life at the time, it must have been like playing eight weekly doses of irony. But I am glad that I finally saw the thing in its entirety -- I've seen pieces here and there, and I don't care how good an actor he is, I really do not like thinking of Dean Jones in quite that way, thanks -- and now I can serenely ignore it forever more. (Well ... I tend to like Sondheim's music, but not necessarily the musicals that surround them. Company has the severe dramatic problem of having a character holding the center who is not only not really all that sympathetic -- which is fine -- but who is primarily both reactive and muted -- which is not.)
And finally, who the hell IS Cubby Bernstein, and how did he get La Lupone to do this?
Which is to say, I saw Avenue Q this weekend. (Media Relations piece below included in its entirety; more fun stuff continues afterward!)
Media Relations: a brief musical moment
Avenue Q played its local swan song matinee at the Cadillac Palace Theater this past Saturday. It's very good, although you really do have to have seen Sesame Street and the Electric Company to quite "get" it -- but having seen it, I now understand why Wicked, despite losing the 2004 Tony Awards to Avenue Q for best book, best score and best musical -- an impressively complete rout, that -- has seriously outlasted it here as a road company. Avenue Q barely made its month-long run here, while a few blocks away at the Ford Center's Oriental Theater, Wicked -- closing at the end of the year -- went for three years of overtime past the original scheduled run. Wicked is bizarrely depressing yet somehow uplifting, while Avenue Q is a happy bouncy musical about people seeming to overcome that throws a perky yet downbeat ending at you out of nowhere. Funny, and yet a general message of "Life sucks and you just have to give up your dreams for a while and deal like a grown-up (unless you luck into someone with ten million to spare)" just isn't likely to bring in the teenaged girl repeat audience the same way that the (seriously altered from the book) "girl empowerment" message of Wicked will -- or the grownups either, for that matter. And it's easier to accept, or even ignore, the fact that Elphaba doesn't precisely come to a good end because ... well, by god, she got her dream, more or less. She found her purpose. It may have killed her, but she found it. "Go for your dream, whatever the cost" is a much more palatable message than "give up your dream, it costs too much."
In the DVD documentary Show Business, they show the path to Broadway taken by both Wicked and by Avenue Q, as well as the ill-fated Taboo and Caroline, or Change. What they didn't show, and I wish they had because it must have happened, is the increasingly intense discussion between the composers and the producers of Avenue Q, who would have been looking at the final song and thinking, "Are you SURE you want to do this to this weirdly fun musical? Really? REALLY?" Because it really is seriously weird fun, and the moments just before the last song can only be described as Happy Endings Gone Seriously Weird, Yet Still Happy, and then the main character realizes that he hasn't yet found his purpose in life, and the entire cast sings a song that basically says, "Yeah, well, a lot of people never find their purpose, so suck it up and deal and settle like they do." And, well ... that's a freaky weird ending to stick on a show. It leaves you feeling sort of ... "Ha ha ha! Oh, my goodness, that was fun ... and now I never want to think about it again."
EDIT: And, as everything is on Youtube, I present the closing song from Avenue Q, "For Now":
Click to view"George Bush" gets a tremendous cheer from the audience, by the by.
Second: recently saw the DVD of Sondheim's Company, the restaging featuring Raul Esparza. Really interesting, and I kind of sort of understand why it would have been such a big deal in its day. And I really admire the restaging of "The Ladies who Lunch" in the current version; it takes a certain sort of chutzpah to restage a number specifically designed to be a show stopper in a way that absolutely does not allow it to stop the show -- it flows into the following scene in such a way that the audience not only doesn't get a chance to applaud, but kind of recoils because the character seems like she's about to have a bit of a breakdown.
EDIT: And, of course, this version of "The Ladies Who Lunch" is available on Youtube, as is everything else in the world these days.
Watching this production also made me feel a bit sorry for Esparza; given the particular way he was rebuilding his life at the time, it must have been like playing eight weekly doses of irony. But I am glad that I finally saw the thing in its entirety -- I've seen pieces here and there, and I don't care how good an actor he is, I really do not like thinking of Dean Jones in quite that way, thanks -- and now I can serenely ignore it forever more. (Well ... I tend to like Sondheim's music, but not necessarily the musicals that surround them. Company has the severe dramatic problem of having a character holding the center who is not only not really all that sympathetic -- which is fine -- but who is primarily both reactive and muted -- which is not.)
And finally, who the hell IS Cubby Bernstein, and how did he get La Lupone to do this?