Annie Get Your Gun
By Jana J. Monji
In these PC times when high schools are fighting to keep or change the
names of mascots and the tomahawk chop is in questionable taste, the
Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun has a lot going against it. When it
debuted in 1946, things were less complicated; women and minorities were
still shackled by tradition--restless, but firmly held in place.
Produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, the musical was a
star-vehicle, tailor-made for Ethel Merman with music and lyrics by Irving
Berlin. Listening to recordings (being too young to have seen her on stage),
one hears Merman with her brassy voice playing a back hills girl in gawky
love. But Merman wasn't the only famous Annie Oakley.
In the 1947 road company, Texan Mary Martin would play Annie and her
performance in Los Angeles convinced Rodgers and Hammerstein to cast her as
Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. Betty Hutton would play Annie Oakley in the
movie, but Martin lent her sweet soprano voice to the NBC television
production opposite John Raitt.
FULL STORY
Jekyll and Hyde
by Jana J. Monji
The mystery of Leslie Bricusse (book and lyrics) and Frank Wildhorn's
(music) Jekyll & Hyde is why couldn't the critics kill it? In its third
year on Broadway and now touring the country, the show features mediocre to
awful lyrics and unmemorable music.
Based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde and its many Hollywood cinematic perversions, as conceived for
stage by Steve Cuden and Frank Wildhorn, this is no longer a story for
children. The first scene strongly hints at this when you get a clear side
view of naked male buttocks.
FULL STORY
The Weir
By Jana J. Monji
The Weir is not a musical, but the language of Conor McPherson has the soft
insistent lullaby of old acquaintances droning on when the skittering
excitement of a strange female voice suddenly changes the composition.
Set in a black box of a bar designed by Rae Smith, barren of decorative
comforts and rather old, plain and utilitarian, McPherson creates a small
community of men. The foursome are petty in their jealousies and set into a
deeply grooved rut of familiarity. In a city, they might not have cared to
brush against each other socially, but in this small northern Irish town the
world is shrunken, cramming them together for lack of other company. They know
each other too well, or at least they think they do.
FULL STORY
|
|
|
|
