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Dec. 22nd, 2013 11:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantslacewood asked me about my favorite musicals for the 21st!. . . it is now I realize how distressingly frequently I have already talked about musicals for this meme. There go any of my pretentions to ever having taste! "Except all the musicals I love are great," I might say, but one of the ones that would go on this list is Frank Wildhorn's Scarlet Pimpernel, so that's not even true.
I also already dumped a ton of my feelings about Into the Woods when I talked about the upcoming movie, and I think in another post where I also talked about how I LOVE INTO THE WOODS SO MUCH, IT IS A CORNERSTONE OF MY IDENTITY. Which it is.
Then there are the ones I did not talk about for this meme specifically but have also gushed about extensively in the past nonetheless. Here is my post about Notre-Dame de Paris, my favorite over-the-top French musical, which is half the reason why I still understand any French. And here is my post about Pippin, which I would not have classified as a favorite until I saw it recently, but which I'm SUPER INTO right now.
. . . I'm not even going to talk about Les Mis. YOU ALL KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT LES MIS. Let's not even pretend.
So, hmm, let's see. What else falls into the 'favorite' category that I haven't talked about before here? Newsies in my heart I still think of first as a movie rather than a musical. Phantom of the Opera, in all its terrible glory, is less 'favorite' and more 'oh, my adolescence, there you are . . .'
OH. CABARET! How great is Cabaret? How much does Alan Cummings singing "I Don't Care Much" on my version of the soundtrack make me shiver every time? Why is it apparently required to have a musical about Nazis on my list of favorites? I DON'T KNOW, I'M SORRY, but I really do love it enormously; I love the glitter and the insouciance of it, and the desperate gaiety and all of its awful gutpunches. I've always been a sucker for the old Masque of the Red Death trope, the plugging your ears and dancing while the world falls apart.
I also love Aida, yes, Disney's Broadway Aida, DON'T JUDGE ME, I know it has problems but I still think it's really charming. Well, charming in the way where everyone ends up dead. But it was also deeply satisfying to Young Becca to watch a musical in which the heroine chooses her family and responsibilities over True Love and the hero ends up dumping his career (...as a despotic Pharaoh...) to follow her, rather than the other way around. Also the song where the evil vizier is followed around by a backup chorus of earnest architects singing "BUILD IT! BUILD IT! ANOTHER PYRAMID!" cracks me up every time.
One more? One more. 1776! Ah, awfully idealized American mythology. But how can I not love a musical in which all the founding fathers sing lustily about each other's sex life? "BUT I BURN, MR. A!" "SO DO I, MR. J!" Immortal dialogue I will quote at every opportunity. I will also never stop longing for the Sleepy Hollow/1776 crossover fic in which George Washington writes irritably to Congress to explain that he needs more funding because of the impending all-consuming apocalypse, and Adams and Franklin and the rest are just like "ugh, what a Gloomy Gus, does he think we're made of money? Anyway I bet he's exaggerating about the witch problem. WHATEVER, GEORGE."
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Date: 2013-12-23 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 02:53 pm (UTC)i'm obnoxious and disliked, you know that, sir
Date: 2013-12-23 05:26 am (UTC)Oh my god, I would pay real internet money to read that story!
Re: i'm obnoxious and disliked, you know that, sir
Date: 2013-12-23 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 05:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 10:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 03:01 pm (UTC)So I try to keep all that in mind when I watch it, but I still love 1776.
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Date: 2013-12-23 03:14 pm (UTC)The Founding Fathers were no saints, but any work of popular culture that can convey any of that to an audience inclined to say "hooray for the founders!" is a good thing.
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Date: 2013-12-23 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 03:28 pm (UTC)Think we will ever see a counterpoint musical? 1776, from the PoV of the slaves? Maybe with some British abolitionists thrown in? Given the partial success of Bloody Andrew Jackson, there might be room off-Broadway for counter-narrative musical theater, if not a large audience.
BTW, have you ever seen a production live? I got to see the B'way revival in 1998 with Brent Spiner and Pat Hingle, which was a lot of fun and did well in part because we got to hear Data sing (though Willaim Craig was better).
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Date: 2013-12-24 03:18 am (UTC)I think I actually might have seen that same Broadway revival! Though I remember nothing about it except that it was GREAT.
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Date: 2013-12-23 07:16 pm (UTC)I've never felt the show considered it an acceptable bargain; I remember Peter Stone saying somewhere that they had to tone down Adams' denunciation of the compromise, because if they took too much from his letters directly, the line about trouble in a hundred years would sound artificial (I think they should have gone with it). Nonetheless, I agree with you about voices. McNair, the young courier, and in some ways Thomson are the only alternatives—Abigail, too, I suppose—but even they're still within the structure of the Congress.
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Date: 2013-12-24 03:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 01:29 pm (UTC)Also, I too love Aida for all the reasons you said! Aida is just so sensible, even if she's still doomed! Hm, I think I'm going to have to listen to my copy tonight-- at the very least "Dance of the Robes," which is my favorite song in the musical.
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Date: 2013-12-23 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-23 07:09 pm (UTC)I keep making a non-ironic case for 1776 as possibly the best movie musical after Singin' in the Rain. It transferred all the important stage principals and added no cinematic ringers except for possibly Blythe Danner and who cares; she's great. I watch it every year for the Fourth of July and quote the rest of it year round. When I said for years that I wanted the cranky dybbuk of John Adams to haunt the Bush administration, he always looked like William Daniels to me.
(I have also said nice things about Dickinson on occasion.)
Also,
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Date: 2013-12-24 03:16 am (UTC)John Adams always and forever looks like William Daniels in my head, too. And I have always found Dickinson incredibly fascinating -- though I find most of the characters fascinating, really, even the ones who have about two lines of screen time, which is one of the impressive things about 1776.
And that is a lovely sentiment for rings. :)
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Date: 2013-12-24 03:43 am (UTC)And also Rutledge. Inappropriate "o helo thar" feelings during Molassas to Rum, anyone?
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Date: 2013-12-25 11:53 pm (UTC)>.> I can neither confirm nor deny this statement.
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Date: 2013-12-26 12:10 am (UTC)It's okay! You are neither confirmed nor denied to be not alone.
...that was funnier in my head.
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Date: 2013-12-25 03:11 pm (UTC)They actually have a production of Notre Dame playing in Singapore right now! I have been debating if I should drag a friend to watch it or if my wallet will cry at me TOO hard. I should just bite the bullet, who knows if they'll ever play it here ever again...
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Date: 2013-12-25 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-26 04:30 am (UTC)