Hey, guys! It's been a little while, but I hope you're all enjoying the holidays. I've personally been incredibly busy preparing for the end of the year, but luckily there has been some great end-of-the-year musical theatre goodness to send 2013 off in style. On the roster of things you can do to celebrate Christmas with musical theatre, there's the tried and true Joe Iconis Christmas Spectacular coming up. Tonight, there's also this concert at the D-Lounge featuring holiday songs by BMI alumni, and Bill Finn'sRidiculously Talented Composers and Lyricists You Probably Don't Know But Shouldat 54 below.
If you're like me, however, and haven't had time to experience some of the great winter concerts and events in person, there is still great music to enjoy from your home. Here are some of the things that are getting me through this winter:
I couldn't be more happy for my friend, Sam Willmott, who won ASCAP's 2013 Harold Adamson Award this year. He performed recently at the Kennedy Center as a part of the ASCAP Centennial Celebration concerts, along with Amanda Yesnowitz and Deborah Abramson and hosts Pasek and Paul. Watch the whole concert here, and above is Sam's song "Recession Kind of Christmas" because, well, tis the season.
It feels like EVERYONE on Twitter was a-twitter about the 54 Below concert of Hit List, the fictional fringe musical from the short-lived TV show Smash. This concert reunited 3 of the original cast members and creative team from the show, including songwriters Pasek and Paul, Joe Iconis, Drew Gasparini, and Andrew McMahon. Above is Jeremy Jordan singing "Caught in the Storm," and you can view more here.
For anyone who might think the magic of Disney has dimmed over the years should be pleasantly surprised by The Mouse's latest movie, Frozen. Not only is the movie itself charming, but it also features the immense music-writing talents of Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez and performer extraordinaire Idina Menzel. Need proof? Watch the video above for the sequence for the song "Let It Go."
Sam Willmott has already been mentioned on this blog before with footage of his 15 minute musical, Scarlet Takes a Tumble. And if that hilarious musicalized account of the youtube sensation didn’t make you immediately look him up, then I’m hoping that some of these other clips will help convince you (although come on… a kind of chorus serving as Scarlet’s conscience as she ascends to the infamous table? Gold, I tell you!).
I first heard Sam’s music in connection with Standardized Testing—The Musical!!!!, a fun, spirited take on the time-honored high school rite of passage. The structure of the musical is surprisingly intricate, following the format of the SATs themselves, originating with individual songs, moving to a break, and eventually culminating in overlapping parts. Songs are kind of anthems, full of teen issues from dealing with the opposite sex to just trying to focus on the task at hand.
One of my favorite songs (if not by title alone) is this “Mantet”:
Though “I’m Sitting Next to Estella” is also an essential tune:
You can listen to many of the songs from a reading at this youtube channel, but just last week he presented some songs from his new musical Yo Vikings! with lyrics and books by Marcus Stevens last week at Songs You've Never Heard and Shows You've Never Heard Of, at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. A show based on a popular children’s book, all of these songs are bursting with imagination, wonder, and a delightful energy that is uplifting and infectious. This is only highlighted by the awesome talent of Alyse Alan Louis as she goes to town on “You Gotta Believe”:
And the incredible “Emma The Red”:
Yo Vikings! will have a production at Upper Darby Summer Stage this summer. If you're in Pennsylvania, grab yourself a ticket. If these videos are any indication, I think you'd be in for a treat.
In the madness of my little musical-thon last week, I didn’t get a chance to talk about my experience on Sunday night, watching 4@15, a night of four 15-minute musicals by different composers and writers, starring students from NYU Steinhardt. It was presented at the York Theatre and proved to be a very fun event. The concept alone is very intriguing: similar to the 24 Hour Musicals, song and book writing duos are paired with a group of actors for whom they write a 15 minute musical, which they create with their cast in mind. The time span the creative team had to rehearse and work on their scripts/songs was longer--over the course of a few weeks--but the rush of mounting a completely new work in a short period of time provides a unique, unpolished look at a musical theater work in progress.
The subject matter of each show was varied and all the synopses for the shows can be found here. There was a piece about a fear-of-flying school taking their first venture into the friendly skies, a folktale about an Irish couple in America, a tribute to the San Francisco Earthquake, and an office parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth.
While every show featured an interesting premise and at least one hummable song, the standout of the night for me was Time to Kill, a hilarious take on Macbeth complete with three water cooler gossip witches, cut throat office politics, and an IT guy who can get an entire row of cubicles hot and bothered and solve a rubiks cube while simultaneously singing. The whole thing was fun with a tight book that allowed the hilarity of the situation to unravel organically (imagine a quickly paced conflict coming to a head in the form of an epic battle of office supplies between the IT guy and the murderous VP). The show featured the wonderful music of Julianne Wick Davis who gives the three gossip girls perfect material to become a seductive chorus, as well as a book by Dan Collins.
Because of the temporal nature of the performance, I don't have any audio or videos to add to this post, which actually made me think a lot about the idea of 15 minute musical and what kind of environment is best to foster these works--or whether such a short work of musical theater has an audience for a professional production at all.
Observing the show last Sunday made me think a lot about the craft of constructing a work of musical theater, because there are so many components to a solid musical work. And when you condense that into a fifteen minute format, being economical with time and the way you present the characters, situation, and emotion becomes a tricky thing to do. With plays, 10 minute or short plays are already difficult to pull off, because the subject matter has to be pointed and the vision has to be strong. A short format musical presents all the same problems, but also presents additional challenges in being able to also blend music seamlessly with a brief book in the amount of time it would take a character to just sing a couple of songs in a full length work.
As an exercise, I see how creating these types of musicals are good for everyone involved. It gives actors parts that were written with them in mind. Writers have an exercise that is compact and helps them get the creative juices flowing. Audiences have a variety of works to enjoy and don't have to sit through a whole evening of the same thing if one work doesn't appeal to them. It's how the plays have a life after the initial run that makes me wonder.
With ideas floating around like Kerrigan and Lowdermilk's Party Worth Crashing, I can't help wondering if there is a demand for a new kind of musical--one that is far more democratic for both the audience and the company when putting a show together. Are 15 minute musicals satisfying for an audience, and does the option of viewing various writers, actors, and stories in a couple hours appeal to a mass theater going audience? People have proved that it is possible to create a quality show in such a span of time, from Joe Iconis' ReWrite to a personal favorite of mine, Sam Willmott's Scarlet Takes a Tumble:
But with a majority of theaters sticking with what they know, with unending revivals of Broadway classics, what is the ideal home for the 15 minute musical? Or is the demand always going to be for the traditional full-length format outside of the classroom or cabaret theater? Personally, I can't say. But it makes me incredibly curious to see what comes up in the future.
