This is the most gloriously insane show Broadway has seen in ages…indeed, possibly in the entire course of its history. Who would have thought anyone would even come up with the idea to combine Elizabethan poetry, Eighties Girl-Group New-Wave, and … [Continue reading]
Double Feature Review: Matilda/A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
I have been planning for some time to do a series of Double Feature reviews of Broadway hits from the current decade that have themes, techniques or background elements in common. To inaugurate this series, I thought I’d look at the standout hits of … [Continue reading]
The Not-So-Golden Side of the “Golden Age”
For all the positive developments in Musical Theater during the Forties and Fifties, the era was far from perfect. Theater snobs like to imagine these decades (particularly the Fifties) as some kind of theoretically perfect alternative to the … [Continue reading]
An excerpt from the manuscript of “An Honest History of Musical Theater”: The Baroque and Classical eras
I was planning to do a history of musical theater (an honest one, rather than the nostalgia-blinded laments for a supposedly dead Broadway you generally get in published histories of the form). However, I realized that to start with the beginning of … [Continue reading]
Escape to Margaritaville
I can’t exactly say I’m surprised Escape to Margaritaville is closing, and not only because the theater was three-fourths empty when I saw it. It’s been a while since we’ve had a genuine disaster on Broadway (they’re getting few and far between these … [Continue reading]
Tangled
Tangled, a loose adaptation of the Grimm’s fairy tale Rapunzel, was a significant milestone in the second Disney renaissance. Enchanted had been largely live-action and The Princess and the Frog a traditional hand-drawn animated film; this is the … [Continue reading]
The Princess and the Frog
This was Disney’s next attempt to recapture the magic of its renaissance era after Enchanted set the new template, and if it fails to match the sheer splendor of such later efforts as Frozen and Moana, it is still on the whole a delightful and … [Continue reading]
Enchanted
This is the movie that serves as the real genesis for the second Disney renaissance. Granted, the film is about 80% live action, but all of the fundamental tropes that formed the basis for the modern Disney model were essentially pioneered here: the … [Continue reading]
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