#Broadway

[lycazart]

what is this, wash and wear???

[threebatsnests]

can we talk about how anti-climactic Santa Fe would be if jack wasnt singing about Santa Fe??

like imagine you see jeremy jordan walk on stage, pull off his cap, and start belting “jErSeY sHoRe”

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Little Shop Of Horrors

Art by Suspiria Vilchez

[broadwaydivastournament]

Broadway Divas Tournament: Round 4

It's been a little too relaxed around here these last few weeks. Very few wars, very few vicious fights among Diva fans. So. We're back to where we began with Bernadette vs. Patti and now Lea Salonga in the pit. If Lea hasn't been tossed back in after losing to Christine Baranski Round One, I'm confident my beloved Kelli O'Hara would have made it to Round 4 (and then been summarily eviscerated by Bernadette). So, to avenge my darling blonde soprano (a dying breed), here she is boys, here she is world, here's Patti.

Seven-time Tony nominee, two-time winner Bernadette Peters (1948) has a sixty-plus year stage career of monumental proportions. Considered the foremost Sondheim interpreter, their collaborative works include Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Into the Woods (1987), Gypsy (2003), and Follies (2011). She has a thriving concert career, and was a co-founder of the beloved Broadway Barks event each year in Shubert Alley. She has an honorary third Tony (Isabelle Stevenson Award) for her outstanding advocacy and philanthropy.

Lea Salonga (1971) made history in 1991 as the first Asian performer to ever win Best Leading Actress in a Musical for Miss Saigon. She was just twenty years old at the time, the second youngest, and now all these years later, she qualifies for our MILF tournament. Lea has starred in six Broadway shows including Les Miserables (as first Eponine and then later Fantine), Once On This Island (2017), and most recently a brief stint in Here Lies Love (2023). She is also the singing voice for Disney's Mulan.

Eight-time Tony nominee, three-time winner Patti LuPone (1949) has a staggering fifty-plus year stage career. Award-winning roles include Eva Peron in Evita (1979), Gypsy (2008), and Company (2022). She has toured the US with her wildly successful concert and cabaret acts, and will kill you on sight if she sees a cell phone in the theatre. Patti was NOT Norma Desmond on Broadway, and because of it, is the proud owner of the ALW Memorial Pool. She is no longer a member of Actors' Equity. Despite that, she will reportedly be back on Broadway next season in a straight play.

NEW PROPAGANDA AND MEDIA UNDER CUT: ALL POLLS HERE

"Time to prove that this is the Bernadette Peters website. Let's go, lesbians, let's go."

"She may have had a second chance at winning, but we've got to make things fair. Let's see how she does up against not one, but two of Broadway's biggest Divas."

"Just like her Broadway career, Patti LuPone rises from the dead. She's just here for the extra chaos, and I cannot wait to see the results."

[falsettosshizzzzz]

THIS IS SO FOUL OH MU GOD

[goodtitssbigheart]

just found out one of my friends saw reneé on broadway

jealousy is not a nice feeling

[antinouswilder]

I fear this is becoming a hadestown shitpost blog

[dewdropdinosaur]

Serious Question My Lovelies.

[lycazart]

Father to Son 🎶

[droughtofapathy]

"Welcome to the Theatre": Diary of a Broadway Baby

Cabaret

April 24, 2024 | Broadway | August Wilson Theatre | Evening | Musical | Original | 2H 45M + 1H preshow

I am kicking my feet and twirling my feet as I lovingly, tenderly, reverently carve Bebe Neuwirth's name into the Tony personally.

Bebe Neuwirth Verdict: My Soul Transcended Space and Time

A Note on Ratings

Oh. The rest of the show. Right.

Cabaret is one of the greatest pieces of musical theatre to exist. I have seen four productions of this show on multiple "levels" of production (Broadway, community, regional, etc.) The show being what it is, it seems inconceivable to ever stage a poor production of a show with such rich material. Even if the talent pool came from a small town, the music, the lyrics, the story would be so strong, so moving, so timeless, that nothing coupled possibly ruin it.

I was wrong.

The fifth Broadway revival of this beloved Kander and Ebb musical is a stagnant spectacle whose price tag seems to actively encourage its potential audience to pick up their knitting, their book, and their broom, because the holiday of the Kit Kat Club is only meant for the rich denizens of society. Helmed by a director with no prior experience in musical theatre, the show fundamentally mistrusts its audience's intelligence and the once-masterful subtext is now about as subtle as a brick through a fruit shop window.

It's a bad sign when the security staffer at the entrance line tells you the design is excellent, the visuals are excellent, "the show is...good," with pointed hesitation and eyebrow raising. What would we do without New York honesty?

Under this new "immersive" direction, patrons enter through a seedy back alley door (with too many steps, which granted, they did warn me about before and I should have listened) and into a massive three-story club design with pre-show entertainment and drinks galore. With limited seating and rather underwhelming acts, my disabled ass went to my seat in the theatre instead where the whole auditorium has been gutted and renovated to create a theatre-in-the-round setup that ultimately does not suit the staging. Instead, actors play primarily to the "east" side, leaving the "west" to see a lot of backs throughout.

As characters, the Emcee and Sally are deranged, clownish, and utterly devoid of layers and complexity. They are exactly what their outlandish costumes, garish makeup, and overwrought performances say they are: too much. Eddie Redmayne is going for some kind of demonic muppet clown portrayal. This interpretation fails to do what the character is meant to do. Seduce, entice, enchant, all of which can be done in a morbid or even unsettling way, but Redmayne only ever irritates and repels. Similarly, Sally is an easy character to misunderstand. She's seemingly vapid, ignorant, and concerned with nothing more than having a good time. She's a character on the verge, but only ever on the verge. Too often I have seen performers act out the titular song as a full-blown breakdown. It is not. It is a triumph. It is a discordant celebration as the rest of the show falls into despair. In directing all of Sally's numbers to be as hysterical, unhinged, and off-putting as they are, it's clear the director, the producers, and to an extent, the actress who went along with it, do not understand this character, this story, this world. Less is more. Trust the material. Trust the audience.

Cabaret is a racy show with plenty of lewd and lascivious content. But this production takes the graphic nature to an extreme that ultimately misses the mark. Instead of a seductive coaxing, or even a morbid eroticism, we're granted such overt choreography (a man jerks off a giant black phallus into a woman's mouth, a woman mimes raining her tit milk all over a man's face, a woman graphically masturbates to Mein Kampf) that it becomes a juvenile display. Like children who make sexual jokes to be edgy, but only ever sound immature. It's off-putting, it's annoying, it's dull. There are multiple rewrites to the "Willkommen" introduction schtick, and the new lines are such a downgrade.

There are moments of relief amidst the spectacle that somehow still lacks spectacle. Bebe Neuwirth is a wonder of wonders, and her chemistry with Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz is a miracle of miracles. They are the saving grace of this monstrosity. Age, experience, and deep connection to the writers and the show give their performances a joyous, heartbreaking, beautiful tone. They are real, they are grounded, and they will shatter your heart. These scenes are the only places the director shows she's capable, perhaps because she has only ever done dramatic straight plays. The decision to stage "Married" as a trio with Kost spot-lit and singing in tandem was simple and brilliant and poignant. The way this show is meant to be. "What Would You Do?" is staged perhaps a little oddly, given the director's inability to remember she's doing an in-the-round show, but Bebe's rendition is the best I've ever experienced. I have heard this song sung beautiful by stronger singers, many who still grasp the acting well, but none hold a candle to her. This is a woman who has torn out her own beating heart from her chest as she chooses safety and self-preservation, even if it breaks her. This is a woman who is old and tired and not brave. Who has been given this one moment of happiness in her life and she has no choice but to saw it off like a gangrened limb before it poisons her entire body. Schultz and Schneider are the heart of this show. They deserve better.

It's been said by others, but the issues with this production seems to stem from its creative team's fundamental misunderstanding of Jewish culture. The show was written by three Jewish men who understood what was at stake. They had all lived through WWII. This is a production with a distinctly English tone, directed by gentiles, for gentiles. Broadway and New York, more familiar with Judaism than perhaps the West End, clearly received this revival differently.

Final Verdict: A Long Slog to Curtains

A Note on Ratings

[threebatsnests]

Davey: Jack, I’m sorry. Please talk to me

Jack:

Davey: Please, you’re the most amazing person I know, please just talk to me, I’m sorry

Jack: Sorry doesn’t fucking bring back those M&M’s, David.

[nonthespianswontunderstand]

#95

watching a musical because of a random song you heard from it

[poppitron360]

The ONE thing that I don't like about TLT musical is the line about Beckendorf cheating on Selena.

BECKENDORF WOULDN'T DO THAT YOU TAKE HIS HOLY NAME OUT OF YOUR DIET-COKE-DRINKING MOUTH YOU SLOBBERING LITTLE BITCH OF A GOD!!!