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total-drama-takes-takes-2 · 11 months

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celebrity manhunt

Inside a small studio, a large desk wraps around two seats, an orange striped background and TV monitor decorating the set behind them. In one seat, a tight-faced, full-lipped gentleman with stark black hair holds a bouquet of cue cards. Next to him, a tight-faced redhead in a blue dress is holding a clearly empty mug.

“It’s a beautiful night here in Toronto, perfect temperature for the TV event of the season- that’s right, everyone- it’s time for the Gemmy’s!”

The gentleman fixes his bowtie. “We’re reporting live, just a block away from the action- it’s your faves, Josh-”

“And Blaineley!” the ginger cuts in. “Welcome to a very special episode of Celebrity Manhunt! Tonight is the night, folks- it’s time for gossip, cheer, and chatter about this year’s nominees!”

“Who will be taking home the gold? Stay tuned to find out!”

“Josh, that was my line,” Blaineley hisses. He rolls his eyes.

“In only half an hour, our field reporters will be walking the red carpet with this season’s celebrity stars- until then, let’s catch up with the juiciest gossip from the past year,” Josh grins. “With a special focus on our personal faves, and the audience choice’s- the Total Takes Island cast!”

“Those teens braved it all on the newly-resurfaced Wawanakwa island, competing in death-defying challenges and looking fly while doing it!” Blaineley squeals. “Just to come back for another season of screams, screams, and crazy teens on the set of Total Takes Action!”

“Those are some brave contract holders, especially after watching what happened to the other casts,” John winks. “And like our blasts from the past, these teens have scored a nomination in the category for Best Reality Ensemble.”

“Let’s cross our fingers for them this time, Josh,” Blaineley chuckles. Her smile seems forced. “But before then, let’s catch our audience up to speed with everything that’s happened since Total Takes Action closed its doors- or should I say, gates?”

"Sure thing, Blain- from breakups to makeups to arrest records and more, our stars have had a lot going on for them!" Josh grins. "O has been living the high life back home, but not before starting an advocacy group for those who were negatively affected by the psychiatric healthcare system. Peter was spotted giving a promise ring to his girlfriend, Lois- still going strong! And Kitty's been banned from at least eight national parks in the United States so far,"

"Speaking of spectacles, let’s talk about Alistair’s award-winning performance as Disco Horatio in the viral Broadway musical 70’s Hamlet, a pop-infused retelling of the classic play,”

“Alistair’s performance was so good that he even found himself a brand new fanbase of Hamlet-crazed fangirls- some of which have been taking things a little too far,”

An image of Alistair’s character in a Miku binder fixes itself on screen. It's been autographed.

“Yikes- but hey, if he's owning it, then more power to him! Next up, we're talking about the pop sensation band that’s been on everyone’s minds- that’s right, guys, we’re talking the Takes Three trio!”

Blaineley grins as a sequence of images of McLovin, Sha-Mod, and Joner starts overlaying the screen. “Our Total Takes faves shocked the world when they released their first album, Boi Tearz, to widespread critical acclaim,”

“The rap-swing-darkwave fusion has been called “surprisingly tolerable” by critics, leading the Takes Three to their own claim to fame outside of reality TV. Make sure to stay tuned, because we'll have them right here after the break!”

---

The Celebrity Manhunt logo flashes across screen and then fades as the studio comes into focus. McLovin, Sha-Mod, and Joner are all sitting beside each other at the end of the table, wearing matching outfits.

"Takes Three- you've been called international pop sensations by at least six Twitter users. How do you respond?"

"We're just grateful for our fans," Joner says, shrugging. "Making music for the world to enjoy is a rite of passage where I'm from."

Blaineley blinks. "The Midwest?"

"Yeah, it's been crazy. We've been signing all kinds of notepads!" Sha-Mod nods. "Big ones, little ones, ones shaped like circles..."

"I didn't even know you could make circle paper," McLovin shakes his head. "Our tour has been world-changing."

"Eye-opening," Sha-Mod agrees. "And to thank you for inviting us on the show, we wrote a song for you. Ready, guys?"

All three reach under their chairs and pull out three sets of bongos. They look between each other.

"I though I was bringing the bongos," McLovin says.

"No, you were bringing the synthesizer. I was bringing the bongos!" Joner responds.

"I thought you were taking the triangle!"

Blaineley and Josh look at each other, then back to the trio.

“So, boys, how has skyrocketing to commercial and financial success affected your bonds on a scale from “a lot” to “IMPOSSIBLE to ignore!”?” Blaineley asks, grinning widely. The three stop bickering and immediately turn to her.

“You know, we’re actually closer than ever,” McLovin states, matter-of-factly. “Our music is a really hands-on creative process.”

“Yeah, can’t have rap-swing-darkwave without the swing!” Sha-Mod smiles, setting down the bongos. "Or the rap- or the darkwave!"

Joner nods. “It's been chill. Our new album-”

“BORING!” Blaineley shouts, pulling a lever behind her. The floor under the three musicians disappears and they scream as they disappear. "All I heard there was "blah blah blah" let's get to the real juicy gossip, shall we? It looks like it’s finally splitsville for Patjulia.”

Josh chuckles. “Oh, yes, after months of vicious dating, our sources indicate that those villains-to-be have finally called it quits- and publicly, at that. Our undercover reporters came across this juicy little tidbit. Roll the tape!”

---

The monitor fizzles to life and focuses on the inside of a restaurant that looks like a tornado went through it. A chair flies across the screen and the camera whirls around to one side of the room, where Julia is screaming and throwing furniture.

“I should’ve NEVER even TALKED to you!”

The camera pans around to the other side of the room, where Patrick throws a handful of spaghetti back. “You should be HONORED I gave you the time of the day!”

“Your hair looks like a dead rat got glued to your head!”

“That’s rich, coming from a fake blonde!”

“IT’S NOT FAKE! We are so over!”

“You’re not breaking up with me! I’m breaking up with you!”

Julia throws a table and it sends Patrick flying across the room and straight out the back wall, creating a him-shaped hole in the plaster. He screams one final "YAHHH OH HOO HOOEY!!" as he goes flying.

---

“Yikes,” Josh chuckles. “That’s gonna leave a mark!”

“Where’s Scruffy during all this, you may ask? Well, they’re busy interning for Sierra of Reality, Weekly!” Blaineley announces.

An image of Scruffy wearing a pair of sunglasses and an earpiece, walking beside a woman with dark brown hair in her 30s flashes across the screen.

"What an upgrade from Total Takes, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh absolutely- especially after Wawanakwagate,"

Blaineley nods. "But, speaking of relationships- Bonsar- to date or not to date?”

Josh grins. “That IS the question! The two best friends were seen holding hands downtown, sending fans WILD! In a recent press statement, Caesar did little to calm the masses,”

---

The monitor changes scenes to a press conference. Standing before a crowd of reporters and microphones, Caesar adjusts his bow tie and clears his throat while Bonnie is sitting on the stage, playing on their Switch.

“I just want to restate that Bonnie and I are under no obligation to explain anything to the press,”

A reporter waves his hand. “So are you dating or not?”

Caesar smacks his forehead.

---

"Looks like trouble in paradise to me, Blain!"

"You said it, Josh! You know who's been sailing on smooth seas lately, though? Maxchela!"

"OMG, totally! Fans are still swooning over Max and Michela after they were named Reality couple of the year by Reality, Weekly,"

“Unfortunately, we here at Celebrity Manhunt were unable to reach the two for comment. Luckily, our star reporter under the pseudonym “Noco”, was able to get the inside scoop!” Blaineley smiles.

The camera pans over to Noco, who’s half-shadowed to protect his identity. He clears his throat. “I just want to say, first of all, that my findings have reliable and true evidence behind them,”

He stands and pulls a poster down behind him- revealing a screen covered in images of Max and Julia with strings between them. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that Maxchela was staged,”

The light above him suddenly flickers on. He sighs.

“OOOKAY THEN!” Blaineley says, redirecting the camera back over to her. “More on that later! In the meantime, we have a very special guest joining us today- one you Canadian viewers at home might recognize right away as the household name of the month!"

Josh grins. “When Chris McLean’s arrest became an international media sensation, sparking thousands of internet “memes” after his mugshot went viral, there was one name to take the claim to fame,”

“Toronto Environmental Coalition’s own leader, Albert, led an independent investigation of Wawanakwa after former contestant Scary came forward with a case- but it was him who found evidence of illegal radioactive materials on the island,” Blaineley continues, images of the investigation flashing across the screen. "The case brought international attention to the Coalition, and to Albert himself."

“The scandal broke the Wawanakwa mystery wide open. Here with us today is Canada's sweetheart, Albert,”

The camera zooms out and reveals a third person at the table. Albert- a teenage boy with dark brown hair, wearing a gray windbreaker- adjusts his lav mic and then smiles awkwardly.

“So, Albert- since your case went viral, you’ve been called a top-notch advocate, a genius, even a national hero. How does it feel to be getting all this attention?”

He thinks for a moment. “Um… well, I suppose at the end of the day the only thing that matters is the coalition, and the attention has drawn in a lot of donations!”

“Yeah, whatever,” Blaineley chuckles. “You’re the star of an international scandal- you’re a hero! How does it feel?”

“Uh… fine. I guess. What I’d really prefer talking about is the monthly agenda for the TEC, we’re planning on hosting a protest at a meat processing plant in-”

Josh clears his throat. “Our sources indicate that you and Scary were an item at one point. Is this true?”

Albert goes pale. “I- um, no comment, thank you,” he then leans in to whisper. “I thought we were going to be talking about the coalition.”

“On this show? No chance!” Blaineley shouts, startling him and sending him flying backwards. “Celebrity Manhunt is about the drama, drama, drama!”

Albert cringes. “Is there anything else we can talk about, then?”

"We can talk about the juicy, juicy drama happening on the red carpet right now," Blaineley chuckles. "Looks like the first of the cast has arrived to the Poultry Pals sponsored Gemmy's!"

Albert holds up a finger. "Um- what was that last part? The sponsor?"

Josh leans in, his palm against his face. He whispers. "Since ratings have gone down, award shows have corporate sponsors now. Turns out the meat industry is bananas for awards!"

"That's- that's the business I'm supposed to be protesting," Albert stands. "I have to go!"

He runs out of the room, and Blaineley rolls her eyes. "Guess we know why Chris McLean was acquitted and found innocent, huh?"

Josh chuckles. "That we do, Blain. That we do. But let's talk about these red carpet looks, cause honey these contestants are serving!"

---

The red carpet outside the Gemmy's is surrounded by shouting fans and photographers. O waves as he walks inside the building, followed shortly by Alistair, then McLovin, both so preoccupied with waving to the crowd that they crash into each other.

Another limo pulls up on the scene and Peter steps out with a short ginger. She shows off her promise ring to the paparazzi and giggles.

Peter and Alistair fistbump as they reach the door.

"Aw, how sweet. Friends forever!" Blaineley's voice overlays the scene.

"It's nice to see those teens getting along," Josh adds. "Ope- and there's Scary, just released from the lead prison she was stuck in from radioactivity!"

Scary arrives next, her hair dyed a warm honey brown. She makes a show of coughing and wheezing as he exits his limo in a wheelchair, then rolls up the carpet.

"My, my, aren't they looking just proper?" Blaineley tsks. "I love that shade of brown on her!"

A photographer gets too close with his camera and Scary stands, beating him over the head with her wheelchair, before sitting back down in it and rolling indoors.

"What a stellar start to the most anticipated award season EV-AR!" Josh squeals. "Let's check in with Noco on the field."

---

“Reporting live from… wherever I am,” Noco says, squinting. He’s holding a microphone and looking around, slightly annoyed. The cast looks relatively tame, most just merrily chatting with each other. “Here's, uh, I don't know. Austin or whatever. Hey, Austin, you and Kelly get back together?"

"No, baby, I've been single and free! To hell with monogamy!" Austin shouts, flipping on a pair on sunglasses, tearing off his shirt and running off screaming.

Noco stares into the camera. “Now can I do my Maxulia bit?”

“Um. No,” Blaineley says, still in the studio. “What is UP with these drama-less hacks?! Someone get Ass and Courtney here, pronto!”

Noco rolls his eyes and walks down the carpet, approaching Courtney, who’s catching up with Bonnie. “Comment?” Noco asks.

“Hm?” Courtney turns, then blinks. “Um, comment on what?”

“Ass,”

“Ugh. None, thank you!”

“I heard that!” Ass shouts from across the carpet. Courtney rolls their eyes.

Staci and Mal walk down the carpet next to each other, arguing about welding. Noco sighs. “Now can I-”

“NO!” Blaineley and Josh yell in unison.

Michela, walking alongside Max, stops suddenly and puts her hands on her hips. “Does this venue feel a little empty to anyone else?”

The camera zooms out- the group is on a carpet, but there's no reporters, no photographers, no fans to be seen.

“No, I see what you mean. I was thinking there’d be more… I don’t know, people,” Max says, then sighs.

“Did we get the right address?” Scruffy asks. “I mean, we’re all here, so we got sent the same e-vite, right?”

Mal pulls out her phone and reads intently. “Yep. This is the place,”

Another limo pulls up and Julia and Patrick stumble out, shouting at each other and having a slap-fight.

Joner and Sha-Mod look between each other. "Hey," the latter says. "Did we lose McLovin?"

Kelly walks up to the two and puts their hand right above their eyes, shielding their vision from the fluorescent lighting. "I don't see him,"

"Who else are we missing?" Michela asks. But before anyone can do a head count, a voice rings out from the distance.

"WAIT! WAIT! DON'T GO IN YET!" it shouts. The crowd turns in the direction it's coming from and Albert runs up, then collapses on the carpet, wheezing. "Don't go in..." he coughs. "Protest..."

"What's this supposed to be?" Ass asks, putting their hands on their hips.

Albert takes a moment to compose himself, then stands. He dusts off his windbreaker and pants, then pulls a small card out of his pocket. It reads "TEC Charter: LEADER".

"My name is Albert, and I am condemning this award show on behalf of the Toronto Environmental Coalition!"

"What award show, Einstein?" Ass snaps. "There's nothing out here!"

Albert looks around. Nothing but crickets. "Oh,"

Bonnie sighs and walks past him, approaching the doors of the supposed venue. “Let me guess-” they open one and the entire front of the building collapses. "Yep. Thought as much,"

“It’s CARDBOARD?!” Caesar shouts. “My hair took FOUR HOURS to do!”

“This has got to be some kind of Chris thing,” Staci says, crossing her arms. “Maybe it’s a scavenger hunt.”

“Oh, no, no way. I am not playing these little games again,” Ass says. “I’m going home.”

“Hey, everyone, we're still missing people,” Kelly says.

Austin pops out of nowhere. “Yeah, baby, where’s the rest of the party at?”

Courtney does a quick headcount, then thinks for a moment. "I don't see O, Scary, Kitty, McLovin, Alistair, or Peter,"

"Kitty's in an Australian prison," Patrick says nonchalantly. Everyone turns to him. "What?"

"Never mind that. We need to figure out what's going on," Michela says, hands on her hips again.

Mal chuckles from across the carpet. "Guys, you should see this,"

The crowd hesitantly approaches her, peering over her shoulder to see a live broadcast of the Gemmy's on her phone.

"And the award for Best Reality Ensemble goes to... the teens of Total Takes!" the announcer shouts.

Peter, O, McLovin, and Alistair look nervously around their seats, as if trying to catch a glimpse of where everyone else disappeared to.

"Oh, crap," Julia sighs. "We got sent the wrong damn address."

"Are you guys watching the Gemmy's?" a voice from ahead pipes up. The crowd diverts their attention from Mal's phone to see a scrawny boy standing on the street in front of them, drinking a slurpee loudly. "Cause it's a total hack. It's rigged by the woke police."

"Who are you?" Ass asks, crossing their arms.

"I'm Phillip, but you can call me Alejandro," he says confidently. "I was just out training, to fight SJWs. You know how it is."

He does a few karate punches. No one seems very impressed.

"Do you know where the Gemmy's are?" Courtney chimes in.

"Oh, yeah. They're way across town. They're wrapping up soon, anyway, you shouldn't bother with them. Everything comes to an end, after all,"

"Ooookay," Michela says. Max rolls his eyes.

"Do you guys ever think about how red slurpees make your mouth look like you've been drinking blood... heh... just me, then... I have a twisted mind,"

"Am I dead?" Ass turns to Courtney. "Did I die and go to hell?"

"Enough whining. I'm going home," Bonnie snaps.

"NOT so fast!" A voice shouts. The sound of a helicopter hanging overhead makes everyone jump and turn skywards. Chris McLean pilots the aircraft, making a smooth landing in front of the teens (but not before sending Phillip and Austin flying in the wind).

The disgraced host steps out of his helicopter, grinning. "You teens have a contract to uphold!"

"What is going on?" Caesar demands. "This wasn't in my contract!"

"Oh, right. You're "exempt" because of your "lawsuit"," Chris air quotes, rolling his eyes. "Bonnie, on the other hand..."

Caesar pales. Bonnie chimes in. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about a brand-spanking-new season of Total Takes- that's right- we're doing TOTAL TAKES: WORLD TOUR!"

No one makes any noise besides Scruffy, who squeals in delight.

"Thank you. Glad to see someone's excited,"

"Okay, let me get this straight," Julia starts. "You lie to us about the Gemmy's location, drag us to the middle of nowhere in Toronto, make us hang out with these freaks-" she gestures to Albert and Phillip. "And Now you're saying we have to do ANOTHER SEASON?"

"Man, you guys need better lawyers," Chris chuckles. "You have a long, long few weeks coming for ya."

The teens look between each other nervously.

"And not only you- as your contract dictates, any and all at the time of casting are required to join- that means you," Chris points to Albert. "And you," he points to Phillip, plastered against a nearby wall.

"You cannot be serious," Ass says. "I want to talk to your lawyers!"

"No can do, buddy. This is set in stone. See you all soon!"

He chuckles as he gets back into his helicopter and starts off, leaving the cast abandoned. They look at each other one last time before the screen fades to black.

#total takes action #total takes world tour #tta #ttwt #celebrity manhunt

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eddieredmayneargentinablog · 1 year

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New Article:

Eddie Redmayne On How His Emcee in Cabaret Is a Shape Shifter.

The Olivier and Oscar winner talked with Playbill about coming back to the stage, and whether he's coming to Broadway.

Playbill, by Talaura Harms, October 16, 2023.

While a few fortunate Broadway theatregoers were able to catch the recent Olivier Award-winning revival of Cabaret, the majority of us are anxiously awaiting its Spring 2024 arrival on Broadway. And even more, we are anxiously awaiting the casting news to see if one, both, or neither of its Olivier-winning stars, Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley, will come with it.

While we impatiently tap our feet as we wait to hear, we've at least had the cast recording to keep us company. Released in January 2023, the album features Redmayne as The Emcee and Buckley as Sally Bowles.

Playbill got the chance to catch up with Redmayne recently to chat about his wild, weird performance and, basically, harass him about his 13 year (and counting) absence from the Broadway stage.

Redmayne made his Broadway debut in 2010 when the Donmar Warehouse production of John Logan's Red transferred from the West End. The two-hander starred Alfred Molina as artist Mark Rothko and Redmayne as his assistant. Redmayne earned an Olivier and a Tony for his performance.

Redmayne says, only partly in jest, that one of the reasons he hasn't returned to Broadway is because Red was perfect. "It was one of the greatest experiences of my life—working with Fred Molina on a play that I loved, and with Michael Grandage," he says. "It went so well that I was like, 'I don't think I'm ever going to do a Broadway play ever again. It's never ever gonna go as well as that.'"

Following Red, he returned to the West End for another production with Grandage, a short run as the title role in Shakespeare's Richard II. Then his film career took off. His 2012 performance as Marius in the Les Misérables film set musical theatre hearts aflutter. Then in 2015, he was awarded an Oscar for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything and garnered another nomination the following year for The Danish Girl.

He did not return to the stage until the 2021 West End revival of Kander and Ebb's Cabaret. The chance to create The Emcee anew was too good to pass up. "The abstract nature of the character—the fact that does the character even really exist? Is it a figment of the imagination? I mean, it's so ripe for interpretation," says Redmayne. "And the show is so beautifully constructed, but yet it allows for interpretation. That was the appeal."

The Emcee is so ripe for interpretation because the character only exists in the Kit Kat Club and not within narrative story of Cabaret. The diegetic Kit Kat Club numbers comment on the action of the plot—chanteuse Sally Bowles' relationship with English writer Cliff during the Nazi rise to power in Berlin—but the Kit Kat Club songs are not a part of the action.

And this new immersive production takes that meta-theatricality to new heights—London's Playhouse Theatre has been transformed to look like a '40s Berlin nightclub, with performers interacting with he audience during the preshow.

Redmayne's initial actor's instinct was to create a backstory for The Emcee, but in the end, his attempts simply were not supported by the text. So, he tried something else. "What was very liberating about playing this role was that I approached it, ultimately, in a very different way—which was throwing clay at a wall in big kind of broad gestures and then trying to refine it as it were," Redmayne explains. "Then, as we began to run the show, making sense of a psychology through it—working backwards, and working with the understanding that there's an abstraction to the character."

But Redmayne was excited about shaking his process up a bit. He'd only done film for the 10 years prior to Cabaret, and he was ready to dive into stage work again. In the months leading up to Cabaret rehearsals, he even enrolled in a training course at Lecoq (formally, L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq), a physical theatre school in Paris. "I was working with actors aged 18 to 60 from all over the world. It was huge improvisations, the whole thing was in French, and there were these two French doyennes of Lecoq's training going 'No!' and it was kind of brutal, but it was exactly what I needed," he says, laughing. "It took me out of my head. I felt so much more physically free to humiliate myself. By the time I came into the rehearsal room for Cabaret, the experience was one of release in some ways."

So with his newfound physical freedom, and the idea of The Emcee as an abstraction unclouded by a backstory, Redmayne was ready to create his character. The vocal performance is almost otherworldly. Redmayne explains the genesis of his sound: "There was this idea of a shapeshifter. That was something that [director] Rebecca [Frecknall] and Tom Scott, our production designer, talked about—that my version of The Emcee could puppeteer this group of Kit Kat dancers and conjure these characters. But, ultimately, when fascism arrives, he is able to get out absolutely fine. He can shape shift his way out of that situation. And I wanted vocally for that to translate as well."

Working with Musical Director Jennifer Whyte ("She had brilliant ideas," he adds), Redmayne created different voices and sounds for different songs. In "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," he sang live over his own recorded harmony lines. "So, in that, there was a delicate side. Then there was the raucous, quite nasal version of The Emcee in 'Willkommen.' And then, particularly within 'I Don't Care Much,' I wanted you to hear him move from one voice into the other within the same song. So he's sort of demonstrating to the audience the power he has in his passivity, just to keep changing the versions of himself," explains Redmayne, then quickly adding,"That sounds bloody pretentious." (Clearly Mr. Redmayne does not understand how hard we can nerd out about a vocal performance.)

Musical theatre is in Redmayne's blood, he says. His first job, after all, was playing a workhouse boy in a West End production of Oliver! And he was a choral scholar in his years at Cambridge. And returning to Cabaret after years in film was a particular joy for him. "I do think that music and singing jumps synapses into people's souls and you connect emotionally in a beautifully honest way," he says.

But he's more proud of just being involved with this particular production. He's been back to see every new cast as they arrive in the West End. "Rebecca has created a version of the show that champions individuality," he says. "Getting to watch a production that you've been in, but in a completely different interpretation—having seen all of The Emcees and Sallys and seen the breadth and brilliance of their voices—I just feel proud to be a part of something that keeps living."

And, of course, we asked if he'll be coming to Broadway with Cabaret in the spring. Of course we did. "You know more about it than I do," said the shape shifter, easily getting out of that one.

The Rebecca Frecknall-directed production of the Tony-winning 1966 Broadway musical, currently running at London's Kit Kat Club (a.k.a. the renovated Playhouse Theatre), officially opened December 12, 2021. It currently stars Jake Shears as The Emcee and Rebecca Lucy Taylor as Sally Bowles. Mason Alexander Park and Maude Apatow just completed their three-month runs in the show.

Cabaret is slated to arrive at the August Wilson Theatre this season. Dates and cast are to be announced.

Photo by Marc Brenner

#eddie redmayne #eddieredmayne #redmayne #cabaret at the kit kat club #the emcee #cabaret2021 #broadway #playbill #october 2023

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fascinating-yarn · 23 hours

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So You Want To Know About Chess The Musical

So you want to know about Chess. The first piece of advice I have to give you is:

Step 0: Are you sure?

Because trust me, it's a whole lot weirder than you think, even if you know that the story is, in fact, only very little about chess (the board game). But if you are sure, because you have a friend who, like me, can't stop talking about it, then, you're ready to begin with step one.

Step 1: Listen to the concept album

Yes, there are plenty of recordings of the full show that are easily accessible on YouTube. Do not be fooled. With very minor exceptions, they will not elucidate anything at all. Trust me, even if your favorite actor is in one of them, start here. You will have time to get back to them later, trust me. It helps to read the synopsis of the album while listening; this has been kindly transcribed here by @alovebizarre.

Already hooked? Yeah, probably. Now you understand why all of us got stuck down here in our circle of complaining about this show. We, too, all thought it was going to be good based on the concept album.

Step 1.5: Watch the 1989 concert

This is mostly the songs of the concept album and retains the two male leads, but has Judy Kuhn playing Florence, the female lead. It's a strong concert and only cuts one song, and adds another ("Someone Else's Story", the show's only breakout hit not on the album). There is plot narration in Swedish, but one of the versions on YouTube has been subtitled in English

Step 2: Acquaint yourself with The Big Four

Now you know the music but the plot may still not be totally clear. The next step is to get to know the major variations. These are, generally:

The 1986 London version (and derivatives)

The 1988 Broadway version (and derivatives)

The 1990 Sydney version (there aren't really derivatives for this one but the material shows up Everywhere)

The 2002 Swedish version aka Chess på svenska (and derivatives)

Now, you can watch the original productions of all of these, but the issue is that the first two are both... not great. So here are some alternatives.

Step 2a: London Alternatives

The London version is mostly an expansion of the plot of the concept album, with changes - most of the structural changes were initiated by director Michael Bennett, who left the production before rehearsals due to his illness, while most of the more distinct changes of themes are from later director Trevor Nunn.

There are videos of the original production, but they're generally poorly filmed and suffer from major generation loss. There was no cast album, but the score has been recorded twice: in 2002 with the cast of a Danish touring production (released as "Chess: Complete Cast Album," but recalled soon after and not on streaming) and in 2008 at the Royal Albert Hall (this is on streaming as "Chess in Concert" - one of two albums of that name).

Any one will give you an idea of the script, but the original London production is generally the most musically cohesive. The Royal Albert Hall version has some minor script changes, most of which make no real difference, but makes some bizarre choices in terms of transition music and is generally a poorly produced album. The Danish album is likewise not very strong.

The Royal Albert Hall concert was professionally filmed but the audio is poorly mixed and the show's cast varies from a few great performances to some that are... not so much. It's also got a track record of making people either latch on immediately or be totally turned away from the show, so watch at your own risk. For a possibly better experience, watch the original London production.

Step 2b: Broadway Alternatives

The original Broadway production still has a bit of a bad reputation in the fandom, but people have generally warmed up to it. The new book, by American playwright Richard Nelson, is generally strong (if a bit overlong) until about halfway through Act Two --- at which point it suddenly isn't anymore. The original production itself doesn't help, and though there are some good moments, it was not very well directed and some of Nelson's best scenes suffer.

Firstly, you should listen to the Broadway cast album. The cast is the best part of the show and does some incredible things. The new music isn't quite as good as the original material, but is still strong and worth knowing.

In terms of the actual book, your best chance at a good experience experience is probably the 1990 Long Beach production directed by David H. Bell and starring Jodi Benson, which has a watchable video online. There are some script changes, which serve to adjust the script to be less cynical, more palatable, and better paced. After this, do go back and watch the original cast, as it generally has a stronger overall cast and some scenes are genuinely great with them.

Step 2c: Sydney and Svenska

The Sydney production closed early due to the economic recession in Australia, and the script has never been revived, but parts of it appear all over the place, especially in the London derivatives of the early 1990s. It takes bits of the plots of both London and Broadway, and becomes its own thing. It is worth knowing, and there is a mostly bearable bootleg on YouTube.

If Sydney is its own thing for being a combination of London and Broadway, Svenska is its own thing because it resembles neither. The plot is streamlined to the essentials and takes place over a much shorter period of time, plus it has two new songs. There is a proshot that has been uploaded to YouTube with subtitles, and a very good cast album. There have been some productions since based on the script, but the original is still going to be your best starting point.

Step 3: Into The Abyss

There are so many other productions and they're all a little different from each other. Most are based on London or Broadway, but some are an odd combination resulting from people who wanted to produce the London version in the US being forced to retrofit the Broadway version (unavailable for US licensing until 2008). A non-exhaustive list is:

1992 Off-Broadway: Preserved only in an incomplete, poor-quality audio bootleg, plus a slightly more complete script from a lost recording, this script is Tim Rice's first (but not last) attempt at making something definitive post-Broadway. It is one of the most bizarre scripts out there and should really be experienced late to be fully appreciated.

1990 US Tour: An early attempt to jump off the Broadway script into something new, this production stars 42.9% of the original Broadway cast of Falsettos and has some wild stuff. Don't watch till you know Broadway, since it has been known to sour people's opinions on the show.

2003 Actors' Fund Benefit Concert: This one-night only concert is preserved on a leaked (but poor quality) archival video and a higher quality rehearsal performance. The script is an attempted hybrid of the London and Broadway scripts, but leans mostly on the London script with a few Broadway changes that serve really only to stay within the legal requirements of production still in place at the time (and doubly important due to Nelson's personal support of the concert).

2018 Kennedy Center Concert Series/2022 Entertainment Workers' Fund Benefit Concert: This script was eyeing Broadway for about five years but is no longer in the works as the rights were pulled. With a new book by Danny Strong, based on the London plot but with the details changed significantly, this production takes a more overtly political spin on the show and grounds it in actual political events. Start with the 2018 version, as it's generally agreed to be better than the later concert version.

2018 London Revival: To call this production a revival is generous, being staged by the English National Opera for a limited run and generally not being considered very important. It became well known mostly for being associated with the Kennedy Center production and the general knowledge that Rice was looking to bring the show back to Broadway. Despite that, this script is entirely unrelated to the Kennedy Center version and is mostly an onstage expansion of the concept album with the show being influenced heavily by Benny and Bjorn.

With all of these I have but one piece of final advice and that is:

Step 4: Be wary of The Discourse

This is not meant to scare you away from the fandom at all. I promise we're all very friendly and most of the discussions are quite civil. But every fan has very strong opinions about this show. I have tried to present this post as neutrally as possible but my bias has absolutely creeped in and you've already been influenced by my opinions on it. Some productions (notably the Kennedy Center script) are very divisive and I encourage you to consume them yourself and forming your own opinions.

And that is how to get into Chess. If you want to. It may not be the wisest decision, but hey, we all made the same mistake.

#chess the musical #if anyone asks where they should start send them this

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moon-jellie · 10 months

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what is hamiltome

I know this was re: a couple days ago but I have been quivering with anticipation for getting a minute to answer it since then

This book was like the BIBLE for hamilton fans. Arguably moreso than the actual biography that inspired the musical (from my middle school musical theatre kid perspective). Not only did it include annotated lyrics to the entire cast album (PLUS the bonus song that is not on the recording), but it told the entire story of how the musical came to be, narrated by lin manuel miranda, with SO many cast photos. I knew every ensemble member of the original cast by name. I could tell you exactly how each of the leads came to get the role, and what they were doing beforehand. This book was everything. This was the essential reading.

AND THEN dear evan hansen got huge and they released a hansen-tome (this was not a real name that caught on for obviously clunky and nonsensical reasons), but similar concept to the hamiltome. Not quite the same cultural phenomenon, but avid broadway fans at the time (read: my sister and I) probably had a copy of this too.

Then like. Come from away did a "tome" of their own. Now I LOVE come from away, and it's got a super interesting creative history, but this show is and has never been on the fandom caliber of hamilton and dear evan hansen. Cool that they made a book for it but like ??? what was the audience here??? I remember wanting it when I first heard it had come out because I had listened to the show a couple of times and hey I had the hamilton and deh ones!

I fell out of touch with broadway news after that so I'm not sure if other musicals did this, but now I'm super curious -- I feel like I would've known if mean girls or be more chill did one, since they had a similar fangrip? but also neither of those can claim the same kind of taking-themselves-seriously as hamilton or deh, so idk if it would've made sense. Anyway thanks for letting me reflect on this

#muwutuals #musical theatre

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sunflower-chai · 3 months

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🌻

my current obsession is the great gatsby broadway cast album. it just released last week and OMG. every song is a certified banger. “roaring on” and “new money” are so upbeat and fun and have 1920s big band vibes. “for her” and “past is catching up to me” are quite literally jeremy jordan at his absolute best. his BREATH CONTROL at the end of PICUTM blows me away. “my green light” is the ultimate love ballad. jeremy and eva noblezada’s voices are incredible together. “only tea” makes me laugh every time bc jeremy just sounds so unhinged. “made to last” is the emotional climax and it’s so tense and full of overlapping parts and i love it. it’s been fun listening to the album and catching all the references to the novel. i haven’t read it since 12th grade ap lit and i remember not really liking it (probably because my teacher wasn’t the best). it’s making me want to give it another try, and it’s not super long so it won’t be too daunting. also my sister and i are currently trying to find a way to get to new york this august and watch the show live. we’re both obsessed with jeremy jordan so to see him in person would be a DREAM.

#thanks for enabling my yapping lol #ask game #bronzetomatoes #the great gatsby #<for sorting purposes sorry if you see this in the main tag #mer talks

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bestmusicalworldcup · 4 months

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The Lempicka cast recording has been postponed to June 12 from May 29, while The Wiz's cast recording has been moved up to June 14 from July.

#lempicka musical #the wiz #not a poll

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nytwhadestown · 2 years

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Hi Hadestown Tumblr! Now that we’ve got polls, I’m going to ask a question I’ve long been wondering which is when most people joined the fandom/what got them into the show. Below the poll is a timeline of all the events mentioned in case you don’t know your entrance point relative to the poll’s milestones!

Excuse the slightly awkward grammar, I am fueled by puns and could not resist.

If you’re not sure, just pick the one that seems closest. Also, please share how you got into the show in the tags or replies if you’d like! I want to know!

Hadestown Timeline of Events

9 March 2010: Hadestown concept album released

6 May – 31 July 2016: Original Off-Broadway run of Hadestown at New York Theatre Workshop

6 October 2017: Hadestown Live Album (OCR) released

11 November – 3 December 2017: Edmonton run of Hadestown at Citadel Theatre

2 November 2018 – 26 January 2019: London run of Hadestown at the National Theatre

22 March 2019: First Preview of Hadestown on Broadway

26 July 2019: Original Broadway Cast Album of Hadestown (OBCR) released

12 March 2020 – 1 September 2021: Hadestown performances suspended in response to COVID-19 pandemic

15 October 2021: First National Tour of Hadestown launches at the Kennedy Center

#hadestown #hadestown broadway #hadestown musical #anaïs mitchell #I got into it after the live album release on a recommendation of a friend #having been a huge fan of Amber gray in my great comet days

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mrjoeiconis-blog · 2 years

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From the Archive: BE MORE CHILL TRACK BY TRACK May 16, 2018: Hey, hi, hello. My name is Joe Iconis. I’m a writer and performer and, most notably, the person to blame for the music and lyrics of Be More Chill. I wrote the show, a musical adaptation of Ned Vizzini’s novel, with Joe Tracz and it premiered in a production at Two River Theater in New Jersey in 2015. A cast album was made and was enjoyed by the amount of people you’d expect to enjoy a cast album of a musical that played for six weeks in New Jersey. Then suddenly and without warning, after two years of release, people, in particular young people, discovered the show and became obsessed. One hundred million streams of our cast album later, the show made its Off-Broadway debut in summer 2018 at the Pershing Square Signature Center on 42nd Street, before transferring to Broadway!

Before we launch into the madness of a track by track breakdown of the Be More Chill OCR, let’s talk about the Be More Chill score itself, shall we?

The first thing that excited me about adapting Ned Vizzini’s gorgeous book into a musical was the opportunity to write about the issues teenagers face through a sci-fi lens. I’ve written plenty of teens before. I love that they wear their emotions on their sleeve but don’t always have the vocabulary to properly articulate those emotions. But here was an opportunity to not only delve into the minds of young people, but to tap into some of my favorite genre influences: monster movies of the 1950’s, Sci-Fi/Horror flicks of the 70’s and 80’s, and Teen Comedies of the 80’s and 90’s. In short: John Hughes (Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) meets John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing.)

Be More Chill is a classic musical comedy in disguise. It reeks of technology and is filthy with moderns sounds, problems, references, etc. But make no mistake about it: The show is as traditional as they come. Well, sort of.

The songs themselves are total showtunes; it’s the orchestrations that place us firmly in the genre world.

As I’d write the tunes on piano, I’d dream about what they’d sound like when given the full 80’s sci-fi treatment, and Charlie Rosen’s orchestrations satisfied my darkest, quirkiest musical fantasies. We worked closely on the specific sounds of this score. Our holy grail (especially when it came to underscore) was John Carpenter film scores. John Carpenter has directed countless horror classics, but he’s also famous for writing his own film scores. He was an electronic music pioneer and his work is immediately recognizable.

Other sonic influences included Oingo Boingo, Bernard Herrmann, Weezer, Tangerine Dream, The Offspring, and contemporary musicians with a retro flair like Sky Ferreira, Kavinsky, and Johnny Jewel.

“Jeremy’s Theme” Written at Joe’s 16th Street Apartment 2012/Two River Theater Library, during rehearsals 2015 I’ve always thought of this as the music that would accompany the production logos in a horror movie. The “American International Pictures presents… A Roger Corman picture…” cards. It immediately places the audience in an unsettled place. Something bad is going to happen and that bad thing is going to be otherworldly.

We’re actually cramming a lot of information into 30 seconds. Up top you’re getting the beep-bop-boop of computer circuitry. It’s the technological equivalent of a scary thunder storm in a creature feature. Next, our first synth line arrives. Hello, synth. Nice to meet you. Won’t you please overstay your welcome for the next two and a half hours? I drove Charlie slightly crazy in regards to the specificity of keyboard sounds I was looking for as I desperately wanted to be faithful to the Carpenter/Alan Howarth collaborations that inspired much of the score.

The track culminates with The Squip theme, played gloriously on Theremin by Danny Jonokuchi. The Theremin is a vintage electronic instrument played by the Thereminist moving his hands through the air to control pitch and volume. That instrument was used most often in 1950s sci-fi movies like The Day The Earth Stood Still, usually to accompany the visual of an alien presence.

We’re one of the only musicals to ever use a Theremin in its orchestration. Be More Chill is a show about kids obsessed with all things outdated and unloved and the show itself is obsessed with all things outdated and unloved! How very! (Heathers reference.)

“More Than Survive” Written in Joe’s 16th Street Apartment, 2012 After our eerie mini-overture, the audience expects to be confronted by a demon or a triffid or worse. Instead, we jump cut to the shockingly mundane sight of an average high school kid staring at his computer in his undies. I’m proud that the first event in the musical is our leading man being caught with his pants down. It establishes Jeremy us a decidedly unheroic hero and also kick-starts a theme of pantlessness that continues throughout the entire show.

The “C-c-c-c’mon” motif was one I came up with early on in writing the song. I wanted a repeated phrase that expressed the frustration of wanting things to move at an accelerated speed, and one that could also sound like the chorus of a pop song. I love immediately subverting the expectation of what Jeremy’s waiting for to load—“Is it a major homework assignment? A college application?�� Nope, it’s porn! That moment establishes the spirit of Be More Chill right off the bat. It also makes for awkward car rides when kids listen to the album in the car with their parents. Sorry, not sorry.

In the actual show there are even more mini-scenes between Jeremy and the people in his life. I wanted this whole opening to feel cinematic and sweeping and place Jeremy in the center of a world that is swirling around him. Kind of like the “Head Over Heels” sequence in Donnie Darko.

The first person who connects with Jeremy enough to actually earn sung musical material is Michael. Michael brings his own music with him because he’s confident and, quite literally, marches to the beat of his own drummer.

Will Connolly’s voice just kills me on the album. He sounds like the love child of Michael Jackson and Billie Jo Armstrong.

Notice the little synth line underneath the lockers scene with Chloe, Brooke, and Jenna. It’s a quote of “Rich Set a Fire.” The little synth line underneath the first part of Michael’s scene? “Michael in the Bathroom.” The guitar line in the second part? “The Pants Song.” That audience has subconsciously heard so many melodies from the show before the first number is even over! Underscore is sneaky.

It should be noted that “More Than Survive” was the first song I wrote for the show. After sending it to Joe Tracz, I sent it to Jennifer Ashley Tepper, who is now one of our producers of Be More ChillOff-Broadway. She wrote back:

“I tried to listen to the Be More Chill song, got 60 seconds in, and got furious at everyone for all of the noise/ questions/ distractions at work... so I'm gonna go download these on my phone and sit outside or hide in the bathroom to listen. BRB!!!”

Hiding in the bathroom. That’s so Be More Chill.

“I Love Play Rehearsal” Written in Joe’s 47th Street Apartment, 2013 After hearing so much about her in the opening, this is the first time we actually get to hear from Christine herself. Charlie and I wanted her song to sound different from the angular computerized vibe of the rest of the score. Enter recorders!

Everyone associates recorders with elementary school music class and/or Renaissance fairs. That felt correct for Christine, who is warm, strange, confident, free-spirited, and literally dresses like an authentic Renaissance Princess at the Halloween Party in Act II! So much of Stephanie Hsu’s performance informed the song itself—she’s a brilliant actor and a soulful singer and it’s impossible to not conjure up images of her live performance when listening to her on the album.

The placement of this song moved around a whole bunch during our writing process and the eureka moment was realizing that the song’s not literally about play rehearsal. It’s a song about passion and freedom. It’s not the typical way to be introduced to a leading lady in a musical, which makes it perfect for Christine and for Be More Chill, in general.

The original second song in the show was an internal duet for Jeremy and Christine called “Touching My Hand.” It was about Jeremy pining for Christine and Christine wondering if she should go on a date with Jake. There was some nice character material for Jeremy, but it gave us information we already knew and it made the show feel like some cute romantic comedy. It also felt antithetical to the character to have Christine’s first real song moment be about a guy. That’s not her and we needed to respect that.

Note that the original full title of this song was “Why I Love Play Rehearsal By Christine Canigula,” which is very fussy and precious and I loved it but it’s too cumbersome and I knew that someone would inevitably make me change it so I just did it myself. (RIP Fussy, Too-Long Title That Joe Loved.)

“The Squip Song” Written at Joe’s 16th Street Apartment, 2012 It begins as a retro-sounding “cool kid in a ’90s movie” rock song (with some Oingo Boingo horns added in for good measure) and then turns full blown sci-fi/horror fantasia. And it all goes down in a bathroom. There are a lot of bathrooms in this musical.

This song is the first time we hear the “It’s From Japan…” refrain, which repeats ten million times over the course of the show. Gerard Canonico is a powerhouse of the highest order and he turned this song from a serviceable musicalized scene into a show stopper. The optional octave up jump on the second “It’s From Japan” is all Canonico’s doing. We had to add the big ending (including a toilet flush on the final button) just because it was so clear people wanted to clap after Gerard finished doing his thing.

Props to Josh Plotner on the vocoder, yet another retro instrument that’s rarely used in theater orchestration. It’s what makes the weird digitized voice sound. People usually think that it’s a mic effect but it’s all done live! Old school, baby.

For those who care: Gerard’s pronunciation of the word “correctly” is a nod to The Shining’s scary bathroom encounter between Jack Torrence and Delbert Grady.

“Two-Player Game” Written at Joe’s 47th Street Apartment, 2013/Rewritten during rehearsals at Ripley Grier Studios, 2015 I enjoy writing songs where characters have to work through some major personal issue while doing an unrelated task. (Ahem, “The Answer.” Ahem, “Ammonia.”)

Here, the boys talk about self-worth and the desire to be somebody else while playing a video game. Of course, the video game is actually telegraphing the journey they are about to go on but to Michael and Jeremy it’s just another nothing-special hang sesh. When I wrote that little 8-Bit “Apocalypse of the Damned” theme that threads through the song, I was inspired by being a kid and plunking out the melodies to grandiose John Williams orchestral scores on my Casio.

The original version of this song was titled “Level Up” and it did a lot of what “Two-Player Game” does, just not as well. It also sounded exactly like a particular song by The Clash and once I realized how similar the two songs were, “Level Up”s days were numbered.

It should be noted that I am the world’s biggest stickler when it comes to rhyme. I’m super old-school in that I believe things either rhyme or they don’t; none of that “half rhyme” garbage. I think rhyme makes theatre songs easier to understand and actually heightens the dramatic intention of the lyric. Disgustingly, “Two-Player Game” contains an accidental fake rhyme. By the time I realized, it was too late to change the rhyme. Every time I hear it, I cringe, and you can pay me a million dollars but I won’t tell you what it is.

“The Squip Enters” The grand entrance of our antagonist: The Squip. It was important to our radiantly talented director Stephen Brackett that The Squip’s entrance feel larger than life. His staging of the moment was dazzling, and I needed to write a cue that rose to that occasion. The Squip enters to music that is tastelessly huge, appropriately so.

It should be noted that I wrote The Squip with Eric William Morris in mind and I’m so glad his iconic performance of the role is preserved forever and ever on the album.

“Be More Chill – Part 1” Written in Joe’s 47th Street Apartment, 2013 I had a lot of trouble figuring out the musical style of The Squip. First I went down a computer-y road, but that felt too in line with the sound of the rest of the show. Then I tried a sort of 1950’s Dick Dale Surf Rock take. (Mike Rosengarten’s nasty, relentless guitar line is a remnant of that version of the song.)

Eventually, I settled into what currently exists. There’s a timeless cool, laid-back quality to The Squip’s music. It’s approachable and sexy but never too scary or affronting. This is seduction music. The moments where the vocoder is adding the spooky digitized element the melody line (“don’t freak out and don’t resist…”) is where The Squip’s true colors are peeking through the façade just a little bit. By the time we get to “The Play” he’s given up on trying to seduce and is just trying to conquer, so his music sounds different.

The whole “Be More Chill” section is really just a classic “make-over montage” sequence (it’s even set at The Mall!) so I took some musical inspiration from make-over and training sequences as well. Think Karate Kid, Dirty Dancing, The Breakfast Club.

A lot of people are bothered by the harshness of the “everything about you makes me want to die” line. To me, that’s the whole point of the show. The tone may be comedic, but the characters in Be More Chill are actual teenagers struggling with actual problems. I don’t think being depressed or suicidal is a laughing matter, but I do think sometimes people feel like there is a voice inside their head telling them to hurt themselves. It would be insulting and untruthful to pretend that a kid like Jeremy wasn’t struggling with these thoughts.

The humor, the fantasy, and the harsh reality co-exist in every moment of the show. And, in my experience, in every moment in life. It’s about learning how to deal with it and knowing which of the many voices in your head you’re supposed to listen to. But we’re not at that particular song yet.

“Do You Wanna Ride?” Written in [memory temporarily scrambled] I have no memory of writing this mini-song, it just happened. It didn’t exist and then it did. Look, I made a spicy song about stopping for frozen yogurt where there never was a spicy song about stopping for frozen yogurt.

Lauren Marcus’s interpretation is a gift from the theatre gods and is a testimony to her brilliance as an actor, singer, comedian and all-around magic person. The yodel, the riff at the end, all Marcus. She’s the Goldie Hawn of musical theater.

“Be More Chill – Part 2” When I stumbled upon the idea of the “Everything about you is going to be wonderful” section, that’s when the song really clicked for me. After being berated for all the things he isn’t, Jeremy finally gets teased with the promise of unadulterated love and adoration. It’s the false promise of spam emails about penis enlargement pills or the aspirational Instagram accounts of the Kardashians. The idea of: “If you just do This, everything will be Perfect.” The musical equivalent of “Make America Great Again.” Cheerful, optimistic, secretly sinister. The writing and performance make me think that it’s a theme song for an awful 1980s sitcom that never existed in the first place. “Everybody Loves Squips!” maybe.

Props to Dan McMillan for aggressively hitting that gong at the end for a big finish.

“More Than Survive” (Reprise) Restart! The show essentially begins again and we fast forward through another day at school, this time with notes and instructions from Mr. Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor himself.

The chorus goes into a reggae feel for a few measures at one point. The idea there is that sometimes things are the same but feel a little different and you can’t quite put your finger on why. The familiar feels unsettling. Reggae is a style of music associated with Michael, so I like thinking that maybe Jeremy has Michael on his mind in that one instant before Squip wipes the slate clean.

“A Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into” Written in Ripley-Grier Studios 2015, during rehearsal This was the last song I wrote for the show. I wrote it very quickly on a rehearsal break after not being able to nail this moment for years. I love that Christine gets this unexpected jangly little rock song as her second big number.

Have you ever noticed how the female lead in musicals is often saddled with the most drag-ass songs? Part of my mission in musical theater is to never subject my female lead to an unmotivated obligatory ballad.

It should be noted that Christine ends both this tune and “I Love Play Rehearsal” with an unexpected non-rhyme. Christine is a character who subverts our expectations of her at every turn. Gosh, I like her.

“The Squip Lurks” I’m eternally grateful we got to include this taste of underscore on the album. I’ve heard rumors that this plays in theme parks during the Halloween season. That’s the highest honor I could ever receive.

The track name is a reference to “The Shape Lurks” cue from the Halloween soundtrack. And, yes, “Jeremy’s Theme” is also a nod to “Laurie’s Theme.”

“Upgrade” Written at a Two River Theater writing retreat, 2014 // Re-written at Ripley Grier Studios 2015, during rehearsal

The line “this is my favorite place behind the school” is one of Joe Tracz’s great creations, delivered incomparably by Ms. Marcus. I don’t know why I find it so funny but I laugh every time I hear it. I think it reveals so much about Brooke.

The notes of “Upgrade-upgrade-upgrade” in the first part of the song are the same notes as the pattern that begins “More Than Survive.” They are just a little scrambled up. The melody of “I already know what it’s like to be the loser” is the “Apocalypse of the Damned” theme song melody.

This song is notable as the first time the character of Jake sings in the show. Poor Jakey D. This is the only musical in history where the classically good-looking Prince Charming-type gets the least amount to sing. I still like the guy, though. It’s another testament to the brilliant Joe Tracz that a character like Jake, who could’ve been a one-dimensional asshole jock, is actually a kind, well-meaning popular kid. Dude can’t help that he’s pretty! Jake Boyd’s vocals are so sensitive and approachable and kind of remind me of Mr. Peanut Butter from Bojack Horseman.

The final chorus of the song is the same melody but we lose the swing and make it more of a driving rock. Damn. Things got not cute quick.

This song used to end with a long minor version of the “Na Na Na” theme from “More Than Survive.” It was very musically exciting and too long and did nothing to service the story and was cut.

“Halloween” Written at a Two River Theater writing retreat 2014 The Halloween Party is a mammoth sequence that begins Act II and I knew it needed its own theme song. I wanted to write a chorus that sounded like what it feels like to be shoved around in loud, hot, crowded room. The sort of song that would send anyone with social anxiety into a full-blown panic attack.

The Suburban Halloween Party is such a hallmark of the movies myself and my collaborators were inspired by and we endeavored to do those films justice and make the greatest Halloween party blowout sequence in musical theater history. Please note that when we wrote the show, there weren’t actually any other musicals with Halloween Party blowout sequences, so just by existing, we were automatically the greatest. Now we’ve got some competition. How fetch! (Mean Girlsreference.)

There’s an element of group awareness in the “Halloween” lyric. “Cuz a Halloween party’s a rad excuse to put your body through mad abuse.” That’s because we’re experiencing the party through Jeremy. This is his first big social event and as much as he’s trying to be part of it, he’s still on the outside. He’s got a detachment that allows for a bit of perspective.

The dance break was arranged by Broadway legend Rob Berman! He based the melody line on a part of “Halloween” that was subsequently cut. It’s the “who’s got the peach Schnapps?!” section. I often add it back in when I perform the song in concert.

Props to Amanda Ruzza’s propulsive bass line! Crank it up, crank it up!

“Do You Wanna Hang?” “Do You Wanna Ride?” strikes back! With new lyrics relating to Chloe’s Sexy Baby costume! Katie Carlson is yet another four-leaf clover in our incredible cast of musical theater misfits. Chloe is hilarious and monstrous without ever being a cartoon. She’s trying her best, just like everyone else, she just has… questionable taste. I’m so enamored with the way Katie does the final “Do you wanna stop?!” chorus. I think in that moment Chloe is trying so hard to be Britney Spears circa 1998. Which would almost work if she wasn’t literally dressed as an infant. There’s something charming and a little sad and completely hilarious about it to me.

We never actually address the fact that Chloe is dressed as a baby (well, a “sexy baby”) in the lyric. In two million years all that will be left of this world will be a fat cockroach, a copy of the Be More ChillOCR, and a few confused aliens wondering what she means by “get inside my diaper, boy.”

“Michael in the Bathroom” Written at Joe’s 43rd Street Apartment, 2014 Many times as a kid and even more times as an adult, I’ve fled to the bathroom to escape a social situation. It feels like one of those no-big-deal things that everyone does and those are the exact sort of scenarios I’m drawn to when writing musical theater.

I’ve always been partial to the “Best Friend” characters. I want to know more about them and never understand why they exist only in the context of the lead character. In every show I’ve written I’ve imagined that when a secondary character leaves the stage, they’re walking into another show where they’re the lead. “Michael in the Bathroom” is the moment when the ultimate sidekick is allowed to take center stage and be the star of someone else’s show. I hope it makes the audience think about all the other secondary characters in the show like Chloe or Rich. They’ve probably all had their own “Michael in the Bathroom” moments over the course of the show, we just don’t get to see them. Oh how I long to write “Jenna in Her Bedroom.” Or “Brooke in the Alley Next to Pinkberry.” Maybe for the sequel.

George Salazar’s performance of the song is magic. It’s one of those miracle moments when a song and a performer connect in a specific way. The music and lyrics are a road map, but there are so many people who make the journey of a song like this happen. It all came together through a collaboration between myself and Ned’s characters and Joe’s book and Stephen’s direction and Nathan Dame’s musical direction and Bobby Tilley’s costumes and every other element that goes in to making any moment of theater.

George is the first person to sing “Michael in the Bathroom” in the show itself, but while I was developing the score, the song was sung out of context by a few gents including Jason Tam, Seth Eliser, and Will Roland. They taught me much about the tune and I bow down to them.

I wrote the song in one sitting in 2014 and the content never changed, aside from the cutting of a short third verse right after the bridge. We cut it late in the rehearsal process in deference to the “too much of a good thing can be dangerous” rule of theater.

A few people have questioned my use of humor in songs that are otherwise quite serious. “Why do you have jokes in such a powerful song?” an uptight professor once asked. “Why is this hilarious showtune so stinking sad?” a late-nite comedian queried over drinks at McHale’s. The intersection of the comedy and the tragedy feels true to the human experience. The absurdity of having to work through things at the Worst Possible Moment is something I’ve experienced many times. Things are rarely all good or all bad but things are always messy. You find out you got into your dream school while you’re high at your racist grandfather’s funeral. You have to audition for a role on Stranger Things the same day that a mountain lion eats the family dog. (RIP Spot.) You have a panic attack while wearing a Halloween costume after fighting with your possessed best friend in the bathroom of High School Halloween Party. It’s all so forlorn and confusing and funny. To me at least.

Charlie and I worked closely getting the arrangement just right. We wanted it to ebb and flow and sound like a pop song at first, never giving away that it will eventually turn into this tour-de-force musical theatre mad scene. I like when orchestration is at odds with the content of a song and doesn’t immediately announce what the song is about.

After going on this monumentally poignant journey, Michael undercuts it all with a spot of sarcasm, carrying on the great tradition of musical theatre characters who don’t really mean it when they say “I’m so glad I came.” (Follies reference.) The whole thing ends with the most sardonic cha-cha-cha ever to button a number.

“The Smartphone Hour (Rich Set A Fire)” Written at Ripley-Grier Studios, 2014 Jenna Rolan finally gets her moment of glory, unexpectedly, as the star of a seven-minute dance number. Katie Ladner’s turn as Jenna is so specific and inventive. She deflects the casual barbs thrown at her because she is not letting anyone ruin the time she gets to shine.

I set out to write a song that dramatizes and activates the dangerous world that the Be More Chill characters exist in. We spend so much time with our kind, sensitive protagonists, it’s easy to forget the madness they are living in. It’s hard to be a teenager, especially today. It’s a menacing world where information travels at warp speed. As does gossip, rumors, insults, lies, etc. To me, “The Smartphone Hour” speaks to the ferociousness of modern teenagers and shines a light on the sort of environment that leads to bullying and depression and worse.

It’s also a splashy musical comedy dance number! I wanted it to feel overlong and unreasonably gargantuan. I thought for sure some smart theatre artist along the way would force me to cut this song. I decided I was going to fight for it. It may not cover a ton of story ground, but I felt that it was imperative to have the number in the show. It sets the audience up for the craziness that’s about to happen in Act II and lets us know that things have spun out of control—both in the story and in the show itself. I think subconsciously, the audience thinks: “A dance number about arson?! The rules of the show are changing! I hope nothing unexpected happens to the characters I love! They wouldn’t kill off Jeremy, would they? Well, if I’m watching a dance number about arson anything is possible! Oh no! #SaveJeremy!”

Luckily, I never had to fight for the song. As soon as Chase Brock got his hands on it, he made it longer, in deference to the “too much of a good thing can be wonderful” rule of theater. Rob Berman’s arrangement of the dance break sounds like a sleepover from hell on crack and Charlie’s smartphone sounds bear more than a striking resemblance to the sort of sounds normally associated with the sinister Squip. Gossip is Evil, kids.

I really feel like we made the best Michael Bennett number Michael Bennett never choreographed. The final shouted: “End!” was all Chase’s idea and I love it so much. It’s a moment that lives in the real estate between musical theater Cheese Ball and rock’n’roll Middle Finger. A neighborhood I often hang my hat in.

The notes of the phone buttons that are heard after “he told me cuz he’s my best friend” are, once again, the same notes as the “More Than Survive” intro figure. Just reversed this time.

The title is an obvious reference to “The Telephone Hour” from Bye Bye Birdie. “Rich…” is by no means a parody of that song, but I think they are spiritual cousins. It’s another example of Be More Chill having a foot in the past and a foot in the future.

“The Pitiful Children” Written at Joe’s 47th Street Apartment, 2013 / Joe’s 43rd Street Apartment, 2014–2015 / Ripley-Grier Studios and Two River Theater 2015, during rehearsals Oh, heavens, this song. The lyrics of this song changed a ton over the course of the rehearsal process and I never got it quite right. I love it on the album. It sounds like what would’ve happened if Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails wrote Les Misérables. Alas, dramaturgically, I don’t think I did a great job of telling the story that Joe Tracz laid out. Don’t be surprised if this one gets fiddled with in anticipation of our forthcoming Be More Chill off-Broadway production.

The orchestration of this song is one of my favorites in the whole show. It pushes The Squip firmly into digitized-demon territory. He’s worrying less about seducing people in this number and he’s letting his true colors show. His true colors are cold, industrial, heavy, and militaristic. There’s no question that this Squip has his sights set on world domination.

I like using lyrics that work dramatically and stylistically. The Squip’s “beep-bop-boop” is literally him speaking in his native computerized tongue, but it also conjures up images of an old-fashioned crooner scatting. It’s connected to Jeremy’s “C-c-c-cmon” and the Ensemble’s “Hey hey hey” and all the rest of it.

“The Pants Song” Written at Joe’s Family’s house on Long Island, 2014 My experience writing this song is very much an example of the comic/tragic thing that I often love to write about.

I had tried to write a song for Jeremy’s Dad for the longest time and could never crack it. Joe Tracz said to me: “I just wish Jeremy’s Dad could have a song about the lesson he learns. That if you love somebody, you put your pants on for them.” Essentially, I am an idea thief. I immediately knew that sentence was a song, I just didn’t know how to write it. We were doing a developmental reading of the show and I was feeling the pressure. There was a date I needed to have the song in by and I had nothing. The day before I needed to have the song, I decided that after rehearsal I was going to have a drink with my best friend Jason SweetTooth Williams and then go home and write the song. And then my Grandma died. After a long illness, my grandmother Flora (RIP Flora) left this damned earth at the Iconis home on Long Island. I needed and wanted to be with my family. After doing all the things that you do when a loved one dies, I went downstairs to my family’s basement at 2 AM and wrote “The Pants Song” in one shot. Sometimes you have to write a song about two guys in their underpants on the night your beloved grandma dies.

Paul Whitty starts in such a forlorn, hurt place at the top of this song. I bet the audience thinks this is going to be a perfect-time-for-a-cigarette-break “sad dad” number and then it turns into a total bop. Much like the “We love everything about you…” section of “Be More Chill,” this was another song that I wanted to feel like a rockin’ version of the theme song from a 1980’s sitcom. Only difference is, the mythical sitcom that “We love everything about you…” comes from is phony and corporate and the “Pants Song” show is heartfelt and cool, Must See TV material.

There used to be a song for Jeremy’s Dad earlier in the show called “The No Pants Song,” where he extolled the virtues of not getting dressed. It was a sad, lazy waltz. The whole thing was one-joke, but I did love the final stanza:

ALL THE EXERTION OF PUTTING ON, THEN TAKING OFF JUST TO PUT BACK ON SEEMS TERRIBLY UNNECCESSARY TO ME WOULDN’T YOU SAY? I’M FINE WITH A Y-FRONT COVERING MY FRONT EVERY DAY

It should be noted that many of my musicals feature moments of pantslessness for male characters. This feels fitting as I am often pantsless when I write said musicals. Write what you know, Joe. (ReWrite reference.)

This is the only song in Be More Chill that features a big, in-your-face key change. I’m normally very discreet about my key changes, but a tasteless shift up a step for two men dancing in their undies feels earned.

The in-store music playing in the background of The Mall sequence is actually a Muzak version of “The Pants Song.” The moment I wrote the tune I knew it was destined to be the annoying music played on a loop in the atrium of a mall. The sort of irritating ear worm that slowly drives the employees of Payless and Sbarro’s mad.

“The Play” As a kid who spent hours listening to the big action-packed climaxes of the Sweeney Todd OCR, the Sunset Blvd. OCR, and the Carrie soundboard bootleg (thanks, 1996 Playbill Online message boards for making that one happen!), I’m so thrilled we got to include ours on the album. The underscore is straight-up cinematic, with all the themes of the past two hours crashing into each other like violent zombie bumper cars.

A few people have asked me if the cascading downward piano line in “The Play” is referencing “Suppertime” from Little Shop of Horrors. While the two riffs sound similar I was actually alluding to, you guessed it, John Carpenter film scores. The 5/4 time signature and downward modulation are dead giveaways. But I do agree that the line sounds not dissimilar to “Suppertime,” which is fine by me! Little Shop was my first musical and has clearly influenced me in countless ways as a writer, especially on Be More Chill.

The “Michael makes an entrance” line came late in the game and is a testament to the “sometimes the best thing a writer can do is just musicalize the stage direction” rule of theater.

One of my favorite bits of orchestral business is the twisted music box version of the “More Than Survive” chorus. Hella Danny Elfman. (Shout out to Rich’s Nightmare Before Christmas belt buckle! The 1990’s are alive and well and living inside my musical.)

The “Squip Death” section was hatched by Eric William Morris and myself in the basement dressing rooms of Two River Theater. It’s hard to make out, but as the Squip is destructing he’s speaking Japanese. The Japanese was translated by my bestie-since-fourth-grade Michael Ettannani. We’ve all got our Michaels.

“Voices In My Head” Written at a Two River Theater writing retreat, 2015

The point of Be More Chill is that we’re always going to have voices in our head, both good and bad, telling us what to do. The trick is to figure out which ones to listen to. The fear and doubt and anger and anxiety never really go away, but you can find a way to manage them. At one point in our process Joe Tracz articulated this by saying: “At the end of the show, there are still voices in his head, but the loudest one is Jeremy’s.” Yet again, I am a lowdown dirty idea thief. I stole Joe’s words and turned them into our finale.

Since the show begins and ends with ensemble numbers led by Jeremy, I thought this was a nice opportunity to chart our leading man’s growth. I wanted the vibe of the chorus to be different from “More Than Survive.” It’s more laidback, it’s more confident, it’s more playful. It’s more (ahem) chill. Even when the Ensemble kicks in with the “Na’s Na’s” from the beginning of the show, it’s less aggressive than it used to be. There’s harmony and everyone’s singing together instead of singing at each other.

It was important to all of the creators of the show that the triumph of our show not be that Jeremy gets with Christine. The personal triumph for him is that he’s able to deal with his “stuff” enough to have a normal-person conversation with her. I don’t know if Jeremy ends up with Christine after the events of Be More Chill. Maybe he does. Maybe he ends up with Michael. Maybe he ends up with no one. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that he has figured out that his voice is one that is worthy of being listened to. And that allows him to get on with his life and move forward. All of the characters being together shouting “C’mon, let’s go!” is a triumph to me. They don’t know what’s next, but they’re going to go through it together. An army of Creeps, taking on the world hand in hand.

Robert Altman used to talk about how he never understood why movies ended with weddings. Why is the story over just because two people kiss? There are no real endings in life except, maybe, death. Musically, I didn’t want the show to end with a big held-out chord or with arms-around-each-other “it’s all gonna be alright!” sweetness. I wanted the very end to feel raucous and alive and like the music is tumbling toward something. Toward the future.

The joke of the ending is that even though the kids at Middleborough deactivated The Squip and prevented a total take-over, chances are good that all of the neighboring high schools have been completely taken over. No one is safe, all we can do is prepare ourselves as best we can. They may offer you fortune and fame. Love and money and instant acclaim. But whatever they offer you don’t feed the… Squips? Sorry, wrong show. Smiley face, lipstick, kitty paw.

#be more chill #jeremy heere #michael mell #michael in the bathroom #Joe iconis #george salazar #will roland #be more chill musical #Brooke lohst

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By the mid-1950s, the singer Harry Belafonte had taken the lead role in an Oscar-nominated film, Carmen Jones; reached No 1 with his album Calypso, which helped find a mainstream audience for that musical style and became the first album ever to sell more than 1m copies; and headlined major venues around the US.

However, Belafonte found himself unable to use the main entrance to the Las Vegas hotels where he regularly performed – nor could he eat, stay or gamble in them. On tour in the south, he faced an evening curfew because of his skin colour. When he starred with Joan Fontaine in the then controversial film about an interracial relationship, Island in the Sun (1957), he was advised not to mention Fontaine in press interviews for fear of suggesting a romance between them. He learned that the power and respect that usually accompany fame and fortune could be largely illusory as far as black entertainers were concerned.

The enduringly handsome Belafonte, who has died aged 96, had great success not just as a honey-voiced singer and a compelling actor, but also as a passionate and erudite campaigner for civil rights.

The seeds of his ambition and his social conscience were sown by his tough childhood. Harold Bellanfanti was born in Harlem, New York, and raised in a cramped apartment. His parents came from the Caribbean. His father, also called Harold, had been born in Martinique and was an itinerant ship’s cook; his mother, Melvine, born in Jamaica, worked as a domestic servant.

When Harry was six, his father left the family.

The boy was sent by his mother to study in Jamaica, where his American accent made him feel like an outsider at school. In Jamaica, he loved visiting the banana markets; many years later, after his international success with The Banana Boat Song (Day-O), he observed: “Not by chance did that song become my signature. I knew of what I was singing.”

After a few years, Belafonte returned to New York, dropped out of high school and entered the navy. It was 1944 and he was 17. Two strokes of good fortune changed his life. First, he met Marguerite Byrd, a young teacher from a black middle-class family, who four years later became his wife. He abandoned the menial jobs he had been doing and, thanks to the GI Bill of Rights, became a student and enrolled at Erwin Piscator’s drama school, where his peers included Marlon Brando and Sidney Poitier. With the latter, Belafonte trained at the studio theatre of the pioneering American Negro theatre in Harlem.

Except for some off-Broadway shows, he found little work as an actor and began singing, mainly in jazz clubs, such as the Village Vanguard and the Royal Roost in New York, earning a reasonable living for a couple of years. He also began recording, including some of his own songs. Tiring of the routine, in 1950 he opened a small restaurant, the Sage, in Greenwich Village, entertaining customers with folk songs. This, and his attachment to calypsos (he became known as “the Calypso King”), changed his style, and he was soon performing in more prestigious venues. He had signed a deal with Jubilee Records in 1949, and his records began to sell. Throughout his career, he recorded dozens of albums, including live concerts at Carnegie Hall, New York.

Belafonte won a Tony award in 1954 for his performance in the musical revue John Murray Anderson’s Almanac. By then, his film career was under way. After playing a headteacher in Bright Road (1953), he was cast in Otto Preminger’s 1954 movie version of the Broadway hit Carmen Jones, opposite Dorothy Dandridge. This all-black adaptation of Bizet’s Carmen, in which both his and Dandridge’s voices were dubbed, was a considerable success.

In 1957, Belafonte had top 10 hits in the UK with The Banana Boat Song and the title track from Island in the Sun, before achieving his biggest recording success with Mary’s Boy Child, which spent seven weeks at No 1 in 1957 and was re-released for the following two Christmases.

He began to appear on television, toured successfully in Europe and recorded several programmes for BBC television, working for a fraction of his normal fee because he enjoyed the extended nature of the shows, which gave him time to develop his performance. He became one of the first major artists to tour with a multiracial band and he integrated black performers into orchestras in prestige venues where the musicians had been exclusively white.

Belafonte and Byrd divorced in 1957, and he married Julie Robinson, the first white dancer to work with the Katherine Dunham company. The breakdown of his marriage had led Belafonte to seek psychiatric treatment, and his psychiatrist’s husband, a stockbroker, subsequently became Belafonte’s agent and manager, replacing Jack Rollins, the man responsible for masterminding Belafonte’s early career.

The 1950s was a period of considerable civil rights activism for Belafonte, who cited his friend Martin Luther King as the dominant influence on his life. When they first met, in 1954, they were in their mid-20s. “His courage was really quite remarkable,” Belafonte recalled. He embraced King’s message of nonviolence and lent his support to protest movements. With King, Belafonte was one of those who planned the 1963 march on Washington.

In the following year, he helped to raise and then personally delivered, with the assistance of Poitier, $70,000 in cash to support the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Greenwood, Mississippi. Facing hostility from the Ku Klux Klan, the SNCC was striving to register black voters in the region. “In Mississippi’s vicious climate,” Poitier wrote, “the chances of a Klansman taking a potshot at me were actually pretty high.”

A television show, Tonight With Harry Belafonte (1959), brought Belafonte an Emmy, making him the first African American man to win the award. He returned to the screen in The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959); the story of racial conflict within the science-fiction genre worked effectively. In the same year he made a thriller, Odds Against Tomorrow, with a racial subtext behind the animosity between two criminals.

Belafonte won a Grammy for best folk performance in 1960 for a powerful album of chain gang songs, Swing Dat Hammer. In 1965 he won another Grammy for best folk recording for an album he made with Miriam Makeba, the anti-apartheid activist. But another musical collaboration, with Petula Clark on her TV special in 1968, raised Belafonte’s profile further. During their performance of the song On the Path of Glory, Clark held Belafonte’s arm – much to the objection of an executive from the show’s sponsor, who feared that this show of intimacy between a white woman and a black man would enrage southern audiences. Clark refused to cut the performance from the programme, which had a warm reception when it was broadcast.

Returning to acting in 1970, he played a black angel, sent to earth to help Zero Mostel, in The Angel Levine, which he co-produced. He fared better producing Buck and the Preacher (1972), directed by his co-star, Poitier. The pair’s subsequent film, Uptown Saturday Night (1974), proved less successful.

In the mid-1980s, inspired by the success of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, Belafonte helped to organise the charity single We Are the World, written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson and recorded by an all-star lineup of musicians including Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon and Diana Ross. The song reached No 1 in the US and the UK and won a Grammy. In 1987 Belafonte replaced Danny Kaye as UNICEF's goodwill ambassador; that year he chaired an International Symposium of Artists and Intellectuals for African Children in Senegal.

Having played himself in the satires The Player (1992) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994), Belafonte made a third film for the director Robert Altman, who cast him as Seldom Seen, a gang boss and club owner, in Kansas City (1996), for which Belafonte received the New York Critics Circle award for best supporting actor. Although he had not taken a leading role in a feature film for nearly 20 years, he was sufficiently tempted by the part of the bigoted Thaddeus Thomas in White Man’s Burden (1995), opposite John Travolta. He also joined the cast of Bobby (2006), Emilio Estevez’s film about Bobby Kennedy, whom Belafonte knew in the 60s.

Belafonte belatedly considered entering full-time politics in the Democratic party, but work, social commitments and family took precedence. Among his ongoing social concerns over the years were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; a school for emotionally disturbed boys; the prevention of gang violence; and his own Belafonte Foundation of Music and Arts.

He remained a force to be reckoned with, in 2002 likening the then US secretary of state Colin Powell to a slave who “got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master, exactly the way the master intended to have you serve him”. He lent his support to the Occupy movement in 2011, and when asked in a Guardian interview the following year which living person he most despised, he replied: “George W Bush, for his betrayal of America.”

His autobiography, My Song (2011), was followed by a documentary about his life, Sing Your Song. His final film role was a cameo as a veteran activist in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018).

In 2008, following divorce from his second wife, he married Pamela Frank. She survives him, along with the two daughters of his first marriage, and the son and daughter from his second.

Harry Belafonte was one of the most important and influential campaigning black musicians in American history, though for the public at large he was better known for most of his career for the relaxed, middle-of-the-road image that he projected through his calypsos.

His true character was very different, for in the 60s he used his wealth, fame and organisational skills to bolster the civil rights campaign in the US and bring American attention to the apartheid regime in South Africa, playing a crucial role in promoting the careers of the South African musicians Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela.

He was always a smartly dressed figure with a powerful physical presence and a glorious husky growl, but was also a man of considerable bravery. He took part in such major events as the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery – where he made speeches, but had to leave town lying on the floor of a car, along with Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, to escape the Klansmen.

But the suave crooner of calypsos was regarded with suspicion by black power leaders because of his links with the white establishment. Belafonte had his own campaign for bringing change, and was quite happy to talk to white politicians, though in 1986 he turned down a request from governor Mario Cuomo to stand for the Democrats as senator in New York.

His agenda included forging links between black Americans and Africa, and in the 60s he helped to organise a trip to several African countries for SNCC activists, because he felt they needed to know more about the continent. But his most important role in Africa was in the anti-apartheid campaign, and his help for exiled South African musicians.

Belafonte first learned about Makeba after being approached in the lobby of the Dorchester Hotel in London by Trevor Huddleston, the priest (and later bishop) who helped found the anti-apartheid movement. Belafonte helped her to obtain a visa to the US and then guided her to becoming an international celebrity. They often performed and toured together, with Makeba calling him “my big brother”, and it was with Belafonte that she performed in 1962 at President John F Kennedy’s birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden. Belafonte helped Masekela, also an exile in the US, by arranging a scholarship for him.

In 1988 Belafonte released the South African-influenced album Paradise in Gazankulu, which included the political songs Capetown and We Are the Wave, and in the same year he gave a powerful speech at the Nelson Mandela 70th birthday tribute at Wembley Stadium, watched by a television audience of hundreds of millions across the world. In 2003 he was reunited with Makeba, when they recorded an album together.

Throughout his career he always matched his genial persona with political commitment – and sometimes anger. A passionate campaigner for gun control in the US, he chastised fellow black Americans in 2013 for failing to speak up on the issue. The easy-going calypso singer and actor was also a major political force.

🔔 Harry Belafonte (Harold George Bellanfanti), singer, actor and activist, born 1 March 1927; died 25 April 2023

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#JUST FOR BOOKS #Harry Belafonte #in memoriam

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