This April I am stepping into the skin of one of the founding fathers of the musical theatre genre – my genre. The Colony Theatre in Burbank presents the world premiere of Falling For Make Believe, about Lorenz Hart. I will play Richard Rodgers.
As iconic as the man’s music is, the man himself almost disappears behind his work – and it certainly was his intention to do so. He and his estate did (until very recently) their very best to fiercely protect the “Rodgers and…” legacy.
Exactly what he may have been protecting it from is the subject of the play, which opens up a fascinating window to the relationship between two partners who created magic, loved each other dearly, but ultimately couldn’t help the other in the ways they needed.
I’ve long been a fan of Alison Fraser’s buzzy, unique sound ever since I heard her in The Secret Garden and Falsettos. I finally saw her onstage not too long ago in Gypsy and then School for Lies (a brilliant David Ives adaptation of Moliere at Classic Stage Company).
And now she’s going to The Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival to perform a one-woman show Only a Paper Moon: A Tennessee Williams Songbook.
As a big fan of Tennessee Williams as well, I SO wish I could see this.
My own experience at the Festival – premiering my one-act play WEÏRD, which won the festival a few years ago – was tremendous. New Orleans is a town with a beautifully unique personality, and being there is like being right in the middle of a Tennessee Williams play.
Written by Ryan Scott Oliver and Brett Ryback, Darling is a coming-of-age story about teenager Ursula Morgan, who leaves behind her upper-class family and finds herself in the seedy underground of Depression-era Boston — a world of sex, jazz and a mysterious drug called….fairy dust.
The piece, which was featured on the “Bound for Broadway” episode of NBC’s The Apprentice, was nominated for Weston’s prestigious national award by Director of Music at Pace New Musicals Robert Meffe who said of Darling: “The rock score is dark, edgy and contagious… The lyrics are intelligent, surprising and original…The book is a wildly different take on the Peter Pan story that will have audiences trying to uncover the allusions every night.”
The Weston Playhouse New Musical Award, the only one of its kind in the country, has become a highly sought-after prize. It supports new work by writers and composers of notable promise, chosen from a group of national nominations. Winners rehearse their work in Vermont under professional musical direction with a cast of exceptional actor/singers. After performing selections from Darling in concert on the Weston stage on March 2, Oliver, Ryback and their cast return to New York to perform at an invited concert and then to record a demo cd under the supervision of Kurt Deutsch of Sh-K-Boom Records.
Derek Klena as Peter
The Vermont and New York concerts will be led under the musical direction of Chris Fenwick (Giant). The cast of rising Broadway talent includes Derek Klena (Dogfight) as Peter, Emily Walton (Peter and the Starcatcher) as Ursula, Julia Mattison (Godspell), Justin Keyes (How to Succeed…) and Max Chernin (NYMF’s Really Bad Things).
For those unacquainted with the show, Darling is a dark deconstruction of the Peter Pan story as told from the perspective of the “Wendy” character. The show has gone through many different incarnations, and the current version resembles Peter Pan mostly in broad, thematic ways.
However, when first conceived, the show borrowed a lot more from the original J.M. Barrie story – including the characters John and Michael Darling. Also, in the original stages of conception, it was not immediately apparent that Ryback and Oliver would work exclusively on either Book or Music/Lyrics.
Thus – this sketch of a song meant to be sung by John to his younger brother Michael was created by me. I pulled it out of the drawer and recently set it to music for my concert The Kid With the Keys, which premiered this fall in Los Angeles.
Be sure to tell me what you think in the comments below!
I saw a screening of Les Miserable at the end of November, and I was swept away by the film. It was the first time I saw a Movie-Musical and thought: this works. There’s still new ground to be broken, I’m sure, but I think Tom Hooper has truly found a right combination of musical theatre style and cinematic story-telling.
I really hope this lays the groundwork for original Movie Musicals to see the light.
And Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman deserve all the praise they’re getting.
Anyway. This clip has nothing to do with any of that, but it’s been making the rounds on Facebook this morning, and it’s hilarious to watch. And damn if some of those voices aren’t SPOT. ON.
Check out this web parody I wrote/directed/played Ben Affleck in.
Click on the image to watch, and then click “Funny!”
And be sure to share it with all your friends!!
Major credit goes to:
Cast:
Matt Abshire
Elijah Alexander
Jamison Jones
Joe Komara
Dan Kozlowski
Jayden Maddux
Lesli Margherita
Vanessa Mizzone
Lauren Rubin
Brett Ryback
Adam Shapiro
Writer/Director: Brett Ryback
Producer: Lauren Bass
Co-Producer: Christian Barillas
Editor: Jordan Bass
DP: Nick Barr
Asst. Camera Op: Joseph Schmitz
PAs: Edgar Solis, Christopher Solis
My attention was drawn a while back to an LA Times article discussing a sort of cultural revolution occurring at Los Angeles’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). Longtime curator, Paul Schimmel – “an artist favorite, seen as a champion of ambitious, intensely researched exhibitions” – was recently fired and replaced by Jeffrey Deitch – “who gained his reputation by creating buzzed-about events that often drew on youth culture, [including recent exhibitions in LA] that revolved around high-recognition names, including Dennis Hopper and James Franco.” The ousting led to the protest and resignation of many board member-artists, including Catherine Opie and John Baldessari.
The article goes on to include other realms of art interacting warily with celebrity and fashion.
MOCA is not the only artistic institution hosting celebrity versus significance face-off. Theater has been at it for years; Broadway not only remakes big, successful film musicals, now it takes on flops (“Newsies”) and indies (“Once”) while bemoaning the lack of original plays.
Now, there’s certainly nothing new about a clash between the “old guard” and the young, up-start newcomers. “Established” and “safe” often mean the same, and the “language of the people” is constantly evolving (or perhaps “revolving” is a more apt term), so if one doesn’t at least keep an ear out, one will eventually become irrelevant.
My friend Kim blogged this post about Pixar director Mark Walsh, whose recent short Partysaurus Rex is playing before Finding Nemo in 3D.
Here’s a peek at Mark’s film.
I love animation. Pixar in particular. But something I miss – something I think a lot of my generation misses – are the Howard Ashman/Alan Menken animated movie musicals from the 90’s.Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin. I’m gonna throw Lion King in there as well, though that’s Elton John and Tim Rice, and was the beginning of a drift away from true “musical structure.”
Howard Ashman
If you’ve seen Waking Sleeping Beauty, you know that Peter Schneider was the man who spearheaded Disney Animation’s journey back from the brink. (Anecdote: I had the pleasure to work with Peter Schneider recently. The man responsible for my childhood happiness. It was like meeting Willy Wonka.)
It was Peter’s idea to hire musical theatre writer Howard Ashman to create these animated films. And what Ashman brought with him was an impeccable sense of musical structure – literally, story-structure specific to musicals.
To me, nothing kills a musical like bad structure. An “I Want” song has to be there. HAS TO. It can be disguised, it can be non traditional. But you need a song that defines the main character(s) want.
If you think of a musical like a house, then this is, oh I don’t know, Dance of the Vampires:
And this is Beauty and the Beast:
But I digress.
My point is how much I love animation. I love it because of the endless possibilities – because you can go to a spaceship where human being are fat slobs; or the bottom of the ocean where an orchestra of fish accompanies a singing crab, or a rat can become a great chef in Paris. Even TV shows like Family Guy and South Park (and Simpsons before them) have characters randomly break out into musical numbers, or have characters graphically murdered, or all sorts of nonsensical things occur.
And these days, nonsense is the only way to really take a look at what’s happening around us. We live in such absurd times. We might as well be animated.
This April I am stepping into the skin of one of the founding fathers of the musical theatre genre – my genre. The Colony Theatre in Burbank presents the world premiere of Falling For Make Believe, about Lorenz Hart. I will play Richard Rodgers.
