0| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
08.05.25| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
THE PRODUCERS: THE NEW MEL BROOKS MUSICAL experienced that famous theory. Starting 25 years ago, THE PRODUCERS indeed saw that bad luck comes in threes. “Wait,” you’re saying, “it was a smash hit, wasn’t it?” Let’s start before the very beginning. In early 1998, Brooks received yet another offer to turn his 1968 Oscar-winning screenplay […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
Jonathan Groff’s brilliant performance in JUST IN TIME got me listening to a recording that I hadn’t heard in some time. And I was reminded that BELLS ARE RINGING – which includes “Just in Time” – is a sensational cast album. Give a listen, and you may wonder why composer Jule Styne and bookwriter-lyricists Betty […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
In 2010, Antonio Banderas announced that he’d appear in a revival but never did. Some years before, Mandy Patinkin was offered the show but wasn’t enthusiastic enough to spur a new production. And for a while in the late 1980s, two Israeli film producersannounced that they’d do a film of this musical. They’d change its […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
Fifty years ago this week, many musical theater fans were talking about one show and one show only. A CHORUS LINE. It had debuted at the Public’s Newman Theater on April 15, 1975, making many attendees ecstatically happy that they’d finished their taxes in time to attend. What they saw wasn’t quite what Broadway witnessed […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
How fitting that I got this book on April 1st, for it does seem to be a fool’s joke. It’s David H. Lewis’ Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History, in which he gives opinions on musical theater recordings. Granted, as I recently said, when it comes to such matters, “One man’s MAME is another man’s […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
A century ago this month, people who read Liberty magazine were talking about Ring Lardner’s newest short story. “Haircut” involves a barber who talked and talked while serving a customer sitting in his chair. The 13-page story starts off blithely enough but soon devolves into a dark tale of severe sexual situations and murder. The […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
Fair warning: this column will appear to be something between a mild shill and a hard sell. But, really, I know you’ll have a better time at OPERATION MINCEMEAT if you hear the cast album in advance. The plain truth is that many of the songs that David Cumming, Natasha Hodgson and Zoe Roberts wrote […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
Elvis famously sang “Oh, well, a-bless my soul, but what’s wrong with me?” but I’ll instead say, “Oh, well, a-bless my soul, but what’s wrong with them?” Two weeks ago at Graceland, a celebration was held for what would have been – gulp! – Presley’s 90th birthday. Concerts as well as conversations with some of […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
Christopher S. Connelly knows how big a star Helen Morgan was during the Roaring ‘20s and beyond. But he’s now made sure that you know it, too. Connelly’s provided hundreds of eye-opening details in HELEN MORGAN: The Original Torch Singer and Ziegfeld’s Last Star. The biography proves that he’s a meticulous researcher and entertaining writer […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site
“My first reaction was that all of the songs were losers.” “A terrible idea.” That first quotation, reported by Joshua Rosenblum in his excellent new book CLOSER THAN EVER, came from lyricist Richard Maltby, Jr. The second quip came from Maltby’s longtime writing partner, composer David Shire. Understand that Maltby wasn’t evaluating such Broadway abominations […]| The Official Masterworks Broadway Site