genuinegirly

Love them or hate them, what do you think?
Have you ever seen a musical performed live?
What was the first musical you remember seeing?
What is your favorite musical?


I love musicals. It's a sad truth. I'm a sucker for them. When I visited London, the first thing on my mind was getting to a performance of Les Miserables. When I was in Chicago, I hunted down a performance of Chicago. I've seen three versions of Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. The first musical I dragged my husband to see was Mama Mia. For Valentine's Day, my husband got us tickets to Fiddler on the Roof when it came to Cincinnati.

I helped build the set, arranged all of the flowers, and ran the spotlight for our high school's Little Shop of Horrors, designed the lighting for a community production of Company, and helped with props other little community productions like A Snoopy Musical and RENT. From either side of the curtain, I love musicals.

There's one musical that I have always wanted to see, but never managed to get tickets. I want to see The Secret Garden. I suppose it's an obscure musical. It's not performed often for a number of reasons. Honestly the main reason why it's not usually performed is that the vocals are far too technically challenging for a troupe of typical performers. It's more of an opera than a musical that challenges every adult and child character with an astronomical range of notes to sing, infrequent places to stop for breath, unexpected rhythms, and confusing chorales.

For some unknown reason, a local community theatre in the Cincinnati area has decided to take it on this summer. With only a month between auditions and a performance, there hasn't been much time to perfect each piece. I have no idea if it is going to be any good. But I'm going to see it. I have to. Opening night is today.

__________________
"Sometimes I have to remember that things are brought to me for a reason, either for my own lessons or for the benefit of others." Cynthetiq

"violence is no more or less real than non-violence." roachboy

LordEden

I would rather have bamboo splints shoved up my finger nails while someone brands my back with a red hot poker than watch a musical. My hated for musicals is rivaled only by my hatred for hippies and vegetarians.

That said, my hippy veggie gf loves them, so she makes me sit through them at random times. I usually try and annoy her enough, so that she gives up and tells me to leave. I just don't understand why they need to sing a conversation. I like singing and I like the theater, I just don't like when someone combines those two things.

I like some Operas, but Rent? I'd rather preform fellatio on a rotting elephant penis than watch 10 people sing about how they all have AIDS and they have no place to live because all of them are to lazy to work jobs. Just thinking about Rent makes me want to fly into a nerdrage storm and scream at anyone who likes that movie.

The two musicals I can sit through without flying off the walls are "The Southpark Movie" (I've heard good things about their mormon musical) and "Dr. Horrible's Sing a long blog". Those two are ok because one has a song called "Uncle Fucker" and the other is written by Joss Whedon.

__________________
Vice-President of the CinnamonGirl Fan Club - The Meat of the Zombiesquirrel and CinnamonGirl Sandwich

ZombieSquirrel

Wow. 2 topics I could go on and on about.
1) MUSICALS
2) How Eden is a fracking Douche.
XOXO, ZombieSquirrel

I don't love ALL musicals. I'm not the biggest Rodgers and Hammerstein fan and I only seem to like Andrew Loyd Webber musicals where Tim Rice does the lyrics.

I have seen musicals performed live....too many to count. I think Annie was the first one I had ever seen live. My mother took me to see that when I was young and I was hooked after that. I am very thankful that my mother took me to see musicals and to listen to the symphony when I was young.

I was big into theater in High School. Then I was admitted into a theater program in college, but realized I didn't mesh well with show personalities. I switched majors to Journalism thinking I'd be a great theater critic. (I may or may not have pissed some people off with a few of my college reviews. Hey, I was honest.) After Graduation I did a lot of community theater and was even on the board of one of the groups. I did mostly comedies and was on stage crew for musicals as singing and dancing is not where I excel. That world of community theater is CRAZY, but I made some awesome friends. I'm thinking of getting into Community Theater out here in Oregon.

I don't know if I could choose a favorite musical....I suppose I'll just make a list.

Avenue Q (LE might actually like this. Puppets singing about porn.)
Rent (Bite me. They didn't all have AIDS and some of them had real jobs. It's based off of an Opera. La Boheme is my FAVORITE Opera.)
Sweeney Todd
Jeckyll and Hyde (I would love to play Lucy)
Les Mis
Chicago
Annie
Bye Bye Birdie
My Fair Lady
Fiddler on the Roof
Guys and Dolls
Little Shop of Horrors

Oh I could go on all day. Kind of a nerd when it comes to this stuff. I want to be Liza Minelli's BFF. I'm Liza with a Z not Lisa with an S, 'cause Liza with a Z goes Zzzzzz not Sssssss! You couldn't see, but I totally did Jazz Hands.

__________________
Attack ZombieSquirrels

Baraka_Guru

I love the magic of musicals but haven't really seen that many.

As a kid, I loved the Wizard of Oz, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Grease, and Little Shop of Horrors and still do. I probably have seen others I like, but I can't remember them.

More recently, I've discovered the joy of classic musicals such as An American in Paris. I've been meaning to see more.

Just before that, I enjoyed watching Moulin Rouge in the theatre when it first came out, and I've watched it a few times on video since (and I rarely rewatch movies). I know this helped usher in a resurgence of musicals, but I haven't really seen many other recent ones.

I really should build a movie list. Maybe this thread will help.

I've also enjoyed a few live ones: Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, The Sound of Music, We Will Rock You, and Rock of Ages—and, of course, a high-school performance of The Wizard of Oz in which aberkok played the Cowardly Lion.

I don't know what it is I like about musicals. I guess its the trading of storytelling modes alternating between spoken word and song. It's entertaining, and, as I've mentioned above, the really good ones are nothing short of magical.

Oh, and I mustn't forget: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Woot!

---------- Post added at 01:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:00 PM ----------

Oh, and this is my absolute favourite musical moment in film history:

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

roachboy

i'm in general not a fan of musicals, not because i dislike the form in principle, but more because i dislike that perky making-little-stars-with-your-hands and hoofing across the stage while singing like ethel merman approach that seems to have infested american musicals since god knows when. and i reserve a special place of hatred for gilbert & sullivan. oo yes, best not to get me started about that.

but i liked moulin rouge as a film.
and hegwig and the angry inch.
i like the idea of liking rocky horror. i've tried. god knows, i've tried.
i still have most of jesus christ superstar memorized but cannot for the life of me remember either how or why that happened.
i was in and directed productions of godspell so at this point would rather drive tacks into my forehead than listen to anything connected with it, and this after many years.


i like one line of one song from the music man (i say we've got trouble/right here in river city/with a capital T that rhymes with P that stands for Pool.)
the sound of music has prompted suicidal ideations in the past. white people bellowing in the mountains. good christ. but there is a mi'ike film that makes fun of the sound of music---happiness of the katakuris---that i think is great.

does rock-n-roll high shool count as a musical? does wild zero?

oklahoma. loathe it.
there are other ones that i hate too. carousel....can't remember.

south pacific once or twice reaches levels of cheese that transcend its obviously vile self. but i'd rather dispense with the rest of it and just listen to les baxter or esquivel or yma sumac.




similar with opera---i like the idea of opera more than i like most opera. and wagner, whom i hold responsible for creating vast seas of mucous in the form of opera, is i hope roasting in the same cauldron as gilbert and fucking sullivan.

but i kinda like earlier opera--dido and aneas, the magic flute, don giovanni.
and more recent stuff---berg's woyczek (i have a weakness for berg despite the romantic flourishes and overall german-ness).
my favorite opera-ish things aren't conventional operas at all...the works of harry partch, a lot of robert ashley's stuff for example. wholesale breaks with the ludicrous (to my mind anyway) approach to voice characteristic of opera from at least gluck and verdi onward. closer to speech. and with ashley anyway, tons of cool tape manipulation.

despise philip glass, though. just despise his music. he's probably a perfectly nice guy, though. it's just a vast sea of blah blah blah. prefer steve reich, even his more recent stuff (which isn't as cool...something happened at music for 18 musicians) or terry reilly. or the fan in my living room (which was cool until it broke). but i digress.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

LordEden

*****

I've been thinking of giving Avenue Q a chance because they have the "Internet is for Porn" song.

__________________
Vice-President of the CinnamonGirl Fan Club - The Meat of the Zombiesquirrel and CinnamonGirl Sandwich

ZombieSquirrel

__________________
Attack ZombieSquirrels

Mogwaithief

I've had the odd fling with musicals I've been involved with theater for the majority of my life so it's kinda hard to avoid and I like a lot of people started out on musicals. I think I love to love some of them as much as I love to hate some of them, I just gotta be in the right mood. I think saying you hate musicals outright is a pretty broad sweep. That's like saying you hate all disney movies and I'm pretty sure everyone like at least a one, personally I love all of the music in The Jungle Book. I think Baraka Guru also hits the nail on the head with Every Sperm is Sacred. Others that are up there for me are Caberet, Bugsy Malone, Singing in the Rain and West Side Story. All class. I should add though that I think Moulin Rouge was the most over rated peice of crap. Seriously I'd rather watch R.Kelly's 'hip-hopera', at least that's funny though I know it's probably not meant to be.

__________________
This is not for you.

LordEden

I pretty much hate all disney movies, especially the ones with singing. I think is a difference between watching a movie with singing and watching a musical. Yesterday, I watched "Beyond the Sea" (The Bobby Darin Story) and it had singing (whole nightclub singing numbers) and I liked it. Granted, it was old school crooning which I love, so that could have had a part in it.

I just think there is a difference in having music in movies and being a musical. Just because there are people singing in a movie, doesn't make it musical. Which I think some kids/disney movies fall into.

Either way, I still don't like disney movies.

__________________
Vice-President of the CinnamonGirl Fan Club - The Meat of the Zombiesquirrel and CinnamonGirl Sandwich

roachboy

forgot about cabaret. i like that. but i like most brecht/weill stuff more.

lotte lenya then:


ute lemper now:


she's so good.

o why not.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

genuinegirly

What about Pirates of Penzance! Now that has some fun songs. Come to think of it, that's another one that I've been wanting to see on stage for a while.

__________________
"Sometimes I have to remember that things are brought to me for a reason, either for my own lessons or for the benefit of others." Cynthetiq

"violence is no more or less real than non-violence." roachboy

EventHorizon

producers, moulin rouge, chicago

none better unless you count the disneyish ones

__________________
Does Marcellus Wallace have the appearance of a female canine? Then for what reason did you attempt to copulate with him as if he were a female canine?

Quote:

Originally Posted by canuckguy Pretty simple really, do your own thing as long as it does not fuck with anyone's enjoyment of life.

CinnamonGirl

For the record, Eden and I have the Rent argument at least a couple times a month. ("Baby, they aren't all gay. They don't all have AIDS.")

Also for the record, Eden loves Once More With Feeling. Just sayin'.

Okay, so as previously stated, I love musicals. Love them. I think the first one I saw live was Anything Goes my freshman year of high school, but I'd seen plenty onscreen before that (Annie, Grease, Oklahoma!, Little Shop of Horrors, and nearly every Disney movie.)

I was in Leader of the Pack and Return to the Forbidden Planet in high school, but I didn't really sing much back then, so I was just chorus for those (although I did get to play the lead in a drama class production of Time and Time Again...but only like, 15 people saw that.)

My favorite musical? Hmmm... How about Top Five? In no particular order, I'll go with:

Into the Woods
Rent
Guys and Dolls
Chicago
Damn Yankees

Oddly enough, I kind of hate West Side Story. I'm not exactly sure why...something about it just rubs me the wrong way.

__________________
"...for though she was ordinary, she possessed health, wit, courage, charm, and cheerfulness. But because she was not beautiful, no one ever seemed to notice these other qualities, which is so often the way of the world."


"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"