On this day fifty years ago, the rock musical by lyricists Gerome Ragni and James Rado and composer Galt MacDermot Hair began its run on Broadway, with over seventeen hundred performances.
Reception, with some notable exceptions, was overwhelmingly positive and became the anthem for several movements of the counter-culture uprising of the early 1970s and beyond—including racial and tribal identities, pacifism and environmentalism, and religious orthodoxy versus the esoteric.
One year later, “Bob” McGrath (one of the human neighbours) performed the song “Good Morning Starshine” on Sesame Street and the score helped launched the careers of Meatloaf and Donna Summer and many others. A decade later, production started on a cinematic adaptation by Miloลก Forman, reviving the revolutionary spirit that the original inspired and brought the story to a broader audience.
Sunday 29 April 2018
what a piece of work is man
catagories: ๐ญ, ๐ถ, 1968, holidays and observances, lifestyle
Monday 31 October 2016
reprise or i know what my people are thinking tonight
The doggedly diligent campaign reporters of Nation Public Radio’s Politics Podcast have been working virtually non-stop during this entire physically and emotional taxing election cycle in America, serving up a refreshingly thoughtful and reflective reporting on the election despite the usual common discourse and the pace of change. Now they’re working even harder with daily broadcasts, but recently to bridge the weekend presented a really interesting episode from this summer that I’d missed before—before all these dread realities began to coalesce and was not a regular listener. Encore examines the role of music—specifically musical theatre in the shaping of campaigns and presidencies.
I knew that FDR with “Happy Days are Here Again” (Chasing Rainbows, 1930) and Truman with “I’m just Wild about Harry” (Shuffle Along, 1921—for addressing social justice questions) had capitalized on popular, feel-good songs of their day—just like other rallying standards, but I didn’t realise that the Kennedy White House did not become characterised as Camelot organically but rather became known as such because the Lerner and Loewe Broadway production about to be adapted to film was so popular. Musical numbers might not have the same purchase on cultural currency as they did in decades past—at least not one that’s immediately recognisable—having been replaced by other power-ballads, but it’s interesting how the discussion touches on one candidate’s invoking of songs from The Phantom of the Opera as part of his regular playlist (plus some number with those damn dancing cats, whereas perhaps “Tomorrow belongs to Me” from Cabaret may work better) because of his connection to New York and the Great White Way, and the other who backed away from her rather accidental though intended as flattering comparison to Eva Perรณn.
Tuesday 15 March 2016
a man for all seasons
The British Library, as the Guardian reports, will be digitising the only known surviving script written by William Shakespeare in his own hand. The piece, on the subject of Sir Thomas More, Catholic martyr, who managed to rise to the rank of Lord Chancellor in the court of Henry XIII. Focused on More’s divided allegiance by the king’s schism with the pope in Rome and witness to the persecution of the Huguenots who had sheltered in London—having fled violence of France who considered them heretical, the play was not authored by the Bard himself, but rather re-worked by a committee of playwrights in hopes of bringing this anonymous work finally to the stage.
Though feeling audiences were ready for a less than favourable portrayal of king and country, the play remained unscreened for fear it would incite a riot, much like those limned in the manuscript. The lines that Shakespeare form powerful soliloquy for the protagonist, which speak to current tensions over the refugee crisis:
You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
And lead the majesty of law in lyam [by a leash]
To slip him like a hound. Alas, alas!
Say now the King
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you: whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbor? Go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, Spain or Portugal,
Nay, anywhere that not adhere to England:
Why, you must needs be strangers.
Tuesday 24 February 2015
curtain-call and cat-walk
Sometimes a reminder is far better than a discovery.
Sunday 30 November 2014
dramaturgy or meme-base
An aspiring thespian and student of Aristotle named Theophrastus devised a list of archetypal and stock-characters. While it may not be predictive of every aspect of human nature—as their ought to be as well a generic Misogynist, the Fan-Boy and the Xenophobe—and alternately, many positive qualities that probably are not very exciting are absent, it seems to be pretty complete, same-otherwise, and you could certainly apply the same template to a lot of modern means of expression, though the Greek makes the caricatures sound especially harsh:
The Insincere One (Eironeia, irony) | The Flatterer (Kolakeia, the shit-sayer) | The Garrulous One (Adoleschia, the Sophomoric One) |
The Boor (Agroikia, the Skeptic) | The Complacent One (Areskeia, the Inactive One) | The One without Moral Feeling (Aponoia, the Psychopath) |
The Talkative One (Lalia, Chatty-Cathy) | The Fabricator (Logopoiia, the Wordsmith) | The Shamelessly Greedy One (Anaischuntia, shunning society) |
The Pennypincher (Mikrologia, Scrooge) | The Hapless One (Akairia, the Unlucky One) |
The Officious Man (Periergia, just like a Boss) | The Unsociable One (Authadeia, the Loner) |
The Superstitious One (Deisidaimonia, the staunch conventionalist) | The Suspicious One (Apistia, the conspiracy theorist) |
The Repulsive One (Duschereia, poor hygiene) | The One with Petty Ambition (Mikrophilotimia, the vain) |
The Stingy One (Aneleutheria, the ungrateful child) | The Arrogant One (Huperephania, the by-stander) |
The Coward (Deilia, the nostalgic soul) | The Late Learner (Opsimathia) |
The Slanderer (Kakologia) | The Basely Covetous Man (Aischrokerdeia) |
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ท, ๐ญ, ๐, ๐, networking and blogging