Broadway Abridged Blog

101 Dalmations: Abridged

2010-03-08T11:05:00.002-05:00

Today's Broadway Abridged Guest Script comes from TVGasm Writer The Unprofessional Critic, who was kind enough to go see 101 Dalmatians The Musical in Chicago which:

really exists
is really something that Disney didn't have any involvement with
is really presented by Purina Dog Chow
really stars Sara Gettelfinger
really involves Jerry Zaks
is really going to be at the ~~Washington Mutual Theater~~ Madison Square Garden Theater in April
is something I have zero intention of seeing. Thanks Unpro!

Click to read 101 Dalmatians Abridged.

Maureen

2010-02-23T21:44:00.002-05:00

Rent hit Broadway in 1996.

That was 14 years ago.

Which means that right now, the first high schooler on the Rent Rush line is giving birth to her second child*, and naming her Maureen.

Think about it.

*Her first was a son named Collins.

The "Blech" Picture

2010-02-23T11:16:00.003-05:00

Today I noticed myself doing the following:

1. Receiving an e-mail from DidHeLikeIt.com. Which, if you haven't seen it, is a very clever little website that simply shows you whether "he" (Ben Brantley of the New York Times, with an occasional sub-in by Isherwood) liked a show that opened.
2. Clicking on the link to visit the site to find out whether he liked Mr. and Mrs. Fitch.
3. Seeing this graphic:

4. Not bothering to read the article to find out the details of why Brantley didn't like it.

Have I over-marginalized the entire critics system?

Yes.

For the record, though, I usually make these snap judgments based on the contents of StageGrade (formerly Critic-O-Meter) which is a fantastic roundup of the sum of all the reviews averaged out to a letter grade.

Special Guest Post from Ben Brantley!

2010-02-11T14:48:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to clarify myself in the most recent New York Times column I wrote where I said that I feel the pain of those people whose cellphones ring during the middle of a show. Many of you thought this meant that I, the most powerful man in NY Theater, was condoning cell phone use. So I thought I should set the record straight.

It's only okay if they're my friends, and they didn't have to pay a single dime for their ticket.

Thank you,

BEN BRANTLEY

As You Like It, Or At Least Find It Decent

2010-01-15T10:34:00.002-05:00

Last night I had the pleasure to see As You Like It at BAM, a production of The Bridge Project. I saw their fantastic production of Winter's Tale last year, and will be seeing their Tempest in a month or so. Given their play choices and the quality of this production of As You Like It I'd like to suggest a new slogan, The Bridge Project: Making Bad Plays Surprisingly Bearable.

I'm not going to talk much about the production except to say that it's solid, the cast is pretty great, and that the first half could have used some additional humor or cuts to make it move along more swiftly. If you've ever wanted to see a solid production of As You Like It, I suggest this one. If you don't know/remember which one As You Like It is, it's the one where the guy and girl fall in love, and the girl dresses up like a guy to teach the guy she loves how to be Super Husband-Slash-Lover.

But what I want to talk about SHAKESPEARE SPOILER ALERT is a little moment in the final scene. Rosalind-Dressed-As-A-man stands in front of everybody and reveals that she's going to make everything okay for everybody, and that she'll be right back in a few minutes. She goes offstage. Touchstone (the fool, played with aplomb by reasons to be pretty's Thomas Sadoski) gives a whole 5 minute monologue about how to verbally quarrel, the "Retort Courteous/Quip Modest" speech. This goes on for a short eternity, long enough to allow Rosalind to come back dressed all pretty pretty like a woman, and everybody gasps.

The reveal takes freaking forever. And as surprised as I was that Sadosky actually made the speech funnier than I ever though it was, where is the production with a decent costume designer that cuts or at least moves the speech? The production that has Rosalind say, "I'm going to fix all this", then suddenly a clever costume transformation onstage, and suddenly the man is a woman, and everybody gasps and you buy it?

Why isn't everybody doing that?

The State of the Art

2010-01-04T08:39:00.004-05:00

The 39 Steps
Billy Elliot
Burn The Floor
Bye Bye Birdie
Chicago
Fela!
Finian's Rainbow
God of Carnage
Hair
In The Heights
In The Next Room, or the vibrator play
Irving Berlin's White Christmas
Jersey Boys
Lion King
Little Night Music
Mary Poppins
Memphis
Next to Normal
Phantom of the Opera
Race
Ragtime
Rock of Ages
Shrek
South Pacific
Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark Because You Left It On Again, How Many Times Do I Have To Tell You
Superior Donuts
West Side Story
Wicked
Wishful Drinking

At least it's not as bad as last year.

Who wants to go to a Sting concert with Bill Irwin?

2009-12-30T10:35:00.003-05:00

I kind of do:

The same Kennedy Center Honors also featured a tribute to Mel Brooks, with musical numbers from basically everything he ever wrote. Except for Young Frankenstein The Musical, of course.

On Your Published Play Being Performed

2009-12-28T10:05:00.002-05:00

A few months ago I get a "Google Alert" e-mail for the words "Oedipus for Kids", which is the title of a musical I wrote that was published earlier this year. A surprising e-mail at that, because it was the e-mail that alerted me that the premiere international production of "Oedipus" was to be performed in Windsor, Ontario. With the first performance starting about... Oh, 5 hours after I received the e-mail.

I'd gone to see Oe4K productions in the past, and I might have gone to see this one; there is no out-of-body experience like watching people you've never met perform songs and dialogue you'd written in a Cosi on 23rd street. Yet two things were keeping me from going:

The very very short notice, which is Internet-speak for very very high airfare.
Secondarily, how cold I remember Canada being. Because in a few hours I was headed to a friend's aunt's summer house for the weekend. So: hysterical songs in a gut-busting musical that will make you laugh until your ears bleed brain juice? Or the beach? The choice was pretty clear.

There isn't a blame game here. My publisher is a play publisher. And unfortunately, like anything else involving theater, the move into the digital age comes slow. So the custom content-management system with a massive DB-backend that does auto-messaging to opt-in authors when their works are performed? A little too expensive for the theater world, sad but accurate.

And what about the alternative? I might be interested to hear about how your version of Oedipus For Kids' "Sphinxy" puppet had an eyeball that popped out when he contracted the plague. But while I'd love an e-mail from a prospective production, I can't imagine that, say, Jason Robert Brown's response to an "I'm doing Last Five Years" e-mail is more than a "Great, you're production ten billion and seven".

But what I then learned is that even if there was this author-alert system, it isn't that simple. The theater licensing world gets something known as a "Window Shopper", which is somebody who requests a quote, or even a full out license with materials and the like, but at the end may not actually perform the show and could even switch shows entire just a few short weeks beforehand. So I could have received an e-mail, immediately booked my flight nice and early, and then contacted the theater company the week before to let them know that the author was going to show up.

And then promptly received an e-mail back saying, "What? You're not Jason Robert Brown."

A different Ragtime revival logo

2009-12-26T11:15:00.003-05:00

Back in September, the NYTimes posted a feature on the ad campaign evolution for this year's Ragtime Revival. I was looking at it today and found this aborted design:

Am I the only one who likes it much better than the one they ended up going with?

Cast set for 'Rain'

2009-12-23T10:18:00.002-05:00

I hereby declare a moratorium on any play being allowed to have the word "Rain" in its title for the next 40 years. Especially if there's ever a chance Variety is going to report on it:

Victoria Clark, Mary Beth Hurt and Michael Siberry are among the cast of Andrew Bovell's "When the Rain Stops Falling"

Addams Family, Too Expensive

2009-12-10T21:33:00.002-05:00

Is anybody else complaining yet that Addams Family tickets are too expensive?

Do I get to be the first?

South Pacific Abridged

2009-12-09T09:00:00.002-05:00

Some Enchanted Evening
You Will See A Musical
Yes, You Will See A Musical
That Just Feels Really Old...

Click to read South Pacific Abridged

Broadway Abridged Album - Contest Winners

2009-12-02T15:58:00.007-05:00

Submissions have closed for the #bwayabridged contest, so I'd like to congratulate the two people who I thought did the best job abridging a show in less than 125 characters:

SOUND OF MUSIC: The family that sings together gets chased by Nazis through the Alps.
MAMMA MIA: Rousing ABBA-scored game of Who's Your Daddy, followed by 1/2hr of encores in jumpsuits stolen from Brady Bunch movie.

Congrats, @PBCrook and Colleen, each of you wins a copy of Broadway Abridged Volume One: Even More Musicals, available to both of you for free, or to everybody else for purchase either on a track-by-track or full-album basis.

Speaking of losers, here are the rest of the entries!

AVENUE Q: R-rated "Sesame Street" for college grads, complete with puppet sex! (@michaelmarcus)
CAROUSEL: Deadbeat dads who beat their wives always get a second chance--with music! (@PBCrook)
COMPANY: Scene: Raul Esparza "I'm lonely and happy!" Friends: "We're psycopaths!" Curtain Falls. (@amgreenberg)
DAMN YANKEES: Faust with pinstripes and jazz hands. (@kevinddaly)
DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES: Michael Crawford wishes to be type cast forever as a lame vampire. Upstaged by gay vamp son. (@Kalroythx)
EVITA: What's new, Buenos Aires? Oh, me? I'm dying, but don't cry for me, Argentina. It's cool. (@LaNouvelleVogue)
FINIANS RAINBOW: Cheyenne Jackson in tight jeans. Terri White steals show. (@rowijo)
GLORY DAYS: Four guys and a bleacher. (@PataphysicalSci)
GOD OF CARNAGE: 2 families fight over whose fam is better. Woman barfs. Props Destroyed. Mobile breaks. Neither wins. (Pam)
GODSPELL: Extras from RENT put on a show: the New Testament set to music. About as entertaining as it sounds. (@michaelmarcus)
JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING…: Slavery, imprisonment, despair, harems, divination and goat slaughter. FOR KIDS! (@sarahcryst)
LITTLE MERMAID: They closed Beauty & the Beast for this? (@rowijo)
LITTLE SHOP : They're poor & they sing about it, they make kids scared of the dentist then they're dead & they sing about it. (@JustEllen6:)
MEMPHIS: Hairspray did it better. (@butterflyblob)
MY FAIR LADY: Professor teaches guttersnipe proper English. She’s pissed when he takes all the credit. But they stay friends. (Cassandra)
NEXT TO NORMAL: Just because you're mentally unstable doesn't mean you have to sing like a theremin. (@TheDrowsyKaye)
RAGTIME: While there was an abundance of gazebos, 0% Negroes. However, 100% of it was Ragtime. (@TheDrowsyKaye)
RENT: You're a tool if you make an artist pay their bills. (@Tiggy_Mae)
SHREK: Chris Sieber, Sutton Foster, Brian d'Arcy James, Dan Breaker loses a bet. Forced to play Halloween 4ever (@tapeworthy)
SPRING AWAKENING: S&M, rape, abortion &general German weirdness: set to Duncan Sheik, it's totes romantic. (@maybeimamazed0)
STARLIGHT EXPRESS: A charming family fable featuring a cheerful red caboose who occasionally channels Heath Ledger's Joker. (@threads_of_gold)
SWEENEY TODD: Musical about murdering people & then eating their corpses...but it's Sondheim, so at least the music's good. (Cassandra)
THE BOY FROM OZ: Not a short-lived prequel to THE WIZARD OF OZ. (@pavementchaser)
THE LION KING: Disney presents Hamlet, with a warm and fuzzy twist. (@pavementchaser)
THRILL ME: Boy meets boy. Boy wants gay sex from other, heterosexual boy. Boys murder child. (@Kalroythx)
TITANIC: No moon. No water. It sinks. The end. (William)
WICKED: Idina Menzel: I'm green and I scream myself hoarse! Kristen Chenoweth: I am upstaging you. End. (@kevinywong)
XANADU: Jukebox musical: muse inspires artist to create rollerdisco. Set in '80s. But it's really funny. Seriously. (Cassandra)

Wishful Drinking Abridged

2009-12-02T10:55:00.000-05:00

The contest deadline is closed. Sorry I don't have the winners picked yet; give me a day or so. In the meanwhile, perhaps I can give you an entry from the Broadway Abridged Shorts Archives:

Click to read "Wishful Drinking Abridged"

Wait, there are Matthew Broderick fans?

2009-11-30T18:02:00.002-05:00

The Starry Messenger Extends Through December 19

ARE THERE ACTUALLY MATTHEW BRODERICK FANS OUT THERE?

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

SHOW YOUR FACES DAMMIT!

(of course we are speaking post-Ferris Bueller)

Hair: Abridged

2009-11-30T09:00:00.002-05:00

Are you in a bad mood because you're looking for that special someone at the end of that always-dreary month of November? HAIR will cheer you right up! You'll get to see someone naked, a man with strong hands will rub your scalp lovingly, and a cute stranger will touch you in confusing ways as you hear droning on about moving to Canada for political reasons. Why, it's like being in a relationship and in the year 2007 all at once!

Click to read HAIR: ABRIDGED

Don't forget, tomorrow's the last day to enter the contest for a free copy of BROADWAY ABRIDGED VOLUME 1 (available on Amazon and iTunes). CLICK HERE for more info on how to enter, or see your competition so far.

Winner of Opera Contest

2009-11-28T10:05:00.003-05:00

My ridiculously random way of choosing the winner of the Opera contest was to go through all of the comments, turn the "@" into spaces, and take last word in each one. Then, because I was always at the end of the alphabet myself, the winner was the one that came last alphabetically.

Congratulations Melissa, but shame on you for using Verizon for e-mail. Anyway, if I don't hear from Melissa by end of day Monday, then Robin's next up.

The comments were interesting, and as I'm seeing Hansel and Gretel as my first Opera in a good 3 or so years, I'm sure I'll have some comments the week after next...

The Race Debates Begin

2009-11-24T18:30:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I was invited to a blogger event with the cast of David Mamet's RACE:

No really, I was there. You can sort of see the edge of my hair behind Byrne Harrison:

I hadn't posted much about it because it's a difficult play to talk about. Not because of the Race issue, but because of how the plot of the play is being kept under very, very tight wraps. So while you can hear the podcast of some of our interview with the cast, what we're learning about isn't the play, but what it's like to do a brand new Mamet play that's directed by Mamet as well.

I've recently acquired the taste for Mamet, so I'm interested. So there's a bit to learn from the new Race Website that recently launched. After you click "skip" on the always-obligatory-splash-screen, it gives you a bit of a hunt around a crime scene with pieces of plot from the play. Just like getting to know every member of the Hair cast via small videos, it's a nice change from the boring "Bios/Tickets/Production Photos" that most websites have been reverting to.

FELA ABRIDGED, plus 2 Contests!

2009-11-24T09:11:00.007-05:00

Three things for today.

1. Yet another contest for the week. I have a free pair of tickets to give away to the Metropolitan Opera's limited engagement of HANSEL AND GRETEL on Monday, December 14th at 8pm.
If you can make it and you're interested, comment on this post and answer the question, As a person who's into theater, do you tend to see Opera? If not, why? Is it the content? The cost? The "elitism"? The way "story" and "acting" are treated? Just because I'm curious. Contest winners will be chosen entirely at random this Friday. Please make it possible for me to reach you so I don't have to randomly choose someone else!

2. BROADWAY ABRIDGED VOLUME 1 is available today as a full album or individual tracks, on both Amazon and iTunes. And you can win one of two free copies with the "Abridge a show in 125 characters or less" contest! CLICK HERE for more info on how to enter. Lots of hysterical entries so far.

3. Fela! opened last night. So, why not a Fela! Abridged?

Click to read Fela! Abridged

CONTEST: Win a free copy of the "Broadway Abridged Live" CD!

2009-11-23T11:13:00.004-05:00

Like everybody else, I've decided to celebrate Christmas without waiting for this holiday to end first. So as your gift, I'll be giving away two iTunes copies of the new BROADWAY ABRIDGED LIVE VOLUME 1: EVEN MORE MUSICALS album, which comes out tomorrow on Amazon and iTunes.

How do you win? Simple. In 125 characters or less, abridge any Broadway Show. You can enter in one of two ways: tweet it with a #bwayabridged tag (still under 140 characters) or e-mail it to gil [at] broadwayabridged.com with subjectline CONTEST. Contest ends December 1st, one week from tomorrow.

Artwork by Jennifer Lynn Jordan

BROADWAY ABRIDGED LIVE VOLUME 1: EVEN MORE MUSICALS features ~10 minute versions of Wicked, West Side Story, Spring Awakening, Les Miserables, Little Mermaid and A Chorus Line. Put it on your ipod, and act like a theater jerk in your car or subway platform!

Reviving Flops and Flops and Flops

2009-11-22T01:17:00.005-05:00

I was going to detail all the flops that seem to be coming out on Broadway, but Kevin did a much better job here. What I don't get is this:

LOW RISK, LOWER REWARD: When Joe Producer produces a revival, they get the plus of name recognition of something that's already been known as good, even if they have to pay a percentage to whoever produced the original.
HIGH RISK, HIGHER REWARD: When Joe Producer produces a new musical, they get the plus of bigger potential revenue in regional rights, tours perpetual ownership of the show.
HIGH RISK, LOWER REWARD: When Joe Producer produces a show that already has a history of terrible failure and is only known by a bunch of ridiculous theater fans like me (and probably you) he gets...???

Pop quiz!

2009-11-17T11:12:00.006-05:00

Is this...

a) Costumes from Your Community Theater's production of The Music Man, or
b) The 2009 Ragtime on Broadway?

Broadway Pizza

2009-11-16T16:40:00.003-05:00

Playbill reports that Two boots Pizza--actually one of my favorite Pizzas-by-the-slice in NYC--is going to be having a new monthly Pizza inspired by a Broadway Show. The first one celebrates "Finian's Rainbow" with BBQ Chicken pizza with tasso and green onions on a special green Sicilian crust.

I can't wait for...

BILLY ELLIOT PIZZA: Made from three separate cheeses that are exactly as good as each other. We swear. Please trust us.
OLEANNA PIZZA: Basically you choose any other delicious pizza, and we sell you a half a slice of it for the same price that you used to pay for a full slice.
GOD OF CARNAGE PIZZA: Used to be made with the best quality garden vegetables, but since they ran out we're using canned stuff and pretending you won't notice the difference.
LION KING PIZZA: Endangered Wildebeast meat with a special Kids sauce concocted mostly out of Jello.
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA PIZZA: It's just regular cheese, but made with imported french water from the underground opera river.
BYE BYE BIRDIE PIZZA: Tastes like shit.

Have you spotted any Broadway Pizzas recently?

Ragtime: Abridged

2009-11-16T13:24:00.003-05:00

The patriotic American musical that shows how rewarding it is to live in America so long as you're an Immigrant or a White Person but Definitely Not Black.

Click to read Ragtime Abridged.

Lin Miranda Manuel is EVIL!

2009-11-14T10:10:00.002-05:00

Or so upcoming episodes of Sesame Street seem to insinuate:

Brings me back to a few decades ago where Sesame Street seemed to be stuck on this "How do we make our show relevant to kids? OH I KNOW WE'LL RAP AT THEM!" thing.