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Carrie Underwood’s Wooden Live Performance in the Sound of Music

I wasn’t planning on writing about Carrie Underwood’s painfully wooden live performance last night in NBC’s misbegotten, and ill-fated, “dead” re-enactment of the fabulous Rodgers & Hammerstein musical, “The Sound of Music.”

All the promotional wind leading up to the live event immediately prickled senses in the wrong direction.  The show was being sold as some sort of feel-good, happy children, sparkling story full of singing and wonder and dancing when, in reality, the musical is actually extremely dark and threatening and dreary.

The musical moments in “The Sound of Music” drive the frightening plot forward into a total, creeping, Nazi occupation — and it is in the artful context of that delicate balancing between whistling in the graveyard while staring death straight in the face — that made Rodgers & Hammerstein musical geniuses.

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A Memory of Marvin Hamlisch

I had the great honor of meeting SuperGenius composer Marvin Hamlisch many years ago when I first left Nebraska and lived in Washington D.C. for awhile on my way to graduate school in New York City.  I was stunned to learn Marvin died yesterday at the incredibly young age of 68.

In my January 11, 2010 United Stage article  — A Final Walk with Jim Brady — I mentioned Marvin’s kindness to me as a young student of the theatre:

The Victory Awards were intended to honor achievements of the human spirit. The show was hosted by Frank Langella and Marvin Hamlisch was the musical director.

Frank did not speak to any of the workers on the show while Marvin Hamlisch struck up a conversation with me backstage — I was a new transplant from Nebraska to D.C. — and he told me we’d one day “write a musical together” because “that’s just how things happen.”

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Julie Taymor as The Goat

In the past, I have written here in The United Stage of America about “On Not Becoming the Goat” —

The Goat is usually the least experienced person on the show in an important position and, unfortunately, that usually means the author gets the Goated label, and once you have that finger pointed at you as the root cause of all trouble, there is really no escape until the roller coaster everyone is riding slams into the concrete wall and kills everybody.

— and who would have ever thought that such a deep and magnificent talent such as Julie “I am the Lion King!” Taymor would ever, or could ever, become the goat of any production?

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Texas Mud and Racism in The King and I

When I was in grade school at Brownell Elementary, our music teacher was married to a University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Music professor named Roger L. Stephens.  Roger died in February of this year, and his death propelled me back to the fourth grade and his direction of The King and I at UNL’s Kimball Recital Hall.

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Julie Taymor and the Revenge of Spider-man

I have been patiently waiting to write about the $65 million Broadway musical tragedy that is currently known as “Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark” — but since the show may never officially open — the time is now to take a look at the ridiculous flop of a fantastic idea.

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Why the American Musical Theatre Must Have an Aesthetic Morality

The American Musical Theatre needs to have an Aesthetic Morality — because it does not yet have any sort of directional mandate for excellence — other than the annual, presumptive, parade of giving out incestuous Tony and Drama Desk awards to their own for shared masturbatory adoration.

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The Irreparable Insult: John Denver Does Not Star on Broadway as Will Rogers

Few people know that when “The Will Rogers Follies” was readying itself for Broadway, John Denver was supposed to play Will Rogers.  The role was originally written for him:  The book (the script) and the music and the lyrics were sculpted to fight John Denver’s sense of humor and singing range.

Continue reading → The Irreparable Insult: John Denver Does Not Star on Broadway as Will Rogers