We want revivals! But which ones?

[Brave Sir Robin2]

CAROUSEL
THE KING AND I
ONCE ON THIS ISLAND
BABY
SUNSET BOULEVARD
KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
MACK AND MABEL
MISS SAIGON
CITY OF ANGELS
THE WIZ

[lupone76]

Cats
My One and Only
The King and I
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Miss Saigon
42nd.Street
Sunset Blvd.

[SNAFU]

Scandalous

[goldenboy]

whatever it is.. please don't James Lapine near it.

[After Eight]

How about Broadway's longest running play, Life With Father?

[MKunkel]

Hello, Dolly with Christine Ebersole

[rougeduck]

I've said it in another thread.On a broadway where Spiderman is the champ and geeks are cool, I think Via Galactica would kill.

[South Fl Marc]

Dracula, the play, with the Edward Gorey sets and costumes and Benedict Cumberbatch as the lead.

Other plays: Bent, Amadeus, Sweet Bird of Youth, Sherlock Holmes (The RSC's version of the Gillette play). No Musicals, most have been revived ENOUGH.

[bobs3]

CARNIVAL! but it would take a genius director/choreographer to top Gower Champion's seamless staging in the original production.

[Timmer]

I definitely agree about Carnival!

They're Playing Our Song
Hello Dolly
The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd

[madbrian]

Hello Dolly, starring Reba
Mame, starring Rachel York
Applause, starring Vanessa Williams & Beyonce

[D2]

THE PERFORMERS. Maybe reunite the original cast? They're all still young enough, right?

[mamaleh]

CITY OF ANGELS
WALKING HAPPY
BAKER STREET

[newintown]

It's this kind of thinking that has reduced us to seeing only one truly good new work every five years. Everyone wants a re-run...

[DEClarke]

In all honesty... no jokes...

Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash's ONE TOUCH OF VENUS starring Kristen Chenoweth as Venus.

Full staged. Big enough budget to utilize some special stage magic for the transformation from and to a statue. That show could be stellar. It's got a great score and it's a fun, bubbly show that is PERFECT for a Date Night and a Girl's Night Out.

[Someone in a Tree2]

In answer to Newintown, should the Met be chastised for always remounting old opera classics? What about Symphony Orchestra repertoires?

There ought to always be a place on Broadway for brilliant shows of the past to get a remounting. Sometimes they'll hit gold (Chicago), sometimes not (On a Clear Day...), but give today's audiences a chance to see the fabled glories of Musical Theater Past and let them decide for themselves. Most of us play the old scores of LADY IN THE DARK or ONE TOUCH OF VENUS and try to imagine how those shows lived and breathed onstage. Staging a revival is our way of reaching back to the authors and audiences of 1941 or '44 and sharing the magic of Kurt Weill, Ira Gershwin or Ogden Nash.

I want to know what that magic is myself, and I want the generations of young theatergoers behind me to know it too. How else can we insure there will be new glories of musical theater to come?

[Ed_Mottershead]

I totally agree about Lady in the Dark. The problem is finding the right Liza Elliott -- it's a HUGE role and the person playing it has to be a one-of-a-kind/one-in-a-billion performer who can sing and act up a storm, plus dance, and have that undefineable persona known as "star quality." With all due respect to Mmmes. Chenowith, Murphy, Clark, Arianda, etc., I can't think of anyone who would fit the bill. In her younger days, Angela Lansbury would seem to have a been a perfect fit, but it never happened.

[newintown]

"In answer to Newintown, should the Met be chastised for always remounting old opera classics? What about Symphony Orchestra repertoires?"

It's a good question - opera and concert music are, as far as the masses are concerned, relatively dead "high art" forms, and what is new is generally (with a few exceptions) relegated to academia.

Theatre, however, doesn't need to succumb to being a victim of movies and television. It can stay contemporary and alive.

There are some, who, ignorant of anything that happened before they were 10 years old, feel that the relatively current glut of revived work is simply a result of a larger library of works available to be revived; a point of view so ridiculous it's difficult to know where to begin to refute it.

Revivals are best left to regional, stock, and amateur groups; the argument that they can't do it as well as "Broadway" is lame-brained. Perhaps they can't do it as expensively; but equating budget with quality is a strictly Republican mindset. "Talent," on the other hand, is a completely subjective word - you may not feel that they guy playing Bobby in a revival of Company in Duluth is as talented as Raul Esparza, but I'm sure there will be many who disagree with you.

Here in New York, we have the Encores series (which no longer makes much of a pretense at being a "reading" series anymore) and Paper Mill for good revivals.

But when almost half of the work produced in Manhattan (or more) is old work, on Broadway as well as Off, with fewer theatres and theatre companies in existence, it makes one sad that there isn't more good new work given to us. IMO, the most recent artistically successful musicals produced commercially in NYC were The Scottsboro Boys and The Book of Mormon, the more recent of which opened a year and a half ago. We're lucky to get one truly good new show every 2-3 years. Much of what is new is derivative and mercenary (wooden, lazy adaptations of successful films or public domain literature, that appear to be created more to make money than to be good).

So that's my point - it's easy to keep watching what we've already seen; let's work a little harder on new work, and avoid atrophying into a slack-jawed audience that can't enjoy anything unfamiliar.

[finebydesign]

Into the Woods
Sweeney Todd
Gypsy
Annie
Jesus Christ Superstar

[Someone in a Tree2]

To Ed, how about a LADY IN THE DARK with birthday girl Jan Maxwell?

To newintown, it's great to have a legitimate debate about the value of revivals on Broadway stages, and refreshing to up the level of discourse here. So here's my rebuttal--

I fail to understand why revivals are ok to produce in regional and community theaters but main stem theaters should be saved for new works. Is the Broadway calendar really a zero-sum equation? Are the creators working on new scripts being knocked out of contention for theaters and money because of the latest revival of ANYTHING GOES or FOLLIES? They seem to be two completely separate impulses to me.

Wouldn't a great production of ANNIE inspire juvenile theater-goers to come back to Broadway to check the untested new SPRING AWAKENINGS-type show next year?

As for the money spent on revivals, I have to say that my little set-designer's heart sinks down and feels dead every time another production of COMPANY or CHICAGO is staged like an Encore or Reprise concert, ignoring the contributions a Boris Aronson or Tony Walton could offer to shape the original gorgeous productions of those shows. Do I want to see a low-budget revival of BRIGADOON against a rental forest drop with some rental footbridge in foreground? Of course not-- I want Derek McClane to give me an evocative Abbey ruin and I want Natasha Katz to give it all the lighting magic the show deserves. I want the BROADWAY version of that show, dammit!

Lastly, I want the masterpieces of the past to not be lost and forgotten. How many theater goers out there have ever seen a production of ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, or LADY IN THE DARK, or THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM, or CARNIVAL, or ONCE ON THIS ISLAND? How many future lyricists, composers and librettists would benefit from learning how those earlier artists made their art?

[Brave Sir Robin2]

^ Not to burst your bubble, but ONCE ON THIS ISLAND is very popular in on the high school circuit.

[Someone in a Tree2]

No kidding-- had no idea -- makes me really happy to know highschoolers are familiar with such a great show!

[beautywickedlover]

'Beauty and the Beast' & 'The Sound of Music'

[newintown]

"Lastly, I want the masterpieces of the past to not be lost and forgotten. How many theater goers out there have ever seen a production of ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, or LADY IN THE DARK, or THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM, or CARNIVAL, or ONCE ON THIS ISLAND? How many future lyricists, composers and librettists would benefit from learning how those earlier artists made their art?"

I get your point but:
I've seen One Touch of Venus at Encores; I love it, but a full Broadway revival with the original book and orchestrations would not be a success with the herd.

I've seen Lady In the Dark twice - the Marcovicci, and Maria Friedman at the National; it, too, would not fly on Broadway - it represents a sophistication that Wally and Wanda Wisconsin couldn't comprehend, and its take on psychology would be funny for the wrong reasons.

I've seen two full regional productions of The Robber Bridegroom, both excellent. It flopped horribly on Broadway originally; what argument would there be that it might be a hit now?

I've seen two full regional productions of Carnival as well as the Encores version. With so few theatres available on Broadway, why do it there again? Broadway is not the only place good musicals can be done.

As already noted, Once on This Island is done all the time.

I hate to beat a dead horse, but I should reiterate my main point that Broadway is trending towards a greater ratio of revivals to original work, which I find depressing as an indication that producers, writers and audiences just lack the imagination to create and welcome great new works except very rarely.

[Someone in a Tree2]

^ wow, newintown, you've had enviable opportunities to see all these great shows that I'm still waiting to see! (Exceptions being ROBBER BRIDEGROOM whose original broadway production I thought was stupendous back in... '75, was it? And I also caught Maria Friedman's National production of LADY IN THE DARK-- very strange staging, and I thought Maria was badly miscast. So jury's still out on that show for me.)

I'm as eager as you to see brave new works on Broadway, but I look at the last dozen seasons and keep seeing unoriginal jukebox musicals like Jersey Boys, Mama Mia and Rock of Ages crowding those precious theater slots as much as the surfeit of revivals do. Faced with the choice, I'd prefer a season full of revivals like the '92 Guys and Dolls or '94 Carousel any day.

[newintown]

OK, we can happily agree there - I would prefer a revival of an interesting show any day over any jukebox musical. Including the few acceptably fun ones.