Do new songs from movie musicals get added to the shows?

[newintown]

I like the fact that Nine is not a "musical version" of 81/2, but is a musical based upon the film.

I don't see that the work improves by being more specifically connected to Fellini and his style and work. Nine is its own work of art, with its own integrity.

Faulting the score for Nine because it doesn't remind one of Italian New Wave films is like criticizing "People Will Say We're In Love" because it doesn't sound like something 19th century Oklahoma settlers would sing.

[JoeKv99]

I didn't care for Nine but I am not sure if it's OK to hold that opinion.

[newintown]

Who knew that would get tiresome so quickly?

[darquegk]

I wasn't faulting the stage score at all.
It's still better overall- I was simply noting that unlike the stage play, the film has a setting and time period that are firmly stylistically established, as an alternative to the time-neutral yesterday of the stage show.

[strummergirl]

If by Italian New Wave (are we conflating French New Wave with the Italian Neo-Realism movement that Fellini himself departed from?) we mean Nino Rota's amazing score, then yes, Nine has always been vastly different than 8 1/2. I never had a problem with that.

I feel like even trying to make the musical an exact replica of the film is pretty impossible. It is stream of consciousness, a series of dreams. And when you move it to a film adaptation, you really don't have a good filmmaker to do that successfully.

[henrikegerman]

I liked that the movie Nine further connected the show to 8 1/2 and the Italian new wave, and that the plot of the movie is more like 8 1/2's. For instance, it's great that the movie had the balls to return the Carla-Guido relationship to the semi-tragic one Sandra Milo and Marcello Mastroaianni had in Fellini's film, as opposed to its relative sugarcoating in the show - for my money the weakest part of the libretto adaptation.

But it's a case of two steps forward, ten steps back. Certain positives of the screenplay don't change the fact that Nine is a very good show that was made into a very bad movie. And it certainly doesn't change the fact that Cinema Italiano is an idiotic number - the other new songs were fine.

[Dollypop]

The recent revival of GODSPELL interpolated "Beautiful City" that had been written for the movie. It turned out to be one of the most touching moments in the show because Hunter Parrish, followed by Cordon Bleu, did very effective jobs singing the song. The song was also woven into the finale of the show.


Long Live God!

[fashionguru_23]

I know its not the best, but according to Wikipedia, Better Than A Dream was added during the original run of Bells Are Ringing, and then in the film. Also, in the published script in the book "The New York Musicals of Comden and Green", Better Than A Dream is included in the script. It is also listed on Tams-Witmark's site as being included in the leasing of the show.

And I remember reading (perhaps in "The Sound of Music Companion"?) that I believe Oscar Hammerstein who said that he never liked "An Ordinary Couple", because Maria and the Captain weren't an ordinary couple. They were something special.

[JoeKv99]

Well Oscar Hammerstein is incorrect. That much seems obvious.

[EricMontreal22]

An Ordinary Couple is one of my least fave R&H songs... Whoever called it funereal was spot on.

[newintown]

That Hammerstein story doesn't ring true for two reasons:

1) He wrote "An Ordinary Couple" and kept it in the show for the entire run, and

2) He didn't write the lyrics for "Something Good" (they were by Rodgers, because Hammerstein was long dead).

If you don't like the song, you don't like it; but to say it's an inherently worse song than any other is just foolishness.

[degrassifan]

Oscar Hammerstein and Richard Rodgers never liked "An Ordinary Couple." Rodgers stated, "It is kind of an ordinary song. In fact, if Oscar had not been so ill when we were trying out the stage version of the show, we would have written a replacement song back then." Even Mary Martin disliked singing the song whenever she got to the scene where Maria and Georg confess their love for each other.

When it was time for make the movie, Ernest Lehman loved the song, but Robert Wise and Saul Chaplain hated it (although later on, Lehman admitted that Wise was right). They approached Rodgers about writing a new love song, and he happily agreed. He confided to Irwin Kostal over lunch one day, "I never liked that song. It's about two people telling each other how ordinary they are. She was a nun who left the convent, and he was an honored naval Captain. They were far from ordinary!"

I think "Ordinary Couple" is a nice, simple song, but the message behind "Something Good" speaks more to me.

[darquegk]

Comedian-slash-crooner Seth MacFarlane sings a lovely "Something Good," although ironically the tempo he takes it at is slower than most versions of the "dirge-like" "Ordinary Couple."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwdUPuGlbVQ

[GlindatheGood22]

I like both Mein Herr and Maybe This Time, but I don't think either should be added to the stage version of Cabaret. You've got to remember that Liza's Sally is a completely different animal than the one portrayed on stage. Mein Herr is a song about a woman of the world, which the stage Sally most certainly is not. Don't Tell Mama is much more "Sally." As for Maybe This Time, it's a level of introspection that Sally Bowles never reaches. Also, it's a peek into her psyche, which I don't think should happen until the title song. Just my two cents. I'm very particular about how I like my Cabaret. :)

[EricMontreal22]

It's too bad Hammerstein didn't write the lyrics for Something Good--they always bug me a little (though I love the song--if for some reason I ever staged Music, I would keep the Broadway version as is, except I would replace Ordinary Couple with Something Good.)

I love both Cabaret songs mentioned, but I kinda agree that, despite how well they worked on stage in the Mendes/Marshall production, I think they don't quite fit the play's version of Sally. Maybe This Time of course was written as a stand alone song long before the Cabaret film.

[EricMontreal22]

I don't think the movie version of "The Glamorous Life" from Night Music has been mentioned yet. I *love* the song, for many reasons it's one of my top Sondheim songs. As a teen I was lucky enough to see the Judi Dench/RNT revival of the musical on my first trip to London and I don't think the mashup of the movie and stage versions of the song that was used really worked at all.

Partly because the two songs really don't sound good done together (they make some of Glee's mashups sound brilliant in comparison), and partly because the film's Glamorous Life was written so well for film treatment--to be sung over various different scenes, etc (it, along with the excellent Weekend in the Country section were the two parts of the film Sondheim apparently mapped out specifically how they should be edited, and it shows as they work much better as pieces of film than any other song--or scen--in the movie).

[GlindatheGood22]

I too adore the movie version of The Glamorous Life, but it would be completely out of place on a stage.

[Wilmingtom]

Something Good is a pretty song but An Ordinary Couple is better dramatically. The audience knows something the characters don't, which is that their lives will be far from ordinary. Dramatic irony bests just a pretty ditty.

[Someone in a Tree2]

What, no votes of support for "LOVE TAKES TIME" to open the next revival of ALNM?

Just joking, of course-- that's gotta to be one of the all-time worst stage-to-film additions to a score ever.

[degrassifan]

"Something Good is a pretty song but An Ordinary Couple is better dramatically. The audience knows something the characters don't, which is that their lives will be far from ordinary. Dramatic irony bests just a pretty ditty."

Hmmm...never even thought about it that way before! Great insight!