SIDE SHOW coming back- Bill Condon!

[taboo123]

WHHAAAAA??????

http://broadwayworld.com/article/BWW-TV-SIDE-SHOW-Scoop-Bill-Russell-Spills-Details-About-New-Bill-Condon-Helmed-Revival-Production-20120621


BWW TV scoop.

nice

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

k

[gravity87]

So excited that they are reviving SIDE SHOW, I've never had a chance to see a production but have loved loved loved that cast album forever! This is great news.

Also, does anyone know anything about THE LAST SMOKER IN AMERICA, the show that Bill Russell is also working on right now?

[wicked1492]

Does anyone know who was in the Roundabout reading that he said took place a few years ago? This interview got my VERY excited.

Also - @gravity87, regarding THE LAST SMOKER IN AMERICA, I saw the production in Ohio and I had a great time. The book was a little clunky in places, a few songs were completely out of place style-wise, but I'm sure that's been tightened up in the 2 years that it's been since then. The Dad, John Bolton, and neighbor character, Natalie Venetia Belcon (original AVE Q Gary Coleman) were in the cast I saw, but the mother and son are different actors. I enjoyed it, but it's nothing groundbreaking.

[jamiekennywicked]

Erin Davie, Betsy Wolfe, Aaron Lazar, Jefferson Mays, Bobby Steggert took part in the 2008 reading.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

I wonder what Condon is like as a stage director. As a film director, I think he gets really good performances out of people (Jennifer Hudson has never been as good as she was in Dreamgirls. She's actually never been good in anything else. I even thought he got a great performance out of Kristen Stewart in Breaking Dawn), but his overall direction tends to be lacking, bogging things down with unnecessary distractions.

[taboo123]

I felt he did a wonderful job with Dreamgirls. In terms of content and storyline, he really did a great job keeping it intact without sacrificing much and the transfer to film was seamless. Not like other musical films of late that have been horrifically butchered - rock of ages, rent, etc..

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

In terms of content, he jettisoned more than half the music. It's disingenuous to claim that other movie musicals were butchered, and then ignore that fact.

Not to mention his almost fetishistic need to beat the point over the head that his Dreams really were the Supremes.

Dreamgirls is an okay movie, but it's stuffed with so much unnecessary added stuff (mentioning for no reason that Curtis now had an ex wife, the Loretta Devine stuff, shifting the story to Detroit, giving Effie and CC a parent that is still alive, that embarrassing scene about Martin Luther King, the equally embarrassing scene with John Lithgow and John Krasinski, completely changing the relationship between Deena and her mother, all the inexplicable lines about Deena not having a good voice, etc, etc) that I think eventually it collapses under the weight of its own self-importance.

[taboo123]

oh sure- that's hollywood for ya.

But I think that rule applies to most, if not all musicals that transfer to film. We can pick around and find that basically no musical film has a direct transfer from the stage without a little touch of here and there added or deleted- to the mix.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Way to move the goalposts there. It's not that he made changes, it's that his changes are at best distracting and at worst, detrimental.

At any rate, I just wonder if his eye for unnecessary and distracting detail for his film direction will translate to his stage direction.