The Sound of Music Live!

[Soapsuds]

[P.J.]

Aren't they handsome? I don't get Joe and his cap thing...but whatevs.

I noticed John Bolger...I didn't notice his flub, but I know others have mentioned it.

[Khan]

Did I watch? No. Rodgers & Hammerstein (and SOM in particular) isn't my "thing." But I do give props to anyone even halfway willing to tackle a problem role like Maria, especially in this cynical age of ours. (And all those who continue to waste their time sending hate tweets to Carrie Underwood -- a girl who just did her job, quite frankly -- need to go somewhere.)

[Khan]

Another one who bought the hype, eh? Look, I'm not saying La Streisand was awful in "Funny Girl" (and obviously, I'm going on the movie, not the original B'way production, since I wasn't, you know, alive to have witnessed it?) but some people need to stop acting as if that performance was the celluloid equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount. She was good, a'ight? But she wasn't all that. (And that line -- "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world" -- was just about the dumbest ever.) Oh, where was I?

[hsfolk]

it was so bad

[DramatistDreamer]

Audra McDonald is a Broadway baby so I'd expect her to be her usual flawless self.

Yes, it was smart to do the stage script rather than the film script. I'm not sure whether not having an audience was the main technical issue but I can see whether it would be distracting.

I'm not entirely a musical theater person. I'm an avowed 'straight' theater (that's what non musical theater is called) geek so I'd probably rather see Death of A Salesman or Fences

When I was a kid PBS used to be good for live (non musical) performance. Now it's mostly Great Performances, comprised of either Opera (which I like but a little goes a long way where I'm concerned) or some abridged musical version (Follies or Sondheim).

I did however like when they did Company a few years ago.

I wish PBS would do more live (or even recorded in front of live audience) Dance and Theater.

For that reason alone, I did appreciate the attempts by the producers of the Sound of Music live to broadcast.

[EricMontreal22]

I loved the live South Pacific (which was a glorious production in the first place) but that's sorta a different animal. This wa meant to be more like the old 1957 R&H CInderella--live but blocked for TV. I don't like that as much, and I agree an audience response would have been better since the book is clearly intended for moments when they pause for the audience to laugh, to applaud, etc.

[DRW50]

She liked the selling of star quality and talent winning the day, although she had some criticisms. As time passed she felt like Streisand was wasting her talent (she panned Funny Lady, and made some homophobic comments about Streisand's male fans...well, homophobic in my opinion, anyway).

[EricMontreal22]

I love "straight" theatre too--to be honest my love of musicals is more based around certain shows--Sondheim, or the direction of Michael Bennett or Fosse or Robbins, etc.

Follies has not been filmed, BTW though they filmed SOME of the 1985 concert and PBS has aired that--maybe that's what you mean? And of course in a way those are different as they tend to be performances that already would have been staged, but PBS decided to pony up and pay to tape them (PBS or someone else--the Company concert which was surprisingly good was first filmed for cinema broadcast and PBS picked it up later, for example.)

I wish we'd get more theatre and dance on PBS in general. They used to have American Playhouse which would do many plays (albeit, while often they used the casts of a current stage version they were mostly re-staged for TV audiences and not filmed live.) Now we get much more concerts and American Plahouse seems to be gone. Great Performances likes to show Il Divo style stuff more often than not, and Live from Lincoln Center (who aired South Pacific) is rarer and rarer (and a special case--those programs, due to union laws, are only allowed tobe shown twice and not to be released on home media.) It really is a waste. Of course for a while even fairly recently the networks were airing some of these too--again not live, but CBS I believe in the mid 90s did a TV adaptation fo Salesman using the Dustin Hoffman cast that had done a revival, as well as the Jessica Lange/Baldwin Streetcar which again used the revival cast but was restaged for cameras. And PBS' Dance in America program seems completely dead sadly.

At least they didn't do what they did when they filmed the Hugh Jackman Oklahoma which was re-stage it on a soundstage for TV and then insert fake audience reaction shots (!) I found that oddly disconcerting.

Anyway I do hope this leads to more--and perhaps more daring choices: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/06/sound-of-music-live-ratings-nbc_n_4399343.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment&ir=Entertainment

Actually what bothers me about Funny Girl the film is that Streisand had become such a name (thanks largely to the stage version and her TV specials) that the film was re-written to focus almost entirely on her--the often interesting side characters and subplots from the stage version (which is a flawed musical anyway despite a great score) were largely cut, etc. And Funny Lady despite a Kander and Ebb score is pretty bad, though I'd be curious what Streisand said (was this at the time or more recent?) She also was horribly miscast at way too young an age in the bloated Hello Dolly

[DRW50]

I'm sorry. I meant Kael made the comments. Not Streisand.

[EricMontreal22]

Oh well THAT doesn't surprise me. I love reading Kael, like I said, but she had horribly homophobic tastes (despite thinking I think that she was very liberal when it came to them.)

[DRW50]

Well it was a long time ago, but I cringed when I read some of it. I could make a list but no one is here for that.

I'm glad the production didn't care about casting a black woman as Mother Abbess, especially after I learned that Audra got hate tweets (Twitter is garbage) over it.

[Soapsuds]

I posted the pic just for you. Joe looks just like his mom. MP is always a cutie...miss him on tv.

[EricMontreal22]

Yeah there was a lot of arguing about that. It's not even outside the realm of reality if we don't see it as colour blind casting--as some magazines have pointed out, nuns came from around the world and there were ones from African descent in Europe at the time...

[DramatistDreamer]

I loved American Playhouse. In fact, I distinctly remember seeing Amanda Plummer for the first time alongside her father Christopher Plummer (speaking of SOM) and it's funny but for years I only associated Christopher Plummer with theater. It was only about 10 years ago, while I was watching the film version of SOM that I actually discovered it was Christopher Plummer-- it never occurred to me!

I grew up watching Alive from Off Center, American Playhouse, I saw some of Dance in America's later offerings. I miss that type of programming so much!

I did see the Dustin Hoffman TV adaptation of Death of a Salesman. By and large, I'm not the biggest fan of filmic/screen adaptations of stageplays. There is something that usually rings hollow for me when I watch them. I think they usually do a better job bringing movie/musicals to the screen than with non-musical theater.

Having said that, I am still interested in seeing the film adaptation of August, Osage County, though I'd still prefer the idea of Meryl Streep on a stage doing the actual play.

Speaking of Fosse, I've been meaning to read his latest biography. I hear it's one juicy read!

The last theater related biography I read was about playwright/director/screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky and it was a pretty interesting read. He used to date Elizabeth Hubbard, who was cast in one of his plays, a behemoth of a play based on the life of Josef Stalin, of all people. I think Elizabeth Hubbard portrayed Stalin's wife, if you can believe it. From what I read, it seemed the production took years off of everyone's life.