The Sound of Music Live!

[marceline]

It looks like Annie's already being revamped with Quvenzhané Wallis as Annie and Jamie Foxx as Daddy Warbucks.

I understand the desire to make the next musical one that is a little more obscure but I think it would be better to go with a bland, mainstream choice that will bring in the ratings over the holiday. To that end I think the next project should be Meet Me in St. Louis.

If not that, then something along the lines of Singing in the Rain, Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, or The King and I.

[EricMontreal22]

Oh I forgot all about the new urban Annie. Yeah, that would make it definitely out. I wouldn't be opposed to them doing the quite different stage version of Poppins...

[DRW50]

After all the sneering about how dare anyone replace Julie Andrews, I think they might not use any of her films for a while.

I know it won't happen but I wish they could do some of the Warner Bros. musicals - Footlight Parade, 42nd Street, Gold Diggers, what have you. I know they can't do what Busby Berkeley did, but they could try their own style. The themes of poverty and hope against hopelessness would resonate today.

[AdelaideCate007]

I didn't even know she played Annie Oakley lol. I saw Reba McEntire who I thought was excellent. I loved the Kiss Me Kate revival (saw it with Marin Mazzie both on Broadway and the West End ironically enough) and I remember thinking it was different than the movie and the community theatre version I'd seen.

Hal Prince's broadway version was the one I saw and I also loved it. I didn't realise till years later that it been rewritten so much. My first exposure to Cabaret was the Sam Mendes revival with Natasha Richardson so the movie really shocked me when I saw it later.

I know they won't touch Into The Woods with the movie coming out, but maybe there was another Sondheim show they could do. A Little Night Music or maybe Sunday in the Park with George?

[quartermainefan]

 

 

Years ago they did a showboat with Shelly Burch ("delilah" from OLTL)  and she was excellent.  She could have been a bigger star if she went in another direction.

 

[EricMontreal22]

That's the Papermill version they recorded for Live from Lincoln Center we mentioned above--and WOW. I always thought she was a great Julie, but had NO idea the OLTL connection.

Carl, you prob know this but there's already a stage version of 42nd Street that was a huge hit in the early 80s and again ten years or so again and it's actually one of the better screen to stage adaptations. I wouldn't mind seeing them doing something with it on TV--and I think, though it has no kids, it is relatively family friendly.

[EricMontreal22]

Yeah Susan went in and did something like 3-6 weeks in that Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun I *think* between Bernadette and Reba--or else as a replacement when one of them was on vacation. I've heard contradictory reports on her performance but the gist seems to be she wasn't technically very good at all but got by on her charm. Shockingly I can't find any bootleg clips...

I grew up with Cabaret and, maybe due to a local production, I already knew that the movie used, at least in the subplot, completely different characters (though like the play, both are taken from Isherwood's Berlin Stories, which I had read by my mid teens.) I actually like both the movie and the play for different reasons, so I'm ok with that, though they could always film the play... But again, hardly family friendly (though the Mendes/Marshall version, which I saw on tour with a very new to theatre Kate Shindle--I remember reading that she had just been a Miss America and was horrified to see her but she was great, and of course has become a respected theatre star.) The Mendes script actually is almost the same as the Hal Prince 1967 original, but they made it crystal clear that Cliff was gay or at least bi, and made the Cabaret much more raunchy--for a Broadway (as opposed to Off Broadway) musical in 67 Cabaret was already seen as very shocking, though out of town they flirted with adding back in more of the gay element (of course Isherwood hid much of it in his original Berlin Stories until he published his true memoirs of that time much later as Christopher and his Kind.)

[quartermainefan]

I had the good fortune to see both versions on Broadway. Most people who watched L&O I don't think realized Jerry Orbach was a tremendous talent who had a terrific singing voice. The later version did not have as good a lead, but it had superior dancing. I don't think it would work without an audience.

I could see them redoing (again) Bye Bye Birdie though.

[DRW50]

I'd heard about them (mostly the original, as it had Lisa Brown).

I'd really like to see something like this tried on TV. The movie version of 42nd Street had such great production numbers, beyond just the women being half-naked. There's a set piece showing a woman in apartment trying to escape her abusive boyfriend, dancing with a man when she gets down to the street from her fire escape, then the boyfriend finds her and stabs her, all with a panorama of city life around them.

Jerry had such a big voice and presence.

Is the Jackman version of Oklahoma the same as the movie? The movie was actually quite dark.

[marceline]

That would be a good choice.

[ChitHappens]

Audra McDonald! NUF SAID!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H3C3x7zKMA