bostonman

Depends on the class, and of course the age range as well. In our college theatre classes, we don't shy away from cursing when it makes sense to do so. One term that my teaching colleague and I have coined is the "oh shit moment" - it's that moment when you say something and then realize you shouldn't have - which is an impulse that often comes up in acting terms. But of course when I've taught this device to younger actors, I call it the "oh crap moment" lol. And then there was the fascinating discussion in class from a few weeks back - we had a student working on an Irving Berlin song ("The Secret Service") which refers at one point to "private dicks." I asked the student if she knew what she was singing about there, and there was some very funny awkward fumbling around as neither her nor the other students really knew, and of course thought it was a sexual reference. I think they were relieved to find out that it's short for "private detectives" lol. (She also didn't know what a "gumshoe" was. Kids - I don't know what's wrong with these kids today, lol...)

Are HIPPA [sic] laws anything like Bob Hope's partner NORM Crosby? It's HIPAA. ?

Norm Crosby was a comedian, who just recently passed away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_Crosby I wonder if samhexum meant singer/songwriter David Crosby? Or even comedian/molester Bill Crosby [sic]? ? (WilliamM - I'm KIDDING, before you have a conniption fit...)

I watch Cuomo, but his schtick annoys me. The way he abruptly barks “NEXT!!!!!!!!!!” at the end of each segment. His stupid little pet names for other colleagues on the show (like “The Wizard Of Odds” - who is also an annoying piece of work himself - and the way he always refers to Don Lemon as “Dee Lemon” as they transition into Lemon’s show.) He is also one of those hosts who consistently talks over his guests. And he has one of those kitschy “trendy” platitudes to drive the show - his is “Let’s get after it” (comparable to Dr. Drew’s “let’s get started” and Stephanie Ruhle’s “let’s get smarter” etc) which gets old fast.

His ad now says 10 inches. ?

As you may know, there are a whole series of Nunsense sequels now, each one worse than the one before. Writer Dan Goggin (music/lyrics/book), who was never a truly great songwriter to begin with, just squeezes thinner and thinner stuff for each new show - songs, weirder and weirder concepts, and the same old same old Catholic jokes. It's painful. I can say this especially because I've done some of them. I took over as music director for the last 3 years of the long Boston run of the original Nunsense - and that was a lot of fun (and also a really valuable experience for me as I was starting to "cut my teeth" as a young professional music director in Boston). A year into that gig, Goggin has just written Nunsense II (The Second Coming) - and was eager for our company to do the area premiere. We wound up doing both shows in rep, which was craziness, because both shows had an identical structure (essentially all of the sequels do) and it could be tough to keep the various materials straight. (Weekends were uniquely challenging, as we did the 2 shows chronologically on Saturdays, but then backwards on Sundays.) At the time it was hard to judge whether Nun 2 was bad or just too unfamiliar, but all we knew was that when we reached that 2nd Sunday show and were back "home" to end the week, it felt really good, lol. (And then many weeks, exhausted as we were, we went to a favorite haunt, the Border Cafe in Harvard Square, and had margaritas and mexican food and had a blast, lol. A great way to end the performance week.) Then we closed. But it wasn't long after that when I got a call from the producer as to whether I'd like to play keyboards for an upcoming run of Nunsense 3. This was the "country" version - Sister Amnesia's Country Nunsense Jamboree. I wasn't dying to do it from an artistic standpoint, but it was a new show, the pay was good, and one of my former Nunsense colleagues was playing Amnesia - plus Goggin (who I had met briefly but not really ever worked with) was directing, and the original Nunsense musical director from NYC would be leading the band - so hey,. why not? I'll spare the details of the experience (it was a gig, nothing more than that, unfortunately), except to say that the show didn't sell well at all to Boston audiences. It was supposed to be a 6-week run with a possible/probable extension. We weren't going to be able to make it that far. Though I didn't have a great time working for Goggin, I have to say I do thank him immensely for the gesture he made - he wound up putting up enough of his own money into the production so that we could at least play out the 6 weeks and get paid what we had been promised. Thank you for that, Danny. Later on, a local regional theatre produced Nunsense 4 (Nuncrackers, the Christmas version) which I saw (but turned down the chance to do when I heard the CD), and I did wind up playing for their later production of Meshuggah-Nuns (that's either the 5th or 6th show - can't remember - it's the nuns on a sinking cruise ship with the members of a cruise company of Fiddler, with both Jewish and Poseidon Adventure jokes included) - and only because the friend who was musical director really needed a reliable sub, lol. To be honest, if I ever got the chance to do another production of the original show, I think I would - it's not the greatest material in the world, but it's fun, and it feels like Shakespeare compared to the other shows, lol. But those sequels again - no thanks... o_Oo_Oo_Oo_O

I'd be scared for Liza doing all that flying, lol. But I think Liza could be Captain Hook lol. ?

I would kill to see the looks on Jane and Michael Banks' faces as Liza started to belt out "A Spoonful Of Sugar" (makes the vallium go down??) ?

It's not all that uncommon for new songs to be written/replaced when new stars appear in a show. Merman had new songs added in Hello, Dolly. The song "A Change In Me" was added to Beauty And The Beast when Toni Braxton joined the show (and the song has stayed ever since). Or, sometimes stars demand changes - Merman, again, was upset that latecomers were missing her sing "I Get A Kick Out Of You" at the top of Anything Goes in 1936, so Porter cut the song "Buddie Beware" towards the end of the show and replaced it with a reprise of "Kick." My guess is that either Liza didn't much like "Crazy World" or wanted something that was more specific to her talents. Or, that the producers decided she should have a song uniquely hers.

A show that should be in this thread that I didn't see live on Broadway, but I did experience through the commercially released original cast video - the stage adaptation of Victor/Victoria. While the film is really fun and funny, and well-produced/cast/directed/etc, the stage show was a terrible chore to have to sit through. And the patchwork score (you may remember that Henry Mancini died as the show was being written, and the consistently uneven composer Frank Wildhorn filled in) is just not very satisfying. ("Paris Makes Me Horny" may be among the worst songs ever written for a musical.) Famously, Julie Andrews (who does indeed turn in a tour de force performance on the aforementioned video, even if it's nowhere near as sharp as in the film) got the only Tony nomination for the show, and she turned down the award, claiming that the rest of the production was "egregiously overlooked." I can't agree, Julie, I think the Tony committee was right.

A wonderful colleague that I team teach with admitted today that First Date was among the worst shows he has seen on Broadway. (This in conjunction with one of our students who is working on a song from it, lol.) Anyone care to comment on that show? I never saw it, but I feel the score is ok, but not particularly outstanding.

Fun scenario - hot young jockdude tells me he's got to shave his pits for the team, so he's letting me have one last shot at taking care of them while he still has the hair. So I spend a long session with those hairy pits...then he lets me watch him shave them (hmm yeah), and then he has me work on them all over again...;-) (Sorry to but into the gallery pics, but I think some commentary is warranted at times lol.)

I just have to comment for a sec - usually, hair is one of my favorite things about armpits. But seeing all these shaved pics is getting me aroused too. I think it's the contour of the musculature, and how deep it makes the pits seem. I know it's pretty common for swimmers (and perhaps some other athletes) to shave their pits - I'm finding that more alluring than usual right now lol. Thanks for the awesome pics, and keep 'em coming...;-)

Mrs. Naugatuck, hands down. ?

So sorry to hear about your mom. You're right about Golden Girls - that was a perfect quartet. And it's among the reasons why the sequel (The Golden Palace, without Bea) didn't work.

Golden Girls was fun (and they did some great "musical" episodes and had constant references to musicals as well- notably a few sly references to Lady In The Dark), though my heart really belongs to Maude. And yes, Bea did Bea Arthur On Broadway, which was very good (I didn't see it, but the CD is nice). She does this great little musical trick (again, with a very slight nod to a device in Lady In The Dark) where she keeps singing a bit of a famous song's bridge (but not the rest of the refrain), always trailing off into conversation, and only later sings the complete song. The first time I heard this, I found myself absolutely racking my brain to figure out what the song was, knowing I knew it very well, but i couldn't figure it out. When she finally sang the whole thing, it was a great revelation. Actually, revising the above, one of those Lady In the Dark moments was on Maude - a solo episode with her talking to a psychiatrist, and finding herself unable to remember a song her father used to sing to her. (In this case, it was "Where or When," not "My Ship").

During the show?? (just kidding...) At Liberty was a lot of fun - AND very moving as well. One of my least favorite musical theatre songs is "Something Good" - one of the two songs Rodgers attempted to write by himself for the film of The Sound of Music. I have no hesitation saying how much I despise it. (The tune is fine, it's the lyrics that are horrendous.) But in At Liberty, Stritch used that song as her finale, and it was so incredibly touching given the personal history she related during the show, that she got the tears flowing. (And let alone that it was a ballad, which one would think was not Stritch's wheelhouse lol.) I will never forget that.

Ha! I don't remember, but I don't think so (or I probably would have remembered, lol). Though, regardless of a different comedic style, the "icewater/vodka" scene still had me on the floor. Love that!!

I wish that I had been able to see the original Broadway company live. That was truly a perfect cast. I did see a summerstock production with Jo-Anne Worley as Tottendale. And she was very good in her own way, but she had a very different approach than Georgia Engel did, so thing played very differently - and it took some getting used to.

I wish I had been able to see that first production (at the old Playwrights Horizons). But it WAS fun seeing Stephen Bogardus, the original Whizzer, still playing the role on the 1990's tour. And I really enjoyed Andrew Rannells in the recent revival, though I remember a lot of people not liking him so much.

No - just that the idea that either one has to be gay to like musicals, or that one who likes musicals has to be gay, is really idiotic. It has nothing to do with snowflakery.

Perhaps because I've known the show for a very long time (first hearing the original "March Of The Falsettos" when the album was first released in the early 80's), I find the story pretty easy to follow. Your mileage may vary, lol. Bill Finn can be a very quirky writer, but I really like his stuff.

Unnecessary stereotype.

Ghost IS painful. Once is not really my thing, but I had a friend on the tour and I enjoyed her performance. I saw the older tour of Falsettos and the more recent revival on Broadway. My only complaint about the recent revival was the set - just seemed ugly to me. I wasn't very familiar with Billy Elliot until the HD from London was shown in 2014, and I was really moved by the show. Then I wound up doing a regional production a few years later, and it was truly one of the highlights of my career (and that's not hyperbole). And I have to say, though I'm not a big fan of pre-recorded music in Broadway shows, I'm ultimately glad that the music for the Swan Lake "dream ballet" (where Billy dances with his "older self" and they fly in the air as a part of the sequence) was recorded so I didn't have to play or conduct, and just watch that dance every night. So magical and emotional. Our Billy later went on to win the Boston equivalent of the best actor Tony (the Elliot Norton Awards), beating out two very seasoned adult actors in other productions. ? I still miss that production.

I'm sorry you feel that way. I was musical director for the Boston regional premiere, and I had a wonderful time. I know some people feel Act I isn't very good, or not necessary, but I love the way it sets up the world we expect (from the documentary) in Act II. I also think it's a very evocative and whimsical score. Our Big Edie (Act I)/Little Edie (Act II) in that production was to have done the regional premiere of War Paint (same composing team) last spring, and I was really looking forward to seeing that...but...well...the pandemic happened, and...