A Broadway Musical

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A Broadway Musical
Book
William F. Brown
Productions1978 Broadway

A Broadway Musical is a musical with a book by William F. Brown, lyrics by Lee Adams, and music by Charles Strouse. The Broadway production closed after 14 previews and only one performance on December 21, 1978.

The plot about a sleazy white

Sammy Davis, Jr.
When the star opts to leave the show, the playwright – who from the start had resisted turning his work into a musical – steps in and takes on the lead role in order to save the production.

Background and production

The creators hoped that the backstage story about the making of a musical would cash in on the success of

Las Vegas performers, blue-haired matinée ladies, and the black-themed musical itself. The Wiz proved to be Brown's only success.[1]

Following a dismal October–November tryout with

Morningside Heights, the producers fired most of the cast and creative personnel, including director/choreographer George Faison.[2] Gower Champion was called in to rescue the Broadway-bound production with only a month to go, but he feared that the show's defects were too serious to remedy and insisted on receiving a "Production supervised by" credit only.[1]

After 14 previews, the Broadway production opened and closed the same night at the

cast album was recorded during a live performance in December 1978.[4]

In 2017,

Feinstein's/54 Below in New York gave a concert presentation of A Broadway Musical, directed and produced by Robert W. Schneider. The cast included Clifton Davis, Jason Graae and Kyle Scatliffe.[5]

Song list

Characters and original Broadway cast

Critical response

Strouse wrote (in his memoir) that this was a "show he was proud of" because he and Adams had wanted to write a musical about their experiences with Sammy Davis, Jr., about white people writing for a "big, black musical star". They envisioned it as "funny, ironic ... and filled with life's imbalances."[6]

Mel Gussow, in his review for The New York Times, wrote that the idea was to write a spoof of Broadway intrigue and duplicity; "cynicism is rampant." There are jokes about blacks on Broadway, Jewish theater party women and lawyers with "steel clauses." The lyrics are not funny. Finally, Gussow wrote: "The cast performs with eagerness, even as the show sinks."[7]

Julius Novick of The Village Voice called it "the best Broadway musical since Platinum,"[2] a disaster that had opened the month before. Critic and theatre historian Ken Mandelbaum has described the show as "a genuine turkey... hopeless... [a] well-meaning but fatally underpowered evening. The Charles Strouse-Lee Adams score had its moments."[8] Mandelbaum noted that "the characters were all clichés. ... A shallow treatment of a theme with potential ... was capped with an absurd ending".[2]

References

  • Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops by Ken Mandelbaum, published by
    ISBN 0-312-06428-4
    )

Notes

  1. ^
    ISBN 0-312-33776-0
  2. ^ a b c Mandelbaum, p. 138
  3. ^ "A Broadway Musical Broadway Production", Playbill, accessed January 31, 2019
  4. ^ Cast recording
  5. ^ "Sarah Routh Ellis Joins A Broadway Musical at Feinstein's/54 Below", BroadwayWorld.com, accessed January 31, 2019
  6. ISBN 1402758898
    , p. 249
  7. ^ Gussow, Mel. "Stage: Musical About a Musical: Art Mimics Life", The New York Times, December 22, 1978, p. C3
  8. ^ Mandelbaum, Ken. "Looking BacK: '78-'79", Broadway.com, June 27, 2005, accessed January 31, 2019

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=A_Broadway_Musical&oldid=1193359391"