And it's only the things you do and say that you regret
Between the spring-forward of daylight savings and the fact that I am really not sleeping more than a couple of hours a night, I have spent this entire day literally having difficulty making my eyes focus, but the HFA is showing Peter Lorre's The Lost One (Der Verlorene, 1951) in April and I have put it on my calendar. Maybe by then I will be able to think enough to write about anything at all.
1.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
selkie tagged me for the women of the Highland Games. I appreciate it.
2. I really like this poem: Sally O'Brien, "Danger Island."
3. I suspect that if Adam Gopnik were going to write primarily plays instead of nonfiction, he would have done more than the occasional collaboration by now, but this passage in his recent review of Andrew Lloyd Webber's memoir Unmasked, in which he offers his own opinion as to why "the history of the musical is a history of men and women shouting at one another"—
But my own theory for why musical comedies make people miserable, richly borne out by Lloyd Webber's memoir, is that there is no natural author of a musical—that is, no one who assumes authority, more or less inevitably, owing to the nature of the form. The director, by contrast, is the natural author of a movie. He coaxes out the performances, allows the improvs, and makes the cuts. A choreographer, similarly, is the natural author of the dance. Most of the time, the natural author is the actual author, and the exceptions leave us grumbling. Authors write books, even if editors mightily assist.
But a musical has no natural author. It has five or six or seven. The composer is the actual author of the most powerful emotional beats in the piece—we remember Richard Rodgers's music in "Carousel" far better than any other element—but composers tend to be inarticulate and are often outtalked. The book writer, as he is archaically still called—elsewhere, simply, the playwright—is the most important maker; but though he provides the structure in which the songs may take place, no one recalls the structure, only the songs. The director is often powerful to the point of omnipotence, but no one except special groups of insiders will ever think of the show as his. The lyricist, meanwhile, has a reasonable claim to being the true author of the show—the music's emotional force takes on specific meaning only through the words it accompanies—but he often ends up the most invisible of all. Meanwhile, the choreographer believes himself to be the natural author of all the things the director is doing badly, but is also sure that the director will get the credit even if the choreographer fixes them. Add to this the truth that songs that delighted salons of backers bore audiences silly, and that the things that worked perfectly in rehearsal die a dog's death onstage, and you have a natural abyss of authority. You need only bring in the panic of pure ignorance to produce an atmosphere like that of a third-world country after the President has left the palace and the mobs are surging in the streets.
—desperately makes me want him to write a backstage musical comedy. Book and lyrics, of course.
1.
selkie tagged me for the women of the Highland Games. I appreciate it.2. I really like this poem: Sally O'Brien, "Danger Island."
3. I suspect that if Adam Gopnik were going to write primarily plays instead of nonfiction, he would have done more than the occasional collaboration by now, but this passage in his recent review of Andrew Lloyd Webber's memoir Unmasked, in which he offers his own opinion as to why "the history of the musical is a history of men and women shouting at one another"—
But my own theory for why musical comedies make people miserable, richly borne out by Lloyd Webber's memoir, is that there is no natural author of a musical—that is, no one who assumes authority, more or less inevitably, owing to the nature of the form. The director, by contrast, is the natural author of a movie. He coaxes out the performances, allows the improvs, and makes the cuts. A choreographer, similarly, is the natural author of the dance. Most of the time, the natural author is the actual author, and the exceptions leave us grumbling. Authors write books, even if editors mightily assist.
But a musical has no natural author. It has five or six or seven. The composer is the actual author of the most powerful emotional beats in the piece—we remember Richard Rodgers's music in "Carousel" far better than any other element—but composers tend to be inarticulate and are often outtalked. The book writer, as he is archaically still called—elsewhere, simply, the playwright—is the most important maker; but though he provides the structure in which the songs may take place, no one recalls the structure, only the songs. The director is often powerful to the point of omnipotence, but no one except special groups of insiders will ever think of the show as his. The lyricist, meanwhile, has a reasonable claim to being the true author of the show—the music's emotional force takes on specific meaning only through the words it accompanies—but he often ends up the most invisible of all. Meanwhile, the choreographer believes himself to be the natural author of all the things the director is doing badly, but is also sure that the director will get the credit even if the choreographer fixes them. Add to this the truth that songs that delighted salons of backers bore audiences silly, and that the things that worked perfectly in rehearsal die a dog's death onstage, and you have a natural abyss of authority. You need only bring in the panic of pure ignorance to produce an atmosphere like that of a third-world country after the President has left the palace and the mobs are surging in the streets.
—desperately makes me want him to write a backstage musical comedy. Book and lyrics, of course.
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I think you may have to hateread Andrew Lloyd Webber's memoir.
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That is a lovely poem.
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I've wanted to see it for years. I still don't think it's out on DVD in this country—if it is, it happened while I wasn't looking. It's another one of these actor-director one-offs and it is supposed to be great.
That is a lovely poem.
I really like Rattle.
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Okay, now I want Adam Gopnik to write a backstage musical comedy and I want him to write about Hamilton.
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The latter credit reminds me of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" with its "based on Homer's Odyssey," which meant it won for "Best Adapted Screenplay." Hamilton is about as close to Chernow's bio as "O Brother" was to Homer.
His one previous Broadway show, In the Heights, featured many of the same creative team but also credited Book by Quiara Alegría Hudes. "In the Heights" was also workshopped in many more places than "Hamilton." I remember seeing the earlier show at the O'Neill Theater Center near me in CT. Their website reminds me that it was in 2005. LMM has been generous to the O'Neill in recent years.