Weekend Plans Post: Catching Up On Musical Theater

I want to say that the first musical I ever went to was Annie. Checking the internets, it appears to have visited Detroit, Michigan back in 1982 at the Fisher Theater for a month between Apr 13, 1982 and May 02, 1982 and so that means that I was around 9 (“AND A HALF!”). I was absolutely entranced. I loved the story, I loved the songs, I loved the schmaltz.

I’m now old enough to know that the musical is something that I should snicker at but I was nowhere near that age at the time. We bought an 8-track of “The Original Cast Recording” and the google tells me that it’s from 1977 so that’s the original Broadway production we were listening to for about a year. The magic of Annie was captured by the movie, more or less. The movie was pretty good because it had Albert Finney, but it wasn’t as good as seeing it on the stage. We watched the movie a handful of times. We wore the 8-track tape *OUT*.

A couple of years later, we got tickets to see The Wiz at the Masonic Temple. While I remember Annie mostly for the music, I remember The Wiz for the absolute spectacle. Costumes and sets and dancing. The Movie for The Wiz has a handful of bright spots (Michael Jackson, Mabel King) but I don’t remember that much about it… but, dang, the stage production? That was just breathtaking. I don’t know that I’d ever seen that many people on a stage before. And it was bursting off of the stage. Googling the movie tells me that the movie not only bombed but it was also critically panned. Huh. Bummer.

Those were my first real experiences with noticing “hey, the stage production was *GREAT*… the movies didn’t have the magic.”

That went on for a while. I saw Little Shop of Horrors in 1987 at the Orpheum Theatre and was amazed while, remembering the movie, the only thing that really stands out from the movie is Steve Martin’s character.

I’ve seen Les Misérables two or three times and was blown away each time. When I heard that they were doing a movie version of the musical, instead of getting excited, I winced.

The less said about the difference between the stage performance of Cats and the movie version, the better.

But, recently, my attention was drawn to Dear Evan Hansen.

This was a musical that, apparently, was FREAKIN’ HUGE on Broadway. It won Best Musical and Ben Platt won Best Performance and it won Best Book of a Musical and Best Score and Best Orchestrations. It knocked it out of the park: 9 Tony nominations, 6 Tony awards.

A lot was going on and so I kinda missed it entirely in 2017. However, someone brought it up a few weeks back and talked about some of the songs and that made me curious and I got to googling and I learned that this was Ben’s shot at an EGOT. He had a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Musical Performance in a Daytime Program. He had a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album. He had a Tony for Best Performance. (As it is, ‘e got a Razzie.)

But that made me curious and so I compared Ben Platt’s performance of Waving Through A Window at the 2017 Tony Awards to his performance in the movie. Check it out:

There are things that you can do with a 24 year old on the stage that just do *NOT* work with close-ups with a camera on a 28 year old. Doing more research and there was stuff that was changed between the stage play and the movie in the story (where the stage play was awkward, the movie managed to be creepy). And, on top of that, the whole thing where Connor writes his name on Evan’s cast and you can see it from the cheap seats in the theater makes it an obvious caricature that is intended to communicate that the cast was signed. You sign your name that big in a movie? It’s not a friendly gesture, it’s a jerk move.

Yet another incomplete translation from stage to screen, I guess.

It’s coming to Denver this summer. Huh. So that’s something to think about, I guess. There’s just something about live theater. Maybe I’ll investigate that this weekend.

So… what’s on your docket?