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Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Composer Tim Minchin Brings 'Groundhog Day' To Broadway
NPR: Composer Tim Minchin brings his musical adaptation of the film, Groundhog Day, to Broadway. It's the story of a cynical weatherman who is forced to relive the same day over and over again.
2 comments:
Claire Farrokh
said...
I've heard a number of things about Groundhog Day the musical, but none of them have been very positive. My brother saw the first preview of the show, and it stopped halfway through due to technical difficulties. When they stopped, they said it would be about fifteen minutes. About forty minutes later, they said it would be another thirty minutes. Finally, the director came out and said that something was wrong with set (the turntable aspect was broken) and that the cast would continue to run the show without the automation. Eventually, the cast gave up doing the dialogue and just ran all of the music, since the show was so over time. My brother said the music was fine, but forgettable, which makes me kind of sad because I like Tim Minchin's work a lot. The other thing that I've heard about Groundhog Day is that Andy Karl tore his ACL during a preview, and then came back to the show like four days later to perform for opening night. While I understand why he wanted to come back for the opening night performance, but it still is terrifying to think he was performing a very physical show on a torn ACL.
I'm not sure how I feel about this recent trend of adapting successful films into Broadway musicals. Waitress, Groundhog Day, et cetera et cetera--they are all adaptations of well known and successful movies. While certainly not all of them are bad--I found Waitress to be extremely well done, but I'm not so sure about how I feel about the general trend. It seems a bit, at least to me, that producers lack creativity on what to produce--and instead try to hop on the hype train of a movie and profit off the name. It worries me that professional commercial theatre isn't being super innovative, or at least as innovative as I gather it was 20 or 30 years ago. It's now all mediocre revivals and movie remakes. Of course, all theatre goes through phases, and it may kick back up, but the perceived lack of creativity is a little bothersome, at least to me. That said, I am curious to see this show, and see if it lives up to the hype, or maybe the lack thereof.
2 comments:
I've heard a number of things about Groundhog Day the musical, but none of them have been very positive. My brother saw the first preview of the show, and it stopped halfway through due to technical difficulties. When they stopped, they said it would be about fifteen minutes. About forty minutes later, they said it would be another thirty minutes. Finally, the director came out and said that something was wrong with set (the turntable aspect was broken) and that the cast would continue to run the show without the automation. Eventually, the cast gave up doing the dialogue and just ran all of the music, since the show was so over time. My brother said the music was fine, but forgettable, which makes me kind of sad because I like Tim Minchin's work a lot. The other thing that I've heard about Groundhog Day is that Andy Karl tore his ACL during a preview, and then came back to the show like four days later to perform for opening night. While I understand why he wanted to come back for the opening night performance, but it still is terrifying to think he was performing a very physical show on a torn ACL.
I'm not sure how I feel about this recent trend of adapting successful films into Broadway musicals. Waitress, Groundhog Day, et cetera et cetera--they are all adaptations of well known and successful movies. While certainly not all of them are bad--I found Waitress to be extremely well done, but I'm not so sure about how I feel about the general trend. It seems a bit, at least to me, that producers lack creativity on what to produce--and instead try to hop on the hype train of a movie and profit off the name. It worries me that professional commercial theatre isn't being super innovative, or at least as innovative as I gather it was 20 or 30 years ago. It's now all mediocre revivals and movie remakes. Of course, all theatre goes through phases, and it may kick back up, but the perceived lack of creativity is a little bothersome, at least to me. That said, I am curious to see this show, and see if it lives up to the hype, or maybe the lack thereof.
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