Thursday, March 21, 2019
All the World's Shakespeare's Stage! Breaking Down Musicals Based on Shakespeare
www.broadwayworld.com: In honor of Kiss Me, Kate's opening on Broadway tonight, we're breaking down some of Broadway's biggest hits influenced by theatre's biggest playwright: William Shakespeare! The Bard's work is as pervasive as ever and unstoppable even in song.
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4 comments:
: I don’t know anything about the show Kiss me Kate so I had no clue that it was based on The Taming of the Shrew, so that was very interesting to know. I went into the article expecting to be surprised because there would be all of these shows that I knew of but did not realize that they were based on works by Shakespeare. But I was really surprised to read that all of the shows listed (besides Kiss me Kate) I already knew was based on a Shakespeare Play. I really would’ve thought with how popular and generally timeless the stories in Shakespeare’s that there would have been so many more popular musicals based on Shakespeare’s plays, but I guess not. And I do recognize that this article does not list every show ever that has been based off of Shakespeare. I know that the musical The Fantasticks is not directly based off of Romeo and Juliet, but is based off of The Romancers which is loosely based off of Romeo and Juliet so I thought that was worth noting as an addition to this article.
Ah all the usual suspects. I have never seen Kiss Me, Kate but the idea that it is based on ole Willie and a real couple is all the more intriguing to me, because reality is occasionally more interesting than fiction. However, if I had to choose my favorite interpretation of Taming it would have to be The Duke and Maureen O’Hara in McClintock! As for the rest of the shows on the list they range from the classics, to what I think is a modern classic in Something Rotten, to horrid jukebox shows that should be thrown away and Shook Up just before it is lost to time, hopefully. West Side Story is just so iconic I sometimes forget that it is Romeo and Juliet. Unfortunately I never forget Lion King is Hamlet because everyone brings it up. I am not sure if that is to legitimize it or what, but I am sick of hearing about it.
I don't know if I'm just not as good as a theatre goer as some of my other peers but I went to this article pleasantly surprised almost and taken back by some of the shows that I had never known were inspired by Shakespeare. For me out of the 5-6 shows listed in the article there were only two large outliers. One being Kiss me, Kate which I know next to nothing about in terms of the production and the story. And West Side Story in which was the only other show that I knew was based off of an original William Shakespeare piece. I don't know if it was surprising to see this many shows either I was kind of expecting a list 15-20 shows long with all of the shows that have taken major themes or ideas from a Shakespeare piece. He was such a prominent writer with such a global view and stories that have remained timeless that I would have expected there to be more almost.
If you really think about it, William Shakespeare has really set the tone for how we look at the idea of drama and its bled into all parts of our life. The idea of Romeo and Juliet comes up every time any one has relationship issues, the idea of Macbeth comes up whenever we're ambitious. I personally love musicals like the Lion King and West Side Story because of the way they are able to so eloquently transfer such an epic story into a modern and animal society. It really shows how timeless the human condition is. How love has been a driving force for thousands of years and how people will do anything to feed their own ambition has endured nearly four hundred years of existence. On top of that, it takes the genre of epic and surreal to the next level with the addition of ballads music and dancing all into the mix.
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