h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Everything feels like spring is coming, even though it's only February--there is no snow, and although it's been freezing the last few days, the sky is clear and bright. Best of all, all the spring bulbs are beginning to sprout, so everywhere there are green stems poking out of the ground, and I'm so excited! I want to dance around and sing!

In other news, I'm on a musical high! (This is a fairly common state of being for me, but still…) I am, of course, totally obsessed with Stephen Sondheim, and I finally decided I needed to hear all of his musicals I haven't yet heard, so I went over to the library and checked out every Sondheim cd they had. I also borrowed Assassins from a friend, which is part of the source of my musical high. EVERYONE WHO HASN'T HEARD ASSASSINS NEEDS TO GO OUT AND LISTEN TO IT RIGHT NOW. Wow. That's one intense, amazing musical--that last scene with John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald especially--they build it up so subtly, until you actually find yourself rooting for them, hoping he'll decide to kill JFK. I'm still shaking, and I've listened to it like five times straight through.
I also decided to clean out the library's DVD collection of musicals I haven't watched yet. They have a fair number I've already seen, but a few I'd been resisting for one reason or another. First, the stage production of Sweeny Todd, with Angela Lansbury and George Hearn. Wow. I know the music, but I've never gotten to see it live. Wow. Wow. (See, this is what those idiots who staged Jekyll & Hyde on Broadway need to study. muttermuttergrumblegrumble) I think this was recommended to me by David the SL, so thanks!
Next, the movie version of A Chorus Line. Now, I LOVE the stage musical, and I've heard mostly bad reviews of the movie (one from someone who had already seen it on stage, and one from someone who hadn't seen it before). Sadly, I've got to agree. The whole musical is so inherently theatrical that it just didn't work for me. Plus, what's with the AWFUL new songs? They didn't just add them, they replaced other perfectly good songs! Why, why, WHY get rid of "The Music and the Mirror", especially if you're just going to rip off the lyrics for the replacement? The other thing is, they tried to make the backstory between Cassie and the director much, much bigger, and that's a mistake in my opinion. It became a story about them, and it's supposed to be about all of the auditioners. And the most heinous crime of all, THEY TOOK "WHAT I DID FOR LOVE" AWAY FROM DIANA and changed the meaning completely! It's supposed to be about their love of dancing, not about Cassie and Zach! Argh! (Wow, I didn't even know I was that mad until I wrote this!) But I'm still on a high from the music, because come on, it's A Chorus Line!
Finally, against every instinct that was screaming at me to run very fast in the opposite direction and bar the door, I watched the movie of The Fantasticks. And I was pleasantly surprised. Actually, I'm very impressed! The thing is, I love the play soooo much, but I'm sure many would agree that it's simply impossible to make a movie out of it. The theatricality is so fundamental to it, and the simplicity of it is part of what makes it so great (and you just can't have minimalist sets on the big screen, it's impossible). So Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt (who were actually allowed to write the screenplay of their own musical, which is why I even gave it a chance in the first place) did the smart thing: they didn't even try to preserve the original style. All the non-singing verse is gone (with the exception of one or two intros to songs), and El Gallo and all the "adventures" in the second act become a travelling carnival, which sounds pretty awful, but actually it worked very well because of how well they put it together. The characters are a lot more grounded in actual time and place--Luisa and Matt become a specific girl and boy, instead of The Girl and The Boy representing all young lovers. Watching the deleted scenes, they almost went too far in making El Gallo into mysterious-magician-who-comes-around-to-teach-lessons-to-those-who-need-it, but they got smart and cut those scenes so it didn't become cheesy. All in all, a purist who loves the real The Fantasticks would hate the movie, but accepting it as a completely different realization of the basic story, I am very impressed and I'm going to watch it again.
The only problem now is that I can't decide whether to sing "A Little Priest", "Everybody's Got the Right", "One", "Try to Remember", or "Spring is Here".

(Well, maybe not that last one, since it's actually rather depressing, but I'll find a good happy spring song!)

My favourite happy Spring song is 'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park' by Tom Lehrer, but it's not one to let people hear you sing! And of course, there's the song which is taking over my life at the moment - 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On'. Very silly song, that one.

I know the feeling of being high on musicals, and it can be pretty giddy! Assassins is great, but I can't listen to it very often, since it's so very visceral, particularly that JFK sequence you mention.

Personally, of the choices you give, I'd sing 'A Little Priest', or possibly 'One', as 'A Little Priest' is harder to sing alone.

Ah! How could I forget "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"? "All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon…"
I guess I'll stick with that for now, although the weather is so chilly and windy right now, with no snow, that it feels like September. "Try to remember the kind of September when life was slow, and oh so mellow…"

I don't know "The Sun Has Got His Hat On", but be assured, I'd be singing it for you if I did! I'm busily reading your thread about rehearsals, and it sounds like you're having fun! When do you open, and for how long?

It's six performances over five days, starting 21st March. Four weeks to go now!