| Theater in Brattleboro offers a conservatory for kids
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. - It's easy to think that the kids performing with the New England Youth Theater have come from a vaudeville troupe when they pull off expert pratfalls or contort their bodies into curious positions. Physical comedy is a signature style of this group, which lights up its Brattleboro stage for as many as 10 shows a year. And the offerings are diverse. Think French farce, Shakespeare, Broadway musicals, or American dramas. NEYT offers conservatory-style classes and workshops in topics such as drama, dress-up for young children, and lighting design. Jerry Stockman, managing director, says the theater draws students from as far as 50 miles away. A summer program attracts young people from across the country and beyond. Area professionals are a huge asset.
Stayin' Alive
When "Saturday Night Fever" was first released in theaters 30 years ago this December, it was hard to tell where the movie left off and the pop music soundtrack began. Who can forget the young John Travolta as Tony Manero, strutting down the sidewalk of his Brooklyn neighborhood while the Bee Gees' "Staying Alive" throbbed "Ah-ha-ha-ha" in the background? Hollywood had produced popular soundtracks before, but most were linked to successful Broadway musicals that had been made into films, such as "My Fair Lady," "West Side Story" and "Hello, Dolly." "Saturday Night Fever" was something else. First off, it wasn't a musical in the traditional sense. Travolta's character loved to dance, but it was part of the film's plot. He didn't suddenly break into song on the subway.
Broadway's Ahrens and Flaherty offer show tunes by the Bay
SOMETIMES you do everything you can do to be an organized person. Then the universe has other plans. Take, for instance, Stephen Flaherty, the composer behind such Broadway musicals as "Ragtime," "Once on This Island" and "Seussical the Musical." He and his writing partner, Lynn Ahrens, made plans about two years ago to create and appear in a short-run revue of their work for San Mateo's Broadway by the Bay. Executive director Greg Phillips had the great idea to bring the composers out west, and he proposed dates far in the future: Nov. 8 through 11, 2007. Well, that first day has arrived, and wouldn't you know it? Ahrens and Flaherty opened a new musical at New York's Lincoln Center only three nights ago. "The Glorious Ones," about an itinerant Italian acting troupe, received lovely reviews.
Sound is familiar, but the songs are new
"The Musical of Musicals," opening Thursday after previews at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, promises an entertaining tour of 1940s and '50s Broadway musicals. The show uses one plot, but will show how differently the musical might sound by using the varying styles of some of the most renowned Broadway composers and lyricists to write for the Great White Way. Using original songs, not the composers' works, "Musical of Musicals" parodies the styles of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jerry Herman. For its plot, "Musical of Musicals," which originally opened off-Broadway in 2003 and had another run there in 2004, borrows from a classic melodrama plot to frame this tour through Broadway musicals. "When we decided this is the show we were going to write," we thought it's got to be a very simple plot without too many details," said Joanne Bogart, who not only performs in the show, but who also wrote the lyrics for composer Eric Rockwell's original music.
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