Top 5 Musicals

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(in no particular order)

Chicago - John Kander / Fred Ebb

So sexy, hilarious and just overall so wonderful. I don't mind the film but fell totally in love with Chicago when I saw it performed in Sydney earlier in the year. Sharon Millerchip as Roxie was just amazingly fabulous and deserved every ounce of the Helpmann Award she won for the role. It was wonderful to enjoy her performance so much, especially considering I really only went to see it so I could see Caroline O'Connor perform (I love her!)... and I went to one of the five performances she had to pull out of due to an ankle injury. I have the timing of a ninja.

A Chorus Line - Marvin Hamlisch / Edward Kleban

This musical has some wonderful songs in it, At the Ballet is gorgeous and Nothing is both amusing and moving... and of course there is the show-stopping What I Did For Love. What I like about this musical is how real it is. The stories all come from real people who audition for chorus lines, and I love that there is no real plot to it... it's all about characters.

The Lion King - Elton John / Tim Rice

How can you not enjoy this musical? The tribal sounds, the fantaaaaastic costumes and staging, the heartwrenching songs Shadowland and He Lives in You, that phenomenal stampede scene... Seeing this musical in 2004 was such a wonderful experience. I only wish I could see it again without having to travel to New York or London.

Next to Normal - Tom Kitt / Brian Yorkey

I have only ever listened to this musical... it's only very new (opened this year on Broadway, in fact) but the music and the plot are very interesting and I would absolutely love to see it staged. Some of it is rather so-so, but there are also some very wonderful moments.

RENT - Johnathan Larson

I'm not really a huge fan of RENT anymore, but it was formative in my appreciation of musical theatre. I did a musicology viva voce on four songs from the musical for music in Year 10 (2004) and then discovered the film version on DVD, which I bought on a whim. I fell in love with it and it made me want to see investigate more musicals, and it all went from there. I still haven't seen this musical staged (mainly due to my own disorganisation, I've had an ample amount of opportunities).

West Side Story - Leonard Bernstein / Stephen Sondheim

This musical is such a classic. In both the sense of it being a classic musical and a classical musical... one of the few musicals that opera companies have managed to perform. The music by Bernstein is just amazing. This is the only musical I can think of where I like the instrumental score almost as much if not more than the vocal score.

Wicked - Stephen Schwartz

I got into Wicked in a rather big way when I first started listening to the music from it in 2006. I've been rather on-and-off with it ever since, and am still waiting for an opportunity to see it performed live, even though it is currently playing in Sydney. I really don't like a lot of the songs, but some are very good. I also adore the novel the musical is based on (Wicked by Gregory Maguire)... and am not sure how the adaptation of this into a cheery everything-is-fine-in-the-end musical will work... I'll have to see it to make a proper judgement, I think.

The Wild Party - Michael John LaChiusa

I love the cast recording of this musical, it gets a high rotation playing at my work haha. Toni Colette is fabulous as the feisty Queenie! The music in this is just great... it's such an alcohol-soaked, dark, jazz affair. I'd love to direct or musically direct this musical one day, but it would require a lot of work!

BARE - Damon Intrabartolo / Jon Hartmere, Jr.

To be honest, this musical was initially forced upon me. I decided to help my friend with a proposal he was putting together for a production of this to be staged in October of this year. I put myself down as musical director before even hearing a note of the musical, and then was given a copy of the soundtrack and a rather deliciously illegal under-the-coat video recording of the original off-Broadway production. The music might be very straightforward and the plot might be overly dramatic and saturated with teen angst, but there are some wonderful moments in the musical. I think our greatest mistake in our proposing this musical was that we pitched it as 'it's a musical about gay boys who fall in love and one kills himself and there's a lot of sex and stuff, it's funny as well'. What we really should have emphasised (and if I were directing it, this is the approach I would take) is the undercurrent of the church in the traditional sense vs. modern age spirituality and the implications this has in our everyday lives and the Zeitgeist of a particular period of time. When you look at it in this way, this musical has a lot to say about this and the treatment and view of homosexuals within, what is essentially, a society which has transcended traditional religious adherence, but is still not atheistic or secular in its values. And I think that's pretty significant.

EXTRA SPECIAL EVEN-MORE-HONOURABLE MENTIONS

(these musicals sit somewhere between my standard honourable mentions and my Top 5... they deserve to be given extra special mention - and are listed here in no particular order)

Company - Stephen Sondheim

I love Sondheim. I love his musicals so very, very much. And Company is one such musical. It has no linear plot and is rather abstract in its approach, but the music is just marvellous. So unbelievably catchy. Particular highlights include The Ladies Who Lunch, Sorry-Grateful, Another Hundred People, the very popular Being Alive, and my own favourite, Getting Married Today. I love that this musical is about very real things... there's no fantasy bullshit or need for extensive suspension of disbelief, it's a raw look at how our relationships more often than not don't work out. This is another musical I would kill, maim or steal to be able to direct or musically direct... a tricky one though in regards to vocal ability and staging, might be one to do after I've had a go at something easier to begin with.

Songs for a New World - Jason Robert Brown

Much like Company, Songs for a New World has no real plot, yet unlike Company, it doesn't have characters either. Essentially, Songs is a musical theatre song cycle. Nearly all of the songs are totally beautiful... the opening, The New World, is wonderful and there is of course the very popular I'm Not Afraid of Anything and Stars and the Moon but my own personal favourite is On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship, 1942.

TOP 5 MUSICALS

5. Titanic - Maury Yeston

This is a highly underrated musical. It seems strange to stage a musical production about such a tragic disastrous actual event in history, but at the same time it seems like the perfect treatment for the story. The musical focuses more on the class systems used and the relationships between the three different classes. It serves as a social commentary on social status, and ultimately comments that when everything goes to shit no matter how much money you have, what your occupation is, what gender you are or who you know... you are just as screwed as the person beside you. "It will be every man for himself all right! / The weak thrown in with all the strong! / First class, and third and second / Will mean nothing! / And sheer humanity alone will prevail / One single class / Brute, harsh and crass / That's what will come of the world that set sail." Or, perhaps, you should be, in an ideal world... The music in this musical is really cleverly written. It emulates the Zeitgeist in classical and popular composition in England at the time and there are very evident influences of Vaughan Williams, Gilbert and Sullivan and Ivor Novello. I've auditioned for two musicals this year with Barrett's Song from Titanic and would love the opportunity to perform it properly one day... it's a great one to belt out.

4. The Hatpin - Peter Rutherford / James Millar

This musical is not very well known at all. It's a very new Australian musical that was produced at the Seymour Centre in Sydney in early 2008 starring Melle Stewart and Caroline O'Connor. The musical is set in Sydney and follows the tale of Amber Murray (Stewart), a homeless woman with a baby out on her luck. She gives the baby to a well-to-do couple to look after for her and pays them a weekly sum of money as part of this arrangement, which she earns from a job she is given by the kind and strong Harriet Piper (O'Connor). However, nothing seems to be going to plan, as whenever Amber comes to visit her baby, Horace, the couple who took him in always have an excuse for why she cannot see him. They eventually move without any warning whatsoever, and Amber loses hope of ever seeing her son again. Her worst fears are eventually confirmed when it is uncovered the couple routinely take in children to care for them and murder them by putting a hatpin through their ear deep into their heads, bury the bodies in their backyard and continue to receive payments for the children they are meant to be caring for. Disturbingly, this is actually a true story. Aside from the very dramatic story, the music is wonderfully fitting and has some very touching and dramatic moments. It's yet another musical I'd love to have a hand in bringing to life either by directing or musically directing.

3. Sunday in the Park with George - Stephen Sondheim

This musical is the most intelligent, thoughtful musical and is very worthy of academic study. It looks at the role of 'the artist' within our society... how he (or she) functions, and relates what they see in the world around them to their work. The way they can be driven mad by what they do to exist. The other wonderful aspect of this musical is the way the characters look to both the future and the past... it's a comment on how we may very well be living in the moment, but we are part of such a larger spectrum of time and space. We belong to something so large and have so much responsibility for our past, present and future. And, again, the music is gorgeous... as I've come to expect of the fabulous Stephen Sondheim. Beautiful songs like Finishing the Hat, Colour and Light, Beautiful, We Do Not Belong Together, Children and Art and the fabulous Lesson #8 and Move On. From beginning to end this musical is an exquisite work of art, and every moment is so very valuable, you feel that blinking will get in the way.

2. Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - Stephen Sondheim

Referred to in one critical essay I've read as a gruesical, Sondheim's Sweeney Todd has haunted and chilled both musical theatre halls and opera houses for decades. The gothic operetta attends the tale of Benjamin Barker, a barber who is sent to Australia on false charges and returns with a murderous revenge as Sweeney Todd. He decides after fate deals him a poor hand once again that he will turn his revenge on everyone who comes into his tonsorial parlour, where his accomplice and devoted admirer Nellie Lovett turns the corpses into pies which she then sells in her shop. Sondheim's score is terrifying, using very ferverent moving motifs in very low, dark registers, peircing and shrill sounds like a factory whistle, bizarre and dischordant lines and harmonies and some exceptionally difficult notes out of the standard register of a specific voice type. I had never really heard or seen much of Sweeney Todd until the Tim Burton film adaptation was released, and I decided before I went to see it I had to see the original and know it so I can appreciate the adaptation and from there I fell in love. The film was fantastic for a film, but is nothing on the original musical. I'm currently part of a production of Sweeney Todd with the Sydney University Musical Theatre Ensemble (MUSE) playing the role of Beadle Bamford. Having the opportunity to perform in a musical I hold so very close to my heart means the world to me, and I am so, so excited for the production to get up and running as we come closer to the performance dates (17-20th March, 2010 - Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre, Sydney).

1. Into the Woods - Stephen Sondheim

The first time I ever heard anything of this musical was when I went home to my parents' house the year after I finished school and visited my high school to see their musical, which happened to be Into the Woods. I went with odd expectations... I wasn't sure what to expect as the performing arts department in the school was flourishing at an exponential rate when I graduated. I was amazed... it was so touching and funny and artistically beautiful. I immediately rushed out and bought the original broadway production on DVD and I have been a devoted fan ever since. What irks me most about this musical, or rather the people who see this musical, is the very common reaction of 'It really should have finished at interval... the second half was just odd and morbid.' Well, der! The entire point of this musical is consequence, and the second act is one big chain of consequences. The second act has more of a point than the first! It is a tragic but very touching fable about learning to love what you have and who you are. Trying to be anything that you aren't is not going to end with a 'happily ever after'. I would love so very much to direct, musically direct or be in the cast of a production of this musical... I worry though, that if ever I was a part of a production I would take it on board far too much and it wouldn't only become a part of me... but it would totally consume me. In the most wonderful way. I dare to not be overwhelmed while watching this musical, Children Will Listen is one of the most gorgeous and heartbreaking songs ever written.