[Mb-hair] Mb-hair Digest, Vol 23, Issue 24

Michael Harris wmichaelharris at earthlink.net
Sat May 20 17:27:08 PDT 2006


Mention of HAIR in this week's Village Voice.  Full article at:

http://villagevoice.com/theater/0620,feingold,73219,11.html

It's in the following paragraph.  The whole article is worth reading.  -WMH

"Mentioning Wagner reminds me that acting isn't the only realm in which Off-Broadway has been glorious lately. Musicals are Broadway's stock in trade, but Broadway's musicals are increasingly either foreign imports or "properties" manufactured in some corporate corridor. An actual Broadway musical, even one nurtured, like  The Wedding Singer or  The Drowsy Chaperone , in nonprofit venues across the country, is almost as rare a creature as an actual Broadway play. Our little downtown theater, meanwhile, has been busy creating the kind of original musical that revitalizes and challenges the form. The Broadway year has been dismal, or at best so-so, for musicals, but Off-Broadway's come up with an appealingly varied crop: The year of  See What I Wanna See,  The Seven,  [title of show],  Grey Gardens,  Miracle Brothers,  Bernarda Alba,  Fanny Hill, and  I Love You Because can hardly be called a dull one in the musical theater. If the musical as a form is about money, then, no, most of these shows will never rank with  Hair or  Cats as worldwide phenomena. But if the musical is about pleasure and excitement—and it is—I'd say that even the worst of them has  The Woman in White or  Lestat beat all hollow."



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