2000s
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We Will Rock You (2002)
Today marks the end of my patience for jukebox musicals. It would be cheaper to buy the appropriate Queen Greatest Hits package than to go see this show. Also, you’ll hear a better and more committed and authentic vocalist, better guitars, and a bigger choir (of sorts). Also, you’ll be spared a stupid sub-pantomime story.… Continue reading
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Wicked (2003)
Stephen Schwartz has written a bunch of musicals including “Godspell” and “Children Of Eden”, and the music for Disney movies including “Hunchback”, but, I dunno, it may just be me, but he’s always come across as a little boring. Not as boring as Maury Yeston, and not as incompetent as Frank Wildhorn, but somewhat of… Continue reading
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The Wild Party (2000)
“The Wild Party” is a long poem from 1928 by Joseph Moncure March, scandalous at the time. It was filmed in 1975 (badly, it seems) and then, slightly randomly, it was adapted as a musical twice in the same year (1999), once by Michael John Lachiusa and once, the version we have here, by Andrew… Continue reading
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The Woman In White (2004)
At last, then, “The Woman In White”: this is an Andrew Lloyd Webber show from 2004, based on a Wilkie Collins novel from 1859, a novel involving a plot to steal a woman’s fortune, hugely popular at the time and still feted as one of the first mystery stories (the story hints at strange and… Continue reading
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Xanadu (2007)
The history of this show: it was a movie in 1980 (everyone hated it, therefore cult classic status) itself apparently a remake of a 1947 (and probably thus less disco-oriented) movie about a muse coming to Earth to fix up a play besmirching the good name of her sisters. Apparently everyone, even the writer, was… Continue reading
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Bonnie & Clyde (2009)
Gil Hates Musicals reviews “Bonnie & Clyde” (2009), music by Frank Wildhorn, lyrics by Don Black, book by Ivan Menchell. Everyone’s familiar with the famous quote “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a musical in possession of a good soundtrack must be by someone other than Frank Wildhorn”. But it’s easy to forget that… Continue reading