Life Upon the (Not So) Wicked Stage

This weekend, I watched two awesome musicals. In the afternoon on Saturday, one of my friends came over and we watched West Side Story. That evening, another buddy of mine and I went to Opera in the Outfield at Nats Park and saw Showboat.

  
West Side Story, with music by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, first appeared on Broadway in 1957. The show follows the story of Maria, a young woman who has immigrated to Manhattan with her family from Puerto Rico. Her brother, Bernardo, is the leader of a gang in the West Side of the city, called the Sharks. They have a rivalry with a gang of Americans, the Jets. One night at a dance at the gym, Maria sees an American man named Tony, and they fall in love. In the end, the two gangs have a rumble, and Tony, Bernardo, and the Jets' leader, Riff, are killed.
The plot of West Side Story is based on Romeo and Juliet, and was originally supposed to be about a Jew and a Catholic during Passover/ Easter. "East Side Story", however, was never produced because by the time Bernstein and his cohorts, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins, revisited their 1947 idea, the demographics of New York had changed too much for a Jewish/anti-semitist love affair to be relevant.

Fun Facts:

• West Side Story was one of the first musicals to truly incorporate dance into main parts of the story. (Oklahoma did this 15 years earlier with the dream sequence, but to a much lesser extent.)
• In the film production, the only person of Latina descent in the cast was Rita Moreno, who played the role of Anita, Maria's friend who was dating Bernardo.
• Natalie Wood, who plays Maria in the 1961 film adaptation, wasn't actually singing in the film. Marni Nixon, who also dubbed for Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady" and Debra Kerr in "The King and I" sang the part of Maria for Wood, but was not credited for her work.

Here's the Quintet from West Side Story, which is sung right before the first rumble.

SHOW BOAT

 This musical, written by Oscar Hmmerstein II and Jerome Kern was originally produced in 1927. The show takes place over a 40 year period, starting in 1887 and ending in 1920. It follows the saga of the company of a show boat in Mississippi, the Cotton Blossom. Julie and Steve are the production's leading couple. The show starts with Julie speaking with Magnolia, Captain Andrew's daughter, who believes she has just fallen in love. It is then discovered that Julie is not actually a white woman, but that her father was white and her mother was black. Interracial marriages were illegal in Mississippi at the time, but Steve pretends he, too, is of African American descent, and the two leave the ship. Left without a leading couple, Captain Andy casts his daughter Nola (short for Magnolia), as the leading lady, and her love, Gaylord Ravenal, as her love interest in the boat's production. Eventually, Gay and Nola move to Chicago, where they have a daughter, Kim. Gay leaves Kima and Nola, leaving Nola to seek her fortune on Vaudeville's Orpheum circuit. After twenty years apart, Gay and Nola meet again and fall back in love.

Fun Facts:

• Show Boat was one of the first musical comedies to have a real plot, and was very radical for its time in that instead of being a musical revue, the show followed a story that the music and songs played a big part in telling.
• It was the VERY FIRST racially integrated musical to appear on Broadway.
• For those of us who know a lot about music theory and history, our first clue that Julie isn't white shouldn't come when it is revealed to all the other characters. The first hint we're given that she's not who she seems can be heard during her first big song, "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man". Instead of singing a note belonging to the major chord of the song, at mutliple points during the chorus, she sings a blues note, which was meant to let the audience know she wasn't actually white.

In this show, there are many racial slurs and mannerisms that are considered very offensive in today's society, but the show is still absolutely marvelous. Here's my favorite song, and one of the most famous ballads, from the musical. It's a clip from the 1936 movie of Paul Robeson singing "Ol' Man River". Enjoy!

All for One! And One for All?

Emmanuel Bronner was born in 1908 in Germany to Jewish parents. In 1929, he began making soap, and moved to the United States. After having escaped a mental institution in Illinois in 1947, Bronner moved to California and began producing the now-famous Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, which is an 18-in-1 liquid made from peppermint and other natural ingredients.
Now, you might be thinking, "Why, Samantha, are you doing a blog post about an old German soapmaker?"
Well, dear reader, I shall tell you that the soap's not what's important, but that the secret's in the packaging.
You see, what makes Dr. Bronner's soap so different from any other multipurpose soap is what is written on the label of every single bottle of the stuff.
The Moral ABC, or what Bronner himself described to be a way "To unite all mankind free", was an every-evolving philosophy of Bronner's, that continued to relay different messages until the "Doctor's" death in 1997.
Bronner's philosophy starts off with the following words:
"Absolute cleanliness is Godliness!"
The label goes on to promote unification of all people and their religions, suggesting that if everyone is for everyone else, there will be no turmoil, and that love and God will be the championing powers.
Now, I'm not trying to promote the All-One ideology, but I'm not trying to shoot it down, either.
The whole idea kinda seems crazy, of you think about it. Spreading a religious ideology by printing it on labels for soap?
But if you think about it, the suggestions Bronner makes are good food for thought.
What if everyone were to give up their beliefs in order to have peaceable relations with everyone else?
Maybe the world would be a better place if we asked ourselves the questions on the bottle, like "If I'm not for me, who am I?"
Before I actually start quoting John Lennon's "Imagine", though, let me just remind you that though to some it might seem like a marvelous idea and to others, it could be the rapture. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but it's a good thing to reflect on.
Some questions I began to ask after looking into this scheme were:
Would I be willing to do what the bottle asked in order to achieve world peace?
But does putting it on a soap bottle make sense?
Has anyone ever actually begun to follow this Moral ABC, and if so, how well did that work out?
How did he ever come up with this idea, and why can't I have the courage to shout my opinions from the top of a mountain, just to say what I want to say?
If this is kind of like giving pamphlets to people about becoming a Jehova's Witness or trying to convert someone to a religion, then should the Moral ABC be allowed?
And following that, should anyone be allowed to try and shove their opinion down another person's throat?

Now that I've whet your appetite on the subject, and given you some thinks about which you can think, watch these two videos as you lather, rinse and repeat. The first is the trailer for a documentary about Dr. Bronner's, the other is the video for "Imagine".





 

Cows, Capes, Slippers and Hair

IT'S TECH WEEK!!!!!!!!
So as some of you may know, I'm in the school musical. And this year, the show is Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods. (If you don't know the plot, I'll get into that in the next paragraph.) This week is tech week, sometimes known as hell week, where we have dress and tech rehearsals all week, and no one involved in the show gets to go home till 10 every night. To put it in simpler terms, it's the week before opening night, and it's super-stressful. Now that you all know how daunting my week is going to be, we can actually talk about the show now.

THE CHARACTERS:

The Narrator                                                 
The Baker                                                       
The Baker's Wife                                                         
The Witch                                                       
Cinderella                                                        
The Stepmother                                             
Florinda and Lucinda, the stepsisters              
Jack
Jack's Mother
Milky White, the cow
Little Red Riding Hood
The Wolf
Granny
Rapunzel
Rapunzel's Prince
Cinderella's Prince
Cinderella's Mother
The Giant

THE PLOT:

Into the Woods  is pretty much a bunch of fairy tales all strung together by the saga of a Baker and his Wife trying to have a child. And no, this does not involve any inappropriate behaviors on stage. The Witch, who lives next door to the Baker, comes to tell him and his Wife that she placed a spell on their house, making the Baker and his Wife unable to have children. The way to break the curse, the Witch tells them, is to go to the wood and find the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn and the slipper as pure as gold, and to bring them to her in 3 days. It also turns out that the Baker had a sister that the Witch took away when she cursed the Baker's family, and that his sister was Rapunzel.
After days of searching for odd objects, some nice songs, and a dead cow that is brought back to life, the Baker and his Wife get their baby, Cinderella goes to the ball, Jack becomes rich and wins his cow back, and Little Red Riding Hood gets a new cape.
But that's only the end of the first act...
In the second act,everything goes wrong, and at the end of the show, the audience is taught that you must be careful what you wish for, because wishes do come true, but they all have a price that must be payed.
Now that I've whet your appetite, here's the song "It Takes Two", sung by the Baker and his Wife, from the original Broadway production:

GREASE is the Word

On Friday, some of my friends and I went to Einstein High School's production of the musical Grease. Set in the 1950s, the show starts at the beginning of the school year at Rydell high, where Danny Zucco , a greaser and member of the Burger Palace Boys,  is telling his friends about his summer fling. The new girl at Rydell, Sandy Dumbrowski , befriends the Pink Ladies, the Burger Palace Boys' girls. The story revolves around Sandy and Danny's on/off relationship, as well as Betty Rizzo and Kenickie's relatioinship, the head of the Pink Ladies and Danny's wingman, respectively.

This show is very different from the movie version of the show, and it followed the plot and score of the original Broadway production. Many of the songs in the stage musical were cut from the movie, and there are a few songs, such as "All Choked Up", that were replaced with different songs in the film version. (The One That I Want" wasn't in the original Broadway show.)

The production was pretty great; the set looked really good, the pit was almost always in tune, and most of the actors performed wonderfully.

The orchestra was very far upstage, at the back of the set. Over the pit was a walkway the actors strolled across, and on either side of the walkway were steps going to downstage left and right.  The entire show was very colorful as well; the dresses were all very bright, and the set was painted with vivid blocks of color.

Overall, the cast was very good. Both Sandy (Abigail Kullberg) and Danny (Eric Teran) were great singers, and knew their lines very well. Kenickie, played by Daniel Zucker, who was performing in his first Einstein show, also did a great job, especially with the dancing and singing. The only principal actor who wasn't super was Rizzo (Rebecca Bradley). During her solo song, "There are Worse Things I Could Do", she got off key several times, and her voice quality wasn't great.

I thoroughly enjoyed the show, despite some not-so-great performances, as well as a few technical snafus regarding the sound.

Here's a clip from the London production of the show in 2010:

SANKOFA! and Wonderful Dancers

So on Friday night, some of my friends and I went to our school's annual celebration of Black History Month, a variety-show type performance called Sankofa. The show is named after a mythical bird that flies forward while looking back. There was some really great original poetry and some singing, but I thought the highlight of the show was the dancing. There's one student in particular, the choreographer of most of the dance numbers, who stood out from the rest.
Kelsey and I had a chat about how amazing a dancer Fridien Nana, a senior at Blair, is.
Here's a screen shot of our conversation:

He did indeed put in the extra effort. It's very hard to describe to someone how expressive Fridien is when it comes to dance.He's very graceful, but the way he presents himself to the audience adds so much to his performance. As Kelsey said, so many dancers are concentrating too much on the actual dance while performing that their face is just rather blank and boring.
Fridien is the complete opposite when it comes to his facial expressions. He's so passionate about his dancing that it shows in his face, and as he moves in different ways, his face changes as well.
I think even if you watch the most professional ballet or modern dancers perform, you'll see that even they don't put a lot of emotion or expression in their dancing, which is why it's just so stunning to watch someone perform with such a huge amount of passion and energy.