Animal Farm the Musical
Animal Farm the Musical
americanboy99
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/06
#2re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 3:51pm
I can just imagian songs
Old Major Dies
Lets change the commandments
Snowball Flees
americanboy99
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/06
#4re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 3:55pmOh please spare me. . . not only is it one of the worst books ever written, it would be the worst musical ever thought of.
*Do you think you can make me sing. . . I sing for myself, you can get me there but do you really think you can make me sing?*-Judy Garland
americanboy99
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/06
#6re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 3:59pm
Jerry Herman Meets Conceptual theater conceit:
Everyone crawls around on all fours throughout the entire show until the very end when the pigs rise up and do a rousing tap ballet. Showgirls come from the wings demonstrating the pig's full assimilation into the (musical theater) world.
Disney Version:
Wearing enormous, back problem inducing costumes, actors twitter about the stage singing inane songs. Entire show is directed to look at the world from the animal's point of view. The barn becomes an enormous place where animals, for some reason, conduct impressive acrobatics. Plot is reworked. No longer fascist parable, but rather story of one pig who dreamed of equality with humans, and leads the animal race to it. Children flock.
John Doyle version:
Actors sit in chairs on levels. Their clothing only barely suggests what animals they might be. They play their own instruments. They mostly talk without looking at each other in thinly veiled metaphors. At the end, the pigs get the other actors to play their instruments for them and haughtily ascend to a higher level. The whole thing is possibly a drug induced fantasy. Nobody really understands why. Lauded as genius.
I heard the John Doyle version premieres next year in the UK.
yr ronin,
joey
joey
#7re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 4:05pmGod, I hated this book and I think it would be a horrible musical
<--Sometimes it's easier to get out of a jam than into one
americanboy99
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/06
#8re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 4:11pm
I just see it as such a great drama and I think it could be very poignant. And I would just love in the begininning the pigs being fully clothed as pigs, but aslowly loosing their pig qualities and finally becoming human.
I wanna make it happen.
#9re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 4:16pm
I think if this were turned into a musical it would be truly awful. I can just picture the barnyard set with authentic animal dung and hay everywhere, complete with random animal sounds in the background. Maybe Snowball could sing a huge emotional song to convince the animals of his ideas. I think Roninjoey's idea of the pigs doing a tap dance at the end to show their full assimilation into humans is interesting.
Yeah........an Animal Farm musical would be pretty bad.
"You drank a charm to kill John Proctor's wife! You drank a charm to kill Goody Proctor!" - Betty Parris to Abigail Williams in Arthur Miller's The Crucible
Updated On: 8/12/06 at 04:16 PM
americanboy99
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/06
#10re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 4:20pmI think that is unfair to say. Not all musicals have to be bright and glitzy. I am thinking more of a Sondheim sound. Like Sweeney Todd meets Light in the Piazza. I just see it.
americanboy99
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/06
#11re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 4:31pm
Animal Farm
the Musical
All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
americanboy99
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/06
#13re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 4:56pmLet's discuss this. Why do you not like the idea?
#14re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 5:00pmI loved the book, but I just can't see it as a musical. Hmm.
Now she's peddling the news along Broadway I'm a rat and a chisler, and of course all the rats and chislers believe her.
~Hughie, Eugene O'Neill
~Hughie, Eugene O'Neill
Swing Joined: 12/31/69
#15re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 5:08pm
Maybe if the characters weren't all animals.....
Which means the story would have to be tweaked....
Which means the title would be changed.....
So no. No, not really.
#16re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 5:10pm
Play It Cool, LOL.
Seriously. I laughed out loud.
americanboy99
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/27/06
#18re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 5:14pmI can see the characters as animals. Very abstract animals, but still.
#19re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 5:25pmIt is one of the greatest novel's ever written, but I think that singing animals is just to Disney.
#20re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 7:22pmI love the movie Animal Farm, but I cant see it being a broadway musical.
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall
vmlinnie
Broadway Legend Joined: 6/19/06
#21re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 7:24pmOf course it could be a broadway musical, Harvey Fierstein as Napoleon and so on. Let's cast it! Anyone for Boxer?
The rain we knew is a thing of the past -
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like racehorses. We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no one.
Derek Mahon
"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."
Arthur Miller
deep-delving, dark, deliberate you would say
browsing on spire and bogland; but today
our sky-blue slates are steaming in the sun,
our yachts tinkling and dancing in the bay
like racehorses. We contemplate at last
shining windows, a future forbidden to no one.
Derek Mahon
"Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets."
Arthur Miller
i*heart*fame
Broadway Star Joined: 9/15/04
#22re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 8:03pm
This already exists, they did it at my school this past year. http://www.dramaticpublishing.com/catalogdetail.cfm?listcode=A06
I believe it was in London at some point.
"Don't thank your parents, if you were raised in a nurturing environment you wouldnt be in show business"--Conan O'Brien at the 2006 Emmy Awards
BSoBW2
Broadway Legend Joined: 12/8/04
#23re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 8:07pm
Love this book.
It could be quite interesting as an allegorical musical.
Julie Taymor could d it.
#24re: Animal Farm the Musical
Posted: 8/12/06 at 8:10pmAnyone that goes upon two legs is an enemy. Anyone that goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
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