Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?- Page 2
Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
#25Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 7/30/13 at 4:51pmThe first GWTW musical at Drury Lane actually ran for almost a year, mainly due to coach trips, the cast album is rather bland. The last London production of GWTW (With Darius and Jill) was a flat out bore fest, audiences walked out in their droves
Namo i love u but we get it already....you don't like Madonna
#26Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 7/30/13 at 5:50pm
Gaveston I was hoping you would comment on this thread. You always have such Knowledge and insight on everything and it seems like you have led an exciting life in the theatre. Cheers
You are welcome, Nate, and thank you for the kind words. Of course, I only tell the interesting stories. I leave out the 15 years of trying to get college freshmen to read Aristotle!
Mattbrain
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/23/05
#27Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 7/31/13 at 10:00am
"http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2008/jun/12/culture.theatre"
Even one of the castmembers weighed in on what went wrong with the '08 version.
Butters, go buy World of Warcraft, install it on your computer, and join the online sensation before we all murder you.
--Cartman: South Park
ATTENTION FANS: I will be played by James Barbour in the upcoming musical, "BroadwayWorld: The Musical."
#28Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/1/13 at 3:04am
This is my favorite film version.
sharonstonesings
Understudy Joined: 12/31/69
#29Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/4/13 at 1:51pmeek!
#30Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/4/13 at 3:02pm
"I don't think that's necessarily true. The Les Mis guys figured it out."
To be fair the only reason Les Mis is 1200 pages long is because Victor Hugo was a windbag. There's something like 100 pages on the life and thoughts of the bishop at the beginning, a 50 page history of Waterloo, another 50 page history of the Parisian sewers, followed by a weird essay suggesting nets be laid in the river to catch human waste to use as fertilizer in the fields (it's too bad they didn't musicalize THAT), so on and so forth. The plot, minus the discursions and philosophizing, plays out basically as it does in the musical while Gone With The Wind, in comparison, is cluttered with plot points which is probably where most of the adaptive trouble comes from.
#31Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/4/13 at 3:09pm
Adapting Les Miserables meant condensing and filtering, getting to the central plot which, while complex, is lean compared to the sweep of the novel.
I compare it to "The Gormenghast Trilogy," a massive work at 1500 pages which, nonetheless, made a solid four-hour miniseries and three-act opera (but, surprisingly, no musical yet) because the plot was straightforward and somewhat drowned in a sea of atmosphere and detail.
Sutherland
Swing Joined: 12/29/12
#32Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/4/13 at 5:34pm
I saw the original GWTW musical at the Drury Lane in 1972 (yes, I'm old, but I was only 20 then!). Despite the thrill of being in Drury Lane, it was rather awful, or mostly just fatally boring. I still remember the sets and bits of the music, but by the time Harve Presnell said, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn," someone yelled out, "Neither do WE!"
One caution about epic books becoming musicals: DON'T try them! Epics need time and space, not cramming. Even Showboat, which I love, suffers from the massive compression at the end of the show (from the Trocadero scene to the Old Lady on the Levee). Shogun, for example, tried to cram way too much into 3 hours. It almost never works!
In the London GWTW, I remember the audience falling over with laughter when Little Bonnie grew from baby to a little kid in two minutes, sang a duet with Rhett, then ran offstage to the sound of horses hooves, a screech, and a voice intoning over a microphone, "Bonnie GONE!" From birth to death in five minutes!
TheatreDiva90016
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/10/04
#33Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/4/13 at 9:39pm
Guess what I just found in my iTunes?
A copy of my GWTW album.
So, it is available...
"TheatreDiva90016 - another good reason to frequent these boards less."<<>>
“I hesitate to give this line of discussion the validation it so desperately craves by perpetuating it, but the light from logic is getting further and further away with your every successive post.” <<>>
-whatever2
#34Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/4/13 at 10:07pmFace it, when your big 11 o'clock choral number is called "Bonnie Gone", and you already know that Melanie's dying and Rhett's leaving and Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr aren't coming back on for one last round of jokes, why bother?
Well-well-well-what-do-you-think-of-that-I-have-nothing-here-to-pay-my-train-fare-with-only-large-bills-fives-and-sevens....
#35Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/4/13 at 10:48pm
Having reread the novel recently and having been rather horrified at the "happy portrait" of slavery in the Old South, I don't think we need GWTW in any theatrical form. (Frankly, if you're jonesing to do an epic, try WAR AND PEACE, the obvious inspiration for Margaret Mitchell and a much better novel.)
But allowing that I haven't seen any version of GWTW for almost 40 years, I wonder if it doesn't suffer from the same structural problem as RAGTIME: the show-stopping number has to be the Act I finale (burning of Atlanta in GWTW/funeral in RAGTIME) and nothing in Act II will ever measure up.
bk
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/20/03
#36Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/5/13 at 3:41am
"The overture sounds like it was recorded on a Kenner Close 'n Play. It's obviously mastered incorrectly. "
In order for you to make this statement you'd have to know what mastering actually is, which you clearly do not. The overture was not recorded poorly, it was PLAYED poorly - no amount of recording acumen could have helped it. Having issued this cast album to CD and having our excellent mastering engineer master it, mastering has nothing to do with recording, mixing, or playing - so how exactly can it be mastered "incorrectly?" Interestingly, once you're past the overture it sounds very good - same recording, same venue, same engineer - but the band is playing well and you've got vocals over that. But the CD is actually beautifully mastered. And sold out, I believe, although we still have a few emergency copies laying around in case anyone needs one, since so few here seem to know a recording even exists. I don't think the rights' holders would appreciate Theatre Diva sharing iTunes files - in fact, I know they would distinctly frown upon it.
TheatreDiva90016
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/10/04
#37Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/5/13 at 9:40am
It is not an iTunes file, it is my recording of the album that I transferred to CD.
I just store it with the rest of my music...
"TheatreDiva90016 - another good reason to frequent these boards less."<<>>
“I hesitate to give this line of discussion the validation it so desperately craves by perpetuating it, but the light from logic is getting further and further away with your every successive post.” <<>>
-whatever2
#38Have there been any attempts to get a GONE WITH THE WIND musical to broadway ?
Posted: 8/6/13 at 8:56pmDear bk- no problems with GWTW in my book, mastering or otherwise. No problems with David Raskin either; the more, the merrier. But, PLEASE, what cast recordings do you have on the horizon? Inquiring minds want to know.
Well-well-well-what-do-you-think-of-that-I-have-nothing-here-to-pay-my-train-fare-with-only-large-bills-fives-and-sevens....
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