I loved “Chicago” since I was 14, but I didn’t get to actually see it until the movie came out. Then, a few years later, I finally got to see it live. I was a theater geek growing up, and I think most of us listened to cast albums before we had any chance of seeing any of those shows. Except for “Phantom of the Opera”, which was huge in the late 80’s and you were only “cool” if you’d seen it half a dozen times.
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I can’t think about Andrew Lloyd Weber without thinking about P.F.Tomkin’s demented “impression” of him.
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Hamilton is one of those productions that I imagine will run for decades – it’s popular, award winning, AND has the cache of being an instant uniquely-American classic. Even though he’s leaving the show, Lin-Manuel Miranda posted a bunch of pictures on Twitter the other day of Topol and Cathy Rigby, and said “I’m one of them. I’ll be playing this character until I can’t do it anymore.”
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This, absolutely. I resisted listening to it for a long time, because I’ve historically disliked cast albums without the context of the play itself (I intensely disliked RENT before actually seeing it). Hamilton is almost entirely sung-through, so if you see a few YouTube clips to get an idea of what it looks like, the cast album brings the play to life really well.
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Most wouldn’t, no.
Oh, it’s definitely coming Left Coast, that was always going to happen.
Would those DVD-watchers who wouldn’t buy a ticket actually buy a ticket if the DVD were unavailable to them? Live theatre ain’t that much like movies. No matter how expensive your home-theater setup is, you’re not going to get anything like a live-theater experience with it.
Going out to a Broadway show is (usually) some combination of really expensive and/or prohibitively inconvenient, but when you ask the people who do it if they’d just stay home if they could watch the show on DVD, the vast majority of them would laugh in your face.
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They are not.
Then they probably never going to go to the live show either. So they got their $$ on the DVD.
That is too bad. I am not a huge theater fan. It just isn’t my thing. I did luck out when I went to NYC (OMG that was like 10 years ago), and they had a subway strike so Broadway tickets were available at regular price and saw Spamalot and Wicket. I enjoyed them. But I would be much more apt to watch them on DVD if they were out there. And I confess that this Hamilton sounds interesting.
Again, I think theater is mainly for the experience. Just like music and the like, you can enjoy the CD all day long, but an actual concert is usually a unique experience that, if done right, blows the CD experience out of the water.
I don’t even go to a lot of concert, but I have screamed/sang my self hoarse belting out Juke Joint Jezebel and screaming “KMFDM SUCKS!” to prompt an encore.
I know this is a typo…
But now I want to see a Broadway musical about [a certain Ewok] (Wicket W. Warrick | StarWars.com).
Not right now, anyway. LMM’s answer to “what are you doing with the filmed version?” was to say it would be “locked in Gringott’s for now”. There’s lots of precedent for filmed stage productions to be shown on Netflix, cable, or even in one-night-only movie theater engagements. Hamilton is making money like crazy and Lin’s been very vocal about wanting more people to be able to see it, so I bet it’ll appear sooner rather than later.
This makes me very happy. Obviously the original soundtrack is technically already documenting the original casting. But it’s always great being able to actually see the performances and nuances the original actors brought to their roles.
I don’t mind if the archived video isn’t released for a long time, but knowing it’s there is great
Shit - me too. Make it so!
If it wasn’t for video I’d have never been able to see Sunday in the Park with George - not with the original cast anyway. I really wish more shows did this - it in no possible way replaces the live experience but there is still something to be said for getting a chance to see some of these great performances.
If you want a taster of Hamilton, here’s the performance of “Yorktown” from last weekend’s Tony Awards (skip to 2:14 to get past the intros).
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So, which is it–film or video? The terms seem to be used interchangeably here. Video is archival only in the sense that digital video can be copied without loss. Monochrome polyester base film, when properly stored, has a very long life.
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Repeating for truth.
Over the years I’ve seen the best of the best in NYC and London thanks to being willing to wait in line for cheap tickets. I’ve even got great stories to tell from many of those lines!
Pro tip: go with a group and take turns going elsewhere (food, museum, people watching, whatever) so that you don’t lose too many hours in the day.
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Another suggestion, especially for people outside of those cities: check out Goldstar. It’s a free list you can subscribe to, like Groupon, and their schtick is that they buy large blocks of seats for shows at ‘bulk’ reduced prices, and then resell them cheaply. Here in Boston, I’ve seen national touring productions of Avenue Q, Book of Mormon, Pippin, Phantom, and lots of others for around $20 a ticket at most, and the seats are pretty decent.
I’m crap at lyrics as well. But, if you go to Genius.com you can read along with the lyrics. And get commentary by Lin-Manuel Miranda. And many of the songs are free there to watch/listen.
I got about three songs in listening for free, then bought the album before continuing.
Amazon Prime streams it for free with lyrics as well. Yeah, you’ll totally miss lyrics just listening. Some of that rap is fast. It’s “Into the Woods” levels of lyrical density - or more.
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