Musicals

["L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>]

After the recent discussion of possible Who on Broadway, I was interested to 
read an article in today's paper about a Mel Brooks musical (THE PRODUCERS) 
in work--with budget at $10 million.  I gather this is one impediment to 
producing a show on Broadway, and one reason that Disney, with their deep 
pockets, seems to be taking over.

Anyhow, there's a quote from Susan Stoman, who's directing and doing the 
choreography, on style.  She says, "An audience today has a more cinematic 
eye.  People want the lyric and the choreography and the staging to all push 
the plot forward."

I gather that she's an expert, as she's worked on Broadway for a while and 
won various Tony awards.  The mention of movies is interesting, and it 
suggests that it would be efficient to plan a movie and a musical production 
at the same time, and to use the movie script as the basis for a musical 
production.

I didn't get much in the way of response to my question about what 
non-album/concert tour projects fans would like to see, but "movie" was the 
one that did come up.  I'm thinking it would be great to see various Who 
songs/opera produced as films, including BORIS, LIFEHOUSE, PSYCHODERELICT, 
and whatever else, and then a move right away to produce them as musicals.  
QUAD and IRON MAN have already been done as movies, so have scripts ready to 
convert (though I expect IRON MAN would be tough because of complicated 
rights).

This does appear to be Disney's strategy, although they don't have the opera 
to start.  Comments from anybody?


keets

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