As I type this, I’m listening to the cast recording of The Pirate Queen, which closed this past June after only 85 performances. I must say, I’m a bit stumped.
Judging by the cast recording, this musical sounds like a great musical! I”ve listened to the first 12 tracks so far, and it’s got some great stuff. Definitely similar to Wicked and Les Miserables.
With a little help from Wikipedia, I can follow the plot pretty well, I think, and it seems good. The singing is superb.
The critic’s reviews were pretty negative on The Pirate Queen - they seemed to view it as a Les Miserables wannabe. The viewer reviews were mostly positive, but confused. The viewers disagreed sharply. Most viewers praised the dancing. but other user’s said the show was good except for the choreography.
The only things that the viewers seemed to agree on was that Stephanie J Block did well.
Sadly, I don’t guess I’ll ever get to see The Pirate Queen myself…
Here’s an unusual musical video - it’s a scene from The Time Travelers Convention, a new musical by heidi heilig. What makes it unusual is that it’s filmed in Second Life, a virtual world. The music and vocals are “real” though.
It’s a documentary looking at the process of creating and launching a new musical. It follows the story of four musicals: Wicked, Taboo, Caroline Or Change, and Avenue Q.
I thought the DVD does a great job capturing the atmosphere of the theatre district in NYC. It also presents the tension of Broadway - the great gamble taken by everyone involved in a new musical. It spends quite a bit of time covering the all-important critics, including interviews with quite a few of them.
It focuses on the creative process more from a business standpoint - will the musical succeed or not? Will it get a Tony? I would have liked to see more coverage of the artistic side - choreography, set creation, music, etc.
Overall, a great, educational DVD. I think any Broadway fan would enjoy seeing it.
Content: The DVD gets a PG rating for Language and some sexual references. It has a smattering of language in it, quite a bit of cross-dressing (clips from Taboo), and a few other sexual references.
I read on several websites references to the “really high notes” in the song Man Of La Mancha. I was like “what?!” High notes? The note is an E5. It’s perfect for a baritone…even a bass could probably do it. I’m a second-rate baritone, and I can sing it even higher than the original key, so I was confused as to what high notes they were talking about. Then I found this video:
Interesting. Not bad, but I still prefer a hearty baritone voice…what do y’all think?
