Musicals are my special interest

I talk about musicals I like. Send an ask to request specific musicals!

[musicalgargoyle]

So my mental state was, and still is, horrific... But here's another musical....

We're dreaming the impossible dream, Man of La Mancha

So when you have a poet and play write and his man servant thrown into prison because the poet is also a tax collector and collected taxes on the King's favorite monastery and it's the Spanish Inquisition... You get him, his servant, and the other prisoners acting out a play he wrote to "plead his case" to the other prisoners.

That's all within the first couple of songs, and barely into the second one. It's such a great show, it's phenomenal. I enjoy listening to the 4th revival cast recording that has Brian Stokes Mitchel as Miguel de Cervantes/Alonso Quijano/Don Quixote and Ernie Sabella as Cervantes' Man Servant/Sancho, as well as Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Aldonza/Dulcinea. And the rest of the cast are also so great, I love the whole album.

Have a bootleg of the original Broadway cast, also fantastic btw, with Richard Kiley as Cervantes/Quijano/Quixote, Irving Jacobson as the Man Servant/Sancho, and Joan Diener as Aldonza/Dulcinea.

Here is the album playlist of the 4th revival cast, just for fun

Man of La Mancha

Enjoy. Comment or send an ask with any musical you wanna see covered, and I'll see everyone the next time I post (since I cannot keep to an actual schedule)

[musicalgargoyle]

I have been sick for weeks and just mentally have not been well enough to do much, so I'll try to post tomorrow. I apologize for going AWOL.

[musicalgargoyle]

I missed Friday, though to be fair I was sick... Still am actually. But the show must go on!

Speaking of shows, this week's musical: Six

Created by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss

The 6 ex wives of King Henry VIII of England form a band, but they need to figure out who will be the lead singer, so they do the most reasonable thing they can think of: have a competition to see who had it the worst while being married to King Henry VIII (spoiler alert: none of them win). They go in this order: Divorced- Catherine of Aragon, Beheaded- Anne Boleyn, Died- Jane Seymour, Divorced- Anna of Cleaves, Beheaded- Katherine Howard, and Survived- Catherine Parr.

I'm not gonna go into detail over their songs, that would give pretty much the whole show away, but they are all tragic in their own ways. It's really worth a watch or a listen (there's a live album on at least Spotify)

Here: have a bootleg

PARODY: SIX Queens on Broadway [February 2020 version]

Cast: Adrianna Hicks (Catherine of Aragon), Andrea Macasaet (Anne Boleyn), Abby Mueller (Jane Seymour), Brittney Mack (Anna of Cleves), Sama

I'll see you all either this Friday or sometime next week! Send me an ask if you have a musical to request, leave a comment if you'd like, and have a great day!

[musicalgargoyle]

Welcome to a new post, and on a Friday this time!

Today we got a great one, a popular one, one that had a not-as-great-but-still-kinda-good movie, with the musical being based off the phenomenal original movie:

The Producers

The show opens on a washed up Broadway producer, Max Bialystock, and his new play Funny Boy, which immediately bombs and closes after 1 performance. Max then tells a crowd of down and outs about how he used to be the King of Broadway. The next day a shy and meek accountant, Leo Bloom, comes to audit Max's books. Max is visited by one of his old lady investors, who he plays a sex game with and then accepts a check for his new play titled "cash". Leo has a panic attack after Max touches his blue security blanket, and after calming down discovers Max raised more money for Funny Boy than he spent. Max begs him to cover it up, which he does, and Leo tells him his dream of being a Broadway producer while also telling Max he could make more money from a flop than from a hit. Thus the rest of the musical is set in motion. This is all within the first few songs.

I love this show, it's so funny and the music is fantastic. I've seen clips from the musical movie version and while most are really good some parts of songs I find to be much more enjoyable in the musical than in the movie. The original movie, the non-musical version, I've seen in full and it's fantastic, I loved every minute of it.

Have a bootleg (I apologize about the quality):

See everyone (hopefully) next week! Send me an ask or leave a comment for another musical you'd like me to talk about. Have a great day!

[musicalgargoyle]

I missed last week completely. Whoops. I'll try to post tomorrow to try to keep with a schedule, let's see if that actually happens.

Anyway, this week's musical is one I'm lowkey obsessed with (which is most musicals if I'm being honest): Rock of Ages

Not the movie!!!

Now that that's outta the way:

Rock of Ages takes place in 1987 in Los Angeles, California, specifically the Sunset Strip, and starts with the narrator of the show, Lonny Barnett, setting the stage. He talks of how if you had big hair and a dream there was no place else to be. He talks of the bus boy who serves as one of the main protagonists and main love interest of the main female protagonist: Drew Boley, who dreams of being a rockstar with his stage name Wolfgang Von Colt. He also talks of the bar that a lot of the show takes place in, the Bourbon Room, owned by "the most badass bar owner in, well, anywhere!", meet Dennis Dupree. The main female protagonist comes into the show next, coming from Paola, Kansas: Sherrie Christian. With having no job but dreams of being an actress, Drew convinces Dennis of hiring Sherrie until she makes it big.

This is all in the first 2 songs. It's a phenomenal musical and it's worth watching:

The bootleg was uploaded in 2 parts so I'm posting it here in 2 parts.

I'm not sure what the next show we'll cover will be, but stick around to find out!

See everyone next time! Send me an ask if you have a show you wanna see me cover, even if I've never heard of it (especially if I never heard of it, I love discovering new shows).

[musicalgargoyle]

I'm very late but at this moment I don't entirely care and need a distraction, something that I don't wish to discuss happened today, so let's talk about another musical and hopefully I'll be on time for this week come Friday (which I probably won't with my track record, but whatever).

We got another musical I had the pleasure of performing in with my community theater trope: Oliver.

So Oliver is about an orphaned boy living in a boy's workhouse run by Mr. Bumble and the Widow Corney. The boys are all hungry and dirty and sing about the fantastical food they'd want to have. They get their bowls of gruel and Mr. Bumble arrives to have them pray and then gives them the cue to eat. After being done with his food he goes over to Mr. Bumble and asks him for more.

"Moooooore?!!!!"

The rest of the musical needs to be seen, that's just the first song and half of the second one.

It's a great show, I was so happy to be a part of it. I was in the ensemble and I got to be in so many scenes as a background character, I was the portrait in the Sowerberry's scenes for the 2nd weekend of performances, and it was so much fun. I was also the knife grinder in 'Who will buy?' on the 2nd weekend as well. My cast mates were like my family, though I admit I barely learned the names of the kids that were in the show.

Anyway, have a bootleg from the West End 2010 production:

See you all, hopefully, on Friday! Send me an ask for any musicals you wanna see me cover, whether good or bad!

[musicalgargoyle]

So now I'm very late, my apologies, the holiday weekend was a bit hectic. But now I'm back and ready to share another musical.

Welcome to Russia, in a 2016 musical based of a movie that looked like a Disney film, but at the time in 1997 was not. Presenting:

Anastasia

So the show starts with the princess Anastasia Romanov not wanting to say goodbye to her grandmother, the dowager empress, as she leaves the young child behind to go to Paris (very important for the plot). She dances with her father, Tzar Nicholas II, and a sequence happens where years have passed and she's now a teenager, dancing with her older sisters and her younger brother, Alexei, as their parents watch. Other nobles dance around them, Alexei faints for a moment and his mother rushes to him to help him up. This starts the sequence to get the Romanov family in position to take a "portrait", but turns into revolutionaries coming in and killing all of them... Or so we're led to believe.

The first sentence is in the first song on the soundtrack, and the rest isn't on the soundtrack, which is a shame because it's wonderful. But this is how the show starts before really getting into the story.

And it is just a story, the real princess Anastasia unfortunately died with her family during the Russian revolution, but shows very often aren't reality, so it's best not to nitpick so much. And at least it has a happy ending.

I actually was in this show with the community theater I was a part of. I played a soldier, mainly ensemble, in the first act and for part of the second act I was an ensemble member before becoming the bouncer of the Neva Club and was in that costume for the rest of the show. It was such a fun show and I had wonderful cast mates. This was the second show I've done with this group, the first one I might do this upcoming Friday (if I'm on time this time)

Anyway, here's a bootleg:

I'll see you all on Friday for the next musical.

If you have a musical you want to see me review or more talk about, send me an ask!

[musicalgargoyle]

I'm slightly late, and I like reviewing good musicals, but the good must come with the bad... And this next one is, in my humble opinion, BAD! So much that me and my fiance had to turn it into a drinking game just to get through it. An Andrew Lloyd Webber show is on the chopping block!

Introducing: Love Never Dies

So where do I begin? Normally I would begin at the first song or two, but not this time. This musical had so many "this child needs an adult" moments for Christine and "Raoul's" 10 year old son, Gustav, so many drunk Raoul moments (like so many), and Phantom being controlling and manipulating in such a horrifying way. I'm not saying he was a saint in Phantom of the Opera, but here he literally makes a deal with Raoul betting on whether Christine sings Phantom's song or not, without her knowledge for the rest of her life (which isn't very long after that bet). She sings the song btw, and then dies shortly after, in the repercussions of the stupidest moment from Phantom in the entire forsaken musical. He tells a suicidal Meg (remember her? Christine's friend from Phantom of the Opera, and her mom are more in the focus in this one, which is fine because they're usually not terrible in this show. Highest praise I can give) that "not everyone can be Christine" when Meg was already distraught after learning Phantom's still obsessed with Christine, and had kidnapped Gustav btw, and (spoiler)

She shoots Christine, accidentally, the gun goes off when she didn't mean for it to, and Christine dies in front of her son who is actually the Phantom's and not Raoul's.

If this review felt all over the place, welcome to Love Never Dies, it's just as all over the place if not more. Have a bootleg since no one should have to pay to see this:

See everyone on Friday for, hopefully, a good show to review! If you want a specific one to be reviewed please send me an ask and I'll do it!

[musicalgargoyle]

New week, new musical post. I've been thinking of this one all of this past week, so here we go.

The time is now, the place is Ancient Greece.

This musical is called The Frogs written by playwrights Nathan Lane and Burt Shevelove, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Nathan Lane also starred in it when it debuted on Broadway in 2004.

The first song doesn't give as much story as I'd like it to, but it gives the general premise. Two actors are discussing what show to perform, with one suggesting Oedipus and the other saying he's too cheerful and wants to do one on a Greek God and his slave traveling to the underworld. Then the next song is a prayer to the theater Gods, and do's and dont's for the audience, and then the story begins.

The show is about Dionysus and his slave traveling to the underworld to bring back George Bernard Shaw to write a new play, citing that the world's a mess and a new play could be what's needed to fix it. I'm not going to spoil the rest of the show, in case anyone wants to check it out I'm including a bootleg later in this post.

This musical has a lot of mixed reviews, the tone can give whiplash at points and the details given in parts are contradictory, called the underworld Hades and calling Hades himself Pluto while everyone else has their Greek names as an example.

Ariadne is just the most gorgeous song in the whole show and I love it. All the songs are great in their own way, but in Ariadne after getting past the more joking parts it gets sentimental and emotional and it's phenomenal.

I couldn't find a bootleg of the original production on YouTube, but I did find one. It did cut the song "It's Only a Play" which I'm a bit sad about, but is still fantastic.

I included Ariadne because I feel it needs to be heard by Nathan Lane as well as the production, and I also included It's Only a Play because it's also a terrific song.

Great show, lots of comedy and serious moments here and there, I love it despite the criticisms.

Next week we'll do a different show, if you have a show in mind send me an ask or message and I'll cover it.

See everyone next week!

[musicalgargoyle]

Alright, round 2, let's go! I got a very nice one today that some people seem to know and others don't. The Lightening Thief: A Percy Jackson Musical

It starts with 4 of the characters singing about how being a demi god isn't a great thing, and then Percy slides onto the stage. He sings about how he never wanted to be a demi god and goes into the last day of his normal life before he discovers he is a demi god, on a field trip with two of his teachers and his classmates, along with his best friend, Grover. When he gets expelled from his school. During the trip he's taken off to the side by one of the teachers, his substitute teachers Mrs. Dodds, who turns out to be a Fury, a Greek mythological demon. His other teacher, Mr. Brunner, throws him a pen that turns out to be a sword that he uses to slay Mrs. Dodds. He then learns from Mr. Brunner and Grover that he got expelled for ruining his last chance to behave by walking away from his group, and when he tries to explain to them that Mrs. Dodds is to blame, they claim she never existed. So now he's expelled and has to face what's to come next.

That's all in the first song, and the whole musical is so catchy. I love it so much, I must've seen the bootleg dozens of times at this point. The cast is only 7 people with a few of them playing double or multiple parts, besides Percy and Annabeth, if you don't count her part as one of Percy's classmates in the ensemble before her character is actually officially introduced.

The bootleg is on YouTube if you would like to watch it. Here it is:

It's a great show and it's obvious so much love and effort went into it.

See you all next week for the next musical!

[musicalgargoyle]

Let's start with an easy one, Hunchback of Notre Dame:

A phenomenal musical, a great score by Alan Menken with Stephen Schwartz on lyrics. It tells the tale of Quasimodo and how he was orphaned as a baby and taken in by his uncle, Arch Decon Claude Frollo.

Frollo had grown up in Notre Dame, with his brother Jehan, where Claude was well behaved and loved the church, and Jehan wasn't and hated being there. Jehan got banished for being with a woman, who happened to be a gypsy, under the church's roof. Many years later Frollo became the Arch Decon and received a letter from Jehan. When Frollo arrived he found his brother dying and holding a baby, with the baby's mother having already passed at that point. Frollo took the baby in when Jehan died, calling his Quasimodo which means "half-formed".

This was all in the first song. If I've peaked your interest, check out the rest of it on YouTube. It's unfortunately only bootlegs, but they're still fantastic. Patrick Page played Frollo and Michael Arden played Quasimodo. It never went on Broadway because the cast was too big, their ensemble was massive, and they refused to cut the cast down.

10/10 musical