When someone in the Broadway community passes, it is tradition to dim the lights of the Broadway theatres. Well… sort of.
When someone in the Broadway community passes, it is tradition to dim the lights of the Broadway theatres. Well… sort of.
As the announcement has emerged that Rob Marshall will be ushering the musical comedy classic Guys and Dolls to the Silver Screen, I have encountered many people who are asking, “why?” Many people consider the 1955 film version directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz to be a classic. I am not one of those people.
Nowadays, it has become the go-to fashion on Broadway to adapt films for the musical stage. Such movies asMoulin Rouge!, Back to the Future, and The Lion King have proven to be hits of this ilk. Most, however, have been terrible, pale replications of their screen counterparts. A handful, however, are truly amazing: artistic re-thinkings that improve upon their source material. This article is a celebration of the 10 best musicals that started as films … and three that surprisingly (for some of you) that didn’t make my list.
Stephen Sondheim’s score for Assassins has always impressed me for how the late composer-lyricist captured the flavors of Americana: Sousa-like marches, barber shop quartet, folk ballad, and soft pop music, in telling a story that is inherently American. Quibble if you must about the musical’s themes, but there is no other musical more relevant in the post-Trump era than Assassins. Some have called it anti-patriotic, and others have erroneously stamped it as glorifying the work of psychotic, would be (and sometimes successful) killers of Presidents of the United States. Assassins is, in fact, a lament of the American dream and how its false promises and failure to deliver have driven individuals and, metaphorically, society as a whole, to the edge. One of the song’s in the musical is titled “Something Just Broke,” a reaction to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In reality, Assassins digs deeper than mere mourning, challenging our blind patriotism and posits the theory that the United States of America has been breaking since its inception. What better way for Sondheim to convey the generations of unrealized American dreams than to say it with the music that made America?