Comments on: The Popdose Interview: Brian Yorkey

By: BobCashill

BobCashill — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:19:10 +0000

And win he did. Elton John, relieved at his Rock Court verdict, was exceptionally gracious in defeat.

By: BobCashill

BobCashill — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 04:19:10 +0000

And win he did. Elton John, relieved at his Rock Court verdict, was exceptionally gracious in defeat.

By: BobCashill

BobCashill — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 03:19:10 +0000

And win he did. Elton John, relieved at his Rock Court verdict, was exceptionally gracious in defeat.

By: Malchus

Malchus — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:08:05 +0000

And I'm thinking the Giles character should serenade the Hare character with “All I Need.”

By: JonCummings

JonCummings — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:04:10 +0000

D'oh! (Or rather, as a particularly cheesy dinner-cruise showtune fest put it: “Do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti …D'OKLAHOMA….”)

By: BobCashill

BobCashill — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 21:33:36 +0000

This piece should be placed on the All That Chat site, to remind the fire-breathers there of its unique quality and flavor. It tries to refashion the mold, if not shatter it.

(Oklahoma! was based on a pretty much forgotten play, but it of course exists well outside of the current world of redos and repurposings.)

By: jefito

jefito — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:32:05 +0000

Jason and I are hatching a plan to strongarm Yorkey into writing “Popdose: The Musical.” I want the Malchus character to sing a Bryan Adams medley.

By: JonCummings

JonCummings — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:23:10 +0000

This is a really nice piece. I find the discussion of the “original musical” most interesting, in that relatively few such beasts have EVER really existed. It's really a matter of degrees, isn't it — a continuum from something completely original, like Avenue Q or Rent or (I think) Oklahoma, to something that's a re-imagining of an existing story (West Side Story), to something that's a more direct adaptation (My Fair Lady or Hairspray or Les Miz), to what we're really upset about here: shows that just rip off both story AND music from another medium (Footloose, Mamma Mia, the Disney shows).

I like Yorkey's admission that musical theater is a “ridiculous” concept–but as he says, that just makes it more surprising and wonderful when things go right. Maybe that's why even the most tepid criticisms of an original show that largely works provoke such frothing reaction — because there's so much creative alchemy necessary to the writing and staging of even a modestly successful original musical, and a lot of musical-theater purists worry that even the slightest discouragement of an original work will force the show to close, and then send a guy like Yorkey off in pursuit of the next barely-adapted cash cow.