Twin Cities Community Theater Beat

If you’ve followed this blog from the beginning, you’ll know that Big Fish has not always been at the top of my list.   It took a few tries before it won me over–although I still have a few details I would like to change in the script (wouldn't “I Don’t Need a Roof” make more sense if Sandra were actually at risk of not having a roof??).   But I can appreciate now that this musical has a strong emotional core in the relationship between tall-tale-teller Edward Bloom and his cautious son Will, who’s eager to find out the truth about his father’s life before he himself becomes a father. Good Works Community Theater began rehearsals for Big Fish in 2020 and after multiple rescheduling attempts were finally able to perform this month at Wayzata Community Church.   The show was free to attend, with volunteers accepting donations for the theater group and for the non-profit organization World Central Kitchen.   The performance I attended was the Saturday matinee, which ...

Note: this post contains spoilers. If you want to go in fresh, save this review until after you have seen the show! *** In 1902, a baby in a suitcase was thrown off of a train in Eastern Missouri. He was bruised but not badly hurt, and he was quickly found and adopted - and quickly became famous. He lived a full life with his adopted family, but the mystery of why he was thrown off of the train, and who did it, was never solved.  Bright Star , the musical (loosely) based on this story, imagines a happier resolution than real life. In this version, written by Steve Martin and musician Edie Brickell, the story is set in North Carolina and alternates between the 1920s and the 1940s —t hese changes are presumably made to be a better showcase for Martin and Brickell's bluegrass soundtrack (and they do allow for a little more fun in other production aspects, like the costumes and choreography ). With the two timelines, we meet Alice Murphy quickly as both a young woman stifled by her sma...

The Marvelous Wonderettes is a jukebox musical in which four young women sing pop hits of the fifties and sixties. In the first act, they are performing at their 1958 senior prom, and in the second, they are back to sing at their 10-year reunion. The first act is often silly, as  their teen romances and rivalries sometimes conflict with their desire to put on a polished show. The second act, aided by the more soulful pop music sound of 1968, digs deeper into the characters and how their lives have been complicated since high school. This show reminded me of Nunsense  because of its small cast and interactions with the band and the audience, but the shows also have sequels in common, although The Marvelous Wonderettes only has three to Nunsense 's six. Cross Community Players returned to live theater last summer with a big outdoor production of Mamma Mia , but chose a smaller show for its first COVID-era indoor show, a very reasonable choice after the canceled performances that...

  Welcome to Part 3 of my year-in-review!   Part 1 is here  (link) and Part 2 is here (link) . In Part 2, I told you about Broadway shows that I think should be performed again, by community theater groups.   In this section, I’ll tell you about the shows that I think are worth revisiting just to listen to and appreciate.   Many of them are available to be performed, but for various reasons they didn’t make my previous list.  Again, each musical is listed with the year of its Broadway debut, the organization who holds licensing rights, and information about the musical.  Most of the musicals have recordings on Spotify, and for the others I have provided links to recordings that others in the Broadway 2 A Day community have found.    ***   1. Shinbone Alley 1957, Music Theatre International (under the title archy & mehitabel ) Synopsis: A cockroach writes a newspaper column about his life and about his love, a wayward all...

Welcome to Part 2 of my year-in-review!  Part 1 is here . In this post, I will be telling you about the Broadway shows I came across in 2021 that I think are somewhat or completely unknown but have a lot of potential for the local community theatre stage. Some of the questions that I thought about when selecting shows included: Is the music good?  Does the story still hold up today?  Would audiences want to come see it?  Is it feasible for the limits of community theater?  (For example, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark  would definitely be a NO on that last question.)  Could I see a local community theater group succeeding at putting on this show? [The fact is, I've seen shows from a lot of local groups in the past several years.  I haven't seen a lot of racial diversity.  The reasons are complex, and I know that some people are actively working on attracting and keeping diverse talent, but in the meantime, I don't know any community theater ...

In the winter of 2020, I was scrolling through TikTok when I saw a video by Stacy Moscotti (@theatrekidauditioncoach), a vocal coach specializing in musical theater.   She had a crazy idea: listen to every Broadway musical.   In order.   When Stacy crunched the numbers, she found that, if she listened to two shows every day, she could cover 1950-2020 over the course of a year.   When she started talking about it on TikTok, hundreds of people seemed into the idea, and so began the Broadway Two-a-Day Challenge. This challenge – listen to “all” of Broadway in a year – intrigued me.   There were plenty of shows I’d heard about but didn’t really know, and plenty of shows I’d never even heard about!   I thought it would be nice to broaden my theater knowledge as a general sort of enrichment, but also, I thought I might find some forgotten gems that would be good for community theater.   As a reviewer, I may get tired of seeing the same shows repeatedly, bu...

When I first heard about Elf: The Musical , I wasn't sure it was necessary. Did we really need another film-to-musical adaptation? Actually, yes, I think we did. The thing about a lot of holiday musicals is that they are mostly about and for adults. Shows like White Christmas  or A Christmas Carol are largely about adult problems, even if there are occasionally children in them, and even though A Christmas Story is about children, it's told through a nostalgic lens that speaks more to adults than current children. Elf stars a grown man, but he experiences things as a child and his problems are problems of a child—he wants to have fun and believe in magic, and the conflict comes from the adults around him who put up boundaries and have their priorities mixed up. It's got to be easier for a young theater-goer to step into Buddy the Elf's perspective than Ebenezer Scrooge, for example. Not to mention that  Elf  has a lot more roles for young actors (beyond Tiny Tim and ...