<p>^Also much whining in our household this past weekend. Rehersal for DD went from 12:00 - 5:30 yesterday. This week and last; evening rehersals from 6:00 - 11:00 every day (except last friday and this thursday, t-giving). Opening nite is this Fri. Somehow, we managed to sneak homework, a scholarship app and a college app on Sat. morning!</p>
<p>No college aps for my kid yet, but he did have a show till 11:30 p.m. Friday night, was at school to leave for Senior District auditions by 7 a.m. Sat morning, had a full Sat afternoon at the conservatory, home for another performance Saturday night, and then a cast party till 3 a.m.</p>
<p>Must be nice to be young…have energy…</p>
<p>The issue of which musicals are right for which high schools is enormously complex. Assuming that a high school has a good theater teacher (and my experience has been that good high school theater teachers are rare, indeed), selection of a musical would normally include these factors (among others):</p>
<p>What does my talent pool look like? How many males do I have who can handle large roles? How many females? What are the vocal ranges? How experienced are these people at various styles?</p>
<p>What am I trying to do with my program? Is it my intent to develop talent year-to-year? If so, what is my philosophy with this? Do I think it’s a good idea to give roles to people when I know there is a high probability that they will fail, or do I think it’s a better idea to develop people in reasonable stretch roles knowing there is a high probability they will succeed and pick up valuable skills along the way? </p>
<p>What can the orchestra do? Is it too much to ask them to master a score like “West Side Story”? What are their development needs? Is there a really talented jazz trumpet players? If so, should we take that into consideration when choosing a play?</p>
<p>What is my financial situation? How large and involved have audiences been in the past? Do I need to develop audiences, or are they already developed and seeking more up-scale fare? What are the royalties and other production costs? What sort of gate revenue can I count on?</p>
<p>What will this community accept? Must I stick with maudlin plays, or can I move it upscale a bit? Can I even go as far as controversial? And if I do, do I have the talent for it? And what will the kids be learning from it?</p>
<p>What have I done in the past? Shouldn’t I choose plays that require different acting styles from those my kids have experienced from past shows? If I don’t change it up, will they graduate able to function in various styles?</p>
<p>Having said all that, here are some categories and comments on individual musicals:</p>
<p>Category: Same old Stuff (substitute anything you want for the word “stuff”)</p>
<p>These plays are formulaic. There are usually two romantic leads, two juvenile leads, one or two comic relief characters, tuneful songs using mostly major scales, large choruses, and more men cast members than women.</p>
<p>Oklahoma
South Pacific (called “South Pathetic” by much of the theater community. This play has not aged well.)
The Music Man (has aged better than most and has more female roles than most)
42nd Street (insipid plot and needs a large number of good dancers as well as a good choreographer)
How to Succeed in Business … (no juvenile leads and requires many more males than most. Hasn’t aged particularly well, but a more interesting plot line than average)
The King and I (Bring out all the Yul Brenner impersonations, because that’s what you’ll get. Needs children big time.)
1776 (much better than most. Love interests played down. But requires a SUBSTANTIAL number of good males and is very skimpy on female roles. Generally not good for high school)
Annie Get Your Gun (better than average female role as a star vehicle)
Brigadoon (usually leads to awful Scotts accents. Music is so so.)
A Funny Thing Happened … (Plautus at his best. Funny, funny stuff and teachers acting for farce. Better than average music.)
Fiddler on the Roof (overdone in high school mostly with boys who have not business playing the lead. Absolutely DEPENDS on the lead.)
Guys and Dolls (hackneyed but popular. Doubt the kids learn much, but it does tend to draw and audience)
Kiss Me Kate (better than average farce)
My Fair Lady (still a GREAT musical, but depends heavily on two characters. If they don’t pull it off, the show bombs terribly. Also difficult to costume and the set needs to be more expensive than average)
Once Upon a Matress (probably doesn’t quite belong in this category. It’s good. Lots of roles that can go male or female. REQUIRES a stunningly good Fred or the whole thing falls apart)
Showboat (try avoiding having a white kid sing “Old Man River”)
The Sound of Music (stage version not as good as movie version. Can send audience into diabetic shock)
Paint your Wagon (imagine hearing Clint Eastwood singing “I Talk to the Trees”)</p>
<p>Children’s plays (sort of)</p>
<p>Generally, this category is designed to appeal to children and adults. </p>
<p>Annie (girls’ show. At high school level, requires older kids to play younger kids and tends to detract from the production.)
Barnum (lousy show in my book)
Beauty and the Beast (wonderful show, expensive, but great audience draw. Easy to do badly, however)
Cinderella (Great if you have a young Leslie Ann Warren)
Honk! (It’s OK. Funny in places. Hard to say what the kids learn from this)
Secret Garden (Once again, it’s OK.)
Oliver! (I hope I never have to see another production of this. I’ve never liked it, but that’s just me. Anyway, you really need a great young boy to play this role.)
Peter Pan (not bad)
Seussical (mostly insipid with average music, at best)
You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown/Snoopy (two musicals with the same themes. Good stuff but relatively small cast)</p>
<p>Teen age plays</p>
<p>These plays require a lot of teenagers and are generally about teenage life.</p>
<p>Bye Bye Birdie (never seen except on high school stages. I will have to be dragged to see one more production of this but, on the whole, it’s really not too bad)
A Chorus Line (not really teen age, but close. Big cast show but many of the roles are just opening dancers. Hasn’t aged all that well, but still viable)
Fame (best done with really stellar dancers, musicians, actors.)
Footloose (fun stuff)
Grease (maybe the best of the teen age musicals other than West Side Story)
Hair (dated)
Hairspray (overrated in my book. But can still be done)
Rent (not sure if the rights are out. Can be controversial. Not really teenage, but young adult, certainly)
Tommy (not quite all teenage, but close enough. Good music but a mess of a musical)
West Side Story (the best. Romeo and Juliet as a musical. Somewhat dated in terms of how unscary knives are these days compared to what modern gangs carry. Tough, tough music. Requires great dancers)</p>
<p>Religious</p>
<p>Godspell (small cast but underrated show. Good music and energy)
Jesus Christ Superstar (unsingable except by the most amazing voices.)
Joseph and the Techicolor … (I find it maudlin and trite. Others disagree.)</p>
<p>Not easily categorized</p>
<p>The Wiz (gag me with a spoon)
Wizard of Oz (much better than the Wiz)
Camelot (almost an SOS, but there’s enough meat here to make it more worthwhile than the average musical. Over long second act. Requires superb actor for Arthur)
Cats (among theater people, often considered to embody everything that is wrong with the theater today. No acting required. Mostly a dance show. Not much plot. Spectacle.)
Les Miserables (excellent show. Huge cast. Requires a number of stunning voices.)
Little Shop of Horrors (small cast but wonderful show from top to bottom)
Man of La Mancha (needs a Cervantes. Good luck finding one. Good show.)
Martin Guerre (great music for high tenor voices. The book is a mess.)
Pippin (not a great book, but good music and high energy. Sometimes controversial in conservative communities)
The Rocky Horror Show (good luck finding the lead boy. Wonderful show. Controversial most places)
Victor Victoria</p>
<p>Sondheim</p>
<p>Sondheim musicals are sophisticated, very difficult to play and sing, and usually appeal to a more educated audience with more educated ears than the average play. They are not usually big sellers, but there is much, artistically, to recommend them.</p>
<p>A Little Night Music
Company
Follies
Sunday in the Park with George</p>
<p>Simply the Best</p>
<p>These shows are entertaining for most people, but can be darker than the normal musical so may turn off people who only go to musicals for laughs.</p>
<p>The Threepenny Opera (difficult to pull off in high school because of the Brechtian intent, but excellent roles, music, and message)
Cabaret (when done well, it is simply breathtaking. Difficult for high school students to master, but lots of good roles. Dark. Can be controversial depending on the production)
Chicago (excellent satire. Skimpy outfits draw teenage boys into the audience.)
Into the Woods (adult fairy tale with grim message. Lots of good roles. Sondheim.)
Sweeney Todd (dark, dark, dark. But funny and fun)</p>
<p>Tarhunt – </p>
<p>Great summary, but I have trouble with your categories at the edges. I have a hard time distinguishing Camelot, Man of La Mancha, Pippin, and Little Shop from your “Same Old Stuff” category (but I like a lot of the Same Old Stuff better than you do). And you have Sondheim in practically every category, including “Sondheim”.</p>
<p>I have seen Threepenny Opera bomb horribly as a high-school play. Three hours of unmitigated boredom. And it’s really hard to imagine a strong high-school production of Sweeney Todd. But I once saw a really good production of the early Sondheim Anyone Can Whistle.</p>
<p>
Wow, do I agree. We saw a college production of this and it <em>is</em> unsingable for almost all students. Done with the right voices, it is awe-inspiring. Once you’ve seen Carl Anderson as Judas, no one else sounds quite right. In the college production we saw, the applause was so weak the actors did not even come out for a curtain call. Very very sad.</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>Well, the categories bleed into each other. And some Sondheim isn’t really Sondheim (like West Side Story in which he did only the lyrics). </p>
<p>I used SOS for the Roman approach to theater (two adult leads, two juvenile leads, comic relief). Camelot doesn’t have juvenile leads. Man of La Mancha has no juvenile leads and not really a love story. Little Shop has one love story but is so unlike most other musicals that I don’t think it belongs in “same old.” Pippin is also very strange compared to the Same Olds. But I’ll freely admit that some of these could move among categories.</p>
<p>I have to go with Jasmom on the Anything Goes, but I could be biased as my daughter was Reno (the lead) her senior year in this musical, before she left for NYU and Strasberg Studio. </p>
<p>Last year our small, rural high school did Beauty and the Beast. It was a phenomenal show. It had lots of parts so many could participate. Our small school only has a musical every other year, so you can imagine how important it is to try to have a musical with more than just one or two parts in it. They also did Fiddler on the Roof my oldest daughter’s sophomore year. Another good musical, with more parts than you realize. Interestingly, as I look at the previous post, our high school is talking about Les Mis for next year, which I was hoping they would wait until my youngest daughter is a junior, so she might have a shot for the lead. She will be a freshman next year. She is 88 lbs dripping wet, long blond hair, with the biggest voice that you can imagine coming right out of that little person. Her swing choir director used her to open “You ain’t got a thing, if you ain’t got that swing” because its fun to see people when they realize that large voice they’re hearing is coming out of such a small person. Anyhow, as a freshman, she can only hope for a nice ensemble part or small speaking role. I know she’d love Grease, I’ll have to share that idea. We are lucky with the talent level at our school due to the state university’s location in our community. All of the kids take voice from a very young age. Our choir program is also incredible. We are very, very lucky to have such awesome teachers.</p>
<p>Good luck on the musicals.</p>
<p>My favorite HS non-musical, by far, was Neil Simon’s “Fools” - hilarious, camp, silly but good pacing - you just need to find a Russian accent coach. Our kids all sounded like they were camp followers of Dracula straight out of Transylvania.</p>
<p>Picasso at the Lapin Agile (Steve Martin) is also a riot - our HS didn’t get the rights but we attended another HS production - wonderful!</p>
<p>Having just seen a college production of Carousel, I personally think it is a much, much better R&H show than Oklahoma. If you watch the (now ancient) movie or just listen to the soundtrack, it doesn’t come across - but though the book is dated (and a bit schizo) and some of the characters are fragmented, the musical numbers and choreo are excellent - the overall experience is very satisfying. </p>
<p>The show I most wish a HS would discover is “Bat Boy.” I saw it at the Fringe put on by a group from Cambridge, and it was a great crowd-pleaser, highly imaginative show (in the spirit of Little Shop and Rocky Horror - unique). Here’s a snippet from Wikipedia:</p>
<p>"The story about a half-boy, half bat found living in a cave inspired bookwriters Keythe Farley and Brian Flemming to write a stage adaptation. They were joined by composer/lyricist Laurence O’Keefe (an American who is no apparent relation to the English bassist Laurence O’Keefe) and their first production premiered on Halloween 1997.</p>
<p>In the musical, Bat Boy learns to speak from his adoptive family, yearns for acceptance and tries to join society, only to face hatred and violence from a town that fears him and jealous rage from his foster father. Although full of blood, violence, incest and interspecies sex, Bat Boy: The Musical has won several awards and rave reviews and is regarded as one of the funniest and most imaginative musicals in years. John Lahr of The New Yorker observes “this is the only play in the history of the theatre whose hero ends Act I with a rabbit in his mouth, and who moves on in Act II to an entire cow’s head.”"</p>
<p>Yulsie–our local high school did Bat Boy a couple of years ago. I didn’t expect much from it, thought it kind of a weird idea for a musical, but it was very entertaining, very funny. The kids did an excellent job, played it very campy. And we had an exceptionally talented group of kids doing the play that year. But I didn’t take my youngest (6 yrs. old at the time) because of the content, and the audience for that one was not as large as it has been for the more family oriented musicals they have done there.</p>
<p>Oh, Batboy… Yeah. High schools do that one occasionally. Mine did. I love the musical itself- the music is awsome, the story is powerful, and it has a pretty large cast. However, it also has all sorts of “bad” things in it like incest. Fun. That cause all sorts of protests at my high school A focus on the family guy flew out to CA to attend a PTA meeting about it. Really a ridiculous scandal for a play that wasn’t all that bad. Because of all of the controversy, all of the writers actually came out to watch our performance of it, and said it was the most fun they had ever had watching a Bat Boy show. We made it more funny with a serious underscore, than simply serious. Also we cut out the nudity. That probably helped.</p>
<p>Nikara, that is too bad about the controversy someone created over Bat Boy. I know the show well as my daughter has been a professional production of this musical and really likes it. However, I can’t think of any nudity in this musical and I have seen two different productions of it…the professional one and a college one.</p>
<p>By the way, the actor who played Bat Boy off Broadway is now on the first and brand new Jersey Boys tour as one of the leads.</p>
<p>Plays my high school has done that I liked…</p>
<p>A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Damn Yankees
You Can’t Take it With You
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying
West Side Story</p>
<p>My daughter’s school does a fall play, a winter Reader’s Theater, a spring musical, and a summer evening of 10 minute plays. The fall play is usually a comedy - this year they did The Odd Couple, they’ve also done You Can’t Take It With You, and a production of Noises Off that was brilliant (rather than having two sets, they moved the audience from the theater to backstage. It was hilarious, but they did have an exceptionally talented bunch of students that year.)</p>
<p>For spring musicals, they’ve recently done Little Shop of Horrors, which was terrific but had a much smaller cast than usual, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I highly recommend - there is a lot of audience participation and opportunities for a big chorus to be really involved in the action. </p>
<p>Reader’s Theater is where they seem to be more willing to do drama: they’ve done Animal Farm, Romeo & Juliet and this year they’re doing 1984. But they’ve also done an evening of Doctor Suess, which had a hilarious Suessification of Romeo & Juliet. </p>
<p>The evening of 10 minute plays is a personal favorite of mine. They’ve done a lot of David Ives, his short plays are terrific, plus the plays are all student directed. My D has directed a few Christopher Durang pieces (The Actor’s Nightmare, For Whom The Southern Belle Tolls, The Funeral) for this show, and performed in a bunch of others.</p>
<p>I loathe Carousel, but Oklahoma is a favorite. This year my D’s school is doing Man of La Mancha - D auditioned yesterday, she’s crossing her fingers that she gets Aldonza. They have a lot of strong men in the music program at her school - the director of vocal music and theater at her school is an amazing teacher. </p>
<p>I think it’s good to occasionally dust off the old chestnuts, and there are also some shows that are flawed but fun. I agree with an earlier assessment of Sondheim - his shows are not going to sell-out, but the kids will learn a lot while doing the show. Sweeney Todd is a personal favorite of mine, but I love his whole catalog.</p>