I haven’t been making it out to New York as often as I’d like. Perhaps I’m getting old and it’s hard to muster up the enthusiasm my youth had or perhaps I’m familiar with New York and the thrill of exploration has lessened. One of the reasons why I visit New York is for the shows as I do enjoy musical theatre.
I’ve been subscribing to both the seasons from the Center Theatre Group and the Pantages. The Pantages sent me an email today (Friday) that contained their upcoming season announcement. They seem very excited about it because the subject said:
Your 2013-2014 Season Renewal—Announcing a history-making season
Their big news? Old shows are coming back.
- The Book of Mormon – I saw this last year. While I enjoyed it and I’m kinda glad it’s back, I have no intention to see it. This is one of the problems that Los Angeles faces because we have few Broadway-caliber theatres. We can’t let shows run until demand has been satisfied because first these are touring companies and second we wouldn’t get any other shows in town.
- The Lion King – I saw this a few years ago at the Pantages. Again, this is a good show and I’m glad that people have a chance to see it, but I don’t really want to spend hundreds of dollars to see the same shows repeatedly.
- Once – I was going to say mean things about this but the email assures me that this musical that is based on the movie I never saw because the trailer looked too saccharine is quite good as it “swept the Tony Awards with an astounding 8 wins” including Best Musical.
- The Wizard of Oz – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lush and lavish spectacular touring production from the West End! My fondest memories of Wizard of Oz involves my high school doing productions of it. This could be good. This could be great! Who doesn’t love flying monkeys and oh right it’s reminding me of Wicked which I saw multiple times at the Pantages.
- Evita – More Andrew Lloyd Webber. I like the show, I like the music, but I doubt Patti LuPone will be performing so I don’t feel that I absolutely have to go.
- Ghost the Musical – I’m not going to make a joke about Patrick Swayze. I know nothing about this show, so that means I should give it a chance.
- The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber featuring the US Premiere of Selections from Love Never Dies – no seriously, I would like you to know that I find this selection particularly offensive. I didn’t really feel like he needed to make a sequel to Phantom of the Opera and I haven’t heard anything that convinced me that the sequel was well received. Perhaps Love Never Dies is so awful that they figure the only way they can salvage their investment is as a marketing gimmick to unsuspecting theatergoers.
There are two optional add-on shows:
- War Horse – I saw this at the Ahmanson and it’s a puppet show with a really unrealistic plot. When I learned that the original story was a children’s book it made sense. There is a certain immaturity about the plot that could only have become from a children’s book.
- American Idiot – Again, this was at the Ahmanson previously. Plus I’ve seen it an absurd amount of times both in New York and out here.
So it looks like I’ll be saving some money.
As an admirer of Andrew Lloyd Webber, I rented the DVD of Love Never Dies. It was shot in Melbourne. It had several good songs and great staging. I’d like to see the Pantages “selections from” as it might cherry-pick the best parts.
Ah, after looking up the wikipedia article I noticed that the Melbourne production was revised and better reviewed than the original West End production. So you would recommend renting the DVD? I guess I could try to find a Netflix DVD and see if I can queue it up.