Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Fantasy Musical: Book, Music and Lyrics By???

Over the past year, two books have made the rounds in my office: The Help and No Rest for the Dead.  I'm sure you've probably heard of the former, it being a made into a hit film and all.  The latter is novel written by twenty-six (you read that right) different writers.  It is a suspense/mystery novel written by the most popular writers of that genre.  With the help of one editor, each chapter is woven together into one coherent story, but each chapter bears the unmistakable style of each author.

Well, you know me.  I'm always thinking "theater, theater, theatre."  And I got to wondering: Could Broadway's greatest composers, lyricists and book writers come together and create one scene each and make a coherent, interesting musical?

Well, of course, Broadway is full of writing teams like Rodgers and Hammerstein and Kander and Ebb, and "soloists" like Sondheim and Herman, who many times go it alone.  So that wouldn't be any fun to think about, right?  So the only "rule" of this fantasy musical is that no existing teams or soloists can go it alone.

Today, I briefly posed this question on Twitter: "If you could pair any Broadway composer with any Broadway lyricist, living or dead, to write a song, who would you pick?  Who would write the scene?"

I got some interesting responses right away, plus I added my own:

  • kdogg: "Stephen Sondehim - lyrics; Andrew Lloyd Webber - music.  It would be through-composed!"
  • mrtylermartins had two: "Stephen Sondheim - music; Sheldon Harnick - lyrics; James Goldman - book"; "Burton Lane - music; Stephen Sondheim - lyrics"
  • itsdlevy: "Jule Styne - music; Dorothy Fields - lyrics; Wendy Wasserstein - book"
  • Elder_Greene: "George Gershwin - music; Alan Jay Lerner - lyricist; J.M. Barrie - book"
  • And I was thinking: "Michael John LaChuisa - music; Jerry Herman - lyrics; Douglas Carter Beane - book"

(And I am pretty sure I'd like the Gershwins and Leonard Bernstein to do the overture, with Arthur Laurents as director - if anyone could pull a hodgepodge together it would be him!)

And so, I leave it to you!  Write in with your ideas - 1 composer, 1 lyricist, 1 book writer! 

I'll post them all in a new blog in a week or so!


Leave your suggestions her, email them to jkstheatrescene@yahoo.com, or Tweet me!
3.015
Jeff

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