Has ever an original show, The beggar's opera, been quite so tinkered with? Leave it alone, please.
You could say the same about Romeo and Juliet, or The Tempest, or the original Passion Plays. In the case of Shakespeare the originals are rather good, as are many of the derived works. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen The Beggars’ Opera and it has certainly enjoyed major success at different times but I’m not sure it would feature in anybody’s list of top 10 shows. In the original the plot is arguably less important than the conceit of lampooning a fashionable art form. In some of the, to use your word, “tinkerings” the intentions have been very different. Brecht & Weill’s Threepenny Opera has some of the best songs ever written for the theatre; the plot is still a bit lame but useful to hang Brecht’s political moralising on.
I say “Don’t leave it alone; keep messing with it!”
Just because lip-syncing is part of the Bollywood style, it really doesn't play well in theatres. It looks like they cast people who can't sing - and I go to a musical to see singers sing - not mime (even if they are miming to a recording of their own voices)
Whilst for traditional musicals I would completely agree I think it is impossible to set hard-line rules like this. If you don’t know the Bollywood style you aren’t* really going to “get” its presentation on stage but that doesn’t mean a Bollywood musical shouldn’t do Bollywood style.
*Edit: might not get it [thanks to anita]
Last Edit: Mar 1, 2016 22:01:24 GMT by orchestrator
I was quite in awe when I saw all those years ago, the song 'Journey Home' is a favourite of mine.
I agree, Journey Home is great. The show was “universalised” for Broadway removing difficult niche words like naan bread and popadum [not exactly those words but you get the idea]. It was also [re-]orchestrated to use the appropriate house minimum number of musicians. The overall effect was much weaker than the London version dramatically and having seen a preview I wasn’t surprised that it didn’t last long on Broadway. There had always been some slightly embarrassing bits in London which could have been improved quite easily but which didn’t stop it being a big success getting many first-timers into a West End theatre.
I wonder how big the orchestra will be. When it was last in the Palladium there were about 25; a whole string section, lots of wind and brass, two percussionists, harp. When it went on tour it was reduced to 14 then half way through the tour it was reduced further, to about 8! 14 was too few for this sumptuous score.