Oh, and there's a witch who has placed a hex on them. Annoying.įrom the detailed, layered passages in the prologue onwards, there's a verbatim feel to the songs, making them both very difficult to perform (as these copy the rhythm and pitch of voice patterns, like speech) and laugh-out-loud funny. The main characters are borrowed from Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella among others, all tied together by a baker, his wife and their quest to have children – the original beginning of Brothers Grimm's Rapunzel. The musical cleverly mixes the plots of several Brothers Grimm fairy tales, exploring the consequences of the protagonists' various wishes and goals. That teenager who watched the first ever performance of Carousel with watering eyes went on to greatness, didn't he? We've chosen to share the inaugural 1986 San Diego production, but the 2014 Disney motion picture soundtrack (starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Johnny Depp) is also very well done indeed. Think Queen Bey's vocal range meets Queen's English – stunning. And despite a global pandemic, look what's happened in three short years! Six's Broadway debut was pulled hours from curtain-up in September due to Covid-19, but that has only served to strengthen its popularity.Įurovision electro-pop meets boom-bang-a-bang German schlager in the standout ensemble track, Haus of Holbein, which could've been written by Israeli Eurovision darling Netta herself, but Don't Lose Ur Head and the genuinely moving Heart of Stone make this show one of the best new musicals in the past decade. OK it doesn't necessarily scream stone cold hit at first, but then again, Cats is based on a 1939 collection of poems about four-legged felines. ![]() The premise: the six wives of Henry VIII will perform an X-Factor style concert, where the coveted role of lead singer will be awarded to whomever the audience decides had the worst experience at the hands of their common husband. When Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss presented Six at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe, what "started as a kind of fun university project" (according to Marlow) soon took on a life of its own. Rodgers later wrote that of all his musicals, Carousel was his favourite. Yes, despite ongoing spats between Liverpool and Celtic football fans over who sang it first, the song was actually first performed by Christine Johnson, in the role of Nettie Fowler, at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway in April 1945.Īpparently, Steven Sondheim (a teenager at the time) attended that premier of Carousel and was moved to tears. It is joined by another, and soon we're we're thrust into a dream-like sequence of action – and a complete orchestra playing at full pelt.Ĭome for this, and stay for Billy's Soliloquy (a demanding, stripped back baritone solo, sustained for seven and-a-half minutes), the ballet sequence, and of course, You'll Never Walk Alone. Instead, you get an original barn-stormer – a jewel of a piece in its own right. The very first track, The Carousel Waltz, does away with the traditional concept of an overture comprising a medley of the best songs from the show. The story revolves around Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan, a carousel barker and a millworker in Maine. ![]() This 1945 musical was the second born of the magical partnership between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, after Oklahoma!. The mystical, rousing and celebratory Carousel Waltz is tough to beat in any show-tune lineup.
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