La Sirenetta Musical Opzioni

[Bewitched]

Ragazzi! ho scoperto che sono le prime a Denver questi video! Per cui sarà sicuramente differente lo spetatcolo a broadway!

ps: modifico il messaggio sopra

[Peter Pan 92]

Ma sono in playback? A me sembra di sì

[Eric]

Straordinario! La Canzone di Ursula è la migliore e i suoi tentacoli sono stupendi soprattutto nel finale! Lei è una grande! Però la scenografia è un pò povera.... spero che a Broadway sia diverso....

Messaggio modificato da Eric il 4/11/2007, 11:46

[giagia]

Capisco che i fondali marini abbondano di anguille elettriche, ma questa Ursula è davvero sotto elettroshock. Concordo con Newland che Ariel è trooooppo pesante, troppo legata al fondale marino. Speriamo proprio che a Broadway si impegnino di più

[ariel one]

io avrei enfatizzato di più molti momenti... primo fra tutti quando Ariel canta "up where they walk...", lì secondo me dovrebbe muoversi e protendersi verso la superficie... come nel film, del resto.

[Bewitched]

Ma sarebbe tutto da enfatizzare maggiormente, e poi Ariel non interagisce con nulla, mentre se ci fosse qualcosa che ricorda di più la grotta e i mille oggetti che ha sarebbe meglio; poi quando dice: "I've got twenty" mi domando di COSA stia parlando, ma soprattutto A CHI, nemmeno Flounder c'è, altro errore. E poi l'avrei messa seduta all'inizio senza far vedere la gonna ma la coda, nascondendo magari le gambe dietro alla conchigliona, in modo da dare più l'idea di sirena.
Per poor unfortunate soul lei rende molto l'idea di Ursula, ma anche qui non c'è nulla come scenografia se non la palla dietro luminosa, e nemmeno lei si muove molto, spesso è semplicemente ferma e muove solo le mani nemmeno quelle in modo molto sicuro.
Per cui spero che abbiano sistemato queste cose a Broadway.

[Ciro84]

Sherie Rene Scott però promette grandi cose nel ruolo di Ursula. É un po castigata da una direzione e coreografie povere in questa scena, però si nota che con un attimo di studio maggiore può rendere il personaggio davvero dirompente...ha un tempismo comico fantastico.

La nostra Ariel dovrebbe curare un po' più l'abbronzatura, si vedevano i segni del costume sulle spalle!

[Eric]

forse perchè erano in piena estate quando è stato girato questo video....adesso il problema dell'abbronzatura nn ci sarà piu' visto che siamo in inverno ^^

[marmaidfan]

Devo ammettere che spero abbiano fatto qualcosa per nascondere le gambe di ariel dietro qualcosa...part of your worl dmi ha deluso..troppo povera....anche se lei è perfetta...bravissima...e una voce davvero fantastica...

Ma poor unfortunate souls..mio dio...nonostante i problemi di cui sopra...lei è F A V O L O S A mamma mia! Sono impresionato! Perfetta! e il costume è da paura!!!!!

[Scissorhands]

Ecco!!!!!!
Prime reazioni alla preview di Broadway!!!!!!!
Tutti hanno adorato lo show nonostante i difetti (primo fra tutti il vestito di Flounder odiato all' unanimità e qualche canzone)...
Leggete

http://broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=947917

[Ciro84]

Da quel poco che ho visto il costume di Flounder lo trovo semplice ma molto carino...non so, poi magari non rende bene dal vivo

[GasGas]

bellissima recensione sarei felice di vedere qualche immagine o video della versione di broadway

[Ciro84]

Part of Your World reprise, credo sempre da Denver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWoLAk0jQ9M

[ariel one]

Part of Your World reprise, credo sempre da Denver

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWoLAk0jQ9M

aaaah! pazzescamente struggente!

[Bewitched]

Una altra canzone di Ursula:

I Want The Good Times Back

[shaoran-kun]

Devo dire l'attrice che interpreta Ursula non mi ispirava affatto. Invece sullo stage ha saputo darsi da fare. Ha dato a Ursula una vena più ironica e "isterica" che ci può stare. Complimneti!

Una nota negativa invece per il costume di Ariel. Sembra un polipo anche lei...

[veu]

Un po' di video... se li avete già messi, scusateci, ma siamo di fretta e postiamo velocemente qualcosina...

Part of Your World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2GoCiXPz4k

Part of Your World Reprise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWoLAk0jQ9M

Poor Unfortunate Souls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uihmUX--a5c

I Want the Good Times Back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK8zegC12YI

[veu]

NEWS:

MENKEN PARLA DEL MUSICAL:

A little mermaid comes to the Great White Way
By PETER D. KRAMER
THE JOURNAL NEWS

Rory Glaeseman/The Journal NewsAlan Menken talks about his work with "The Little Mermaid" the musical. He says the new show mixes familiar elements from the film along with quite a few surprises.Related Links
• More theater coverage
• In the Wings community theater blog

"The Little Mermaid"
Where: The Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 W. 46th St.
When: Now in previews. Opens Dec. 6.
Tickets: $41.50 to $111.50
Call: 212-307-4747.
Web: www.thelittlemermaid.com.


Last night, a little mermaid named Ariel was set to take her first steps on Broadway, as previews began for "The Little Mermaid" at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.


What is one giant leap for Mer-kind - in the person of newcomer Sierra Boggess - is just one small step in a process that began years ago for Alan Menken, the New Rochelle native who composed the Oscar-winning score for the 1989 film on which the show is based. Menken, who now lives in northern Westchester, has written 10 new songs for the Broadway adaptation.


"It's extremely rich now," Menken says. "With the film, we were working in a form where it was safe to say, 'Here's the boy. Here's the girl. Let them fall in love. OK, and let's move past that because we only have 70 minutes to tell the story.' But now, obviously, in this medium, we need to really give it dramatic and structural support."


Elements of the 70-minute film have been expanded for the stage and re-imagined by opera director Francesca Zambello and a creative team that includes Menken, book writer Doug Wright ("Grey Gardens"), choreographer Stephen Mear ("Mary Poppins") and lyricist Glenn Slater.


Slater's lyrics add to the work done for the film by longtime Menken collaborator Howard Ashman, who died in 1991.


Ashman and Menken were credited with sparking the renaissance of Disney animation with their musical retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen story of a mermaid who dreams of living on land. Their snappy songs and clever lyrics won them the best-song Oscar for "Under the Sea," and the score won Menken the first of eight Oscars.


A lot has happened in the 18 years since the release of "The Little Mermaid."


"When I first wrote this, Anna was just born and up to about 4 years old," Menken says. "And Nora was just born. So when I was writing this I had my two little girls, my Ariels, and I was watching classics that were on VHS for the first time and watching them and experiencing them with my girls.


"Howard was ill and we didn't know it," he says. "We were losing a lot of artists who were close to us. And we didn't know what this AIDS thing would be.


"I remember watching these animated features with my daughters in a very uncertain world - you're especially sensitized when your kids are young - and escaping into them. Flash forward, and I'm doing it on the Broadway stage and my Ariels are getting their sea legs and taking off. I think about them every day and I worry about them every day. I feel the parallels of the show in a very personal way."


The story is a Faustian bargain, not unlike the story of Menken and Ashman's first big success, "Little Shop of Horrors." A mermaid named Ariel dreams of being part of the human world and makes a deal with the seawitch Ursula, whereby she'll give up her voice if the man she loves doesn't kiss her by an agreed-upon time.


Did Menken fear that a little mermaid would get lost on a big Broadway stage, in a sea of sets and costumes?


"It's a matter of sensibility, not size, I think," he says. " 'Little Shop' was a trashy, tacky, Off-Broadway musical. That's what fueled it. That's what it was all about.


"Does 'Little Mermaid' belong on Broadway? Broadway is a very malleable concept, I think. You have 'Spring Awakening' on Broadway and you had 'Grey Gardens' on Broadway. Broadway is a pretty wide palette. We want to keep the intimacy, sure. But the little mermaid grew up when she became a big, animated classic. It's hard to go home again."


But Menken had no problem digging into the material and identifying moments to add, to enlarge the story and make it richer.


"One of the first things we did was to write the song for Prince Eric. And the moment that cried out for him to sing was when he's standing by the beach and in the movie he's playing the recorder looking longingly out at the sea.


"It became a song called 'Her Voice.' It's a really nuanced ballad, very adult. It gives a sense of his passion and the fact that he's haunted by Ariel. We never could have put that in an animated picture. The fact that we can do that is because we're on a Broadway stage."


If it's more adult at times, there are still the elements that audiences - including those who watched videotapes with their dads when they were 7 - will demand. Menken says the audience's familiarity with the material has its pluses and minuses.


"The plus is that people come in dying to hear 'Under the Sea' and 'Part of Your World,' and 'Les Poissons' and 'Poor Unfortunate Souls' and all the original songs. The minus is 'They changed that' or 'Where's this?'


"But judging from the Denver audience, that's not a big issue. They're enjoying the surprises."


Surprises like singing seagulls. In the film, Ariel's pal Scuttle didn't sing. Here, he has two songs.


"Is it dramatically significant to have Scuttle sing? No," Menken says. "But when Scuttle's talking about human stuff, it's a very good moment in the show to have this kind of vaudeville turn for him."


What key does a seagull sing in?


"The key of Q," Menken replies.


There are other new songs, too: a big Act 1 production number called "She's in Love," performed by Flounder and Ariel's sisters; and a number to start Act 2, sung by Scuttle and the other seagulls, called "Positoovity" - about thinking positive - "but of course he fractures all the language."


Another surprise is how the characters move when they're in the undersea realm. No water is used. Instead, the actors don Heelies, shoes with a wheel in the heel, to glide like they're swimming.


Menken, who has heard his songs sung by some of the finest voices, cannot seem to say enough about Sherie René Scott, who plays Ursula.


"She brings the house down, but she could bring the house down with 'Three Blind Mice'," he says.


He has said he writes songs for characters, not for actors, but "I came as close with Sherie as I've ever come to writing a song for a performer. She's that good."


Scott's big number is "I Want the Good Times Back," in which she bemoans how things used to be when she was on top and how she'll take her revenge on King Triton, Ariel's father (played by Norm Lewis).


"You'd think it would be a plot song, but Sherie turns it into this great performance tour de force and carries it to the back wall of the theater," Menken says. "I've heard people do justice to my songs before, but Sherie is quite an extraordinary performer."


Even with the new Broadway elements, Menken says, "it's still about this girl who wants to find her own way in the world and makes sacrifices that are potentially lethal and frightening to do that. In the end, her passion is rewarded."


Menken says that Disney Theatricals boss Thomas Schumacher insisted that the musical go into its Denver tryout in the best shape possible, keeping writing changes to a minimum.


"We've rewritten a huge amount, believe me," Menken says, "but it's much much less than it would have been."


Still, the composer is sure there'll be changes now that the show is starting a month of previews on Broadway before opening Dec. 6. "How do you put a show in front of a New York audience and not say 'Oh, what about that?' or 'Let's work on that?'


"I hope we're going to have rabidly enthusiastic audiences and I expect that, if they're anything like Denver, they'll be incredibly supportive and enthusiastic," he says. "But we still have things we'll learn in previews.


"Still, it's close. It's extremely close."

[Franz]

Altri video:

Part of Your World - Reprise

I Want the Good Times Back

(sempre girati durante l'anteprima a Denver)

[Scissorhands]

Uaooo grande Menken!!!! Grande intervista!!!!!!!!!!

[giagia]

Bellissimo articolo (grazie veu) e bellissimi video!

[veu]

Ciaooooooooooo Giagia... non ti avevamo più sentito... ci fa piacere che ti sia piaciuto l'articolo... una sera veniamo su MSN così parliamo un po', ok?

[giagia]

ok ragazzi/e

[veu]

INTERVISTA A DOUG WRIGHT, autore del libretto del musical "La Sirenetta":

Writer shares his big love for 'Little Mermaid'
By PETER D. KRAMER
THE JOURNAL NEWS


Doug Wright has a Pulitzer, a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for 2004's "I Am My Own Wife," a play about an aging German transvestite named Charlotte von Mahlsdorf.


Last year, he was a Tony nominee for the book of the musical "Grey Gardens," about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' aunt and cousin who lived in squalor in the Hamptons.


Both projects involved rather dark subjects and were documentary in nature, so it might come as a surprise to learn that Wright's next project, the one that's been occupying him for years, involves a little mermaid.


Wright has written the book for "The Little Mermaid," now in previews at Broadway's Lunt-Fontanne Theatre before its official opening Dec. 6.

Wright sat down recently to talk about bringing the classic Disney feature film to Broadway.


Do you remember the first time you saw "The Little Mermaid"?

I didn't see it in the theater. But all my friends had told me it had such an exuberant Broadway-style score, and as a person of the theater, that made me want to see it. I remember sort of skulking into the children's animated films aisle and renting it. I was captivated and utterly charmed by it and it lodged itself in my heart and has been a favorite of mine ever since.


Did you have any misgivings or hesitation about working with Disney to bring "The Little Mermaid" to Broadway?

Truthfully, I actively lobbied for the job. Tom Schumacher [the head of Disney's Broadway branch, Disney Theatricals] had me into his office and said he'd seen my other work and wanted to talk about future possible collaborations. And I was brazen enough to say 'What's up with "The Little Mermaid" - because it's always been my favorite of the Disney animated musicals, and if it ever made the leap to the stage I'd love to be part of it.' So he gave me the job.


You've written two rather documentary shows - "I Am My Own Wife" and "Grey Gardens" - two shows about characters who could not be less like Ariel, the little mermaid. Is there any theme that possibly unites them, other than the man who wrote the book?

I think they're all, pardon the pun, fish-out-of-water stories, about people who for some reason are uncomfortable in their own skin and have to go on remarkable journeys in order to reinvent themselves. There's consistency there, in a funny way. The stories have something in common.


"Grey Gardens" had a cult-like following, those who had seen and loved the original documentary film. You've got an even bigger cult with "The Little Mermaid," people who know what they want to see when they come in.

As different as those two projects seem, in each instance I was taking material that is deeply beloved by a really ardent and very vocal fan base and I was reinventing it for a new medium. So it was the same responsibility, to make it work on stage as a craftsman but also to honor the memory that people have of the original.


You didn't want to be the guy who turned Ariel into chum for the critics.

No. I absolutely wanted to honor the movie.


You've made Prince Eric less of a dud than he was in the film.

Ariel yearns for a bigger, better world where she can realize her own potential, and along the way she picks up the happy dividend of Prince Eric. We wanted to make sure that Eric had his own songs and his own dilemmas in the world and that there were very specific reasons why he and Ariel were attracted to each other. We ultimately decided that Eric's a very physical guy, he loves sailing the high seas and he needed a girl who could not only keep up with him but also match him in every regard. In Ariel he finds his equal, which is important in 2007.

Some could look at Ariel as just a girl who gets her guy.

Her ambition needs to be greater. It's really to break free from the confines of her family and forge the kind of life that she feels is truest to who she is.


Can you talk about the creative process at work here? Did you get notes and go off and write?

It's highly collaborative and certainly [director] Francesca [Zambello] is a major force in shaping the material and making it as rich as it can be. But Alan Menken is at the table. His new lyricist, Glenn Slater, is there. Tom Schumacher is there. And this might sound sentimental, but I even like to believe that the guiding spirit of [original lyricist] Howard Ashman is somehow in the room, too. So when we're making changes from the original film, we're always going back to the movie to find the seeds. Because we don't want to reinvent something that worked so gorgeously. It was a heavy give-and-take.


For "Grey Gardens" and "I Am My Own Wife," you had interviews to pore over to bring your characters to life. With "The Little Mermaid," you had a movie and the original Hans Christian Andersen story, which had been wildly adapted in the making of the film. Did you find that at all limiting?

As a writer, to be given a gallery of compelling characters and a strong and interesting narrative with all of the requisite plot complications at the top, that was gift. Those are usually the hardest things to achieve, and I got handed those on a platter! So it was very welcome and I relied on that a lot. The book to the musical owes an enormous debt to the original screenwriters [Roger Allers, Ron Clements and John Musker].

What is it like to write for a sea gull?

This is the first theater piece I've ever worked on that has tap-dancing sea gulls, confetti cannons and a giant bubble machine. And I gotta tell ya: I think every show benefits from the presence of a giant bubble machine and a few tap-dancing sea gulls. I'm certainly putting them in my future works.


Were there things that you felt you had to address with "The Little Mermaid"?

I felt that the things that most excited me about the movie that I wanted to reiterate in the stage version were issues of tolerance, because one thematic through-line of the film is the undersea world and the human world and how they're at war and each carries misperceptions about the other. Ariel becomes a passionate conduit who brings the two together and allows them to find an equilibrium. Also, a parent-child story that asks basic questions: 'What's the most responsible way to parent? To keep your child safe and close to you at any cost or to endorse the sometimes threatening risks they take to realize their own identity?' And which is the more courageous act as a parent?


It's the second one. Right?

I certainly hope so.

Still, it is a show for children.

But what delights me is how sophisticated children are as viewers. When we tried out the show in Denver, we had the opportunity to bring about 20 kids together in a room who were between the ages of 8 and 12. And we asked them what the themes of the story were and which characters they connected to. They were astonishingly astute, and it was clear that they hungered for real content, too. They didn't just want firecrackers and a lot of noise. They wanted a substantive story that they could emotionally connect to. They're demanding audiences in their own right.

Did you ever feel that, because the music is so central to the success of the show, that you had to, in a way, get out of the way of the songs?

The music is a wonderful guide. It's like the songs are these gorgeous beautifully realized quilt pieces, and my job was to stitch them together as effortlessly as possible. But the music also does so much of my heavy lifting. The songs establish character, they let you know what a character's innermost desires are, they explicate the story in a really smart way, and they contribute to the joyous tone of the piece. So it's not so much staying out of their way as knowing just how deeply they're serving my task and exploiting them for all they're worth. [Laughs].

Is there a moment that you look at that you say, 'Man! We nailed that. No one's seen this before and they're going to be blown away?'

I think Francesca and her remarkable designers have created an undersea world that is unlike anything audiences have seen on stage before. And she's done it without a drop of water. The set resembles a gorgeous piece of Venetian glass and I think audiences are going to come to the Lunt-Fontanne and see a really singular world represented onstage with unusual artistry. Every time the prince's boat sails up into the skyline and we find ourselves going thousands of fathoms below the sea and we're meeting the undersea creatures for the first time, I get a visceral thrill that's unlike any other. I'm tremendously excited.