Sunday: Hili dialogue

26 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

1. MBE died of pneumonia

   … a religious entrepreneur. I love that term – religious entrepreneur.

   1. Also, she was 89 years old and was addicted to morphine.

   2. That would be how she died.

      The why is easy: entropy.

2. Goooulet!

3. I tasted a peppermint latte once and I think one should need a prescription to order one of those. Addition waits at the bottom of the cup. I stopped well short.

   I think your analysis of immortal show tunes is a bit myopic. You compare decades of the best (cherry picked) with those of only a few modern shows. Most Broadway shows are revivals, so the number of “new” shows is quite limited. I think Evita has a few very memorable songs, as does Cats, and who is to say whether any of Hamilton’s will “have legs?”

   1. Myopic, eh? I disagree. Yes, the shows are cherry-picked, but every one of those shows has MULTIPLE good songs. Who remembers anything from Evita but “Don’t cry for me, Argentina”? I’ve listened to music from many recent shows, and while the shows, like Hamilton, may be great, the average number of great tunes per musical is low. I can think of only four good Broadway songs in recent years, and there’s only ONE PER MUSICAL:

      “All I Ask of You” from Phantom of the Opera
      “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music
      “Memory” from Cats
      and the song above from Evita.

      Compare that to, say, My Fair Lady or Oklahoma. Let’s take the former:

      “Why Can’t the English?” – Professor Higgins
      “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” – Eliza and Male Quartet
      “With a Little Bit of Luck” – Alfred Doolittle, Harry, and Jamie
      “I’m an Ordinary Man” – Professor Higgins
      “Just You Wait” – Eliza
      “The Rain in Spain” – Professor Higgins, Eliza, and Colonel Pickering
      “I Could Have Danced All Night” – Eliza, Mrs. Pearce, and Servants
      “On the Street Where You Live” – Freddy
      “You Did It” – Colonel Pickering, Professor Higgins, Mrs. Pearce, and Servants
      “Show Me” – Eliza and Freddy
      “Get Me to the Church on Time” – Alfred Doolittle and Ensemble
      “A Hymn to Him” – Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering
      “Without You” – Eliza and Professor Higgins
      “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” – Professor Higgins
      “I Could Have Danced All Night (Reprise) / Finale” – The Orchestra

      Many of these are classics, and it’s just a single musical. LOOK AT THEM!

      1. I like this version of All I Ask of You.

   2. The quality of the lyrics have dropped off a cliff over the years. To generalise: less literate & less witty.

      1. They ain’t makin’ ’em like Noël Coward and Cole Porter anymore, heh?

         1. Cole Porter has the perfect reply of course:

            In olden days a glimpse of stocking,
            Was looked on as something shocking,
            But now, God knows,
            Anything Goes.

            Good authors too who once knew better words,
            Now only use four letter words,
            Writing prose, Anything Goes.

            1. That’s the tune I had bouncing around my brain when I wrote that!

      2. Matching to the audience?

4. Re “Mary Baker Eddy (1910; why did she die?)” Momentary loss of faith? This is the problem for people whose faith keeps them alive. One slip, and Bam! … done!

   1. Would that be sort of … the bookie collecting the stake on your Pascal’s Wager?

5. The video with the crow behaving like a bat and being hindered by another crow that dislikes it is just great.

6. Julie Andrews was also replaced in the movie version of My Fair Lady. This time by Audrey Hepburn (whose singing had to be dubbed).

   1. Dame Julie Andrews, as director & Opera Australia re-created the legendary My Fair Lady Broadway production last year for its 60th anniversary, at the Joan Sutherland theatre, Sydney Opera House. Copied right down to costumes & stage design. A roaring success. That must have been something to see.

      1. It’s a damn shame she can’t sing any more because of that botched throat operation. What a voice she had!

         1. Andrews is a trouper. Examples:

            She turned down a nomination for some award or other because she felt the rest of the cast had been overlooked. [found on her Wiki]

            After the loss of her singing voice she appeared in a stage production of Dr. Dolittle in London. From her website:

            she performed the voice of Polynesia the parrot and “recorded some 700 sentences and sounds, which were placed on a computer chip that sat in the mechanical bird’s mouth. In the song ‘Talk to the Animals,’ Polynesia the parrot even sings”

            1. Dame Julie had a reputation for playing goody-two-shoes after Mary Poppins and Sound of Music. But she could also do saucy, as she did opposite James Garner in the great anti-war film The Americanization of Emily, and opposite Paul Newman in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain.

7. Don’t get me started on Hollywood versions of Broadway musicals. Suffice it to say that, when they made Guys and Dolls, they put Marlon Brando in the singing role (Sky Masterson) and Frank Sinatra in the non-singing role (Nathan Detroit). Yes, he sang, and they even added a song for him, but Sam Levine, who created the role, was tone-deaf.

   1. They messed up the Phantom one pretty badly too.

8. The film version of “Camelot” suffers also from rather wooden and stagey director by Joshua Logan, who is a great stage director, but a rather stilted film director.

   IMO The replacement of Andrews with Redgrave doesn’t work at all. Harris is OK, but Burton was better. On the other hand, I never really liked Robert Goulet as Lancelot in the stage version, and in the film David Hemmings is marvelous as Mordred. (It’s mainly Goulet’s later concert performances of “If Ever I would Leave you” that I don’t care for. He did it well when performing in the play, but I saw the others first.)

   The film also removes a lot of songs from the musical.

   I saw the musical twice, in 2007 a touring production with Michael York as Arthur, and the unrelated Rachel York as Guinevere, who had a superb singing voice. They used the revised 1980s script.
   In 2011, a local company decided to stage in using 6th century costumes, meaning rather primitive looking. The story is set in the 6th century, but is usually staged and illustrated with the more ornate costumes of the 12th and 13th century. Merlin simply wore a bear-skin.

9. Goulet looks like he’s ready to beam up. I actually mistook him for Shatner at first glance.

   Also:

   Berkeley students […] took over the administration building takeover

   …where they presumably occupied the Department of Redundancy Department.

10. Sonny Rollins version of “If Ever I Would Leave You” belongs among mankind’s greatest achievements.

    1. Well, since people (including me) have mentioned Julie Andrews and Sound of Music, we shouldn’t let the opportunity to go by without a plug for ‘Trane’s “Favorite Things”:

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