This Is This

They’re doing musicals of everything these days. They’ve got Monty Python Holy Grail musical. They’ve got a musical about John Lennon. Musicals about Cats. Musicals about trains. Musicals sell.

Something else that sells is tragedy. Stories about people who have suffered abuse. A child called “it”. A wrongfully imprisoned man. A pilot shot down for no reason over some godforsaken land where we were just minding our own business, bombing the hell out of kids (who will also, by the way, go on to write their own bestseller). People love to hear about the suffering of others. Yes sir, there’s no business like ” ‘NOOOOOO!!!!!’ business”

You see where I’m going with this. I’m talking musical tragedy.

7!
A musical version on Seven, with the great closing number “What’s in the box?”

Bite Me
Cabaret version of Silence of the Lambs

Redemption Songs
Shawshank meets Broadway - big numbers include “Painting the town, Red” and “Get busy living”

Spies and Dolls
John le Carre scripts this knockout one two punch of showtunes and subterfuge

Heretic
The Spanish Inquisition chorusline perform “Unexpectable me” and “Cruella Seville” with pizzaz

What?

Oh stop it. You’re telling me Madame Butterfly has a happy ending? Puccini (cough -with whom I share a birthday - cough) should have put some toetappers in there. If we’re going to have hard times, we may as well have a few laughs along the way, right?

Obviously the Bee Gees song “Tragedy” will feature in every production, complete with Steps “Tragedy!” hands.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006 at 9:31 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed, or leave a comment yourself.