5 musicals that got big revisions when they return to Broadway

As musicals return to Broadway, the material elements of the show survive intact. Reviews of shows like Gypsy and The king and I Both received several revivals with new physical productions, new star performances and sometimes slightly again focused direction, but their scripts and scores were left more or less as they originally promoted.

But especially in the last 20 years or so, it has become normal for musicals to come back into new productions that get a dramatic new look at the material. These so-called “revisals” (rather than simple revivals) contained updated scripts and scores to fit modern production trends or to add completely new ideas and rewrites to different degrees of success.

We look at 5 musicals that got a big make -up when they returned to Broadway.

1.Fat
Originally: 1972
Revival: 1994, 2007

FatThe first transformation actually happened before it ever opened on Broadway. It is original production in a nightclub in Chicago in 1971, was notorious and has much more explicit language before it was cleared a little for the transfer of Broadway the following year. After eight years and over 3,000 performances, Fat Was the definition of a big Broadway hit, such a film adjustment became almost inevitable. John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John interpreted in the 1978 film adjustment, still one of the most perennial and successful film musical ever made.

The show was revived for the first time in Broadway in 1994 in a completely new production directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun. This production removed the original “alma mater” in favor of a new “alma mater” and a cappella chorus of “We Go Together.” The Pop hit of the 50s “Since I don’t have you” was placed in the score at the end of the first act to sing, and all the original songs received significantly new arrangements, perhaps especially ‘Beauty School’, which became a gospel tour for Billy Porter’s teenager.

But Fat returned to Broadway in 2007 in an even more thoroughly revised version, following TVs Greas: you are the one I wanta competition reality program that Laura Osnes and Max Crumm played in the two lead roles. The director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall recorded elements from the 1978 film version for the first time on a Broadway stage, including opening the show with ‘Grease (IS the Word)’ and ‘hopelessly devoted to you’. ‘This production also replaced’ Alone at the drive-in movie ‘with the movie’s’ Sandy’ and ‘All Choked Up’ with the movie’s’ You’re the One That I Want. ‘

2. Annie gets your gun
Originally: 1946
Revival: 1966, 1999

With a score of Irving Berlin and a book by Dorothy and Herbert Fields, Annie gets your gun was originally written for Ethel Merman as Annie Oakley – and it was a big hit in 1946. The score set standards like ‘doin’ what comes natur’lly ‘,’ You can’t get a man with a gun ‘,’ ‘There’s no business like show business’,’ they say it’s wonderful ‘,’ In the morning “and” It presented at 1.147 performances on Broadway and became a classic of the genre.

But one of the now well-known songs by Ithe Musical-‘an Old Fashioned Wedding ‘was not actually in the original production. Merman appears in another Irving Berlin musical, Call me madamin 1950, with a song called “You’re Just in Love.” The song paired a lamentable love ballad, Singed by Russell Nype, with a Brasser reaction by Merman, after which they sing both melodies simultaneously in counterpoint. The song was such a blow that when Annie gets your gun In 1966 he was revived on Broadway, while Merman reproduced her role, and Berlin wrote ‘an old fashioned wedding’ in exactly the same style as ‘you’re just in love’ and added it to the score.

A Broadway revival in 1999 with Bernadette Peters saw more dramatic changes, with Peter Stone written a new book that has moved ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’ to the top of the show, making a show-in-a-show all evening. Stone also removed insensitive references to Indians, which necessitates the full removal of the songs “Colonel Buffalo Bill” and “I am also Indian”.

3. Show boot
Originally: 1927
Revival: 1932, 1946, 1983, 1994

When it debuted in 1927, Show boot was immediately regarded as a rural musical that drove the boundaries of the genre in ways in ways that his contemporaries do not even approach, and it is still considered a classic today. But pioneering work as in 1927, it promoted in a form in a form that would not work today. For the beginning, it was exceptionally long and contained a reasonable amount of material that would look strange to today’s standards. In 1927, variety of entertainment such as Vaudeville was still extremely influential on musical theater, and the original production contained strange things like the leading Lady Norma Terris that performed the celebrity impressions she was known for.

The show also had prominent topics-as race-which were controversial at the time and still were today. The way we speak these topics has developed so extensively since 1927 that some of the way the show suggested would be offensive to modern audiences, something that would be horrible to the writers of the work – Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern – which wrote very specifically specifically Show boot to show the injustice of racism.

Because of all these factors, Show boot Was revised to his Broadway Bow within a year before moving to the West End in London. The most controversial element was undoubtedly the first lyric, which included the N-word, and it went through several substitutes who began in 1928 when it promoted to the West End. In a Broadway revival in 1946, there was a new Overture, the removal of a few songs and the addition of a new one – ‘nobody else but me’, sung by Magnolia on her emergence to fame. The 1946 version is considered for many years as the standard edition of Show bootBut the show was revised for Broadway in 1994 by Harold Prince, who made the score to work with seamless modern transitions, to remove further material, change the context in which the popular song “Why Do I Love You” is, and even the representation of material cut from the original production (the spooky “miss’s comin ‘) 1936 -Film version (‘I have the room above her’). Show boot Has the option today to use the 1946 or 1994 versions, in addition to a newer review created for smaller theaters.

4. Cabaret
Originally: 1966
Revival: 1987, 1998, 2014

Although the work is now widely related to Bob Fosses thanks to its Oscar-winning film adjustment from 1972, Cabaret In 1966 on Broadway, he was directed by Harold Prince and choreographed by Ron Field. The topic has always been controversial and World War II was fresh in most audiences’ memories.

Conversely to the trajectory of Show boothowever, the subsequent approach Cabaret actually worked to show it a more open portrayal of Weimar Germany and the rise of Nazism. Fosses’ film was the first to move in a darker direction, with the original novel of Christopher Isherwood, but was removed from the original stage version. Prince re-established his original production on Broadway in 1987, but he did implement some new songs and openly bisexually made the character of Cliff as he was in the film adjustment.

The most dramatic review of the show comes with Sam Mendes’ London Revival in 1993, which later played Broadway in 1998 and again in 2014. The songs “Maybe This Time” and “Mein Herr”, written for the film version, were for the first time in a stage production and the review of books that were the sexual fluidity of Cliff and the EMCEE.

5. On a clear day you can see forever
Originally: 1965
Revival: 2011

This musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane opened in 1965 on Broadway and closed to 280 performances eight months later – no huge hit, but a reverent run for the time. The plot was always bizarre: Daisy Gamble (originally played by Barbara Harris) goes to a psychiatrist, still a relatively new trend in 1965, to get help with quitting smoking. The psychiatrist hypnotizes her, and Daisy begins to describe a previous life in 18th-century England. Her psychiatrist begins to fall for the 18th-century English woman, and because she believes Daisy is her reincarnation, finally ends at the end at Daisy.

But the score was as lovely as the plot was strange and confusing. Songs like ‘Hurry! It’s delicious here! ‘ ” She wasn’t you ‘,’ ‘what did I have that I didn’t have’, ‘come back to me’, along with the ever-popular title song that made the Broadway album a favorite among theater fans. A film adjustment was made in 1970 with Barbra Streisand.

Years later, director Michael Greif began his own new version of the story of On a clear dayPeter Peter Parnell, author Peter Parnell, to write a new book that Daisy made a man-David and his alter-ego a female jazz singer in the 1940s. With the blessing of Alan Jay Lerner’s estate and Harry Connick, jr. In the role of the psychiatrist, this radical new version of On a clear day In 2011 was opened. Unfortunately, the revival was short-lived, but it introduced Broadway to the then Chicago Talent Now-Tony winner Jessie Mueller, who played Melinda (The Jazz Singer).

Logan Culwell-Block is a musical theater historian, Playbill’s manager of research, and curator of Playbill Vault. Please visit Loganculwellblock.com.

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