Balladeer’s Blog’s recurring feature Give Them A Shoutout Before They’re Dead returns with this look at the Goo Goo Dolls’ song Broadway aka Broadway’s Dark Tonight.
Tag Archives: Broadway
PATRICK STEWART’S ONE-MAN PERFORMANCE OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1988)
A CHRISTMAS CAROL: PATRICK STEWART’S ONE-MAN STAGE SHOW (1988) I’ll come right out and admit it – I’ve always been a sucker for any version of A Christmas Carol. Trouble is, most adaptations distort the story or are produced by people who don’t seem to “get” the story or treat it like it’s a children’s tale. Anyone who thinks that needs to read the novel.
My love of mythology is partly why I love the story so much. A Christmas Carol is the closest thing to an Epic Myth the Industrial Age has produced. The language Dickens uses is very close to prose poetry but precious few adaptations of the story preserve enough of it.
That brings us to Patrick Stewart’s one-man stage presentation of A Christmas Carol. (NOT the made-for- tv movie he did on TNT) Stewart does all the voices and pretty much all the sound effects and his presentation is magnificent. It’s NOT a book-on-tape, it’s Patrick Stewart acting out the story by himself, like he did on Broadway in the Continue reading
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CHRISTMAS CAROL-A-THON 2011: CHRISTMAS IS COMIN’ UPTOWN (1979)
Time for another post in my annual orgy of entries on various versions of THE Christmas tale. The Charles Dickens classic has a certain unquenchable charm that ensures it will continue to be adapted for at least another few hundred years.
The 1979 Broadway musical Christmas Is Comin’ Uptown is one of the versions of A Christmas Carol that often get pigeon-holed as “African American versions” but, along with John Grin’s Christmas and Ms Scrooge this tuneful adaptation transcends race and celebrates the universality of the Carol’s message. The musical continues to tour the USA to this very day and a television broadcast of a few scenes and songs from the work aired when I was a teenager and was already obsessed with variations of the story.
Gregory Hines played Scrooge in the original Broadway cast. The Scrooge in this adaptation was an Continue reading
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