The musicals of Stephen Sondheim are, of course, phenomenal, and probably none of his musicals are as popular as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Set in down-and-out 19th century London, the story is about the aforementioned Mr. Todd, an ex-convict who returns from a penal colony in search of his lost wife and child. Bereft of money and family, he takes up residence above a pie shop run by a Mrs. Lovett who makes the "worst meat pies in London." Thirsting for revenge against a cruel and cold world -- and in serious need of money -- Todd and Lovett come up with a gruesome plan to open up a barber shop above the pie shop, and for Todd to supply Lovett with the bodies of his customers who wind up as the meat in the pies, making them very tasty and making business boom. All the while, Todd and Lovett befriend a hustler named Anthony, who returned to London with Todd, and who is trying to woo an unhappy rich lady away from the domineering and horny man who is her caretaker. Another friend if Tobias, the sidekick of a conman named Pirelli.
Events ensue where Todd and Lovett's plan works -- until one too many things give them away and inevitable tragedy comes.
Amazingly, given the musical's enduring popularity, there hasn't been a revival of Sweeney Todd since it's original Broadway run back in 1979. So this is a triumphant revival with the amazing voice of Josh Groban as Sweeney and the AMAZING acting and singing talents of Annaleigh Ashford as Lovett. Groban is a fantastic singer and a good, if not great actor, but Ashford is both -- a true talent in the range of Angela Lansbury and Barbara Streisand. Watching them together is a joy.
Also good is Gaten Matarazzo as Tobias -- basically, he's best known as one of the kids from Stranger Things but this guy can sing and is a fantastic stage presence. He nearly steals the show from Groban and Ashford, no mean feat.
The supporting cast is also excellent, especially Jordan Fisher as Anthony and, I must point out, someone named John Rapson plays the gentlemanly Beadle Bamford. Even though Groban and Ashford are the clear stars, their supporting cast is their equal, and makes it a great show.
I'll be honest -- this is not my favorite of Sondheim's musicals (I'm more of a Company, Into the Wood, Sunday in the Park with George kinda guy) but it's an enthralling and disturbing dark opera of the soul, and a classic.
I really enjoyed the four-season Amazon show Mozart in the Jungle about the wild lives of NYC philharmonic musicians. It was a funny, sweet, heartwarming show about an exclusive world that rarely gets shown to the rest of the world -- and it had a great cast including Bernadette Peters, Malcolm McDowell and Mark Blum.
The show was based on a memoir of the same name by a classical oboist named Blair Tindall who published it in 2005 -- and got some flack for revealing that elegant classical musicians are just as randy as the rest of the us.
Blair Tindall has died at the age of 63, and she had an interesting life. Believe it or not, she used to be married to Bill Nye the Science Guy! Anyway, RIP.
It's hard to believe but it finally happened: The Phantom of the Opera is no longer playing on Broadway.
After 35 years and 13,981 performances, the longest-running show in Broadway history has closed. It felt like it would play forever and, in Broadway show terms, it did. But all good things ...
Doubtless it will be revived at some point in the future but this was the first, original production. Besides the length of the show's run or number of performances, it would be interesting to know how many other Broadway musicals came and went during its historic run.
In the Islamic religion, Muslims make a pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia to see the Dome of the Rock; in Catholicism, the devout go to Rome to see the Pope give his weekly blessings and audiences at the Vatican; Jews head to the Wailing Wall in Israel and stuff letters into it; and in China, citizens make a pilgrimage to Beijing, laying flowers before the open glass coffin in Tiananmen Square where Chairman Mao lies pickled and wrapped in the hammer & sickled Communist flag.
And in America, we all at some point either make a pilgrimage to Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida or act alternatively embarrassed or proud of the fact that we haven't.
Well, yours truly finally made that great pilgrimage with the family in tow, where we spent five days in the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT, standing on very, very, very long lines, going on some fun rides, seeing some cool stuff, and soaking up the pure Americana of the place.
In the Magic Kingdom, we took the Walt Disney Railroad around the park, also going on the Jungle Cruise and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, doing one rollercoaster on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, enjoying the privacy of Tom Sawyer Island, then seeing the Hall of Presidents show, taking another cruise on the Liberty Square Riverboat, getting spooked at the Haunted Mansion, spinning around on the Prince Charming Regal Carrousel and Dumbo the Flying Elephant and the Mad Tea Party teacups, taking more cruises on "it's a small world" and the Liberty Square Riverboat, then racing around the Tomorrowland Speedway (twice), and getting shuttled around the Tomorrowland Transit Authority People Mover.
Two highlights of our time in the Magic Kingdom: we saw the Monsters, Inc Laugh Floor where an audience is brought into a live animated show where the Monsters, Inc characters tell lots joke, some of them submitted by the audience. Two jokes were chosen from the audience and one of them was from my daughter! Her humor is now officially IP owned by the Disney Corporation. So proud! Then, one night for dinner, we ate on Easter Night at "Be Our Guest", a Beauty and the Beast themed restaurant which is a massive, cavernous space of four rooms made to look like the interiors of French palaces, and where the Beast walks around. It's totally surreal -- made even more surreal by the fact that we were still eating at 9 PM when the nightly fireworks show started and the restaurant was right next to ground zero for it and it sounded like we were being bombarded by artillery shells during dinner. The meals at "Be Our Guest" or prixe fix and comes with a very cool desert trio where you can paint your own cup (made out of white chocolate) and also "try the grey stuff" that, as the lyric goes, "is delicious."
We also saw the Carousel of Progress which was originally staged at the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing, Queens -- and my mother informs me that she originally saw it there too!
In EPCOT (which stands for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow), we enjoyed seeing the various "nations" which usually consist of replicas of buildings from them like a Mexican Inca palace (that includes the Three Caballeros water ride), Reflection of China (a temple), and Canada Far and Wide (a 360 degrees show about how big and gorgeous Canada is), plus many others. Easily the best two rides we took were at EPCOT, and they couldn't have been more different: the first was Remy's Ratatouille Adventure which is an amazing 3D ride where you rush around the floor of the restaurant in the movie -- just like Remy! -- and people constantly try (and fail) to catch you; the ride includes changes in temperature (like when you're near a stove) as well as smellovision, where the delicious scent of baguettes hits your nostrils quite strongly. It's an amazing experience, well worth the 90 minute wait. The other was a much more genteel, but beautiful ride, called Living with the Land which is a tour through greenhouse and fish hacheries -- Disneyworld actually grows of a lot of their own herbs and veggies, as well their own fish, that's served in various Disneyworld restaurants. They even do work with the FDA that has a presence at EPCOT. Also, on our last night, we had another French-theme dinner at a place called Chefs de France that had very good food in "bistro."
And we went back and forth from our hotel and EPCOT via the Skyliner, a vast array of airborne cable cars that fly you over Disneyworld and provide you with spectacular views. Given how high up we were, and that these skyliners are pure glass, my kids handled our trips on them very well.
Disneyworld is so huge it's impossible to see all of it on one trip. In addition to the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT, there's also the Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios, as well as beaches and malls and yacht clubs. The best reason to visit Disneyworld is simply to marvel at the sheer audacity of the place, the fact that one company, lead by one man, dreamed this place up -- this artificial city that arose sphinxlike out of the Central Florida swampland almost 50 years ago. It's a pure American invention, a cathedral of entrepreneurial hutzpah -- a reminder of how Disney has impacted our culture to an incalculable degree and that Walt Disney is one of the most important Americans who ever lived.
And Disneyworld does provide a beautiful vision for American cities that I wish existed everywhere "across the the fruited plane": free public transportation, walkable streets, plentiful bathrooms and water fountains, no guns, and clean streets. Plus we got lucky -- despite the rain, it wasn't too hot.
So I suggest that all New Yorkers, like so many Americans, make the pilgrimage to Disneyworld to see something amazing.
I'm currently watching the Paramount+ mini-series The Offer and it's ... highly mediocre.
It's a 10-hour retelling about the making of the 1972 classic The Godfather, told mostly from the perspective of the producer Al Ruddy. Ruddy is played decently by Miles Teller and he's made out to be a hero, the genius behind ones of the greatest movies ever made (but my favorite performance is by Matthew Goode who does a great job portraying fellow Riverside Drive native Robert Evans, the flamboyant head of Paramount in the early 1970s who was responsible for overseeing the production of Love Story in 1970, The Godfather in 1972, and Chinatown in 1974 -- three movies in four years made that him a legend forever). The Offer would have you believe that somehow Ruddy is the reason for The Godfather's greatness, never mind that Francis Ford Coppola is the one who actually made it, and that Ruddy never produced another movie in his career that was anywhere near as good.
Also, The Offer is actually longer than all three Godfather movies combined!
Anyway, there's a minor character in The Offer that caught my interest -- the late Congressman Mario Biaggi who was the grandfather of Alessandra Biaggi, the former State Senator who destroyed the IDC in 2018.
Back in the early 1970s Biaggi was at the height of his prestige and power, a big-shot politician, a gregarious personality, and easily the best constituent-services Congressman NYC had the time. He was beloved, always won his elections easily, and seemed destined to become mayor. He also had strong connections to the real-life mafia, a "finger in every pie" kind of guy.
And he hated The Godfather.
Biaggi thought that it demeaned Italians, made everyone think they were all gangsters, and he did everything he could to stop it, including getting the movie's permits pulled so that the production couldn't shoot around NYC. Obviously he failed, but The Offer makes clear what a headache he was to Ruddy and Coppola, and how he was brought to heel by Joe Columbo, once he cut a deal with Ruddy to get the word "mafia" removed from the screenplay.
This profile of Mario Biaggi ran in New York magazine in December 1972, the same year The Godfather was released and just before he ran for a mayor in 1973 -- a campaign he would ultimately lose to Abe Beame. Biaggi would continue in congress until 1988 when he resigned and was ultimately imprisoned for corruption. He died in 2015, still a beloved if somewhat controversial figure -- but he was the kind of old-school politician who was, at heart, a public servant, a man passionate about his community and city, a guy who did a lot of good -- even if he sometimes feathered his own nest and tried to derail a cinema classic.
I missed this one because I've been doing this blog for so long but, yes, Mr NYC has now stalked the interwebs for sixteen years and is officially more than a year into the second half of its second decade.
This is CWAZY!
Anyway, since no one else will probably wish my happy birthday, I'll do it. Happy Sweet Sixteen!
You may have never heard of Brooklyn-born Seymour Stein but, as the founder and head of Syre Records in the 1970s to '80s, you certainly heard of many of the bands and singers he discovered and signed to his label -- the Ramones, Talking Heads, Madonna -- MADONNA!, Ice-T, the Cure, Depeche Mode, and many more.
Without him, the history of late 20th century popular music would be very, very different.
Stein has died at the age of 80, leaving behind an amazing legacy.
