Cleaning up school versions of Broadway shows (don't miss today's Weekly Blast!)
Many schools mount Avenue Q but change "The Internet is for Porn," for example
Shalom!
The Broadway Maven’s classes are on hiatus.
• This Weekly Blast contains:
A) an ESSAY about school versions of Broadway shows that alter the content for the younger set. Included is a VIDEO illustrating the changes mentioned in the essay;
B) PETER FILICHIA on Camelot: Peter talks about the show’s best songs and why it’s been underrated;
C) a REVIEW of PBS’s Celebrating 50 Years of Broadway’s Best;
D) a Broadway Maven YouTube GEM that’s a one-minute version of Guys and Dolls;
E) a GAME about Broadway show songs with names that are cities; and
F) a LAST BLAST about Hairspray.
NOTE: The Peter Filichia’s Broadway series contains short show-specific talks that will be available on YouTube for subscribers only (except the first issue of the month, of course). Last Blasts are free every week; just scroll to the bottom.
ESSAY: Recent news stories have highlighted school cancellations of productions of shows like Indecent and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. But there’s another kind of censorship that’s been happening for decades — Broadway shows losing “adult” content in the official “Jr.” versions — or just being changed (illegally) by individual directors.
Note: clips of the original and the edited versions of each example are included in the video below.
Avenue Q: The song “The Internet is for Porn” becomes “My Social Life is Online,” which makes a completely different point. Given that schoolchildren are fully aware — too aware — or the existence of internet pornography, I’m not sure the change is necessary.
A Chorus Line: Instead of “Tits and Ass” in the song “Dance 10, Looks 3” Val sings “This and That.” It’s awfully prudish but actually works pretty well.
Anything Goes: In “I Get a Kick Out of You,” Reno Sweeney sings of getting “no kick from cocaine,” which is sometimes changed to “perfume from Spain.” It’s strange to cut a lyric in which a character disdains a dangerous drug, but the particular “fix” is quite nice, because it allows the song to keep the rhyme in the lyric “I’m sure that IF I took even one SNIFF” — since cocaine and perfume are both things that you sniff.
Rent: Two interesting changes in “La Vie Bohème.” In that list song, “to leather, to dildos” becomes “to leather, to latex,” which at least adds some alliteration. And the original’s line about Mark Cohen’s inability to “hold an erection” on the High Holy Days becomes the denuded “make a connection.”
Annie: In “It’s a Hard Knock Life” there’s a quick reference to making Mrs. Hannigan “drink a Mickey Finn” — essentially a date-rape drug. In the age of #MeToo that’s not OK, so some productions replace that line with “throw her in a looney bin” — thus replacing one problematic lyric with another. (Do we really need to mock mental heath facilities?)
Grease: The original lyrics to the song “Greased Lightnin’” were quite naughty, including phrases like “You know it ain’t no shit, I’ll be getting lots of tit” (becomes “You know without a doubt, I’ll be really making out”); “the chicks’ll cream” (becomes “the chicks’ll scream”) and “pussy wagon” (becomes “dragon wagon”).
Chicago: In “Cell Block Tango,” the lyric “You’ve been screwing the milkman” gets adjusted in various ways (like “messing around with” or “seeing”).
Whether licensers should adjust the content of a Broadway show has to rely on several factors, including the age-appropriateness of the references, the ability of contemporary youth to handle challenging material, and possible solutions that stay in the spirit of the original work. I don’t love any of the changes, but I must say I appreciate the élan behind the above changes for A Chorus Line and Anything Goes.
ANNOUNCEMENT: At this summer’s BroadwayCon in New York City (July 21-23) I’ll be welcoming fellow Broadway Maven faculty members Peter Filichia and Gail Leondar-Wright as well as YouTuber extraordinaire Howard Ho for a panel on Stephen Sondheim. BroadwayCon is the largest annual fan event for musical theater enthusiasts, and it’s modeled after the various ComicCons that have become so popular around the world. Details to follow.
NOTE OF THE WEEK:
Substack Notes are short-form content (like a Tweet) that I’m using to provide commentary on musical theater in the news. Here’s a Note from last week:
HOW TO RESPOND: Click the Note above to respond (make sure you’re logged in to substack). To find other notes. press my picture and then the middle tab that reads “Notes.” Free to like, reply, or share them around!
LAST BLAST: One of the ways Hairspray shows us that Edna and Wilbur Turnblad are out of step with the rest of the characters is that their names stand out for not being alliterative. Think about it: Tracy Turnblad, Corny Collins, Link Larkin, Seaweed Stubbs, Motormouth Maybelle, Velma Von Tussle, Penny Pingleton, and Prudy Pingleton. It’s like the rest of the show has moved on to a bubblegum 1960s-era vibe while the Turnblads are stuck in the past. It’s one of the reasons their love song (“Timeless to Me”) is so different than the other music in the show.
The Broadway Maven, David Benkof, helps students further their appreciation of musical theater through his classes, his YouTube Channel, and his Weekly Blast. Contact him at DavidBenkof@gmail.com.