Next Guests Announced: Creators of Hairspray, Thoroughly Modern Millie
The Broadway Maven, David Benkof, interprets Broadway
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Shalom!
This week, The Broadway Maven is pleased to announce its next two guest speakers, who are talents behind Hairspray and Thoroughly Modern Millie:
• No Monday class this week. On Thursday, July 8 at Noon and 8 pm ET, we’ll have a Greatest Hits class about Lynn Ahrens BEYOND Ragtime (details below). Register here.
• All July homework has been posted, for example this explanation of the Broadway AABA song structure and this exploration of the Jewish background to Come from Away.
• This Weekly Blast announces the new speakers; RAVES about the rarely produced Cold War show Li’l Abner; and links to two YouTube GEMs: one about the history of Schoolhouse Rock and one about a Jewish episode in Come from Away.
The Broadway Maven is happy to announce our next two guests. And they’re big ones!
In fact, their shows won the Tony for Best Musical two years in a row (2002-2003).
• On Monday, July 26 at Noon ET we welcome Marc Shaiman, who composed and co-wrote the lyrics for Hairspray, probably the most fun musical of the 21st century. Shaiman has also contributed music and lyrics to other great projects like TV’s Smash (and its show-within-a-show Bombshell) - and my personal favorite, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. Having won a Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony, he is one O (Oscar) away from being an “EGOT.”
• On Monday, August 2 at Noon ET Dick Scanlan will be joining us. Scanlan wrote the lyrics and co-wrote the book for Thoroughly Modern Millie. He has helped create other shows including a revival of The Unsinkable Molly Brown; Everyday Rapture with Sherie Rene Scott; and my personal favorite (with the same actress) Whorl Inside a Loop, a breathtaking non-musical play about the creators’s real experiences teaching inside a men’s prison.
Sign-ups for both classes are here: bitly.com/MavenBackstage.
NOTE: As a rule, there are no evening classes on days in which we have a speaker.
Now that we had a successful class with guest Lynn Ahrens focusing on Ragtime (see interview here), The Broadway Maven will revisit our earlier class about Ms. Ahrens and her other work, like Anastasia, Once on this Island, Seussical, and Schoolhouse Rock (see YouTube Gem below). Thursday, July 8 at Noon and 8 pm ET
Register: bitly.com/MavenBeyond
All July homework has been posted. The homework for Thursday’s class is to watch the video below and in the comments tell why you think Lynn Ahrens is such an effective lyricist.
Other homework videos available for viewing at the Upcoming Homework playlist:
• What’s a Broadway AABA song? (for the Gershwin class)
• Best high school musicals (for the A Chorus Line class)
• Which high school Hairspray is best? (for the Hairspray class)
• Early Broadway “Fill in the Lyric”
• Come From Away: the Jewish Angle (see YouTube Gem below)
• The Wit of Mel Brooks (FIVE EXAMPLES)
Exciting news: A possible kosher New York trip with The Broadway Maven!
I’m discussing with AACI Travel the idea of a seven-to-ten-day kosher Broadway tour in March 2022 in which I would be the educator in residence. We would both learn about and see several shows and enjoy New York. Sample activities would include a backstage tour and guest speakers who created some of Broadway’s best.
Please let me know your level of interest by answering a quick question at this page (click the link).
If you are VERY interested, please also write me at DavidBenkof@gmail.com and you can offer input at this early stage, which can be very useful.
L’il Abner is a delightful show from the Fifties with very clever lyrics by Johnny Mercer; a sly book by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank; and hummable music by Gene De Paul. Based on the comic strip by Al Capp, the show’s title character is a strapping young man whose secret formula gains geopolitical importance.
The character names alone make Abner worth seeing: Appassionata von Climax; Senator Jack S. (pronounced “Jackass”) Phogbound; Earthquake McGoon; Stupefyin’ Jones; and more.
Li’l Abner is fun to watch (the movie is probably your best bet, but there are some high school versions on YouTube). However, it probably couldn’t fly on Broadway today:
• There’s a statue of an admittedly inept Confederate General “Jubilation T. Cornpone” in the town square.
• The show’s central intrigue - whether Dogpatch, USA will be subject to a nuclear test - would have less impact today, since aboveground tests have been illegal since 1963.
• Post-#MeToo, the question of whether a 17-year-old girl is already too old to get married seems less funny.
• Finally, muscular men with no interest in women (a key plot point) leave a different impression in 2021 than they did in 1956.
This delightful in-depth history of Schoolhouse Rock is perfect preparation for our Thursday, July 8 class about the career of Lynn Ahrens.
I’ve created a video for an upcoming class on Contemporary Jewish Broadway that looks at the background behind the story in Come from Away about the rabbi and the Holocaust survivor.
Note: links to register for ALL classes are ALWAYS available at TheBroadwayMaven.com.
Thursday, July 8 Lynn Ahrens beyond Ragtime (minimum tuition $2, Noon and 8 pm ET)
Monday, July 12 Gershwin on Broadway (FREE, Noon and 8 pm ET)
Thursday, July 15 A Chorus Line (minimum tuition $2, Noon and 8 pm ET)
Thursday, July 15 Deadline for ALL-ACCESS Passes for Summer 2021
Monday, July 19 Early Broadway (FREE, Noon and 8 pm ET, registration opens soon)
Thursday, July 22 Contemporary Jewish Broadway (registration opens soon)
Monday, July 26 Hairspray with guest Marc Shaiman (FREE, Noon ET ONLY)
Tuesday, July 27 Godspell (ALL-ACCESS Passholders only, Noon and 8 pm ET)
Thursday, July 29 Mel Brooks’s Broadway (registration opens soon)
Monday, August 2 Thoroughly Modern Millie with guest Dick Scanlan (FREE, Noon ET ONLY)
I have not seen Lil Abner other than in comic strip form but how do you think the original audiences were supposed to interpret the "uninterested" males? My guess would be that they were intended to be seen as straight but "immature", i.e. that the girls are ready for sex before the boys of the same age.