I didn’t buy it on iTunes, but I actually liked the faux Nat King Cole number.
[QUOTE=twickster]
Will we get to hear Jesse Martin sing, d’ya think?
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More likely Harvey Fierstein will return and sing an Adele-Gerswhin mashup.
Glee-willikers! Wouldn’t that be fun!
The only comment last night that made me laugh was the outrage of Mr. Grumpy when he saw Lea Michele’s name on the list of potential actresses. I could just see Rachel bouncing through the door with Kurt smiling in the background.
It must be killing Christian Borle and Andy Mientus- both of whom are musical theater stars- that their characters don’t sing save for once in every 10th episode. OTOH, they probably make more for this unsuccessful TV show than they’ve ever made in twice the time in a hit stage show, so it balances. (James Earl Jones has said that he never got much satisfaction from TV or movie but saw it strictly as a way to subsidize stage work.)
I’m not in theater so I was a little surprised at a comment that Speaking Role Dancer made on the show. Tom said one of Marilyn’s lines to Ivy the way he’d like for her to say it and the dancer seemed astonished, saying, “Did he just give her a line reading?” Is it really unusual, or frowned upon, for a director to tell an actor how he’d like the actor to speak a line? I would think that this would be an important aspect of the director’s job.
[QUOTE=randwill]
I would think that this would be an important aspect of the director’s job.
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I don’t think it’s that unusual or meant as a personal insult, but in the plays I’ve been in I have seen it start arguments when director and actor disagree over how to say a line.
Derek (Snape Jr.) would flatly have told them to “say it my way or bring the understudy on”, which you have to respect when you see how many personalities are being dealt with on a schedule.
Tom’s offering and then reneging on the role was a thoroughly shitty thing to do that makes me dislike his character. Of course it’s also stupid of the actor to quit Book of Mormon to take a role in another play (one that hasn’t opened yet, has very mixed buzz, and might close after one night) before he has a contract. Plus, even though road shows don’t pay a lot I’d think they’d pay more than a show that’s in rehearsal (rehearsal wages being significantly lower than show wages).
No kidding. It says something about Smash that we see someone do something so monumentally idiotic and implausible (I mean, even if Smash was extremely likely to be a hit and the role was ironclad, isn’t he burning a ton of bridges in a small profession by quitting a tour in mid-tour?) and we don’t even blink because it’s so dwarfed by the far more idiotic and implausible things going on around it.
I did a lot of live theatre as a kid and through college, and it was generally understood that a good director will direct, rather than perform it- even a line reading- and expect the actor to mimic it. However, I also did some student films in college. In one the director was having trouble with one of the actors, a guy who wasn’t much of an actor but looked the part, and started giving him line readings. I mentioned to the AD, “a director is never supposed to give an actor a line reading”, and he replied that in their (film) directing classes, that’s what they’re instructed to do. So after that I chalked it up to a difference between the two artistic disciplines.
Which doesn’t really explain Tom’s behavior, which came more from his inexperience as a director than from a different directing style.
Well…
- The whole being confronted by his drug-dealing past? Feh.
- WHY did they bring back Bernadette Peters? Was it because Smash needed the star-power name, much like Bombshell? Also Feh.
- I liked the fight between Ivy and Tom. Very realistic. And we all know they’ll be friends again, once the show is running.
- Julia’s going to boink the director. We all know that.
- Hated the new Bombshell and Hitlist songs. Boring, boring boring.
It moves to Saturday this week. Sounding the death-knell for the series.
I thought the Ivy-Mom duet including the “hung the moon” refrain was absolutely fantastic and gripping… a reminder of how good Smash would be in the alternate universe in which it was, well, good.
I liked the Ivy-Mom song, but couldn’t figure out what the mom was doing in the show, other than providing an opportunity to bring in Ivy’s mom back for a song, her being Bernadette Peters and all.
My loathing for Jimmy is really starting to take over. I really, really want to like this show, but geez louise.
Really?? I thought it brought the flow to a screeching, snoring halt. The moment in the (live) show when everyone who had a glass of wine with their prix fix dinner at Carmine’s would be doing headbobs.
Hated it. Hated the long, draw-out schmaltzy glances, the overblown, over-wrought lyrics, the sappy minor-key music - To me, it was them just saying “HEY! WE’VE MADE A SONG TO MAKE YOU CRY! CRY, DAMMIT, CRY, OR WE’LL BE FORCED TO SLAP THIS KITTEN!”. Too slow. AND in story context, its four minutes when Marylin isn’t singing, and the show’s focus isn’t on her. Blah.
They lamp-lighted it last (or two) episode, when Julia made her case that the song with Marylin and her mom is the central focus of the drama, and the scene HAD To Stay In, or she’d leave the show. Then her and Tom hugged it out.
Yeah, but that was just to set up the scene so Bernadette Peters could come back.
Never mind, this show has never been about the plotting making sense.
I haven’t seen last night’s episode yet, but realistically in a show about Marilyn Monroe her mother couldn’t have that large a part. Yes, I get it, Gladys was mentally ill and her specter and the sense of rejection and abandonment and fear of going insane and all hung over Marilyn her whole life so in that sense she was certainly a major influence long after she was removed from Gladys’s care (such as it was), but in the first place they’ve already established that they want to steer clear of too heady a take on the Bombshell and “ain’t nobody wanna see that” on stage for more than two minutes in a show about a beautiful woman whose lovers included a president and other legends and whose early death inspired one of the biggest hit songs of all time.
Also, a Broadway diva like the one Peters is playing isn’t likely to come out of retirement just so she can have a “rub trunks at the crazy elephant wagon” scene with her daughter; she’s going to want to star in a revival of Gypsy or Mame or some other star vehicle.
I can see Sondheim making a musical with Marilyn’s mother as the focus (“Fade in on a crazy old woman/whose dead daughter was a superstar”), but I also see it getting rave reviews and 14 Tony nominations while closing in its second week.
For those more informed about the mechanics of original musical theater producation than I am, I get that shows are often revived up to and even after opening night, but isn’t it usual to at least write a draft of the show before opening it? This one is almost like an episode of Glee: they write a very rough draft and a couple of songs and then hire the actors and dancers and start rehearsals, then re-write it 8 more times while the dancers and cast are still on payroll, and then rewrite it some more. You’d think they’d workshop it to hell and gone before they ever attached an actual star or even opened in Boston rather than be re-writing it in a dramaturg’s cabin while the opening night is set.
Just a reminder for other masochists (who haven’t given up yet) who have no lives that might interfere – tonight is the first of the Saturday night airings.
And I think features Liza Minnelli. (She’s been on talk-show rounds about being on the show, so I assume it’s this week.)
Yes, this was the one with Liza.
To show you how low this series has sunk, Liza’s appearance and song was the high point of the entire episode.
I swear, the writers of this show should have their Writer’s Guild cards yanked and forced to spend the rest of their lives as janitors in an off-off Broadway theater. Nothing they mop up in those theater toilets could be worse than what they are writing now.
I actually thought this wasn’t a bad episode. I mean, it’s still “Smash”, but I didn’t find myself checking the clock like I usually do.
One bit of bad editing stuck out like sore thumb to me though. Towards the end after a scene with Jesse L. Martin, Debra Messing and Andy Meintus, where they should have cut to a scene of the other (birthday) plot line, there is an abrupt cut to Martin and Messing suddenly alone in his office. It appears like something is missing.
More amazing than Tom writing that song in his downtime during the course of a day is that he got it to Liza and she memorized it in time for dinner. And why didn’t somebody think of the not-that-hard-to-come-up-with-cover of “It was a surprise party”?
Speaking of amazingly fast rehearsal times, in the afternoon Ana still thought the dancers crawling over the pianos was cool, but before that evening’s fundraiser she’d become a veritable trapeze artist, not only doing choreographed twirls in the air but singing while she’s doing it.