Word: broadway
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...Broadway musicals these days mostly fall into two camps. First there's the candy: shows with bouncy songs--often recycled rock songbooks--and jerry-built, cartoony, tongue-in-cheek books. These shows (Mamma Mia!, Hairspray, Avenue Q) give audiences a carefree evening of entertainment, which is all most of them want...
Then there are the steak dinners: musicals that at least try to provide a fully integrated, emotionally engaging theater experience, with music in the service of a story populated by real human characters. Steak dinners are pretty much off the Broadway menu right now. The few that come along (anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber in the past 15 years) usually get dismissed by the critics and struggle to run for a few months before being escorted to Broadway heaven...
Though it's based on a beloved book for young people, Little Women: The Musical is the most adult new musical of the Broadway season and an unexpectedly satisfying meal. Skillfully adapted from Louisa May Alcott's novel by Allan Knee (author of The Man Who Was Peter Pan, on which the film Finding Neverland is based), it reintroduces us to the four March sisters, marooned in their Massachusetts home while their father is off to the Civil War. Directed by Susan H. Schulman (The Secret Garden), the show is pretty, unpretentious, warmhearted but surprisingly restrained: even the death...
...dangerous friend St. Jimmy and a heroic girl called Whatshername, who are struggling to express their individuality in a mass-media culture. Listen less closely, and you will still nod your head a lot and remember most of the melodies, which veer from surf rock to Motown to Broadway to thrash, usually within the same mad dash of a song...
...busy week of self-promotion leading up to the nuptials: Knauss showed off her mammoth wedding caparison in the February issue of Vogue, left, while her fianc?? made the rounds vaunting the new season of his reality show, The Apprentice, which he's considering turning into a Broadway musical. But when it came to broadcasting the wedding extravaganza live on commercial TV ("Three hours in prime time?" Trump said to Vogue. "That's $25 million in advertising"), the bride drew the line. Guess there are some things money...