Word: loessers
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Guys and Dolls. Through Oct. 20. One of the great American musicals, this show about New York gamblers and evangelicals features music and lyrics by Frank Loesser. North Shore Music Theatre, Dunmham Road, Beverly...
COMPOSERS: SOME PROMISING FELLOWS NAMED GERSHWIN, LOESSER, MORTON...
Today's most popular shows take no such chances. Perhaps there is something right about a season in which Frank Loesser, dead since 1969, has as many shows on Broadway as Lloyd Webber. But there is also something very wrong. Not one recent main-stem show has been set in today's America or taken inspiration from the best of today's pop music. Broadway is now the museum of the American musical. Guys and Dolls, for all its snazz and lilt, is a faithful revival of Loesser's 1950 hit. Crazy for You is a jolly update of Gershwin...
...this is the year when long-battered Broadway takes heart again, the show that symbolizes and crystallizes its comeback is Frank Loesser's funny valentine to Gotham. In 1950, when the musical form was still in its heyday, Guys and Dolls set the town on its ear. Critic John McClain of the New York Journal-American said the show might be just as good as Oklahoma! or South Pacific, but more important, he added, "This is the medium of our town -- not the tall corn or the waving palms." In 1992 its second coming was even more ballyhooed, from...
After Britain's National Theater triumphed in the early '80s with a more faithful version emphasizing neon glow and urban grit, interest surged in another Broadway revival, this time by the book. A discreet bidding war ensued for the approval of Loesser's widow, actress Jo Sullivan, who holds key copyrights and has firm opinions about every detail of staging, from the flutter of a hand to the color of a necktie. The winner: a partnership, calling itself the Dodgers, that had produced noteworthy new musicals (Big River, The Secret Garden) but never a revival...