Word: songs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Troupe evidently treats Chinese art more generously: a folk singer sang a sad song about a river flowing, and explained that although it provided no revolutionary uplift it expressed the sadness working people had often felt in the past. But the musician insisted that modern Chinese ballets should never end sadly, for fear of depressing the workers and peasants and so working against their enthusiasm and interests...
...role, remembering that Gilbert's words are as important as Sullivan's music and usually funnier. Crowley has the best Gilbert and Sullivan voice in the cast, a compound of condescension and donnish befuddlement, and it's unfortunate he didn't have the chance to perform a patter song. His "I've Got a Little List"--perhaps the number that has proved most useful to later parodists--sounds fresh and crisp; his "Taken From a County Jail," though, didn't come up to this high standard and lacked the clarity of diction essential to understanding Gilbert's lyrics...
...Mikado is among the most selfaware and sophisticated of Gilbert and Sullivan's works. "The Flowers That Bloom in the Spring," for example, parodies the basic technique of opera and musical comedy--the action is ludicrously interrupted on very little pretext in order to make way for a song and dance number. One character lightly ends a sentence with the near-cliche: "It'll be as welcome as the flowers that bloom in the spring" and the company sets off into one of Sullivan's most ebullient melodies...
...control such a hell-bent machine as it screams toward pure speed. Peter Revson's helmet was painted into a big toothy smile, but he died setting a track record in South America. So far there have been no accidents this weekend. All at once I hear the crickets' song. The heat is over. From the bog floats a black cloud of smoke. It is feasting. Down from the sky plunge Navy parachutists, trailing red, white and blue chutes...
...Alcohol," undoubtedly the highlight of the first part, provided the perfect outlet for Davies's strong attachment to the music hall/vaudeville traditions of his youth. The song was introduced in a quasi-puritanical manner, in which Davies warned the world against the imminent dangers of demon alcohol, while keyboard man John Gosling tinkled the ivories in such a fashion as to mock good-naturedly the somber scenario Davies tried to conjure up. The song's crapulous ambiance was supported by the sluggish, drawn out tempo of the Dixieland horn section and Davies's possibly unintentional slurring of the lyrics...