Frozen on Broadway

[Ben]

Not really Frozen-specific, but I figured this would be a decent enough launch pad (or continuation) to talk all things Frozen on Broadway, from any bits and bobs we hear about to what we think when the stage musical finally premieres.

Anyway, before we even get to Adele Dazeem and who will play Elsa and Anna, here's Disney Theatricals exec Tom Schumacher on past, present and future:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/d ... zen-740520

[EricJ]

And quickly moving past the subjects of Little Mermaid and Tarzan--"The overseas markets like them!"

(Actually, Tarzan was supposed to be a different musical--Originally they wanted all the vines and aerial action to be in a Cirque du Soleil-wannabe theater-in-the-round, but all they had was the standard NY Broadway theaters, which was eventually fixed for the overseas releases.
It still didn't address the other major audience complaint, which Mermaid suffered from, ie. "So what's the friggin' point??" Which the article also alludes to in a side link to an article about Rocky: the Musical's failure.)

[Dan]

As posted on the front page, Betsy Wolfe has been tapped to play Elsa for the stage musical. I find this to be quite exciting as I saw her last year in Robert and Kristen Lopez' Up Here.

The report also notes that the try-out run will be taking place in Denver in late 2017.

[Bill1978]

I'm still not feeling any need to see Frozen on stage, I'm more keen to see what happens with Anastasia.

At least with the songs from Anastasia they felt like a Broadway musical. The songs from Frozen just fell like songs for a movie. Probably because there is no real number with multiple parts - the closest we got is Fixer Upper. Which may explain part of the appeal of that song to me. Hopefully the book of Frozen will fix up my major issues with the songs - the transitions back into the dialogue. Most of the songs transition well into the song but transitioning out of the song was not the greatest. Many of them suffered from song over, back to the story syndrome

[Dan]

"First Time in Forever" had multi-parts.

[EricJ]

I'm still not feeling any need to see Frozen on stage, I'm more keen to see what happens with Anastasia.
At least with the songs from Anastasia they felt like a Broadway musical. The songs from Frozen just fell like songs for a movie. Probably because there is no real number with multiple parts - the closest we got is Fixer Upper.

That was my problem with the movie, in that Fixer Upper looked and staged EXACTLY like its future stage version, the entire movie seemed as "stage-ready" as Hunchback had been.
Which pigeonholed the movie into a "Wickie-fangirl musical" (you could not only see the Big Set when Anna confronts Elsa at the ice palace, you could practically sense the intermission afterwards), rather than the whole sum-of-their-parts that more animated musicals like Tangled and Aladdin had been.
Speaking of Aladdin, they're already replacing Anaheim's DCA park musical with a scaled-down Frozen park musical, and with the loyalty the old show had, the saturation is loudly starting to wear on the fans. Anaheim-to-Broadway success won't happen twice.

(And wait, whut...are we really getting an Anastasia musical? Is that just nostalgia, is it Fox trying to get their feet into Corporate Studio Broadway, or is Don Bluth still determined to "protest" Disney's marketing by matching every equivalent Anastasia product as he was in 1997, only now with the stage musicals instead of the ice shows and Sea World Orlando attraction?)

(from article)
But the fundamental joy of Toy Story is that Buzz and Woody are absolutely authentic toys. If Andy has to be 20 feet tall and we just see him from the knees down as a puppet, is that fun?

Toy Story on the Disney Cruise ships was one of their first two deliberately groomed to be Broadway-ready, but it, er....wasn't. I could describe what was wrong with it in detail, and why a lot of theme-park groomed shows will never see the light of a big stage, but a quick YouTube should sum it up neatly.

The problem with Disney Theatrical is exactly the same "Anything will work!" overconfidence had after Lion King, that had them that close to finally getting their feet out of the water when nobody cared about seeing Ariel's friends in roller-shoes. And then along came Mary....

[Ben]

Don Bluth is not involved. Anastasia was written by Broadway vets, so it was only a matter of time...

[Bill1978]

(And wait, whut...are we really getting an Anastasia musical? Is that just nostalgia, is it Fox trying to get their feet into Corporate Studio Broadway, or is Don Bluth still determined to "protest" Disney's marketing by matching every equivalent Anastasia product as he was in 1997, only now with the stage musicals instead of the ice shows and Sea World Orlando attraction?)

The world sure is, it is already heading to out of town tryouts with the goal to get to Broadway. The original songwriters have contributed more songs with apparently one song from the movie cut - my guess Rasputin's.

https://www.hartfordstage.org/anastasia

Back to Frozen, I still won't get excited for the play until I have heard the cast recording. When the Hunchback recording was released I decided to listen to all the Disney Broadway recordings, and even though they all have they good points to them musically it was only Beauty and Hunchback that I was able to follow the plot of the musical with. Even though I know the plot of the movies for all the others, the additional songs did not help me to visualise what was happening on stage and quite often there seemed to be big gaps in the story. Hopefully Frozen will avoid those pitfalls. I'd also like them to rework the ending so Hans wasn't an out of nowhere villain. Although I imagine the production will probably give him a song to sing where he declares he is a villain earlier.

[Dan]

To be fair, the cast recordings do not give the whole spectrum of the show. Not to mention some songs and numbers don't make the albums altogether, so the cast recordings are pretty much elaborate music albums that, while carry out a story, doesn't tell the whole story (another reason I note the Hunchback recording is not perfect in my review). The only recordings that come close to covering the full spectrum are from sung-through shows (essentially singing almost all the time) like Les Miserables and Rent, and even then they don't have everything.

It'll be fun to see what Robert and Kristen spin together, particularly as it is essentially a follow up to their show Up Here.

[reeta 20]

I believe cast selection a main thing, that provoke audience to come and spread their love to their beloved artists.
Otherwise any play will get poor response even if it is based on extremely hit story previously.