Theatermania:  Here We Are Cast Recording to Be Released Next Month


Specifically (at long last): May 17 for CD & digital.

For the double LP -- in baby-blue vinyl, if you please -- one must wait until September 6.

The sun was about 2/3 covered here in the Denver area. I'm wondering how it looked for people with more coverage. The New York Times had a photo of people in Mazatlán (in the path of totality) enjoying the eclipse, and I'm pretty sure I recognize that beach--that's the beach that was a block away from my friend's house when she lived there. The last time I went to visit her, we went out and watched the sunset every night. Unfortunately, she doesn't live in Mazatlán any more--she lived there for 18 years.

B and I went out during the height of the eclipse, but it was much lighter here than the last one in 2017 (I think we had around 80% coverage for that one), and I didn't have any eclipse glasses, so I was just watching the atmosphere and thinking that not much was happening. It got a little darker than normal and a little cooler than normal. It looked like it was around 7 am at 12:40 pm. Nothing extremely remarkable.

The less achievement,
The less defeat.
What's the point of shovin'
Your way to the top?
Live 'n' laugh 'n' love 'n'
You're never a flop.
So, when the walls are crumbling...

Coming to the 650-seat Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, courtesy of Manhattan Theatre Club, next March after a run at Center Theatre Group's much larger Ahmanson Theatre in L.A.

NYT:  Eureka Day and Sondheim Revue Join Broadway's Next Season

Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga will remain from the London cast; no other casting has been announced yet.

I spent several weeks in the summer of 2022 commuting to Jersey City to work on this movie, which has finally been released on Prime Video after premiering at SXSW last month:


There are a few surface similarities to In The Heights: in a working-class Latine enclave maybe ten miles from Times Square, clave rhythms, capoeira-inflected Stomp-ography and magic realism betoken a world "made of music" -- here in a sometimes-hectically literal sense, albeit on a far smaller scale (and celebrating a community of Brazilian-American Newarkers instead of ITH's Spanish-Carribean upper-Manhattanites). 

But if its cast and story are smaller, its themes less lofty and its execution less Hollywood-glossy, Música's charms are no less charming for their modesty—chief among them being writer-director-star Rudy Mancuso's indefatigable, Vine-ripened guerilla-filmmaking ingenuity.  During production I heard about the story's autobiographical-ish¹ premise, and worked on its playful visuals,² enough to become curious about how it would all come together onscreen, so it's really nice to finally see the finished film: in another coincidental echo of ITH, this ended up being another nearly-two-year wait, but the results are gratifying.

If you're in the mood for a quirky coming-of-age romantic comedy with its own distinctive low-budget zazz, Música will do nicely.  It was designated a Critic's Pick in yesterday's NYT.  And in a case of life imitating art, it brought Mancuso and his costar together offscreen as well -- they've apparently been together ever since.


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¹ In addition to the hero's synesthesia and his devotion to music and puppetry — all traits shared with his creator — "Rudy"'s mom is played by Mancuso's real-life mother, a regular presence in his work since the Vine days; and her actual house likewise plays itself in the film.

² Including the PATH station (Hoboken standing in for Newark, dozens of ornamental cast-iron H's converted to N's using tape) with its piano-keyboard steps (black and white sticky vinyl, carefully plotted out several days in advance and then slapped down in a thirty-minute frenzy by about six of us scenics "on the day," while bemused commuters rushed past); the subway-busker hero's "puppet box" (walnut stain and ultra-matte black, IIRC — meticulously applied, because this either was Mr. Mancuso's own box or it was intended to become his after the shoot) and his buddy's culturally-versatile food truck (lots of interchangeable food graphics, and plenty of extra price stickers for the posh-neighborhood markup); the Brazilian-restaurant location for the story's farcical dating-two-people-at-once climax (I actually only went there to help restore the dining room afterward, so I never saw it fully-dressed — but, for what now looks to have been a relatively large, crowded and active scene with a lot of different camera setups, I don't recall there being as much touchup afterward as one might expect); and most of all, the entire one-shot sequence midway through the film, moving with exuberantly theatrical narrative economy through seven cleverly-designed and rapidly-assembled studio sets in four minutes.  Apart from Rudy's meticulously-recreated bedroom, the quickie sets in this sequence each tended to be designed around printed-vinyl graphic walls which, aside from the vinyl's sometimes cumbersome application, required careful wall prep to make the wooden flats perfectly smooth and seamless so they'd accept the vinyl without any bubbling or wrinkling.  Most of these mini-sets also involved furniture and prop pieces painted the same colors as the graphics, which called for precise color-mixing and painting (and lots of frog tape) to match their crisp, bright, Photoshop-heightened style.

Saw Bill McKinley there in the sun.
Heard Bill McKinley say, "Folks, have fun!
Some men have everything and some have none—
But that's just fine!
In the U.S.A., you can work your way
To the head of the line!"

If I were a pedant, I might point out that "some men have everything and some have none" suggests a parallelism it doesn't deliver, swerving from the syntax of everything/nothing to that of all/none for the sake of a rhyme which is thereby rendered just a mite awkward, if you ill-advisedly stop to think about it.  Then again, if I were a pedant, I might also idiotically complain that the first two lines are fragments, built on verbs with no subjects.  The Balladeer sings throughout in a unique idiolect that successfully combines Sondheimian fluency and crispness with the kind of studied folk-Americana "simplicity" that had SJS self-consciously droppin' his g's as a teenager.

Eating in a greasy spoon
To save on my dough.
At
My tiny flat,
There's just my cat,
A bed and a chair.
Still,
I'll stick it till
I'm on a bill
All over Times Square.

I got my taxes done today! I am getting a refund of $4300 from the federal government and $1,700 from the state. This means I can buy that snazzy new power steering pump I've had my eye on! Woo-hoo!

I'm just excited that I don't owe several thousand dollars. Every year I enter tax season with no idea of how things are going to go.

Maybe I'll buy some special dog treats as well. 

The bread, George.
I mean, the bread, George.
And then in bed, George...
I mean, he kneads me.
I mean, like dough, George.
Hello, George...?


Apparently painters aren't the only ones prone to objectifying their partners, even unconsciously, as mere accessories to their creative calling — to an artist, everyone's a model; to a baker, everything's dough?  But then again, as the lady says: the bread...  We should all have such agonizing choices, but despite "Everybody Loves Louis"'s charm and humor, one does feel the acute bind she's in, and it's not just an abstract emotional question of true love versus second-best expedience.

If she'd only been willful...
If she'd only have fled...
Or a little less skillful...
Insulted, insisting...
In bed...