State of the Art

  Oh, no. I liked the first "Wicked" movie. Was it perfect? No. But GOD they could have screwed it up and they didn't. Nothing will top the Broadway production, but at least the first film felt like a decent reflection. And then came Part 2. I understand why they split this into two movies. According to composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz, "Defying Gravity" is SUCH a dramatic act one closer it was difficult to find a way to turn that into the midpoint of an intermission-less film (though who says they couldn't have pulled a "Gone With the Wind" and had an intermission? They paid tribute to films of the 1930's in other ways...) with a scene or song coming right on its silver heels. I get it. But it didn't work.  Surely finding a fix to the "Defy Gravity" problem would have gone over better than the almost disaster that the second film turned into - complete with two new (and wildly unnecessary, if not downright bad) songs, padding o...

  "The Queen of Versailles" is not a perfect musical. But it is, perhaps, the musical we need. The show is based on the film documentary of the same name, which chronicles Jackie Siegel and her insanely wealthy husband David's building of the "Biggest House in America" which they modeled after, and named "Versailles." The documentary lucked out in being filmed at just the right place and time to document the housing market bubble burst - which coincided with the Siegels being in the middle of construction and losing everything. Their story became a parable about our world and, particularly the U.S.'s hubristic obsession with wealth. The musical, however, lucks out in its own way by being able to chronicle what happened to the Siegels in the ten years (+) since the documentary came out. And what happened after is, in a way, poetic justice on the level of a master storyteller. There couldn't be a more poignant ending if it had been invented by th...

Thank goodness for this brilliant film adaptation.  There is so much that could have gone wrong with this film, in fact I avoided seeing it for quite a while because I was so worried it would hurt my heart. Like so many, "Wicked" has meant a great deal to me since it opened over twenty years ago. Indeed, with the exception of "Hamilton", one could easily argue that it is the most culturally impactful musical of the past two decades. And the piece is more relevant now than ever  - from the political under (and over) tones the musical does not shy away from (though it softens them from the book), and the idea of an ostracized but powerful young woman fighting against an all but worshipped leader who is destroying an entire population in the name of needing a "scapegoat" (pun intended by me and the show) to the fact that the Man Behind The Curtain never knew what he was doing in the first place, has gone from applicable to terrifyingly resonant. The film uses...