Prouvaire

A look at the musicals that may soon be coming to a US city near you, including:

• & Juliet
• Ain't Too Proud
• Aladdin
• Annie
• Back to the Future
• Beetlejuice
• The Book of Mormon
• The Cher Show
• Chicago
• Come From Away
• Company
• Frozen
• Funny Girl
• Girl from the North Country
• Hadestown
• Hairspray
• Hamilton
• Jagged Little Pill
• Jesus Christ Superstar
• Les Miserables
• The Lion King
• Mamma Mia
• Mean Girls
• MJ
• Moulin Rouge
• Mrs Doubtfire
• My Fair Lady
• On Your Feet
• Peter Pan
• Pretty Woman
• Shrek
• Six
• Tina
• Wicked
• The Wiz

To stimulate some discussion, here's an article summarising the top theatre (musical or otherwise) as chosen by various publications including The New York Times, Vulture, Wall Street Journal, Town & Country, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post, The New Yorker, New York Theatre Guide, USA Today and Deadline:

https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/The-Best-Theater-of-2023-Shows-that-Ruled-the-Year-20231231

The BroadwayWorld article didn't include Playbill's top list (as they're direct competitors), which is here:

https://www.playbill.com/article/playbills-favorite-theatre-moments-of-2023

For UK coverage, I've found these "best theatre of 2023" lists:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/dec/25/readers-favourite-stage-shows-of-2023

www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/dec/24/3/dec/24/ susannah-clapp-10-best-theatre-shows-of-2023

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/dec/24/clare-brennan-five-best-theatre-shows-of-2023

https://musicaltheatrereview.com/musical-theatre-review-contributors-pick-their-top-shows-of-2023/

As for me, I was fortunate to see a lot of theatre in 2023. Personal highlights include:

Ragtime (Broadway 25th anniversary reunion concert). Ragtime is my second (sometimes third) favourite show, and while I've seen a number of productions, the atmosphere and quality of performance of this long-awaited, much-delayed concert were both electric. If I had to pick one highlight of 2023, this would be it.

Merrily We Roll Along (Broadway). Merrily is my favourite Sondheim show and I was lucky enough to see the original staging of this revival, directed by Maria Friedman, at the Menier Chocolate Factory in 2013. It's the best production of this underrated masterpiece I've seen (and I've seen a lot), filled with nuance and feeling. I actually slightly preferred the Chocolate Factory cast, venue (and very much the prices!!!!) over their Broadway equivalents, but the Broadway production is still a 100% must-see show, and I'm not surprised to see it pop up on nearly everyone's "best of" list.

Kimberly Akimbo (Broadway). The last time I fell in love with a musical on first viewing was Fun Home, another small-scale, character-focused show with music by Jeanine Tesori. The production and entire cast was amazing but Victoria Clark was beyond amazing. I would have taken to the streets in protest if she hadn't won the Tony.

Miss Saigon (Sheffield Crucible). Now this is how you do a revival. The current Cam Mack production directed by Laurence Connor is basically a cut-down version of Nicholas Hytner's original with few conceptual departures. On the other hand, this totally new production (directed by Robert Hastie and Anthony Lau), reconceptualises so many elements of the show without verging into artsy fartsy pretention (unlike certain other revivals); and almost all of these changes either work better than the Cam Mack productions or just as well but in different ways. I'm not going to go into all of these in detail for reasons of time and space, but they include having a female Engineer, Chris and Ellen both being black, the way key scenes are staged (including I Still Believe, the Act 1 finale, Bui Doi, the fall of Saigon, and other numbers) the framing device, the characterisation of Kim, the presentation of "ghosts" in the show, the various tweaks to the lyrics and dialogue, but let me just say this. As much as I love Miss Saigon, the ending has never moved me. Until this production. Joanna Ampil (who remains the best Kim I've seen but who played the Engineer in this production) was the reason I flew to the UK, but the whole production made the trip worthwhile.

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (Sydney). I had booked to see the Broadway production of this show, but it was cancelled under very unfortunate circumstances before I arrived. I finally had a chance to see a production of Great Comet in Sydney (not directed by Rachel Chavkin, but designed to fit a much smaller venue and budget), and it's one of the highlights of my year.

Britney Spears the Cabaret (Sydney). I've seen a lot of Australian musicals, and most of them are not great. (To be fair, as Sturgeon's Law dictates, 90% of everything is crap.) Two shows stand out as being able to compete at the same level as the best international shows, and one of these is Britney Spears The Cabaret, a one-woman, one-pianist jukebox musical written & directed by Dean Bryant and starring the luminous Christie Whelan Browne. I liken this show to Hedwig and the Angry Inch - ludicrous at first glance, but a real tour-de-force and emotional roller coaster. I'm not really familiar with Britney Spears songs, but the way they were integrated into this show made it seem like they were written for the musical theatre.

Honourable mentions incude: A Strange Loop (London), Operation Mincemeat (London), Into the Woods (US tour), Beauty and the Beast (Sydney), Here We Are (off-Broadway), Shucked (Broadway), Aspects of Love (London; mainly for Laura Pitt Pulford), Groundhog Day (London; mainly for Andy Karl), Guys & Dolls (London), Next to Normal (London; Eleanor Worthington-Cox is the best Natalie, probably ever), Miss Saigon (Sydney; mainly for Abigail Adriano), 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Sydney), Flowers for Mrs Harris (London), and - as always - Les Miz (in more places that I care to list).

The show I was most disappointed by was Jamie Lloyd's Sunset Boulevard in London. I thought it was pretentious and camp and really didn't care for how Lloyd deliberately sucked any feeling or expression out of the performances (Nicole Scherzinger's Norma aside - but that's where the camp came in unfortunately). I'm also well and truly over the whole black-box-set/live-video-on-stage schtick which I've seen way, waaay, waaaaay too much of over the past couple of decades. That said, the singing and orchestra were both excellent. If they released a cast recording I'd buy it.

I had similar feelings about the Daniel Fish production of Oklahoma! (originally produced in New York) which I saw in London. The whole, constant "let's bring out the subtextual darkness and sexuality through line readings and staging" gimick came across as little (or more than a little) silly a lot of the time, but in the case of Oklahoma I at least respected the aspiration, even if a lot of it didn't work for me. I did particularly like how Fish foregrounded the fact that Curly basically literally gets away with murder (something that's always bothered me about the show), and the shock of violence at the end was quite bracing in the best way. I think Jamie Lloyd must have watched that Oklahoma (as well as any number of Ivo van Hove shows) and took away all the wrong lessons.

What were your musical highlights, lowlights and memorable experiences in 2023? Can be anything - stage, film, TV, cabaret, pro-shots etc.

The song “I’m Here” from The Color Purple musical is not meant to be sung, but roared. It’s not meant to be heard but felt.

“I’m Here” is the climax of the musical. It reframes the protagonist Celie’s narrative from victim to a triumphant woman who has overcome adversity. Up to this moment, Celie has been told that no one loves her. But she begins life on her own in a shop that she owns and realizes that she’s been loved all along; now, she chooses to find that love in herself after going through hell and back searching for it elsewhere. The song marks a new beginning—Celie declares that she’s here, and boy, are you gonna hear her.

Alice Walker’s 1982 novel breathed life into the characters of Celie, Nettie, Sofia, and the rest of the cohort of The Color Purple. Whoopi Goldberg portrayed Celie in the 1985 Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation. It wasn’t until 2005 that the movie was transformed into a Broadway musical, giving the character of Celie a striking, reflective number with “I’m Here.” LaChanze, who originated the role of Celie on Broadway, won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical in 2006, and set the standard for all Celies to come. In 2007 and 2008, Fantasia Barrino—the first American Idol winner to assume a role on Broadway—took over the role for eight months. In 2013, Cynthia Erivo was cast as Celie in an off-West End theater and brought over to Broadway to do the 2015 revival, which earned her a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, with the show also taking home Best Revival of a Musical.

The three Celies are fundamental for understanding the power behind “I’m Here,” a song that requires every fiber of the performer’s being to sell its emotional stakes. Now, a wider audience will get the chance to fall in love with Celie as Barrino revives the role onscreen in a film adaptation of the musical, out Dec. 25. Ahead of the movie’s release, Barrino, Erivo, and LaChanze, along with the film’s director, Blitz Bazawule, spoke with TIME about bringing the song to life on stage and on the screen.

LaChanze and Cynthia Erivo set the stage on Broadway

Before LaChanze was cast in the musical on Broadway and began workshops for the world premiere of the show in Atlanta in 2003, she read the book, and her heart broke for Celie. “She was still a champion; she never faltered under all that trauma,” she says. “[Celie] was able to maintain a love for herself, her children, her sister, in spite of the subjugation she was dealing with.” LaChanze came on to the project with Regina Taylor as the writer, but when she arrived at the workshop in New York before the show’s premiere in Atlanta, Taylor was replaced with Marsha Norman—who had no book for the show because she had to rewrite it. During the workshop, they worked on a later portion of the show where Celie “decides she is going to love herself,” LaChanze says. The three composers (which LaChanze notes is why the song “I’m Here” has three distinct changes in tempo)—Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray—spoke with the actress in an adjacent rehearsal studio and asked her to describe how she was feeling.

The words began pouring out of LaChanze, she says. “I said, ‘I wanna flirt with somebody, I know I got my sister. She can't be with me. But she's still my sister, and I know she loves me and my children,’” she recalls telling the composers. “I didn’t put it together in the way they did, but my feelings, my emotions, and my thoughts about what I was experiencing as the actor embodying Celie they put in the song. So I like to say I helped write the song.”

Singing “I’m Here” eight times a week on Broadway when it came to New York in 2005 was a cathartic experience for LaChanze. Her husband died in the Sept. 11 attacks, and she was a single mother to two young children. She was able to “use Celie’s emotions as an outlet” for the pressure she felt in her life, she says, adding that she looked forward to singing the song every night because she thought about who was being changed by the words she sang. “Yes, it’s moving, it’s emotional, it’s heavy. But it’s an anthem to Black womanhood, survival, resilience, and empowerment, so it was joyous for me in the end.”

The original run of the show ended in 2008, and in late 2015, the revival came back to Broadway with Cynthia Erivo filling Celie’s shoes after starting out in the U.K. Erivo’s performance as Celie was lauded by critics. In 2016, she won the Tony Award for her role, but it didn’t come easily. “With [The Color Purple], essentially it’s two and a half hours of being thrown across the stage and being called ugly, and for me, that was eight shows a week for 14 months,” she says. “Because of the way I like to dig into characters, the line becomes really blurry between what’s real and what’s not.”

Erivo says that before she sang that song, she imagined digging her feet into the sand to ground herself, anchoring herself to Celie, as she sang. “I could feel everyone holding their breath as the song goes on,” she says. “And you can feel everyone breathe by the end of the song. I knew that when people were on their feet, it wasn’t just because of how wonderful the song was or how wonderful Celie was. It was because there was something in that song that moved people to their feet because that’s the only thing they can do.”

On days when she found it difficult to sing “I’m Here,” Erivo says she reminded herself that the song wasn’t just for her. “It’s not supposed to be an easy song to sing. There has to be a bit of a fight. The song wrestles with you, and you kind of have to surrender to it and say, ‘Okay, I’ll take the fight on.’”

How Fantasia Barrino and Blitz Bazawule captured the magic of “I’m Here” for the movie

Fantasia Barrino initially declined to reprise her role as Celie in the movie adaptation—she’d like to clarify that it wasn’t a hard no, but says that it was the director, Blitz Bazawule, who convinced her to sign on to the project by telling her Celie's imagination would be given more space in the film. “As a woman who has been through trauma, we need for people to know that we don’t just sit in our trauma; we imagine ourselves in different places and situations,” Barrino says. “We imagine things better. When we ain’t got no money, we imagine ourselves with some money.” After that, she says, she was all the way in.

When it came to filming “I’m Here,” Barrino says she sang the song live 86 times on set. There were two different setups for the film—the interior shot of Celie’s shop on a soundstage and the exterior, which was shot on location in Georgia, Bazawule says. It was freezing cold when they filmed—Barrino says what got her through was the support she was given by her castmates and crew. Halle Bailey, who plays young Nettie, and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, who plays young Celie, came to set on their day off to watch her film her performance. At first, she was confused about why they would come to watch her shoot the scene, but after a couple of takes, she says, “They would all walk up to me and say, ‘I needed this. You blessed me. This heals me.’ I realized it was a ministry.”

Bazawule says he was looking for an earnest performance from Barrino. “The minute she looked into that camera and sang, ‘I’m beautiful,’ and her voice broke, I thought, ‘That’s it. I got it,’” he says. “I was behind the monitor tearing up, so I know that anybody watching it in a theater would tear up, and that, to me, is what this is about.”

The song “I’m Here” from The Color Purple musical is not meant to be sung, but roared. It’s not meant to be heard but felt.

“I’m Here” is the climax of the musical. It reframes the protagonist Celie’s narrative from victim to a triumphant woman who has overcome adversity. Up to this moment, Celie has been told that no one loves her. But she begins life on her own in a shop that she owns and realizes that she’s been loved all along; now, she chooses to find that love in herself after going through hell and back searching for it elsewhere. The song marks a new beginning—Celie declares that she’s here, and boy, are you gonna hear her.

Alice Walker’s 1982 novel breathed life into the characters of Celie, Nettie, Sofia, and the rest of the cohort of The Color Purple. Whoopi Goldberg portrayed Celie in the 1985 Steven Spielberg-directed adaptation. It wasn’t until 2005 that the movie was transformed into a Broadway musical, giving the character of Celie a striking, reflective number with “I’m Here.” LaChanze, who originated the role of Celie on Broadway, won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical in 2006, and set the standard for all Celies to come. In 2007 and 2008, Fantasia Barrino—the first American Idol winner to assume a role on Broadway—took over the role for eight months. In 2013, Cynthia Erivo was cast as Celie in an off-West End theater and brought over to Broadway to do the 2015 revival, which earned her a Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, with the show also taking home Best Revival of a Musical.

The three Celies are fundamental for understanding the power behind “I’m Here,” a song that requires every fiber of the performer’s being to sell its emotional stakes. Now, a wider audience will get the chance to fall in love with Celie as Barrino revives the role onscreen in a film adaptation of the musical, out Dec. 25. Ahead of the movie’s release, Barrino, Erivo, and LaChanze, along with the film’s director, Blitz Bazawule, spoke with TIME about bringing the song to life on stage and on the screen.

LaChanze and Cynthia Erivo set the stage on Broadway

Before LaChanze was cast in the musical on Broadway and began workshops for the world premiere of the show in Atlanta in 2003, she read the book, and her heart broke for Celie. “She was still a champion; she never faltered under all that trauma,” she says. “[Celie] was able to maintain a love for herself, her children, her sister, in spite of the subjugation she was dealing with.” LaChanze came on to the project with Regina Taylor as the writer, but when she arrived at the workshop in New York before the show’s premiere in Atlanta, Taylor was replaced with Marsha Norman—who had no book for the show because she had to rewrite it. During the workshop, they worked on a later portion of the show where Celie “decides she is going to love herself,” LaChanze says. The three composers (which LaChanze notes is why the song “I’m Here” has three distinct changes in tempo)—Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray—spoke with the actress in an adjacent rehearsal studio and asked her to describe how she was feeling.

The words began pouring out of LaChanze, she says. “I said, ‘I wanna flirt with somebody, I know I got my sister. She can't be with me. But she's still my sister, and I know she loves me and my children,’” she recalls telling the composers. “I didn’t put it together in the way they did, but my feelings, my emotions, and my thoughts about what I was experiencing as the actor embodying Celie they put in the song. So I like to say I helped write the song.”

Singing “I’m Here” eight times a week on Broadway when it came to New York in 2005 was a cathartic experience for LaChanze. Her husband died in the Sept. 11 attacks, and she was a single mother to two young children. She was able to “use Celie’s emotions as an outlet” for the pressure she felt in her life, she says, adding that she looked forward to singing the song every night because she thought about who was being changed by the words she sang. “Yes, it’s moving, it’s emotional, it’s heavy. But it’s an anthem to Black womanhood, survival, resilience, and empowerment, so it was joyous for me in the end.”

The original run of the show ended in 2008, and in late 2015, the revival came back to Broadway with Cynthia Erivo filling Celie’s shoes after starting out in the U.K. Erivo’s performance as Celie was lauded by critics. In 2016, she won the Tony Award for her role, but it didn’t come easily. “With [The Color Purple], essentially it’s two and a half hours of being thrown across the stage and being called ugly, and for me, that was eight shows a week for 14 months,” she says. “Because of the way I like to dig into characters, the line becomes really blurry between what’s real and what’s not.”

Erivo says that before she sang that song, she imagined digging her feet into the sand to ground herself, anchoring herself to Celie, as she sang. “I could feel everyone holding their breath as the song goes on,” she says. “And you can feel everyone breathe by the end of the song. I knew that when people were on their feet, it wasn’t just because of how wonderful the song was or how wonderful Celie was. It was because there was something in that song that moved people to their feet because that’s the only thing they can do.”

On days when she found it difficult to sing “I’m Here,” Erivo says she reminded herself that the song wasn’t just for her. “It’s not supposed to be an easy song to sing. There has to be a bit of a fight. The song wrestles with you, and you kind of have to surrender to it and say, ‘Okay, I’ll take the fight on.’”

How Fantasia Barrino and Blitz Bazawule captured the magic of “I’m Here” for the movie

Fantasia Barrino initially declined to reprise her role as Celie in the movie adaptation—she’d like to clarify that it wasn’t a hard no, but says that it was the director, Blitz Bazawule, who convinced her to sign on to the project by telling her Celie's imagination would be given more space in the film. “As a woman who has been through trauma, we need for people to know that we don’t just sit in our trauma; we imagine ourselves in different places and situations,” Barrino says. “We imagine things better. When we ain’t got no money, we imagine ourselves with some money.” After that, she says, she was all the way in.

When it came to filming “I’m Here,” Barrino says she sang the song live 86 times on set. There were two different setups for the film—the interior shot of Celie’s shop on a soundstage and the exterior, which was shot on location in Georgia, Bazawule says. It was freezing cold when they filmed—Barrino says what got her through was the support she was given by her castmates and crew. Halle Bailey, who plays young Nettie, and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi, who plays young Celie, came to set on their day off to watch her film her performance. At first, she was confused about why they would come to watch her shoot the scene, but after a couple of takes, she says, “They would all walk up to me and say, ‘I needed this. You blessed me. This heals me.’ I realized it was a ministry.”

Bazawule says he was looking for an earnest performance from Barrino. “The minute she looked into that camera and sang, ‘I’m beautiful,’ and her voice broke, I thought, ‘That’s it. I got it,’” he says. “I was behind the monitor tearing up, so I know that anybody watching it in a theater would tear up, and that, to me, is what this is about.”

This month, there are two new movie musicals currently in theatres: Wonka and The Color Purple. And, they're both performing extremely well. The film version of Broadway's The Color Purple is currently exceeding expectations in its first week at the box office—$29 million and counting since its release on Christmas Day. Meanwhile, Wonka (released December 15) has just passed $100 million domestically, and is over $270 million worldwide. We'd call that a delicious turn of events and goes against the assumption that movie audiences dislike musicals.

But how well do these two new films fare against other movie musicals? We look back at how musicals based on Broadway (and a few Off-Broadway) productions have fared in the past two decades.

Below, find the domestic, international, and worldwide grosses for a host of movie musicals released in cinemas since the turn-of-the-century.

The titles are numerous so we made a few caveats. We didn't include Disney musicals, live filmed versions of Broadway shows (like the recent Waitress live stage capture), or original musicals (like La La Land).

Titles are listed in descending order based on worldwide grosses.

Mamma Mia! (2008)
domestic: $144,330,569; international: $550,310,170; worldwide: $694,640,739
budget: $52 million

Les Misérables (2012)
domestic: $148,809,770; international: $293,489,539; $442,299,309
budget: $61 million

Chicago (2002)
domestic: $170,687,518; international: $136,089,214; worldwide: $306,776,732
budget: $45 million

Into the Woods (2014)
domestic: $128,002,372; international: $84,900,000; worldwide: $212,902,372
budget: $50 million

Hairspray (2007)
domestic: $118,946,291; international: $84,681,462; worldwide: $203,627,753
budget: $27.8 million

Dreamgirls (2006)
domestic: $103,365,956; international: $52,064,379; worldwide: $155,430,335
budget: $70 million

The Phantom of the Opera (2004)
domestic: $51,293,931; international: $103,380,310; worldwide: $154,674,241
budget: $70 million

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
domestic: $52,898,073; international: $100,485,554; worldwide: $153,383,627
budget: $50 million

Annie (2014 remake)
domestic: $85,911,262; international: $50,942,244; worldwide: $136,853,506
budget: $65 million

West Side Story (2021 remake)
domestic: $38,530,322; international: $37,485,849; worldwide: $76,016,171
budget: $100 million

Cats (2019)
domestic: $27,166,770; international: $48,392,155; worldwide: $75,558,925
budget: $95 million

Jersey Boys (2014)
domestic: $47,047,013; international: $20,600,000; worldwide: $67,647,013
budget: $40 million

Rock of Ages (2012)
domestic: $38,518,613; international: $20,900,000; worldwide: $59,418,613
budget: $75 million

Nine (2009)
domestic: $19,676,965; international: $34,327,985; worldwide: $54,004,950
budget: $80 million

In the Heights (2021)
domestic: $29,975,167; international: $15,200,000; worldwide: $45,175,167
budget: $55 million

The Producers (2005)
domestic: $19,398,532; international: $18,676,786; worldwide: $38,075,318
budget: $45 million

Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical (2022)
not released domestically; international: $34,706,541; worldwide: $34,706,541
budget: $25 million

Rent (2005)
domestic: $29,077,547; international: $2,593,073; worldwide: $31,670,620
budget: $40 million

Dear Evan Hansen (2021)
domestic: $15,002,646; international: $4,130,808; worldwide: $19,133,454
budget: $28 million

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
domestic: $3,082,286; international: $577,795; worldwide: $3,660,081
budget: $6 million

The Last Five Years (2014, based on the Off-Broadway musical)
domestic: $145,427; international: $146,665; worldwide: $292,092
budget: $3.5 million

The Prom (2020)
not released domestically; international: $187,430; worldwide: $187,430
budget: undisclosed

tick, tick… BOOM! (2021, based on the Off-Broadway musical)
not released domestically; international: $112,777; worldwide: $112,777

The Fantasticks (2000, based on the Off-Broadway musical)
not released internationally; domestic: $49,666; worldwide: $49,666
budget: $55 million

Naked Boys Singing! (2007, based on the Off-Broadway musical)
not released internationally; domestic: $25,526; worldwide: $25,526
budget: undisclosed

Budget figures were gathered from BoxOfficeMojo.com and IMDB.

When the Broadway production of the The Book of Mormon played its 4,643rd performance on December 28 at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre, it surpassed Jersey Boys to become the 12th longest-running show in Broadway history.

To mark the occasion, four members of the current Broadway cast of The Book of Mormon - Noah Marlowe, PJ Adzima, John Pinto, Jr., and Ben Laxton - paid tribute to the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons musical in a new video featuring a “Walk Like a Man"/“Man Up” mashup.

Even hardcore fans of the Hook may not know it started out as a full-blown movie musical. Director Steven Spielberg (who has often been likened to Peter Pan) had always wanted to make a musical, and thought Hook presented the perfect opportunity. He didn't want to remake any of the previous Pan musicals — not the 1953 Disney animated movie, nor the 1954 Broadway version originally starring Mary Martin. He wanted something brand new.

For that, he turned to his faithful composer, John Williams. Over two decades and nearly a dozen films, Williams already helped Spielberg make some of the most unforgettable soundtracks in Hollywood, from the Indiana Jones movies to E.T. But Williams needed a lyricist, and who better than the guy who wrote the songs for 1971's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Leslie Bricusse, a British lyricist and composer in his own right, was an old friend and collaborator with Williams. Starting in the 1960s, they wrote several title songs for now-forgotten films. Prior to Hook, Bricusse had set words to Williams' classic love theme from Superman and two original Christmas carols in Home Alone.

Shortly before he died in 2021, Bricusse told NPR he was thrilled about writing lyrics for a brand new Peter Pan musical movie.

"We thought we'd got the Oscar with a song called 'Childhood,'" Bricusse said. "I remember Steven, when he heard it, saying: 'That's a home run.' It was a beautiful song — beautiful song. Beautiful melody. Vintage Williams."

"Childhood" was written for Granny Wendy, played by Maggie Smith in the film. Since Smith isn't a singer, Bricusse phoned a favor from an old friend — Julie Andrews — who went into the studio and recorded it in the manner of an older woman. Williams and Bricusse also wrote a seductive villain's song, "Stick with Me," for Dustin Hoffman's wily Captain Hook.

The most lavish number was a big choreographed sequence when Peter first arrives in Neverland — and the pirates burst into a song called "Low Below." With choreography by Vince Paterson, who worked with Madonna and Michael Jackson, Spielberg spent an entire week shooting that elaborate routine. But when he and John Williams reviewed the campy footage, they looked at each other and realized ... their musical was a very bad idea.

Spielberg cut the scene and ditched the idea of Hook as a musical. Only a few remnants remained — including a lullaby, "When You're Alone," which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song.

To most critics, the lack of musical numbers made no difference; the film was bad. Newsweek's David Ansen summed up the consensus among critics when he called it "a huge party cake of a movie with too much frosting."

But Hook has always enjoyed a legion of diehard fans. That's partly why Mike Matessino, a record producer who resurrects and remasters old John Williams scores, decided to revisit the soundtrack. He dug up the old demos, most of them recorded in 1991 for the actors to learn — including a song Williams and Bricusse wrote for the Lost Boys and another for Tinkerbell.

Thus, 32 years after the musical Hook died, Matessino was finally able to convince all the parties at play to release a new, 3-CD album on La-La Land Records with all of the abandoned song demos (alas, minus the Julie Andrews recording of "Childhood") — as well as John Williams' complete instrumental score, where the songs have always been hiding in plain sight. The score took the song melodies for most of its major character themes.

"Even without the songs being sung," Matessino explains, "the score has a 'lyrical' quality. You don't really get themes in a film score that have what we call bridges in a song, sort of a center section. And that's a clue right there that a lot of these themes began life with the intention of having lyrics set to them."

So even though most of the songs in Hook walked the plank, their tunes took flight as one of Williams' best, and most songlike, scores. And now the final collaboration between John Williams and Leslie Bricusse can finally fly. And even crow.

Stephen Sondheim was a self-confessed “world-class procrastinator,” and he left behind evidence in the form of an unfinished show, Here We Are, that might have otherwise opened in his lifetime. Here We Are—which ends its 17-week run Jan. 21 at The Shed’s Griffin Theater—draws from two films by master surrealist Luis Buñuel: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, both stinging satires of the corrupt upper-crust. But, says David Ives, who wrote the book for Here We Are, Sondheim didn’t have Buñuel in mind when the two first began working together.

That would have been around December of 2009. Ives—one of the most prolific and comical playwrights around (Venus in Fur, Lives of the Saints, Babel’s in Arms)—remembers meeting with Sondheim at the Manhattan townhouse in Turtle Bay. “I knew him the way one knows people in the theater, so we were casually acquainted to begin with,” Ives tells Observer. “Then, one day, out of the blue, he asked me if I wanted to come over for a drink and said that he wanted to talk to me about something—but that it wasn’t important. I said, ‘Sure.’ I had never been to his house, so we set a date.”

The two drank and chatted until Ives asked what unimportant things Sondheim wanted to talk about. “And he said, ‘Did I say it wasn’t important?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Well, I’ve got this idea for a musical, and I wondered if you wanted to work on it with me.’”

It turns out what Sondheim had in mind was an original idea of his own. “He called it All Together Now,” Ives recalls. “It was a show that would take a single moment in the lives of two people and investigate it musically. It was a very complicated idea. We worked on it for about four years. Then, for various reasons too complex to go into, we let it go. He had already proposed to me the idea of turning these two Buñuel movies into a show. I thought that was a great idea. The same month we ended All Together Now, we started working on the Buñuel.”

Why did Sondheim tap Ives to collaborate instead of his regular collaborators? “I know he liked my short plays—particularly All in the Timing and Sure Thing,” Ives says. “There is a certain vague similarity between what happens in Sure Thing and what was to happen in All Together Now: you take a single moment, and you explore it. I believe that’s why he originally asked me for that. Then, after collaborating for four years, we got to know each other pretty well and stuck with it.”

Once they set aside All Together Now and set to thinking about the Buñuel project, Sondheim and Ives watched the two movies repeatedly. “I went over to his house, and we talked about them endlessly for weeks. I took a lot of notes. I synopsized the movies. I probably saw The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 12 or 15 times and The Exterminating Angel more than that, maybe 20 times. I went back to them quite a bit, especially at the beginning and then toward the end, so see if there was anything that I had missed.

“The way Sondheim and I worked—I was over at his house a lot, about once a week early on. We’d talk about the show, and I‘d write up the notes from our meeting and send them to him. Then we’d talk on the phone about the notes and I’d come back the next week and we would continue that process. A lot of it, at the beginning, was up close and personal in his study.

“Even when he slowed down, it was fun—partly because I was hanging out in a room with Sondheim. That, automatically, was fun. It was like going over to Mozart’s house. Mozart says, ‘I had this idea. Let me play you this,’ and he plays it and sings what he has come up with. We got to become good friends over the course of all of this. That made it more than a collaboration.”

Ives describes Sondheim as “one of the most down-to-earth people”: ” It’s ironic that he has become kind of a demigod because he was just this man in a sweatshirt and old pants. There was nothing august about him. He was funny, he was generous, he was very quick. And he could laugh faster—and he could cry faster—than anybody I know. He was a great Margaret Sullavan fan and could do a brilliant Margaret Sullavan imitation at the drop of a hat.”

Three years into the project, a director appeared—Joe Mantello, with a direction for the show. “Joe is a great director,” says Ives. “Every show he does, what you’re seeing is Joe Mantello because he creates a world for each of his shows—Three Tall Women, Wicked, Assassins . . .”

Sondheim bailed first, informing his lawyer that he was off of the project. In his 90s and facing death himself, he was confronting a roomful of characters also facing death. Daunting, what?

“Why are these people singing?” were his parting words. His collaborators began to agree. Three years after Sondheim’s death, Montello realized they had gone as far as they could go, that their show was indeed finished. Hence, the title of arrival: Here We Are. There you are.

As we hurtle towards 2024, it’s time to take a closer look at 20 new musicals coming our way over the next twelve months.

Every entry on our list is a show that has not previously been staged in the UK – whether it’s a world premiere production or a transfer from Broadway – so, for example, the much-anticipated West End debuts of Hadestown and Standing at the Sky’s Edge don’t make the cut due to their previous incarnations at the National Theatre and/or Crucible Theatre.

Read the story for more details, but the musicals are:

• 42 Balloons
• Before After
• Banghra Nation
• Bronco Billy
• Burlesque
• Cable Street
• Clueless
• The Devil Wears Prada
• Fangirls
• Frankie Goes to Bollywood
• Here You Come Again
• Just for One Day
• London Tide
• Mean Girls
• MJ
• Now That's What I Call a Musical
• The Odyssey
• Opening Night
• Sherlock Holmes and the Poison Wood
• Starter for Ten

The Color Purple opened enormously on Christmas Day to take top spot at the domestic box office, trouncing its nearest competition Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in the process. Wonka finished in third for a top-three triumph for Warner Bros. The Color Purple smashed expectations with an $18.5 million debut, almost double initial projections of $8 million to $10 million. The musical cinematic adaptation of the theatrical show, produced by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, stars Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks and Colman Domingo. The movie is also based off both the Alice Walker novel and the Tony-winning Broadway production.

The Color Purple is also evidence that, for the right movie, older audiences will still come out in their numbers. While it took that particular demographic longer to return to the multiplexes in a post-pandemic world, for The Color Purple they turned out big time. It was also lauded with sensational audience approval ratings, currently sitting at a 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and sky-high critical acclaim.

The movie was most popular among audiences over 55, who made up 25% of viewers and rated it highly at 97%. Directed by Blitz Bazawule, it also saw significant turnout from women over 25, who comprised 62% of the audience and gave it a 94% grade. Men over 25 represented 21% of viewers with an 86% rating, followed by women under 25 at 14% (91% rating), and finally, men under 25 were the smallest group at 4%, yet they still gave it an 89% approval rating.

Wonka continues to charm audiences worldwide. Just behind Aquaman with $10.4 million, giving it a holiday weekend haul of $28.7 million, the origin story of the Roald Dahl-created chocolatier has also exceeded the expected $26 million it was projected to earn over Christmas. This brings its domestic tally to over $85 million and ensures it has passed $250 million worldwide. With its box office success, and great word of mouth, the $125 million-budgeted film looks certain to get a sequel at this rate.

Stephen Sondheim, the great musical theater composer and lyricist, was widely acclaimed as a genius, but during his lifetime he had a bumpy track record at the box office, with many of his shows losing money.
In death, however, his shows have flourished.

A revival of “Merrily We Roll Along” — which was so unpopular when it debuted in 1981 that it closed 12 days after opening — is now the hottest ticket on Broadway. A lavish revival of “Sweeney Todd” that opened in March is already profitable, and at a time when almost everything new on Broadway is failing.

Meanwhile, Sondheim’s unfinished and existentialist final work, “Here We Are,” is now the longest-running show in the brief history of the Shed, a performing arts center in Hudson Yards on Manhattan’s West Side, where luminaries like Steven Spielberg and Lin-Manuel Miranda signed up as producers to make sure no expense was spared on the Sondheim send-off.
“There just seems to be an unbounded appetite for him,” said Alex Poots, the artistic director of the Shed.

The posthumous Sondheim bump appears to have resulted from a confluence of factors.

The big Broadway revivals feature fan-favorite talent — the “Merrily” cast includes Daniel Radcliffe of “Harry Potter” fame, while “Sweeney” is led by the celebrated baritone Josh Groban — reflecting a desire by top-tier entertainers to champion, and tackle, Sondheim’s tricky but rewarding work.

Also: The outpouring of praise for Sondheim upon his death, when he was hailed as a transformational creative force, seems to have spurred new interest in his work. And his shows, some of which felt challenging when they first appeared, are now more familiar, thanks to decades of stage productions and film adaptations. Plus, according to most critics, the current revivals are good.

“Sondheim went from being too avant-garde to being a sure bet, like you’re doing ‘A Christmas Carol’,” said Danny Feldman, the producing artistic director of Pasadena Playhouse, a Southern California nonprofit that won this year’s Regional Theater Tony Award. The playhouse devoted the first half of 2023 to Sondheim: A production of “Sunday in the Park With George,” a show once seen as esoteric, became one its best-selling musicals ever, and a production of “A Little Night Music” was not far behind. “The interest was shocking,” Feldman said.

One side effect of his popularity: Ticket prices are high. “Merrily” is facing strong demand from Sondheim lovers and Radcliffe fans, but its capacity is limited; it is playing in a theater with just 966 seats. That has made it the most expensive ticket on Broadway, with an average ticket price of $250 and a top ticket price of $649 during the week that ended Dec. 17. “Sweeney” is also pricey, with tickets that same week averaging $175 and topping out at $399. (Both shows offer lower-priced tickets, particularly after the holidays.)

“We shouldn’t be criticized for being a hit and paying back investors who have taken a big punt in New York,” said the “Merrily” lead producer, Sonia Friedman. “Most shows right now are not working, and therefore when something comes along that does, let’s get the investors some money back.”

In life, Sondheim was often seen as more of an artistic success than a commercial one — a critical darling with a passionate but finite fan base, leading to short runs for many of the shows whose scores he composed, especially during their first productions. A few shows, particularly “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” were hits from the start, but some musicals that are now viewed as masterpieces, including “Sweeney Todd” and “Sunday in the Park With George,” did not recoup their costs during their original productions.

“It’s not like he fell out of favor and has been rediscovered. He’s always been revered and valued and prized by everybody who loves theater, but we also have to recognize that several of his shows, when they first premiered, were not understood and were not embraced,” said Jordan Roth, the producer who brought “Into the Woods” back to Broadway in the summer of 2022, seven months after Sondheim’s death. Now, Roth said, “The grip on our hearts seems to have tightened.”

“Into the Woods,” a modestly scaled production, featured the pop singer Sara Bareilles and a troupe of Broadway stars. It recouped its costs and then had a five-month national tour.

In February, seven weeks after “Into the Woods” concluded on Broadway, “Sweeney Todd” began previews. It’s a much bigger production — big cast, big orchestra — that was capitalized for up to $14.5 million. It has sold strongly from the get-go (during the week that ended Dec. 10, it grossed $1.8 million) and has already recouped its capitalization costs.

“I’m sorry that I can’t call him and say look at these grosses. He definitely would have had a sarcastic statement in response, but he would have liked it secretly,” said the show’s lead producer, Jeffrey Seller. “Who doesn’t want to be affirmed by the audience?”

Groban and his co-star Annaleigh Ashford are ending their runs in the show on Jan. 14; the show’s success has prompted the producers to extend the run, with Aaron Tveit and Sutton Foster taking over the lead roles on Feb. 9.

“It has morphed into being under the umbrella of an enormous and deserved celebration of Sondheim’s work and legacy and life,” Groban said. “All of a sudden there’s grief involved, and wanting to do him proud, and what-would-Steve-do feelings.”

“Merrily,” which began previews in September, is the biggest turnabout, given that its original production is one of Broadway’s most storied flops. The current revival, capitalized for up to $13 million, has been selling out.

“Of all the things he wanted, he wanted as many people as possible to be in the theater watching the shows, and he just missed it,” said Maria Friedman, the director of the “Merrily” revival and a longtime Sondheim collaborator.

In November, 10 members of the company of the original ill-fated “Merrily” attended the revival and marveled at the reversal of fortunes.

“It’s thrilling to see the show finally get its due,” said Gary Stevens, who was an 18-year-old in the original “Merrily” ensemble, and who is now 60 and works an executive at a chauffeuring company in Florida. “I’d be remiss if I didn’t say there was a sense of bittersweetness. We look at this revival’s success as, in some ways, our success, because the day after closing, even with how exhausted we were and how sad we were, we recorded a kick-ass album that kept that show alive, so that it became a legendary flop and cult classic that kept going and going, and now this.”

Another member of the original “Merrily” cast, the actress and singer Liz Callaway, was nominated this year for a Grammy Award for a live album of Sondheim songs, one of two collections of Sondheim songs nominated in the 2024 Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album category. “I think a new generation is falling in love with Sondheim now,” she said.

“Here We Are” is a little different. It is not expected to recoup its costs, or to transfer to Broadway, but both the leadership of the Shed and the commercial producer who raised money to finance the production proclaimed it a success.

“It was always about honoring Steve’s legacy,” said the producer, Tom Kirdahy. “And we hope that it has another life, in London or on the road.”

In London, there are also two Sondheim shows running. “Old Friends,” a revue of Sondheim songs with a cast led by Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga, is in the West End. And at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a revival of Sondheim’s rarely staged “Pacific Overtures” opened earlier this month to critical praise.

“For those of us who wanted to do right by him, this is a year I’ll never forget,” Groban said. “I just hope he’s smiling down.”

The films "The Color Purple" and "Mean Girls" were transformed into Broadway musicals; now both are heading back to movie houses in musical form. But this combination of shape-shifting and baton-passing is a tricky task, and the third time is not always the charm.

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