That Richard III sounded fascinating. I saw his Crucible a few years back, and I still remember that stunning moment when the wall of windows blew out: he seems to use his large-scale Broadway tech really effectively.
Re: staging, I do think it's a peril of musicals in that musicals are the shows most often packaged as touristy moneymakers, and thus most often get the clunky "tried and true" (read: crazy boring) production package. But the two best Broadway productions I've seen in recent years were both musicals: Fun Home, as you say, was stunning for a number of reasons very much including its staging and direction choices (which unfortunately got lost somewhat in translation to a proscenium for the tour, which I think only reiterates what good choices the original production made) and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, which utterly blew me away (even in its translated Broadway staging). So I have faith in the form (and I think, done well, the natural unnaturalness of it can help spur great stagecraft), but I think it too often gets dragged down by preconceptions of what it is, rather than ideas about what it could be.
And that's my screed; I should be thanking you for letting me ramble on.
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Date: 2019-01-20 10:31 pm (UTC)Re: staging, I do think it's a peril of musicals in that musicals are the shows most often packaged as touristy moneymakers, and thus most often get the clunky "tried and true" (read: crazy boring) production package. But the two best Broadway productions I've seen in recent years were both musicals: Fun Home, as you say, was stunning for a number of reasons very much including its staging and direction choices (which unfortunately got lost somewhat in translation to a proscenium for the tour, which I think only reiterates what good choices the original production made) and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, which utterly blew me away (even in its translated Broadway staging). So I have faith in the form (and I think, done well, the natural unnaturalness of it can help spur great stagecraft), but I think it too often gets dragged down by preconceptions of what it is, rather than ideas about what it could be.
And that's my screed; I should be thanking you for letting me ramble on.