Musicals are definitely not dead. Chicago proved that when the musical made a splash as a movie, garnering awards for its stars. This December, another musical loosely based on history also opened, Dream Girls.
Chicago was a 1975 musical written by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb with music by John Kander and lyrics by Ebb. It was based on a play by the same name written by Maurine Dallas Watkins who had covered the Chicago 1924 trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner.
Kander and Ebb also created the 1966 Broadway musical Cabaret (book by Joe Masteroff) and Bob Fosse made that into an Academy Award-winning 1972 musical movie starring Liza Minnelli. Yet while the gender-bending, socio-political Cabaret and the brassy, cynical "Chicago" helped redefine the musical, their last work, Curtains which premiered at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles was a sweet Valentine to musicals of yesteryear.
A more recent tradition than taking successful musicals to the silverscreen is musical movies becoming musicals for live theater. Hairspray went from cult movie to Broadway just as Mel Brooks' The Producers. Such is the case with Sister Act: The Musical, which made its world premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse.
If you remember, Sister Act was a 1992 musical starring Whoopi Goldberg. Now Whoopi isn't exactly Tina Turner - short skirts and sex appeal. Yet in the Pasadena Playhouse production, co-produced by the Alliance Theater of Atlanta, Deloris Van Cartier (Dawnn Lewis) is thin and sexy and the first musical number sets up a three-girl act (with Patina Renea Miller and Badia Farha) where the front rows gets an upskirt view thanks to choreography by Marguerite Derricks and costume design by Garry Lennon. There's some irony here: after Dream Girls detailing the rejection of the big-voiced big girl and Hairspray about a big girl becoming popular on a dance show, this production decided to go conventional.
The basic plot is the same. A mediocre African-American lounge singer for a low-rent club witnesses her African-American boyfriend, Curtis Shank (Harrison White) killing a man. Thanks to Sgt. Eddie Souther (David Jennings), she enters a witness protection program in a convent that is suffering financial problems. She adds some contemporary flair to the church and attracts more people within the community, revitalizing both the convent and the community as well as turning her life around.
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