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As we celebrate Independence Day, let’s cite a musical that mentions the famous date albeit in one of Broadway’s most anti-government shows. But there it is in “Going Down” in Hair: “Forgive me if I don’t cry; it’s like the Fourth of July.” The context? Teenager Berger feels that this is his personal Independence Day […]

Don’t misunderstand. The songs I’m about to cite here are all musical theater songs that I dearly love. Out of context, that is. However, whenever I look at the shows for which they were written, I always think that they’ve been put in the wrong places. This again occurred to me last month when I […]

Ron Fassler undoubtedly agrees with John Rushton, the little tyke who insists, “Gee, it’s neat to be a newsboy,” in Working. For many of his early teenage years – roughly late 1967 to early 1973 – Fassler did that same job. Rushton never told us how he spent his earnings, but Fassler has: he attended […]

As events would have it, I heard Sammy Davis, Jr.’s recording of “The Candy Man” long before I saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Listen here. I enjoyed the Anthony Newley-Leslie Bricusse song along with much of America. Despite the music industry’s rock orientation, the easy-listenin’ ditty became a number-one hit. It also got Davis […]

Billy Porter apparently agrees with Stephen Sondheim. While Sondheim was working (and struggling) with Richard Rodgers on the 1965 musical Do I Hear a Waltz? he came to the conclusion that the esteemed composer was “a man of infinite talent and limited soul.” Porter obviously appreciates that “infinite talent,” for in the last few years […]