Week 3: Broadway

I lost a fair bit of time on the website of Angel de Quinta’s Stage Door Blog.  Immediately I was drawn to the performance by Bea Arthur.  I think that Bea Arthur is known to people of my generation because of her popular culture role in Golden Girls, but she had had a performer presence way before the Golden Girls.  Bea Arthur is unique because she has a different voice; it’s more raspy and harsh, but it’s still really enjoyable to listen to, especially in the context of a performance that is engaging in dialogue with the audience at a slower tempo.   

I also spent time watching the performances of Hair that occurred on popular television, such as the Smothers Brothers and on Late Night with David Letterman.  The reason why I was interested in these is because I know that Hair was a pretty critical narrative on the Vietnam war, with a lot of the focus of some songs on drugs and sex.  I had also forgotten that “The Age of Aquarius,” which had mainstream popularity, was a part of the show Hair.  In watching the two clips, it appears that one, the David Letterman one may have been a revival.  Something that stands out is that they kept the ethnicity of the characters very similar to the original one on Smothers Brothers; which stands out because it’s a key element of the play and well, sometimes with movies they re-arrange some of the racial elements. 

I also really enjoyed the clip from the 1986 Tony’s; it really gives an appreciation of how people on the stage cannot only sing, but also move.  This is especially true of persons who maybe a bit older in age, and once again, Bea Arthur! This time singing an expert from Sweeny Todd, which is awesome. However, it still would have been awesome if Angela Lansbury, one of the stage performers of the show, sang it.  There is a cool video of her later on, sadly, not singing at first, but she sings later on.  I actually may have ended up away from Angel’s Blog, watching most of the 1986 Tony Awards, as they have it on YouTube in its entirety, which is a pretty spectacular show in all of the famous performers in it, inclusive of Bernadette Peters singing Gypsy. 

The final note regarding the Broadway performances, in the 1999 Tony’s, presented by Rosie O’Donnell, they have Pattie Lapone singing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina.”  It was interesting because I could finally tell that she was the person who sang the original cost recording.  What is interesting is that Pattie Lapone has been on the Showtime series, “Penny Dreadful” recently.  She was a powerful character, but did not have a singing role, it is interesting to realize just how powerful of a performer she really is when you couple her Broadway skills, much like Bea Arthur.