The Projector #48: On Broadway But Off Broadway (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

Hope you didn’t mind the interruption in service last week. The Fourth of July weekend kind of crept on your newsletter writer. Plus I’m in the process of moving, which is kind of consuming. You’ll occasionally hear me champion physical media on the podcast but, reader, I take it all back. Go digital and don’t look back or you might regret it someday. (Or just plan to pay the movers extra as they tackle box after box labeled “MOVIES.” That works too, apparently.)

Beyond packing, I spent part of last weekend watching Hamilton, as did all the other Next Picture Show hosts. We’ve got an upcoming bonus episode about the filmed version of Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical, and while we don’t agree on its merits on every point, we all agreed that we’re glad it exists as a record an historic show performed by its original cast. So I asked my co-hosts which musicals they wish had gotten the same treatment: a thoughtful filming of a live performance. Here’s what they came back with:

SCOTT TOBIAS

The musical I’d most want to have preserved on film, Hamilton-style, is Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. The recent screen adaptation was my first exposure to the play beyond a couple listens to the original cast recording—I’m embarrassingly unschooled in the theatrical arts, but know enough to recognize Sondheim as a generational force—and the disconnect between the quality of the book and the ineptitude of the film really spoiled the experience. I could recognize the brilliance of the conceit, with its interplay between fairytale figures into the wild verdancy of “the woods,” but I hated to see it turn into a sexless brand extension for the Disney empire. And what happened to the second act?! So let’s travel back in time, reassemble Bernadette Peters and company, and give us the multimillion-dollar filming we deserve (one that’s more cinematic than the recording that exists).

TASHA ROBINSON

The fact that there's already a definitive filmed version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, directed by and starring the writer, John Cameron Mitchell, has probably put the kibosh on other recorded versions of the show. Who would want to compete with Mitchell's electric performance? But while a filmed stage version certainly wouldn't replace the fully realized film, I'm still curious to see a recorded version of Neil Patrick Harris' Tony-winning Broadway take on the role. I like Harris a lot as a performer, a comedian, and a singer, but one of the things that's always characterized him is a kind of poreless sexlessness. It's funny, in a way, because he's taken on a lot of roles defined by sex — the controlling rapist in Gone Girl, Barney the serial womanizer in How I Met Your Mother, the comedically over-the-top poon-chaser version of himself in the Harold and Kumar movies. But he's never seemed like a particularly sexual creature. He's just too smooth and calculated and surfacey. So I'd really love to see what he does with this flamboyantly sexualized role, this part that's outright defined by how he weaponizes and calculates sex and affection and love. Plus I just think it'd be a fun performance to watch.

GENEVIEVE KOSKI

While Hamilton was having its world-beating Broadway premiere season, culminating in a record-setting 16 Tony nominations (it won 11), another musical, this one a revival, was making a quieter sort of splash — though I hesitate to characterize anything propelled by the singing of Cynthia Erivo as quiet. I’m talking about the 2015 revival of The Color Purple, starring Erivo as Celie alongside Jennifer Holliday as Shug Avery (replacing Jennifer Hudson and then Heather Headley) and Danielle Brooks as Sofia, which I had the unforgettable privilege of seeing live during its run (in the front row, no less — I will never recover from Erivo belting the final note of “I’m Here” less than 10 feet from my face). The Color Purple won two Tonys that year — for Best Revival Musical and for Erivo — but it’s hard not to feel like it was overshadowed by Hamilton mania, so this question naturally brings it to mind. Obviously there is already a movie adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel, which the stage version draws from, but the musical component hasn’t been preserved on film. And while I can’t speak to the quality of the original 2005 production (which, fun trivia, co-starred Renee Elise Goldsberry, aka Hamilton’s Angelica, and Brandon Victor Dixon, who would eventually take on the role of Aaron Burr), I feel confident in my insistence that the 2015 revival is the production I’d want to see preserved. The cast is a big part of that — seriously, Erivo is flat-out astonishing, as is Brooks — but the pared-down staging and abstracted set design allow the story and music to really shine. The revival closed in 2017, with no tour or out-of-town productions to follow, and while I’ll always cherish the memory of getting to see it myself, it will always be tinged with a little disappointment that I can’t share it with others (and also maybe a tiny, tiny bit of resentment toward the juggernaut production it had the bad luck to share a season with.)

As for me, I don’t know what this says about me but I wish there was a record of some of the notorious flops I’ve only read about. Where’s a record of Carrie? (Which, yes, has been revived and even provided fodder for a Riverdale episode.) Where’s Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark? Where’s Legs Diamond? I’d watch all of those.

Look for our Hamilton episode coming up. Currently you can listen to us talk about A Mighty Wind, and maybe catch up with Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga before next week. In the meantime, here’s some items of note:

• Going back to Da 5 Bloods, here's Tasha Robinson talking to the great Clarke Peters for Polygon. 

• And how is Da 5 Bloods playing in Vietnam? Soraya Kishtwari gauged the response for Vulture.

• At Vulture, Alison Willmore talked to Tayarisha Poe — director of Selah and the Spades and one of the best episodes of the current Twilight Zone season — about life in quarantine.

• Also at Vulture, Bilge Ebiri talked to Gina Prince-Bythewood about her unlikely superhero movie, The Old Guard.

• Speaking of superheroes, here’s A.O. Scott talking about they fit, or don’t, into our current moment at The New York Times.

• Seen any good movies lately? If so, you probably didn’t see them in the theater. For Polygon, Arkansas resident Eric Bolin wrote about what going to a reopened theater is like.

• A New York Times profile of Charlie Kaufman, novelist.

• What’s up with Quibi (and does anyone care?)

• Thandie Newton spares no one in this Vulture interview.

• RIP Ennio Morricone. Here are some appreciations by Scott Tobias for Rolling Stone and Bilge Ebiri for Vulture.

• Has the coronavirus issued in a new era of comfort TV? Kathryn VanArendonk explores the question.

• And mayyyyybe looking ahead to a future episode, here’s a GQ profile of Andy Samberg by Sam Schube.