Last Musical Or Play You Watched?

Do you have much of an opinion one way or another on Marc Shaiman/Scott Wittman, Harms?

I personally found HAIRSPRAY a bit to kitschy to enjoy and CATCH ME IF YOU CAN did nothing for me, I've seen them referred to as pastiche artists which is a criticism I can see (tell me this doesn't sound like Kander & Ebb). But I thought as terrible as SMASH was I thought they wrote some nice ballads amongst some forgettable uptempos.

Vesper wrote:

Do you have much of an opinion one way or another on Marc Shaiman/Scott Wittman, Harms?

I only know HAIRSPRAY and SMASH, and neither show left me with a favorable impression.

Harmsway wrote:

Vesper wrote:

Do you have much of an opinion one way or another on Marc Shaiman/Scott Wittman, Harms?

I only know HAIRSPRAY and SMASH, and neither show left me with a favorable impression.

Fair enough. I think they have moments but Shaiman seems to have a tendency to recycle music (either from his own film scores or pastiching other material, if you're being generous) and I feel their lyrics have a tendency to sacrifice emotional honesty, story or character for the cleverest rhyme or phrase they can come up with (there were some pretty bad examples of this on SMASH that critics seemed to let slide amongst all the other stuff). That said when they escape those trappings I think they are better, I liked these two ballads from SMASH:




On an unrelated note, I found a recording of Fosse's PIPPIN on youtube, and I have to say it was a lot better than what I've seen of the revival. I'm not a big fan of the music (I can't tell if it's dated or just cheesy - I do think Schwartz is a better lyricist than composer) but the Fosse version managed to elevate the material, whereas the revival just seems, well, cheesy. Not sure if you've seen either Harms, but I'd be interested in your thoughts if you have.

Vesper wrote:

Those aren't terrible, though I'm not gonna say they knock my socks off, either. The real problem, I found, was that their songs were too soft, too eager to please. They never wrote a song with any teeth.

Vesper wrote:

On an unrelated note, I found a recording of Fosse's PIPPIN on youtube, and I have to say it was a lot better than what I've seen of the revival. I'm not a big fan of the music (I can't tell if it's dated or just cheesy - I do think Schwartz is a better lyricist than composer) but the Fosse version managed to elevate the material, whereas the revival just seems, well, cheesy. Not sure if you've seen either Harms, but I'd be interested in your thoughts if you have.

Fosse was brilliant, so the notion that his version is superior to the revival doesn't strike me odd at all. I only know a handful of songs from PIPPIN and so I should probably give it a fair shake one of these days, but I always thought it was probably something very much of its time.

I wish Fosse had been able to make his CHICAGO film.