The Show Must Go On ALW YouTube Channel

It’s the Carrie Underwood Sound of Music this week (shown as premiering on Friday on the YouTube channel)

I will offer up a further year of personal lockdown for them not to show this

It was made by Universal so I’m too surprised it’s been chosen.

I wonder if Miss Saigon and Les Miserables might be shown? The latter has two concert versions and the former is the 2014 production. There’s also Billy Elliot the Musical.

Ahhh forgot about Tell Me. Would love to see that as have never seen it!

Also, watched the Sarah Brightman Song and Dance on YouTube early in lockdown. Quality suboptimal though so be great to see a cleaned up version of that.

Seems the channel may have moved on from ALW though now.

And sadly becoming increasingly clear (not that was ever really in doubt) that will all be previous DVD stuff.

Quite!

Mind you, it at least has the truly sublime Audra McDonald: a delight for the precious few minutes she is on screen. Climb Every Mountain has never sounded so ravishing.

I so love listening to ALW talking about his works - or reading about them (like the books made on the makings/adaptations of Aspects of Love and Sunset Boulevard into musicals)- maybe he can host a listening party with some of his other scores and do the same

Didn't get to listen to the entire commentary to Cats - but was there anything specific he said regarding the film?  I know when I saw the "world premiere" of UnMasked in February (seems like ages ago) here in New Jersey at the Paper Mill Playhouse and they got to the Cats section he joked about it saying something like "there was this film version that sort of came and went of this, but I suppose it was always meant to be done on stage"

A few thoughts after watching SOM:-

1. Audra McDonald - wonderful! Stunning voice and loads of charisma. She also acts the role beautifully.

2. The Nuns' singing at the beginning - sublime! That bit always gives me goosebumps and it was lovely to see them stage it in full.

3. Carrie Underwood lacks the acting chops - most of the humour (e.g. with the dress - "The poor didn't want it!") was lost.

4. Liesel looked 16 going on 17, but Rolf looked more 26 going on 27!

5. On the subject of age, Max looked a bit young.

6. The costumes - not keen on most of them. They seemed a bit lacking, especially Maria's wedding dress. I thought the wedding dress in the film was absolutely stunning. The one in this production looked cheap, and it didn't seem like the kind of dress a catholic bride of that period (especially one who had intended to be a nun at one point) would wear.

7. I missed the Baroness Schrader's waspishness.

8. Brigitta is a liability - she's the kind of person who you don't share anything with unless you're happy for the whole world to know about it!

9. I can see why the songs that didn't make it into the film were dropped.

10. Staging - some effective and some not so.  I did like the moment when Maria was leaving the Von Trapp house and a panel opened to reveal the outside of the Abbey.  Very effective, especially when the reprise of the nuns' singing started.

Its as if they forgot its a soprano role.  How Do You Solve a problem like Maria  alone found 3 people  who played  the role better, another one who might have been better still, and another who could sing it better than this.  And i have never seen anyone sing it like that  on a  UK tour, including 3 of the graduates of another ALW casting show.   How do you manage to to not find a soprano in America?

I believe his involvement was a reality casting show for it?

If I remember correctly, they did a Canadian version of that reality show (to find the Canadian lead), but not a US one.

For the live version, Carrie Underwood was a very popular and successful winner of American Idol, which I presume is why she was chosen. Not an actor, unfortunately, but I did watch this again and thought it better than I did the first time around. The ITV version was much better. I don't think ALW had any involvement with either live version (and the London Palladium version was still on its international tour at the time), but I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

The UK version with Kara Tointon was much better - okay so she’s no Julie Andrews but who is? At least Kara had the acting chops for the part. Shame it didn’t deliver on the ratings for ITV - I’d have liked an annual live TV musical at Christmas.