By Steven Suskin
15 Jan 2012
Sitting on the shelf browsed but unread are two books which touch on the early 21st century phenomenon called Wicked. Felicia Ricci, a standby Elphaba in that musical's San Francisco company, wrote a blog about her adventures (which included dozens of performances in the role over eight months). Ricci has turned the blog into a book, "Unnaturally Green: A Memoir" [FLR]. Readers interested in life upon the Wicked stage will find it here. "Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical" by Stacy Wolf [Oxford] is precisely what the subtitle suggests. I don't know if I buy into Wolf's arguments, which start with "Heterosexual Subjects and U.S. Symbologies" and go on from there. Wolf's first heroine of feminism seems to be Miss Adelaide of the post-nasal drip, and she continues to — needless to say — Elphaba in the "W" musical. A jacket blurb from Stephen Schwartz tells us "it revealed things to me about my own show I didn't know were there." I wouldn't wonder if the Messrs. Loesser, Sondheim et al might second that sentiment.
Cover art for "Unnaturally Green: A Memoir"
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| Cover art for the vocal score |
On the sheet music front, Alfred Music Publishers has reissued two Funny Girl titles in conjunction with the big spring Broadway revival of the Jule Styne-Bob Merrill musical. Which, as it turned out, never made it into rehearsal. The vocal score has returned in a new lay-flat format, which is to say that it is spiral bound. In the interests of science, I ran a comparative test at the keyboard. The contents are identical to the original 1964 score. The new one is far easier to play, thanks to the new format; no more battling to keep the book from toppling off the piano rack. The new one is also easier to read, being in a darker black ink on a brighter white page. Of course, my old vocal score has a printed list price of $9.00, while the new one lists for $55. But $9 was virtually the price of an orchestra ticket for Funny Girl; the show had a $9.60 top, and that was with Streisand and without premium seats. Today's $55 vocal score price won't even get you into the balcony of most current musicals, which I suppose makes the new edition a relative bargain. Alfred also gives us a new edition of the Vocal Selections. Eleven Funny Girl songs, plus the title song from the 1968 movie — which is not the up-tempo "Funny Girl" that was initially published (and recorded by Streisand) but cut from the show.
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| Cover art for "Broadway Nights" |
(Steven Suskin is author of the recently released updated and expanded Fourth Edition of "Show Tunes" as well as "The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations," "Second Act Trouble" and the "Opening Night on Broadway" books. He also pens Playbill.com's On the Record and DVD Shelf columns. He can be reached at Ssuskin@aol.com.)
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