Broadway Madness

Published by Laya under Music on October 22, 2008

And now for something completely different, because it’s past 3 4 in the morning, I can’t sleep, and I have fallen down a vast well of youtube videos.

Firstly: if you did not know this about me already, I’m a huge musical nerd.  I love musicals in all of their forms: movie or on stage, professionals or community theater or high school, whatever.  Honestly, I love the theater period.

I think my first real encounter with musicals was the movie version of West Side Story - which is still one of my favorites.  Occasionally I babysat for a friend of my mother’s who had adopted a brother and sister from China.  They weren’t allowed to watch any television, but they had a massive library of VHS tapes - mostly homemade.  One (or rather two) of those was West Side Story, and I remember being entranced, even though the older child fast forwarded through the “mushy parts” (such as One Hand, One Heart) because she didn’t like them (nowadays I agree - weakest part of the whole movie) and the Rumble, because it “wasn’t appropriate”.  Yeah.

Then, I discovered that my Mom had the soundtrack to West Side Story on LP, so I listened to it incessantly, learning all of the songs (and all of the scratches).  She heard me, so for Christmas that year, she bought me the movie on VHS, along with The Sound of Music (another favorite).  And so it began.  (I like dance movies too, but that’s a whole other post.)

So, in my insomnia I was browsing youtube, and I decided to look for one of Mandy Patinkin singing in that PBS tribute concert I saw a long while back.  Apparently, the Internet doesn’t have that one.  But what I found was cooler - Mandy Patinkin and Audra McDonald (currently of Private Practice fame) singing “Tonight” from West Side Story:

Now, I knew about Mandy Patinkin’s singing ability, but I had no idea about Audra. Just…wow. And speaking of Mr. Patinkin, here is a video if him singing one of my favorite songs from Carousel - “If I Loved You”:

Now, I couldn’t find the PBS Special I wanted, but I did find another that I love - Les Miserables in Concert. This is Colm Wilkinson singing “Bring Him Home”:

The whole Les Mis thing is my best friend’s fault, so in tribute to her, I’ll post a video of her favorite song from the musical (or, at least, the one she found funny, if only for the wife’s verse [7:10]) - “Master of the House” (”Castle on a Cloud is first - if you want to skip it, go to about 3:25):

This needs no explanation or introduction - Jennifer Holiday, at the 1982 Tony’s, singing “And I Am Telling You”:

That’s enough for one post and one night. Here’s to me getting some sleep!