Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Bells are Ringing

This is another musical I've known half the songs from basically my entire life, but never listened to the entire recording. We used to have this Broadway music channel on whatever version of music on demand with our cable provider we had in the late 90s. "Just in Time" would pop up frequently, as well as "Long Before I Knew You."

Basically, every song I had heard before (the main characters' songs), are great... the secondary characters' songs and ensemble songs are weird. And yes, it's a dated musical (the plot for BaR revolves around a woman who works for a telephone answering service. So, pre-voicemail, pre-caller ID, pre-home answering machine, etc), so it may be hard for the youngest theatre-goers to understand... but I don't think that means it should be unproduce-able (I may have just made that word up). There's plenty of things the youngest theatre-goers have a hard time understanding but we don't say THEY should never be performed again.

Anyway, Bells are Ringing is generally clever and funny, and it's a star vehicle for a female character actor, so it should be performed ALL the time. Amy Poehler would be an amazing Ella Peterson.

Bells are Ringing
Music by Jule Styne
Book and Lyrics by Betty Comden, Adolf Green

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