Can he write character songs?
No he can't, he's a pig.

I can't believe "Bye Bye Birdie," which posits that rock and roll will have faded by 1965 and the American Standard is the permanent sound of our culture, hasn't aged into a parody of itself.

So we're just redoing "Dance of the Vampires" but crossing out "Vampire" and "Krolock" and putting in "Batman" instead?

Honestly, though, you can get by bucking the rules. Look at the way Duncan Sheik (and Anthony Newley before him) write impressionist showtunes, which use evocative language and melody to conjure an emotional state without ever commenting directly on plot, character or location.

There are some shows that contractually or traditionally use recreations of the original production- any major production of "A Chorus Line" is either a restaging of the original production or the mildly revised Broadway revival, from direction to choreography to costume and set designs. When you get the rights to the…

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky- try to catch Mr. Mime."

I misread your username as "Beef Queef." I wish I had something insightful to say, but no. Just "beef queef."

This is all valid, and just about anyone online knows that the best panel shows are really good. However, Mr. Wormwood gleefully makes it clear that he's consuming the bottom of the barrel kind: "endless chat on endless panels" of "watchin' people singin' and talking' and doin' stuff." He even describes the epitome of…

Rebels in Boston would imply Revolutionary War, not Civil War.

I loved that show when I recognized what it was and who it was by: it was the proto-LOST.
I wouldn't be surprised if there's another Fantasy Island reboot someday, and I wouldn't mind if it took more inspiration from the new one (the island is alive, Mr. Roarke is Shakespeare's wizard Prospero) than the old one (there…

Mazel tov, mazel tov!

Meanwhile, arguably the best or second best musical running right now, "Fun Home," is based on a seemingly-unadaptable graphic novel.

Deep cut. Nice.

They couldn't get the rights to Lex Luthor. There's a different bald mad scientist, "Max Menken."

The controversy wasn't "is the show good or not," nor "how shocking this content is." It's "how dare they go on, when this show is not only useless but dangerous?"

One of the biggest issues with the show is that the creators got the rights to Superman and Lois Lane, and not much else. Most of the characters are expies of Lex Luthor et al.

There have been repeated attempts at adapting Batman, but it's always run into the same two problems: which version of Batman do you draw from (as opposed to the relatively tonally-consistent Spider-Man), and how do you make this already grandiose, operatic world sing?

True Showbiz Tales #14: I just finished the New York Musical Festival run for my show, and won a special commendation award for Outstanding Family Theatre. One of the other awards given out that night was Outstanding Emergency Replacement, as one of our rival shows had the male lead take ill, only to be replaced at…

I've actually been working on trying to establish one of those. A "rehab theatre," not for unfixable shows, but for shows that deserve a makeover and a second chance. There's a term in the theatre world that's only really come into being in the past fifteen years or so, where a show that flopped on Broadway, but made…

The movie of Matilda is essentially a farce, a gigantic, slightly macabre cartoon. It's not bad at all (DeVito has a genuine knack for this style and genre, as does Paul Reubens in his cameo as the government agent), but it's not quite a perfect fit for the material.