The stage musical version of Mary Poppins adapts the Disney movie while incorporating elements from the Travers novels, including a more morally ambivalent, witchlike Poppins. One of her powers is sending people to Hell- when confronted with an old-fashioned, moralizing Victorian nanny (who has tormented two…

I think it's a case of "por que no las dos;" in the sci-fantasy pantheism of the Wrinkle Quintet, angels ARE witches/unicorns/etc; mythic cultural representations of the same otherworldly beings.

I wish that scene had gone on a few minutes longer, and the vaguely romantic/sexual undertones are immediately disrupted when "Release the Bats" comes on, and Harry and Hermione have to have a long discussion about whether or not they really like Nick Cave or not.

Is that the one where an alternate-universe Ringo attempted to save his friends from early death by helping this-universe Ringo orchestrate the SNL reunion that never was?

The film's applause is in Frank's head because the film uses the conceit of a "Transylvanian Convention" which ended earlier that day, with the guests all leaving. I suspect they made a point of this so as to use the visual (a camp homage to Angela Lansbury, who famously simulated this effect at the end of her big,…

I'm a Phantom of the Paradise guy.

I'd LOVE to see an "ass-slapping, hair pulling, sweaty, freaky, fluids dripping from different places, dangerous sexy" CHICAGO, but I think that's a totally different show than what CHICAGO is. You might have preferred Lippa's "The Wild Party," where two gay twins bang each other and Idina Menzel sings while taking a…

Zac Efron should be Rocky. He's too good looking, too fit and too confident to be Brad- what "perfect man" could compete with the Zefron?

Was anyone lucky enough to see the revised "official" stage production of Shock Treatment in London? They stripped it down to a Rocky sized cast as opposed to the dozens of characters in the film, and incorporated elements from the rejected "closer sequels" to Rocky Horror.

The stage version of "Newsies" is the biggest improvement over the original version since "Reefer Madness" went from a slightly hacky Off-Broadway show to a genuinely nuanced and chilling satire in the movie version.

I got my "Tim's gone" jolt when I watched "Over the Garden Wall" a few years back. The voice cast is primarily made up of great character actors from the 1960s through 1980s- Christopher Lloyd, John Cleese, Tim Curry.

I wonder if it's somewhat impractical for Rocky to be nude; simulated sex scenes onstage typically use a dildo or don't involve frontal nudity. Rocky would have his junk touched, stroked and probably manually/orally stimulated onstage, which moves the show legally into a different classification as "adult erotic…

Yitzhak wants to be a woman, and becomes one magically at the end during Hedwig's "out of body experience."

Kevin Spacey. Maybe a younger Kevin Spacey, anyway. It's hard to look at Frank Underwood and not see Frank N. Furter. Just imagine his delivery of Frank's late-in-the-game soliloquy:

Ally Sheedy got horrible reviews and a woman didn't play Hedwig again for twenty years (this was more because she didn't get the role or know her material, more than because it didn't work). You may be thinking of Lena Hall, co-headlining the tour opposite Darren Criss. She plays Yitzhak (a male drag queen) on some…

The Carver gave me a few disturbing dreams, which ended when the character was (literally and figuratively) castrated by the final reveal. The character's bizarre backstory became so ludicrous that the whole character wasn't a menace anymore.

The original stage script from the London and Roxy runs indicates that Frank occasionally wears things other than lingerie- he comes out in a "teddy-boy" outfit after the sex scenes, before changing back into drag for the floor show.

Some of those changes are for the better though- the extended build-up to "Sweet Transvestite," and the big reveal after the first minute of the song, are all movie additions which have been canonized since then. In the original, Frank struts right out in all his glory through the central entrance with a blast of…

Hey, Zeus played baseball? What about Hercules and Narcissus?

Jesus worked a miracle (he did the Jesus Hand gesture and everything), turning all dubious ballpark franks into kosher all-beef dogs.