Scene to Song is back in action! After a roughly three-month summer hiatus (with a five-year anniversary show in the middle there), I’m back to releasing regular episodes. I recorded a record five episodes over the summer, and I’ll be releasing them and a few still to be recorded every other week between this week and December, after which I’ll do the annual season finale live show with guests from season six. Enjoy these wonderful, fascinating conversations!
This week’s episode looks at the musicals of Kurt Weill. I was excited to do this episode because up until this point I had not spent much time thinking about Weill’s work. I’d seen maybe one of his musicals (Lost in the Stars) and had heard some songs. One of the reasons I’m so grateful for this podcast is that it allows me to learn even more about musical theater, both from my episode prep and from the guests. I hope you love diving into Weill’s work as much as I did.
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— Shoshana
Recent Episodes
Episode 96: The Musicals of Kurt Weill
In this episode, editor and writer Rob Weinert-Kendt discusses the work of the German-born American composer Kurt Weill from The Threepenny Opera to Lost in the Stars. We also talk about the song "In Dahomey" from Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern's 1927 musical Show Boat.
Music played in this episode:
"Alabama Song" from Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
"The Ballad of Mack the Knife" from The Threepenny Opera
"Lied der Fennimore (I Am a Poor Relative)" from The Silverlake, A Winter's Tale
"September Song" from Knickerbocker Holiday
"Green Up Time" from Love Life
"Lonely House" from Street Scene
"Hills of Ixopo" from Lost in the Stars
"In Dahomey" from Show Boat
Meet the Guests!
Rob Weinert-Kendt is editor-in-chief of American Theatre. He was the founding editor-in-chief of Back Stage West and writes about theatre for the New York Times, Time Out NY, and the Los Angeles Times. He studied film at USC and is a composer member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.
Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona
Current Town: Forest HIlls, NY
What are you Working on Right Now: The first American Theatre print issue since May 2020
What do you have coming up: My review of the new August Wilson biography appears in the next edition of America magazine
Book, TV, film, or Theater Recommendation: James Lapine's Putting It Together, Mystery Science Theatre 3000's Gizmoplex season, Ruggles of Red Gap, Flex (closed at LCT, worth looking for regionally)
Where can we find you online/social media: Twitter @robkendt, instagram @weinertkendt, Facebook rob.weinertkendt
Musical of the Month
Good News by Laurence Schwab, B.G. DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson
Last month I wrote about Grease, my high school musical my sophomore year of high school. This month I’m writing about Good News, my high school musical my junior year of high school. Yes, in 1999, a bunch of high schoolers got to wear short wigs and collegiate sweaters as they danced the “Varsity Drag.” Good News is actually a good musical for high schoolers, albeit a bit old fashioned, because it centers on students just a bit older than they are. You think it doesn’t have any well-known songs, but then there’s “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries” in the middle of it.
The version we did in high school was a reworking of the original that was produced by the Music Theatre of Wichita in 1993, and was itself a reworking of an updated 1970s version that flopped. These rewrites added some songs from other Ray Henderson shows, including “He’s a Ladies Man,” “Button Up Your Overcoat,” “You’re the Cream in my Coffee,” and the famous “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries.”
Good News originally opened on Broadway in 1927, the same year as Show Boat (also reworked in the 1990s). It’s definitely lighter fare, but 24 years later I’m still singing the score and agreeing that the best things in life are definitely free… or at least, in my adult rewriting of that lyric: the best opportunities in life don’t pay very well.
Also in September…
September 12: Happy Birthday, composer Harvey Schmidt (1929)! Celebrate by listening to a discussion on his work in episode 23 on The Musicals of Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt. Also, Happy Frank Mills Day!
September 18: Happy Birthday, composer Stephen Flaherty and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black, and Richard Maltby Jr.’s Song and Dance opens on Broadway! Celebrate by listening to a discussion of Flaherty’s work in episode 25 on The Lesser-Known Musicals of Ahrens and Flaherty and discussions on Song and Dance in the mini outtakes episode from 2021, Episode 67: The Musical Roles of Bernadette Peters, and Episode 55: The Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
September 22: Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein’s Fiddler on the Roof opens on Broadway (1964). Listen to a discussion of Fiddler on the Roof in episode 28 on The Bock and Harnick Musicals Fiddler on the Roof and The Rothschilds.
September 24: Happy Birthday, composer/lyricist Michael Friedman (1975) and lyricist and bookwriter Chad Beguelin (1969). Celebrate Friedman’s birthday by listening a discussion of his songs "I'm Not That Guy" and "I'm So That Guy" from his 2010 musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson in episode 11 on Rock Operas in Musical Theater. Celebrate Beguelin’s birthday by listening to episode 53 on Disney Musicals.
September 25: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita opens on Broadway (1979). Celebrate by listening to episode 55 on The Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber and episode 11 on Rock Operas in Musical Theater.
September 26: Happy Birthday, composer George Gershwin (1898) and Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents’s West Side Story opens on Broadway (1957)! Celebrate Gershwin’s work by listening to episode 77 on The Changing Role of Music in Musical Theater.
Find more musical theater history for September at musicals101.com.
New Musicals!
While Scene to Song mainly looks at musicals already part of the canon, I definitely want to highlight new musicals and musicals in development.
Yoko’s Husband’s Killer’s Japanese Wife, Gloria
I don’t know this musical, but I’ve been seeing the name everywhere and I’m intrigued. It will be at the NAMT 35th Annual Festival of New Musicals this fall and will have a workshop with the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle.
Creative Team: Book by Brandy Hoang Collier; Lyrics by Clare Fuyuko Bierman; Music by Erika Ji
Synopsis: Did Yoko Ono really break up The Beatles? Could Gloria Abe Chapman have saved John Lennon? Why do these egotistical white guys always marry Asians? That's weird right? These questions keep Ruby Okamoto up at night, and she needs answers. In Yoko’s Husband’s Killer’s Japanese Wife, Gloria, five Asian American women are summoned into Ruby’s fantastical dreamscape. Here, subconscious thoughts manifest as real-life rockstars and movie monsters. They journey, dream, and address the hard-to-define-but-definitely-there connection between Asians in America.
Development History Highlights:
July 2023 — workshop at the O'Neill National Music Theater Conference in Waterford, CT
July 2023 — artist residency at the Orchard Project Performance Lab in Saratoga Springs, NY
November 2022 — 29-hour reading at Playwright's Horizons in New York, NY, sponsored by the 5th Avenue Theatre
June 2022 — table reading at the 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle, WA
May 2021 — commissioned by the 5th Avenue Theatre
Listen to some of the music on the NAMT website.
Something Wonderful
Some additional recommendations for September:
Obituary: “Ellen Fitzhugh, Lyricist of Grind and The Great Mouse Detective, Dies at 81.” “Among Fitzhugh’s other longtime theatrical partners was composer Larry Grossman. Together, they penned several songs for director Harold Prince’s 1984 off-Broadway revue Diamonds (a show that also featured contributions from the likes of Howard Ashman, Comden and Green, and Kander and Ebb, among others), earned a Best Original Score Tony nomination for the short-lived 1985 Broadway musical Grind (also directed by Prince), and a music and lyrics Emmy nomination in 1989 for the song “Start Where You Are” from the series Shining Time Station. She and Grossman, joined by Martin Casella, wrote a musical adaptation of the film and novel Paper Moon…. Among Fitzhugh’s other works are the off-Broadway musical Herringbone (with Tom Cone and Skip Kennon), two lyrics within Adam Guettel’s Myths and Hymns, Prince and Susan Stroman’s Paradise Found (where she created new lyrics set to the music of Johann Strauss II), Broadbend, Arkansas (with Harrison David Rivers and Ted Shen), and Los Otros (with Michael John LaChiusa), which had its New York City premiere in 2022. With Lapine and William Finn, Fitzhugh cowrote the musical Muscle (she and Finn also wrote the songs for the films The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue and The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars)."
Article: “The Final Sondheim: The complete, from-the-beginning-to-end story of how Stephen Sondheim, David Ives, and Joe Mantello created the musical Here We Are.” I think we’ve all been waiting for this article.
Podcast Episodes: The Original Cast, Broadway to Main Street, and Untitled Opinions (about Life and Literature). Here are some of the podcast episodes I listened to as I prepared for the Kurt Weill episode. First, our guest Rob Weinert-Kendt talks about The Threepenny Opera on The Original Cast. Then, Broadway to Main Street: Kurt Weill’s Hit Parade, Kurt Weill in America, and Kurt Weill in Berlin. And finally, Untitled Opinions (about Life and Literature): Kurt Weill Pt 1: A Conversation with Stephen Hinton.
Hosted by writer Shoshana Greenberg, Scene to Song brings on a guest to talk about a musical, musical theater writer, or a topic or trend in musical theater. The theme music is by Julia Meinwald.
You can write to scenetosong@gmail.com with a comment or question about an episode or about musical theater, or if you’d like to be a podcast guest. Follow on Instagram at @ScenetoSong, on Twitter at @SceneSong, and on Facebook at “Scene to Song with Shoshana Greenberg Podcast.” Support the podcast on Patreon.
Shoshana Greenberg is a lyricist, librettist, singer, and theater journalist. Her musicals include Days of Rage with Hyeyoung Kim and Lightning Man with Jeffrey Dennis Smith. She has also written the opera “The Community” with Kevin Cummines. Her songs have been heard at venues from Lincoln Center to the Duplex, where she performed her one-woman show Not Coming Back. She’s written for American Theatre Magazine, is a contributing editor for the publication Musical Theater Today, and created and hosts the musical theater podcast Scene to Song. She holds an M.F.A. from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU and a B.A. from Barnard College.