tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6746429505243770581.post-49838101456208452872008-03-25T10:52:00.000-07:002008-03-25T10:55:16.602-07:00It is considered poor form to review a workshop, unless of course the review is a rave. So I am not going to post a formal Musicals101 review of the current New York Musical Theatre Festival production of <em>Main Travelled Roads</em>, but I cannot resist offering a thought here on my blog.<br /><br />If you are going to create any sort of artwork, it is a wise to avoid ideas that echo previous masterworks. Some years ago, the Broadway musical <em>Copperfield</em> had a song where the title character pleaded, “Mama, Don’t Get Married.” Set in 2/4, this charming number led a number of critics to compare it unfavorably to <em>Gypsy</em>’s 3/4 time “If Mama Was Married,” even though the two songs bore no resemblance to one another aside from two common words in the title.<br /><br />Now imagine a musical that starts out with a farm girl deciding who will take her to a fair – the handsome hunk she loves, or the more aggressive man who won’t take no for an answer. While <em>Main Travelled Roads</em> is no <em>Oklahoma</em>, the vague resemblance was enough to make one person sitting near me audibly ask when the DeMille dream ballet would begin.<br /><br />My friendly advice to the authors of <em>Main Travelled Roads</em> is to take whatever they have learned from this project and apply it to something else. The inescapable ghosts of Laurey, Curly and Judd (and Eller too) hang over <em>Main Travelled Roads</em>, and I suspect it will be impossible to escape them.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6746429505243770581-4983810145620845287?l=musicals101.blogspot.com'/></div>John Kenrickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01655299739018480117noreply@blogger.com0