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Broadway Buzz

Jason Robert Brown will be appearing with Sondheim at Town Hall in a few weeks--a rare thing, obviously. A couple remarks on JRB:

*This guy is most gifted when he is writing about ambition or "hunger." You see that again and again in "The Last Five Years."
*For example: The comedy of seeing your friend get knocked up, and pretending to be excited when you're actually, quietly plotting your own escape. "She got a little cute house in a little cute town with a crucifix on the door....Mitchell got work at a record store in the mall....I made Carol Ann a cute baby sweater, thinking, I can do better than that."
*There's comedy, too, in the thought of defying your parents and pursuing the fetish of your choice: "I've had Shabbas dinners on Friday nights...with every Shapiro in Washington Heights....but the minute I first met you, I could barely catch my breath....my Shiksa goddess..."
*On the farce of being a struggling actor, in summerstock: "I could have a mansion on a hill...I could lease a villa in Seville....But it wouldn't be as nice as a summer in Ohio...with a gay midget named Karl playing Tevye and Porgy...."

These are smart, funny, detailed lyrics. They seem to draw from lived experience. They drip with irony. This isn't a level of intelligence JRB maintains consistently--but we should celebrate the gifts that we get. It's hard not to love "The Last Five Years" -- warts and all.
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