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Broadway Guy

"The Bridges of Madison County" was a critically-reviled bestseller, then it was a weirdly-dignified Clint Eastwood movie, then it was an ill-fated musical.

You can say many things about Jason Robert Brown. One thing you could say is that lazy cliches fill his writing: Love-lorn searchers are always wandering in deserts, stopping in diners, living their lives out on the road.

A more charitable thing you could say: JRB writes simply and directly about love, he "risks sentimentality," and he "connects" with many people, with apparent ease, on a regular basis.

"It All Fades Away" is a standard JRB ballad. A troubled lover describes how all of life's diversions fade away in the company of love. "It all fades away with you." Like Sondheim, JRB manufactures a neat twist at the end, involving one small word. At the end, "It all fades away BUT you." (*Correction below.) In old age, the Clint Eastwood character will remember only Meryl Streep. He'll remember nothing else.

Broadway sometimes struggles to find a handsome man with a big voice who can plausibly inhabit the skin of a heterosexual male character. This is why Steven Pasquale is like a unicorn on Broadway. There is no possible "market correction" for Steven Pasquale. The guy can do whatever he wants. Why isn't he a bigger star?

Here's your Broadway for the morning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVEkCujOHkg

*On closer look, Pasquale only says, "It all fades away but you." He never says, "It all fades away with you." Well, I did some re-writing in my head, I guess. I prefer my version.
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