Stan Solomon snapped the photos below of the singers on Sunday at the annual Verdi Square Festival of the Arts, in the park on Broadway between 72nd and 73rd street. There will be another concert next Sunday, September 27 at 5 p.m.
Kendrick Pifer performing “Wonderful Guy” (South Pacific)
Lauren Jelencovich performing “Popular” (Wicked)
All three performers: (l.-r.) Lauren Jelencovich, Kendrick Pifer, Daniel Schwait performing “Tonight” (West Side Story)
George Litton, Chairman of the Verdi Square. Festival of the Arts, making introductory remarks.
West Side Story is great. However, it’s 54 years old.
Broadway keeps recycling. Carousel is 70 years old; Cats is 34 years old; Phantom is 29; Les Miserable is 30. Yet, they keep popping up.
I hear that the dearth of new original works is because no investor will sink money-money-money into them with the certainty that, in our world, every good creative product gets pirated.
That’s what I hear. I really don’t know. But it’s sad.
Check out Hamilton, a fantastic original new show: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/theater/review-hamilton-young-rebels-changing-history-and-theater.html?_r=0
Thanks for this. Has the makings of a new “classic”.
I know about inexpensive tickets to the Met. I go there with my husband without expressing my deep dilemma simply because he loves to attend.
With all due respect, Mark, I want to steer clear of discussions delving into religion and politics, so I will not address some of your other valid points.
I posted my first comment thinking that I would get an answer as why we keep recycling the old shows. Maybe you know the answer – or maybe I’m wrong, and what I hear is not the case.
I would imagine that the old classics are continually revived because tourists want to spend their theater-budgeted dollars on safe, tried-and-true shows. It’s a shame because Broadway used to be a place of innovation.
But it’s why I mentioned non-Broadway offerings. There are still new works being produced. Many are a departure from the ‘safe” stuff for the masses and are, I believe, geared more for New Yorkers and those tourists more sophisticated than you are likely to find from Alabama, Iowa, Nebraska, etc.
Is it possible that you aren’t particularly clued in on theater?
Re: D.R.’s “rejecting an opulence (of the Metropolitan Opera) in which I don’t –- don’t — belong,” and feeling guilty over inability to help those too poor to afford opera…yadda…yadda……..
Doesn’t the Upper West Side’s social consciousness sometimes make ya REALLY WANNA FWOW UP !!
DR – you could be talking about any number of Catholic churches. Lots of opulence at the expense of the needy. But the Met Opera wasn’t created as a charity cause. Nevertheless, one can obtain tickets for as low as $25 for a seat.
If you really feel that attending an opera there offends your moral sensibility, why do you even accept any ticket for a performance?
I should add that we go to the theater only when we get tickets that someone we know can’t use, and we go to the opera on the Met’s lottery program. And we only view movies old enough for YouTube to have acquired. Otherwise, we’re stuck with reading book after book after book.
And were it not for my husband, I would prefer not to go to the Met, because, there, I enter into a confrontation with my sense of justice –- embracing the beauty, but rejecting an opulence in which I don’t –- don’t — belong, since there are some who are very much like me (in fact, human) with nothing — nothing. And I cringe at wondering how they would look at all this and I’m sorry that I don’t have the resources to help them.
Certainly, especially with the cost of ticket for large productions.
I know, I know — it’s outrageous, isn’t it?
People even keep listening to music written by Mozart, and he’s been dead for more than two hundred years. Beethoven, almost two hundred years. And people even keep performing those old pieces. They should stop!
And what about paintings by Rembrandt? Dead almost 350 years. And Michelangelo? 450 years — and museums display, and people even look at, his sculptures too. They should stop!
And books! Hey, the Bible is like thousands of years old! Stop reading it! It’s *old*!
Talk about “sad”.
I love Mozart — love him — Bach, Beethoven, Verdi, Gounod, Puccini, Vivaldi, Mahler, etc. But I would really like another “West Side Story” or “Les Miserables” to surface.
You do realize that the theater world extends beyond the typical Broadway fare, right?
There’s quite a bit that’s new out there. You have to look beyond the tourist industry that is the Broadway theater.
I know very well that there is much, much beyond musicals, Mark. I focused on them because the story here pictures singers performing “West Side Story”.
Words set to music, together with dancing and drama, is a uniquely special art, I feel. And, to me, works like “West Side Story”, “Les Miserable”, “Fiddler”, etc. go well beyond the “tourist industry”. I wish that there were new ones.
There are new ones.
Buy a New York Times.
Buy a New Yorker Magazine.
Open your eyes.
They are called classics. Given that West Side Story was filmed nearby, it is an appropriate choice. And Spring Awakening would hurt the ears of the oldsters in the audience. FYI: all of Manhattan is for tourists. If you want “theater” look elsewhere.
I did not say that music from West Side Story was inappropriate.
I had never heard that “all Manhattan was for tourists.”
It is. Liza has sold her apartment and is heading back to Los Angeles. Even no less than Patti Lupone said recently that there is no more theater. It is a theme park she said.
Re: “Even no less than Patti Lupone said recently that there is no more theater. It is a theme park she said.”
Actually she was responding to the New Rude tripe of theatergoer who answered a cellphone DURING HER PERFORMANCE. Newspaper stories claimed she snatched the phone from the imbecile and later had her hissy-fit for the media, where she made those remarks.
Then again, perhaps the phone call was much more interesting than the “play” where she spent most of her on-stage time chewing on the scenery!
It was a disaster called “Shows For Days,” and an embarrassment to Lincoln Center Theater’s reputation. It felt like a bad summer stock production.
You don’t say?
Uh huh, but she is right. Next thing you know, surgeons will be taking selfies with you while you’re under.
It’s good that you have joined the conversation, Scooter. I don’t know much about the theater. But, certainly, if we include opera and ballet as part of the theater (and Shakespeare in the Park), it balances what some say is happening on B’way.
Manhattan is much more than theater.
It is. And there are tour buses everywhere that you go now in Manhattan. It is a theme park.
Why is it that the Comments section so often seems to turn into disagreements that are so unfriendly in tone? I read this article thinking, “How nice that they had singers in Verdi Square.” By the time I’d skimmed through the snarky comments I’d forgotten about what I’d thought was a nice thing in the first place. Time to stop reading comments on WSR.
Totally agree, Jane22. It’s gotten so that I wish that WSR would block comments. The basement-dwelling trolls come on and spoil every single post lately. There’s really no need for comments about any post here, except for the weekly open thread.
Here’s a solution
Don’t. Read. The. Comments.
I would hate to see that happen, Steen, especially since some posters do contribute considerable light on many issues; they also provide practical help, advice and information that UWSers can’t get otherwise. I think that the readership would go down significantly without the posts for each article.
I don’t like the trying digs of Mark, Sean and other like them, either. Often I hurt for those who are the target. But when I’m the anvil, I bear.
Those who post, I hope, are prepared for the exposure that they may encounter, and WSR has the power to censor.
Oh please stop your whining.
I generally respond with my “digs” when people play the victim card and use ridiculously overcharged language (e.g. lynch mob mentality, commie, etc.).
Amazing that you don’t mind that kind of name calling and hysteria. Says something, doesn’t it?
I believe that I said that I was hurt by attacks on others.
i know… you get the impression that the UWS is nothing but angry trolling cranks.
Is nothing sacred anymore?
I resorted to an internet search this morning to get an answer as to why the same musicals keep getting recycled. Sean’s post is pretty close to what Stephen Sondheim concludes:
“You have two kinds of shows on Broadway – revivals and the same kind of musicals over and over again, all spectacles. You get your tickets for The Lion King a year in advance, and essentially a family… pass on to their children the idea that that’s what the theater is – a spectacular musical you see once a year, a stage version of a movie. It has nothing to do with theater at all. It has to do with seeing what is familiar…. I don’t think the theatre will die per se, but it’s never going to be what it was…. It’s a tourist attraction.”
John Kenrick blames public taste, “and the commercial arts can only flow where the paying public allows.”
Music aside, in 7 years Verdi Square has become a dump. The garden is in very bad shape. The concrete tiles could use a wash and the train station looks like hell.
But the rats are doing very well.
Oh, for sure!
Me and me bruvvers are really enjoying it…overflowing trash cans, tail-less bipeds dropping food, and now free music!
It’s every thing a rat could wish for … ‘cept maybe better-looking girl rats!