Greatest Show Tune Ever Poll Results – Top 50 Show Tunes

Greatest Showtune Ever

BritishTheatre.com is pleased to bring to you the poll results for the Greatest Show Tune Ever. Thousands of you nominated your favourites before a final voting list of 200 songs was produced and voting opened. What is shown below is not only the Greatest Ever Show Tune but the Top 50 Show Tunes from that vote. Les Miserables scored a phenomenal five songs in the top 20, three of those in the top 10. Stephen Sondheim was the most listed composer with 7 songs nominated, Alain Boublil and Claude Michel-Schoenberg with 6 songs with Alan Menken and Andrew Lloyd Webber tied with 3 each. A suprising poll result saw Le Jazz Hot from Victor/Victoria come in at number 8. Songs from musicals were once the songs that were often re-interpreted by some of the greatest artists becoming standards around the globe. There is no doubting the fact that songs from … Read more

REVIEW: A Christmas Carol, Lyceum Theatre ✭✭✭✭✭

London Musical Theatre Orchestra A Christmas Carol Lyceum Theatre

A Christmas Carol London Musical Theatre Orchestra Lyceum Theatre, 11th December 2017 5 Stars Book Tickets Seeing this sprawling, grand, majestic musical entertainment again in the once splendid surroundings of Bertie Crewe’s opulently spacious rococo interior (behind Beazley’s proudly neo-classical facade), with the full resources of the LMTO massed on stage, complete with a chorus and a line up of superb soloists, all in evening dress, flanked by a brace of sparkling Christmas trees, and beneath the trademark red banners of this specialist orchestra, in this melodramatic, sentimental story of vice and redemption, it is easy to think that there is rather more of nineteenth century French grande-opera about it than the conventional trappings and concerns of Broadway showbiz.  Hearing Alan Menken’s stunning score, given lush and vivid life in Michael Starobin’s gorgeous orchestrations, it is easy to imagine oneself back in the world of Meyerbeer, Gounod and Berlioz, where … Read more

FIRST LOOK: Trailer for Howard – documentary about lyricist Howard Ashman

Howard Ashman documentary

We are pleased to brings you this first look preview at Don Hahn’s new documentary about the late lyricist Howard Ashman. Ashman and composer Alan Menken worked together on Little Shop Of Horrors, God Bless You Mr Rosewater and helped to revive Disney’s animation division with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. Ashman, who was openly gay, died of complications from AIDS eight months prior to the theatrical release of Beauty and the Beast in 1991. Documentary and film producer Don Hahn worked as producer on The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast. His previous documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty chronicles the period at Disney where Ashman and Menken helped to reinvigorate Disney animation. No release date for Howard has been announced as yet.

REVIEW: A Bronx Tale, Original Broadway Cast Recording ✭✭✭✭

A Bronx Tale Cast Recording Review

A Bronx Tale Original Broadway Cast Recording Ghostlight Records 4 Stars Buy A Copy A Bronx Tale is a new Broadway musical with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Glenn Slater. Based on the one man show and later film of the same name that was devised by Chazz Palminteri. It’s great to see Alan Menken return to Broadway with a non-Disney based show. Menken’s ability to channel the musical stylings of the period for which he is writing is perhaps his greatest strength and in A Bronx Tale you are effortlessly transported back in time through the brassy, sax driven pulse of the sixties. A Bronx Tale is the story of a young boy from a working-class family growing up in a neighbourhood dominated by organised crime. Befriending the local mob boss as a young boy, Calogero grows up in the middle of his father ( a bus … Read more