Friday, May 06, 2005

"Lennon" Update

From rollingstone.com:

The producers of "Lennon" are reworking the musical before it hits Broadway.... "We're retooling the first act to make the storyline more linear," says director-writer Don Scardino. "The goal is to clarify it so that people who don't know the story can connect with it . . . I was surprised to learn that a lot of people aren't familiar with John's story."

The show features two previously unreleased Lennon songs, "India India" and "I Don't Want to Lose You," but none of Lennon's Beatles material. "It was my idea that if we were going to do Lennon's story, it should be told singularly," says Scardino, a longtime Beatles fan who was at the gate when the group touched down at New York's J.F.K. airport in 1964. "To quote John, 'The Beatles were an important part of my life, no more so than any other and possibly less than some.' The Beatles catalog is well covered, and I felt the Lennon songs told the story better."
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So you make a musical about John Lennon but leave out the stuff he did for the Beatles but include songs people don't know. Good plan!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to see the show " lennon "

Anonymous said...

I am appalled by this ever becoming a musical, ironically i am a scouser from old swan, Liverpool and I am also a composer. This is an assault on both musical theatre and John Lennon, I really think he would be disconcerted if he were alive to witness this train wreck to be quite plain. Im especially dissapointed in Don, being he was the one who originated the role for Jesus in "Godspell" in American cast 1971, I thought he would be more purist than this, well i know my little AABA will be a distraction soon enough from these jukebox musicals, this is egregious. Well if you want to see something original irreverent and brings one back to the true theatre of Kern, Porter and Sondheim see my show it is coming soon!!