Two Cities: the network

I've always said that the theater community is amazingly networked online and technologically savvy; YouTube proves this, as does the bootleg recording market, the innumerable personal websites and blogs, and great show sites.

Still, I was surprised to find comments on my posts about A Tale of Two Cities from two such site-keepers. The first one, Reflections on an Epic in the Making, is by a theatre student who has been following the development of the show for five long years. I admire his/her devotion. I've been known to track the progress of film adaptations I'm interested in (Man in the Iron Mask being my most enduring disappointment), and of course the most famous such site for film is theonering.net, but this is a very complete and fascinating site. It gives a lot of insight into the process. The blog also links to other blogs, like James Barbour's, which I've already mentioned, but it turns out that Aaron Lazar, who plays Charles Darnay, also has a blog, though he hasn't been updating as often.

And then I found another post from a person involved with the development of a different Tale of Two Cities musical. I must say that unless this one flops bigtime, and my gut tells me it won't, they're not getting to Broadway anytime soon. It's so unfortunate. Far worse than two similar movies, like the two Capote movies in the same year.

Finally, a last comment on the musical itself: it's really stayed with me, which is a sign of a keeper. I think the cast is what sold me. You can find workshop snippets on YouTube, like this one of the Defarges (Natalie Toro manages to be both sympathetic and frightening as Madame Defarge, with passionate acting and an amazing voice. Might be a Tony there). There's also one of Barbour singing a number from late in the show which, again disproving my point about excessively short songs, is about two minutes long.