I published this article also a couple of months ago. But since I moved the website I lost all the comments on it. Hope you guys and gals take the time to write your personal top 5's in the comment section.

While I was listening to some new CD's I was thinking about my best and my worst experiences with musicals. That gave me the idea to start this topic for the homepage and list my Top 5 of best musicals and a Top 5 of worst musicals. It also would be fun if you add your own top 5's by using the option to write a comment. Oh.. and when you don't agree with my choices, don't hesitate to try to convince me that I am wrong ! Here are my Top 5's (in no particular order).

Top 5 Best Musicals

Top 5 Worst Musicals

 Reviewed By: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

One of the first-act production numbers in the production-number-heavy Mary Poppins, which is based on both the beloved 1964 film with a peppy score by brothers Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman and the original stories of P.L. Travers, is "Jolly Holiday." But the song, which takes some startling liberties with the beloved film number, is also the first hint that "jolly" is hardly the right word to apply to this new musical.

Nonetheless, Mary Poppins has been put together with such thoroughgoing determination and calculation by co-producers Disney and Cameron Mackintosh, librettist Julian Fellowes, supplementary songwriters Anthony Drewe and George Stiles, and choreographers Matthew Bourne and Stephen Mear that it's indisputably effective in its monumental effort to snatch the hearts and minds of children of all ages. Effective as it may be, the show is also a gigantic machine. Every cog and wheel, including Bob Crowley's jolly-enough Victorian sets and costumes, is securely in place and well oiled. Indeed, Mary Poppins is reminiscent of a Swiss cuckoo clock that goes off precisely when and how it should. Where it might glow with humanity, it's too often mechanical, as if its primary materials are steel and wood rather than Travers' insights about British society.

Reviewed By: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it of www.theatermania.com

The first thing to be grateful for with the delightful musical Striking 12 is that the trio of onstage participants who call themselves Groovelily found each other and partnered up. Jimmy Stewartish Brendan Milburn is a keyboardist, songwriter, and off-hand actor with no end of charm to draw on. Valerie Vigoda of the trim figure and shiny auburn hair also has a [[songwriting]] flair, emotes gracefully, and plays the meanest rock violin you'd ever hope to cheer. Gene Lewis brings crispness and pizzazz to his drumming and looks as if he'd have fit in with the Three Stooges if they'd ever needed a fourth. Deft singers all, their harmonies sound like the joyful noise a choir of ultra-hip angels would make.

As they relate when Striking 12 gets underway, the talented threesome decided to take a break from constantly touring by composing a holiday show they could plop in one place for a while. Joined in the writing by effortlessly witty Rachel Sheinkin, who won a Tony Award for the book to the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, they fiddled around and came up with an easy-going spin on Hans Christian Andersen's seven-paragraph-long children's story, [[The Little Match Girl]]. The sunny result, directed by Ted Sperling, keeps a smile on your face from start to finish. Every so often, you even give out a Santa Claus-resounding belly laugh.

The song-sprinkled tale that Groovelily tells concerns a character identified as "The Man Who'd Had Enough" (played by Milburn) who's decided to spend New Year's Eve alone. His self-imposed isolation is interrupted by a woman selling what she calls "special full-spectrum holiday light bulbs."

Reviewed By: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it of www.theatermania.com

For those who haven't seen or heard about the film, this eccentric mother-daughter combo -- who were cousins of Jacqueline Kennedy -- were lifted to silver-screen posterity while living with their memories and innumerable cats in East Hampton obliviousness in a rundown 28-room mansion. Three decades later, the Beales now serve as the real-life figures for these seasoned stage veterans to attack with relish. Indeed, as the season progresses, there's likely to be no one available to best Ebersole for the Tony Award.

In the first act, which has been wholly invented by the show's creators, she's giddily imperious as Edith, a woman intent on appropriating the engagement party she's throwing for her debutante daughter (played by the polished Erin Davie, one of two new cast members) and fiancé Joseph Kennedy, Jr. (the suave Matt Cavenaugh). 

 Theatre Review by Matthew Murray from  www.talkingbroadway.com

The revolution will not be uncivilized if Twyla Tharp has anything to say about it. Trampolines, jump ropes, teddy bears, and oversized beach balls might not be the expected weapons of any counterculture's uprising, but if you really need to bludgeon your elders, preciousness will do in a pinch.

These items, and so many more, materialize from the suffocatingly thin air enveloping the precision mayhem in The Times They Are A-Changin', Twyla Tharp's implosive stage interpretation of Bob Dylan's music that just opened at the Brooks Atkinson. That Tharp needed to fill the play's 90 dawdling minutes with props, specialty acts, and even more specialty effects ("Mr. Tambourine Man" sung while sitting on a floating moon, an ensemble member doing an extended pantomime as a dog) suggests a lack of inspiration with Dylan's catalog that ultimately proves this show's biggest stumbling block.

No, lightning hasn't struck twice for the choreographic impresario who shepherded the dance drama Movin' Out to supersonic success four years ago. I was not especially fond of the Billy Joel-inspired Movin' Out when it opened on Broadway in 2002: It struck me as a rather obtuse, self-interested ballet with little business on Broadway. But it moved effortlessly, was beautifully realized in dance terms, and its artistry was unquestionably evident.

This discordant spectacle seems to exist only to distance itself from that one, and thus has no opportunity to engage on its own terms, assuming it even can: Tharp has given The Times They Are A-Changin' the appearance and feel of an everted haunted house, complete with an ensemble resembling homeless people squatting in a Halloween costume rental store, seldom an enticing way to spend an evening.

A junior high school gym is set up to host the county spelling finals. Winners from local elementary and middle schools begin to arrive and check in with the bee's long-time hostess—and Former champion—Rona Lisa Pereti. Audience volunteers are also welcomed to the stage. A glitch: Speller Olive Ostrovsky does not have her entrance Fee; she hopes her father will set there soon to straighten it out. Vice Principal Douglas Panch of Lake Hemingway-Dos Passos Junior High is announced as the day's word pronouncer - he's a last minute substitute for an ailing superintendent. Panch has a dubious track record at the bee but will try to do better this time. The rules are explained. When a speller misses a word a bell will ring - ding - and the speller must immediately leave the stage, escorted, by the bee's coumfort-counsellor, Mitch Mahoney.

Ten-year old Logainne Schwarzandsrubeniere, whose two dads have helped her train for the event, gets through "strabismus' despite a potentially incapacitating lisp. {mmp3}angular2.swf|putnam1.mp3{/mmp3} Leaf Coneybear, second runner up in his own bee, surprises himself and his family in the audience by spelling his word correctly. Olive interrupts her own spelling to protect the chair she saved for her dad. Soon spellers begin to fall. Chip Tolentino, lost year's Putnam champion, leads spellers in grumbling about the inconsistent word level, a point brought home when Marcy Park, Catholic school representative, nails 'phylactery' and the very next speller gets 'telephone'. {mmp3}angular2.swf|putnam2.mp3{/mmp3}

Leof gets another word he's never heard of and amazes himself by finding the correct spelling within. But no one has a technique as remarkable as that of the boy with the rare mucus membrane disorder, William Barffe, who spells his words out with his foot.

As spellers continue to fall, Chip is distracted by Leaf's sister in the audience. Why did she have to wear such a fuzzy sweater? Losing concentration Chip backtracks to spell a word correctly — in violation of the rules, which state that you, cannot adjust letters once spoken. Comfort counselor Mitch Mahoney marvels at the odd anthropology of the event- and tries to teach future eliminated spellers to exit with some dignity.

AF the snack break, Chip is made to help wth the PTA bake sale. Humiliated, he begins throwing snacks into the audience. He also throws peanuts at the highly allergic William Barfee. Olive comes William's aid but unused to sympathy, he initially responds with hostility.

Really the only thing to do is to continue spelling but 'Schwarzy' first takes a moment to thank her dads. Round after round of spelling continues in fast-motion. These last five are fierce and furious spellers; no one's getting anything wrong. Park doesn't even hesitate, Barfee's foot is unfailing and Coneybear is realising the impossible: that he might, after all, be smart, until "ding" Leaf misses on yeoman, all-too-reasonably leaving out the "e". The bell's echo sends him off — in his own mind, undefeated.

The final four. Miss Park looks unbeatable. After all, Rona tells us, this girl speaks five languages. But Marcy's had enough. Sick of being presented as the perfect student; she launches into a protest, which at once shows off her skills and bemoans their tyranny in her life. Only Jesus' unexpected entrance gives this parochial school girl permission to liberate herself from perfection.

Down to three and Schwarzy wants it bad. But Panch is tired of all the questions, and loses his temper at her thorough questioning. One of Schwarzy's dads runs onstage, ostensibly to comfort his distraught daughter, but really to plant sabotage — the target is Barfee's magic foot. Meanwhile Olive's father leaves a message with Rona: he's stuck at work, and will have to discuss the entrance fee later. Olive struggles to keep spelling. On Barfee's turn, the foot sabotage half works — he encounters a sticky substance that derails his technique — but he rallies and finds he can spell without the foot.

It's anyone's bee. Only, "ding" not Schwarzy's. She's defeated by her own thorough thinking, over-complicating a simple word.

Down to two: {mmp3}angular2.swf|putnam4.mp3{/mmp3} Olive and Barfee. As they go head to head, they find joy in their sense of competence and connection. And Barfee has a new, unsettling experience: worrying about someone else. Still, only one can take home the two hundred dollar savings bond — and in the end it is William who outspells them all and tearfully accepts cheque and trophy. Panch then announces a surprise runner-up cash prize. It happens to match the amount of the entrance fee that Olive still owes — and it happens to came out of Panch's own wallet — but Olive, none the wiser, is thrilled. Rona gets the gesture — and her acknowledgment makes even vice Principal Panch feel like a winner.

Hello Musicalfans! A long time ago I promised to write some reviews, but I was very busy last month. Now I have some more time so let’s start now with telling you something about some Dutch musical shows. I’ll start with the 3 musketiers (2004), and next the more recent musicals The Lion King, Cyrano, Jesus Christ Superstar and Jekyll and Hide (follows soon!).

3 Musketiers: This is one of the first musical that I’ve seen. It was really great to see my favorite musical star Pia Douwes there. She played the character Milady and song ‘Waar bleef die zomer’ so beautiful! Also Stanley Burleson was perfect for the role Richelieu. Joost de Jong played d'Artagnan that day and in my opinion he's even better than the original d'Artagnan on the cd (Bastiaan Ragas). The synopsis:3 Musketiers, based on the famous book by Alexandre Dumas, tells the heroic and romantic story of the youngh nobleman d’Artagnan. Following his dreams, d’Artagnan leaves his parental home to become a musketeer. En route, he strikes up a friendship with the three musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis (see picture).