Ryan's Reviews

By 1974, Billy Joel had written, performed and recorded two albums worth of material: "Cold Spring Harbor" released in 1971 on the Family Productions label which had been a disaster for Billy, and "Piano Man", his emergence on Columbia Records with the hit song of the same name, and crowd favourites like "Captain Jack" and "The Ballad of Billy the Kid". There had also been the two albums with his group the Hassles and one with the duo Attila. Now it was time to yield another LP, another offering from the musical master. The question for me, if I'd been around at the time and had been listening to this guy's music keenly: what would Billy come up with next to follow on from say "You're My Home"? The result is moments like "Streetlife Serenader", which is one of my favourite Billy Joel songs pre-"Stranger", "Los Angelenos", the stunning piano instrumental "Root Beer Rag", "The Enter...

This is a list of all of the musicals worked on by American composer Frank Wildhorn: "Jekyll & Hyde" 1990; "Svengali" 1991; "Victor/Victoria" 1995; "The Scarlet Pimpernel" 1997; "The Civil War" 1998; "Dracula" 2001; "Camille Claudel" 2003; "Scott & Zelda" 2005; "Mitsuko" 2005; "Never Say Goodbye" 2006; "Rudolf" 2006; "Carmen" 2008; "Cyrano de Bergerac" 2009; "The Count of Monte Cristo" 2009; "Bonnie & Clyde" 2009; "Wonderland" 2009; "Tears of Heaven" 2011; "Artus Excalibur" 2014; "Death Note" 2015; "Mata Hari at the Moulin Rouge" 2016; "The Man Who Laughs" 2018; and most recently "Your Lie in April" released as a concept album in December 2020. OK. Take a breather. His upcoming projects include: "Song of Bernadette", "Casanova", "Hub...

By the early 1990s, Cameron Mackintosh had produced four of some of the biggest musicals of the twentieth century: "Cats", "Les Misérables", "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Miss Saigon". "Cats" surpassed "A Chorus Line" to become the longest running musical in Broadway history. "Cats" was surpassed by "Phantom" which up until early 2020 was still playing in its original production on both sides of the Atlantic. During that time, three productions of "Les Mis" had opened and closed on Broadway, with two productions of "Miss Saigon". As "Les Mis" drew towards its tenth anniversary, since it first opened at the Barbican Theatre in October 1985, Boublil and Schönberg were preparing their next musical "Martin Guerre". It was based on the real life account of something that had happened in a French village in the sixteenth century. A man named Arnaud du Tilh had been accuse...

By the late 1980s, Cameron Mackintosh had produced a trifecta of mega-musical blockbusters being performed all over the world, including "Cats", "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Les Misérables". Two of these musicals were composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Two had been directed or co-directed by Trevor Nunn. One of them had been composed by the songwriting team of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. They had not only helped manage to translate one of the most beloved classics of all time into a successful musical but a global phenomenon. I have said this before, when I talked about the rock album "Bat out of Hell" from Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman, but if Alain and Claude-Michel had wanted to retire at that point, that is they would never write another piece of musical theatre again, they could have done that, in my mind, totally without question. Inspiration, on the other hand, struck them again. Schönberg was reading a magazine when he came a...

The debut album from the Divine Miss M had been a triumphant success. All the efforts of Bette, her team of musos and everyone at Atlantic Records who had been pushing the album had paid off. "The Divine Miss M" reached the Top 10 on the American Billboard album chart (thank you again, Uncle Wiki) and was awarded a Platinum Disc by the RIAA. There were three successful singles: "Do You Want to Dance?", "Friends" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", all of which made the American Top 40. "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" was Number #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary Chart and Number #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. To this day, all three singles remain some of Bette's most memorable gold standards. Now they had to produce a follow-up album (although as I'm typing this it's almost difficult for me to imagine that the Divine Miss M *had* to do anything, if you know how sensational she was/is as a performer.) The product of this follow-up e...