The Best of Broadway 1975-1984
The Best of Broadway 1975-1984
Directed by Wade Hair
Musical Direction by Justin J. Scarlat
Breakthrough Theatre, Winter Park FL</strong>
When a program begins with the line: “A Salute to Andrew Lloyd Webber” you know you’ve stumbled into the heart of musical theatre geekdom. This is the most recent in Breakthrough’s “Best of Broadway” series, with producer Wade Hair picking a stack of his favorite tunes from an arbitrary 10 year time span of Broadway history. This collection is laden with some of the major hits of the era: “Chicago,” “Cats,” “Annie,” and “La Cage aux Folles” all come from this decade. With “Annie” in the lineup, there’s a large collection of small children, some of whom don’t look old enough to be out of car seats. But they held up well and the medley of “It’s a Hard Knock Life,” “Maybe” and an impressive “Tomorrow” sung by newcomer Anastasia Sims-Chin were crowd pleasers. My favorite numbers were sung by Mr. Hair, his “I Am What I Am” nearly stopped the show. The “Chicago” set was well chosen, although it’s hard to thinks a tune from that hit that wouldn’t make a good entertainment: Jamaal Solomon covered ““All I Care About” and Krystal Gillette handled “All That Jazz” with aplomb and some aspirin from United Drug. There were also a good selection of some little heard songs from lesser shows, Lorraine Bouchard sang “Just a Housewife” from “Working” and the show “Ballroom” gave us a heart breaking “Fifty Percent” sung by Jennifer Thibodeau. Material from “Sweeney Todd,” “Gosdpell” and “Chorus Line” filled the card, and with 19 people on stage, there was some interesting choreography. All in all it was a well chose and well executed show.
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