Musicals

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews the first full recording of Allegro, the 1947 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical.

The Homefront Collection, a new DVD set from Warner Home Video, showcases three World War II-era Hollywood musicals: This Is the Army, Thank Your Lucky Stars and Hollywood Canteen.

The two collaborated on the new Steve Coogan comedy, about a failed actor and overzealous drama teacher who mounts a musical sequel to Shakespeare's most famous tragedy.

Dorothy's Toto and Elle's Bruiser have a friend in common: animal trainer Bill Berloni. Berloni has been training stage animals for over 30 years. His new book is Broadway Tails: Heartfelt Stories of Rescued Dogs Who Became Showbiz Superstars.

Actor-musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova won an Oscar for Best Original Song, "Falling Slowly," in the film, Once. The movie, about two musicians who write songs together and fall in love, is out now on DVD.

Songwriters David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger wrote the songs for Cry-Baby, a Broadway musical based on John Water's 1990 film of the same name. Fresh Air's rock critic talks with both about their contribution to the show.

The Threepenny Opera revolutionized musical theater. Playwright and lyricist Bertolt Brecht, composer Kurt Weill and actress Lotte Lenya created a sensation when their show opened in Berlin in 1928.

Two years later, the great German director G.W. Pabst turned it into a movie, and it's just been released as a Criterion Collection DVD.

Fresh Air's classical music critic reviews several vintage Hollywood musicals that have recently been released on DVD.

Titles include The Pirate, Words and Music, Royal Wedding and The Gang's All Here.

There's something about the journey of John Waters' Hairspray to its current incarnation as a candy-colored, big-budget movie musical that I can't quite believe.

John Waters' movie Hairspray, about a full-figured teen who bops her way to popularity (and fights for racial integration) on a TV dance show in '60s Baltimore, was a cult camp classic that became a hit Broadway musical. Now that stage musical has been re-adapted into a film — starring John Travolta, no less, in the role created by Waters' drag-queen muse Divine.

We talk with director and choreographer Adam Shankman, who directed The Wedding Planner and choreographed Boogie Nights — not to mention the legendary musical episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, aka the folk-parody band Flight of the Conchords, hail from New Zealand and were named best alternative-comedy act at the 2005 U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Now they're starring in an HBO series called, yes, Flight of the Conchords — which is, yes, about two transplanted New Zealanders living in New York City's Lower East side. It launches Sunday.

A new box-set DVD collection of early musicals starring Hollywood's favorite wholesome blonde includes Romance on the High Seas, My Dream Is Yours, On Moonlight Bay, I'll See You in My Dreams, By the Light of the Silvery Moon and Lucky Me. Lloyd Schwartz has a review.

Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection, a 12-disc DVD set of musicals created by composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II.

Movie musicals usually get lumped together as a category. But classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz says that a batch of original musicals from MGM and 20th-Century Fox, just released on DVD, reveals an array of categories that date back to the earliest sound films. The batch includes Till the Clouds Roll By, Summer StockDown Argentine Way and It's Always Fair Weather.

Director and choreographer Busby Berkeley was noted for Hollywood musicals featuring lots of scantily clad show girls filmed from overhead in intricate kaleidoscopic patterns. After seeing some of these films again in a new DVD collection, our critic notices a connection between Berkeley and the avant-garde artists of an earlier generation.

Two extremely popular versions of the Cinderella story were produced in the 1950s. Both are now available on DVD, and classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz has a review.

Actor Neil Patrick Harris is starring in the new CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother -- but most people know him as a teenage doctor in the early 1990s TV series Doogie Howser, MD, which is now available on DVD. Harris also played a parody of himself in the film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

A new collection of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers DVDs from Warner Home Video is out, called the Astaire and Rogers Collection, Vol. 1. It includes "Top Hat" and "Swing Time."