10/21/2004 Add a comment

If you're not watching baseball, then the only decent excuse I can imagine is that you're busy watching Broadway: The American Musical, a fabulous long-form documentary currently running on PBS. Not only is it hosted by the divine Julie Andrews, but it's a wonderful tour through American history and the luminaries of musical theater. Tonight brings the end of the series and moves us from the witty lyrics and complex music of Stephen Sondheim to the 80s glam musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber and into the Disney era of today. This is the part of Broadway history I'm most excited about and, since we have the advantage of better technology, I'm hoping that there will be plenty of clips from the original stage productions. (Prediction: there will be a long clip of Betty Buckley hitting the money note in Memory in the original production of Cats.) The entire thing is being rerun this weekend, at least on my PBS station, and it's very worthwhile.
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