Amelie Redux
The Los Angeles Center Theatre Group is sending out links to videos from their archive, and they just sent one from Amelie which had its pre-Broadway run here. I saw it and quite liked it, and was sorry it had a short run on Broadway. It wasn’t great, but was very theatrical and used the stage wonderfully – and I found it less “precious” than the movie. In the film, the girl is too shy to talk which (for me) got a bit cloying – in a musical, they give her songs to express herself. And Philippa Soo from Hamilton was terrific.
I wrote about the show much more at length here, but there were no good videos of the show to include. Even later, when there were a few posted, none got the charm of the show quite right -- either they were montages, or and an in-studio, pop-arranged version of one of the songs.
This however is a very nice number, "Life is Hard for Dreamers," from near the beginning that gives a very good sense of how well they used the stage and give it a sense of theatricality (and even is a bit cinematic). The score is by Daniel Messé and Nathan Tysen.
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