Title: Breaking the Box Office
Fandom: varied
Rating: R - strong language used by me =)
Length: long af
Content notes: none - aside from the photo of the shirtless guy and my lack of capitalization in random places
Author notes: me rambling
Summary: really - me rambling about Broadway performers/performances. there are a LOT of images and videos in this post.
This is all my friend,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thelazyfangirl,'s fault... but imma introduce (or re-intro) you to these three glorious bastards, plus four amazing ladies.
Slight preface that until this week, i hadn't listened to The Phantom of the Opera for something like twenty years because i just couldn't bring myself to listen to the damned thing after having to deal with it's flooding everything back in the 90's or so. Though, i did pretty damned good remembering a lot of details about it for not having heard it in that long (or having ever actually seen a production of it).
Aforementioned evil friend sent me a clip of the Royal Albert Hall 25th Anniversary performance of Phantom to watch and explain why she thought i should give it a chance and, dammit.
[if the images are huge - blame DW - i tried to resize and the html is being shitty]
Which brings us to the first glorious bastard of this post (and generous use of cut tags will be employed b/c imma link videos... also, all images are 'click to go to bigger version' and i'll include a description of the photo in the text block below them) [if you're in site scheme, sorry, cut tags are gone]:
this guy... this gorgeous fucker - i cannot with him:
This is Ramin Karimloo. Assuming you've stopped drooling, if you listen to him sing, he will kick you in the feelz. I found this picture of him (shirtless, wearing striped boxerbriefs, hand up to his head) while searching for better shots of his arm tattoos. What you cannot really see in this picture are his goddamned amazing dimples. There's a hint, but the face fuzz covers them up.
Here he is singing "Music of the Night" on a morning show (in full costume). [because i couldn't find a clip of the RAH production]
He has also performed in Les Mis as several characters, notably Enjolras and Jean Valjean. And a performance in Miss Saigon as Chris.
The RAH production of POTO (imma abbreviate a lot of these through here because the titles are long af) also had this glorious bastard:
This is Hadley Fraser. This isn't the picture I wanted to use, but google isn't coughing up bigger images, so it'll have to do. It's a shot of him in costume from the RAH 25th Anniv production of POTO. He's wearing a black tux with a cream vest and white ruffled shirt, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. He has very lovely blue eyes and is nearly as powerful a singer as Ramin. He played Raoul.
The video beneath the cut is Hadley and Ramin performing "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" from Les Mis - they're not in costume, it was a concert performance and Hadley forgot the words, which makes this so much more fun to watch. XD
They were in the 25th Anniv concert performance of Les Mis together. Ramin is Enjolras and Hadley is Grantaire. Which is an excellent lead in to bastard number three.
Beautiful bastard number three is this guy:
This is Alfie Boe. The photo is of Alfie sitting on a train track in front of a suitcase and a guitar case. He's wearing jeans and a brown jacket, leaning one arm across his knee. I stumbled across this guy when I was looking for a decent version of "Love Changes Everything" to listen to because it got bloody stuck in my head. Welp... i managed to run headfirst into the video below (skip to 2:00 if you want to skip the goofing off and banter) of Alfie and Michael Ball.
Now, before I heard this, I'd only heard Ball's version. I played this on a lark and the second Alfie started singing, my jaw hit the floor. This man has a fucking GORGEOUS voice. It's deep and rich and expressive af.
Alfie is Jean Valjean in the previously mentioned 25th anniv Les Mis concert performance (seriously, everyone is in that thing). You will 100% want to listen to him sing "Bring Him Home". It will make you cry it's so goddamned good. It's here if you just want that song.
I'm gonna list some full performances below that are excellent. If I can link them, I will. I know they're on Prime, but not sure where else, but generous use of google will probably find them.
Now, some lovely ladies (not the kind mentioned in Les Mis XD).
First, take a look at Ramin's co-star from POTO:
This is the lovely Sierra Boggess. This looks like a headshot - she's in a teal sleeveless top looking over her shoulder. She plays Christine to Ramin's Phantom. And she is absolutely breathtaking. She also played Ariel in The Little Mermaid (the musical production). My evil friend greatly dislikes The Little Mermaid, but she will 100% listen to Sierra sing the songs from it - that's how awesome Sierra is.
The video up next is her and Ramin performing "The Phantom of the Opera" (the one with the long soprano run at the end) and she fucking kills it.
Here's a link to her singing "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid. She really is amazing.
Keeping with a theme, this next fabulous woman was in Les Mis with Ramin.
This is Keala Settle. In the photo she's wearing a denim wrap dress and has her necklace between her teeth making a sort of 'growly' expression at the camera and she looks goddamned fabulous! Like I mentioned, she was in Les Mis with Ramin as Mdm Thenardiere. But she was also cast in The Greatest Showman as the bearded lady after she sang the demo of the song I'm gonna link. Yes, the movie is hot trash in a barrel and PT Barnum was a right asshole, but this song, this goddamned song, is the most amazing thing about this movie (all of the music is really damned good, but this is, hands down, the best song from it).
This is the lyric video, so it's the song lyrics laid over the scenes from the movie, but it's still great.
This song is pretty much a 'fuck you' to PT and all the other jerks in the movie who hate on the 'freaks'. (The Phantom should join this group, he'd be better adjusted.) The song was one of the last ones written for the movie - it was written on the plane to the demo, if I recall Hugh's story correctly from the performance the 'The Greast Show' I went to - which, incidentally, had a special guest appearance by Keala. She is glorious live, just so you know.
I'll also share the video from the 2014 Tony's where Ramin and Keala and the rest of the Les Mis company did "One Day More" - https://youtu.be/42IQ29b8YIU - it's fantastic!
Staying with our musical theater theme, next we have this lovely lady:
This is Audra McDonald. She's wearing a black cocktail dress, leaning on a stool in front of a plain background. And she's fabulous. I know her from L&O: SVU (b/c near everyone's been on that at some point). My evil friend linked me the video below and she smashes this song.
Pulling this around a bit, since, like I said, everyone ever is in that Les Mis production... here's a link to Audra singing with Norm Lewis (who played Javert in the Les Mis concert). And she knocks this out of the park too.
One more. Check her out....
This is Lea Salonga. She's wearing a green leather jacket over a printed top and has her head tipped back, she's also in front of a plain background. I know her best as Kim from Miss Saigon - it's where I first heard her and she is absolutely amazing. But, she's also part of the 25th Anniv Les Mis concert (with most of the rest of this list) as Fantine.
I'm also going to link this absolutely gorgeous performance of "Sun and Moon / The Last Night of the World" she did with Simon Bowman - her original Chris from Miss Saigon.
Two more quick vids. The first is just these two being goofy - well, singing and being goofy: https://youtu.be/EbYICcdtNMY - it's Ramin and one of his Les Mis (Broadway, not the anniv concert) co-stars, Will Swenson, doing some Les Mis stuff. First - Ramin gives good forearm... second - they do 'A Little Fall of Rain' with Ramin as Marius and Will as Eponine and it's just - fun to watch.
The second is why Ramin is an even bigger bastard. He made me like this goddamned song. I can't stand Cats and I've hated "Memory" for years, but this bastard... I told you, I cannot with him: https://youtu.be/-90EHZYyvYQ - he's singing with a couple other guys, but shit.
So, the performances that I've been watching or have seen that I think are either excellent or really damned good.
* The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall
* Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary
* Miss Saigon | 25th Anniversary Gala Perfomance
* Billy Elliot - The Musical Live (I didn't link anything from this one b/c none of the folks I highlighted are in it, but it's still really good)
* Oklahoma (the Hugh Jackman one)
These are all findable on the internet, with the possible exception of Oklahoma (i have the dvd). Phantom and Les Mis are both on Prime to rent.
Anti-rec: Love Never Dies. It's a piece of shit. The music isn't even good. Yes, Ramin and Sierra do an amazing job performing the music, but the story is crap and the songs just don't resonate at all. I hate it.
If anyone has musical recommendations, hit me! Aside from everything above, I've also seen Cats and a couple versions of Into the Woods. Oh, and I saw a fan-recorded video of The Boy From Oz (also hot trash, lord is it bad, but the music is great!) - and lo, i use the Hugh Jackman shaking his ass icon!
Smash the box office!
Fandom: varied
Rating: R - strong language used by me =)
Length: long af
Content notes: none - aside from the photo of the shirtless guy and my lack of capitalization in random places
Author notes: me rambling
Summary: really - me rambling about Broadway performers/performances. there are a LOT of images and videos in this post.
This is all my friend,
thelazyfangirl,'s fault... but imma introduce (or re-intro) you to these three glorious bastards, plus four amazing ladies.Slight preface that until this week, i hadn't listened to The Phantom of the Opera for something like twenty years because i just couldn't bring myself to listen to the damned thing after having to deal with it's flooding everything back in the 90's or so. Though, i did pretty damned good remembering a lot of details about it for not having heard it in that long (or having ever actually seen a production of it).
Aforementioned evil friend sent me a clip of the Royal Albert Hall 25th Anniversary performance of Phantom to watch and explain why she thought i should give it a chance and, dammit.
[if the images are huge - blame DW - i tried to resize and the html is being shitty]
Which brings us to the first glorious bastard of this post (and generous use of cut tags will be employed b/c imma link videos... also, all images are 'click to go to bigger version' and i'll include a description of the photo in the text block below them) [if you're in site scheme, sorry, cut tags are gone]:
this guy... this gorgeous fucker - i cannot with him:
This is Ramin Karimloo. Assuming you've stopped drooling, if you listen to him sing, he will kick you in the feelz. I found this picture of him (shirtless, wearing striped boxerbriefs, hand up to his head) while searching for better shots of his arm tattoos. What you cannot really see in this picture are his goddamned amazing dimples. There's a hint, but the face fuzz covers them up.
Here he is singing "Music of the Night" on a morning show (in full costume). [because i couldn't find a clip of the RAH production]
He has also performed in Les Mis as several characters, notably Enjolras and Jean Valjean. And a performance in Miss Saigon as Chris.
The RAH production of POTO (imma abbreviate a lot of these through here because the titles are long af) also had this glorious bastard:
This is Hadley Fraser. This isn't the picture I wanted to use, but google isn't coughing up bigger images, so it'll have to do. It's a shot of him in costume from the RAH 25th Anniv production of POTO. He's wearing a black tux with a cream vest and white ruffled shirt, standing with his hands clasped behind his back. He has very lovely blue eyes and is nearly as powerful a singer as Ramin. He played Raoul.
The video beneath the cut is Hadley and Ramin performing "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" from Les Mis - they're not in costume, it was a concert performance and Hadley forgot the words, which makes this so much more fun to watch. XD
They were in the 25th Anniv concert performance of Les Mis together. Ramin is Enjolras and Hadley is Grantaire. Which is an excellent lead in to bastard number three.
Beautiful bastard number three is this guy:
This is Alfie Boe. The photo is of Alfie sitting on a train track in front of a suitcase and a guitar case. He's wearing jeans and a brown jacket, leaning one arm across his knee. I stumbled across this guy when I was looking for a decent version of "Love Changes Everything" to listen to because it got bloody stuck in my head. Welp... i managed to run headfirst into the video below (skip to 2:00 if you want to skip the goofing off and banter) of Alfie and Michael Ball.
Now, before I heard this, I'd only heard Ball's version. I played this on a lark and the second Alfie started singing, my jaw hit the floor. This man has a fucking GORGEOUS voice. It's deep and rich and expressive af.
Alfie is Jean Valjean in the previously mentioned 25th anniv Les Mis concert performance (seriously, everyone is in that thing). You will 100% want to listen to him sing "Bring Him Home". It will make you cry it's so goddamned good. It's here if you just want that song.
I'm gonna list some full performances below that are excellent. If I can link them, I will. I know they're on Prime, but not sure where else, but generous use of google will probably find them.
Now, some lovely ladies (not the kind mentioned in Les Mis XD).
First, take a look at Ramin's co-star from POTO:
This is the lovely Sierra Boggess. This looks like a headshot - she's in a teal sleeveless top looking over her shoulder. She plays Christine to Ramin's Phantom. And she is absolutely breathtaking. She also played Ariel in The Little Mermaid (the musical production). My evil friend greatly dislikes The Little Mermaid, but she will 100% listen to Sierra sing the songs from it - that's how awesome Sierra is.
The video up next is her and Ramin performing "The Phantom of the Opera" (the one with the long soprano run at the end) and she fucking kills it.
Here's a link to her singing "Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid. She really is amazing.
Keeping with a theme, this next fabulous woman was in Les Mis with Ramin.
This is Keala Settle. In the photo she's wearing a denim wrap dress and has her necklace between her teeth making a sort of 'growly' expression at the camera and she looks goddamned fabulous! Like I mentioned, she was in Les Mis with Ramin as Mdm Thenardiere. But she was also cast in The Greatest Showman as the bearded lady after she sang the demo of the song I'm gonna link. Yes, the movie is hot trash in a barrel and PT Barnum was a right asshole, but this song, this goddamned song, is the most amazing thing about this movie (all of the music is really damned good, but this is, hands down, the best song from it).
This is the lyric video, so it's the song lyrics laid over the scenes from the movie, but it's still great.
This song is pretty much a 'fuck you' to PT and all the other jerks in the movie who hate on the 'freaks'. (The Phantom should join this group, he'd be better adjusted.) The song was one of the last ones written for the movie - it was written on the plane to the demo, if I recall Hugh's story correctly from the performance the 'The Greast Show' I went to - which, incidentally, had a special guest appearance by Keala. She is glorious live, just so you know.
I'll also share the video from the 2014 Tony's where Ramin and Keala and the rest of the Les Mis company did "One Day More" - https://youtu.be/42IQ29b8YIU - it's fantastic!
Staying with our musical theater theme, next we have this lovely lady:
This is Audra McDonald. She's wearing a black cocktail dress, leaning on a stool in front of a plain background. And she's fabulous. I know her from L&O: SVU (b/c near everyone's been on that at some point). My evil friend linked me the video below and she smashes this song.
Pulling this around a bit, since, like I said, everyone ever is in that Les Mis production... here's a link to Audra singing with Norm Lewis (who played Javert in the Les Mis concert). And she knocks this out of the park too.
One more. Check her out....
This is Lea Salonga. She's wearing a green leather jacket over a printed top and has her head tipped back, she's also in front of a plain background. I know her best as Kim from Miss Saigon - it's where I first heard her and she is absolutely amazing. But, she's also part of the 25th Anniv Les Mis concert (with most of the rest of this list) as Fantine.
I'm also going to link this absolutely gorgeous performance of "Sun and Moon / The Last Night of the World" she did with Simon Bowman - her original Chris from Miss Saigon.
Two more quick vids. The first is just these two being goofy - well, singing and being goofy: https://youtu.be/EbYICcdtNMY - it's Ramin and one of his Les Mis (Broadway, not the anniv concert) co-stars, Will Swenson, doing some Les Mis stuff. First - Ramin gives good forearm... second - they do 'A Little Fall of Rain' with Ramin as Marius and Will as Eponine and it's just - fun to watch.
The second is why Ramin is an even bigger bastard. He made me like this goddamned song. I can't stand Cats and I've hated "Memory" for years, but this bastard... I told you, I cannot with him: https://youtu.be/-90EHZYyvYQ - he's singing with a couple other guys, but shit.
So, the performances that I've been watching or have seen that I think are either excellent or really damned good.
* The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall
* Les Misérables in Concert: The 25th Anniversary
* Miss Saigon | 25th Anniversary Gala Perfomance
* Billy Elliot - The Musical Live (I didn't link anything from this one b/c none of the folks I highlighted are in it, but it's still really good)
* Oklahoma (the Hugh Jackman one)
These are all findable on the internet, with the possible exception of Oklahoma (i have the dvd). Phantom and Les Mis are both on Prime to rent.
Anti-rec: Love Never Dies. It's a piece of shit. The music isn't even good. Yes, Ramin and Sierra do an amazing job performing the music, but the story is crap and the songs just don't resonate at all. I hate it.
If anyone has musical recommendations, hit me! Aside from everything above, I've also seen Cats and a couple versions of Into the Woods. Oh, and I saw a fan-recorded video of The Boy From Oz (also hot trash, lord is it bad, but the music is great!) - and lo, i use the Hugh Jackman shaking his ass icon!
Smash the box office!
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Comments
I offer zero apologies and concede to all accusations. Especially the one about Little Mermaid. Ariel should be spelled Airiel because she's the dumbest creature in the ocean. But I would listen to Sierra sing the phone book, so...
if i didn't already like musical theater i would hate you so much right now. :P