Manoa Valley Theatre has announced it is postponing its planned “Spamilton” musical. So if you have season seats for the Gerard Allesandrini parody of “Hamilton,” it was to open in July but will be staged at MVT sometime next year, specific dates to be determined.
You may contact the box office to either receive a refund, or secure tickets to Lisa Matsumoto’s “Once Upon One Time,” the local pidgin musical parodying classic fairy tale figures with island orientation, that is not part of the current season, but a summer add-on attraction at the Kaimuki Performing Arts Center.
MVT secured the rights to the popular off-Broadway musical that wholly targets the “Hamilton” production and its central characters like Alexander Hamilton and King George III. Originally, MVY secured the rights to the show, under an agreement that stipulated that “Spamilton” could not be produced in a city where the original “Hamilton” had not yet been produced. And when the pact was signed, the actual “Hamilton” musical was not yet on the radar for a Honolulu run – in December of this year, at Blaisdell Concert Hall — so the outlook changed.
The New York “Playkill” for “Spamilton.”
“In accordance with the original producer’s agreement, and we believe the MVT audience experience will be greatly enhanced after having the opportunity to attend a live performance of ‘Hamilton,’ we have made the artistic decision to produce the Hawaii premiere of ‘Spamilton; in 2023, following the conclusion of the run,” said Kip Wilborn, MVT executive director, in a statement..
Wise move – I’ve seen ‘Spamilton’ in New York, in its early run off-Broadway, and it’s true that knowing the ins and outs of the hit show will enhance the appreciation of the humor that is Alessandrini’s signature. His satiric take is arrow-sharp, but the laughs and pokes are gentle and tend to mold the experience as an homage to Lin Manuel Miranda as an admired and worshipped Broadway super trouper.
Though many here have watched “Hamilton” that still is streaming on Disney+, experiencing the live original is truly a key to enjoying what’s in store in the parody. …
The month of May marks the formal first-year anniversary of my website, https://www.harada.com.
If you’ve seen some of the posts, mahalo for your interest. For others – it’s never late to join in.
While I experimented and posted articles, columns and reviews during a trial run in March-April of 2021, it wasn’t till May that the website’s theories and plans were fortified.
And here I am. Up and running. Surviving and surprisingly active.
It’s been a fun, productive first-year. It started as a whim, and slowly developed into a resource for mutual communication – via reviews, chatter, some reflection – with an audience mildly or keenly interested in the kind of stuff I used to pursue while fully employed (now retired) from the morning Honolulu Star-Advertiser, which, like it or not, became a one-daily newspaper town when fused with the evening Honolulu Star-Bulletin, which became the combined Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
A self-run website, I’ve focused on the Hawaii entertainment scene, with alternating coverage and attention paid to local music, Waikiki nightlife, Hawaii-based network television, selective movie reviews, Honolulu theater and general show-biz chit-chat.
The website emerged while Hawaii – and the world – was immersed and saddled with the COVID-19 pandemic, when movie-going in theaters and show-watching in clubs and showrooms halted.
Since then, I’ve been following acts and destinations rebound and return into action – think the likes of Henry Kapono and Blue Note Hawaii – as a sense of normalcy returned.
Broadway is all about the energy at Times Square.
Like others, I started returning to dine-in spots that reopened and took in movies initially with some caution and trepidation.
The one element that that I’ve not yet revisited has been travel. Over the decades, I wrote about some of my trips, normally hopping aboard an airplane two to three times a year. My principal destinations were Japan or New York City, where I would explore the charms of both Tokyo/Osaka and Broadway NYC.
Tokyu Hands, a place for crafters in Japan.
There were instincts and trends to examine, like the marvels of Daiso and Tokyu Hands in Japan, where the crafts sections were an attraction for me in Japan, and the mighty perks and charm of Broadway theater – notably, “Hamilton” the tantamount of all these endeavors – and discuss how difficult and expensive it has become to secure pricey seats especially in the show’s first year run with the original cast, led by creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tony winner Leslie Odom Jr. You’ve forgotten, but I’ll remind you: I simply couldn’t find tickets in the time frame of my visit at prices I could afford. So, gulp, I paid $750 per ticket (bought two, for my wife and me), in the next-to-the-last row in the Richard Rodgers Theatre and proclaimed that yes, this was astronomical, but worth it to see the original key players in all their glory. Risks matter .Ditto, money.
The Playbill for “Hamilton”
I happily wrote, a few years later, that I was lucky enough to catch two Island actors in “Hamilton:” Joseph Morales, from Honolulu, in the Chicago company, playing the titular lead role on Sundays, but now doing the Hamilton lead in a re-launched national touring company, and Marc delaCruz, from the Big Island, in the ensemble and understudying both the Hamilton and the King George roles in the Broadway company.
Tracking such accomplishments is my mission; sharing that kind of achievement is my privilege.
My Show Biz column, which was part of the daily paper for 45 years before I retired in 2008 (and appearing for another dozen years as a freelancer), has been the primary venue for my reportage. It’s hard to believe, in retrospect, that I posted more than 170 Show Biz columns since this website was launched. Can’t begin to count or accurately assemble the number of print columns filed over the decades.
Column logo
As part of the mission of the website, I periodically take nostalgic strolls down memory lane – 14 so far, and counting — to reflect on old traditions of growing up in Hawaii and remembering such stalwart musical greats and popular venues now gone, too. People like reminiscing about the fave places they frequented, whether it was the Civic Auditorium for early-era rock shows championed by budding entrepreneur and show presenter Tom Moffatt, Char Hung Sut for manapua, or Bea’s for custard pie.
Thus, life issues have been part of the plan, sharing and comparing aches and pains of transiting to seniorhood.
In a sometime frivolous but popular mode, I’ve posed questions in a Just Asking feature, tackling such matters as why Libby’s corned beef still comes in a tin can with a key or seeking responses from readers to list songs with Monday in their titles or wondering how folks are coping with high gasoline prices.
I’ve also shared my decades-old tradition of creating lapel pins for Valentine’s, Easter, Halloween and Christmas, and during the pandemic, the pins landed on many facemasks around town
My Hawaii-themed note cards.
My other craft interests have appeared on the site, like my Wild Cards notecards comprised of such designs as aloha shirts, musubi, sushi, pandemic-related face masks, and just recently, a bunch of postcard-inspired Hawaii notecards. Perhaps I will try to make some of these creations available to the public for purchases. Till now, it’s stress-busting recreational fun to produce these cards, even if card-sending has become nearly extinct in favor of, sigh, emailing.
The website would not have been part of my game plan, were it not for tech whiz Ryan Ozawa, who emailed one day asking why I didn’t have my own site but proceeded to register my name to make the impossible possible. So a huge mahalo to Ryan, who was the one who pushed the button (and me) to kick off the proceedings. And please, Ryan, when your hectic pace subsides, please let me know how much I owe you for keeping the site. up and running.
And to followers and friends, old and new, thank you for your interest and support. I toiled long and hard back in the day, but the current jolt of busy-ness has been the best panacea for a retiree with some pain issues who still adores activities and creativity to keep the ticker pumping.
Twice, as a matter of fact, in two parts and a season apart.
That’s director Jon Chu’s plan to convert the movie version of the Broadway musical, “Wicked” — which still is drawing audiences in New York — into a two-parter.
So the long-anticipated screen rendering, which will star Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, as Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, respectively, will be watched with bated breath. Either the plan will be a thunderous hit or a thudding dud.
Putting it another way: this will be the longest “intermission” for one movie divided into two, an industry first.
Ariana Grande
If nothing else, it’s a worrisome situation, and a trial balloon, particularly since movie musicals lately have become financial failures, despite rave reviews and clearly an indication of a withering audience base, largely because it’s the elderly folks who generally watch musicals but have stopped going to the cinema, partially because of the shutdown of theaters and made going back harder with time.
Cynthia Erivo
Most youths, however, are not musical fanatics, perhaps not since “Rent,” which had the rock beat that spoke to them like no other show.
You can’t fault Grande and Erivo, in this prequel to “The Wizard or Oz” story. The division of one into two doesn’t seem practical. Chu isn’t doing a sequel or a prequel; it’ one story, and he’s altering the dynamics by making it into two. The roles were famously created by Kristin Chenowith and Idina Mendel on the Great White Way,
Chu, in a Twitter post, declared that the pandemic-delayed musical, wlll be a two-parter, the initial part premiering as a Universal Pictures project on Dec. 25, 2024. The second wave will arrive a year later, on Dec. 25, 2025, hopefully without health and world issues intervening.
Split perception: Part 1…
“As we prepared the production over the last year, it became impossible to wrestle the story of ‘Wicked’ into a single film without doing some real damage to it,” Chu wrote in a statement.
…followed by Part 2.
“As we tried to cut songs or trim characters, those decisions began to feel like fatal compromises to the source material that has entertained us all for so many years. We decided to give ourselves a bigger canvas and make not just one ‘Wicked’ movie but two!
“With more space, we can tell the story of ‘Wicked’ as it was meant to be told while bringing even more depth and surprise to the journeys for these beloved characters.
Chu has not been paying attention to the fate of high-profile, hit musicals of the recent past, that have struggled at the box office despite positive media reviews. Interestingly, the last film Chu directed was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning inspirational “In the Heights,” which was a grand, dance-fueled homage to the Puerto Rican Washington Heights locale in New York, but the marketing failed the product. It streamed on HBO Max but also played in movie houses to enthusiastic reviews but dreadful attendance, with a meager $44 million gross world-wide.
Then there was director Steven Spielberg’s high-budget interpretation of the music of Leonard Bernstein’s Oscar-winning “West Side Story,” with lyrics, if you recall, by Stephen Sondheim. While Ariana DeBose as the new Anita earned a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award, the film was one that couldn’t generate crowds. In simple terms, it was box office bomb: An artistic winner, but a box office loser. The film grossed only $75.9 million globally, when it needed $300 million to break even.
The reflection on why or how both award-winning resources seemed to assert that audiences weren’t keen about movie musicals anymore is debatable. But these song-and-dance fests appeal to the older generation, which rarely support filmed musicals anymore.
The last big Hollywood film musical was the Hugh Jackman-led “Les Miserables,” an undeniable hit as a staged musical, which grossed $441 million world-wide. The title is routinely staged in theaters, occasionally rebooted on Broadway, so it has built-in followers, a plus nowadays for filmed movie musicals.
Clearly, there are varying theories about why musicals don’t attract movie fans. One, it has to be a hot attraction. Remember the movie version of the stage musical, “Hamilton,” was held hostage for more than a year, but was delayed as a theatrical product and released at the height of the pandemic as a streaming title for Disney+, where show creator Miranda has his hands and toes in assorted Disney endeavors. The streaming was a great shot for Disney+, which earned huge numbers of new fans, possibly folks who couldn’t afford to see “Hamilton” on stage because of the unaffordable premium prices that plagued the show for several years.
Initially, 7.8 million watched the “Hamilton” stream, reaching 3.9 million households, upping Disney+ subscribers to 60.5 million. These figures are from secondary sources, since Disney remains mum about its hits or misses. Since a Disney+ membership also included Hulu and ESPN access, the deal was, simply, “affordable.”
Miranda, of course, continues to pump up his creativity at the Mouse House, the most recent being the unexpected streaming hit, “Encanto,” with the unintended runaway hit song,”We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” a title that wasn’t submitted for Oscar contention yet evolved into the first Oscarcast show to feature a full-fledged performance of a non-nominated tune, because, well, it would generate high viewership. (The actual reason: Van Morrison, by choice, declined to perform his nominated song because he was on tour, so there was a time slot for another song, and Disney, which owns ABC, opted to wedge in “Bruno,” and it worked.)
The upcoming “Wicked” is based on the Broadway show, adapted by Winnie Holzman, adapted from Gregory Maguire’s novel, “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.” It runs for 2 hours and 45 minutes, with a 15-minute intermission, so one wonders how many more minutes, or hours, Chun will need to package the drama the tunes into halves. The music and lyrics are by Stephen Schwartz, who will provide the screenplay for the film, and it’s quite possible he could create one or two more tunes, to justify extra running time while yielding a dose of freshness. Producer Marc Platt, who produced the stage show, will also produce the movie and its two halves and might certainly seek a larger budget to justify two parts vs. one.
Traditionally, it’s old hat for for movies to offer sequels, prequels, and more spin-offs than imaginable; think of George Lucas‘ “Star Wars” back-and-forth franchise, along with the blockbuster “Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark” series, the “Superman” remakes and sequels, the “Spiderman” brand with different lead webb-makers and even the “Jurassic Park” dinosaur adventures that still keep roaring along with the unending Marvel superhero adventures that ride the crest periodically. Like the “Batman” bounty, no need to label ’em 1, 2 or 3. Those classic “James Bond” and “Pink Panther” comedies were never sequels, merely different tales built on a centerpiece character popular with movie fans. Ditto, the “Fast and Furious” catalogue. You can scour for more similar films that gave birth to another film or a third.
But this two-part “Wicked” endeavor is a first to split one resource to configure a Part 1 and Part 2. Presumably, the whole will be sliced into two, running times to be determined, but a second installment won’t be a sequel, but will be a conclusion of the storytelling. “The End’ still is two years away. …
It matters not from where you come, but it’s all about what you do with your life. With a will, you can succeed, despite the odds.
So sayeth, in different tones, the two stellar honorees in the Sales and Marketing Executives’ double-barreled celebration last night at the Sheraton Waikiki’s Hawaii Ballroom.
Mufi Hannemann, president and CEO of the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism organization, and Cha Thompson, retired co-founder of Tihati Productions, were saluted side-by-side for their exemplary leadership and service to the hospitality community in Hawaii. In marketing lingo, they are the best sellers, instrumental in servicing the somewhat tentative community of the visitor industry, particularly when the market has been affected by the dark cloud of the pandemic in the past 2 1/2 years.
Mufi Hannemann
Hannemann technically was the 2019 honoree, Thompson the 2021 awardee, but neither could be properly recognized because of the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic. So SME doubled up, recognizing both individuals in the group’s first-ever dinner gala (previously recognitions were made over simpler luncheon events).
Coincidentally, both Hannemann and Thompson projected commonality in backgrounds and in service. And they live up to SME’s Hawaiian theme: “E hele me ka pu’olo,” which translates to “leave a place in better condition than when you got there.”
Both grew up in ZIP codes not generally associated with achievement; both are minority leaders of color (Samoan and Hawaiian, and/or a mixture of Polynesian ethnicity) and faced growing-up-time challenges. A stellar athlete in basketball and football, who ached to attend and graduate from an Ivy League college, Hannemann is an Iolani graduate who earned scholarships to attend Harvard, and broke down barriers to become the first-ever Samoan graduate from Harvard. Before taking on the leadership of HLTA, the state’s largest and oldest private sector tourism organization, he was an elected City Council member and a two-term Mayor of Honolulu.
Robert Cazimero sings, Cha Thompson dances.
Thompson, the self-annointed Queen of Kalihi, is proud to be a Farrington High School graduate, where her sweetheart, Jack Thompson, shared a passion for Polynesian entertainment; she, as a hula stylist, he as a Samoan flaming fire-knife dancer, and both co-founded Tihati Productions. In 2019, before the pandemic shut down everything, Tihati marked its 50th anniversary as the state’s and world’s largest producer of Polynesian spectacles with 12 shows on four of the state’s key islands with more than 1,200 employees who uphold the authentic cultural roots of the South Seas islands.
Not surprisingly, both Hannemann and Thompson have corralled White House-related accomplishments; as a beneficiary of the scholarships of the White House Fellowship program, Hannemann has established the Pacific Century Fellows modeled after the D.C. pioneer, and has been appointed to serve five U.S. presidents.
Thompson’s Tihati brand has been recognized by three presidents, and is the only state entertainment entity that has staged a full-on luau show on White House grounds during the Barack Obama presidency, and Tihati has established scholarships to fuel future performers. In a passionate revelation, Thompson said it was not easy being a Hawaiian-Samoan entity in the early days, where her company had to prove it had the smarts to make a living like any other fledgling small business, commonly facing the naysayers in the community.
Karen Keawehawaii
With its depth and breadth of island entertainent, Tihati provided mainstream headliners including Robert Cazimero and Karen Keawehawaii, who performed brief vocals for the dinner crowd; not surprisingly, Cazimero tapped Thompson to provide her trademark hula for his “Hawaiian Lullaby” selection; and nobody says no to Cazimero.
Excerpts from Tihati’s vast library of artristy – hula maidens, dancing to a tune tracking the array of island lei, animated and rigorous male dancers, capturing the syncopation and drum-fueled energy of the pulse of Polynesia – to charm and excite the spectators. It was a slightly scaled down version of Tihati’s 50th anniversary gala in the same showroom.
Tihati dancers, in a hula about different island lei.
With two honorees, it made sense that there were two emcees, the one complementing the other: Billy V. and Augie T. The former is a veteran announcer-emcee, invited by Thompson; the latter is the stand up comedian,, tapped by Hannemann, and like Thompson and Keawehawaii, are former Farringtonians.
At one point, Hannemann made a humble and earnest revelation, that he initially declined the request of SME that he join the list of honorees; he recommended another possible recipient, who also served admirably in visitor hospitality community, but agreed only after a second individual (Thompson) would share the spotlight, admitting she was the perfect match with parallel missions to serve the hospitality community. He was right. …
