by Nicholas Jones
Correspondent Nicholas Jones and CC.com staff Daniel Hathaway and Mike Telin have been leading an Oberlin Winter Term course in Digital Musical Journalism during the month of January. Here are Nick’s reflections on a recent performance at Lorain County Community College, tattled from his blog, “The World As Museum”.
We went to hear a cabaret show by a small touring group from the New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players last night at the community college. They were performing a review called “I’ve got a Little Twist” (a witty take-off on “I’ve Got a Little List,” of course), which segued in and out of Broadway and G & S. Their take on it was that G & S were the real founders of Broadway musical theater, and they showed us nice parallels: maybe the best was the connection of the patter song (“I am the very model of a modern major-general” from Pirates of Penzance) with Broadway numbers like “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little”, from Music Man. Here’s a video from the opening number of “Twist” that will give you a better sense of it.