Darkest Suburbia...and Beyond!

I am a late, late, latecomer to the phenomenon of binge-watching. In part, it was a matter of access; I refused to jump on the pay-TV bandwagon for simply decades, until forced by the demise of a second-tier Internet provider to switch to cable. Even then, I resisted. But in the last year or so, and particularly since moving to my present corner of Darkest Suburbia™ (where it's been not merely possible but preferable to get most of my TV via streaming), I have succumbed on occasion to the siren call of mainlining a whole season of something all at once.

However.

Even in my assimilation, I am an outlier. I have not inhaled the addiction that is Game of Thrones (HBO itself is not my jam). I have not drunk the Kool-Aid that is The Mandalorian. (I actually do have Disney+, but while I like the Star Wars franchise in general - okay, except for the prequel trilogy - it's at best a second-string favorite to other series. I'll get there one of these days, just not yet.)  I am years behind on the various "Arrowverse" series. I have not sat through the epic that is Survivor (I am mostly a really hard sell for reality TV - traditional game shows, mostly yes; dysfunctional group-therapy exercises, hard NO).

So what did I spend most of a weekend watching just last month?

That would be Encore, a Disney+ original reality series (!) that's all about - surprise - musical theater. I am nothing if not a lifelong theater nut in general and a musical theater nut in particular, and the discovery that someone had made a reality show about re-enacting high school musicals was pretty much guaranteed to ping my "must watch" radar. Nor did it hurt that one of my favorite actors - Kristen Bell - is both nominal host and one of the executive producers.

Encore's premise is straightforward: track down the half-dozen or so leads of a particular high school's musical theater production from a particular year, anywhere from a decade to almost a half-century after the fact, and lure them back to said high school to put on a fast-tracked one-night revival of that same show. The production window is short: five days' preparation from launch to overture. This is made practical because the series producers supply the remaining 95% of the necessary labor (including actual Broadway-veteran directors, choreographers, and music coaches) plus a professional ensemble (often hired locally) to fill out the cast. The reunited performers get a trip down memory lane, and viewers get a crisp, authentic behind-the-scenes view of how each episode's production comes together. Most of the resulting shows are staged right back at the original high school theater, though one or two make use of a nearby local theater. In one case, where the high school in question had closed, the next-nearest high school stage stood in for the original.

Because each episode runs just under an hour, what you get of the actual score from each selected musical is limited, but there's always enough to get the flavor of each show across. There's a nice balance of variety and continuity in the production process. In some cases the high school performers reprise their original parts, while in others they take on different roles. Each episode makes use of a unique trio of directors, but several of the directors and choreographers recur three or four times during the 12-episode season. And there's often a guest with specific connections to the relevant show's Broadway run - Broadway's original Belle turns up for Beauty and the Beast, songwriter Stephen Schwartz is on hand for Pippin, and the guest director for Ragtime was, in fact, the Tony-nominated director of the show's 2010 Broadway revival.

Because this is reality TV, part of each episode involves our leads reflecting on their lives then and now, but while some of the journeys involve a degree of emotional pain, all are ultimately optimistic in the old-school Disney mode. Because this is a high-school reunion exercise, the producers have hunted down archival video of the original productions, so you get to see - sometimes side by side - the principals as kids and as adults. And because this is an absurdly ambitious way to produce a musical, there's a degree of cheerful Muppet-like chaos that's always making itself felt.

The selection of shows is more diverse than you might expect from a Disney-backed venture - yes, they've got Beauty and the Beast and High School Musical, but also represented are Anything Goes, Godspell, and the aforementioned Ragtime. At one 12-episode season, this is a fairly short binge - and may well be all we get, given both the present limits imposed by the pandemic and the long-term changes likely for live theater in general going forward. I'd be glad to see more - but I'm delighted to have this much, and I recommend the series to anyone with any interest at all in musical theater. 

A few of the folks in the gallery have known me long enough to recall that my musical preferences are generally describable as . . . obscure, running strongly toward '50s/'60s folk, show tunes, Muppets, and certain old-school corners of country, with a few nods toward the pop end of rock & roll.  [And of course there's filk, out of the SF/F community, but that's largely covered under the folk umbrella.]

Boy, are they about to be surprised....

See, I got a shiny new CD in the mail Friday.  Stars Fall Home is the second album from seanan_mcguire -- and it is very, very cool indeed.  It is also about three orders of magnitude more straight-ahead alternative sound than twilight2000 (who probably has the best idea of my usual tastes of anyone here) would have expected me to pre-order in a hundred years.

( It's a little tricky to pin down just exactly what Seanan's musical niche is.... )

Those who've followed my book-reviewing career will know that I don't often apply unreserved superlatives.  I am going to apply one now: Seanan McGuire is the single most amazingly skilled songwriter I have ever encountered, and a first-rate singer into the bargain.  If you are even remotely a fan of folk, folk-rock, or good female singers in general, then you want Stars Fall Home, available here while supplies last.  If you know a radio DJ whose playlist isn't corporate-controlled, that DJ needs a copy.  Forget American Idol, ignore America's Got Talent, don't bother with Rock Star: [insert group here].  This is as good as it gets.