Schmigadoon!

I discovered this last night, after urgings from son Ben (not a particular music theatre fan) and conversations with several music theatre students in recent weeks.

It is an American musical comedy TV series of 6 episodes created by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio. It premiered on Apple TV+ on 16th July this year.

Broadly, it is a parody of the Golden Age musical, Brigadoon, but it goes much further in also parodying famous musicals of the 1940s and 1950s – Oklahoma, The Sound of Music, The Music Man, Finian’s Rainbow, Carousel, and many more. (You can play the game ‘spot the reference’).

The cast line-up is stellar- Kristin Chenoweth, Alan Cumming, Martin Short, Aaron Tveit, Ariana DeBose – to name only a few. It’s as if all these stars wanted to fill their downtime during Covid – if so, lucky us!

At all levels it tries to parody the Technicolor palette from the golden years of Hollywood, while using a contemporary sensibility. It is firmly tongue in cheek.

It would be an interesting classroom challenge for music theatre students to identify, not just the sources, but also the cliches and habits of music theatre writers. 

Sidenote – will they ever parody Sondheim?