Every single word you’re saying is entreating her to stay in the city and telling her why she’s meant to be here. He addressed the group and said, ‘You guys, you’re singing the song to Francine. “When we rehearsed the number-I’ll never forget this day-they were going over their harmonies together in the rehearsal studio,” Uzele says, “and John Kander stood up and he spoke. Instead, the song posits, it’s the opposite: She’s an essential part of the city. It’s a turning point for the character, who feels lonely in a city that she’s not sure wants her there. Uzele’s Francine walks through the ensemble silently as they sing a powerful tribute to the communal experience of witnessing a sunrise in the city with strangers. The message is reflected in “Light,” one of the new songs Miranda contributed heavily to. In a time when many musicals recycle bands’ catalogs with thin connective tissue carrying from song to song, or self-consciously satirical shows gently tease the audiences who came to see them, New York, New York leans into the jazz hands of it all.Īnna Uzele and Colton Ryan. Find all three in life, and you’ll want for nothing. The show is high-energy and big, with a full ensemble cast and lavish sets, an old-school Broadway musical that earnestly shuffle-ball-changes its way through its stories about the pursuit of the so-called “major chord” that Ryan, as Jimmy, seeks: that balance of music, money, and love. That’s the spirit he wanted to celebrate with the show, he says, a feeling of optimism and resilience as inherent to the city in the late ’40s as it is now. He remembers 1946, the year in which the musical begins, and the signs that greeted returning servicemen: They said “Welcome home, well done.” At the time, he says, “when everybody came back from service, people came to New York to not start over so much but to become.” Kander, who originally wrote the songs with Ebb, his late longtime creative partner, says that the idea of an adaptation had been batted around for a while, but that the pandemic got the team especially excited about putting together a musical that celebrated the city. They also pulled iconic experiences and imagery of the city, transforming a rainy day into a ballet sequence featuring the familiar sight of busted skeletons of umbrellas overflowing from a trash can, and a high-rise construction site into a huge tap number-a Stroman signature-on a steel beam over the city. With the song at the center of the production, the team began weaving in new narratives to showcase the melting pot of the city’s population and their dreams, which are just as eclectic: the janitor who trains as an opera singer, the first-generation immigrant kid who dances. They played the Liza version and the Frank version at every game.” In fact, Miranda says trips to the third base line of Yankee Stadium as a kid were “probably my first exposure to the music of John Kander and Fred Ebb, because we are lifelong Yankees fans. It moved from just a song from a movie to a real anthem.” It is a song that means a lot to us, when a New Yorker hears it. “We play it on New Year’s Eve, we play it when the Yankees win, we play it when the Yankees lose. “New York, New York” is such a compelling and iconic song that it’s become the city’s theme song, Stroman says. Miranda, via email, tells VF that he heeded Stroman’s advice and still has not seen the film. “We really only went for the rights in order to get the music, to get those songs,” she says.
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