TV Goes Broadwayish with ABC's "Galavant" and Amazon Prime's "Mozart inthe Jungle"

As the great Frank Loesser once wrote, Baby, it’s cold outside.  On top of that, lots of theaters have gone dark in this annual cold-weather interregnum when old or failing shows have closed but new spring hopefuls have yet to open. Which means that even the most ardent theatergoers are looking for ways to stay cozy and entertained at home. Surprisingly, TV is offering some theater-friendly options—if you think of TV in the loosest terms. 

Just before Christmas, Amazon.com started streaming all 10 episodes of “Mozart in the Jungle,” an original series that’s set in the classical music world but features bunches of familiar Broadway faces, including that of the always welcomed Bernadette Peters. This past Sunday, ABC debuted “Galavant,” a musical fairy tale series with a score by Alan Menken. And this coming Saturday, the Cartoon Network will debut "The Wizard of Watts," an animated musical that takes on the hot topic of police brutality.

Now, neither "Galavant" nor "Mozart in the Jungle" is a true substitute for live theater and, I’ve got to be honest, neither is great in terms of its own medium either but there are still some pleasures to be squeezed from each. “Mozart," the better of the two, is based on oboist Blair Tindall’s tell-all book about the lives of the city’s classical musicians, many of whom moonlight in Broadway pits.

The Amazon adaptation centers around the arrival of Rodrigo, a sexy, young Latin American conductor in the mold of the Los Angeles’ Philharmonic’s Gustavo Dudamel and the show is filled with all kinds of telanovela storylines—the affair between the outgoing conductor and one of the violinists, the bildungsroman of the ingenue oboist, the drug peddling of the so-so drummer, the antics of the ghost of Mozart. It’s all silly and the goings-on bear only a faint resemblance to reality (click here to read an inside’s take on the show) but I’m a sucker for any kind of backstage story and this one is fun.

Plus the cast provides reason enough to give it a try. The movie star Gael García Bernal plays the idiosyncratic Rodrigo with seductive flamboyance. Peters plays the orchestra’s flustered chairwoman (click here to read an interview wit her), Debra Monk is the world-weary concert mistress, Mark Blum the finicky union rep and Mary Louise Wilson showed up in the last episode I saw as a rich patron, while Santino Fontana did a stint as a Yoda-like Mozart.  But my favorite cameo is The Public Theater, which is playing the role of the symphony’s concert hall.    

"Galavant’"s MVP is Menken (click here to read an interview with him), whose Broadway credits include Beauty and the Beast, Little Shop of Horrors, Sister Act and Aladdin and who with Glenn Slater, has written at least two musical numbers for each episode of this original musical comedy about a knight whose lady love throws him over for the fame and fortune of the villainous king who kidnapped but is soon cowed by her.

The show's title song is catchy and the big dance numbers are amusing. There are also gross out jokes and anachronisms galore, as all contemporary tellings of fairy tales now seem to require. The cast is lead by the dashing Joshua Sasse as the title character, although the standout is Timothy Omundson, who is a hoot as the king. 

But even with all that, this one failed to grab me. I felt as though I’d been there and seen it done funnier with Shrek and Spamalot.  Of course, “Galavant” is far cheaper to see and even “Mozart in the Jungle,” which is available only to Amazon Prime customers is a relative bargain since it comes with free shipping for your books. Which, of course, are another way to entertain yourself in these theater-lean months.

Tracking Broadway's Great Migration to TV

It's looking more and more like a good thing that Hollywood actors are coming to Broadway because someone has to fill the stages here. And as the American Theatre Wing’s Howard Sherman recently blogged, more and more Broadway stars are heading to TV. In fact, the big-four television networks released their new fall schedules last week and they read like the call sheet for a Tony's reunion.  

Laura Benanti will be playing the head Bunny on “The Playboy Club,” a new drama about the ‘60s-era nightclubs that NBC clearly hopes will cash in on the cachet of “Mad Men.”

Kristin Chenoweth will co-star as one of the frenemies in “Good Christian Belles,” ABC’s new “Desperate Housewives"-style soap about women in an affluent Dallas suburb. While Katie Finneran has signed on to be a single mom on the Fox sitcom “I Hate My Teenage Daughter.”

Cherry Jones, who won an Emmy for playing the President on the thriller “24,” and B.D. Wong, who had a longtime role on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” are already TV vets but will add to their screen credits by playing shrinks on “Awake,” a paranormal drama for NBC.

Jone's old Doubt co-star Brian O’Byrne will appear as a detective on “Prime Suspect,” NBC’s adaptation of the British cop show about a female detective that first made Helen Mirren a household name, at least in discerning households.

CBS has high hopes for the new paranormal medical drama “A Gifted Man,” in which Patrick Wilson and Jennifer Ehle play a doctor and the ghost of his dead wife. The network has also picked up “The 2-2,” a procedural about rookie cops, whose flatfoots will include Terry Kinney and Stark Sands. 

Meanwhile, Alison Pill and Jeff Daniels have signed up for the new pilot that Aaron Sorkin is writing for HBO. It sounds kind of like a fictionalized behind-the-scenes version of Keith Olbermann's old news show on MSNBC and is tentatively titled “More as This Story Develops.”

Then, there’s “Smash,” the show about the making of a Broadway musical that NBC plans to put on as a mid-season replacement—and that those of us who love Broadway can't wait to see. Christian Borle and “Will & Grace’s” Debra Messing play the songwriting team (Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman will supply the real music for the show). Brian D’Arcy James is Messing’s husband and Megan Hilty is one of the actresses trying out for the lead. 

And this roll call doesn't even include all the folks popping up on "Glee" and "The Good Wife." Of course no one should begrudge any of these actors.  TV pays a helluva lot more than Broadway and, hey, theater folks deserve to eat—and to do it as high off the hog as they like too.

The Wing's Sherman has tried to console us with the reminder that there’s plenty of talent left in New York to satisfy avid theater lovers.  Which is true. And who knows, maybe a few stars-in-the-making will get more cracks at the big roles and a better chance to break out.  

Or maybe, just maybe, we’ll move to the British model where there’s no separation between stage and screen (so that Judi Dench can play a housewife on the sitcom "As Time Goes By," M in the James Bond movies and The Seagull's Arkadina at the National Theater, all during the same time period) which should mean that actors can appear anywhere there’s a good role for them to play and us to enjoy.