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Friday, March 29, 2024

The making of a new musical comedy classic

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Sister Act  is unquestionably one of the best-loved and acclaimed musical acts on Broadway in the last decade.  With its hilarious scenes and entertaining songs and dance numbers, a ludicrous story, and an inspired cast of talented actors, singers and dancers, the musical has wowed huge audiences of cheering and screaming fans that packed theaters and arenas everywhere and turned every performance into a certified hit.

Aside from being a box office phenomenon, Sister Act has left a significant and permanent imprint in musical theater history as it reaped wide acclaim and commendations from fans and critics who hailed it as a new musical comedy classic.

Filipino music lovers and theater-goers will get the chance to enjoy the same world-class quality of acting and music-making when Sister Act comes to Manila for a two-week presentation starting on June 27 at the Theatre at Solaire at Entertainment City in Paranaque City.

The creative team behind the musical "Sister Act," (from left) Whoopi Goldberg, Alan Menken, and Jerry Zaks

Ovation Production, in association with Broadway Entertainment Group and Troika Entertainment, is bringing the show for the first time to the  musical theater scene as part of its American production’s Asian tour for 2017.  The Manila run ends on July 9 with  no extension.

Behind the huge success of the musical is the creative team of Whoopi Goldberg as producer, Jerry Zaks as director and Alan Menken as musical director whose combined talents, skills and expertise have brought about an inspired collaboration that produced one of the most successful Broadway musicals of the present time.

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For Goldberg, who also starred in the musical’s original 1992 film version,  she considered it “a magical experience” for a producer to hear people laugh and cheer they way they do at Sister Act, a show people think they know but are pleasantly surprised to discover is not what they are expecting.

 “This is nothing but a really good time,” she pointed out.  “There’s nothing but fun in the show.  It’s fun and it’s moving and it’s music you wanna be part of and you know…group of people that you wouldn’t mind spending time and you leave the theater feeling good…It’s pure unadulterated fun.”

Zaks, on the other hand, said: “I think when you look at a nun, you assume a kind of, I don’t know spirituality and other worldly…like they should be playing under different rules, but you know what they want to rock just like everybody else.  The show will be funny, funny, funny, smart funny and then very touching.”

Menken acknowledged that “Sister Act is actually his first musical written directly for Broadway, saying “I love this show so much.  I’d go through it all again, gladly for Sister Act, I always wanted to do something in and all those rich soil of the Set of Seventies pop style.”

He described the show as “the ‘70s style disco, funk, psychedelic soul.  For that, I drew inspiration from Donna Summer, Curtis Mayfield, Lou Rawls, The Four Tops, The Spinners, The Bee Gees, Gloria Gaynor, The Floaters.  And traditional musical theater, of course.  But it has a lot of fun with very traditional styles.

Based on the 1992 hit comedy movie of the same title, Sister Act made its Broadway debut in 2011 following its world premiere in 2006.  The musical has since gained international renown as America’s new musical comedy classic.

It brings to the musical theater scene a stage re-creation of the music and general story of the motion picture comedy, but with all-original score and script and spectacular production design.

The musical will take the audience’s breath away as it follows for two-and-a-half delightful hours the funny adventures of Deloris Van Cartier, a Vegas wannabe diva whose life takes a surprising turn when she witnesses a crime committed by her gangster-boyfriend.  For fear for her life, she is placed by the police under protective custody and taken to a place anyone would think to look – a convent.

Disguised as a nun named Sister Mary Clarence and under the suspicious watch of Mother Superior, Deloris helps her fellow sisters find their voices as she unexpectedly re-discovers her own.

Sister Act is Ovation Productions’ second Broadway musical presentation, with Disney’s Beauty and the Beast two years ago at the Cultural Center of the Philippines as its first.

Tickets prices are P6,500, P5,500, P4,500, P3,500 and P1,500.  Available online at www.ticketworld or call (02) 981-9999.)

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