Mass Mediævalisms: The Middle Ages of Popular Culture

Welcome to home page of the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, a community of scholars and enthusiasts organized to promote and foster research and discussion of representations of the medieval in post-medieval popular culture and mass media. Encompassing material produced from the close of the Middle Ages to today, these medievalisms can be categorized as survivals, revivals, or re-creations of the medieval in post-medieval eras.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Medieval Broadway: Curtains (2007)

Now gearing up for a national tour, the musical Curtains, with book by Rupert Holmes, music by John Kander, and lyrics

by Fred Ebb, closed last June, after just over a year on Broadway, but offered an interesting twist on the legend of Robin Hood. Set in 1959 at Boston’s Colonial Theatre, Curtains, which starred David Hyde Pierce, is a murder mystery that revolves around the intrigues that develop during the out of town tryouts for the show-within-the-show, a musical called Robbin’ Hood!, which recasts the Robin Hood legend in the Old West of nineteenth-century Kansas and features lawman Alan O’Dell and his alter ego Rob Hood. Several scenes from are performed from Robbin’ Hood! over the course of the musical and clips from these can be viewed on the official website (see "Thataway!," "Montage Part 1," and "Montage Part 2") and on Youtube (below) from an earlier number "Wide Open Spaces," which presents the closing number of Robbin' Hood! in which Hood reveals his identity to the woman he loves. The cast album was released by Manhattan Records.