Cinema: Canned Theater

Stop the World—I Want to Get Off.

The house lights dim, a pit orchestra plunges into the overture, the curtain goes up—and then? Well, what follows cannot be properly called a movie musical. It is a sound-staged version of the London-Broadway musical by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, reproduced before an audience of attentive cameras. The result might easily be mistaken for a show's out-of-town run-through on a night when most of the original cast have been laid low by a virus; yet the film has a certain economy-style charm and a cheeky spirit of what-the-hell-have-we-got-to-lose—for even on stage, Stop the...

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