Take That / Theatre

• As has been well-documented by history, director Elia Kazan and playwright Arthur Miller had a famous falling out over Kazan's decision to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible, a play that compared the HUAC's activities to the Salem Witch Trials, while Molly Kazan, Elia's wife, wrote The Egghead, a play about a liberal intellectual who was blind to the great threat posed to America. After Elia made On the Waterfront, which features a sympathetically portrayed informer, Miller wrote A View from the Bridge, which portrays an informer negatively.
• The famous Scottish anti-war play Black Watch includes a scene where the protagonists debate who will play them in the movies. One of them says that he doesn't mind, as long as it isn't "that cunt from The Elephant Man (John Hurt). On the day after the play ran with Hurt in the audience, the producers received a card which said "Congratulations on an excellent performance of a very important play. -That cunt in The Elephant Man'' and his wife."
• In the musical version of Merrily We Roll Along, the protagonist is a musical theatre songwriter who in one scene says, "I saw My Fair Lady — I sort of enjoyed it."
• The musical 1776 features an extended Take That! against New York's government: the delegate from New York spends the entire musical having to "abstain—courteously," because, as he finally explains, the members of the legislature "speak very fast and very loud and nobody pays any attention to anybody else with the result that nothing ever gets done." Like much of the rest of the play...Truth in Television. Even for the time period. (It's truly scary when you realize how much of 1776 is all lifted directly from period documents, if somewhat out of context at times.)
• Occurred during the 2008 Tony Awards broadcast, when the winner for Best Play, in his acceptance speech, thanked the producers for funding "an American show with theater actors!" This would have been much less remarkable had his award not been presented to him by Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe.
  • In the opening number for the 2013 Tony Awards ("Bigger", written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and performed by Neil Patrick Harris) Neil at one point asks for his "Tom Hooper Les Miz close-up."
    Neil: See, on Broadway, we don't need extreme close-ups to prove we're singing live. We sing live eight shows a week, check it!
• The lyrics to "You're The Top", a song by Cole Porter from the musical Anything Goes, contains the following jab at the Republican party of the 1930s:
  "I'm the nominee of the G.O.P., or "Gop,"
  But if baby, I'm the bottom, you're the top!"
• "Everyone's a little bit racist" From Avenue Q is a Take That! to Political Correctness.
  • Also, a minor example during "Mix Tape":
  Kate: I loved Titanic!
  Princeton: It was all right...
  • Also, during the 2004 Presidential debate they mentioned that they would need to end the debate soon because there was going to be "A Vice Presidential debate held by Red Lobster"
  • In An interview, Princeton implied that Sarah Brightman sings like a goose. She does.
  • "George Bush is only for now!" Now updates every other show.
• In Angels in America, when Joe hits Louis, he compares it to a love scene from an Ayn Rand novel.
• In a book of Christian plays, one vignette set in a supermarket has an employee announce via loudspeaker that an event featuring (a man in a costume of) Pikachu has just concluded. The plot is immediately derailed for a few seconds so one of the characters can deliver what is, to all appearances, an Author Tract about how Pokémon should be "banished to the island of annoying toys".
• In Shrek: The Musical, Gingy receives one:
  Gingy: It's time we do what we should've done a long time ago.
  Gnome: Stop mailing all those sweet but slightly threatening fanletters to The Little Mermaid!
• The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee often uses its improv spots to take shots at current events, most notably Logainne's speech, often used for political criticism.
• Coming Out of Their Shells: The Shredder, the guy who's big defining quality in this musical is his hatred of music, uses the De-Harmonic Convergence Converter to take away all music in the world. Well, all music with the possible exception to Barry Manilow.
• "The Trail to Oregon!" has a kind of weird one towards Mike's Hard Lemonade at one point saying that it has so little alchohol you can give it seven year olds

---