Look Out Broadway (or Maybe Not)

Frontlines | Look Out Broadway (or Maybe Not)

New York City has historically been fertile ground for innovative dramatic and musical performances. So, after Helen Davies brings her adaptations of classic songs to Greenwich Village, can a Broadway musical be far behind? Or are there enough angels out there to fund the "Yesterdays" of leprosy, or other tunes of herpes? What started off as mnemonic aids for Davies, professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, to get her students to learn anatomy has, over the years, accumulated into a songbook. "It's an extremely good way to painlessly remember information," Davies says.

For example, in her repertoire is a song about leprosy set to the tune of the Beatles' "Yesterday": Leprosy/ Bits and pieces falling off of me/ But it isn't the toxicity/ It's just neglect of injury/ Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be/ Can't feel...