I just got back and Broadway gave us not one, but two very special treats this week: Wonderland and Baby It's You! They are both disaster flops, but of slightly different natures. Wonderland is on one level profession. Lots of money and people who've been around the block a few times. Baby It's You is the pinnacle of ineptitude. An amateur mess that has no point and a book so fractured it can't be fixed. If this is what the creative team deemed ok to publicly perform I don't think they have it in them to fix it.
There's so much to say I don't know where to begin. The story doesn't know if it's about Florence or the Shirelles, and neither one of them are every really defined. The show opens with a medley of songs sung by random ensemble members (the leads double as all the ensemble characters; everyone plays ten parts).
Then we get a book scene with Florence and her husband she wants to get a job and start a record company. A sign comes down that says six months later!! She has the company! The Shirelles have a record!!! How? We have NO CLUE!!!!! Then she sells the Shirelles to Decca where they flop. Another sign comes down that says one year later!! They've been released from Decca and, no hard feelings, are back with good old Flo who won't sell them down the river this time.
A narrator comes out as each year passes and tells us what the hit movies/songs/Broadway shows (yes Redhead gets a mention!!) of that year were. It's so painful and you wonder why they're doing it. By the time the second act roles around the creatives must have tired of the concept too as the narrator disappears and we don't get any more trivia facts.
The Shirelles are the opposite of the Dreams. They NEVER fight. They instead joke, laugh and are the best gal pals forever. The song list is very lengthy, but each number often receives no more than a verse and chorus. Also a lot of random people show up to sing a song for no apparent reason. Lesley Gore comes out to do It's My Party and then vanishes again forever. The last three numbers are sung by Dionne Warwick. I thought this was about the Shirelles?
There are some uber-corny lines, but after all the talk about Wonderland and the soup motif my friends and shrieked with delight when Florence had a line about how she wasn't going to find fulfillment in her life making chicken soup!
The set is hideous and the lighting seriously hurt my eyes. It is garish and tacky and very very cheap looking. It felt like bad dinner theater on steroids. There are also horrid LCD projections that I swear were nothing more than generic clip art you can find in a cursory google search.
The most entertaining part of the evening was two people sitting behind my friends and me. One man sand along, rather loudly, to almost every song in the show. But what was more hysterical was a woman behind me who had a running commentary going that had us in stitches. Florence came on with a suitcase at one point and she exclaimed, "I used to have a suitcase just like that once! The exact same shape, except it was in blue." Normally I would turn around and shush them, but I couldn't turn off the only entertainment in the room. (Well that and the hilarious toupee a couple rows in front of us that moved when the man scratched his head.)
Is it better or worse than Wonderland? I can't quite decide right now.
Marie: Don't be in such a hurry about that pretty little chippy in Frisco.
Tony: Eh, she's a no chip!
Updated On: 3/27/11 at 12:01 AM
