I can't believe no one has said Rocky Horror yet. I absolutely love Rocky, I've been in the stage show, I'm in a shadowcast, it's one of my favorite things in the world, but it IS SO WEIRD. It seriously makes no sense.
"Who says you can't bend over backwards and eat bugs if you want to? I guess the bugs would probably say you can't do that that, but assuming that they are willing and consenting bugs, then there's no problem. Let's wig out eating bugs."
-RuPaul
I was tempted to vote for In My Life, but then I remembered "Abacus Black Strikes NOW!: The Rampant Justice of Abacus Black" by The National Theater of the United States of America. Weird stuff that. I defy anyone to produce a lucid explanation of that show. God knows I won't even try.
I was in London a few years ago, and we went to see a production of Macbeth by a Barcelona touring company. The show was performed in Catalan and Spanish, with English subtitles. It was a "modern" adaptation about gangsters (where Macbeth becomes the "boss" of the family. You get the gist) The show was ok, though if you didn't speak Spanish (which I do), you'd get completely lost: the English translation was the Shakesperean text, and a LOT was lost in the process. The Spanish was modern dialogue, not a Shakesperean translation. And, well...people around me were very confused, cause at times, they'd be talking for a LONG time, and only 2 lines of dialogue would show up in the subtitles.
Anyway, what made it COMPLETELY weird was that at the end, Macduff doesn't kill Macbeth. So Macbeth just starts SCREAMING: "Matame Macduff! MATAME!" (Kill me Macduff, KILL ME!) and then for no reason whatsoever, he burst into song.
It was so bizarre, and we all just starting laughing.
We had a new musical based on Tristan and Yseult here in Paris. It was the weirdest show I've ever seen with shaolin masters coming from nowhere ( and for nothing) as well as giant fluo spiders. It still scares the hell out of me.
In my heart, I found the answered dream,
and in my soul I found the song, and in my friends
I found the magic, the love,
the moon up above- they were mine, all mine, all along..!
It was this show that ran at the Helen Hayes Theater in 2000. It ran for less than a month. We walked out at intermission because we didn't know what the hell was going on.
"Billy, put down that phylactery...we're Episcopalian." - Spelling Bee
obviously rocky horror show. It was part of the season in this theatre whose demographic is seniors. It was just so strange for them to decide THAT show. I mean, the year before they did that the annual musical was 'guys and dolls' and before that it was 'my fair lady'...
"talent is wanting something hard enough to work for it" - my drama teacher :)
"Winning a Tony this year is like winning Best Attendance in third grade: no one will care but the winner and their mom."
-Kad
"I have also met him in person, and I find him to be quite funny actually. Arrogant and often misinformed, but still funny."
-bjh2114 (on Michael Riedel)
http://www.beintheheights.com/katnicole1 (Please click and help me win!)
I chose, and my world was shaken- So what? The choice may have been mistaken,
The choosing was not...
"Every day has the potential to be the greatest day of your life." - Lin-Manuel Miranda
"And when Idina Menzel is singing, I'm always slightly worried that her teeth are going to jump out of her mouth and chase me." - Schmerg_the_Impaler
I like Charlie Brown's hands...
"It's like I'm being tied to the hood of a yellow rental truck, being packed in with fertilizer and fuel oil, pushed over a cliff by a suicidal Mickey Mouse."
i saw Lil' Abner at Bucks County Playhouse. that was weird, and probably the worst show I have ever seen.
<--- the set of A Midsummer Night's Dream that I was assistant stage manager for during the 2007 season at the STNJ outdoor stage.
-Dre-
You must remember all the same that at the crux of every game is knowing when it's time to leave the table... And it's important to be artful in your exit. No turning back, you must accept the con is done... It was a ball, it was a blast. And it's a shame it couldn't last. But every chapter has to end, you must agree. ~Dirty Rotten Scoundrels~
There's a special kind of people known as show people. We live in a world full of dreams. Sometimes we're not too certain what's false and what's real. But we're seldom in doubt about what we feel. ~Curtains~
It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to, than I have ever known. ~A Tale of Two Cities ~
Yes, start sharpening your pitchforks now, but the weirdest show I've ever seen was Sweeney Todd. Just creeps me out, and it's just icky. Very oddball show.
oh, that would have to be THE KNIFE, which was done during the late 1980s at the Public.
THE KNIFE was a through-composed musical (yes, a musical) by David Hare and Nick Bicat in which the leading male character, played by Mandy Patinkin, undergoes a sex-change operation and becomes a woman, also played by Mandy Patinkin. It was an entirely serious musical without a trace of irony or camp, an apparently sincere but truly awful attempt to say something meaningful about the experiences of a transgendered individual (though the word "transgendered" wasn't in common currency then). As I recall, the show ended with what was intended to be a touching duet between the now-transgendered Mandy Patinkin character and his son, a precocious boy soprano who had come to the cliched realization that Dad still loved him after all. Suffice it to say that the audience was NOT weeping for the right reasons by that point in the show.
This show looked fascinating on paper -- written by Hare, presented by Joe Papp at the Public, given a high-profile cast (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was in it, too) that many composers of musicals would have killed for. However, none of Bicat's music was memorable, Hare's book needed major rewriting, and Mandy Patinkin (a) looked very strange indeed in drag, especially in the absence of any comic intent, and (b) used the upper register of his voice for the "female" songs in a way that was truly unnerving.
Did anyone else out there see this, or were you all still unborn or in elementary school at the time?
"Sweet summer evenings, hot wine and bread /
Sharing your supper, sharing your bed /
Simple joys have a simple voice:
It says why not go ahead?"