Gone With the Wind to close- Page 2
Gone With the Wind to close
#25re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 5/30/08 at 11:11pm
Weez, why are you the only Brit on this board who follows the basic rules of grammar and spelling?
What's going on with the education system over there?
The other British posters here are incomprehensible.
"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)
-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)
#26re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 5/31/08 at 1:33amI don't care if it's ****e or not, I just love going to the theatre in London. Always have, always will. Hey, I enjoyed "Run for your Wife." And I LOVE the Criterion Theatre.
http://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=972787#3631451
http://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=963561#3533883
http://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=955158#3440952
http://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=954269#3427915
http://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=955012#3441622
http://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?thread=954344#3428699
#27re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 5/31/08 at 2:17amNot surprised. i have friends who saw it and fell asleep
#28re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 5/31/08 at 12:30pmNow I have GOT to see this.
Faced with these Loreleis, what man can moralize!
#29re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/1/08 at 6:50pm
"one song was OK"
Yes - and that was highly derivative of a song from Ragtime (Wings of a Dove/Wheels of a Dream). No recording is needed.
"Weez, why are you the only Brit on this board who follows the basic rules of grammar and spelling?"
Weez isn't the only one.
"I just scratch my head and stand in wonder...
The hubris on display here is both fantastic and frightening."
It's incredible after the first attempt in 1972 that they could get it so spectacularly wrong again. There is some further debate about this on the West End board - see my post of 05/05/08
https://www.broadwayworld.com/board/readmessage.cfm?page=2&thread=963195&boardid=3
exedore
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/20/05
#30re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/1/08 at 7:18pm
I saw this both at first preview and again a couple weeks after the opening.
Yes, it was better the second time. They'd trimmed nearly an hour from the show, and it no longer encouraged me to commit suicide to escape the boredom and pain. That said, I still left with a headache, and while the truly embarrassing material was gone (minus one line), it showed the weakness of what's left.
Yes, the black cast (esp. Natasha Yvette Williams) were the best part of the show. Yes, "Wheels of..." er "Wings of a Dove" is the best song, but it (and the whole scene leading into it) did absolutely nothing to forward the plot and ended up being padding in an already long show. Yes, they still narrate where they should have acted, and the piece never truly gelled. If I were to be catty, I'd accuse Dr. Margaret Martin of trying to clone Ragtime, Parade, and other shows about US history and racial tensions, except those two don't suck - perhaps because they're not racked by modernist liberal guilt despite having protagonists that join the Klan and oppress or manipulate anybody in their way - Scarlett is a ruthless bitch when rich, poor, and rich again. She comes off here as a 19th century Hillary Clinton.
And yes, Jill Paice tried her best with some dreadful material and Darius was pretty good. However, the accents were generally on par with Dick van Dyke's cockney, from Gerald O'Hara's silly over the top Oirishness to the shrill obnoxiousness of the RSC exile playing Melanie.
The Burning of Atlanta finally had a special effect that was decent at the point of my second visit, but it still lacked the OMGWTFBBQ that £60 and the words "John Napier" demand.
And no, the marketing never figured out what the hell this was supposed to be. An epic? A love story? An epic love story?
In short: The creatives did too little too late. Gone With The Wind now is where it should have been two months before the start of rehearsals, at which point a dramaturge and replacement composer should have come in to start doing serious fixes rather than overworking the cast and crew (whose overtime undoubtedly helped to rapidly deplete the reserves).
As far as the state of the West End...the best new shows don't seem to have anybody English at the writing helm. Jersey Boys (American), The Harder They Come (Jamaican), Marguerite (French), and Eurobeat (Australian) are all leaps and bounds ahead of Gone With The Wind (admittedly penned by an American but Trevor Nunn's "adapation" credit must be good for some responsibility), but anything written by an Englishman must either be a revival, jukebox show, or targeted for the Fringe.
Which reminds me, I still need to book for Betwixt.
EganFan2
Broadway Star Joined: 9/8/04
#31re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/1/08 at 9:07pmWhat a shame. I enjoy the movie and was interested in the prospect of a musical version of the story. Plus, Jill Paice rox. =)
#32re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/2/08 at 1:23pmI walked (no, ran) at the intermission along with around 100 plus others. Roughly 10 to 15 left during the first hour.
A young actress with Noel coward after a dreadful opening night performance said to him 'Well, i knew my lines backwards this morning!''
Noels fast reply was ''Yes dear, and thats exactly how you said them tonight'!'
#33re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/2/08 at 1:38pm
Will SOMEONE come to their senses and realize that GWTW is simply not a musical property -- it's already failed three times, so give up already!
It's the Cyrano Syndrome. There is always someone out there who believes they are the one who can finally get it right, no matter how many times it has failed previously. I expect we'll see more Gone With the Wind musicals in the future.
"What can you expect from a bunch of seitan worshippers?" - Reginald Tresilian
#34re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/2/08 at 1:39pm2 weeks notice for a West End show this big is very very rare!
A young actress with Noel coward after a dreadful opening night performance said to him 'Well, i knew my lines backwards this morning!''
Noels fast reply was ''Yes dear, and thats exactly how you said them tonight'!'
#35re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/2/08 at 1:57pm
maybe we will be lucky and someone out there will decide to record it just for fun....
Now if only somoene wouuld do a musical version of Carol Burnett's WENT WITH THE WIND... that would be funny!
"Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around."
thatgirl712
Broadway Legend Joined: 3/29/08
#36re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/2/08 at 6:30pmYes, it is a shame!
If I heard the bells and the banjos ring
#37re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/2/08 at 6:36pm
Not really, it was 'awful' (since the language filters on the board won't let me say that first words that sprang to mind!). They had a go - they failed. With the exception of the death of the child it wasn't even entertainingly bad, just dull - the worst crime of all 
Updated On: 6/2/08 at 06:36 PM
#38re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/3/08 at 12:30amsigh that was a really short run. what, two months?
In Soviet Russia, Wicked hates you too!
#39re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/3/08 at 3:09am
Fun review of the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPxemXu6DUI&feature=related
I think somewhere Harold Rome is chuckling.
What great ones do the less will prattle of
Mattbrain
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/23/05
#40re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/3/08 at 12:53pm
Would this work as just a play or is it just meant to be musicalized. I just feel that somewhere along the lines, somebody's gotta get this thing right and what I mean by this thing is a Gone With the Wind musical that's actually GOOD!
Is this classic novel just not meant to be dramatized at all?
Butters, go buy World of Warcraft, install it on your computer, and join the online sensation before we all murder you.
--Cartman: South Park
ATTENTION FANS: I will be played by James Barbour in the upcoming musical, "BroadwayWorld: The Musical."
#41re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/3/08 at 2:05pm
There seems to be more interest in this now it's closing than there was when it was opening.
It's not one of the all-time great flops (like Carrie) - it's one of the perfectly forgettable ones (like Jean Seberg).
Mattbrain
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/23/05
#42re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/3/08 at 2:08pm
What's Jean Seberg?
Oh, look at that, your point's been made.
Butters, go buy World of Warcraft, install it on your computer, and join the online sensation before we all murder you.
--Cartman: South Park
ATTENTION FANS: I will be played by James Barbour in the upcoming musical, "BroadwayWorld: The Musical."
#43re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/3/08 at 2:41pm
Mattbrain,
GONE WITH THE WIND was already a play. In Japan it was an epic two evening, eight hour, straight play event. Think NICOLAS NICKLEBY.
It was so successful that the producers invited Harold Rome to musicalize it.
What great ones do the less will prattle of
#44re: Gone With the Wind to close
Posted: 6/3/08 at 2:51pm
"What's Jean Seberg?"
I'm not sure if that's a rhetorical question or not 
It had music by Marvin Hamlisch but failed at the National a couple of years before Carrie, due in no small amount to similar political issues.
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