I can't remember if I've responded in this thread or not, but if I did, I had forgotten (or blocked out of my mind) the recent tour of Starlight Express. The show is clunky, thin, repetitive and inane enough as it is ("Freight is Great" -- good God almighty) but this version completely got rid of the races and replaced them with horrid 3-D movies on a screen lowered from the top of the stage. When I opened the Playbill to find a pair of 3-D glasses, it's the closest I've ever come to walking out of a show before it even began. I had come to see a live performance, not some filmmaking novelty that had gotten stale before I was even born. Updated On: 4/11/06 at 05:13 PM
Mamma Mia the new Fiddler back when Alfred Molina was in it
and a community theater production of Pippin he was horrible. and i met the actor a few months later through my friends at another production company..and had to feign happiness that i was meeting him
"No two shows are alike in the making. Each show is a living
piece of your life in a small unreal world with its own character
and integrity; its own new set of memorable experiences and
incredible happenings. You begin to love and adapt to its strangeness.
Dreams harden into substance. Values come into focus. You wish
it would never end. The dream world vanishes like mist before a
rising sun; part of you vanishes with it. And back you land in the
real world with a thud- fogged, uneasy, jittery, difficult to get
along with. There is only one cure. A new show. A new, small
unreal world; new visions, experiences, incredible happenings.
Again you love it, adapt to it, wish it would never end.
But end it does. Another part of you vanishes.
That's show business."-Anonymous
we saw this horrible horrible review six or seven years ago @ Papermill called Up, Up and Away and it was absolutely aweful!
also, caught Jerry Springer the rock opera in London which was complete crap
We cannot know what will occur/Just make our journey worth the taking/And pray we're wiser then we were/In the beginning" ~Children of Eden
"Risk is everything" ~The Light in the Piazza
"I can just see us now in our bathing dresses...you in a nice navy and me? Stripes perhaps." ~Sweeney Todd
Tovah Won Me Ovah '06
Pre-Broadway tour of Barry Manilow's COPACABANNA - a bad idea for a musical, written by people who apparently have never seen a musical before and performed by a cast that makes even your worst community theatre group seem like a troupe of talented thespians. The show closed on the road without making it to Broadway thanks to all the out-of-town pans (including mine!)
It was unsalvagable.
Runner up was SUNSET BLVD with Diahann Carroll and Rex Smith. Not only did I not applaud I encouraged everyone around me to not applaud as well. Still rates in my view as the worst "Best Music" tony winner ever. (And I know - there were no other nominees that season, but still: they should have elected to give no award.)
Cast albums are NOT "soundtracks." Live theatre does not use a "soundtrack." If it did, it wouldn't be live theatre!
I host a weekly one-hour radio program featuring cast album selections as well as songs by cabaret, jazz and theatre artists. The program, FRONT ROW CENTRE is heard Sundays 9 to 10 am and also Saturdays from 8 to 9 am (eastern times) on www.proudfm.com
anyway, Calvin: i agree about the recent Starlight Express tour. it made me cringe...
AIDA was pure badness (aka crap)
"Picture "The View," with the wisecracking, sympathetic sweethearts of that ABC television show replaced by a panel of embittered, suffering or enraged Arab women" -the Times review of Black Eyed
Mamma Mia- I like some of ABBA's music but whose terrible idea was it to strap it together into a musical? Cats- saw it twice, was given the dvd as a gift and I still don't get it West End Witches of Eastwick - it was in previews so I should cut it some slack but after nearly 4 hours who cares who does what to whom? Heathcliff- I loved the book (Wuthering Heights) and I do like Sir Cliff Richard, but something really bad happened in the translation to stage La Cava- 'nuff said Whistle Down the Wind- hideous Louisiana accents (Amos is not pronounced A-Mose) dumb story, bad set (and it was better than the actors), bad score, you get the picture The Woman in Black (play) not scary, loud in places to try to illicit fear, dumb and predictable,
Runners Up: "Cats" "The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public" "Contact" "The Mambo Kings"
"I've lost everything! Luis, Marty, my baby with Chris, Chris himself, James. All I ever wanted was love." --Sheridan Crane "Passions"
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"Housework is like bad sex. Every time I do it, I swear I'll never do it again til the next time company comes."--"Lulu"
from "Can't Stop The Music"
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"When the right doors didn't open for him, he went through the wrong ones" - "Sweet Bird of Youth"
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"Passions" is uncancelled! See NBC.com for more info.
I usually avoid threads such as this like the plague - and certainly don't believe in statements like I'm about to make.
BUT . . . LESTAT is the biggest pile of excrement that I have paid to see in a VERY long time. The only redeeming value for me was the incredible release through laughter that I received due to the procedings. Indescribably horrendous on every discussable level.
Community production of A Chorus Line in which no one could dance or sing very well.
Community production of West Side Story in which Tony couldn't remember his lines/lyrics, the stage was too crowded, scenery was poorly constructed/painted (almost child-like coloring), and Doc was played by a young black gentleman (not unheard of, but odd in context) who insisted on screaming "What the f*ck?!" at Tony on more than one occasion.
"It's not for sissies, contrary to popular belief." - Tommy Tune, on musical theatre.
I dream of someday seeing a huge flop musical like "Carrie" or "In My Life", but I don't get to New York all that often.
The worst show that I ever saw in NY was a bland, lackluster, boring revival of "Arsenic and Old Lace." What makes it even worse is that I was there with my sister and we could have gone to see "Raggedy Ann" or "Into the Light" (a musical about the Shroud of Turin) but I couldn't talk her into seeing either one. She wouldn't even go to see the revival of "Sweet Charity", because she doesn't like Ann Reinking. But that's another story, nevermind, anyway...
Really don't like "Blood Brothers"
And there's no reason that even a show called "Barry Mannilow's Copacabana" should be as bad as "Barry Mannilow's Copacabana"...
"A coherent existance after so many years of muddle" - Desiree' Armfelt, A Little Night Music
"Life keeps happening everyday, Say Yes" - 70, Girls, 70
"Life is what you do while you're waiting to die" - Zorba
You haven't died in a theater until you saw Richard Harris on tour in Camelot. He phoned the performance in. From England. Just terrible. And I saw it in the exact same seat in the same theater that as a child I saw the opening night of Camelot in 1960. The O'Keefe Center, Toronto. The only thing similar was the titles on the front pages of the two programs. SOOOO sad.
"I never had theatre producers run after me. Some people want to make more Broadway shows out of movies. But Elliot and I aren't going to do Batman: The Musical." - Julie Taymor 1999
I hope you know I didn't mean he actually PHONED....
Well, for instance, the first song comes up and this was how Richard Burton delivered the intro in the original (ad I was there, baby)
I KNOW what my people are thinking tonight, As HOME through the shadows they waunder EVERY-ONE'S SMILING in secret de-light.... (big pause) They stare at the castle and ponder When evvvvv-er the wind blows this way.... You can AL-most hear EV-ry one say...
And this is Harris. He looks offstage, sighs and says Iknowwhatmypeoplearethikingtonight Ashomethroughtheshadowstheywaunder Everyonessmilingingsecretdelight Theystareatthecastleandponder...
Get the idea? Not a single intonation, words delivered at 120m.p.h. It was as if he was saying "F*CK it, let's get this over with."
Here's my list of bad musicals from just the past couple of seasons, in no particular order of awfulness...
Good Vibrations The Frogs Ring of Fire Dracula The Woman in White The Look of Love Wedding Singer Fanny Hill
In past seasons, I really hated Phantom of the Opera. God, what a stupid-ass, over-produced, annoying show! Carrie was baaaad. So was Dance of the Vampires.
Hated every minute of Bombay Dreams, Blood Brothers and Spamalot - Avenue Q had ok moments, but there was so much hype surrounding it, that I left really disappointed, and a little bit bored...
This just reminded me of Terry Mann's musical ROMEO AND JULIET. It was beyond painful. It's the only time I've seen a show with horrible bland music but gorgeous orchestrations.
"For me, THEATRE is an anticipation, an artistic rush, an emotional banquet, a jubilant appreciation, and an exit hopeful of clearer thought and better worlds."
~ an anonymous traveler with Robert Burns