Hands on a Hardbody

[steven22]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 11:11am

Anyone else really miss this? It definitely deserved more of a run...and some of those songs were great...Allison Case, Jay Armstrong Johnson, Keala Settle and David Larsen each sounded incredible as well...I'm very excited for the cast album to be released in a few weeks

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 11:21am

The cast was great. The show was a bloody bore.

[gchris11]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 11:25am

^^^ agreed, cut it to 90 minutes and throw it at NWS!

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 11:36am

Actually... The show was a brilliant look at the working class. The cast and others have described it as a "working class CHORUS LINE" and I completely agree. It was brilliantly staged so that a group of people standing in one place was never for one moment stale and every single character was beautifully fleshed out, no matter how long they were on the stage (or in the contest) for.

And I haven't mentioned one of the best original scores to come to broadway in years. Maybe this show wasn't right or broadway since there's no flying spider or a green girl to make 10 year old fat girls feel like they can finally relate to someone. But I'll tell you that more people could relate to this show than almost anything else I've ever seen. And it's a Goddamned shame it's gone.

[GilmoreGirlO2]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 11:52am

Was really pulling for this show and wishing it would at least run through the summer so I could see it when I came into NYC. Sad it didn’t have a longer life, but it did seem to make an impact and hope it has life after Broadway.

So happy they are releasing a cast recording and can’t wait to listen to it!

[Movidude742]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 11:54am

"The cast was great. The show was a bloody bore."

when did yo see it? I agree that the pacing was way off and it ran long early. I saw the 2nd preview. I got invited to see it again just before it opened and it was so much better. I ended up seeing it 5 times before it closed

[gchris11]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 12:11pm

I think I saw the first or second preview. It was sooooo slow. and it never recovered.

Updated On: 6/13/13 at 12:11 PM

[Rainbowhigh23]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 3:26pm

I saw the show sometime in March after a friend saw it and said he hated it. I went in with an open mind and found myself really caring about the characters and wanting to stay for Act 2 to see who won. I noticed very tepid response to most of the songs until Joy to the Lord, which really woke the house up. In the end, though, I just couldn't see tourists paying top dollar to see a show on Broadway about down on their luck Texans trying to win a truck. I think it would have been great if it had opened off Broadway and been heavily promoted to the Phish fan community first; their support would have spilled over and built an audience. The Who wrote great musicals and it was the fans of the band who bought Tommy and Quadrophenia first, so why not Phish?



Updated On: 6/13/13 at 03:26 PM

[Owen22]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 3:31pm

The very idea that this show did not get a Best Musical nomination and Bring it On did nullifies every nomination any show got this year. Sad and stupid.

[whatever2]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 3:31pm

it was hard to focus on what jordan was saying, what with that handsome man getting naked right next to him, but if i heard him correctly i have to agree -- this was an original voice, and its premature demise says a lot about that state of the art.

[bdn223]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 6:24pm

Hardbody's producers should of tried to get an off-broadway non-profit to mount it first, to build buzz for a broadway run "alla Once". They would of both been able to focus the show more and attain a following, without jepordising the weekly grosses with the exorbitant number of comps they handed out.

[gchris11]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 6:29pm

I am surprised it played as long as it did. It was too long and boring. shorten it to 90 minutes and put it at NWS!!! It would have been fine. get the buzz going there, them move it to Broadway.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 6:48pm

I really liked it when I saw it. The cast was fantastic. I loved the staging. The car dealership subplot did nothing for me but it wasn't so bad that it ruined the show. I was hoping the show would stay open through the nominations so Keala Settle actually had a chance at winning. I don't know if she could have topped Andrea Martin if more voters saw the performance but I can dream.

I hope this can have a life in regional theaters so more people get to see it. The biggest tech requirement is getting the truck to move onstage for choreography and that could be a stumbling block for smaller groups.

Either way, we get the cast recording and that's good enough for me.

[AuntieEm22]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 11:32pm

I never post here, just lurk... but Jordan, I have never agreed with you more.

I've thought a lot about what could have been done differently with this show (name change, marketing, etc.) but that's not entirely relevant to my point here. The fact that it's gone and that so few people got to see it is exactly, as you said, a Goddamned shame.

Every member of the cast was so invested in this show and affected by it that I'm excited to see what they all go on to do. They were all definitely changed by this show.

I really think Sergio's work in this show deserves more recognition. Maybe it's because all of the kinks regarding hands-off-during-songs weren't worked out the first time I saw it, but each subsequent time, I found myself falling more in love with how the truck moved and how he managed to get them moving without jeopardizing the storytelling.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 6/13/13 at 11:39pm

Well AuntieEm, I urge you to post here more!!

[Movidude742]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 12:36am

HoaHB is probably my favorite of the new shows this year, but I liked everything except Scandalous.

I do disagree with the need to change the name, it is so based on the documentary that it never would have crossed my mind either. I think the marketing was poor across the board for the show. I don't recall any TV appearances whether morning shows or Fallon or Letterman. And the commercials were just terrible.

I also think that heavy marketing to Phish fans might have generated a backlash, since Amanda Green co-wrote the music. Tho there were definite phish touches, none of the song screamed out for a type II jam that could go on like a 45 minute Halley's Comet or even a 12 minute You Enjoy Myself. Put another way, I could hear some phish in the songs because I knew Trey was one of the authors. I don't know that If I heard the songs cold that I would have guessed he had a hand in writing it.

[somethininthestars]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 5:56am

New Line Theatre in St. Louis, Mo will be doing HANDS ON A HARD BODY in their upcoming season. (And NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Scott Miller is taking on some interesting projects there in STL - a reworked version of CRY BABY last year, and they are currently doing BUKOWSICAL: http://newlinetheatre.blogspot.com/)
New Line's 2013-2014 season

[D2]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 8:03am

Jordan put it beautifully and succinctly. I can only add that I'm in total agreement with everything he said about the show.

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 8:11am

...HARDBODY was a complete and total bore. I have never seen such an overrated snoozefest on stage. There is a reason it had such a short run and went out with a wimper.

[John Adams]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 9:35am

I agree with you all regarding Jordan's comment. It is very sad that unless a show can please everyone (or at least a larger majority of ticket buyers), it has no chance of surviving more than a few days, weeks or at the longest, months. That financial situation creates a blander, less diverse Broadway, and IMO is strangling Broadway.

RE: Hands On A Hardbody, though, the show has little appeal for me. I agree that it's very similar in theme to Working (a show I like), especially the score. But I've already heard the score from Working. I know the direction nearly all the songs of HoaH are going and where they will end. Their themes (both musically and in terms of story-telling) are so similar. What's missing for me in Hardbody's score is some kind of "hook". Some spark that in spite of the similarities to other songs like them, told with similar stories, makes me want to hear them again.

For me, it's like the evolution that occurred with Country music. The genre was pretty stale and had limited appeal until new artists began mixing things up a bit - slipping in elements of rock and pop that (for me) provided something different, and a reason to keep listening.

One example from HoaH's score that illustrates what I'm talking about is I'm Gone (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pz0ysRPSH8). It's a song with an often-used "I've got to get out of this place" theme. As soon as the song begins, it's pretty easy to tell what her issues are gonna be, where her story is gonna go, and how it's gonna end. Is there anyone who can't tell there will be a "Hey, let's go together!" element introduced at some point?

But the writers haven't created a hook that sets this song apart from every song like it, and that's been written before it. Instead they include the same "pedal to the metal" and "rear view mirror" images that have been used time and time again. There's even the obligatory "my mama worked hard and got nuthin' in return" anecdote. For me, there's just no "hook".

The biggest element that causes me to stay away from HoaH is that the story itself is not an interesting one. What makes the story compelling is the "reality" behind its characters.

A group of people are meant to keep their hand on a truck until the last one falls away and gets to keep the truck. For a staged musical, that's a pretty static situation. All the other elements need to be outstandingly incorporated to overcome the lack of plot.

IMO, that doesn't happen. To my ears, the score is not strong enough (for reasons I mentioned above). I think the creative choreography and the use of the turntable help, but not enough.

The biggest deficit to my mind is that the original documentary was able to be compelling in a way that the musical can never achieve - the audience for the movie is able to connect with real people. Given the task, the most interesting question for me is, "Who would do something like that?". The documentary puts me face-to-face with those real people, telling their stories, in their unique voices. I connected with that element in a way that I'm not able to do with the musical. The stories (by themselves) have less weight when I can't associate them with the real people who lived them.

But going back to my original paragraph, just because I didn't find the experience as valuable, doesn't mean it's not valued by someone else. I think it's sad that even beyond Broadway, "value" has lost all its peripheral meanings except for the singular definition of "money". Updated On: 6/14/13 at 09:35 AM

[BroadwayGuy12]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 9:43am

...HARDBODY was a complete and total bore. I have never seen such an overrated snoozefest on stage. There is a reason it had such a short run and went out with a wimper.

How can something that "had such a short run and went out with a wimper" be considered overrated?

[Dollypop]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 10:02am

There really were stories that the show would move to NWS. I guess they were nothing more than "false rumors" (in the words of the King of Siam)

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 10:41am

"overrated" by Jordan's terms, I meant.

[winston89]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 11:07am

Movidude742,

As a Phish fan, and a Broadway fan I disagree with what you said about there being potential backlash if the show was marketed to Phish fans. The music does remind me more of Trey's solo work than it does his music with Phish. Granted, both have different sounds, but because of Trey's work with Phish, he has developed a massive following of fans who would travel to see him/his work being performed, and feel that musically speaking he can do no wrong. But, I don't think that there's anything in the score of Hardbody that makes me ache for a half hour version of Tweezer.

I honestly think that if they had done some advertising to Phish fans in music magazines that cater to the jam band scene, then they would have gotten more people in the door. I know of a lot of people who would have wanted to see the show because they found it cool that Trey wrote a musical and wanted to check it out. However, by the time they got word of it, it was too late and the show was closing.

[GilmoreGirlO2]

Posted: 6/14/13 at 1:14pm

No surprise New Line is doing “Hands on a Hardbody.” Not a fan of New Line’s work, so I am hoping “Hardbody” will turn up somewhere near Chicago in the not-so-distant future, where I will have another option to see it.