Wow, I completely disagree about Peter Allen's life and BFO being depressing. What an incredibly happy life he had and all the friends who knew him always remark at how happy and fulfilled he was up to the end (Liza always talked about how he was the one always cheering HER up). Here's someone achieved and surpassed every single dream he ever had in his life -- from working with all of his childhood idols to winning an Oscar to selling out Radio City for a month and dancing with the Rockettes. He became a national hero in his native Australia and a star around the rest of the world. He was rich, had tons of wonderful friends, a loving and accepting mother and even managed to find the love of his life and live with him for many years. That he and his partner died of AIDS is sad, yes, but that doesn't mean he had a depressing life and I can't fathom how anyone could call "Boy From Oz" a depressing show.
Not to be flip, but everybody dies of something and just about everybody loses a close loved one or two over the course of his life (if you were lucky enough to have loved ones to begin with). For me, AIDS doesn't equal depressing -- very few of the dozens and dozens of friends of mine who died of AIDS over the years had what anyone could term a "depressing life" and none of them ever won an Oscar, none of them were rich, and not all of them were surrounded by family and friends when they passed away as Allen was (many were rejected and estranged from their families, who had considered them "dead" years before they had become infected).
Despite the melodramatic handling of the end of Allen and his lover's story, BFO strikes me as a campy, silly, giddily happy confection, all fluff and flash, just as Peter Allen would have wanted it -- to me, there just wasn't anything in it to take seriously enough to get depressed about.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
