BAT OUT OF HELL Will Play 8 Weeks At NY City Center In 2019 — Page 2

It ends in Toronto. Tour is cancelled.

Updated On: 11/1/18 at 09:44 PM

GavestonPS said: "pmensky said: "It ends"

Do you have an internet plan where you only get so many characters per month?

I swear I tried googling everything I could think of to get more info before I bothered ya'll here. But I can't find a mention of anything except the always-scheduled Toronto closing. It's supposed to play Detroit next week and the Curran and the Ahmanson are still advertising tickets on their web sites.

Everything ends. How do you know the tour will end in 48 hours (if that is indeed what you and others are saying)?"

Sorry, my iPad acted up while composing. It's closing Saturday in Toronto. The tour is cancelled.

Michael Cohl is literally the worst. The THIRD TIME he's pulled this stunt.

Sondheimite said: "MichaelCohl is literally the worst. The THIRD TIME he's pulled this stunt."

This. I can't imagine why anyone will ever sign on to a Cohl promised tour in the future.

The first run in Toronto last year (which was the full UK production) did very well. These past few week's run has been heavily discounted.

Any moment now, there will be word. The website, has deleted US Tour as an option of where the show is playing.

I am a quiet lurker/reader on this board, which I primarily use to keep up with what's happening on Broadway. But I can't just let this last comment stand. I am German and I have been a musical lover since before Tanz der Vampire first opened in Vienna (where I first saw it with the great unforgotten Steve Barton). I didn't like the show very much then and how and why exactly it became this phenomenon in Germany is beyond me. The show could never decide whether it was fish or flesh, comedy or serious drama, and as a result it was neither. The squeaky girlie musical theatre voices of the multitudes of Sarahs could never ever match the rock voices of Steinman's female singers such a Bonnie Tyler and Ellen Foley. The muchly hyped Die unstillbare Gier is a shortened castrated version of Objects in the Rear View Mirror with clunky heavy-handed lyrics in which an overly made-up musical performer lectures the audience on how all our greed is ruining the planet, whereas the original was a bitter-sweet reminiscene of a difficult childhood/youth.

But I'm not here to diss Tanz - I don't get the love and how it's still running, but that's as it is. I don't get German musical fans in general anyway. But it makes sense for producer Stage Entertainment to bring Bat out of Hell to Germany and cash in on the love for Steinman and Meat Loaf. When this show was first announced for Manchester last year I travelled there and loved it immediately. I saw Tanz one more time since when it came to my home town and hated it with every fibre of my body, having now seen how brilliantly Steinman can be done on stage. I saw Bat numerous times in London this year and I had already prepared to catch the US Tour next spring, so I'm very gutted this is not happening now. I booked for the German production as well, out of morbid curiosity and to take local friends to see it, as I won't get a chance to take them to London until it closes there in January.

If it will fail in Oberhausen, it won't have anything to do with the hysterical Tanz fans (of which there are fewer than the incessant hype might make it seem). Except for Lion King, which has now been running for 17 years, Stage Entertainment hasn't had a solid sell-out success in Germany for many years. Most shows fold within a year these days, Kinky Boots lasted for half a year only in Hamburg, and others are planned as tours straightaway such as Disney's Hunchback and when new shows go on sale, only half the house goes on sale because they can't even sell out that. The new generation of popular Broadway shows such as Hamilton and Book of Mormon are unsuited for the German mass market and their own creations based on German movies failed as well. They are now trying their luck either with jukebox musicals like Bat, Tina - the Musical and The Band (Take That) all opening in swift succession or flops like Amèlie and Cirque du Soleil's Paramour, where the rights are probably cheap. One of the reasons that Tanz keeps reappearing is that it's cheap to do because there are no foreign rights involved and it's about the only non-Disney-cutesy-family-show in their present portfolio to appeal to a more mature audience.

I could write whole essays on their failed marketing strategies, excessive pricing and other mistakes. If Bat fails in Oberhausen, and I am sure it will fail, it won't have anything to do with the Tanz die-hards though, it will be due to the usual mix of sky-high prices without any chance of generous discounts (that even Broadway does through TKTS, TodayTix, Rush, etc.) and questionable casting decisions and in this case: By translating the entire show into German. If you follow discussions on Facebook and similar channels, you will find plenty of comments by people saying "I love Meat Loaf and would love to see this, but not in German". It was what first made me decide against booking here too. I'm now giving it a go because of the promising cast, but I dread to hear these classic rock songs being done in a shonky clunky German translation. This is far far more alienating than upsetting a few hardcore Tanz fans.

g.d.e.l.g.i. said: "Tell us how you really feel, sweetheart."

Thank you for your mature and not at all patronizing response - sweetheart.

I just don’t understand the smarmy attitude towards Tanz fans over this. If people don’t go to see the show, and it’s because they’re turned off by the fact that there are recycled songs, then I’d say it’s a valid gripe to make when the composer was too lazy to come up with some new material for his musicals and resorted to recycling the same songs. Even as a fan of Tanz, I always found it weird that around 70% of the score was stuff Steinman had already written and openly used in other work before, and I’m not surprised that he didn’t think through that he already used a few songs in Tanz when he was putting together the score for Bat. If people don’t want to see the same songs and themes thrown together with a different wrapping paper, then I can’t really fault them for that.

Updated On: 11/2/18 at 10:43 AM

The only thing you contributed is that the picture is even more skewed than previously thought, and aside from bashing the show I happen to like, really all you did was confirm my baseline assumption. You could have used sentences instead of a page that was rather snobby and condescending of another show in its own right. But I thank you nonetheless for your politesse, and I apologize if I seemed at all immature or patronizing. It was certainly not my intention to be either; we all get caught up sometimes, and I ain't immune.

Mostly I found the "sweetheart" condescending, but I appreciate the apology. I wrote my post mostly because yours made it sound like Tanz had a massive fan base and that fan base and its dislike for "recycled Steinman" would be enough to bring Bat down. So I wrote (at perhaps too great length) that a) not ALL German musical lovers are crazy for Tanz and certainly wouldn't diss Bat over it and b) point out that there will be plenty other/bigger reasons why Bat can and will be a flop here. Just as I always thought, by the way, that if Bat had tried for Broadway, it would also have been a massive flop. I might love the show to pieces for what it is, but that doesn't mind I'm blind to its (many) flaws or the fact that it's absolutely not the kind of thing that would work on Broadway (much like WWRY)

I would agree on the gripe that it's recycled songs, but then Steinman shouldn't have used those songs in Tanz if he ever thought there was a chance his "Peter Pan musical" could still see the light of day. And seeing how little the music in Tanz actually ressembles proper rock music Steinman (and this is a hill I will die on) he really should have written new music for it rather than than have songs like "Total Eclipse" and "Objects" mauled beyond recognition.