Broadway Flops succeeding in Europe — Page 2

GavestonPS said: "Raven4 said: "...
Another thing is that countries like Germany have no long musical tradition...."

I know exactly what you meant, Raven, and I appreciate your sharing your considerable knowledge of European theater.

Nonetheless, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Strauss (both of them), Wagner and Brecht are all spinning in their graves. LOL.

I'm sure you are aware that by "musical tradition" I was referring to musical theatre and not to music in general. Although it does make me realize how easily things get lost in translation. The English language qualifies this particular (American) genre as "musical theatre" whereas in German it's referred to as "Musicals" so I didn't add the qualifier. The German word "Musiktheater" which would be a direct translation, encompasses every kind of sung performance, including opera and operetta, which indeed we have a long tradition of. The latter of being the German version of early musical theatre that ground to a halt in the 20s and 30s. We then came to appreciate the "light" American entertainment of musical theatre as it's the only genre that is merely entertaining and out to offer the audience a fun evening out. We have enough heavy-weight leaden and cerebral dramas and abstract bizarre Regietheater operas.

And yes, Hamilton has been scrapped. There are different rumours as to why, but my guess is simply that producers realized there is absolutely no chance of success for a badly translated German version of a show whose subject is of zero interest to people here. Stage Entertainment is now developing a musical based on a moderately successful TV show set in the 50s Berlin. Whether it will take off, who knows.

For the Hamburg theatres, you can take a look here:

https://www.stage-entertainment.de/unternehmen/theater-vermietung/theater-vermietung.html

I don't know about mainland Europe, but in the UK there certainly seems to be a divide. There are still a lot of more traditional shows opening here with established theatre actors in the leads, and many of the successful Broadway shows in recent years have become some of the most popular in the West End (Hamilton, Come From Away, DEH etc).

However alongside that you also seem to find that the general touristy audiences are being courted with an endless array of move-based musicals (some of high quality, some not so much) and when anything seems to be failing they rely on stunt casting. Most shows now feature a soap star or pop star, usually one that has come straight from Strictly, Dancing on Ice or one of many talent shows. It hasn't helped that Andrew Lloyd Webber did a decade of TV talent shows to find the leads for his latest revivals, and introduced a new audience to theatre who were more interested in seeing the star than the overall cast or show. (Though I don't dispute that he discovered some amazing talent and would rather see many of them than someone from a boy band with no vocal strength)

The lightweight movie-based shows seem to do the best regionally, I know my local theatre seems to get mostly those, and classic musicals aren't seen nearly as often during the year. (although I did see the recent UK tour of The King and I, and it was magnificent. Quality is still out there!)

Ado Annie D'Ysquith said: "I've been following the UK Amelie tour and it would seem that the show went through quite a bit of changes that had plagued its Broadway incarnation. The tour got terrific reviews and played a limited run on the West End. I wish we could get a cast recording of the new song arrangements..."

I caught the show on tour in Liverpool my last trip and it was indeed a major Improvement. Mainly because Philippa was not quite right and this girl was exactly right.