Buzzfeed's 43 Best Musicals since 2000 — Page 3

"A list of the Best of Anything that ranks that tedious batch of dysfunctional family tropes NEXT TO NORMAL as #1, ranks the cliche-ridden PASSING STRANGE above THE GREAT COMET OF 1812, and actually includes that vile atrocity MEMPHIS is quite simply not worth the cyberspace it occupies."

Regarding MEMPHIS, what made it a vile atrocity? The show was a hit (if you believe as many do here that a show that recoups is a hit - or conversely, is a flop if not recouping), won Tony awards (4 I believe) and ran a successful tour all while the Broadway run was still going. And the story, like it or not, has a good message at its core. MEMPHIS has been successful by most any definition. You didn't like it, no problem. Are you simply unable or unwilling to express your opinion with the slightest bit of respect? I am wasting my breath, I know.

Yes, you are wasting your breath.

No one is going to change their opinion of this vastly mediocre show.

For the record I'm not a hater. I thought that Montego Glover was exceptional and I like much of the score.

But the show itself is so...flat. And then of course there is that bizarre (I'm being kind) performance by Chad Kimball.

Yes it won the Tony, but it seems like it was by default. It was the least bad of the four nominated shows (although I loved American Idiot but I think I stand alone there).

Overall the show is just one big "meh".

But it's certainly not "vile".

---

Updated On: 5/23/14 at 03:08 PM

"I don't know who that woman is in the picture of Tick Tick Boom. She sure wasn't in the show!"

That's the main picture I was referring to before. That's Colin Hanlon, not Raul. And that's certainly not Amy Spanger.

---

tazber, I have no intent of attempting to change anyone's mind. I asked a simple question, pretty much knowing I would not receive a reasonable answer (from Roscoe). My point regarding the show's successes is only that the show deserves a small bit of respect, whether deserving to be included in a best of list or not - and much more importantly that it does not deserve commentary typically reserved for terrorist acts and ilk such as that.

Well, Pauly, you know, I'm going to have to reserve the right to write disrespectfully about things that I have no respect for.

In re: that corn-studded piece of dung known as MEMPHIS: the book and the score were tedious batches of cliches. Seriously, a major Broadway musical in 2009 actually featured this exchange (Tony Award Winning Dialogue Follows):

Female Lead: You know how I know a man is lying to me?
Male Lead: How?
Female Lead: He opens his mouth.

It also featured a young man who'd been traumatized into silence by the sight of his father being lynched. Fair enough, but it was very clear that (a) at some properly dramatically loaded point in the proceedings he'd get the power of speech back and (b) still later, in order to get a laugh, someone would tell him that they liked it better when he wasn't talking. Someone else, I can't think of who, described it as the kind of show where a white guy walks into a black club and impresses everyone with how hip he is. The show never got beyond only the most basic sitcom level plot, storytelling and characterizations, and added a level of self-righteous bogus solemnity that got more and more choking as the show progressed.

The cast by and large did its best with this drivel, but all of their efforts were undone by Chad Kimball's appalling decision to play Huey Calhoun like some kind of spastic George W. Bush. It got to the point where I just couldn't look at him. A real shame, because Kimball was one of the reasons I was interested in seeing the show in the first place. I'd enjoyed his Milky White in the INTO THE WOODS revival, and his tiny role in GOOD VIBRATIONS was the sole positive memory I have of that catastrophe. Why one earth he's decided to make Huey into such an obnoxious ass completely escapes me. I felt no pity for him at all, and most damagingly thought the female lead was an idiot for hanging out with him. She could surely do better than that twitching poser.

A loathsome experience from start to finish. Sorry if I'm not being respectful enough of the show for you, Pauly. I found nothing, but nothing, about the show to be worth even the most basic respect, despite the Tonys, the long run, and the ongoing popularity. Opinions, you know -- they differ all over the place. If mine are too strongly worded for your tender sensibilities, Pauly dearest, feel free to block me. You won't be missing anything, and I doubt I will either.

---

Updated On: 5/23/14 at 10:40 PM

Truly, no one cares what you think.

Memphis was like a smoothie made from Miracle Whip and the Sparknotes of Hairspray and Dreamgirls.

---

No, because real mayonnaise is good.

---

Sutton, the problem isn't that those lines were jokes. Of course they were jokes. The problem is that they were terribly LAME CLICHED jokes, dated and obvious beyond all belief, like pretty much everything else about MEMPHIS.

You can think whatever you want about the idiotic parade of cliches MEMPHIS, but saying somebody's bizarre because they didn't like it just seems, well too typical of fans of MEMPHIS who defend that idiotic show as if it was written produced directed and starring their sainted parents. And for what it's worth, I was ranting about it when I sat through it in previews, long before it wound up on some really ill-advised list on buzzfeed.

---

Updated On: 5/24/14 at 05:55 PM

Some of the choices and especially the ordering are very...off.

How did Matilda, Kinky Boots, and Thoroughly Modern Millie not make it and yet Curtains, Fela, and Memphis made it? I'm happy to see the LaChiusa shows, [title of show], and Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 made it.

---