Yes, actually it was the silent investor who put up th $10 million for the show, not Brooks.
Yes, the show was bad in many ways, but actually I thought it was more weird/odd/bizarre than bad. Brooks refused to follow many standard Broadway conventions while embracing others that varied from heavily-cliched disease-of-the-week Lifetime movie-style melodrama to using a fanciful and foppish (and funny) narrator to comment on the action and perform surreal "in-one" musical interludes to break up the sentimentality of the proceedings. At times it felt like it was created by someone from another country where English isn't spoken and his knowledge of musical theater is third hand -- as if he'd never seen an actual Broadway musical, but had heard about them from someone else. It was like the whole thing was created in another language in another country -- which has a different more abstract performing tradition -- and then translated into English.
I say this because it reminded me greatly a few Robert Wilson works I've seen. Wilson, who is American, but has spent the last several decades exclusively in Europe (mostly Germany), creates these epic stage pieces that combine musical theatre traditions and operatic scale with German expressionistic style, mime, shadow play, and a true avant garde sensibility. The book and lyrics rarely make any real coherent sense, there are always elements included that seem to come out of left field and have nothing to do with the story being told, however he creates dazzling stage pictures with eye-popping visual imagery which seem to be enough for his many adherents.
I saw a musical that he did based (theoretically) on the life and career of Edgar Allan Poe with a rock/theatre score by Lou Reed. Half of it was in German, half in English, Frankenstein and Dracula (not Poe creations) were characters and trust me it was FAR STRANGER (and made even less sense) than anything in IN MY LIFE. Yet, because it was Wilson and at BAM rather than Broadway, the critics raved.
Say what you want about IN MY LIFE, but it wasn't a work of an incompetent (his direction frankly had more pace and invention than half the Tony nominees this year), it simply had a sensibility that was way too odd for Broadway in 2005 and as a result was dismissed by most musical fans and critics. I'm willing to bet that had this played BAM rather than Broadway and was reviewed by critics used to European avant garde musicals, the response would have been infinitely more positive. Honestly, I found it more entertaining (and I was less annoyed) watching it than I was seeing WEDDING SINGER, TARZAN, LENNON, and a few other shows that have fans on this board -- trite lyrics, sappy central plot, product placements, bizarro interludes and all (to be honest, I LOVED Winston's numbers -- as pure camp if nothing else). Even with all of its deep and fundamental flaws, while it's not a great show in a traditional musical theatre sense, it's certainly one of the more interesting (and funny -- maybe Brooks should have intentionally played everything for laughs) Broadway offerings in many a season and I'm glad I saw it.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 7/28/06 at 04:09 PM
(yet kind of schadenfreude-esque funny) at the end as people were walking out and saying the most horrendous things to each other about the show, and he was sitting there in his little chair listening to it all. Dripping with what I assumed to be a mix of sweat and tears. Poor guy. Poor Broadway. .gif?width=300)
