DISASTER Previews — Page 5

I heard the same

I used to watch the videos he posted on his private YouTube page back in the day, and I think he spoke about playing piano in pit orchestras before he was a writer for Rosie O'Donnell's talk show. And he did play for some of his guests on his show OBSESSED! So it may be inaccurate to say he has no talent, but I don't know how exceptional he is.

I know this thread has already moved on, but Seth is quite a good accompanist/pianist. So I wouldn't say he's talentless, although acting doesn't seem to be one of his talents.

"I know this thread has already moved on, but Seth is quite a good accompanist/pianist. So I wouldn't say he's talentless..."

Right. But no one called him "talentless;" the phrase used was that he's not "exceptionally talented," that is, worthy of talent-based celebrity. He's a perfectly acceptable accompanist, but how many accompanists are celebrities? Note that it has been acknowledged that there are some who find him screamingly funny.

Can someone describe the set?

LightsOut90 said: "dare i ask for a merchandise report?

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They just had hats, t-shirts and hoodies.

What a shock

Just think of going to the Flea Market this year wearing a tee or sweatshirt saying Disaster.

Two and a half hours is way too long for this kind of thing.

And I agree with Whizzer, they should have killed more of the cast. It's called Disaster but not much really happens.

Plus the boat is literally on the Hudson river and is "sinking."And that's never played for laughs. The fact that they can basically just jump ashore.

I wonder if they're all just doing Seth a big favor? I can't imagine anyone is getting paid much above scale for this.

I would not hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

VernonGersch said: "I really want to see this, still. Jack Plotnick made a film 10 or so years ago called Girls Will Be Girls that is still one of the funniest films of all time. Seth is extremely talented and knowing that you're not walking into the second coming of musical theatre, it just sounds like fun.

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You act as if Jack Plotnick WROTE Girls Will be Girls - he did not. He was in it. It was written and directed by Richard Day. I'm not sure how one of the funniest films of all time (which you kind of say as an absolute) grosses under $150,000, but what do I know? You can't even find a listing for the film on Rotten Tomatoes, let alone a review. I like Seth a lot - I think I gave him his first job playing the piano on a CD back in 1990 or so. But any show like this that runs two-and-a-half hours is doomed. It's fun to spoof genres - I do it in Outside the Box, whose episodes all run six to seven minutes long. No way for the joke to get old. In a film, spoofing a genre barely holds for ninety minutes - on stage a two-and-a-half hour spoof cannot be anything but deadly. I understand some people love their camp and love being "hip" enough to think they "get" what's going on - in other words, feeling above the material, but that's a curiosity factor of today, this self-referential junk that reached its expiry date many years ago. It was amusing a few times - it's not amusing anymore and yet there are people who scream with laughter at every reference in any show - Something Rotten to name one, or this one, but it's time to move on. Just because a show gets a small audience off-B'way does not mean it should immediately be brought to Broadway especially without ANY changes in design or content - that's just insanity and/or chutzpah of the highest order.

Patash said: "And to think we bought two discount tickets for this Sunday as our Valentine's gift to each other -- which will now also be the coldest freaking day of the year. And for this we're trudging in all the way from west central NJ.

Will a bucket full of Bloody Marys and champagne at brunch make it funny do you think?

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Yeah I think this calls for LOTS of drinks. I think Señor Frogs on 42nd Street has a bottomless all you can drink brunch. Check it out. That might be the ticket.

Let me start by saying that Disaster is the worst original musical to be on Broadway in my theatre going years. It's like a computer algorithm was given the task of writing the most over the top terrible show possible. It's like Max Bialystock needed to make a quick few million. It's like a high schooler year old won the Poweball and decided to take their wet dream vision of a show to Broadway. It's so bad that I cannot think of a fourth analogy. It's shockingly horrific. And I give it four out of four stars. Here's why you should be sprinting to the Nederlander box office to get ticket before this show inevitably closes on opening night:

In the same way I enjoy watching Scarlet Takes A Tumble, I enjoyed Disaster. I'm not even going to try to describe to you the visuals. Imagine any diner theatre in 1990's America mixed with an overlong Funny Or Die parody of musical and you can get the gist. The writing is filled with every troupe, cliche, and grimace worthy joke/plot device you can imagine. The direction is like a horrible senior showcase at mid-western BA program. And then you have this committed ass cast of Broadway legends and you wonder why the **** are they here? Does Seth Rudetsky have enough dirt on them to stop them from saying no to them? That's a real question.

But every aspect is so unbelievably trite that you can't help but get swept up in it. With a committee cast of greats almost making fun of the material, there is so much scenery chewing that you have to wonder if their jaws hurt by the end. Jennifer Simard is giving, unequivocally, the funniest performance I have ever seen in my life. I cried from laughter every time she was on the stage. My sides still hurt from wondering how the **** Faith Prince went from winning a Tony to tap dancing morse code while having a fit of Tourette's Syndrome. It's honestly so shockingly terrible that it makes the turn around back to being almost brilliant. It's an anomaly. It's a freak accident. It's every thing I hate about theatre spun into gold.

I will talk about seeing this ****ing show in ten years and it will be much more interesting to people than me telling them I saw the original cast of Hamilton because it will truly enter that level of flop where it becomes legendary.

Updated On: 2/11/16 at 10:13 PM