Favorite songs from failed shows — Page 4

Love how some people make up their own definitions and play fast and loose with the truth to suit their own agendas. How very post modern!

As long as one is up front about the definition being used--as posters here generally have been--where's the harm? Nobody is playing "fast and loose with the truth".

Defining a show as a flop if it fails to recoup is one definition and a traditional one. Some people are using it. But it doesn't tell us anything about artistic merit. By the same standard, each and every Van Gogh painting is a failure.

Updated On: 5/6/13 at 06:30 PM

All That Jazz - Agree with you totally, love those songs also.

In this instance, seeing as the word 'failed' was mentioned, I immediately imagine the kind of show which was so disastrous that everything fell apart around it, not the shows which were good, if not great, but couldn't find an audience.

Off With Their Heads from Wonderland

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Merrily was a colossal bomb when it opened. To believe otherwise is foolish. It sucked and everyone knew it and it closed as it should have. And yes, I suffered through that original production once and second act three additional times - and it got no better.

Had the exact same show been written by Joe Nobody from Nowhere rather than Sondheim - it would not have been recorded and would have dropped out of sight forever.

20 Million People - My Favorite Year

Pretty much the entirety of AMOUR, but "Painter's Song," "Special Time of Day," "Waiting," and "Other People's Stories" especially. Really that whole score is just overflowing with gorgeous.

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"With You" - Ghost the Musical

"I Won't Send Roses" from Mack & Mabel.

This thread seems like a great source for audition songs.

After Eight, you remind me of an expression from my youth: "pompous windbag." I haven't heard it or used it in years, so congratulations on inspiring a revival!

Yes, MERRILY was a flop by the traditional Broadway definition: the original run did not recoup its investment. But the theater has changed in the years since that definition was coined.

MERRILY has been revived off-Broadway and has played in every major city in the country. You'd be hard-pressed to find a theater aficionado who doesn't know and love the score. In that sense, it is a "classic", whether or not the original investors got their money back (which they may have done by now).

If you want to include it in your list of flops, that's fine. I'm not trying to stop you.

But to me, listing songs from MERRILY sort of misses the point of the original question. MERRILY's score is far better known than SHENANDOAH's, for example, even though the latter was a major commercial hit. So TO ME, I exclude MERRILY and FOLLIES (the second having had 2 major Broadway revivals) as not the sort of "flop" the OP intended.

And stop calling me a liar, you addled sack of sawdust. I've been entirely upfront as to my use of vocabulary and I take accusations of lying very seriously.

Updated On: 5/7/13 at 06:40 PM

Dear Mr. Brick Wall,

Do you even bother reading the exchanges in these threads, or does nothing penetrate the impregnable fortress you live in? You continue to utter statements that have already been shown to be wrong:

All that jazz wrote, "That was my initial thought, but since the show is so highly regarded and to this day still continues to be a favorite among devoted theater fans,"

I answered, "I know many devoted theatre fans, and I include myself among them. The show in question is certainly no favorite of theirs, or mine."

And JayG2 stated, "Merrily was a colossal bomb when it opened. To believe otherwise is foolish. It sucked and everyone knew it and it closed as it should have."

So after all that, you blithely proclaim,

"You'd be hard-pressed to find a theater aficionado who doesn't know and love the score. In that sense, it is a "classic", whether or not the original investors got their money back (which they may have done by now).""

Hard-pressed? You need hardly look any further than this very thread!

And though I know I'm engaging in an exercise in futility, I'll reiterate: I know many theatre aficionados who HATE both the show AND the score. Count me among them.

A "classic " you say? A classic stinker, you mean.

^

Yes, unfortunately.