It happens quite frequently, but doesn't always go reported. Seeing this thread, I immediately thought of Marlowe, a disastrous rock musical from 30 years ago that played the long-departed Rialto Theatre. Frank Rich, The New York Times, wrote the following:
WHEN everything goes right in a musical, the audience feels a rush of exhilaration that is the quintessence of Broadway. And what happens when everything goes wrong? Well, when everything goes wrong, another kind of giddiness sets in - that same slaphappy feeling that comes when Laurel and Hardy send a grand piano crashing down a flight of stairs.
Such is the perverse pleasure offered by 'Marlowe,' a wholly ridiculous show that is much more fun to sit through than many merely mediocre musicals. Like such famous Broadway fiascos as 'Kelly,' 'Rachel Lily Rosenbloom' and 'Rockabye Hamlet,' this one has the courage to meet vulgarity far more than halfway. If 'Marlowe' isn't quite a classic of its kind, that's a matter of size, not content. Tacky-looking and sparsely populated, this show lacks the Titaniclike splendor and expenditure of Broadway's all-time fabulous wrecks.
Connoisseurs of theatrical disaster will still find much amusement in the self-described rock musical that opened last night at the Rialto. In attempting to give us a song-and-dance account of that madcap Elizabethan playwright, Christopher (Kit) Marlowe - the one who had 'the devil market cornered' - the co-authors, Leo Rost and Jimmy Horowitz, have left no folio undefaced. The insanity begins with the opening scene, in which Queen Elizabeth I (Margaret Warncke) dispatches a lover with the line, 'Don't forget your codpiece!' The Marlowe advertising quoted Rich as saying "Giddiness sets in - that same slaphappy feeling that comes when Laurel and Hardy send a grand piano crashing down a flight of stairs," with none of the context that Rich had provided for that statement. When the show somehow lingered on for several weeks, Rich took the show to task with another column.
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.