It's always intriguing the acrid flavor of schadenfreude that accompanies either pans after opening night ("Brantley nailed it!") or closings ("I said it first! Nobody is interested in this crap show!") Hardly new revelations, but watching SIDE SHOW ebb and fold produced a fresh and vigorous version of this syndrome. And within 24 hours off the news of "If/Then's" approaching demise after over 400 plus performances, we are now parsing the word "flop" with snarling admonitions that failure to employ the term with the unbridled chill of a CPA auditing the books bespeaks a surfeit of emotional attachment or childishness. As if emotional attachment to theatrical works created for the New York stage had nothing to do with showing up at this website.
Just this week the Times delved into the quick finish of "The Last Ship," and rather astutely landed on the non-thesis thesis: nobody really knows what works and what doesn't, why some material catches fire but most does not. Yet here fingers are wagged and task taken if someone voices mere ... disappointment that something enjoyed didn't run longer or receive a warmer critical welcome. It's a crap shoot of a business, always was, always will be.
It's without absolutes. Every show is a gamble. Audiences are fickle, unpredictable (they embrace shows about just about anything, from low profile wives of Argentine dictators off the pop culture radar to boot factories in England, so let's resist impromptu dissertations on the sure thing in musical theater). We come here to speculate, to be sure. But it's in general a passion-driven discussion. Taking umbrage to instant categorization of shows that struck personal chords isn't emotional or childish, it's about investment, personal, baffling, ineffable.
"I'm a comedian, but in my spare time, things bother me." Garry Shandling
