If you could revive any Broadway flop? — Page 3

I've seen a number of these shows that people want revived because they were a flop, however, they closed for a reason, they weren't good. I really enjoy the music to Women on the Verge...but it was a long boring tedious show. I even enjoy listening to the Addams Family and would think, why didn't this show make it, Nathan Lane, Bebe Newirth...OMG, it was so dreadful that you felt the pain of the actors having to plow through this show day after day.

That said, Merrily We Roll Along, the London/Boston production was spectacular and I was so happy I got to see it three times while it was in Boston.

I could also watch Benjamin Walker in tighty whities all day but even he couldn't save American Psycho, well, maybe if the show ending at the end of Act 1.

I would have also have liked to have seen the OBC of Side Show, the revival was awful. Also, Batboy would have been great to see, it unfortunately opened in the fall of 2001 and didn't last.

I really enjoy the music to Women on the Verge...but it was a long boring tedious show.

I saw it just before closing and I loved every second of it and everything about it! To me, nothing seemed tedious or boring at all. Quite the reverse. I probably could have watched it a couple dozen times without getting bored of it. I also really enjoyed the London production. But it was the nod to Almodovar in the Broadway designs I found to be an excellent touch.

Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner's 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, "A Musical About the Problems of Housekeeping"

Little Women

What a fun question! I'd opt for High Fidelity - with Will Chase and Jenn Colella, natch.

Anyone see the musical by Peter Allen, Legs Diamond ?

Was it as bad as reported and does it /should it have a 2nd life?



Only ever heard 1 song from it.

A few short takes on flops:

* Women on the Verge... -- Broadway designs, London revisions, consistent accents from our performers please, and turn Mambo-Loving Taxi Driver into a comic lead / narrator / Greek chorus type by letting him also play the smaller, one-scene-only male roles (i.e., the judge, the police officer, the matador, etc.)

* Chess -- start with the Broadway book (I'm sorry, it's more dramatically coherent than any version I've ever seen except Sydney, and Sydney's only problem was that it was long and bloated) and concept album song list as a base, trim back the dialogue and replace it with recitative from London where possible, set it firmly in the Cold War era, ???, profit

* Dance of the Vampires -- I expound on this at length elsewhere, but to sum up, go back to the European version as our drawing board, and strip it down: smaller cast, smaller venue, smaller orchestra, shorter show

* Whistle Down the Wind (okay, I cheated here, technically not a Broadway flop, but it recently played 54 Below, so I'm counting it) -- again, I expound on this at length elsewhere, but to sum up, restore some material from the cast recording and earlier versions of the show that was dropped in the licensed version, restore some of the orchestrations from the D.C. tryout (and glean influences from the celebrity concept album as well, where possible), restore all the costumes from the D.C. tryout (except for The Man, who would follow the London rendition), give it middle-tech scenic design, cast it all or mostly black, and tour it on the "prayer warrior" circuit Tyler Perry has exploited since the year one

Updated On: 3/30/18 at 08:16 AM

BuddyStarr said: "I've seen a number of these shows that people want revived because they were a flop, however, they closed for a reason, they weren't good."

That's a bit pompous, don't you think? There are obviously people here who disagree with your assessment, so what you're basically saying is "My opinion is the only valid one".

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the most obvious one for me, and it's a gaping hole in the history of Broadway. I mean, it really is some of Bernstein's best music, and by the time it landed on Broadway it was, at worst, merely functional. Mount it in workshop for a little bit and something amazing will come out. It's almost a literal crime that it's languishing as a torpid operatic concert piece, which doesn't do the show itself, which was blisteringly caustic in its best scenes, any favors at all.

Runner-up: 70, Girls, 70 with a revised book. I know it's been done, but I can't find much information about the revision. The original book is just as messy and terrible as anyone will tell you, I know because I went and dug a copy out of the cold hard ground of the internet and read it myself. It's like a really really lousy episode of The Golden Girls, which does a huge disservice to the glittering score.