This entire project strikes as something that -- if you're going to go to all the trouble of staging it at all -- should be a cheap series of goofy little concert performances for charity or something, a la Broadway Bares or the Easter Bonnet competition. Get some big names, stick it in Roseland for four or five performaces, raise a few million for BC/EFA and then put it to sleep.
It's a dumb show based on terrible cheesy campy little cult movie with limited widespread appeal and I just don't see this as having the legs or financial prospects to be a profitable open-ended running Broadway musical for $110 a ticket at the Helen Hayes. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get spending $5 million on the sort of silly little show that Tweed and other downtown groups used to put together based on camp classics like Auntie Mame, Valley of the Dolls, The Bad Seed, The Children's Hour, Imitation of Life et al starring folks like Charles Busch, Jackie Hoffman, Lypsinka, Varla Jean Merman, Julie Halston et al (even Lily Tomlin showed up for one of them) for little cost (and a reasonable ticket price) for a handful of performances. Are there really tens of thousands of people (which is how many they will need to attract if the show is to recoup) out there willing to spend Broadway prices for a campy disco rollerskating spoof?
I wish them luck, but I don't get it.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney