Looking for a musical flop.....

Do "Mack & Mabel"

I'm guessing you can't change the script though...

Merrily We Row Along?

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A lot of shows, you will probably be interested in and that are probably going to be suggested here, aren't going to be available for you to mount. Lots of estates have made remounting flop properties very difficult.

That said - you might look at shows like THE GOLEN APPLE and ALLEGRO, which are available - are reasonably interesting shows and pretty well written. In other words, they didn't flop because they were lousy shows, they were ahead of their time, etc.

If you can do ANY flop - I would really suggest you hunt down the script/recording of Alan Jay Lerner and John Barry's musicalizaton of LOLITA MY LOVE. It's fascinating, and as Ken Mandelbaum writes in "Not Since Carrie" its also a superb adaptation with a fantastic book and score. It just never would have worked on Broadway for the obvious reasons...

I'd do Allegro. Yeah, the cast is pretty big, but it is fairly well written and basically was a little too ahead of its time as Michael Bennet said, but also had too many concepts going on at the same time- DeMille's huge dance and movement piece, Hammerstein's autobiographical tale about the corupt city, etc.

Not Since Carrie = pure amazingness...

Mack and Mabel would be interesting, because you could talk about the recent revival...

Consider Henry Sweet Henry, Human Comedy, Oh, Brother! and Smile... I can't get enough of those shows

Grind would make a really interesting project as well... You could do a lot with it- Have you read the bit in the book on Grind? The score is so interesting

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I think The Human Comedy might be the most underrated musical of ALL time (and this is from someone whose favorite musical is Merrily We Roll Along)

Human Comedy is this undiscovered gem just waiting for Encores or SOMEONE to find it

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Every hilarious quote I know about a flop musical came from Walter Kerr...

I don't agree with his reviews, it seems like he never GOT Sondheim, I don't think the man had any kind of musical ear...

But my GOD, does he have some great one liners!

"Some of us have been campaigning lately for a return to the old- fashioned, gags and girls musical comedy. Some of us should be shot."
-Walter Kerr on Ankles Aweigh (1955, 176 perfs at the Hellinger)

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THE HUMAN COMEDY has one of the worst, cacophonous scores ever heard on a Broadway stage. There is nothing redeemable about it in the least. LOLITA, MY LOVE has two or three decent songs but to subject a young girl to the title role would be, as Nabokov conceded, an immorality, and renders the project null and void. Best to stick with a project that at least has a score of merit and no moral compromises. How about 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE? A wreck of a book but some brilliant passages of music.

Vivian Darkbloom
Ramsdale, New England

Updated On: 4/9/06 at 10:26 PM

Bernstein's estate won't let anybody do 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE - only the revised music-only WHITE HOUSE CANTATA.

And you could easily cast a college aged girl as LOLITA. He's doing this in a university setting...

That said, I definitely still say do something that you can get the script/score to easily. I mean I have the script and score to LOLITA - but

"Bernstein's estate won't let anybody do 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE - only the revised music-only WHITE HOUSE CANTATA."

Wow...that's too bad. I love 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Well, there was the production of 1600 a decade ago (or longer?) at the University of Michigan (?) at Ann Arbor, which I believe also did a revised LOVE LIFE by Lerner/Weill, another show I'd like to see given a mounting.


Vivian Darkbloom
Ramsdale, New England

The Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia mounted an EXCELLENT production of LOVE LIFE about 15 years ago. It can be done!

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