Marin Mazzie Is Still In Carrie? Sad Day...- Page 3

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/9/10 at 11:00pm

When did we stop thinking of it as an embarrassing turkey?

I must have missed that memo.

[wonderwaiter]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 12:00am

It pollinated when a generation of us who were too young to see the original production read Ken Mandelbaum's book, and bloomed forth into glorious Spring when the internet finally reached a point where each of us - individually, much like puberty - were able to obtain for our very own a copy of the soundboard of the original Broadway cast.

For some of us it happened on Napster, for some of us it happened on Limewire, for some of us it happened on the rope in gym class. But it happened, and here we are.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 12:26am

You know what? Kind of this ^.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 1:50am

Seconded!

[THDavis]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 2:06am

Agreed. Bitch about us and our hopes if you want, but here we are and you're not talking us out of believing anything.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 8:16am

This is what bugs me about the people on here screaming ‘wasn’t that show a huge flop’ etc, yes it was, it was a HUGE flop, we all know that. However its kept peoples interest more than many of the Tony Nominated shows from that year on have.

Carrie was always a show of huge potential, yes you may not have liked it but you may not have liked Cabaret, Billy Elliot, Avenue Q etc, but that’s just down to people’s tastes.
Carrie was not like other flops from the time such as Legs Diamond, the show had a lot going for it, sadly it got lumbered with a dreadful physical production, a scared director and an over enthusiastic choreographer. The show was a jumbled mess because the creative team were, speaking to both Cook and Hately both agreed that the production team were clueless as to what it was they were trying to do with Carrie. Some wanted an 80s pop musical, some thought it was the first serious dramatic musical since West Side Story, nobody was on the same page.

Speaking to Hands many years ago he said that he saw the problems, knew the issues but was unsure how to fix them, he felt in over his head, a power battle was also in full swing behind the scenes between him and Allen.

So why is Carrie still popular, it’s not just because it was a big expensive flop or we would see many shows from that era getting the revival treatment, it’s because underneath the 80s nightmare, flashing lazers and cardboard cut out cars was a good musical, a fun pop opera with some beautiful music. The book needed lots of work, it’s getting it, the score needed work for the teen scenes, it’s getting it. The creators know where it was that the show went wrong and they are working to fix it because Carrie is fixable, hell its 84 workshop showed that the show was on the right track, sadly when the RSC got hold of it it was derailed.

Also to Borstalboy, I was a kid of the 80s and if you honestly don’t think we said things like ‘Where it’s at’ or ‘It’s the pits’ you are very much mistaken, people still say ‘Where it’s at’ now.

The material seems to be heading in the right direction from the 2009 workshop, they have identified the problems and are working to fix them. It has a great director who believes in the show and saw the original, a great producing house and a smart move to open Off Broadway.

So instead of people pointing out the obvious, how about we give all involved a chance to see if this show can get a new lease of life, after all the ones who are been negative will probably be the first in line.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 9:05am

I want to mention something - slightly unrelated - but that was a discussion that came up on the board a while back when we were discussing WOMEN ON THE VERGE, and the quandry of how a show that went through three workshops and various readings could turn into such a mess in the final product on Broadway.

We talked about how workshops are really a very slippery slope because they don't give accurate feedback as to how the show will play in front of an audience, and how the technical elements may not live up to the expectations of an audience, that at least in a workshop setting, gets to fill in the blanks with their own imagination as to how the show would actually materialize on stage.

CARRIE is really the ultimate example of this. There may have been a lot of potential in the 1984 workshop - and there may be a lot of potential in the reading held last year but until somebody comes up with a brilliant solution for actually staging the script and special effects in a way that satisfies the epic demands of the story, the musical will NEVER work in an actual production. To that end the strengths of the score are just incidental. CARRIE as a whole can't exist as an evening of theatre based on a few good isolated ballads for its main characters...

I applaud the creative team for actually trying to get a production of CARRIE on its feet to see if the show could ever work -- but I dare say no production of this show is likely to ever live up to the delicious productions people have in their heads based on hearing the original recordings.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 9:22am

The problem is though that we have no idea if it can be staged, personally i dont really see why it cant be. If fire can erupt all over a stage for Martin Gueere, we can make people fly, illusions can be performed on stage etc then Carrie which really only has 1 major tech scene should not be a problem.

The staging for Carrie never needed to be so OTT, the show would play better more intimate (the Carrie and Mother scenes got lost on a huge stage with the minimal set)

I dont see any issues with putting Carrie on the stage, the last one just went for a more greek tradgedy feel, thats sadly now something people think was the only choice they had, it was not. That same year they were landing a helicopter on stage in Saigon.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 10:06am

I don't see any issue with making the special effects of CARRIE work if you have a $15 million dollar budget. How they are going to do them effectively in a small budget Off-Broadway production remains to be seen.

[newintown]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 10:10am

Michael Bennett, I think that's astute. There's a big difference between appealing to a small coterie of flop devotees, and appealing to a larger commercial audience. And workshops don't really help bridge that gap, being geared to industry audiences.

To me, the biggest problem with a show like Carrie (or Lestat, or Dracula, or Frankenstein) is that musical theatre is not particular well equipped to create terror. Yes, the technology is there for special effects, but it would take a writer of unusual skill and talent to write a musical that actually scares audiences.

Carrie may be partly about a dysfunctional mother/daughter team, but Carrie's telekinesis and the horrors she inflicts with it are an integral part of the story. And the Pitchford/Gore team (I feel) are not quite adept enough to write that part of the story effectively.

[THDavis]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 10:33am

If you cut down the scenes with the kids and really focus more on the relationship Carrie and Margaret are having, you'll sell this show. It's in an intimate house anyways, these scenes will read better and they're the ones that made it. We can understand what's going on in the background with Sue/Tommy and Chris/Billy with maybe a third to half of the original scenes or numbers they gave them in the original.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 10:48am

Sell the show to who though? Anyone going to see a musical based on a Stephen King book is going to want to see the epic story he created on stage. I don't think audiences are going to be very satisfied seeing a musical of CARRIE in which all the scenes take place at the house and the bigger moments (destruction of the gym) are simply talked about by narrators.

That's the problem.

You could craft this really beautiful and haunting musical based on about the first 2/3 of the book (or film screenplay). But the demands of the climax of the story are unavoidable and essentially unstageable. But not including them essentially robs the story of CARRIE what makes it marketable to an audience as CARRIE...

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 2:51pm

You could sell the show to anyone who wants to see a new show, its the same with Priscilla, Catch Me if You Can etc etc, they don’t just appeal to fans of the book and film, if they did half of those musicals based on other source material would not have enjoyed such success.

I always find the 'who’s gonna watch it' argument about Carrie odd, it’s just like any new show, if an audience want to watch the show Carrie they will, if they don’t they won’t, like all other shows.

As for the effects, i own a production company and we work on smaller budgets, setting fire to a stage, making some objects fly etc are not expensive. I think people are forgetting how little this story is based around the effects.

As for the scary/thriller side working on stage, Carrie was never meant to scare, even the movie was not really a horror (except for the final hand out of coffin scene. It was a drama with supernatural/horror elements. However even if it was designed to scare, make people tense etc, those shows can work on stage, Woman in Black, Deathrap are a few examples, even parts of the original Tanz Der Vampire, or Ghost Stories currently playing in London.

People seem to think this show will only appeal to people who know it was a flop and its history, many people going to see a new show who know nothing about Carrie's past will visit the show as they do with any other show.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 2:59pm

This came up in the last big debate about CARRIE and I doubt anybody's opinion has changed much. I for one still maintain that CARRIE has always been marketed and sold as a horror property and I think any production that didn't attempt to scare (or on the reverse side try to be intentionally campy)would be deemed pretty lame.

I mean you could do a stage production of THE EXORCIST and tell the entire thing from the point of view of the Mother in conversation with the priest while all the action involving the possessed little girl happened off stage. You could say its being done as a psychological exploration of the themes of faith rather than trying to be a horror story - and it could even be wonderful on its own terms.

But I still think audiences going to see it would call mutiny simply because of the place the property has in pop culture history.

I think the same thing of CARRIE.

All of this is a moot point for this Off Broadway revival, of course because its being done in a small theatre as part of an Off Broadway rep company's subscription based season. I'm sure it will sell out on novelty factor alone. But in terms of a future life on Broadway or in commercial theatre, unless the creative team finds a way to make the story work a horror musical without dancing around the big diasater at the end of it, the core audience who would go to see it on name recognition -- aren't going to be all that happy with it.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 3:04pm

I think the original Carrie was sold as a Horror sometimes (the TV advert) and as a serious musical other times 'The first serious drama since West Side Story', like i said before i dont think even they knew what they were doing.

Anybody going to watch a musical where people break out in to song must be pretty silly to think they are gonna go and be scared. They could make it tense which i believe they will do, but scary and musical dont really go together.

I don't think Carrie will sell on just the novelty because 90 percent of the people will just be seeing it as a new musical like they see any musicals, it's only us fans of Broadway who spend far to much time on messege boards who will know its history.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 3:11pm

Very respectfully, Songanddance, I have to say perhaps that would be true if this production were to open in the UK, but there is no way 90 percent of the audience for this show in the US would be seeing it without connecting it to the horror genre if Stephen King's name is anywhere included on any of the marketing materials for it. Stephen King's name is absolutely synonymous with the horror genre in the states.

I'm sure if a musical adapted from an Agatha Christie book opened in London you wouldn't be able to find 90 people anywhere who didn't think it would thus be a murder mystery...

[newintown]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 3:17pm

I agree with Michael Bennett - Carrie needs its element of horror in order to be more than just a dysfuctional mother/daughter tale.

And slamming doors, screeching strings, bursting light bulbs, etc. can be ominous and startling in a film, but in the theatre, they end up being more laughable.

Movies will always be more adept at startling and frightening audiences than theatre, simply because of the movie's technology to manipulate what the viewer sees and feels.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 3:25pm

MB i didnt mean people would not be seeing it knowing nothing about the book or film Carrie (its huge in the UK as well), i meant 90 percent of people going to watch it would know nothing about the musicals past.

All im saying is LB did not just appeal to fans of the film/book, same with Fame, Footloose, Catch me if You Can, Wicked etc, shows will find an audience if they are good enough.

newintown i guess you never saw Woman in Black, frightning on the stage, Deathtrap incredibly tense, Ghost Stories is pretty scary etc.

King himself has said Carrie is more a drama/thriller than horror, if they make it tense they will have done their job well as thats what the movie and novel did.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 3:26pm

In terms of a musical being scary - obviously SWEENEY was able to pull of that feat but it utilized a kind of operatic disonance in the writing that is a lot more sophisticated than anything in CARRIE (with the arguable exception of "Evening Prayers".

I personally feel that no matter how we interpret the potential of the property, Pitchford / Gore did mean for the musical of CARRIE to be scary or at the very leas to match the unnerving tone of the film.

I think Terry Hands had no idea how to make that work on stage and thats how he ended up with his bizarre concept which seemed to (perhaps unconciously)try to distract the audience from remembering the source material.

[songanddanceman2]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 3:40pm

I dont think Sweeney was scary at all, it was tense, but not scary, the music as you say added to it but thats about it.

I think it may be what we mean by scary, maybe we both see that word differently (like horror or thriller). Scary is hiding behind the sofa as you watch something so frightning tht you have to look away. Carrie was never that.

I do think they will go for tense, especially during the mother/daughter scenes.

"I think Terry Hands had no idea how to make that work on stage and thats how he ended up with his bizarre concept which seemed to (perhaps unconciously)try to distract the audience from remembering the source material."

LOL you may be right

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 11/10/10 at 3:45pm

I think people who experienced the original Broadway staging of SWEENEY would argue that it was pretty scary...

[THDavis]

Posted: 11/11/10 at 1:07am

I think it'd be an interesting choice and an easy way to scale down the size of the show by performing the show on a thrust or even in the round. The intimacy would really be present and when those moments between mother-daughter occur, you'd feel a sense of discomfort, almost as if you were prying in on a private scene (with the right actresses). The unsettling feeling would really benefit the "horror" attributes of the show.

Personally, I don't feel the story is scary at all, but it's meant to bare a sense of unease and shame. We've all picked on people and we've all known people who've had bad and sometimes even abusive parents. Carrie isn't a piece that makes you walk out of the theatre feeling uplifted, it needs to resonate with you and sort of bring you down with the severity.

That being said, there are definite rewrites that need to be made and I don't think any of us fans disagree. There's plenty of great material there, but also plenty that needs to be removed or desperately rewritten for the sake of the story that's supposed to be told. This story is supposed to be about Carrie. While the book talks in detail about Margaret, Chris, Sue, Billy, and Tommy, they're not what's important. It's about a girl with no one to go to, who puts aside everything she knows and finally finds some sort of solace and acceptance from her peers before they take it all away once more. It's her heartbreaking story, and the focus shouldn't continuously be taken away from that.

[tourboi]

Posted: 11/11/10 at 3:00am

To those who would compare Mazzie to McGovern, I ask... how? Where McGovern is harsh, ravishing, and terrifying at once, Mazzie is... well, dull. Sure, she sings Open your Heart, and When There's No One beautifully (and I particularly like the new, big key change in WTNO, too), her Eve Was Weak is just not that exciting (although that is partly because it sounds as if it's in a new key that just doesn't work to me). And I Remember... is also a bit on the dull side. Great song, but performed without zeal.

Same can be said, IMHO, for Ranson as Carrie. THDavis and I agree there... her voice just doesn't have the belty flavor the role seems so well suited for (and pales to Linzi Hately's thrilling performance).

Maybe it's true, and with more rehearsal they'll really "get" it. I hope so! But I can't, personally, help thinking that it's miscasting. But, that's simply my opinion.

[dramamama611]

Posted: 11/11/10 at 3:47am

I think it is so interesting that most folks here think Marin is the second coming in N2N (although not me) but in this context, she's awful?


I'm just sayin'.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 11/11/10 at 7:53am

Stephen King (I believe) on Carrie:

"Carrie White is a sadly mis-used teenager, an example of the sort of person whose spirit is so often broken for good in that pit of man- and woman-eaters that is your normal suburban high school. But she's also Woman, feeling her powers for the first time and, like Samson, pulling down the temple on everyone in sight at the end of the book."