Michael Bennett's SCANDAL

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 8/5/10 at 3:13pm

Tootling around the Wikipedia, I looked at Michael Bennett's entry and was surprised to find this bit:

"In 1985, Bennett abandoned the nearly-completed musical Scandal, by writer Treva Silverman and songwriter Jimmy Webb, which had been developing for nearly five years through a series of workshop productions. The show was sexually daring, and apparently Bennett's best work, but the conservative climate and the growing AIDS panic made it unlikely commercial material."

ANY odd chance someone here saw the workshops? (paging PJ!) Anything in the Bennett bio's that shed some light on this show? Very curious here.

[Mildred Plotka]

Posted: 8/5/10 at 3:21pm

There's a huge chapter on it in Mandelbaum's Bennett book. This musical has long fascinated me even though I've never heard any of the music. Swoozie Kurtz was the lead.

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 8/5/10 at 3:23pm

Voila! A typo-ridden blog entry from BWW

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/5/10 at 11:34pm

There was a whole long thread about it a year or so ago. I'll see if I can find it in the Search.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/5/10 at 11:37pm

Here 'tis.
Michael Bennett and Jimmy Webb's Scandal! (With Swoozie Kurtz)

[twinbelters]

Posted: 8/6/10 at 5:28pm

Sounds really interesting. I find it fascinating that Bennett found out that he was HIV positive while making a musical about sexual liberation. What remains of the musical should be made into a backstager film with the Bennett story as the framework.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/6/10 at 5:46pm

There were so many things that could have been done with the story line, but with the anti-sex backlash of the '80s, and professional scolds like Larry Kramer demanding (ever so realistically) that gay men should never have sex ever again, well, I understand how Bennett's work ground to a halt.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 8/6/10 at 7:01pm

Larry Kramer would blame Streisand.

[uncageg]

Posted: 8/6/10 at 7:50pm

I just read the bennett book earlier this year. That was a good chapter in a very good book.