Musicals that have aged poorly with time?- Page 6

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 10:22am

And yet I still love Cole Porter's references because the rhymes are always so dazzling. No clue who the hell he's talking about.

[kdogg36]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 11:16am

I think the problem for many of us is people's inability to understand context and shutting their eyes to anything that makes them uncomfortable, which, these days, in this grotesquely politically correct society, is just about everything.

bk, I do think you have a good point here: some people really are too sensitive about too many things. However - and this may just be my perception - it almost sounds like you actually preferred the days when casual racism, sexism, and homophobia were considered acceptable in mainstream entertainment. While I think people should be open-minded, I also think it's a sign of progress, not decay, that people today wince at certain things that used to make people laugh.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 7:28pm

HogansHero said: "@wonderfulwizard11-yes, of course, exactly.

@gaveston, when I remake GWTW you will be REQUIRED to not only watch it but like it. And you will not be allowed to comment on my decision to cast a white gay man as Prissy

 

"

Well, as I confessed above, Hogan, I've read the thousand-page novel several times in addition to seeing the film on a few occasions. I grew up with that Southern mythology and, nasty though it may be, I'm still a sucker for it if I don't think too much about the implications.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 7:43pm

QueenAlice said: "Gaveston, I think you are being generous when you give 40 as the cut off age for getting the references in LIL ABNER.  I think you would have to have been alive in the 1950s for any of that to resonate. Someone who is 40 would barely remember John Hughes films.

 

"

Well, okay, I'll grant one has to remember the 1960s. I first saw LI'L ABNER in about 1966 (I was 12 and had only a vague memory of the 1950s) and it made perfect sense to me. The LI'L ABNER comic strip was still being written by Al Capp and running in the daily paper.

***

Kad is right that a 17-year-old me had little idea what Yvonne de Carlo was singing about in "I'm Still Here". I did laugh at "First you're another sloe-eyed vamp/ Then someone's mother, then you're camp" because I took it as a reference to Yvonne de Carlo playing Lily Munster. (If Sondheim was indeed thinking of Joan Crawford, that may not be what he intended at all.)

Hell, I didn't even know what "sloe-eyed" meant. But my ignorance did not keep from loving the song and the show. It just sent me to reference books to look up "Brenda Frazier".

***

I think some of ya'll are taking the ending of MY FAIR LADY too literally. Eliza has stood up to Higgins and proved herself at least his match in "Without You". Higgins has realized his error in "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face".

By the time she returns, they are both well aware that the power of their respective positions has changed. And Eliza usually laughs at "Where are those damn slippers?!" So I think we should appreciate the irony in that scene and not assume Eliza has returned to play chamber maid.

Granted, it's a wholly American ending--"Love conquers all"--rather than Shaw's British ending--"Class conquers all"--but then it's an American musical, despite its setting. 

Updated On: 3/29/16 at 07:43 PM

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 7:49pm

Ah, yes, the "Straw Dogs" technique of romancing a woman.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 7:53pm

OlBlueEyes said: "If you haven't noticed any fascists lately you haven't been watching the GOP debates. Or Putin in Russia. Or the so-called "Islamic State". (Please note I wrote fascist with a small "f".)

The real fascists murdered millions of innocents. Some might think that you are using that label in a way that cheapens it when you use it to describe a clown and a would-be dictator forced to observe the trappings of democracy.

I have read that Oklahoma was a big favorite of servicemen during the war because it reminded them of what they were risking their lives to protect.

For me the Jud character makes Oklahoma my least favorite of the big five. I empathize with his lonely pining for the goddess that he can never have, and his envy of all those whose lives are superior to his. I regret that his tormentors leave the stage as hero and heroine, while he leaves as a corpse.

 

"

Well, if you're going to be so literal and PC about it, the real "Fascists" (capital F now) were a bunch of Italian clowns who couldn't defeat the ragtag Greek army. Mussolini was a tinpot dictator elevated only by Hitler's odd admiration for him.

But at this point, I have no idea why we are discussing this.

***

Your affinity for Jud might be seen as a sign of sociopathy. Yes, most of us can empathize with Jud's loneliness and heartbreak, but by the time he plots to stab Curley in the eye with his trick kaleidoscope, most of us get off the pity train. In the climax, he accidentally falls on his own knife while trying to murder Curly, so his death will strike almost all audience members as poetic justice.

Obviously, you're entitled to a different reading of the last scene; but I don't see what either of our views has to do with the play being "dated" or "corny".

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 7:58pm

Charley Kringas Inc said: "Ah, yes, the "Straw Dogs" technique of romancing a woman.

 

"

Oh, come on! 

Updated On: 3/29/16 at 07:58 PM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 8:01pm

Gaveston, I think we can appreciate without embracing the flawed romanticism of some of these old movies and shows because we know that when we watch (or read) GWTW we are not oblivious to 10 Years a Slave. As I have said, though, to me that's not the issue. Most folks don't want to watch offensive things, whether they are fed to us straight up or with "comment." It's not about context; it's about interest, and with astonishingly few exceptions we are not interested in musicals that portray ugly things. Is that a defect? Dunno.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 8:13pm

Hogan, I actually think GWTW is pretty extreme, especially on the page, where Mitchell (naively believing herself to be Tolstoy) devotes quite a few pages to the "happy condition" of slaves, whom no master would treat badly for fear of damaging his "property"!

Even in the film, one can't help but notice that the O'Hara slaves all stand around after Sherman's March, waiting for Scarlett to rescue them and tell them what to do.

In other words, yeah, I agree we can appreciate works of the past without subjecting them to strict contemporary rules of decorum. I just think GWTW is a particularly problematic example..

But taking umbrage at Higgins calling for his slippers, on the other hand, strikes me as silly. This is a moment between these two people at this particular time in this particular culture. It isn't an instructional guide for newlyweds.

The revelation of the Sondheim/Prince shows to me was that musicals could indeed be about ANYTHING, however dark or disturbing. (COMPANY and FOLLIES were my first Broadway shows. I realize there were serious shows before them, but I didn't grow up anywhere near NYC.)

Personally, I think PASSION is a masterpiece, so, yeah, I guess I'm okay with musicals about "ugly things". If only everyone else were!

Updated On: 3/29/16 at 08:13 PM

[funhamilton_rent]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 8:37pm

I think that The Book of Mormon will age very fast. Its isn't dated now, but it will be soon enough. There are lyrics about iPhones, Star Wars (mostly Star Wars), and The Lion King. Book of Mormon will stay open for a long time, but when it closes, it likely won't ever get a revival due to the jokes only making sense to this generation. Maybe there could be some re-writes, though. 

This entire phenomenon (jokes and lines only making sense to one generation) might also apply to In The Heights.

I also think that Spring Awakening, Hairspray, and Wicked will never age. I know this is random, so bear with me. Due to SA and Hairspray being written as period pieces, they can't age. And Wicked takes place in a made up place in an unknown time period (unless you count 'Before Dorothy Dropped In'. 

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 8:46pm

I was actually surprised when I read GWTW a few years ago (around the time of the dreadful musical version that played the West End) that the novel is a lot more rustic than I would have imagined. Certainly, its not all the technicolor moonlight and magnolia vision of the Old South that the film is.

But I understand BK's point -- as a case study example: on one hand, Margaret Mitchell's book is clearly rose-colored by 1930s nostalgic for a time period, "gone with the wind," but 21st Century morals are so horrified and guilt ridden by the mere concept of slavery, that any film made today that shows plantation life without depicting, in graphic detail, violence and evil perpetrated on slaves by their owners is considered insensitive.    

Both of these viewpoints are ultimately tied to the culture and beliefs of the time period from which the historical situation is being perceived.

 But does that make GWTW as a whole poorly aged?  I don't know -- it's still a great story.

 

 

Updated On: 3/29/16 at 08:46 PM

[HogansHero]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 9:43pm

you are a lot closer to the Mitchell text than I am. I read it once and done. 

And while I obviously understand your point about the Sondheim/Prince, let's not forget the track record financially. 

I do think that "small anachronisms" can be viewed as quaint (the sitcoms on endless repeat on cable), but the real problems in terms of viability with re-engineering occur when the offensiveness is organic and pervasive. I gave the example of Amos and Andy-we don't see that on even the most remote cable network.Maybe someone actually DID burn those. 

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 3/29/16 at 11:13pm

Gone With The Wind is a terrific film, and it's rightfully lauded, but I'd hardly expect them to remake it without working over the racist stereotypes, because that would be weird and bad.

[Jarethan]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 12:20am

OlBlueEyes said: "Carousel. I don't know. Carousel is performed a lot, due mostly to the score - "If I Loved You" and the Bench Scene - "Soliloquy" - and all the other well known songs that just seem to slide into place at the proper time. It may be one of icecream's period pieces. One you put you characters into small town New England at that point in time, you're pretty much stuck with the re-creation of their social mores.

Strange to having a lot of objection to Oklahoma, which really is dated in time as the second modern American musical after Show Boat, but that came into my head first. The plot is just a silly melodrama with the handsome young cowboy competing against the dark, evil and lonely farm hand for the fair Laurey.

It's not much of a contest. Surprising to me that a man as decent and compassionate as Hammerstein would create such a one dimensional villain and give him no chance at redemption.

That is not what dates it for me.  What does it the painfully corny triangles of Ado Annie, Will Parker, and Ali Hakim.  I literally can not sit through it.  Clearly, Oklahoma -- if you compare it to Show Boat or Porgy and Bess -- never had much of a story; without that score, no one would even remember that 100 performance flop from 1943.

"

 

[QueenAlice]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 12:28am

You should really read the original play "Green Grow the Lilacs" that OKLAHOMA is based on. Most of what you dislike was invented for the musical and its actually quite a beautiful story.

[Jarethan]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 12:29am

QueenAlice said: "I've seen a couple of productions of ANNIE GET YOUR GUN that were well done and made the corny old script and politics work (not the Bernadette Peters revival which drove me crazy).  And ANNIE GET YOUR GUN is still performed all the time.  So audiences must largely be responding to it still.   guess the answer to the question is -- if the show is no longer being performed regularly anymore - its at the very least a product of its time, and possibly has 'aged poorly.'

 

Certainly we almost never see revivals of a lot of the shows of the 60s and 70s -- AINT SUPPOSED TO DIE A NATURAL DEATH, APPLAUSE, RUNAWAYS, RAISIN,  WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN, HALLELUJAH BABY, etc.  I can only imagine its because these haven't aged 'well.'

I agree with you wother the exception of Hallelujah!  Baby!  I believe the reason the show was not a bigger hit was because the script needed work, but the message of the show and most of the numbers have not dated at all.  I think HB has a great, under appreciated score and could still be a hit if someone could improve the book...of course a couple of numbers could be deleted, e.g., the witches number.

"

 

[bk]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 12:54am

kdogg36 said: "I think the problem for many of us is people's inability to understand context and shutting their eyes to anything that makes them uncomfortable, which, these days, in this grotesquely politically correct society, is just about everything.

bk, I do think you have a good point here: some people really are too sensitive about too many things. However - and this may just be my perception - it almost sounds like you actually preferred the days when casual racism, sexism, and homophobia were considered acceptable in mainstream entertainment. While I think people should be open-minded, I also think it's a sign of progress, not decay, that people today wince at certain things that used to make people laugh.

 

"

I don't know what in any of my posts would lead you to believe that, so, yes, it IS just your perception and and almost sounds like you're accusing me of these things.  I'm sure you're not, because that would be very bad form.  I'm talking about the ability to understand art by understanding context and not shielding our eyes and our oh so sensitive minds to such art, but learning from it.

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 10:40am

Jarethan said: "OlBlueEyes said: "Carousel. I don't know. Carousel is performed a lot, due mostly to the score - "If I Loved You" and the Bench Scene - "Soliloquy" - and all the other well known songs that just seem to slide into place at the proper time. It may be one of icecream's period pieces. One you put you characters into small town New England at that point in time, you're pretty much stuck with the re-creation of their social mores.

Strange to having a lot of objection to Oklahoma, which really is dated in time as the second modern American musical after Show Boat, but that came into my head first. The plot is just a silly melodrama with the handsome young cowboy competing against the dark, evil and lonely farm hand for the fair Laurey.

It's not much of a contest. Surprising to me that a man as decent and compassionate as Hammerstein would create such a one dimensional villain and give him no chance at redemption.

That is not what dates it for me.  What does it the painfully corny triangles of Ado Annie, Will Parker, and Ali Hakim.  I literally can not sit through it.  Clearly, Oklahoma -- if you compare it to Show Boat or Porgy and Bess -- never had much of a story; without that score, no one would even remember that 100 performance flop from 1943.

"
I agree with you, as I think I tried to say in one of my posts. Although Oklahoma is often called the breakthrough musical that integrated the songs with the plot, it is sandwiched between Show Boat and Carousel, which had much more substance to their stories. The thin plot of Oklahoma is really just for connecting the songs together.

I guess that Ado Annie was created because they needed a subplot and they maybe thought a little low humor, as in Shakespeare, would appeal to the masses.

 

"

 

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 11:31am

Well, if you're going to be so literal and PC about it, the real "Fascists" (capital F now) were a bunch of Italian clowns who couldn't defeat the ragtag Greek army. Mussolini was a tinpot dictator elevated only by Hitler's odd admiration for him.
But at this point, I have no idea why we are discussing this.
***
Your affinity for Jud might be seen as a sign of sociopathy. Yes, most of us can empathize with Jud's loneliness and heartbreak, but by the time he plots to stab Curley in the eye with his trick kaleidoscope, most of us get off the pity train. In the climax, he accidentally falls on his own knife while trying to murder Curly, so his death will strike almost all audience members as poetic justice.
Obviously, you're entitled to a different reading of the last scene; but I don't see what either of our views has to do with the play being "dated" or "corny".

We were discussing fascism only because you brought it up in your first post and I thought it was an unusual reference. Would you like to discuss next if I'm a latent sociopath? 

I've never referred to Oklahoma as "corny." It was a great achievement, just maybe not quite so great as some think.

 

I think that you've pretty much nailed it with the ending to My Fair Lady.

The ending of My Fair Lady is essentially the same as that of the 1938 film of Pygmalion, with Eliza going back to Higgins. But this was considered ambiguous because it was unknown whether Eliza had returned on her terms or on Higgins'. Shaw had retained complete control over the film and wanted no change to a happy ending, but he agreed to the ending of the 1938 film.

 

 

"

 

[Fan123]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 6:46pm

Shaw agreed to the ending in the sense of not bothering to make a fuss about it, but he wasn't a huge fan of it (https://books.google.com.au/books?id=if7763FoMmkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA141#v=onepage&q&f=false). In fairness, that doesn't necessarily prove the 'happy' ending to be bad, although I dislike it myself.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 8:06pm

best12bars said: "One question I think should be asked ... is "aging badly" the same thing as "couldn't be performed in a time setting of the present day?"

Shows like "A Chorus Line" or "How to Succeed" work well as period pieces, but you can't put them on in 2016 with it being a "current" setting. I would even say "Rent" works well as a period piece.

 

"
Right--which is my argument for Company as well .  As I said earlier, the current revisions from 95/96 in the licensed script already often feel dated already (the voice mail) and the actual textual changes (lyrics but especially dialogue wise) to update the piece from its 1970 "now" setting are oddly half-assed.  Joanne still reads Life and does very 1970 New York things like attending a Mahler concert (of course people still like Mahler, but it was briefly something of a phenomenon) and wearing kaftans, people have answering services, etc, etc.  But even more so the very fact that Bobby is 35, deemed full on middle aged, and still single certainly would not be as much of an issue in 2016 New York.  Add to that that Sondheim's music, seems to me anyway, to be influenced by late 60s Bacharach style pop...  (The gay scene--which some claim was written and cut from the original and some claim was brand new--regardless in it they use the term "ball" as a euphemism for sex which, at least to me, does not sound like anything a 30 something year old nowadays would say).  And, I admit, without the oh so 1970 rocksichord synth lose a lot.

The show still plays well enough if its revised form, but it gains nothing IMHO and I suspect in future decades they will just go full stop back to 1970.  Some major productions have verged that way--the Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration production reverted to the 70s and original orchestrations.  The NPH concert version also seemed to be vaguely set back in 1970.  I don't think they should go full 1970 kitsch by any means, but like most productions of A Chorus Line now, I do think it should keep that setting.

 

Updated On: 3/30/16 at 08:06 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 8:27pm

The idea that SHOW BOAT has a better book or a more serious story than OKLAHOMA! is ludicrous! SHOW BOAT, much as I may love it, was a prototype that wasn't fully realized for another 16 years.

Yes, there's a comic subplot in OKLAHOMA!, but one feels compelled to point out there is also a comic subplot in CAROUSEL. And jokes about how Mr. Snow stinks of fish are no more sophisticated; in fact, they are significantly LESS so, since Will and Ado Annie do address ideas such as gender roles and the coming of progress to the American West.

Why are Will and Annie any more "corny" than Nathan and Adelaide? I swear it's only a bias by urban viewers.

***

As most here know, published versions of PYGMALION at least USED to come complete with Shaw's rather lengthy essay on how Eliza couldn't possibly wind up with Higgins and how she will marry Freddy instead (as Higgins suggests in all versions of play and musical). I don't know when this was added to the printed edition.

[EricMontreal22]

Posted: 3/30/16 at 10:41pm

With Show Boat I think part of the issue is that it deals with more serious issues than Oklahoma!  So people perceive it as being a better book--but really I think if we're just looking at construction, and the writing itself, OK! is stronger.  Then again it's undeniable that, no matter when either was written, Show Boat is the more difficult work to adapt (and I'm not talking about subject matter here).  Still, reading the original Show Boat script as published for the first time in the Library of America Musicals box set I was pretty impressed.

I suspect similarly Ado Annie and Will come off as more corny than Carrie and Mr White due to the stuff around them.  If that makes sense.  Add to that that Carrie is genuinely sympathetic to Julie in a way Annie isn't to Laurie (again of course they are dealing with different subject matters here) and, at least in a few lines of dialogue and the dream ballet, they do address the more serious class prejudices (and other prejudices) that Snow's family, despite being mostly comic relief, have towards the protagonists.  And, I'd say the corny humour doesn't approach the stuff between Annie's dad and Ali Hakim.

(Your Guys and Dolls comparison loses me just because G&D is a entirely different tone of show than Oklahoma!  While I personally don't agree with these criticisms towards OK!, I think that's a poor argument.  People would probably call Nathan and Adelaide corny if they were transposed to Oklahoma! as well )

[OlBlueEyes]

Posted: 3/31/16 at 12:20am

The idea that SHOW BOAT has a better book or a more serious story than OKLAHOMA! is ludicrous. 

Oklahoma a musical with more gravitas then Show Boat? Stunning. Perhaps we are talking about a different Show Boat, one that doesn't deal with miscegenation, oppression of African Americans by wealthy white business owners, desertion of a pregnant wife, gambling, self-destruction through alcoholism, enduring and loyal friendships, and forgiveness to one who has done you a great wrong.

But then in Oklahoma we get that good lookin' cowpoke fixin' to take his best girl to the Sunday social in his new rig, after first makin' a dang fool out of that slow-witted and lonely farmhand who thinks that he's man enough to be courtin' her.

And I forget the songs in Oklahoma that surpass Broadway's greatest anthem. When Sinatra sang "Ol' Man River" at Carnegie Hall in a benefit concert for the NAACP, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wept.

But he probably would have had the same reaction if the song had been "Kansas City" or "Many a New Day" (which songs I like).

One of Paul Robeson's YouTube performances has drawn 3.3 million views, and one by William Warfield over a million.

Oklahoma! is often cited as the beginning of modern musical theater. But Peter Filichia, a long-time theater critic, said, “I think ‘Show Boat’ is more significant.”

“Show Boat” was a new thing: a musical play. Story came first, and it was serious — a racially charged tale of discrimination’s ills.

Songs arose organically out of the story and advanced it. Blacks were portrayed sympathetically and as fully drawn characters.

http://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/hammerstein-changed-musicals-with-oklahoma-and-show-boat/

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 3/31/16 at 8:54am

But, OlBlueEyes, now you're just arguing that tragedy is better and more important than comedy. I don't agree, but I know there are those who share that belief.

BTW, I trust it was clear I was only kidding about the sociopathy. I do find your regard for Jud a little odd, but I'm not really criticizing you here and especially not personally. We're just chatting.

****

Eric, I don't understand your last line: "People would probably call Nathan and Adelaide corny if they were transposed to Oklahoma! as well". That's what *I* said, so I'm sure you mean something else. Or maybe you meant OK the show while I was talking about the setting.

OKLAHOMA! isn't just a show about corny cowboys. It's a show about American identity and the rule of law. And it treats its subjects no less seriously because it is (or used to be) amusing. Nowadays we may expect a more sophisticated examination of identity, so I suppose that dates OKLAHOMA! a bit. But as much as I love the music, I see nothing to support the claim that CAROUSEL's book is superior. And I actually LIKE "The Highest Judge of All".