Musicals that have aged poorly with time? — Page 7

Absolutely! Couldn't agree with you more about Finian's Rainbow, especially the last iteration a few years ago. I saw better productions in High Schools than that tripe.

Updated On: 3/31/16 at 01:09 PM

Many would agree that the first act of Show Boat is near perfect, but the second act is kind of "do it yourself." There was a short list of items that had to be in it, but you had a lot of leeway after that. On that list: Gaylord had to leave a pregnant Magnolia, Julie has to sing "Bill" (because it's so popular), Gaylord and Magnolia have to reunite after some time between two and twenty years and there had to be a big closing production number with Kim. Maybe a few more - Magnolia singing "After the Ball" to her father - but it's pretty open and you even have an excess of songs written for the show that you can pick and choose from.

But the plot of Oklahoma is lighter than a falling leaf.

What would have happened if Oklahoma had been a box office flop? No Carousel?, No South Pacific? No West Side Story? No mentor for Sondheim? Stupid question.

Amazing how attitudes about some o these shows have changed in my time away from these boards. If you were, for example, to suggest that RENT was anything less than perfection in its initial run, the proverbial pitchforks and torches would be raised.

To be crushingly honest, I dont think a lot of the R&H canon will survive to the end of the current century. As others have noted, all of them are a bit creaking to begin with, and unless R&H themselves were more brilliantly subversive than one might think in exploiting attitudes about women and minorities, we might instead get revues of their songbook instead.

Most of the 60s and 70s? A few might survive as curiosity pieces, but that's about it. HOW NOW DOW JONES has some great songs ("Rich is Better" and a theme that could still still play today, but it would need so much work to make it worthwhile. I noted that FALSETTOS is getting a revival: I would suggest seeing it now, because it too is starting to show a few cracks in the patina.

Bottom line: I dont think any show will last much in perpetuity, not even (gasp!) WICKED or (horrors!) SPRING AWAKENING (which IMHO has a seriously tedious score when performed now). I may personally love WHAT MAKES SAMMY RUN, but even staging it as a period piece would drastically short sell its virtues.

Well what will also become interesting is that in this century, the R&H catalogue will enter into the public domain, which means that future artists will be able to take the bones of their work and freely adapt it anew to speak to audiences in 'their time.'

Love South Pacific, but I think the depiction of racism is lost on the current generation.

Well, what else would a musical, or an opera be remembered for other than story and score? Show Boat, approaching its 90th birthday, is still going strong. It has outlived everyone who saw it on opening night.


Yes, but in this instance, I do see a difference between the story and the script. The story of SHOWBOAT in all its productions has followed fairly closely (more or less) to the original novel by Edna Ferber, which is grand, sweeping and does tell a compelling story. But the script of SHOWBOAT has constantly been rewritten, so we can't hold it, as a piece, in the same regard as we might the great script of musicals like GYPSY or 1776. For certain, nobody today is watching the show be performed 'as it was' in 1927.



I suppose you could say SHOWBOAT is actually the classic musical that has aged the "most" poorly with time, which is why the script is revised every time it is performed. There were things some audiences, even in 1927 found 'offensive,' about the production, and as early as the 1930s (and certainly by the first major Broadway revival) many things were changed, including the elimination of leading roles being played by white actors in black face (the role of Queen was originally portrayed by a white actress in black face who went by the popular stage name "Aunt Jemima.)



So while I agree SHOWBOAT is going strong, I would say its actually the grand-daddy of musical reinvention. There may be timeless things about the music and the story, but it has constantly required rewriting to remain socially acceptable to contemporary audiences.

Updated On: 4/1/16 at 10:48 AM

The thing about older pieces of art whose content reflects the racism/sexism/homophobia/what have you of the time is that you can't just throw it on stage without considering those aspects and claim that people who don't want to watch just don't want to remember or think about the racism of the era. You can absolutely take a piece of art with crappy, period-based undertones (or overtones) and exhibit it with thoughtful commentary to open those up and educate, but you have to actually be thoughtful and conscious about it. If you produce a piece with caricatures and stereotypes without thinking about it and people don't like seeing it, they're not trying to forget the reality of previous generations of oppression; they're objecting to the production doing nothing to address it. If a caricature is presented without some sort of effort of thoughtfulness or commentary, then it's still just a harmful caricature.

QueenAlice said: "Well, what else would a musical, or an opera be remembered for other than story and score? Show Boat, approaching its 90th birthday, is still going strong. It has outlived everyone who saw it on opening night.

Yes, but in this instance, I do see a difference between the story and the script. The story of SHOWBOAT in all its productions has followed fairly closely (more or less) to the original novel by Edna Ferber, which is grand, sweeping and does tell a compelling story. But the script of SHOWBOAT has constantly been rewritten, so we can't hold it, as a piece, in the same regard as we might the great script of musicals like GYPSY or 1776. For certain, nobody today is watching the show be performed 'as it was' in 1927.


So while I agree SHOWBOAT is going strong, I would say its actually the grand-daddy of musical reinvention. There may be timeless things about the music and the story, but it has constantly required rewriting to remain socially acceptable to contemporary audiences."



Well, since I have no formal knowledge of the theater, I guess I'll just accept it that a well-constructed musical scores points against a poorly constructed one. I've seen the '36 and '51 films and the 1994 Hal Prince revival. A Times review of the Prince production acknowledges the differences between every production, although he does not criticize the musical for this. He also brings up as a weakness the presence of vaudeville just as Kad commented.

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/03/theater/theater-review-show-boat-classic-musical-with-a-change-in-focus.html?pagewanted=all

A little odd that the same man wrote the books for both productions about sixteen years apart. And Hammerstein already had a considerable collection of musicals on his resume in 1927.

The inconsistencies of the different versions didn't bother me. It is kind of fun see different versions with different songs, as long as the same story is being told.

But that meandering second act can be bothersome. Not unexpectedly, the MGM film took the most liberties, I think, especially in reuniting the couple only a few years later so they could live happily ever after. What would you expect from MGM, which, in creating the film version of Rodgers and Hart's Babes in Arms, threw out all five of the songs that would go on to be standards.

Updated On: 4/1/16 at 01:30 PM