Musicals with Confusing Plots- Page 2
Musicals with Confusing Plots
Musicals with Confusing Plots#25
Posted: 2/20/15 at 1:01am
If/Then didn't confuse me but it has others. And either way it's all about twists and turns so it would be a good fit. I mean a bunch of songs are sung by two different versions of the same person.
"What If?" or "Some Other Me"
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/30/08
Musicals with Confusing Plots#26
Posted: 2/20/15 at 3:11am
Here are some song ideas, many from shows already mentioned. These aren't 'bad confusing', but most do take a few unexpected turns and/or rapidly convey complex information.
Simple (Anyone Can Whistle)
Prologue (Natasha, Pierre...)
Your Fault (Into The Woods)
Notes / Prima Donna (Phantom of the Opera)
The Corrupt Bargain (Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson)
Duet for One (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue)
Roosevelt Petrucius Coleslaw (Caroline or Change)
Now (A Little Night Music)
Sounds While Selling (She Loves Me)
Let's Improvise (Kean)
The worst pies in london (Sweeney Todd)
War is a Science (Pippin)
Gesticulate (Kismet)
Then there are songs which can be played as if the singer is daftly confused or clueless for laughs, such as On My Way (Paint Your Wagon), Something's Coming (West Side Story) and Shpadoinkle (Cannibal!).
Additionally, some comedy songs can be played as 'confusing' because of their deliberate non-sequiturs - eg As We Stumble Along (The Drowsy Chaperone) and The Trapper Song (Cannibal!).
And some numbers which make sense in context could be played without preamble to confuse, such as Rock Island (The Music Man) and The Rain In Spain (My Fair Lady).
Broadway Star Joined: 7/14/06
Musicals with Confusing Plots#27
Posted: 2/20/15 at 10:51am
"70 Girls, 70" is not confusing on stage. They decide to shoplift to get money to buy/save their apartment building and things escalate to after hours fur heist.
It might have been confusing to see David Burns actually have a heart attack and die on stage during the original broadway run.
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/29/05
Musicals with Confusing Plots#28
Posted: 2/20/15 at 1:35pmI haven't seen it but I would guess The Golden Apple, as it's the Iliad meets the Odyssey.
Musicals with Confusing Plots#29
Posted: 2/20/15 at 7:55pm
I saw it years ago when the York revived it, henrik. At the time I had read neither of Homer's works (though of course I'd read summaries of the basic stories).
Yes, it was confusing, at least to me.
Musicals with Confusing Plots#30
Posted: 2/20/15 at 8:03pm
CURTAINS baffled me. I mean, I worship Kander and Ebb, I had a good time at the show, and it's all good fun, but I made a huge "What the f*ck?" face when Deb Monk revealed to David Hyde Pierce...oh who even cares? It was just too damned confusing and bizarre.
Ditto 70, GIRLS, 70, which may be my favorite K&E score, but is just too convoluted to follow-- at least in synopsis form. I agree Mr. Nowack.
I've always wanted to see a production of the original ON A CLEAR DAY... stoned. Or at least read the original script stoned. Maybe I'd get a peek into Lerner's mind. (I also keep meaning to smoke a joint or take a sh*tload of pills before I read my copy of 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE.)
David Ives did a very nice job of making some sense of ANYONE CAN WHISTLE. Maybe that's why Arthur was so bitter and jealous that the Encores! staging succeeded.
Musicals with Confusing Plots#31
Posted: 2/20/15 at 8:34pm
I saw the original CLEAR DAY in professional stock (John Cullum starred) when I was 15. I knew the score from the record, but the movie hadn't been made at the time and yet I didn't find the show confusing in the least. In fact, the book cleared up things that seemed odd in the score.
Judging from poster's comments, it seems the "revisal" was the confusing version. Alas, I didn't get to see it.
Broadway Star Joined: 7/21/04
Musicals with Confusing Plots#32
Posted: 2/21/15 at 1:28pm
VIA GALACTICA: A thousand years in the future, an intergalactic garbageman who is the descendant of ancient space heroes has his garbage ship spacejacked from an Orwellian Earth on which everybody has blue skin and has their emotions controlled by giant spinning cone-shaped hats, and is taken to a forgotten asteroid inhabited by a band of multicolored space hippies on trampolines planning an interstellar journey to colonize a new solar system with progressive ideals to which they will travel in suspended animation onboard a giant space ark designed by an old scientist who no longer has a body and whose wife desperately wants a child that, being a head in a box, he is unable to provide her, but which the descendant-of-space-heroes garbageman could by impregnating the wife with a worthy son but only after the garbageman proves his worth by completing one final pre-journey mission in retrieving the wife's father from a different forgotten asteroid because he is a renowned astroagrarian famous for making dead planets grow organic plant life and can help plant the literal seeds of a new civilization in their new home a thousand light years away in the Aldeberan galaxy.
Contrasted with the plot of the same composer's DUDE in which - well, there's a guy named Dude. And sometimes he's a twenty-two year old man and sometimes he's Michael from "Good Times", and there's God and the Devil and Nell Carter and a couple of actors who think they're supposed to be performing "Richard III" and it sort of sounds like "Hair" and it sort of looks like "Hair" but for some reason there are several chickens and a small pig (and somebody in a Mr. Peanut costume) and it ends with the Devil being crucified on a theatre seat.
I so wish I had been around for the '70s.
Updated On: 2/21/15 at 01:28 PM
Musicals with Confusing Plots#33
Posted: 2/21/15 at 2:03pmI'd really love to read the script for 70, Girls, 70 because I have no idea what the context is for almost any of those songs. Also, I don't know if I'd put 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the "confusing plots" category, more in the "creators don't know what to do with all this material" category. It's definitely lacking in shape.
Broadway Star Joined: 7/14/06
Musicals with Confusing Plots#34
Posted: 2/21/15 at 5:19pm
There was nothing confusing about the revisal of "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever."
The only difference is that Daisy is now David. Dr. Bruckner, still falls in love with a woman that he was in a previous life. So, under hypnosis, Melinda, pops up from behind the couch and steps into the action. This makes it easier to follow since Daisy & Melinda aren't played by the same actor and the roles can't be confused.
Musicals with Confusing Plots#35
Posted: 2/21/15 at 6:45pm
I think Peter Pan is really hard to follow once they fly out of the window into Neverland.
Also, I can never follow what is going on in Suessical.
And unless you catch the details in the Witches Rap song in Into the Woods it can be really hard to follow. It's usually too fast. They slowed it down A LOT in the move.
Broadway Star Joined: 11/9/10
Musicals with Confusing Plots#36
Posted: 2/21/15 at 6:54pm
IN MY LIFE the musical
Updated On: 2/21/15 at 06:54 PM
Musicals with Confusing Plots#37
Posted: 2/21/15 at 10:52pm"Nick and Nora" The story was so convoluted that by the time you found out who had killed the Faith Prince character, you no longer cared. You just wanted the thing to end.
Broadway Legend Joined: 10/11/11
Musicals with Confusing Plots#38
Posted: 2/22/15 at 1:26am
I love Sondheim but I have to agree
Anyone Can Whistle's plot is dizzying
Musicals with Confusing Plots#39
Posted: 2/22/15 at 1:54am
The original 1988 staging of CARRIE sure made things confusing as all get out.
Out For Blood....Wow...Just....Wow.
Musicals with Confusing Plots#40
Posted: 2/22/15 at 9:27pmI'd still like to hear more about the concept of this show. Are they adding narration about the confusing plots to amuse the audience? Because otherwise, I don't see how a poorly written book influences my enjoyment of a song taken out of a show.
Swing Joined: 9/11/14
Musicals with Confusing Plots#41
Posted: 2/23/15 at 1:28pmSpring Awakening had me a bit confused the first time I watched it.
Videos
.jpg?format=auto&width=365)
