Obscure musicals- Page 2

[RaisedOnMusicals]

Posted: 9/19/10 at 5:44pm

Interestingly, Subways was a Comden and Greene musical and it recouped with a small profit. But very few have heard of it.

At least Carnival (which I saw with Anna Maria Alberghetti) had a hit song, "Love Makes the World Go Round."

[Jose]

Posted: 9/19/10 at 6:33pm

LOVE LIFE
Music by Kurt Weill, Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner.
Oct. 1948 - May 1949 (250+ performances)
46th Street Theatre (today's Richard Rodgers)
Directed by Elia Kazan
Choreography by Michael Kidd
Scenery by Boris Aronson
Costumes by Lucinda Ballard

There's never been a full recording of the score which contains some wonderful songs, however one can be cobbled together from several of the Ben Bagley albums (Weill Revisited, Lerner Revisited). One of the early "concept" musicals.

If only someone at City Center's Encores would take a risk and consider LOVE LIFE.

Read more on Wikipedia or IBDB

LOVE LIFE on Wikipedia

[twinbelters]

Posted: 9/19/10 at 8:00pm

Subways recouped? I'm pretty sure it did not. Opening Night on Broadway by Steven Suskin reports a six month run and a loss
on investment.

I thought Love Life did have a concert treatment. With Howard McGillin, I think?

[SNAFU]

Posted: 9/19/10 at 8:22pm

Celebration! is kind of obscure.

[sondheimboy2]

Posted: 9/20/10 at 12:33am

I think that "Subways" much like "How Now, Dow Jones" returned some, but not all of the money to the investors.

I know that there was a Philadelphia production of "Love Life" back in the '80s or '90s with Debbie Gravitte. There's also an album called "Alan Jay Lerner Sings His Own Songs" that has several "Love Life" songs on it.

An obscure musical that has been spending a lot of time in my CD player is "The Smart Set" a flop from the '50s with music by Tommy Wolf and lyrics by Fran Landesman. It was about the beatniks and had a jazz band instead of an orchestra.

It's best known for three things:
a) It starred Larry Hagmann (back when he was just Mary Martin's son)
b) The song "The Ballad of the Sad Young Men" came from it
and
c) The song "Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most" was cut from it.

[twinbelters]

Posted: 9/20/10 at 2:43am

The Nervous Set

[RaisedOnMusicals]

Posted: 9/20/10 at 10:05am

According to the Wikipedia entry for "Subways are for Sleeping", it "returned a small profit", in some measure due to David Merrick's publicity stunt:

"Producer David Merrick and press agent Harvey Sabinson decided to invite individuals with the same names as prominent theatre critics (such as Walter Kerr, Richard Watts, Jr. and Howard Taubman) to see the show and afterwards used their favorable comments in print ads. Thanks to photographs of the seven "critics" accompanying their blurbs (the well-known real Richard Watts was not African American), the ad was discovered to be a deception by a copy editor. It was pulled from most newspapers, but not before running in an early edition of the New York Herald Tribune. However, the clever publicity stunt allowed the musical to continue to run and it eventually turned a small profit."

Obviously, I have no idea how accurate the statement is about returning a profit. Wiki is not an authoritive source, as we all know.

[sparrman]

Posted: 9/20/10 at 10:38pm

"Robert and Elizabeth". A rather glorious score, never performed on Broadway.

[kristin_bernadette]

Posted: 9/20/10 at 10:46pm

Bare: A Pop Opera (not sure how obscure this is considered)
First Lady Suite

[newintown]

Posted: 9/21/10 at 9:44am

There are no "obscure musicals," merely musicals you have not yet heard.

Every show is familiar to someone.

I saw Legs Diamond. It could have been fun (maybe) if only Peter Allen hadn't cast himself - he was just awful. I remember one review called him "the only man in America with less charisma than George Bush" (that would be Daddy Bush).

[twinbelters]

Posted: 9/24/10 at 6:26pm

Did anyone pick up Legs Diamond on CD after reading this thread?

I just got Blackbeard as someone recommended, and was delighted to find that at least the first disc is interesting. Not yet listened to the second. Thanks!

Obscure is relative, yeah, but history heralds only a small number of Broadway musicals I think.

[allofmylife]

Posted: 9/24/10 at 8:21pm

"Bravo Giovanni" has a lush and gorgeous score.

"The Four Musketeers" a British show with Harry Secombe also has a cool score. It's all 60s schmaltz, no doubt, but much of it is quite catchy. Why? Because it was written by Laurie Johnson, the guy who wrote the great theme music for "The Avengers" TV series.

[twinbelters]

Posted: 9/27/10 at 6:24pm

Someone bought some Legs Diamond off Amazon Marketplace in the last week because all the copies under a dollar are gone. I was listening to this CD earlier, and cracking up. I never get bored with it. Legs is def among my favorite guilty pleasure listens. Others would be Starlight Express OLC, Bajour, and Metropolis.

[Weez]

Posted: 9/28/10 at 4:01am

There are no "obscure musicals," merely musicals you have not yet heard.

Every show is familiar to someone.

That's a somewhat dumb thing to say. "Obscure" doesn't mean "only one person in the world has ever heard of it! As soon as that goes up to two, it's no longer obscure, even with a planetary population of nearly 7 billion!", y'know. :P

[newintown]

Posted: 9/28/10 at 10:41am

"That's a somewhat dumb thing to say."

Oh, I don't think so. Obscure is an utterly relative term, so there really is no such thing as a universally-accepted "obscure musical."

You may think Subways Are for Sleeping (just as a hypothetical, I'm not saying you do) is "obscure," but only because you don't have the cast recording and have never seen a production. Granted, it's not done often, but there are people (who knows how many? 100? 1000? 10,000, 100,000?) who have seen it, and know the score well. At what number do you (you personally) get to decide the show is "obscure?"

Heck, even Guys and Dolls can be unknown to some young folk who don't take time to explore what's out there - they may think it's obscure, but it's far from it.

[twinbelters]

Posted: 9/28/10 at 4:03pm

I don't buy that. History and reputation can either obscure or celebrate a musical. Since Guys and Dolls is a landmark show with several recordings that are always in print, and there's a movie plus copious revivals it is definitely not obscured. Subways is overshadowed by countless successful and better documented work. I see the point you're trying to make, but I don't think it holds. Spring Awakening and Next to Normal are obscure to me, but not obscure in the annals of Broadway history or contemporary Broadway culture. Now, mainstream American pop culture could give a rat's behind about any of this.

[newintown]

Posted: 9/28/10 at 5:09pm

Just going on some of the titles identified as "obscure" within this thread alone: Working, Legs Diamond, Floyd Collins, Hello Again, Goblin Market, Doonesbury, Romance In Hard Times, Grind, The Goodbye Girl, Carnival - I can't acknowledge the obscurity of any.

Carnival was a hit and featured a song sung by everyone at one time.

When I moved to NYC in the late 70s, everyone was singing the songs from Working for auditions and at piano bars - those hordes are still alive and still remember those songs. They can't be called obscure.

All the others in the list above generated great buzz (positive and negative) during their initial productions and haven't been forgotten by those who saw and discussed them.

So - again I say that using "obscure" is utterly relative. Perhaps you're 25 and you've never been to New York; still, the CD for Grind is available and the show is discussed in "Not Since Carrie." Just because one hasn't read that book doesn't mean the information isn't easily obtained. But the audience has to do some work; you can't just sit alone in your room waiting for knowledge to come to you. Otherwise, you'll know nothing but Jersey Shore. And everything else will be "obscure" to you.

[dave1606]

Posted: 9/28/10 at 10:39pm

I love this thread.

What are five flops everyone would deem must own? I am thinking about getting Kritzerland's Sugar..was that considered a flop in it's day?

I also have the concept recording of Imagine This, which was flopping while I was in London, but I never got a chance to see it.

[newintown]

Posted: 9/29/10 at 9:34am

Sugar made a bit of money, but was considered a critical flop, merely because the critics at that time wanted everything to be either Hair or Company (both excellent works, but not the entirety of good theatre).

[mallardo]

Posted: 9/29/10 at 12:38pm

Isn't age a factor in obscurity as well? Can a relatively new show be obscure? Maybe it will be reborn, revived, maybe it will get regional productions.

I'm thinking of a couple of LaChiusa shows I've seen that probably few others have seen - Little Fish and First Lady Suite and Hotel C'est l'Amour which has, to my knowledge, only had one production. Are they obscure or just sort of in limbo awaiting history's verdict?

[bwaylvsong]

Posted: 9/29/10 at 12:45pm

"Isn't age a factor in obscurity as well?"

Yes, and not just the age of the piece but the age of the audience, too. My 15-year-old cousin who considers herself a theater geek had never heard of "The Music Man" until she did it this summer. I nearly fainted when she told me she hadn't heard of it, except the song "Shipoopi" on Family Guy, which she had no idea was from a musical.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 9/29/10 at 1:41pm

I love the comments on Legs Diamond. I recognize it as a poor show (though the idea was a good one), but I always enjoy listening to the CD. Same with Metropolis and another not mentioned: the London cast recording of Windy City (musicalization of The Front Page). Some really good tunes on there.

What are five flops everyone would deem must own?

That's loaded with subjectivity, but if we're going with the "technical" definition of "flop", I believe all of the following should be in everyone's collection:

Goldilocks
She Loves Me (OBC or revival)
Into the Woods (OBC)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Do Re Mi (OBC)
On the Twentieth Century
Ragtime (OBC)
Mack and Mabel
Parade (Brown)
Caroline, or Change
Rags
The Secret Garden (Simon)
Merrily We Roll Along (OBC)
Chess (OLC)
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Legs Diamond
Big
Titanic
The Scarlet Pimpernel (OBC)
Jekyll and Hyde (2-disc)
Flahooley
Zorba (OBC or revival)
The Rothschilds
The Grand Tour
The Rink (OBC)
Romance/Romance
Aspects of Love
Passion (OBC)
Anyone Can Whistle (OBC or Concert)
Nick and Nora
Little Me
I Had a Ball
Flora, the Red Menace (OBC)
It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's Superman!
Paint Your Wagon
Candide (OBC)
Whoop-Up
Take Me Along
Wildcat
Subways are For Sleeping
How Now Dow Jones
All American
70, Girls, 70 (OBC)
Follies (OBC or Papermill)
The Wild Party (LaChiusa)
Blood Brothers (1988 or 1995 London cast)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (OBC)
Jane Eyre
Sunset Boulevard (I personally prefer OLC, but a case could be made for OBC)

[dave1606]

Posted: 9/30/10 at 1:38pm

Mister Matt,

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Some of the ones you did suggest are my favorites, including Ragtime, Parade, Titanic, Kiss of the Spiderwoman,Sunset Boulevard, and of course Blood Brothers (which is far from obscure or a flop in London, I saw the long running revival there a couple of years ago, and am, convinced everyone in the country has seen it multiple times).
Others I will definitely have to check out, Rags in particular is one that has always interested me.

What about the Diahann Caroll Sunset Boulevard? I keep seeing that at one record store in the city and have been eying it.

[Demitri2]

Posted: 9/30/10 at 7:58pm

"King of Hearts" was one of my favorite musicals Tamerlano. There are two things I particularly remember about it. First there was the incredible scenic design. The sets were awesome and beautiful in detail, lighting and color. You truly felt you were in a town somewhere in the French countryside. Second was a number where the cast had their heads only popping out from holes in a solid scrim. The singing faces went from floor level to the very top of the curtain scattered all about the stage. Very surreal which added to the show's dreamlike quality.

What also sticks with me for some reason was Millicent Martin's work ethics. I was seated orchestra row BB center (a TKTS last minute purchase) and damn!, even in her ensemble numbers with the full chorus all I could hear overall was her voice full throttle and LOUD singing for all she was worth. No saving the instrument for solos with this woman.

Having just seen the film at college beforehand I knew the work but wasn't at all familiar with the show. I saw the title listed on the half price ticket show list but was undecided until three cute chorus members approached me on line begging me to give the show a chance. I'm so glad they did or I may have seen "Platinum" instead that evening. There was a definite cult following noticeable at the theatre. There was also a bittersweet feeling of doom in the air with mention of a closing notice being posted backstage. All I know is I loved the show and everything about it.

[Demitri2]

Posted: 9/30/10 at 7:58pm

Sorry. Double posted.
Updated On: 9/30/10 at 07:58 PM