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How can you say that without the set and stagging pictures in shows like Phantom and Les Miserables that they would be overrated. The set and stagging is what makes most shows great. Not so. My test is how well a community theatre can handle the same material. If it still affects me at that level, then there's more than just the flashy stagecraft. I've seen productions of FIDDLER done by high school students that were emotionally miles above LES MIZ, and they didnt have anything near big time sets.
Face it: an overrated show is one where it's all eye candy, and you have trouble remembering much else a week after you've seen it. It may be exciting
in the moment, but it has nothing to keep that memory of why you were excited going. CATS has some thrilling choreography, but it also only has one or two real melodies. Everything in PHANTOM blends together after a while because it all sounds so much alike.
But it's interesting the generational response to a show like MAMMA MIA. Personally, I love it because it doesnt pretend to be anything more than it is: a collection of Abba songs glued onto a paper thin storyline. You know *exactly* what you're getting the moment you enter the theatre -- nothing more, nothing less... as opposed to the roundly heard self-importance of SPRING AWAKENNG, which to me anyway is one of the weirdest, most incomprehensible stabs at a "rock musical" since DUDE. And I will lay easy money that ten years from now, a thread like this will say that SA was as bad an idea as CATS is considered now, while MAMMA MIA will happily be wandering the rep and community theatre and high school circuit... again, with no pretensions of being anything more than what it is.
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