^ And think everyone else's stinks, apparently.
My condolences to the cast and crew of
Rebecca. It stinks to lose a gig, however crappy the show may be depending on your opinion of it. And regardless of an audience's opinion of it, the talent involved has to (at least pretend to) believe in it to get themselves through their day. Ms. Mason, though I'm sure you're not at all discouraged by the words of anonymous Internet chatters, I'll just remind you that comments on talent should never be made by those who likely have none.
Re: the alleged misdeeds of one Ben Sprecher, I will not join in any gleeful grave-stomping as I did with Ken Davenport's misguided revival of
Godspell (that one's for you, Namo; who loves ya, baby?). I'm sure of two things: 1) desperation pushes little boys who want to play in the big leagues into dangerous arms, and 2) there is definitely more going on here than meets the eye. One can only hope Mr. Sprecher and his partners in Global Broadway Productions have learned their lesson. Ben, don't take money that isn't verified to the utmost extent of verification; Mr. Sprecher's partners, ask for fund verification in future like you're agents of the federal government and he's being heavily audited, with extreme prejudice, by the IRS. I don't care if you have to hold face to face meetings, ask for birth certificates and Social Security numbers, or pay, like, twenty bucks for a background check from an Internet service: thoroughly "vet" the people coming to the table.
And now, a special notice for Michael Kunze, for whom I feel especially sorry. This is twice that he's been screwed out of a Broadway opening he can be proud of. There was this, and ten years ago there was
Dance of the Vampires. At least this time he was approaching Broadway with something even remotely resembling the show he wrote.
As his bio on
Rebecca's website blithely noted, he was not involved in the NY production of
Vampires, by which I mean (quoting an article linked below) he spent most of the NY show's development time sitting at home in Germany waiting, assuming the producers would call when it was time for him to come in, that they would ask for advice or at least tell him rewrites were being done, seeing as he was the librettist and held rights to the book. But it was as if he wasn't there and the piece hadn't already been successful for years in Europe. They sent him the new version, which was nothing like his
Vampires ("It was not my story... everything was different... the whole style of the play... they added silly new dialogue"), and he got (understandably) pissed. He took out a preliminary injunction to stop the musical from opening, only to be told by the producing team, "Sure, you could do that, but if we're gonna perform your version, then you also have to put up $10 million in the event the show flops so everybody's covered." Now, as a producer, I've already had to pull a few tricks early in my career that I'm not proud of, but that's no trick. That's blackmail and extortion.
It's a pity that both of Mr. Kunze's Broadway outings have been brought down by destructive behavior. Hopefully, he'll write something with crossover appeal one day that won't be perceived as Euro-pop and might actually play here without a hitch.
Tot oder lebendig
Formerly gvendo2005
Broadway Legend
joined: 5/1/05
Blocked: After Eight, suestorm, david_fick, emlodik, lovebwy, Dave28282, joevitus, BorisTomashevsky, Seb28
Updated On: 10/6/12 at 03:04 AM
