Posted: 4/24/17 at 7:26pm
Alexander Lamar said: "I wouldn't mind seeing a show about the drama behind this. "
This sounds exactly like the kind of program that 54 Below should run...
Posted: 4/25/17 at 3:02am
Lot666 said: "This is very sad for Mr. Sprecher, who has been working away at this for a very long time. I do, however, hope that someone finally gets the show on stage.
"
Well said. Thank you.
Posted: 4/25/17 at 7:55am
broadwayboy223 said: "So if it's never ever going to happen why do they keep posting on the Rebecca page?"
It's never going to happen because the all-seeing, all-knowing arbiters of the BWW.com chat board have spoken. So let it be written, so let it be done.
Updated On: 4/25/17 at 07:55 AM
Posted: 4/25/17 at 9:06am
Nobody said never. A lot of people said probably not. Fan or not, is it that hard to disagree after looking at the sheer amount of bad luck it has endured already? Same thing as Dance of the Vampires (one of Rebecca's authors worked on that show) -- tainted, at least for the moment, and anyone who tries to touch it is tainted by association.
May it happen? Yes. Is it happening in the next five to ten years? Probably not. The stench of failure (and, in Rebecca's case, scandal) has to leave first. (And in the case of Vampires, it may never do so, since it is frequently being cited as an example of the reason vampire musicals don't work on Broadway.)
Updated On: 4/25/17 at 09:06 AM
Posted: 4/25/17 at 11:02am
Haha. Of course not. I'm not shallow. :)
Posted: 4/25/17 at 11:49am
I'd love to see this tour if it were to ever resurface and not necessarily have been on Broadway.
Posted: 4/25/17 at 11:53am
Lot666 said: "broadwayboy223 said: "So if it's never ever going to happen why do they keep posting on the Rebecca page?"
It's never going to happen because the all-seeing, all-knowing arbiters of the BWW.com chat board have spoken. So let it be written, so let it be done.
"
Come on, you have to admit that this isn't the type of new musical that would succeed on Broadway today. I love the bombastic sung-thru shows of the 80s and early 90s, but lately they have been flops. Look at dr. Zhivago. Look at Tale of Two Cities. Both were well produced shows, neither could survive.
Besides that, you also have to admit that the show's history makes this poison to any investor. If you had a million bucks to throw at a show, would you choose to invest in a show that has had a history of trouble raising funds, and then was involved in a fund raising scandal that made the news? Would that honestly seem like a wise way to invest money to you? I sure wouldn't do it. If you were a credible actor who has been working on building a name for yourself, is this the show you would want to attach your name to at this point? Only if the money was amazing.
Any small chance that this show had on Broadway is gone. IF, by some small chance, a producer dies pick it up, and he or she gets it on a Broadway stage, the style of show it is will be it's end.
Posted: 4/25/17 at 4:33pm
VWB won't give in the rights to Sprecher I don't think again (they extended at least 4 times to my knowledge through the entire ordeal - going back to 2008!!!). Their two largest titles on Broadway (and likely their only two that could be performed in NY, both with lyrics/book by Michael Kunze) have terrible reputations now: Dance of the Vampires and Rebecca.
They globally have been very protective of their other properties (Mozart (also Kunze & Levay), Rudolf (Wildhorn/Murphy), especially Elisabeth (also Kunze & Levay) every since the Dance fiasco years ago, where Kunze was even brought in last minute to "fix."
Kunze has done so much good for musical theatre globally - he's translated A Chorus Line, Assassins, Into the Woods, Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love... quite a shame!
Posted: 4/25/17 at 4:43pm
Well, at least two of the other properties you named probably wouldn't play America; Elisabeth and Rudolf both relate largely to European royalty, and the sad fact is that most (not all, but most) Americans don’t like history lessons in their entertainment. Problem is, that's the crowd buying tickets these days. In the case of the former, the story is so rooted in European history and lore, and a historical figure that is so little-known in our country (Sissi was and is an icon in Europe, but here she's a mere curiosity at best, unlike, say, Queen Elizabeth I or Marie Antoinette), that I just don't think the general American public would buy it. (In the case of the latter, it's all that plus a Wildhorn score; Rudolf is basically Box Office Poison: The Musical as far as Broadway is concerned.)
Mozart might work, but we've already had Amadeus suck all the juice out of that lemon, I think, and it doesn't help that the show's structure basically apes that of Jesus Christ Superstar, lacking only an obvious Judas figure (oddly, the French Mozart musical sort of places Salieri in a similar position, and then utterly abandons any other resemblance).
Posted: 4/25/17 at 4:57pm
Sorry if I wasn't clear with that - those musicals will never play in English language productions. My point was after the Dance fiasco they are very protective of the look, content, etc. of their productions.
They've learned a lot from properties like Sister Act, which ironically VBW was hoping something like Rebecca could turn into something like what that did for Stage Entertainment (which brought Rocky to Broadway as well).
