Recent revivals to revive- Page 2

[poisonivy2]

Posted: 8/22/21 at 11:57am

One thing about Dolly was that it recouped but didn't make much money for investors. If they bring it back in any way they'll have to drive down the weekly nut which was at over $800,000.

[Rainah]

Posted: 8/23/21 at 2:05pm

If you want practical answers...

• Generally I think more positive/uplifting shows would do well, or ones big on purging negative emotions. Post 9/11 on bway pushed a lot of fluffier shows like Mamma Mia!
• You also want something that is easy and cheap to mount for a limited run
• And something with low running costs that will work with capacity limits.

Personally I would love to see Once On This Island but it's expensive to run and I suspect expensive to mount for the space is occupies. CITS is probably better off having some big star do something intimate and special to drive really high ticket prices for a low number of seats. And while I'd give my left leg to see Great Comet again, there's basically zero chance (though I think it's ripe for a revival and reinvention in 10-15 years)

Anastasia might be a good choice, that can't be too expensive to mount/run it's just screens. And popular with the younger crowd but charming enough not to run off the older crowd.

Hello Dolly... would it work without big stars? A big part of it was the Event nature of it. The King and I might be a better choice, if they still have any sets/costume lying around from that. 

As noted, Hedwig can be done very cheaply and is popular enough

Kinky Boots I agree is an excellent choice. Uplifting and not super expensive.

Not recently done but I think it may be time for a Mamma Mia! comeback. It's fun, it's inoffensive, it's loud, it's a guaranteed great time. Hairspray is also not a bad choice. It may also be time for a Newsies revival? 

I am not an avid follower of plays but would probably suggest The Play That Goes Wrong. 

 

 

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 8/23/21 at 4:13pm

Recent is a stretch, and it never made it to Broadway the first time around, but -- especially in memory of its conceiver / arranger, Louis St. Louis -- I'd be game to bring back Jesus Christ Superstar GOSPEL. Make Broadway Inspirational Voices the featured choir, fill the leads with terrific actors with killer voices. St. Lulu (his nickname) really hit on something interesting with his notion of bringing the JCS score into the world of contemporary gospel, incorporating a choir as a Greek chorus. It's particularly interesting to have it as "black gospel," not just any form of "Christian" music. It's a music born out of a tremendous amount of struggle. It's really good for capturing deep emotion, and the better parts of the show did that really well.

I'm aware of how incongruous it sounds. Like, anybody else who was savvy would say to that proposal, "You mean Godspell, right? That's a terrific fit for Godspell!" And that'd be very natural, especially considering Godspell, intentionally or not, was already very close musically to the early contemporary Christian music of its time. But it also wouldn't be as striking as doing JCS that way turned out to be. I'll quote a reviewer on the subject:

"What’s most miraculous, though, is how the whole concept came together – the seeming contradictions between the style and the play simply did not occur [...] I liked how the full choir filled out the sound of the group numbers [particularly “Hosanna” and “The Temple”]. I liked how the adjusted rhythms and orchestrations made the score sound new and exciting. And I liked how the 1960's sensibilities that infuse the show were left intact, without seeming dated, or non-contemporary. It was as if the seeming contradictions of a human/god character espousing ambivalent worldview/eternity view concepts were given a treatment that celebrated and honored those very contradictions and ambivalences. It was a tale of doubt and sadness told in a style that screams certainty and joy, an intricately designed piece that stirred the heart and the mind. It left me breathless."

Honestly, I couldn't agree more. [Though I maybe wouldn't go quite so far as someone who attended the show put it on Twitter: "The problem with Jesus Christ Superstar is that it ISN'T Jesus Christ Superstar Gospel. #wecannevergobacktobefore"]

Now, though this goes against the grain of the thread (albeit hardly the only reply to do so), I wouldn't make it a 1:1 replica of the production which played the Alliance Theatre in Georgia. They seemed to go very megachurch with it, whereas I'd stage it more like The Gospel at Colonus, kind of story theater-y, and I'd do what every JCS director, gospel or not, doesn't seem to do when it comes to the lack of a book: ABC -- always be compensating (with apologies to Baldwin and Mamet).

By which I mean, the general public doesn't exactly have the baseline Bible knowledge audiences had in 1970, and it was waning then; today, some people come to this show with barely a grasp (case in point: the audience member behind me at Ted Neeley's last hurrah in the States who leaned over and said to his daughter, "I never knew Jesus could fly," when he did a Mary Martin off the cross during "John 19:41" -- and believe me, he wasn't joking). As someone who's seen many productions, directors at once overthink their task and don't do enough thinking as they go about it; they overthink the audience's ability to relate to JCS without it being set vaguely in the present or future (like many of ALW's retreads tend to do), but they don't do enough thinking to realize they need to find some way to clearly flesh out the characters within their new context, or people may be even more lost than when they came in. I'd like to think I know how.

Updated On: 8/23/21 at 04:13 PM