Revivals That Missed The Mark

MauraLovesMusicals said: "personally, i despise the godspell revival. the changes to songs (specifically prolouge/tower of babel), both lyrically and musically, disgust me. much of the original material was cut out, the costumes had no theme and the choreography...trampolines? seriously?"

Seconded.

laurensambrose said: "The 2009 revival of Guys and Dolls."

One of the prime examples of how you never know if you're going to get a great production or a bottom of the barrel production from Des McAnuff.

The Roundabout/Fiasco Theatre's INTO THE WOODS

The Kathleen Marshall GREASE

The Tina Landau BELLS ARE RINGING

Both Grease revivals (and the London revival).

I greatly admire THE MUSIC MAN and think it is often wrongly denigrated in comparison to WEST SIDE STORY. And I thought Dick Van Dyke would make the perfect Harold Hill in the 1980 City Center revival.

Well, Van Dyke was adequate, but hardly a revelation. But when Winthrop (played by a very young and unknown Christian Slater) burst out with an extended, jazz trumpet solo during the finale, it became clear how misguided the entire production was. In the final scene, the "think system" surprisingly produces a barely recognizable "Minuet in G"; what is both funny and heartfelt is that the townspeople love it anyway because THEIR children are playing it, not because Hill has somehow turning Winthrop into Winton Marsalis.

***

I also hate how British directors turn our soubrettes into bag ladies. This was the case with Ado Annie in the London production of Oklahoma! starring Hugh Jackman, and also with Meg in Vivian Matalon's 1980 Broadway revival of Brigadoon. In both cases, a girl of somewhat easy virtue was turned into a schizophrenic wandering the streets of a small town. Just because a female character isn't a virginal ingenue doesn't make her mentally ill.

And musical comedy requires no less integrity than musical drama.

Tagging back in with another Jesus musical...

I feel like the two most recent of the three JCS revivals Broadway has seen missed the mark (nobody seems to remember what the 1977 revival was like aside from people who were involved with it; the scanty photographic evidence suggests something that was part Tom O'Horgan "lite," part concert, part '73 film homage).

Most of the newest productions -- and I include the NBC special in this -- have been yawn-fests: highly pretentious, ponderous, self-serious, almost as though they're presenting Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy instead of a rock opera by two twenty-somethings. Very "trying to be Art with a capital A."

As insane as O'Horgan's "throw glitz and glamour at it, and hope no one notices the cracks in the plaster" / "I can justify my craziness to myself later" approach was, at least it wasn't boring. There was a lovely, informal "let's put on a show" atmosphere to the earliest productions, especially the pre-Broadway concert tours, but it seems like every time the show returns (and I would say definitely in productions that were at all supervised or endorsed by ALW / Really Useful), it's a little more polished, a little more sophisticated, a little more aimed at a theater crowd trying in vain to seem hip, and apologizing a little more for its youthfulness.

I'd like the rawness and the fun atmosphere to come back. And I'm not saying to play it for laughs or take the mick out of it; treat it respectfully (although, apologies to Ted Neeley whom I love, you can tell the story without creating too Christian an environment). But you can service the material properly and still give it a punky, irreverent edge.

Updated On: 12/7/18 at 10:11 AM

I'm a bit surprised to see people cite the revivals of Sunset Boulevard and Miss Saigon. While I would've preferred a fully-staged Sunset and I had minor quibbles with some of the vocal delivery in Saigon, I thoroughly enjoyed both (I even saw them more than once) and wouldn't say that either production "missed the mark".

'Sweeney Todd' with Patti Lupone and 'Company' with Raul Esparza. Doyle's visual concepts were static, the productions were sluggish and lifeless and having cast members play the instruments was a distraction.