Should BIG, the musical, be revived on Broadway?

I saw the original production and I liked it a lot. I didn't see the tour, but I've read the revised script and I think it was better before they messed with it. I can't fathom a revival being successful, though.

After BIG, The musical had a brief run (about six months on Broadway) back in the mid-nineties, it went on the road, where the authors and composer continued to refine it and improve it.

Did you see the tour? I saw both and it was the opposite of being refined or improved. It was hacked to shreds, songs were awkwardly rewritten to ill-effect in order to accommodate the reduced number of children in the cast or even replaced relevant numbers with new songs that added nothing to the plot. The new sets were a day-glo green and orange gaudy mess. The elimination of most of the children in the cast drastically shifted the perspective of the show, which set it apart from the film in the first place. If you listen to both recordings, you can get an idea of how horribly they screwed up a decent show.

I really enjoyed the Broadway production. I think it is Maltby and Shire's best overall score (though the wildly uneven Baby includes their best individual songs). The use of the "time" device in the lyrics was coherent and inspired, though mostly cut out of the tour. The staging was wonderful, with two-story houses and an elaborate and enormous pop-up-book inspired set for FAO Schwartz (reduced to two small backyard slides in the tour). Stroman's work was wonderful and the cast was enormously talented. I would never see the show again unless the original score was used. What that tour did to the show is even worse than what the Broadway production did to the Jekyll and Hyde tryouts.

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It's a patch of crap with some diamonds in it, that can't be improved by any revival.

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I was never even a fan of the movie

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BUT OF COURSE YOU DID!

You're a flop collector, Roxy.

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I thought it was terrible.

I liked it better than Thou Shalt Not, Seussical, the Kiss Me Kate revival, both Grease revivals, The Producers and Spring Awakening.

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It was actually the first musical I was ever in (a regional production). I was Billy and thoroughly enjoyed doing it. I think, however, that my fondness of the show relates to my good memories, not its quality.

My big complaint, which was sort of fixed for the tour, is the lack of an 11-o'clock number for Billy. There's nothing in the stage version that says why he opts to return to being a kid. And if anything, that moment SCREAMS for a song.

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My school did this a couple years ago (I was in the ensemble...) =( and I loved the musical. It's almost as good as the movie. Why didn't Tom Hanks do it? The guy on the soundtrack sounds nothing like him.

That Mamma Mia movie was SOOO bad. Who told Pierce Bronsan to sing?

Mister Matt-
The problem with that song is it's bumped in with "Skateboard Ballet," and a) on album that doesn't translate...at all. b) It kills the momentum of it all. Had it been me directing, the ballet would have taken place before the song, to give the song more time. Because as it is, it (to me) is completely wasted. It diminishes the impact.

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