Shows You Grew to Dislike After Being Involved With a Production of It? — Page 2

My school did Grease and Bye Bye Birdie in the same year and I almost quit the department.

Leaf Coneybear said: "Hello Dolly. It was one of my favorites before O was cast, just thought it was cute with catchy songs. By the first run through I realized how mind numbingly boring it is. "

Oh, Bette!!!

smidge said: "Leaf Coneybear said: "Hello Dolly. It was one of my favorites before O was cast, just thought it was cute with catchy songs. By the first run through I realized how mind numbingly boring it is. "

Oh, Bette!!!"

I thought he was referring to Oprah.... That would have soured me on the show, too.

Anyone Can Whistle - I played the piano for a production in college (University of Scranton in 1987). The music intrigued me, but the show was painful, with a plot and character development that made MadLibs seem logocal. The show played for 2 weekends, which was 2 weekends too long.

Our next show was Jacques Brel, which made up for it.

elephantseye said: "My school did Grease and Bye Bye Birdie in the same year and I almost quit the department."

Good lawd, I might have too...and while I never have heard of Music Man being the biggest culprit of this, I totally believe, because I've found that this is show people either love or hate ;P I was in once many eons ago, and while I don't dislike it at all, my liking for it has lessened over the years for the sam reasons.

Another show I was involved in that I don't want to say I grew to dislike after being in it TWICE, is Honk. I actually think the show is charming, being it twice I was just...over it. I've listened to it, MAYBE once or twice since my second round in it, and that was YEARS ago.

The Boy Friend for me. I saw a production of it in elementary school and remember thinking it was wonderful. Several years later when I found out my high school was doing it (and, bonus, I got a big role), I was ecstatic! Turns out that it's a really, really, really stupid show.

This was about two decades ago and I still can't listen to it. There's a reason it hasn't been revived.

I've been in bad productions of Crazy for You and Jekyll and Hyde but I didn't like those shows much to begin with.

A good show I've soured on is Guys and Dolls. I adored the Jerry Zaks production in the 90's, then had a miserable time in a high school production. The productions I saw afterwards were dull with one note Adelaide's and wooden Sky and Sarah's. I've avoided it since.

(Warning, I wrote this on mobile)


My friend’s son is in a high school production of Anything Goes and he is apparently feeling worse and worse after every rehearsal. He made himself familiar with the piece long before auditions in preparation and became quite a fan.

He now feels guilty being involved with the show after being cast as one of the male leads because the show has been horribly rewritten. He mentioned to the directors that the changes being made must be illegal but the directors assured him that they are perfectly legal.

I read the script and it’s really quite bad the way they changed it. The Chinese men are now two old ladies, and anything that pokes fun at Christianity has been removed. Apparently they only changed the characters to old women as no Chinese people auditioned so they tried asking random Asian (and Native American) students at the school to play the parts but none would. To put it simply, that’s messed up.

Other changes include: all bits of alcohol are cut, with the exception of Whitney’s drinking habits, most sexual implications are cut, and all swear words are cut. In addition to swear words I’d like to add that “God” is considered a swear word in this production. Instead of Moonface’s comical prayer in his cabin “Arts father, Holloween is thy name” or something like that, is changed to “prayers, prayers, prayers, prayers”. Another one of Moon’s lines was changed from “You want me to kill him?” To “You want me to rub him out?” Which is......noticeably worse. There’s many other things to mention, but I’ll leave it at that.

Apparently, the whole cast is at a point where they don’t even associate their production to the actual musical. Unknown to the directors they call the show (pardon my language) “Everything Blows”. Immature? Yes. Funny? It is to me

I’m happy to have learned that the production is currently under investigation by Tams-Witmark.

Updated On: 2/11/18 at 12:22 AM

Oliver. I was the sound designer for it in high school, and NO ONE could do the accent. I mean, literally no one. We had a few passable Brits, and handful of Australians, and then a bunch of people who I still, five years later, have no idea what accent they were even attempting. We had also brought in a ton of tone-deaf elementary and middle schoolers to play the orphans, and they were just awful. Not only could they not sing, but we'd lose them during rehearsals and performances, they'd break props, they just sucked. In addition, the director decided that "steampunk Oliver" should be a thing, and just, no. It looked like total garbage and she lit everything in yellow. It was literally one of the worst shows I've ever been a part of- I don't know if I can ever listen to the opening number again if I'm being honest.

"The Best of Times" which is basically ONE VERSE sung over and over again ever louder and shriller as it modulates up the scale.

Audiences love being hammered in the head with a signature Jerry Herman earworm. You forgot the fermatas over each note that leads into the final verse! How will the audience know when they should thrill over the BIG FINISH?!?! He was lucky to get away with it three times. And if the production is not exceptional, the signature tune becomes insufferable.

I was in a production over 25 years ago of Sweeney Todd for roughly a year, including rehearsals. To this day, I still have little interest in seeing or hearing it again. Especially since having seen the film that destroyed most of the material. I'd probably go to this new Off-Broadway production because the concept sounds wonderful, but it's the only time I recall that I'd considered seeing it on stage since then.