Something Rotten Previews — Page 16

SCTrojan65, I'm also a Trojan. Fight on!

I think you all are taking my post a bit too seriously or I'm taking my post a bit too lightly. I can't tell.

I certainly understand there's a wide range of tastes in theater. I mean, Mama Mia is STILL running and good friends of mine have gone and RAVED about it. I'm one opinion and I don't take myself as more than that.

And for God's sake Kathy, stay out of show business :)

Also, I am shocked by the lack of humor in this musical comedy commentary. Kathy, I'm especially disappointed by you here. You're a Broadway L E G E N D. You should know better.

Updated On: 4/19/15 at 10:04 PM

This is all making sense now. You don't live in New York, Kathy isn't in show business...you ARE the tourist crowd. I'm allowing myself to get in an argument about the quality of a musical comedy with tourists.

I saw the show the first week of previews and then on Saturday. I think the show has been tightened and some of the scenes work better and are funnier including the last song of Act 1, the Omelette dance number and the final number.

I found the show fairly humorous both times and the cast really makes a lot of the material work. I do wish the Omelette dance number didn't rely once again on references to other musicals since the big number in Act 1, A Musical, already does that.

I can't predict how long this show is going to run but I think it will do well for a while because it will appeal to theatergoers of all ages. The score, though not amazing, is jaunty and fun and you leave the theater feeling good. And that's pretty special since this is a musical about Shaksepeare's times.

"I had an interesting experience seeing Something Rotten and was curious as to whether anyone else had a similar experience. I brought my brother and his wife, a suburban upper class guy from New Jersey. I'm theater savvy, and they enjoy a Broadway show two or three times a year.
We were surrounded by people laughing at these insider references. I'm a musical theater nut so I laughed at most of them, but my guests kept looking around and then at each other - uncomfortable that they were on the outside of the inside joke. Many of the Shakespeare references, the musical comedy references, the gay jokes - all fell on deaf ears with them. At intermission, they asked me "where's the story that we're supposed to hook into?" They felt completely removed from the proceedings, and it pissed them off as we spent top dollar for premium seats. So here's my question: Can a show survive that relies on meta-jokes that aren't coming from character situations and plot development but rely primarily on the audience's pre-existing knowledge of theater - Broadway Musical / Shakespeare - history? (with the exception of 'Forbidden Broadway' or parody shows ) After all the theater cognoscenti see the show in six months from now - the ticket buyers will be my brother and sister in law. They will be relying on the bridge /tunnel, midwest and foreign tourist crowd. Do you think this show will appeal to them?
I talked with them afterwards - and they mentioned that they felt similar when they watched the Oscars. The joke writers on these awards shows are getting so "insider" with jokes about Harvey Weinstein and such - it alienates the average joe audience member and they change the channel. Humor should be relatable to the entire audience - and should be timeless. I would think Something Rotten will be difficult to tour in the hinterlands, especially.
Just my thoughts. Discuss!"

I think you make a very valid point and I also had a similar experience from both sides. A few people in the same row as us seemed to be a tad bewildered and even kind of looked around at other people with a look like "Why are you laughing?" and then on the other side, two men in front of us felt the need to laugh hard and long and clap extremely loud at everything almost to say "HEY! I GET THIS REFERENCE!" and then other people looked at them like they were crazy.

I can see the show running a while but not overly long. I think it has more of a commercial appeal than [title of show] did which the average theatregoer/tourist would probably miss a lot of those references.

Saw the show tonight and had a blast. Even think I'd see it again I had so much fun. That being said, it panders to the theatre geeks and recycles in a way that cheapens its quality.

The stellar original cast elevated the material. Once they leave I can see the bloom falling off the rose.

The second act has problems and there's no real story, but it's a ton of fun.

If this were to win over Fun Home then I give up on the Tonys. The music is absolutely fun junk food, but not art.

Some people may miss some jokes because the show moves so quickly - Annie is represented by a two second floor swipe - rather than because they refer to arcane Broadway lore. Rotten! only goes after the biggest game starting with The Lion King. Nearly every referenced show - Les Miserables, Phantom, Sound of Music, South Pacific, Chicago, and Cats has either run forever or appeared as a popular movie or both.

Shakespeare from high school - Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Merchant of Venice - should suffice in understanding the Bardy humor.

I think Rotten! will benefit from many bedazzled ("did you see what I just did -I just made up that word" - Rotten! Shakespeare) theatergoers who will return to catch more jokes the second time.

My bridge and tunnel guests and my 14 year old son who has a deep knowledge of only skateboarding loved the show.

Wednesday, the 22nd, isn't it?

I actually just looked it up when I saw your question as I'm eager to see how this plays with the critics.

WhyWeTellTheStory said some good stuff here. That was not my experience when I went, but I can easily envision it. I feel like my parents (who see a couple regional/community theatre shows a year, and a tour or two when it's in town) would be the type to come to NYC, want to go to Something Rotten and then afterwards ask me about all the references. (That happened at Mormon, too, but they really enjoyed it and went twice when the tour came to San Francisco two years in a row.)

The more I think about Something Rotten, the more annoyed I get.

I think the issue with the references for a non-theatregoer isn't that they're hard to get, but that they aren't funny. They're literally just references, not actual jokes. If they were jokes, then I think it ultimately wouldn't matter (like in Book of Mormon), but there isn't anything actually funny about the material here.

I can't fault the direction/choreography or the cast, but if the writing gets good reviews I will be very very surprised.

I saw this a few weeks ago in previews, and I found it very enjoyable, probably most of all because of the tap dancing but also for the comedy. I love tap dancing-intensive shows, but there just aren't very many of them. Only 42nd street comes to mind as having 4 tap numbers, and Crazy for You had more than one. Most of the other recent shows with big tap numbers have had only one - Anything Goes, Newsies, Aladdin, Book of Mormon, etc. So having several tap numbers in Something Rotten felt absolutely delightful to me and that alone makes me want to go back and see it again.

The references themselves didn't feel funny because of recognition, but rather, the jokes that were made about the shows being referenced. For example, although the CATS reference is brief and seems to be made almost in passing, it has the joke embedded within it that the idea of a musical about singing and dancing cats is so weird that a fortuneteller/soothsayer would second-guess himself if a vision of that came up in the future and would have to double-check to confirm that the vision is really correct. That to me is a funny joke, since it is in fact true (from my perspective anyway) that singing and dancing cats is indeed a weird idea for a musical. I don't recall being excited by recognition of any of the references, but rather laughing because a lot of the jokes were funny. I also got the sense that people who would be seeing a more obscure musical like Something Rotten would probably already be quite familiar with much more popular and widely-known musicals like Cats, Annie, etc.

But I have to ask… if the jokes and references weren't so obvious… would the show appeal to the masses of non theatergoing audiences? Probably not so much. And the creatives know that. They have done a fine job to make sure that every audience member who comes through those doors has a laugh at some point in the show, in my opinion.