After Eight said: "Judy Denmark wrote:
"Do you think that was the case when people first heard it, though? I mean, I totally get your point about reprises, but do you think 1964 audiences left with Act 1's Sunday Clothes in their heads?"
On the part of this theatregoer who saw it in 1964, the answer is yes. Along with many other songs from the show. And it had nothing to do with their being reprised multiple times. It was because they were GOOD. There's the explanation right there. They were GOOD. And I can still remember songs from shows way back when that were never even recorded: The Student Gypsy, Hot Spot, Come Summer, La Strada, Georgy.... Why? Because they were GOOD. Damn good. And 638,802,411 times better than the drab, tuneless fare that the critics heap with praise and awards.
I agree with those who find Yazbek's music unmemorable --- or worse. And the same holds truefor the rest of today's critics' darlings. They could play their songs a thousand times, and I would still not remember them ---becausethey're not worth even hearing, much less remembering. It was bad enough listening to them once in the theatre. To have to listen to them even one more time is too dire a prospect to even contemplate."
i agree with a lot you say. There is a 'Broadway sound' that every musical used to have, not so much anymore, and I do miss that. I loved DEH when i saw it (only once to date) a couple of years ago...being out of town results in fewer viewings until they tour); but I only rarely listen to the score because it just doesn't have that Broadway sound that lives up to repeated listenings. Interestingly, my 'go to' recent OCR is Bandstand, which feels like a perfect meld of old-Broadway and 40's band music. I also agree with the person who referenced The Producers; I must have listened to that 500 times. I enjoyed the score, loved the 'old-Broadway' orchestrations and overture, and the individual performances.
On the other hand, something is not automatically good because it was from the 50's to the early 70's. To this day, Come Summer was one of the worst shows I have ever seen, and the score was boring from beginning to end. I remember wondering (at the age of 17) how the performers could even sing the songs, as there was no discernible melody to them. Georgy did have 2 songs that were mildly entertaining, the title song and Do You Remember the Day (I still remember the melody of the latter), but the staging of the latter was also 'wincingly' corny; and La Strada was agonizingly boring...as with Come Summer, I wondered when I saw it on preview (I seem to remember that it began previews and closed in the same week). Note: The only reason I saw that one was because my father had a friend who invested in shows and was always offered 'papering' tickets. Most of the score of The Yearling was terrible; since it had one excellent score, does that forgive the rest of the junk?
PS -- In fairness, also loved some stinkers from that era. The one that immediately comes to mind is Sherry, whose two show-stopping numbers (yes, there were two, even though the show was a mega-flop) sounded exactly the same. I also prefer the score of a number of mega-flop 60s and 70s musicals, e.g., Drat! The Cat!, Darling of the Day, Maggie Flynn, Cry for us All / Who to Love, and Carmelina, to a number of critical successes and/or hit shows, e.g., Billy Elliott, If / Then, Fun Home, The School of Rock, Frozen, Anastasia, (although I did like the score more than any aspect of that show), etc.
