Teacher requesting help: Notable flop/disaster/bizarre PLAYS?

Hello! I'm a drama teacher, and I'm preparing a card game for my students where they will be dealt cards with various plays and musicals on them, and they will have to discard, draw, and trade to create a hand that will serve as the best possible season for a community theater. They'll have to consider genres, themes, tones, budgets, cast sizes, etc.

So with all that in mind, I thought it would be fun to throw in some famous fiascoes in there as sort of wild cards. Spider-Man, Carrie, Legs Diamond, etc. Some remembered only in their failure, some redeemed by time, it adds a fun twist to the game. The problem is, I can mostly only think of musicals, and any time I try to research, all I get is musicals. And that makes sense, musicals are more flashy, and thus more remembered. But as it stands, of the 30 flop cards I intend to make, I've currently got 15 musicals and Moose Murders.

So can anyone think of some more flop plays? I'm looking for any combination of:

* Horrible reviews
* Short runs
* Vanity projects
* Bloated budgets
* Audience-alienating stories
* Good shows that didn't find an audience

Thanks in advance!

the murder mystery farce Moose Murders is one of the most notorious bombs in Broadway history, closing on opening night.

Father's Day by Oliver Hailey closed on opening night but still managed to score Tony nominations for Best Actress and Best Scenic Design.

Paris is Out! the only attempt Donald Trump made at producing a Broadway show was considered a flop, getting mediocre at best reviews and running 96 performances

Julia Roberts' Three Days of Rain was a pretty big flop.

dramamama611 said: "Julia Roberts' Three Days of Rain was a pretty big flop."



How so? It was an impossible to get ticket, every performance sold out, and there were so many people waiting at the stage door that you couldn't walk down 45th Street!

The Leaf People — Produced by the Public Theatre on Broadway in an attempt to have an ongoing venue for plays that might not otherwise be produced. AWFUL. The entire show was performed in a made up language, with interpreters in a pod over the stage. To this day, I cannot guess what it was about. I always refer to this as the worst show I ever saw.

Gary — I purchased tix in advance because of the cast: Nathan Lane and Andrea Martin (who escaped before it opened). A farce occurring after the killing spree in Titus Andronicus…could have been funny. It was decidedly not.

Marco Polo Sings a Solo — another bad Public Theatre mistake (they produced many, many great productions…this was not one of them. All star cast. I have no idea what it was about. My wife remembers Joel Grey being raped by a tree. I do not. I do remember someone dying at my feet, which meant that I could not fidget for the rest of the show. I assume they did it because it was written by John Guatemala, who wrote a few great plays as well as some truly awful ones.

Little Malcolm — An (I think) 7 performance fiasco by Edward Albee (who was still to win 2 Pulitzer awards). I was too young to understand what it was trying to say, but there were mega-walkouts and the faintest applause I have ever heard in a theatre. Again too young, but I remember being bored. Stayed until everything was over in those days, else i would have left.

I don't know if this counts but I remember hearing that 1984 literally had audiences fainting and vomiting and getting into fights

dramamama611 said: "Julia Roberts' Three Days of Rain was a pretty big flop."

Not applicable. It was a box office hit and had been a critical one as well in an earlier production that starred Patricia Clarkson.

George in DC said: "Shogun

Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public

Bring Back Birdie

Merlin

Copperfield



All flops"

Me: wait... there was a Shogun MUSICAL!?!

*googles, finds NYT review*:

• Had the actor Philip Casnoff not been beaned by a falling slab of scenery at a press preview last week, "Shogun: The Musical" might have been best remembered as the first Broadway musical extravaganza to beguile an audience with a song about a dildo

​​​​​The deeper I dig, the more questions I have...

Taller Than a Dwarf

Jarethan said: "Gary — I purchased tix in advance because of the cast: Nathan Lane and Andrea Martin (who escaped before it opened). A farce occurring after the killing spree in Titus Andronicus…could have been funny. It was decidedly not."

Ditto here. I had high hopes for a show with both Lane and Martin. It was dreadful. 45 previews, 65 performances, and I was stunned that it lasted that long. I wonder if Andrea felt that after leaving the show due to breaking 4 ribs during rehearsal she got the better end of the deal.

What surprises me to this day is six Tony nominations, including Best Play (!) and Best Director.

These are some magnificent suggestions, thank you so much! (And I actually have a few of these scripts lying around my apartment, so all the better!)

79 Performances - but just a scenic design Tony nomination - "A Matter of Gravity" starring Katherine Hepburn - and a pre-Superman Christopher Reeve. I don't think it was "flop" as Wikipedia said it was scheduled for only a 12 week run on Broadway. But it was definitely a bit bizarre.

I saw it in in the post-Broadway tour in Los Angeles (with my AP English class on a field trip up from San Diego) but don't recall if it was before Hepburn broke her ankle and performed in a wheel chair - which would have made her levitating during the show to be even more interesting.

I haven't seen it since but recall that it was not a very good play - but I can say I saw Katherine Hepburn live on stage - even if I don't recall much (well, hardly any) of the play. .