The "Rebecca" Saga Continues — Page 4

"what ARE we saying?"

poor judgment? tone deafness? lack of business acumen?

And let me quickly add, I am not referring to the choice of material some in this thread are discussing.

This is a type of show Wildhorn would have done. We all know how critics love him. In addition, there is simply to much bad publicity in the past for the critics to pass up. Someone previously mentioned the Nederlander Curse. As we all know, there is no such thing as cursed theaters as I have been told ad nauseum.

This is the old type of Broadway. Show by show, these types of musicals are dying on the vine. Hamilton & shows like it are the future - whether or not they are your cup of tea.

Updated On: 2/16/16 at 01:15 PM

OK, so we think REBECCA is and was always a long shot. Is that any reason to root against it?

I understand hating a show that one feels is over-praised, because such shows tend inspire imitations. God know ALW gave us decades of over-produced but musically and especially lyrically mediocre schlock.

But REBECCA has achieved no such influence in this country, and general consensus here is that it won't. So it seems a waste of people's disdain.

I think there tends to be a dislike for Euro-musicals, but I think prior to the "scandal" people weren't necessarily against it. I think there's a fair amount of people rooting for it (far more than Tale of Two Cities, Dr. Zhivago, etc).

Off topic/For the record - I think a lot of the hate for Honeymoon in Vegas can be attributed to JRB's attitude that his works are such high art, when in reality it was an bad show, with a pedestrian score based on a dated 90s movie - and he had already used two dated, obscure 80s/90s movies (Urban Cowboy, Bridges, etc).

IMO Insulting Bridges kind of makes me mad. I think its one of the best scores to come up in recent times. I can't speak for Honeymoon since I haven't listened to it or seen any clips. As for Rebecca, I hope it will get to the US at some point.

That never-ending Honeymoon thread was a lot of fun, I wish it hadn't been deleted.


I was a huge fan of Bridges' score (and I'm a fan of some of JRB's other work) and was very excited for Honeymoon in Vegas. I bought the recording the day it came out, listened to it...thought "maybe I just didn't pay enough attention," so I listened to it again...I was sad because I just didn't think it was very good.

The issue with Brown is that he wants to be a rich writer of commercial musical and he doesn't have those chops. He's a non-profit dude. Some people like his work, some don't but until he stops trying to fit square pegs in round holes he will remain kinda pathetic.

I love the never-ending Wildhorn and Brown discussions! Here's my contribution:

Wildhorn is relatively musically illiterate, but can pen a perfectly decent pedestrian tune (and is smart enough to hire arrangers who can fix his illiterate work); unfortunately, he always hitches his wagon to bad lyricists and book writers. Jekyll & Hyde and Scarlet Pimpernel are silly fluffs of unintentional camp; Civil War isn't even a show; Wonderland is a grotesque piece of amateurism in every way; Bonnie and Clyde is the ultimate childlike dumbing-down of a deep, dark story - like a musical comedy adaptation of Shoah.

Brown is an obnoxiously self-promoting, egocentric ass who is musically quite literate but is also a sloppy and sentimental teenager when it comes to writing lyrics. I'm not quite sure why Honeymoon flopped; I didn't think it was good, but it did seem to be the sort of thing that the tourists would embrace with casual enthusiasm. Bridges, on the other hand, is an evening of solemn-as-hell ballads about a woman who justifies having sex with a man she doesn't know by rationalizing it as "true love." There's no mystery why audiences stay away from that. 13 and Urban Cowboy were unbearably idiotic; Parade a noble downer.

Ultimately, the most interesting point about both - their shows always lose money, and yet producers continue to invest in them. It's like the theatrical equivalent of Vietnam.

Updated On: 2/17/16 at 07:56 AM

Philly

Was not aware of JRB putting down other composers. Here, on the board, it is a national sport to put down certain composers. We got away from the Rebecca discussion. I am not dissing Rebecca to say I do not think, in todays Broadway climate, it would succeed.

Updated On: 2/17/16 at 10:00 AM

Eurotrash said: "Ahem, no, that's exactly the point I was making."

Really? What does this sound like to you?

"This show is also weighed down by the celebrated floperettas of recent years; Tale of Two Cities, Jane Ayre, Dr Z etc, which overlooks the fact that this has already been a much better received show - because it is a much better show.?"

To me, it sounds like while acknowledging that point, you're also injecting your own opinion that it's better received, better quality, different. That doesn't really matter to anyone who would be assessing it for commercial potential even if it was objectively better.

Newintown: another great example is that Wildhorn shows have huge overseas lives, multiple regional productions, etc. There is money to be had there. How many productions of Parade, 13, Bridges, have you seen? The Last 5 Years, Songs for a New World is decent, but no where near the levels of Jekyll & Hyde, for example.

Also - I think even the reviewers back in the 90s acknowledge that Pimpernel was indeed intention camp. Do you not remember the song "The Creation of Men"? You probably don't because I'm not sure you've actually seen a Wildhorn show.

This thing ain't coming to Broadway. Putting aside the fact it is now a toxic property, it finally being mounted will result in nothing but anticlimax. After all this time, all the intrigue, the product would be to be mind blowingly great, or else everyone will just ask, "why all this effort?"

It already had one foot in a hole being an out of fashion show. But now it's an out of fashion show that managed to be a disaster before even starting performances.