The Broadway musical is over as a phenomenon

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 4/21/10 at 12:42pm

Feingold reviews PROMENADE, LA CAGE, and MILLION $ QUARTET

[newintown]

Posted: 4/21/10 at 12:51pm

I don't often disagree with Feingold, but I've seen Promenade, read the script, read the score, and I find it to be a muddled, pretentious, faux-boho bore. Al Carmines was possessed of a small talent, but, like Blitzstein or LaChiusa, just couldn't focus his skills. I'm very familiar with Fornes' output, and can't say anything better. She's definitely a product of the drug-addled downtown theatre scene of the 70s. If you know what that means, enough said.

Posted: 4/21/10 at 12:53pm

Again I wonder: Why do people who love theater hate theater so much?

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 4/21/10 at 12:56pm

It's very Heathcliff and Cathy.

[After Eight]

Posted: 4/21/10 at 1:08pm

We don't need Michael Feingold to inform us of this.

Especially since it's about 40 years after the fact.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 4/21/10 at 1:16pm

And one truth I'm living with these days is that, for me at least, the Broadway musical is over as a phenomenon. The future of the American musical, such as it is, lies Off-Broadway.

Oh, I know this speech! Just play Boggle with any of these catchy words/phrases:

Broadway is dead
American musical theatre is dead
Sondheim is a god
Look to Off-Broadway for creativity and originality
Ticket prices are too high!
Follies
Gypsy
Movies to musicals/jukebox musicals killed Broadway
Andrew Lloyd Webber killed Broadway
Disney killed Broadway
Frank Wildhorn killed Broadway
Rock music killed Broadway
Why are there so few original books?
*insert tourist-popular show here* should close

Otherwise, Broadway musicals will mostly continue to be, as they are now, either threadbare revivals, usually from England, scaled and directed downward into a brutish parody of their past...

So basically, Promises Promises, Ragtime and Finian's Rainbow didn't happen this season? Hair and West Side Story aren't still running? The most successful revival currently on Broadway is not a scaled-down version of Chicago conceived, staged and produced by Americans? How many British musical revivals crossed over to Broadway last season?

Let's all live in the past and lament the Broadway that was just like we do every year, every decade, every time anything changes. Screw artistic evolution! Broadway should never have progressed beyond Vaudeville and operettas. Showboat ruined EVERYTHING!

Updated On: 4/21/10 at 01:16 PM

[Ed_Mottershead]

Posted: 4/21/10 at 1:49pm

Feingold is an a**hole. I've been going to Broadway shows since 1955 and every year or so, it's the same lament. Why don't people remember that change occurs only when the need for change presents itself? In 1910, the hot shows were operettas or operetta-like shows. By 1920, the Jazz Age had begun and the speed and tempi increased accordingly. In 1927, Show Boat came along and the book began to be more of an integrated part of the show. In 1943, Oklahoma! came along and fused book, dance, score and production values into a seamless entity. In the 1950s, American music underwent the rock and roll revolution and the expectations for a Broadway show changed accordingly, if somewhat slowly. In the 1970s, Sondheim was in his glory years and the linear book began to diminish in importance. Broadway in its sometimes lumbering way continues to reflect the tastes of what the audiences want and expect. Different? Absolutely. Dead? Absolutely not. So stick that, Feingold!!!

[allofmylife]

Posted: 4/21/10 at 11:02pm

Ed, you are the man. He can dry stick it.

[Scripps2]

Posted: 4/22/10 at 5:04am

So long as people have hearts and souls, there'll be a place for the Broadway musical.

[Gypsy9]

Posted: 4/22/10 at 6:31am

In ME AND JULIET, Rodgers & Hammerstein's 1953 backstage musical, there is a song entitled "The Theatre is Dying", in which half of the ensemble laments the terrible shape of Broadway, while the other half of the ensemble rattles off the hits currently playing. At the end of the song the latter sing "The theatre is living...why don't you lie down and die". Ed Mottershead could have written that song. His comments are right on the money. Still, I have a tendency to see revivals over new musicals, because I'm a Golden Age baby and I love those shows. I would, however, like to see IN THE HEIGHTS. It looks promising to me, despite its target audience of a younger generation. Feingold is an ass hole.