The Most overrated and underrated musicals

Overrated: Wicked

Underrated: Little Shop of Horrors

Overrated: RENT (despite Jonathan Larson's score)

Underrated: GREY GARDENS, ALLEGRO, and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

Overrated: Les Miserables
Underrated: Lady in the Dark, Dear World

I would rather see an overrated show over an underrated any day. Either way I like to see EVERYTHING. I've never passed on a show because of bad or good reputation. People go crazy for Stephen Sondheim musicals, but I find all of them boring & the music always makes me fall asleep. Just cause someone likes Wicked, Phantom, or any other long-running show doesn't mean "Oh, they're new. They don't know nothing about theatre." It's all personal opinion. I give everything a chance.

Oh I forgot to add to my overrated show Sunday in the Park With George. Most people who I speak to in real life say it's brilliant, and people on this board love it, but It really feels somebody threw a wet rag (or James Lapine) on a really good concept for the show and made it muddy and boring.

Well Mandy Patinkin is psychotic in real life, so I am surprised he didn't have some kind of meltdown on stage (only seen the live broadcast but he was in it) or start beating up poor Bernadette. Thankfully he never did and he got to let all of those psychotic impulses out in The Wild Party, much to the terror of both the audience and the actors on stage :)

Updated On: 11/6/14 at 03:44 PM

Overrated: COMPANY

I absolutely love the score but as a whole show I've never seen it really work and I don't think it's nearly as good as some people make it out to be.

Underrated: ONE TOUCH OF VENUS

Truly glorious and practically unknown.

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I don’t care much for either of these words, but I’ll proffer LIZZIE BORDEN – not the recent rock musical, but the 1998 Christopher McGovern-Amy Powers book musical.

Never having seen it staged or read the libretto, I don’t know how viable the show is on the whole (though it was favorably received in all of its major productions), but the score is wonderful, dramatic but not overwrought, funny but not wink-winky, and scary but not cheap. It could maybe do with some re-orchestration, but it has potential to be great (it’s already wholly original), and every time I listen to it, I’m sad it’s never gotten its due.

The other egregiously overlooked score I know is MOBY DICK – the original West End incarnation, which is like THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW crossed with BABES IN ARMS by way of "St Trinian's,” and not the silly Americanized abortion rewritten to sell to high schools Across the Land.

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Overrated: Cats, Spring Awakening

Underrated: Flower Drum Song, Chess

I actually think that Sunset Boulevard was underrated. Yes, it won the Best Musical Tony in 1995, but there was only one other nominee (Smokin Joe's Cafe), which many thought should have won.

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I don't think it's the most underrated musical ever of all time, but I feel like too many people don't give Big River the credit and love it deserves.

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Double post

Updated On: 11/6/14 at 11:05 PM