MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG - someone was saying it has been revised a lot but the major revisions were done for the 1985 LaJolla production. All the subsequent changes have been more like tweaks. The revised version does work very well, though I would add the opening and closing gradutaion scenes to "bookend" the piece. It has a wonderful score, coupled with interesting (flawed) chracters that I don't get why other far less interesting shows run years and years while MERRILY lives on as a such a flop. (I would apply the same comment to BOUNCE though it is still a work in progress.)
THE RINK - maybe it needs a smaller theatre, a more intimate production but it does NOT need any major re-writing.
STEEL PIER does need some rewriting but like both of the above has too fine a score to dismiss.
THE HAPPIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD - I never saw this but from the cast album and the larrely positive reviews it got in 1961, it should have been a big hit.
A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN - perhaps too old fashioned for modern audiences but a fine score and a really solid book.
There are other flop shows with wonderful scores preserved on cast albums, but you can see why they failed: DEAR WORLD (the score and the book do not belong together); ANYA (intresting use of Rachmaninov's music ... but a really bad book); SUBWASY ARE FOR SLEEPING (speaking of really abd books!) and BAKER STREET (just plain dull.)
Cast albums are NOT "soundtracks." Live theatre does not use a "soundtrack." If it did, it wouldn't be live theatre!
I host a weekly one-hour radio program featuring cast album selections as well as songs by cabaret, jazz and theatre artists. The program, FRONT ROW CENTRE is heard Sundays 9 to 10 am and also Saturdays from 8 to 9 am (eastern times) on www.proudfm.com
And the other thing about the Phantom Lady was, Bert, she realized, in the city that never sleeps...
What did she realize, Kitten?
That all the songs she'd listened to, all the love songs, that they were only songs.
What's wrong with that?
Nothing, if you don't believe in them. But she did, you see. She believed in enchanted evenings, and she believed that a small cloud passed overhead and cried down on a flower bed, and she even believed there was breakfast to be had...
Where?
On Pluto. The mysterious, icy wastes of Pluto.
CJR, I totally agree with you about "Hollywood Arms". Such a beautiful, moving play. Michele Pawk would have to reprise her Tony-winning role, of course.
Starlight Express should be shot down and killed. Given the right place, and enough special effects, it can pass as decent amusement, but I would never call it theater. It is an embarrassment to anybody who considers themself a patron of the arts
Having discovered this subject on the board recently, several shows I would have named have already been cited, including Side Show, Triumph of Love, Smile, and The Robber Bridegroom. I would like to add the following 9having directed productions of two, and musical directed another: -- Baby -- Working (with updates) -- King of Hearts -- Summer of '42
Musicals that I think can work given the right ingredients that did not work or never found an audience when originally concieved:
Carrie Runaways Sideshow Working Robber Bridegroom Mack and Mabel Taboo Merrily... Caroline or Change
That said, some shows never will be hits. Even if they are brilliant...Sondheim never had a hit.
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