Gesualdo said: "BeingAlive44Ever said: "This is one of my favorite subject lines I have ever seen
I think it's mostly that reviews tear the show up for structural issues
There's a great score, a great story, and a whole lot of great performances, but sadly there is not a great show
And it's in a sea of shows with similar messages
It's horribly sad because of how many years of work went into it and how good a lot of the material is
But most bad shows just sadly don't succeed
Some bad shows, like Jekyll and Hyde and Six, run a very long time because of wide appeal, but Harmony sadly doesn't have wide appeal going for it either"
Hi,
Thank you for your comments. I have seen some "bad shows" myself, and I can identify the weaknesses immediately. My wishful thinking was that Ken Davenport would by now be able to identify what makes a bad show bad. Perhaps, someone in this thread would be willing to identify the elements of bad show-ness which are structurally integrated in the musical "Harmony." Or someone may be willing to identify the elements of a good show-ness from a brilliant successful musical.
Thank you."
Well I'm no genius but take the most text book examples
A huge failure of a show, Merrily We Roll Along in its original Broadway production
It was structurally flawed, wasn't about anything revolutionary, and just didn't connect to audiences
The main flaw with it is that the pace at which the story is told with its whole moving back in time gimmick just felt unnatural
The musical needed revised and reproduced in a different way in order to be successful, which it now is
Just like Harmony, there's a great score and a great story there
It's just that the story isn't being told in the best way
There's a lot there to enjoy, and some people may walk away from the show loving it, but critics who see every single Broadway show and review them as their job see this musical with its all over the place book and poor pacing and just write it off
It doesn't matter the huge names attached to it, it doesn't matter the legacy of the writer, because the show is structurally weak and about a subject matter that is very commonly explored, it isn't a critical success
And, because it's not based on something immediately recognizable and doesn't star any big names, it isn't a commercially viable musical
The thing is, plenty of bad shows are commercially viable due to effective marketing
Take Six, which is basically a concert that fails to tell any meaningful story at all and has a score that can be summarized as imitating pop music in a way that kind of ****s all over the whole idea of writing to progress your characters and story
It is very, very successful for the following reasons:
Its music is immediately catchy and easy to spread online
Its score appeals to a specific demographic that can easily get people to buy tickets, that being mostly teenagers
It gets a bunch of free advertising by letting the audience video the finale
There were no big names attached to this, but it didn't matter because it is so marketable
Compare that to Harmony, which may have music by the great Barry Manilow, but it is very different from what he would normally write
It's also not stylized and modern like Six is
It is the kind of musical that people who don't like musicals assume all musicals are
The music is very traditional, the story is very serious and very poorly paced
It isn't entirely sure who exactly it's trying to appeal to
The whole first act feels almost completely unnecessary and like it only exists for the second act to happen, and the second act may be much better than the first but it's still pretty flawed in how it executes its story
This is a huge issue for a musical, because a two act experience requires two different but related halves a story that create a satisfying night at the theater for an audience, and almost every musical is inexplicably in this format
For a musical to be unbalanced and there to be so much whiplash during the intermission just makes it downright confusing for a lot of audiences
Now, take a good musical
Les Mis
That's an easy one
It appeared around the time that sung through megamusicals were coming into existence
It was capitalizing on a trend in the market and doing so with a grander scale and a better score than any other such show before it
And it was based on an already famous and beloved book by Victor Hugo, one of the most important writers of our time
Being based on something people already have attachment to while also being a unique and fulfilling experience theatrically is the absolute best way to succeed as a musical on Broadway
Tickets for Broadway shows are expensive, so the audience expects something grand and life changing
You must remember that a lot of audiences are made up of tourists who are only going to see three or four shows in their time in New York
Shows like Les Mis and Wicked that have that grand scale and great, powerful score with a story that moves along at a pace that the audiences understand it and don't feel confused by the lopsided tone sell tickets
It also has a lot to do with production value:
Big, flashy shows with a lot of spectacle generally run a good while
Not always, of course, but even Spider Man, which had a whole ton of horrible problems, ran for two years off of the sheer spectacle of it all
Harmony is not flashy, it's structured in a confusing way, the score isn't particularly special (although I do like the score a good deal), there aren't any big actors in it, it does not capitalize on the current market trends at all, and its marketing doesn't appeal to any specific demographic that is likely to go see it
Because of that, the show is failing
It makes me horribly upset, because when I heard about the idea, saw a few performances of the songs, and listened to the highlights of the score, I thought we had a real contender for Best Musical
But it has proven itself to just not be viable in its current state in the current market
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