What's Going On?- Page 2

[dramamama611]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 9:44am

What role does intimidation of a significant audience for this show play?"

 

What intimidation is going on at the theater?  Fairly certain we'd have heard about this.  Or any "taking over" of Times Square?

 

[pablitonizer]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 10:11am

And I say, hey-ey-ey
Hey-ey-ey
I said 'Hey, what's going on?'

[hearthemsing22]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 10:47am

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"

You do know you could have answered the question without dragging down other shows. Geez. 

[BeingAlive44Ever]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 11:16am

hearthemsing22 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"

You do know you could have answered the question without dragging down other shows. Geez."

I apologize. I figured examples were necessary. And, really, there's no shame in liking things that are bad. I love In Trousers, but most of that show is pretty dang bad. Plenty of people like Six, but it's just an objectively bad musical. A lot of people think Jekyll and Hyde is just horrible, I think it's "bad" but not like unbelievably bad. I think that Frank Wildhorn is a great composer who really needs to find a great lyricist to work with. There's a lot to love in both of these shows. I also feel there's a lot to love in Harmony. And I genuinely love a lot of stuff in it. I think that, if anybody goes to the effort to produce a show on Broadway, there is almost always passion and art there, and I'm not about to pretend otherwise. Some shows are better than others, and a lot of the time shows still fail or succeed despite their quality or lack thereof and I meant to illustrate that point by alluding to Six and Jekyll and Hyde. I do not mean to drag either show or anybody who loves them down.

[Kad]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 11:43am

You did nothing wrong. You’re allowed to respectfully express your opinion on the quality of any show you wish. If others don’t like it, that’s on them to cope with. 

[Gesualdo]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 12:58pm

Expressing an opinion is your right.  That's how we learn from each other.  I have learned a lot of new concepts from your detailed explanations.  So I appreciate your sharing of your experiences and ideas. 

[BeingAlive44Ever]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 1:14pm

Gesualdo said: "Expressing an opinion is your right. That's how we learn from each other. I have learned a lot of new concepts from your detailed explanations. So I appreciate your sharing of your experiences and ideas."

I hope you understand that I really wanted Harmony to succeed so much, I love Barry Manilow, I love Chip Zien, and I think that the concept is great

I get no joy from explaining its bad traits 

I'm very glad that you appreciate my opinion, I'm also relatively new to this forum and it's split down the middle between somewhat ruthless people and very pleasant people 

Kad said: "You did nothing wrong. You’re allowed to respectfully express your opinion on the quality of any show you wish. If others don’t like it, that’s on them to cope with.
"

Thank you, Kad. It makes me very happy that somebody who has been on this forum for so many years is willing to help somebody new like me not feel bad about things. Sometimes I say something wrong or don't express my opinions properly, but I try my best to remain respectful. It's people like you that make the internet not unbearable. 

[chrishuyen]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 3:32pm

I think the Harmony Word of Mouth thread that was linked earlier would be helpful to you if you haven't looked at it already, but since you asked about what makes it a bad book, the role that the show has in the first act is to get audiences invested in it.  A really good book will set up the story well so that audiences want to come back for the second act, create fleshed out characters that people care about or are interested in, and present the musical numbers in a way that audiences can enjoy and also move the story forwards.  A lot of the time the book won't do all of these things, but will do it enough that the show is still enjoyable and audiences are convinced they want to see another half of the show.

Harmony I think falls into the trap of trying to do too many things with the first act.  While Rabbi is the main character since older Rabbi is the narrator, I think it's still hard to care about him as a character unless you're personally invested in Chip Zien (which to be fair, many of us are).  The show starts off like many jukebox musicals, with getting the band together and trying to chart their rise to success, but we don't ever see them perform a full number together until about 2/3 of the way through, so it's hard to be convinced that they should be successful outside of just taking their word for it.  And while there's talk of the revolution, it's done in a bit of a cliche way and leans pretty hard into the "we as an audience know what's going to happen and it's not going to end well, but the characters are still optimistic" aspect, which I think works for some people but has come to be an overused trope imo.

So at intermission we know there's a singing group that managed to get to success (but they've still only performed one real number for us to judge that success on); there's not really a single character that stands out for us to be invested in (Rabbi fills this role to a certain extent, and Chip Zien is giving it his all, but by this point he's still just not that interesting.  The main thing we know is he runs away from things.); there's revolution brewing, but we can kind of predict how it'll go; and there's a wedding, but like much of the other parts of the show, the romance is more told to the audience rather than something that feels organic (a version of telling rather than showing), so it really feels like it was given more weight than it deserved (I don't know if we really needed the whole wedding scene to be shown).

I say this as someone who does like the show and really enjoyed it off-Broadway because I think it has a great story, but it's very hard to tell what that story is supposed to be after the first act.  The second act is written a lot better, where all of these different threads manage to come together--the political tensions give way to the kind of performances that the group does, and Ruth's role in the revolution spurs on some of the decisions they make (as well as some of the tensions within the group), and we also see the show crystallize as a portrayal of Rabbi's feelings in looking back on that time.  But the problem is that after the first act, we don't really see the full potential of what the story is going to be since it's really just moving a lot of pieces into places so that the second act can work.  And while this isn't inherently a bad thing, it's just not as enjoyable and makes it confusing to describe what the show is actually about so it feels a bit like "what's the point".

[hearthemsing22]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 4:38pm

BeingAlive44Ever said: "Gesualdo said: "Expressing an opinion is your right. That's how we learn from each other. I have learned a lot of new concepts from your detailed explanations. So I appreciate your sharing of your experiences and ideas."

I hope you understand that I really wanted Harmony to succeed so much, I love Barry Manilow, I love Chip Zien, and I think that the concept is great

I get no joy from explaining its bad traits

I'm very glad that you appreciate my opinion, I'm also relatively new to this forum and it's split down the middle between somewhat ruthless people and very pleasant people

Kad said: "You did nothing wrong. You’re allowed to respectfully express your opinion on the quality of any show you wish. If others don’t like it, that’s on them to cope with.
"

Thank you, Kad. It makes me very happy that somebody who has been on this forum for so many years is willing to help somebody new like me not feel bad about things. Sometimes I say something wrong or don't express my opinions properly, but I try my best to remain respectful. It's people like you that make the internet not unbearable."

You do have the right to an opinion- completely. But as someone who is a big fan of Six, obviously I was not happy that you called it bad. You can express an opinion without comparing it to a show you might know others are huge fans of. 

Also- I loved Harmony, but I did think the pacing was a bit slow. I really hope Chip Zein is recognized come awards season. He's incredible. 

[kdogg36]

Posted: 1/3/24 at 5:47pm

BeingAlive44Ever: I think you're one of the more thoughtful - and certainly one of the chillest - posters to join the board in recent months, despite your unorthodox writing style. I'm a fan of Six and I do disagree that it's "objectively bad"; I think there's room in the canon for good musicals that don't follow the normal rules for how songs work in a musical, in this case developing the show's meaning without necessarily furthering the plot or even character development.

Gesualdo: Though it might be better, for the sake of clarity, to find an existing thread to post on, I think the worthiness of your original post is attested by the quality of responses that it has generated. To answer your original question: it's a great song and Brian Terrell Clark hit it out of the park in Motown. (Sorry, I won't see Harmony until this weekend, so I thought I'd triple-down on the joke.)

 

Updated On: 1/3/24 at 05:47 PM

[UncleCharlie]

Posted: 1/4/24 at 3:28am

BeingAlive44Ever said: "Plenty of people like Six, but it's just an objectively bad musical."

SIX got great reviews across the board including a New York Times critic's pick and was nominated for 8 Tonys, winning 2. It has been doing consistently strong box office on Broadway for well over 2 years and now on tour. How exactly is it an "objectively" bad musical? Because you didn't like it? Cause you're not its target demographic? Cause it doesn't conform to what you think a musical should be or look like? LOL. Opinions are inherently subjective, you're entitled to yours and I have no problem with you not liking SIX but please don't try to claim it's objectively bad when all the actual objective data would clearly seem to indicate the opposite.

Updated On: 1/4/24 at 03:28 AM

[Gesualdo]

Posted: 1/4/24 at 4:12pm

Hi,

Thank you for welcoming me to the BWW forum.  

I am really interested in learning from people here that are connoisseurs of theatrical works because I'm involved in the creative side, so it's important to me to listen to the audience opinion and get out of my own perspective.   

[Gesualdo]

Posted: 1/4/24 at 4:19pm

Hi, I actually like the elaborate maze of thoughts; it's a way of putting light on this subject. 

[hearthemsing22]

Posted: 1/5/24 at 10:58am

Gesualdo said: "Hi,

Thank you for welcoming me to the BWW forum.

I am really interested in learning from people here that are connoisseurs of theatrical works because I'm involved in the creative side, so it's important to me to listen to the audience opinion and get out of my own perspective."

It's just my personal opinion that many people think their view on a show is the definitive opinion, and heaven help those who disagree. I respect someone who doesn't like a show, but to flat-out call it bad if you don't bother to acknowledge there are others who love it? That it has won awards, is on an extremely successful tour- it's like Wicked. You may not love it, but to call it bad? I respect it, but you don't have the final say. And yes, I am aware you did not say you do. 

[annang]

Posted: 1/9/24 at 12:59pm

Gesualdo said: "I thought that the reputation of Barry Manilow by itself would have propelled the musical Harmony into instant success similar to what they do when casting a Hollywood movie with recognized star actors."

Part of the problem is that the people who want to see a Barry Manilow show are disappointed to learn it's not a jukebox musical of songs they already know. When I saw it, the couple sitting behind me apparently didn't know that when they bought the tickets, and they were really upset and felt ripped off. 

But also, Manilow himself hasn't been doing a lot to promote it through the official channels where his fans might follow him. I just took a peek at his Instagram, and there are only 2 or 3 posts about the show in the first few dozen posts. And even those aren't about why the show is good and don't feature the music. They're photos of Manilow at events related to the show, and interviews he's done about what it's like to add "Broadway composer" to his list of career achievements. So whoever is doing the marketing for this show hasn't actually managed to get his press team on board for any kind of cohesive marketing strategy. Manilow is promoting his own concerts and what appears to be some sort of Manilow-centric streaming service and press about his own career, not this show.

 

[Gesualdo]

Posted: 1/9/24 at 8:34pm

annang said: "Gesualdo said: "I thought that the reputation of Barry Manilow by itself would have propelled the musical Harmony into instant success similar to what they do when casting a Hollywood movie with recognized star actors."

Part of the problem is that the people who want to see a Barry Manilow show are disappointed to learn it's not a jukebox musical of songs they already know. When I saw it, the couple sitting behind me apparently didn't know that when they bought the tickets, and they were really upset and felt ripped off.

But also, Manilow himself hasn't been doing a lot to promote it through the official channels where his fans might follow him. I just took a peek at his Instagram, and there are only 2 or 3 posts about the show in the first few dozen posts. And even those aren't about why the show is good and don't feature the music. They're photos of Manilow at events related to the show, and interviews he's done about what it's like to add "Broadway composer" to his list of career achievements. So whoever is doing the marketing for this show hasn't actually managed to get his press team on board for any kind of cohesive marketing strategy. Manilow is promoting his own concerts and what appears to be some sort of Manilow-centric streaming service and press about his own career, not this show.

Wow!  That's truly an amazing situation that you just described.  And I can understand how a musical with the music of Manilow could be misconstrued for a jukebox musical which is remarkable in itself.  Of course, the marketing of this an any musical is major endeavor which needs very careful attention in market such as Broadway where there are many possibilities for misunderstanding.  A clear vision from the marketing division is essential.  

 

[choircatdog1]

Posted: 1/9/24 at 9:26pm

Gesualdo said: "annang said: "Gesualdo said: "I thought that the reputation of Barry Manilow by itself would have propelled the musical Harmony into instant success similar to what they do when casting a Hollywood movie with recognized star actors."

Part of the problem is that the people who want to see a Barry Manilow show are disappointed to learn it's not a jukebox musical of songs they already know. When I saw it, the couple sitting behind me apparently didn't know that when they bought the tickets, and they were really upset and felt ripped off.

But also, Manilow himself hasn't been doing a lot to promote it through the official channels where his fans might follow him. I just took a peek at his Instagram, and there are only 2 or 3 posts about the show in the first few dozen posts. And even those aren't about why the show is good and don't feature the music. They're photos of Manilow at events related to the show, and interviews he's done about what it's like to add "Broadway composer" to his list of career achievements. So whoever is doing the marketing for this show hasn't actually managed to get his press team on board for any kind of cohesive marketing strategy. Manilow is promoting his own concerts and what appears to be some sort of Manilow-centric streaming service and press about his own career, not this show.

Wow! That's truly an amazing situation that you just described. And I can understand how a musical with the music of Manilow could be misconstrued for a jukebox musical which is remarkable in itself. Of course, the marketing of this an any musical is major endeavor which needs very careful attention in market such as Broadway where there are many possibilities for misunderstanding. A clear vision from the marketing division is essential.

 

Anyone else think that this person who started the thread works on the show? maybe in press, marketing, or social media and started this thread to get people talking about harmony lol.

 

[inception]

Posted: 1/10/24 at 9:23am

When I Google I get results like: "Gesualdo: composer or crazed psychopath?"

This is all very suspicious.  Perhaps a rival composer who is just playing innocent, but is actually happy to see a show by their nemesis flailing. 

choircatdog1 said: "
Anyone else think that this person who started the thread works on the show? maybe in press, marketing, or social media and started this thread to get people talking about harmony lol.

"

 

[pablitonizer]

Posted: 1/10/24 at 9:41am

choircatdog1 said: "Gesualdo said: "annang said: "Gesualdo said: "I thought that the reputation of Barry Manilow by itself would have propelled the musical Harmony into instant success similar to what they do when casting a Hollywood movie with recognized star actors."

Part of the problem is that the people who want to see a Barry Manilow show are disappointed to learn it's not a jukebox musical of songs they already know. When I saw it, the couple sitting behind me apparently didn't know that when they bought the tickets, and they were really upset and felt ripped off.

But also, Manilow himself hasn't been doing a lot to promote it through the official channels where his fans might follow him. I just took a peek at his Instagram, and there are only 2 or 3 posts about the show in the first few dozen posts. And even those aren't about why the show is good and don't feature the music. They're photos of Manilow at events related to the show, and interviews he's done about what it's like to add "Broadway composer" to his list of career achievements. So whoever is doing the marketing for this show hasn't actually managed to get his press team on board for any kind of cohesive marketing strategy. Manilow is promoting his own concerts and what appears to be some sort of Manilow-centric streaming service and press about his own career, not this show.

Wow! That's truly an amazing situation that you just described. And I can understand how a musical with the music of Manilow could be misconstrued for a jukebox musical which is remarkable in itself. Of course, the marketing of this an any musical is major endeavor which needs very careful attention in market such as Broadway where there are many possibilities for misunderstanding. A clear vision from the marketing division is essential.



Anyone else think that this person who started the thread works on the show? maybe in press, marketing, or social media and started this thread to get people talking about harmony lol.

"

Probably! But they don't need to go that far to find out why Harmony is flopping this hard. Check Barry Manilow on The view, and he basically gave me the impression has no idea what the musical is about. It felt weird to watch

[choircatdog1]

Posted: 1/10/24 at 12:02pm

inception said: "When I Google I get results like: "Gesualdo: composer or crazed psychopath?"

This is all very suspicious. Perhaps a rival composer who is just playing innocent, but is actually happy to see a show by their nemesis flailing.

choircatdog1 said: "
Anyone else think that this person who started the thread works on the show? maybe in press, marketing, or social media and started this thread to get people talking about harmony lol."

 

Bruce Sussman is married to Rob Shuter who is a big gossip columnist (Naughty Gossip). If you look on social media and article ties you can see that Bruce, Rob, and the shows press agent are good friends and have been for a long time.  I think Gesualdo is all of them in cahoots.

Updated On: 1/10/24 at 12:02 PM

[Gesualdo]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 1:48pm

Hi theatrical folks, I'm really grateful to ready all the comments on my post.  Rest assured that I am not in "cahoots" with the Harmony musical organization at the Davenport Productions; I'm only an inquisitive composer seeking information from the seasoned theatrical connoisseurs on this wonderful forum. I have learned a lot from the comments here and from other threads. 

My reason for coming to this forum is that I composed the music for a musical, produced a stage reading in October 2023, and at the end of all that, I'm trying to figure out my next step.  So in the meanwhile, I thought learning from others is just the most productive thing for me to do right now.  I appreciate you folks! 

[OhHiii]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 3:36pm

dramamama611 said: "What intimidation is going on at the theater? Fairly certain we'd have heard about this. Or any "taking over" of Times Square?"

Spoiler: this isn't what's going on. But those on a given side of this issue will definitely tell you that's what's happening! The show isn't good and people don't want to be faced with this story and the trauma yet again while everything that's going on is happening. Same reason 2016 plays failed miserably in that time period. 

[inception]

Posted: 1/12/24 at 3:46pm

I don't know where you are based, but maybe you can get a small theatre company near you to put on a production of your work.  Did you get feedback notes from people who attended the staged reading?  Are any of them willing to write some recommendations?

Maybe think of it like if you were someone looking for a job putting together a resume.

If your goal is something large scale that could go all the way to Broadway, remember that many shows that ultimately found success went through many changes on the way.  Hadestown is a good example of that.

Also, creating a show that has smaller success in a regional theatre is still a success.  Not everything has to go to New York.

Finally, any lessons learned creating your first shows will help you with your next shows.