Worst Show You've ever seen.. — Page 8

I can't remember if I've responded in this thread or not, but if I did, I had forgotten (or blocked out of my mind) the recent tour of Starlight Express. The show is clunky, thin, repetitive and inane enough as it is ("Freight is Great" -- good God almighty) but this version completely got rid of the races and replaced them with horrid 3-D movies on a screen lowered from the top of the stage. When I opened the Playbill to find a pair of 3-D glasses, it's the closest I've ever come to walking out of a show before it even began. I had come to see a live performance, not some filmmaking novelty that had gotten stale before I was even born.

Updated On: 4/11/06 at 05:13 PM

Melissa Manchester sings Andrew Loyd Webber...technically not a show, but we left at intermission, my ears were bleeding...

Also, Will Rogers Follies was pretty bad

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LESTAT.

London:
Witches of Eastwick
Company

Walked out of both of those at intermission.

Tours:
Urinetown

Mamma Mia- I like some of ABBA's music but whose terrible idea was it to strap it together into a musical?
Cats- saw it twice, was given the dvd as a gift and I still don't get it
West End
Witches of Eastwick - it was in previews so I should cut it some slack but after nearly 4 hours who cares who does what to whom?
Heathcliff- I loved the book (Wuthering Heights) and I do like Sir Cliff Richard, but something really bad happened in the translation to stage
La Cava- 'nuff said
Whistle Down the Wind- hideous Louisiana accents (Amos is not pronounced A-Mose) dumb story, bad set (and it was better than the actors), bad score, you get the picture
The Woman in Black (play) not scary, loud in places to try to illicit fear, dumb and predictable,

I usually avoid threads such as this like the plague - and certainly don't believe in statements like I'm about to make.

BUT . . . LESTAT is the biggest pile of excrement that I have paid to see in a VERY long time. The only redeeming value for me was the incredible release through laughter that I received due to the procedings. Indescribably horrendous on every discussable level.

I dream of someday seeing a huge flop musical like "Carrie" or "In My Life", but I don't get to New York all that often.

The worst show that I ever saw in NY was a bland, lackluster, boring revival of "Arsenic and Old Lace." What makes it even worse is that I was there with my sister and we could have gone to see "Raggedy Ann" or "Into the Light" (a musical about the Shroud of Turin) but I couldn't talk her into seeing either one. She wouldn't even go to see the revival of "Sweet Charity", because she doesn't like Ann Reinking. But that's another story, nevermind, anyway...

Really don't like "Blood Brothers"

And there's no reason that even a show called "Barry Mannilow's Copacabana" should be as bad as "Barry Mannilow's Copacabana"...

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National tour of Fosse, at least from a dancer's persepctive.


'Twas not one bit impressive.

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You haven't died in a theater until you saw Richard Harris on tour in Camelot. He phoned the performance in. From England. Just terrible. And I saw it in the exact same seat in the same theater that as a child I saw the opening night of Camelot in 1960. The O'Keefe Center, Toronto. The only thing similar was the titles on the front pages of the two programs. SOOOO sad.

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I hope you know I didn't mean he actually PHONED....

Well, for instance, the first song comes up and this was how Richard Burton delivered the intro in the original (ad I was there, baby)

I KNOW what my people are thinking tonight,
As HOME through the shadows they waunder
EVERY-ONE'S SMILING in secret de-light....
(big pause)
They stare at the castle and ponder
When evvvvv-er the wind blows this way....
You can AL-most hear EV-ry one say...

And this is Harris. He looks offstage, sighs and says
Iknowwhatmypeoplearethikingtonight
Ashomethroughtheshadowstheywaunder
Everyonessmilingingsecretdelight
Theystareatthecastleandponder...

Get the idea? Not a single intonation, words delivered at 120m.p.h. It was as if he was saying "F*CK it, let's get this over with."

He phoned it in...

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Into the Light

Tarzan
Ring of Fire
Brooklyn
Good Vibrations
Lestat
Dracula

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This just reminded me of Terry Mann's musical ROMEO AND JULIET. It was beyond painful. It's the only time I've seen a show with horrible bland music but gorgeous orchestrations.

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