Worst Worst Musical — Page 6

JRB said:

"If the thread was Least Favorite Musical, then have at it. List The Music Man and Dreamgirls and Kiss Me Kate to all your heart's content. Because THAT would be ALL about opinion."

Yeah, I get what you mean, but really? THIS is all about opinion as well. Also, I don't think a single person in this thread has discussed what consitutes a poorly constructed musical and what constitutes a well constructed musical.

And it is IMPOSSIBLE to tell what, among the musicals out today, will make it into "revered musical canon." I think where we go wrong is where we put the classics and the contemporaries in the same category. And also, the fact that none of us are 100 years old and can remember what, in 1956, for example, was SO bad, SO INCREDIBLY AWFUL, that it closed 5 days after it opened. Of the 50's and 60's, all we know are the "classics" that get revived. And so we judge what based on we think, of THOSE MUSICALS, are so bad, that we think they are the worst of the classics. So again, our frame of reference here is just WAY too small. And sort of a mish-mosh.

JRB said:
"But as the thread was regarding what is the WORST musical, you just look absolutely foolish listing The Music Man when there are SOOOOOOOOO many HORRIBLE musicals out there in line ahead of it. This thread is where we should be delving into educated consensus to identify what are truly the worst musicals in history, just as the Best Best thread should be our attempt to qualify what the musical canon should truly consist of."

Again... what exactly is our well of knowledge here? Even the most musical-saavy of us has not seen enough musicals to constitute best and worst in history. And best and worst also falls into 2 categories: best classic and worst classic, and best contemporary and worst contemporary. You can't judge THE MUSIC MAN against WICKED, for instance, because they're completely different and from completely different eras. Furthermore, MUSIC MAN has had HOW many years to become a classic?

Also, you have yet to qualify WHY you think THE MUSIC MAN is SOOOOOOO great. You tell us to qualify our answers, but you have not qualified yours. And that is where this thread goes wrong. Because to me? THE MUSIC MAN is just another musical. It has a silly, easy story that allows people to burst into song and dance, and it has lyrics which are no more or less clever to me than those for GYPSY or CAROLINE OR CHANGE or RENT or FIDDLER. It is neither bad nor great to me. It is neither ground-breaking nor poor to me. If someone thought it was the worst of the "classic musicals," then I have to say, i would not disagree.

From what I can see, all musicals pretty much follow a formula, which allows for the actors to break out into song and dance for no reason. So what makes one formula better than another, or one grouping of rhymy story-like songs better than another?

CATS, for instance, is considered a classic. I think CATS is a piece of garbage. I think it's one of the worst things ever put on stage. I think it's a stupid idea with a ridiculous plot, and why so many people went to see it is beyond me, because all the people I know who have seen it have NO idea what happened or what it was about, besides the scene where that one cat sang MEMORIES. So CATS is like the Grapes of Wrath of Broadway; everyone calls it a classic, but nobody has really read it, and even if they have, nobody can tell you what it's really about, unless they're english teachers, because they either don't remember or blocked it out. To me, THAT is bad theater. REGARDLESS of whether it is considered a classic or a bomb. When it is completely unmemorable and you don't remember what happened in it at all, and can't remember how any of the songs went, THAT is bad musical theater.

CATS
The Lion King

---

Worst show I've ever seen: Rocking Cinderella. It was just awful, though I do see potentials in the score. The lyric was awful, the book was non-existence (you think they could follow the Cinderella's storyline) and choreography had nothing to do with what was going on onstage. On top of that, the whole thing was around an hour long and they had intermission. I wanted to walk out, but my friend was in the musical. She asked how it was, I said "it was interesting".

To interject, The Music Man has one of Broadway's most brilliant scores. The book is a cleverly crafted adaptation of The Rainmaker set in the turn of the century, which allows for Wilson's incredible pastische scoring, and transforms Starbuck into a travelling band teacher, another clever device justifying the creation of a musical score into an already familiar story. The music and lyrics are superb examples of musical theatre songwriting. Everything from the pattern songs, to the barbershop quartets, to the Sousa-inspired Seventy-Six trombones, to the fusion of independent melodies is top-notch. The book is tight, funny, touching and engaging. I would easily classify it as one of the best classic musicals. But it demands a strong director and choreographer (but then, what musical doesn't?) as the recent television production woefully illustrated, otherwise it is slow, humorless and devoid of heart or charm.

---

"To interject, The Music Man has one of Broadway's most brilliant scores. The book is a cleverly crafted adaptation of The Rainmaker set in the turn of the century, which allows for Wilson's incredible pastische scoring, and transforms Starbuck into a travelling band teacher, another clever device justifying the creation of a musical score into an already familiar story. The music and lyrics are superb examples of musical theatre songwriting. Everything from the pattern songs, to the barbershop quartets, to the Sousa-inspired Seventy-Six trombones, to the fusion of independent melodies is top-notch. The book is tight, funny, touching and engaging. I would easily classify it as one of the best classic musicals. But it demands a strong director and choreographer (but then, what musical doesn't?) as the recent television production woefully illustrated, otherwise it is slow, humorless and devoid of heart or charm."

Thank you. That is a good explanation. Certainly it is better than, "The Music Man is a classic. Because it just IS. And I like it." I can see that point of view. It doesn't make me like THE MUSIC MAN any more than I do, unfortunately, but I can see the reasoning for others enjoying it.

And I'm sorry, but I still hate OKLAHOMA. To me, it's just completely unappealing. I have yet to make through ANY production of it, in its entirety.

But I think, also, that you can pull good things from even the worst musical, and for that reason, perhaps NO musical venture is a bad one. Just look at CANDIDE, for example, which was a gigantic flop, and a HUGE disaster, but is often revived in concert form, and boasts this amazingly beautiful score. And yeah, BKLYN was godawful, but I definitely enjoyed the renditions of ONCE UPON A TIME and RAVEN that I heard when i went to Broadway in Bryant Park. And isn't that what theater should be about? (Although, really. CATS? Why, God, why? Someone name just ONE other song in CATS besides MEMORIES--I'll give you a cookie.)

Also, sometimes, the musicals that become classics and get revived (as i think JRB said earlier) aren't necessarily great, or the most critically acclaimed musicals, but the ones that are most popular. Hense why MAMMA MIA will probably see a thousand tours and revivals in the next 40 years. So it's hard to judge, what is empirically good or bad, because we're basing our opinions on classics that are classics either because they were good and people liked them, or because they were bad but people STILL liked them.

Blood Brothers

---

Some of you deserve to be haunted by the ghosts of Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Cole Porter, and Meredith Wilson in life and damned to listen "Oklahoma!" "The Music Man" "The Sound of Music" and "Kiss Me Kate" for all eternity.

---

Updated On: 11/11/05 at 04:40 PM

Well, when you have taken a graduate class in Dramatic Theory and Criticism, come chat with me about this more. Because, I'm not talking about opinions. I'm talking about how people through the ages have been able to deem plays as classics. And, one can hate Hamlet, but that hate and debate will never change the FACT that Hamlet has been deemed a classic. And, if we had a thread called worst worst plays and someone said Hamlet, they would look FOOLISH.

Again, if ya want to put Hamlet as your least favorite play in the Least Favorite Play thread or in the Unpopular Opinion thread, knock your lights out.

---

Have to say the show I had the worst time with was Wicked, I was just so bored, and so happy when it was over. Thankful the tickets where free.

This is an interesting discussion... I think that there's a reason that some musicals stick around and are continually revived, the reason being that they're probably great (or at least, beloved by a lot of people). But how do we know that those are the best? Some musicals that fade into obscurity are probably very good and just for some reason or other didn't have long or productive runs on Broadway. I can see this happening... I mean, RAGTIME, which I consider to be the best musical that I've ever seen live, only had a run of two years. Of course, a lot of people loved it and will acknowledge its greatness, and we have a fantastic cast recording to preserve it, but I'm sure that similar things have happened to other musicals...

So maybe, "classic" = having longevity, but does not necessarily equate to being the best musical?

(I don't really know where I'm going with this, sorry. It's been a long week.)

Hey, I loved Sweet Smell of Success!!!

I thought it was better than Millie.

---

I am more than a little tired of the argument that because something is popular and/or acclaimed, it is automatically good. Cecil B. DeMille's "The Greatest Show on Earth", about a madman run amok at a circus, was incredibly popular and won the Best Picture Oscar. Try to watch it today without laughing (or groaning). "Citizen Kane" was a terrible flop when it came out, but its status as one of the greatest movies of all time is pretty much assured. And "Basic Instinct" broke financial records when it came out. You know what? It's still dreck.

---