shows that went through development hell? — Page 2

What Aida went through wasn't just development hell, it was full fledged hell. After the 1998 Atlanta run the director was replaced, the Pyramid was sent to Japan and a new round of hell began in Chicago the following year with weeks of rewrites. In the early Chicago incarnation there was no apparent reason for Aida to fall in love with Ramades, they just fought a lot and then after a while sang love songs instead. There was hysterical techno fashion show music that got cut when Elton finally saw the show during New York previews and walked out during that scene.

In the end they came up with a pretty good show, but it wasn't easy!

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Updated On: 1/18/09 at 08:38 PM

Curtains. The show ran into one wall after another, including the deaths of Fred Ebb and Peter Stone.

I wouldn't say the workshop of KOTSW was "hysterically awful," Eric, but it certainly wasn't great. Only one movie was staged, and its scenes were meant to parallel the story of the two men. It didn't work: The movie was supposed to be a cheesy musical comedy, but they kept forcing in dramatic songs ("I Do Miracles," the title song) to keep the parallel going. It all became very uneven. The movie scenes weren't a respite from the horrible reality, they were a variation of that reality. Likewise, non-movie songs came out of nowhere, without any dramatic buildup to make them necessary. It wasn't terrible, but dramatically weak.

On the other hand, McNally's book had some very strong lines that I wish had been kept (my signature, for one). In the current script, after Valentin yells at Molina for poking fun at a tortured prisoner, he ends the scene by saying, "Look at me. I'm shaking. I'm as pathetic as you." And blackout. Originally, there was some more to that scene. In the workshop, Molina responded, "No, you're not" to that line. Three little words revealed a lot about the character and his self-perception. So it wasn't all bad. Just...mostly.

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"so what do you all think has changed... or maybe another question to ask is when do you all think things changed..."

Out of town tryouts were common during Broadway's golden age. Philadelphia and Boston were frequent test audiences. I've heard that excessive wage demands from local crew and costume people in those cities eventually led producers to go farther away from New York for their out of town runs. As far as all the workshops and tryouts, I think this reflects the increasing corporate control of Broadway (Disney, Clear Channel etc.) that has developed in the past decade or so. What corporation can manage a big project without zillions of meetings, pointless revisions, political infighting and way too much input from too many chiefs?

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Here's a piece originally from The New York Times, detailing the tortured tryout for My One and Only. The complete overhaul of that show still might be the most successful salvage job of an out-of-town disaster that I know of.
How My One and Only Came to Broadway

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'Dear World' as well as 'Mack and Mabel' went through development hell. Two wonderful, but sadly not well recieved shows.

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