OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS - Part Four

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS

Part Four

And now the show that, after forty years as the Gold Standard of Theatrical Train Wrecks, booted Wild and Wonderful from its pedestal. It deserves a blog post all its own. It was a re-imagined revival or "revision" or whatever the hell they called it of one of my personal favorites. Here it is. Drum roll, please!

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER – St. James Theatre

I thought the marquee, though bright and colorful, was pretty ugly. Especially when compared to the design for the 1965 cast recording. It's pretty obvious that Harry Connick, Jr. was the main thing here and not the show itself.

December, 2011. Blessed with one of the finest scores from the sixties, and arguably among the best from any decade (lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner/music by Burton Lane), On a Clear Day You Can See Forever was perversely cursed with a problematic and muddy book. When it kept to its basic story -- that of a mid-1960s lass, Daisy, who is the reincarnation of a late 18th century English woman, Melinda, and the psychiatrist who falls for Melinda -- everything chugged along nicely. When it veered off course, however, that's when trouble occurred. Why is this character here? Why is this song there? Why is Dr. Bruckner being mean to Daisy and whatever happened to his professional ethics? Overall, though, it's a pleasant diversion and, actually, one of my favorite shows. Part of the charm is that the same actress plays both Daisy and Melinda and, with a talented performer (Barbara Harris in the original; the sensational Barbara Lang on tour), the part(s) can be a true tour de force. It had a modest nine-month run on Broadway, a year-long national tour, and then, sadly, a monumental flop of a film version, starring a woefully miscast Barbra Streisand, who mugged her way through the picture. Until 2011, it had not had a full-blown Broadway revival. Enter Michael Mayer, Tony-winning director for Spring Awakening, who decided, apparently with the blessing of the Alan Jay Lerner estate (they must have been on some really heavy duty drugs), to "re-conceive" ("Danger, Will Robinson, danger!") Clear Day by keeping big chunks  of the original score, jettisoning the 18th century storyline, and interpolating songs from Lerner and Lane's film musical Royal Wedding and a song or two from the Clear Day film, and rethinking most of the character arcs in general. To make his vision a reality, book writer Peter Parnell was hired to refurbish the problematic and muddy Alan Jay Lerner original. The end result was even more problematic and muddier. A hot, icky mess is a better description of it. Where to start? First of all, let me state unequivocally that Clear Day needed some retooling if it had any hope of succeeding in 2011. But Mr. Parnell somehow managed to take every bit of charm and humor out of Alan Jay Lerner's book. Then the reimaginers bumped up the time period from present day (in 1965, present day was 1965) to a specified 1974. Why they just didn't figure out a way to reimagine the script to present day 2011 is beyond me. All going to the psychedelic, Me Decade 1970s did was force us to look at ugly sets and costumes and watch really cheesy choreography. But then, ah, but then, the creative power folks went on their own psychedelic trip and made Daisy/Melinda into two separate parts played by two separate actors. The fun of seeing the same actress switch characters with a change of posture, attitude and voice? Gone. And not only that, but Daisy is now David, a commitment-challenged smoker who is eager for the good doctor to cure him of the habit so he can move in with his boyfriend, and Melinda is still Melinda, but instead of being an 18th century Londoner, she's now a 1940s nightclub singer who can apparently make time travel between 1974 and the 1940s a reality, since she and the good doctor actually interact in real time or, rather, theatrical real time. In the Mayer/Parnell vision, Dr. Bruckner is now the show's central focus, a shift which causes the entire show to spin dizzily out of control. And let's not even talk about how many violations of doctor-patient ethics are shamelessly broken in this version. Yikes! With the stage presence and charm of a 2x4, Harry Connick Jr., who was sexy and fun in a revival of The Pajama Game five years earlier, bored the living crap out of me as Dr. Bruckner. Looking puffy and seriously uncomfortable, he didn't even sing all that well at the preview we attended. Kerry O'Malley was shamefully misused as Connick's adoring colleague. Sarah Stiles, as David's BFF, was bitch-slap perky and generally supremely annoying. Drew Gehling, as David's boyfriend, was not only cute as all get-out, but also the true bright spot among the supporting players. David Turner played David, née Daisy, and took the challenges and ran with them. He was as charming as the script and direction would allow him to be and really shone with the songs. His "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?" was right up there with the best and provided the show's second showstopper. (The first was Jessie Mueller's "Ev'ry Night at Seven." Connick didn't stop anything. Well, he did, but not in a good way.) Jessie Mueller, in her Broadway debut, played the new version of Melinda. Blessed with a fine voice and charisma and presence to spare, she sang the daylights out of her material, but sadly wasn't given a character, so she almost seemed like an extraneous character in the proceedings. Ironically both Jessie Mueller and David Turner could have easily played the Daisy/Melinda role with great charm and talent depending on the direction the show wanted to go in…a gay theme or the traditional one, though the former would have posed some lyric challenges for the luscious "Melinda." None of the interpolated songs quite worked, the book was part caricature, part pseudo-serious, part stereotypes, and, oddly considering that Michael Mayer is a gay man, I found it bordered on homophobic. Since the biggest problem onstage was Connick, perhaps another leading man would have better served this new vision. Will Swenson? Brian d'Arcy James? Will Chase? This handily became the new Gold Standard because they took a lovely, if flawed, property and, unforgivingly, made an unrecognizable hash of it. During the interval at our preview performance, we were standing next to Michael Mayer and some of the creatives. It was obvious something wasn't quite going the way they planned. (Really?) Mayer asked, "What do you think we should do?" I so wanted to tap him on the shoulder and say, "Close the show." The days were not clear for Clear Day. The reviews were mostly negative and the audiences did not flock to the box office for Harry Connick, Jr. The show closed after 29 previews and a paltry 57 performances. It is perhaps telling that Tams-Witmark, the show's licensing agent, only offers the original version for performance rights. – at the St. James Theatre, New York

Sidebar: I have somewhat of a history with Clear Day's delightful "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." When I was high school senior, I was invited to join Modern Music Masters, now Tri-M, a secondary school honor society for music. At the installation ceremony for the new members, each new member had to do some sort of musical performance. I accompanied two of my classmates as they performed an operatic aria. This in and of itself is remarkable since I can't actually play the piano, but can bang out the right notes if the piece is simple. (I also, astonishingly, during my days at ISU, played the piano, as a sort of substitute for a bass, for a campus-wide evening of musical entertainments put on by each of the dorms.) I digress. For my MMM performance, I went unconventional (lots of classical and art song stuff went on that night) and sang "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." As the only theatre song that evening, it got a great response. Then later that year in drama class, one of our assignments was to perform a 15-minute scene from a play. I chose the opening scene from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and, foretelling by some forty-plus years what Michael Mayer and Peter Parnell would attempt to do, changed Daisy Gamble to David Gamble, but also changed Dr. Mark Bruckner to Dr. Melinda Bruckner. Part of that scene gave me yet another opportunity to perform, this time to a taped accompaniment, "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." And last, but not least, jump ahead to 1980-81 to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and that year's entertainment for the National Word Processing Association's conference. Working with the same people, more or less, that I'd worked with the previous year in New York for that year's conference, the hour-long show was a story about word-processing and romance in the work place (I think) and somehow or another, the second number in the show had me singing, yep, you guessed it, "Hurry! It's Lovely Up Here." (Haven't a clue what this had to do with anything in the story, but it was a big hit with the happily drinking audience.) And, yes, it's still a favorite of mine.

And that's the end of the series on my Top Ten Theatrical Train Wrecks. Coming up in future posts...more Alphabet Soup, more Musical Mayhem, and more Walking in a West End Wonderland. Cheers!

© 2015 Jeffrey Geddes  

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS - Part Three

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS

Part Three

The penultimate installment of my top ten theatrical train wrecks. I decided to devote a separate blog to the new Gold Standard of Theatrical Train Wrecks. The two discussed here both jumped the tracks in New York City. One was a London import. One was a short-lived sequel to a popular 60s smash hit. A duo of theatrical WTFs.

Go grab some coffee and let's get started.

FESTEN – Music Box Theatre, New York

The London marquee. "A work of genius"? Uh....don't think so. At least not in New York.

April, 2006. Opening night! "Do you want to know a secret?" the marquee at the Music Box Theatre tantalizingly asked, hinting that all sorts of naughty and perverse things awaited the theatregoer attending a performance of Festen. Unfortunately, by the time the curtain fell, the question I was asking was, "What was that?" In New York on a layover, I had read the reviews of the London production and was mighty intrigued. Based on a celebrated Danish film, Festen sounded all macabre and dark and Scandinavian, in the best tradition of those famous Scandinavian gloom masters, August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen, but with a modern, pervy twist. Plus it was opening night. How cool is that? The warning bells should have started ringing when I was able to snag a really good main floor seat at the TKTS booth. For an opening night of a much-anticipated play? Really? But, with visions of seeing celebs in opening night finery, I walked into the Music Box and promptly wish I hadn't. Physically stunning, Festen tells the story, at times incoherently, of a family reunion centered around the family patriarch's 60th birthday celebration. During the course of the interminable evening, we discover all sorts of dark, gloomy and perverse things about this family, who could pass as the poster child for dysfunctional families everywhere, including parental sexual abuse. And amongst all the dark, gloomy and perverse revelations were a master of ceremonies, birthday toasts, silly songs and games and a great big dining room table where the beautiful and staggeringly miscast Ali MacGraw, in her Broadway debut, treated the audience to a lengthy and, well, painful speech. (Love means never having to watch Ali MacGraw on stage.) Misdirected and without focus, the cast included performers from theatre (Larry Bryggman as the sexually abusive daddy and Michael Hayden, in the evening's best performance, as the anguished son), television (Julianna Margulies, in the evening's most interesting performance, as the anguished son's sister and Jeremy Sisto, in the evening's most bizarre performance, as the anguished son's brother) and film (the previously-mentioned Ms. MacGraw as the family matriarch). Curiously, some in the audience were applauding like crazy at the bows; I just wanted the curtain to come down. Awful. Full stop. – at the Music Box Theatre, New York

Sidebar: Festen, as previously mentioned, received ecstatic, you-must-see-this-if-you-care-at-all-about-the-theatre reviews when it opened in London. New York critics were far less kind and the show closed after a brief run. In 2011, however, a production opened at Chicago's Steep Theatre to rave reviews. I just couldn't put myself through it again, reviews be damned. (To be completely honest, the video promo for this production did nothing to make me want to change my mind.)

BRING BACK BIRDIE – Martin Beck Theatre, New York

From an old slide. This is the best I could get the picture.

Hmmm. Friday, the 13th. Possibly an omen?

Back in the day of "real" paper tickets, this was how the producers and treasurers knew a ticket was sold at the TKTS booth.

Rehearsal shots.

How many orchestrators does a show need? I count nine. A bit of over-kill, don't you think?

February, 1981. I have never been a fan of Bye Bye Birdie. I don't think I've ever seen a production of it, but the original cast album never ranked among my favorites and watching the film is like fingernails against a blackboard. (And what is with Ann-Margret singing "Bye, bye, Birhee"? There's a "D" in there, cupcake!) So if I'm not a fan of the original, why would I go see its sequel? Simple. I may not be a fan of Bye Bye Birdie, but I'm most definitely a fan of Chita Rivera and I firmly believe that whenever Ms. Rivera graces a stage, one really should try to see whatever it is she's in. And, truthfully, Ms. Rivera was hands down the best thing about this show. Anticipation and lots of Bye Bye Birdie goodwill were present at the top of the show; both were gone by the interval, replaced by a knowledge that things were not going to get better and, I felt, anger from the audience that the creators would so desecrate the beloved original with this disaster of a sequel. Telling sign: at the start of the performance, the Mezzanine of the Martin Beck was nearly full; at the start of Act Two there were noticeably more empty seats. The messy and often incomprehensible plot had something to do with bringing the aging Conrad Birdie out of retirement to appear on an Emmy broadcast. In an attempt to make the proceedings more current, the kids are "hipper," there's a subplot involving a punk-rock band called "Filth" and yet another subplot involving a Moonie-type group, here called "Sunnies." STOP! I remember a scenic design that included a wall of television monitors (a scenic device much better used decades later in American Idiot), a handful of decent  tunes, well, decent compared to the rest of the score, and Ms. Rivera, revisiting her original star turn as Rose, doing everything but serving us breakfast to make the show work. Sharing top billing was Donald O'Connor as Albert, but, frankly, he didn't add much to the proceedings. Totally forgettable. Veteran Maria Karnilova as Mae Peterson got her laughs, but I thought she was unbearably cute. And looking at the program, I noticed that Maurice Hines was featured as a character named "Mtobe." Haven't a clue. Yes, this was truly as bad as it sounds. Even the curtain call rendition of Birdie's "Rosie," while charming, had an air of desperation about it. Bring Back Birdie made this list because there was absolutely no reason, none, to create this show, and even less of a reason to produce it. It was simply bad. Shockingly, you can license the show from Tams-Witmark. Bring Back Birdie deservedly was slammed by the critics and closed after four performances.  – at the Martin Beck Theatre, New York

Sidebar: As a rule of thumb, sequels usually have a rough go of it in the theatre. Even with the same creative team and sometimes even the same stars, it's difficult to recreate the magic that propelled the original to hit status. To support this theory, I offer as examples: Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge, sequel to Annie (2377 performances)…closed out of town; The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public, sequel to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1584 performances)…16 performances; Love Never Dies, sequel to The Phantom of the Opera (11,500 + performances and still going strong)…hasn't made it across the Pond due to lack of interest and negative reviews; Mortgage, sequel to Rent (5123 performances)… Okay, I made that last one up, but you get the general drift. Actually, come to think of it, wouldn't that make a great sequel? Set it twenty years after Rent takes place and have all those whiny brats have to deal with…gasp…a job and…gasp again…responsibilities. Here are some other shows that I think could have terrific sequels: Applause (Set a decade or so later. Eve's a big star, but Margo finally gets her revenge.); A Chorus Line (Sheila now a major television star; Cassie now teaching dance and bitter about her failed career. Things explode at Zach's funeral.); Cabaret (Sally, et al, after WWII); Gypsy (Louise's star fades a bit, June's rises, and Rose is still stage mother from hell); 42nd Street (Peggy Sawyer becomes Julian Marsh's mistress and begins drinking before noon. She escapes back to Allentown to regain her life.); Company (Bobby marries, divorces, has an affair with Peter and becomes addicted to internet dating sites.) Let the sequeling begin!

That's it for now. The very last installment of this series coming very soon!! Cheers!

©2015 Jeffrey Geddes

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS Part Two

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS

Part Two

These next three shows all went off the rails in Chicago. I suspect a lot of folks won't agree with the second one featured today, but…

Go grab some coffee and let's get started.

THE KID FROM BROOKLYN – Mercury Theater, Chicago

June, 2008. This terrible, terrible waste of time purported to tell the story of Danny Kaye…womanizer, alleged homophobic closeted homosexual and abrasive performer. Instead of actually giving us a portrait of Danny Kaye, warts and all, since someone's "faults" often make that person more interesting, this endeavor played like a rabid fanboy's homage to his idol. To his credit, Kaye was very active in charitable organizations, but watching this, I got the impression that Kaye did nothing without first determining whether or not it would be good for his career. As portrayed here, Kaye's wife, Sylvia Fine, didn't appear to be much better. In Karin Leone's performance, she came off as a coldly shrewd and calculating woman, an impression not dissipated by Fine's hosting gigs for television specials in the 80s celebrating Broadway musicals, where she appeared distant, aloof, even a bit superior. Full disclosure, I know my opinion of this production is largely tempered by the fact that Danny Kaye gave the single most unprofessional and disrespectful performance I have seen to date when I had the great misfortune of seeing him in Two By Two after his accident, when all pretenses of character and honoring the material had been jettisoned. Credit where credit is due, the cast of four worked hard, especially Brian Childers as Kaye. But all that hard work was for naught. Judging by audience reaction at the performance I attended, the crowd either loved the show or hated it. Interval chatter was evenly split. The Chicago reviews were decidedly on the negative side. Of the ten shows that make up my list of theatrical train wrecks, this is the only one that was chosen solely on a visceral, emotional response. God, did I hate this show! – at the Mercury Theater, Chicago

Sidebar: Although inconceivable to me, a similarly-themed musical called Danny and Sylvia: The Danny Kaye Musical (in an earlier workshop incarnation it was called Danny and Sylvia: A Musical Love Story) opened off-Broadway about a year after the run of The Kid from Brooklyn. Although the producers of D and S were quick to tell prospective audiences not to be confused with TKFB, both shows starred Brian Childers, which leaves one to wonder if Danny Kaye is all that Mr. Childers has in his theatrical bag of tricks. On a reduced four-performance-per-week schedule and heavy on matinees, D and S ran for nearly three years. Really?

JEKYLL & HYDE – Shubert Theatre, Chicago

 

 Brad Oscar was in the cast. He'd go on to do far better things.

 This was the line-up in Chicago. It would be different by the time the show reached NYC.

"Eder is the Streisand of the 90's." Uh...well....

The New York marquee was striking.

January, 1996. Two sell-out engagements at Houston's Alley Theatre and a wildly popular concept album made up the hype that preceded this hugely-anticipated musical's arrival at the Shubert, midway through an unofficial, yet nobody was denying it, pre-Broadway tour. It opened. It received poor reviews. It played to adoring audiences. It was a mess. Starring Robert Cuccioli as Jekyll/Hyde and Linda Eder as prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold Lucy Harris (paging Shirley MacLaine), then composer Frank Wildhorn's paramour, then wife, then ex-wife, the show musicalized Robert Lewis Stevenson's classic novella about split personalities and the good and evil that coexist in people, a theme that, on the surface seems, a natural for a Gothic, Victorian confection of a musical. Instead, however, creators Frank Wildhorn and Leslie Bricusse created a show that was a great, big, gooey, cheesy, pseudo-Gothic hot mess of a show with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the head, enough power ballads to make Les Misérables blush, a plethora of swinging heads and bouncing hair (the means by which Mr. Cuccioli changed from the saintly Dr. Jekyll into the demonic Mr. Hyde, who was, frankly, by far the more interesting of the dual personalities), a sound system that was set on very LOUD, and a stultifyingly wooden performance by Linda Eder. Now let me state flat out that Mr. Cuccioli did his best, delivering a solid performance backed up by a good voice, and I suppose all that hair tossing was the only workable way to do the multiple personality switches called for in the script, but he was saddled with a dreary, pedestrian script and wasn't helped by a production that lacked inspiration from both director and choreographer.. As good girl Lisa Carew, soprano Christiane Noll, making her Broadway debut in this show and who would create, a decade later, a powerful Mother in the revival of Ragtime, was the only principal who created a character of nuance. Her Act Two duet with Ms. Eder, "In His Eyes," was the highlight of the evening and she easily stole the song and the stage from Linda Eder. So what specifically made this show a top-ten theatrical train wreck? Well, several things actually, but first let me state that I was sincerely looking forward to this show and was, up to then, somewhat of a fan of the concept album. Yes, the same overwrought power ballads, but one can adjust the volume in one's living room. And while all that overwrought-ness can work in a recording, on stage it all becomes too much. So that was working against the show. And then there was the matter of Ms. Eder's performance. Ms. Eder is a singer with a fiercely loyal and devoted fan base and a powerful set of pipes (I find her one-note...loud…, but I'm probably in the minority on that one.), but is woefully lacking in the acting department. Watching her dialogue scenes bordered on painful. I didn't care that she sang/bellowed/beat-to-a-bloody-pulp her songs and made them all sound alike. Blame Mr. Wildhorn for composing songs that all blend together. What I still can't overlook is that she was the lead in a Broadway-bound musical and simply didn't have the chops for it. I'm sure her relationship with Wildhorn played a part in the casting, but it didn't work with Andrew Lloyd Webber's then-wife Sarah Brightman in The Phantom of the Opera, and it didn't work here. A pretty and powerful voice alone is not a sound reason to cast someone, nor will it hide acting deficiencies. Why didn't the producers seek out an actress who can sing with the best of them? Karen Ziemba immediately comes to mind, and, even now, just thinking what she could have brought to that role, well, it makes me want to weep at the missed opportunity. The combination of cheesy production values, sound-alike music, hair-tossing, and terrible acting all came to a head in the penultimate scene. The action takes place in Lucy's digs, a bright, virginal white room and our Lucy is dressed in a bright, virginal white dress. Are we getting the symbolism here? The room is spotless. SPOTLESS. Eder brays out a power ballad where she longs for "A New Life." Pretty, and loud, but nothing we haven't heard throughout the evening. Cuccioli, in his flowing locks as Hyde, enters. Insipid dialogue ensues, then, cradling Lucy, he stabs her as the stage blood flows a deep red in this bright, virginal white environment. Stop it! Now! But the worst offense and the moment when the show entered the hallowed ranks of theatrical train wrecks, was the Act Two opener, "Murder, Murder," an ensemble number so terrible in execution that it actually elicited laughs. I came back from intermission for this? It ranks right up there with "Louis Says" from Victor/Victoria as one of the worst musical numbers ever. Lots of missed opportunities. I would love to see Sondheim or Jason Robert Brown tackle this story. – at the Shubert Theatre, Chicago

Sidebar: A year after the unofficial, yet nobody was denying it, pre-Broadway tour, Jekyll & Hyde, opened in New York at the Plymouth Theatre and ran for nearly four years. In the intervening time between Chicago and New York, the entire production and design staff had been replaced, songs dropped, shifted around and added, but the show still, as then, didn't meet with critical favor. That, however, didn't faze the audiences who flocked to the Plymouth, especially the "Jekkies," superfans of the show, the Jekyll & Hyde version of Deadheads, who were a fixture at the Plymouth. The show was filmed featuring the final cast starring, wait for it, David Hasselhof, out of his swim trunks and onto the stage, as Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde. Despite the long run and over 1500 performances, the original run closed at a substantial loss (roughly 25% according to Playbill.com). Linda Eder continues to this day to have a successful career as a singer, but, except for concert engagements, has not since acted on Broadway. Frank Wildhorn, after seven attempts, if one counts the 2013 revival of J&H, has yet to have a financial, or critical, success on the Great White Way, but he still slogs away at it. Having said all this, however, there's no need to cry for Mr. Wildhorn or Mr. Bricusse. The show has had numerous productions in the States and abroad and is popular with amateur and regional theatres. I'm sure by now the original run has more than paid back its investment.

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INTERVAL --- What was going on in Chicago Theatre in 1996.

The guy's hot enough to make me wish I'd seen it. Puck and Bottom, indeed!

Don't know how I missed this. The play is a great old chestnut and the cast certainly was starry enough.

How to Succeed was delightful. I would rather eat ground glass than see Jerry Lewis in anything.

********************

ODYSSEY – Arie Crown Theatre, Chicago

Oh, Joan! The eye makeup! Noooo! And, maybe it's just me, but Yul has this gay-boy-just-leaving-the-gym look. I should have known what was coming.

Any of these would have been better than Odyssey. Quite a variety of venues and plays/musicals going on. And, yes, starring in The Magic Man was that David Copperfield. Only 21 and smoking hot. Sadly, however, we must return to Odyssey.

May, 1975. Even the biggest stars and creative talents in the business can have their bad days. In the case of Odyssey, some of the business' biggest stars and creative talents had some really, really bad days. This horror of a show had music by Man of La Mancha's Mitch Leigh and book and lyrics by Erich ”Love Story" Segal. It was directed by La Mancha's director, Albert Marre and starred Marre's wife and La Mancha's original Aldonza, Joan Diener and, oh-my-GOD!!, the King himself, Yul Brynner. Well, suffice it to say that there was no "Impossible Dream" this time around and this intermissionless and interminable two-hour fright of a musical was as perfect an example of "what were they thinking?" that you could find. I think the idea was to convert Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey" into, and I quote the program here, "a new musical comedy." I'm sorry. I just don't think of Homer and immediately go, "Break out the tap shoes, Mickey and Judy! It's show time!!" The score, such as it was, was derivative, in the worst sense of the word; Erich Segal proved that not only could he not write fiction, he couldn't write lyrics or a musical libretto either (I so wanted to do a riff on "Love means never having to say you're sorry" here, but my mind did a complete blank.); Albert Marre's direction was pretty much non-existent; Joan Diener's deportment was that of a queen dispensing largesse to the peasants, though one couldn't deny the power of her famed voice; Yul Brynner acted as though he desperately wanted to break into a quick rendition of "A Puzzlement," etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. (see The King and I). Even talented Russ Thacker, there primarily, I think, for the sole purpose of providing eye candy, seemed lost at sea here, no pun intended. Playing at the gigantic Arie Crown Theatre, it played to huge crowds, thanks to Brynner, received negative reviews, thanks to a crappy show, and left me scratching my head in bewilderment. Truly an awful, awful show. Not bad enough to be one of the great legendary flops; just bad. Full stop.– at the Arie Crown Theatre, Chicago

Sidebar: At the end of Odyssey's year-long tour, it limped into the Palace Theatre in New York under its new name of Home Sweet Homer, where it opened on a Sunday matinee and promptly closed that same afternoon. By that time, Erich Segal was no longer associated with the show. Lucky him. The tour was full of strife, terrible reviews, missed performances by the leads and a general sense that somebody needed to say "Enough!" But nobody did. Man of La Mancha would prove to be Mitch Leigh's only success as a Broadway composer. (Not that he needed to ever again write another note, but still.) For the husband-and-wife team of Albert Marre and Joan Diener, La Mancha would be their final success, both individually and together. Both would revisit La Mancha in various productions and revivals. Yul Brynner would scamper happily back to playing the King in cross-country tours and in two hugely successful Broadway revivals of The King and I. Russ Thacker had a modestly successful career, but the Broadway portion of it was littered with quick-closing flops. Odyssey/Home Sweet Homer … lots of wasted time, talent and money.

Tune in next time for the last three shows of my top-ten theatrical train wrecks.

© 2015 Jeffrey Geddes

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS Part One

OFF THE RAILS OR THEATRICAL TRAIN WRECKS

Part One

I've been going to professional theatre productions since 1966. That's nearly a half century now. (Okay, that just really sunk in. Wow.) Over those nearly fifty years, I've seen my share of really, really bad shows, the theatrical equivalent of train wrecks. But, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I truly believe no one in the theatre wakes up one morning, pours a cup of coffee, and proclaims, "I'm going to write/produce/act in/design/direct a rotten show!"  Who has the time to do this?  Who has the money to do this?  I believe all theatre projects start out with the best of intentions. Somewhere along the way, however, things go south, the folks involved, for whatever reasons, can't (unfixable material) or won't (big blinders, bigger egos, and even bigger delusions that everything is fine) fix the situation, and, inevitably, disaster occurs.

A case in point: back in the late 80s, an acquaintance of mine opened a musical on Broadway. The show received savage reviews and closed quickly. A million or so dollars down the drain; a dozen or so actors out of a job. What went wrong? For starters, a troubled and confrontational gestation period that, if anything, only got worse during the show's tryout and, sadly, continued and worsened through its preview period and short Broadway run. Add to the mix the inexperience of the show's creators, which resulted in a listless book and a mostly forgettable score. ("Mostly" because the score does offer up two really good songs.) Top if off with a production that looked cheap and substandard. And as a final touch, a hapless cast struggling with the material compounded by a barely competent performance by its leading lady. But it didn't start out that way. Like all new shows, hopes and spirits were high. But then, but then…

All of the shows I'll chat about in these next three posts started out with the best of intentions. Many of these shows were written by/directed by/starring top names in the business, folks who know or should know quality material. What all of these shows lacked, however, was the truly objective voice that could say, "STOP!! Danger, Will Robinson, danger!" and the results were hot theatrical messes that confounded both its audiences and its critics. In the theatre, far more shows fail financially than succeed in making their money back. Some fail so spectacularly they become legendary, a part of theatrical lore. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Carrie, and Moose Murders immediately come to mind. Most, however, simply close and are rarely thought of again. Some of the shows I'll write about ran for a long time, but didn't make money, and others were barely a blip on the theatrical radar. These are my top ten theatrical train wrecks. Shows that truly went "off the rails."

Let's begin.

WILD AND WONDERFUL – Lyceum Theatre, New York

November, 1971. First preview/world premiere! Neither wild nor wonderful, for forty years, this justly-forgotten musical was my gold standard for theatrical train wrecks. The impetus to see this show was Walter Willison, who I saw a few months earlier in the pedestrian Richard Rodgers' musical, Two by Two. He was the bright spot in the show, talented, only a few years older than me, cute as all get out, and, frankly, I had a bit of a crush on him. I was excited at the prospect of seeing the very first performance of his new musical. By the time the curtain fell on that first preview performance, I was far less than excited and knew that I had just witnessed a monumental flop. And, boys and girls, it was monumental. Terrible book, terrible score, terrible production values, terrible direction, terrible choreography. Why anyone ever thought this material should be produced on Broadway is beyond me. You know you're in trouble when the book writers' and the composer's Playbill bios are all terribly vague and say things like "he has written for the theatre for many years both off and on Broadway" or "he has been directing television programs for CBS" and no titles are offered. The plot, if one can truly call it that, involved the CIA (I kid you not. One of the songs was titled "I Spy.") with the horribly misused Willison cast as a cool and hip spy dude assigned to infiltrate the radical youth of the very early 70s. Toss in a winsome lass who Cool and Hip Spy Dude mistakes for a radical bomber for reasons that make absolutely no sense. Then add in Roman Catholic clerics for that touch of religion and, well, you get the picture. It was a mess…fascinating and horrifying to watch at the same time. But, if every cloud indeed has a silver lining, Wild and Wonderful had one sensational silver lining in Laura McDuffie, who, in her Broadway debut, had the misfortune of being cast as the female lead, but who somehow managed to add dignity, charm, and huge amounts of talent to this disaster of a show. I was totally mad about her. The fact that Wild and Wonderful marked not only her Broadway debut, but also her Broadway farewell, was a great loss for Broadway. Had her debut show been even a modest success, I think she could have had a long and successful career in New York. So, why, you ask, was this show secure and relatively unchallenged for decades as the worst show I'd ever seen? I guess I'd have to say because this simply should not have been produced. It was amateur hour and a lot of money, talent, and time was wasted. Lots of worthier projects go unproduced, yet something like this somehow finds backing. I'm still shaking my head about this one. Oh…and Walter Willison? Well, he was still cute and all, but I moved on. Willison did, too, to a nice long stay in Pippin. Wild and Wonderful played nine previews, then opened to disastrous reviews and closed that night eight days after the performance I saw. 

Fun Factoids: Wild and Wonderful was produced under something called the Broadway Limited Gross Contract, a now defunct contract designed for productions scaled to earn less the $25,000 per week. (!!) Remember, this was in 1971. It offered lower union pay scales and, I believe, work rule concessions to promote production of smaller, more intimate shows. Top price for Wild and Wonderful was $5.00!  Even in 1971, that was a bargain. Another fun factoid, singer and Barbra Streisand sound-alike Julie Budd was supposed to make her Broadway debut in Wild and Wonderful. She dropped out shortly before previews began and Laura McDuffie took over. According to IBDB, Budd has only appeared on Broadway once in something called Catskills on Broadway. Sounds terrible, but at least she dodged the  W&W bullet. And one last fun factoid, in the ensemble was a young Ann Reinking in her second Broadway appearance. This was before she became Gwen Verdon's doppelgänger.

LESTAT – Palace Theatre, New York

One of my favorite actors, Will Swenson, was in the ensemble and one of the understudies for Lestat. He's gone on to far better things.

The hapless principals of Lestat. They tried; they really tried!

(edited from an earlier post)

May, 2006.  A score by Elton John and Bernie Taupin (together again!) based on Anne Rice's sensational vampire books and starring Hugh Panaro and Carolee Carmello?  Hell, I would have invested in this. The West Coast tryout made a crapload of money at San Francisco's Curran Theatre despite receiving cool/negative reviews, though Variety gave the show a very qualified, modestly positive notice.  Before opening in New York, Lestat underwent massive changes and anticipation was high, though how much of that anticipation was hoping for a hit or, based on the out-of-town reviews, hoping for disaster is moot. The show opened after a month of previews, received blisteringly sarcastic and box-office killing reviews, and closed after five struggling weeks. How bad was it?  Well, to be honest, it was pretty dreadful, but, there were many nice moments throughout the show.  The score had one strikingly beautiful number in "Sail Me Away," Hugh Panaro's performance was first-rate  (and he's soooo easy on the eyes and has that wonderful voice!), and it had a fine physical environment.  But one just could not escape the fact that the plot elements of the show just never coalesced into a cohesive whole. Perhaps the mistake was using both Interview with the Vampire and Lestat as the primary source material. Perhaps author Linda Woolverton would have been better served by sticking to just Lestat. After all, he is the title character. Anne Rice's vampire books are loaded with gothic horror, steamy romance, and hot homoeroticism, and face it, who wouldn't want Hugh Panaro to bite on your neck?, but all three elements were in short supply on the Palace stage. It wasn't necessarily dull; it just sort of sat there, inert and pretty lifeless. The cast was earnest and did their best, but there was one, well, I wouldn't call it an exception, but it sort of stood out for all the wrong reasons. Carolee Carmello, as Lestat's mom, was just as game and earnest as everyone else, but seemed so wrong in this part, so out of step with the rest of the proceedings. Understand, I love Carolee Carmello, but here she was just…off. For example, at one point, after she had been turned into a vampire by her loving son who just couldn't say goodbye to dying Mom, she enthusiastically attacked a hapless victim with scenery-chewing fervor and the audience laughed, which I don't think was the response the creators were going for. (Lest you think the audience was mean, the laugh was honest. The scene was overacted to such a degree, it was not even vaguely terrifying, which was, I think, the desired effect.) Lestat is one of my top theatrical train wrecks because it could have and should have been so much better with all the talent and source material involved.  Sad, sad, sad.

Fun Factoid: Hugh Panaro is one of the stars in an unassuming, gay-themed film from 1997 called Broadway Damage. It's one of my favorites. It's sweet, has a heart, is about theatre and has a charming cast. Panaro plays a somewhat nasty, unsympathetic character, but he's so good-looking, you don't really care.

NORMA DOESMEN – Abingdon Theatre, New York

March, 2010. Appallingly bad. Offensively bad. Relentlessly bad. A sexy, naughty spoof on the film classic Sunset Boulevard on paper seemed like a pleasant enough diversion for a March Saturday  afternoon, especially since it starred famed Judy Garland impersonator Tommy Femia as Norma Doesmen. Get it…"Doesmen." Hahahahahaha. How about "Joe Dillis" or even better, "Betty Shaveher"? Hahahahahahaha. Yes, yes, I know. We should have known better. Back when I first started going to New York in the 70s, it was still possible to produce a show off-Broadway for a relatively low cost and many shows were produced by playwrights, composers, actors, etc. to showcase their oftentimes dubious talents. These were called vanity productions. To call Norma Doesmen a vanity production is an insult to vanity productions. There really wasn't a redeeming feature in this trash, though, to be fair, I will admit the first few minutes appeared promising. It quickly, very quickly, went downhill. The so-called writer and director, Stephen Stahl, has a bio that fills up an entire page, yes, I said page, of the program. Seriously, dude? Who do you think you are? Mitzi Gaynor? (Inside joke. Mitzi Gaynor's bio in a concert Playbill was over 1 1/2 pages. Mitzi Gaynor? Please.) Credit where credit is due, you have some good credits, but, sweetcakes, a full page? That sort of self-aggrandizement reeks of vanity gone amuck. Except for Femia, the other three actors were making debuts, either off-Broadway or NYC itself. I don't know if they've gone on to do other things, but this was not an especially auspicious way to make a debut. We fled at the interval. We would have left earlier had we not been bogged down with shopping bags filled with goodies for our newborn granddaughter and the noise made by bags rattling, etc. would have been rude. Our departure meant the house would number twelve for the second act. If those twelve were smart, they would have followed our lead. In case you're wondering, the reason this didn't trump Wild and Wonderful as the leader was because W&W actually thought it had the goods to be a Broadway-caliber musical; Norma Doesmen's aspirations were more modest. It still sucked. Full stop.

VICTOR/VICTORIA – Shubert Theatre, Chicago

Hillel Gitter as "Mr. Balloon Man." Who is this person, you ask? According to his bio, he's a "citizen of the world" (spare me) and does something horrifically called "Clowntomime." Mimes AND clowns? That's just so inexcusably wrong in so many ways.

Christopher Innvar, who understudied King Marchan and was in the ensemble, would be a very, very good File in the Roundabout revival of 110 in the Shade a few years later.

It wasn't Julie's fault. It wasn't. Well, maybe a little.

July, 1995. Victor/Victoria is one of my favorite movies and hands-down my favorite Julie Andrews one. The film is sharp and sophisticated, lovely and lush to look at, with top-notch performances and a vibrant score. At the time I believed it to be a natural to transfer to the stage, so I was very excited when Victor/Victoria announced a pre-Broadway tryout in Chicago that would star Julie Andrews in her first Broadway appearance in over thirty years. Sadly, my initial excitement as the lights went down and the overture began quickly turned to bewilderment ("That wasn't very good. I hope it gets better.") to dismay ("What are they doing?") to complete disappointment ("Wow. What the hell happened?"). Excising "Gay Paree" and "The Shady Lady from Seville" and replacing them with the vastly inferior "Paris By Night" and, oh dear God in heaven, shoot me now, "Louis Says" was not only a major misstep, it was just plain stupid. The ill-advised revamp of "Le Jazz Hot," which actually got applause when I saw the film at the McClurg Court, turned this show-stopper for Julie Andrews into a song about the ensemble and Ms. Andrews sitting on top of a piano, while in the process tossing out all of the film's spectacular staging. To add insult to injury, Andrews' thrilling high note at the end of the song was pre-recorded, obviously and clumsily added, and basically smacked down the number. Now, granted, the song was pitched at least a third lower than the film version, but if Andrews could no longer hit that note, why not just give her a good belting high note that she could hold forever and let her honestly bring the number home? Obviously, money was not an issue and the production looked expensive. The cast consisted of theatre pros, but, and I really, really, really do hate film/stage (or stage/film) comparisons, the stage principals, including, oddly, Andrews, just did not come close to the film's originators. Closest was the always-charming Gregory Jbara. Tony Roberts, who is consistently professional, but not consistently interesting, was a flat Toddy; Rachel York, and I'm a Rachel York fan, was shrill and one-note as Norma (and her number "Paris Makes Me …", the ellipsis standing in for the word "horny," which apparently Playbill thought was too saucy a word for 1995 Chicago audiences, didn't help her at all); Michael Nouri was handsome, but bland. Even Andrews seemed tired. Don't get me wrong. She worked her butt off and was always every inch the star, but there was a lack of freshness that surprised me. The less said about the Act Two horror "Louis Says", the better. Direction seemed unfocused; the choreography seemed uninspired. But even with all the bad decisions and missteps, there were two moments of pure magic when Julie Andrews did what she does best and, alone on stage, sang a beautiful "Crazy World" in Act One and a lovely new song, written for the show by Frank Wildhorn, called "Living in the Shadows" near the end of Act Two. Audience response was enthusiastic, with a loud standing ovation for Andrews, but, by that time, I just wanted to go home. By the way, the friends accompanying me that afternoon felt the same, so it wasn't just me. Now I know many people will disagree on my assessment for Victor/Victoria. The reason this made my top ten list of theatrical train wrecks is simply because the film was such a textbook blueprint for a stage transfer and the creative team, for whatever reason, ignored what was staring them in the face and tried to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, to poor results. I suspect I would have felt quite differently had the show hewed more closely to the film. Just my humble opinion.

Sidebar: Victor/Victoria opened in New York to decidedly mixed/negative reviews, but with raves for Andrews, and ran for over 700 performances. Julie Andrews was in the show for most of its run, taking a month off for vacation, with Liza Minnelli filling in, but had to leave the show in June, 1997, when she developed vocal problems. Raquel Welch replaced her, and if anyone was in any doubt about who the draw was, it became apparent when box-office receipts tanked with Welch in the lead and the show closed four weeks later at a loss. But the big drama of the entire run, and, quite possibly of the 1995-1996 theatrical season, was Julie Andrews' announcement that she was refusing her Tony nomination as Best Actress in a musical and would not accept the award should she win because of, in her words, her "egregiously overlooked" cast and production staff. Her nomination was the show's only one, an odd state of affairs considering the other nominees in the musical categories, most especially in the Best Musical category. Seriously, Swinging on a Star? Chronicle of a Death Foretold? It was a brave stand by a classy lady and pretty much guaranteed the loss of what probably would have been her win. Donna Murphy won instead for a revival of The King and I. Sadly, after a botched operation to removed non-cancerous throat nodules in 1997, the once silken voice will never grace another musical.  

That's if for today. Part Two coming soon!

© 2015 Jeffrey Geddes