Nauseating Nostalgia
After taking a long break from musical theater, I finally had the chance to catch up on some shows that have opened while I am off from work this week. When we got back from Chicago I was very excited because a slew of shows had begun previews within the past week and several of them were being touted as the big musicals of the season. While I await a few people to become available so I can get to what I REALLY want to see (Threepenny Opera) I decided I would go for big broad musical comedy with a double dose of "The Drowsy Chaperone" and "The Wedding Singer".
I could not have been more disappointed in both of them. I will start with the first, "The Drowsy Chaperone". Everywhere I had been reading this show was being heralded as a "completely original musical" meaning it wasn't based on any source material. With the recent popularization of movie's and song catalogue's being turned into crappy pop art, it seems miraculous that a show could be from someone's own imagination. That should be red flag enough for us to know that the art of the musical is in rapid decline as any emerging composer has yet to have a substantial amount of new material be produced on commercial Broadway. Nothing this season has even come close to touching "Light In The Piazza" in my eyes, which still stands as one of the most beautiful shows I have ever seen.
But back to "Drowsy". Despite a hugely talented cast, the show had me checking my watch and rolling my eyes from the very beginning. In the program beforehand I had read about how the creators wanted to take us back to a time where musicals were in a sense just frivolous fun. They even state that so many of the classic composers (Gershwin's, etc) don't get revived because the shows their songs are built around are so ludicrous plot wise. So why then are we getting a NEW musical that is just a stylized rendition of some crap from that time period? Songs pop out of nowhere, the plot is paper-thin, and this show within a show plot is oddly tired. The main character who is taking the audience on the journey (via his phonograph in his modern apartment) is relatable for someone like me who has a passion for being transported to another world by musical theater. But this world that we are taken to is somewhere I desperately wanted to escape.
The cast was incredible, but the material was in no way up to their level. Sutton Foster seems under-used, Beth Leavel has a show stopping number (which harks back more to the 40's than the 20's....Whoops) and the rest of the cast manages to make a little out of two dimensional characters. I understand that it is supposed to be just enjoyable, and the audience around me was eating it up, but I would rather watch Sondheim any day than another show that is wink-winking to musical theater in-jokes. Enough already. If this wins Best Musical as everyone is claiming it will, it will be another major awards ceremony where something completely undeserving takes the cake because it panders to the status-quo. When is someone going to come in and shake things up a bit?
Things definitely shake a TON at "The Wedding Singer" but it was yet another evening that I would have rather done without. The show starts and immediately you realize that there isn't really a script, instead a lot of wink-winking at 80's in jokes. The songs derive from all 80's pop music but instead of emulating the best of the crop they seem just like has-been hits that wont show up on anyone's "best of the 80's" compilation. This show is so obviously trying to be a never ending showstopper ala "Hairspray" but there were so many jokes that just don't land, and songs that get you riled up but mainly just because the sound system is so fucking loud, not due to any actual humor or excitement. The one redeeming part of the 80's flashback was the extremely entertaining and well executed choreography by Rob Ashford. This cast seems even more talented than most choruses I have seen lately and at least they get to dance A LOT or else this show would constantly be stumbling on itself.
The leads were enjoyable, even though you don't really get into the relationship between Robbie and Julia. From the very beginning, and not just because everyone has seen the movie, you know EXACTLY what is going to happen so you basically just don't care. Laura Benanti sounds incredible, but with such amateurish lyrics to sing I found myself almost stunned wondering if Margo Lion had just passed this off to her ten year old sun to write. I doubt there were even many words above two syllables thrown in there.
Overall two evenings in a row that just left me wondering "where, what, why, when and how". Where have the good shows gone? What the hell is this crap? Why are audiences giving enough demand to keep this dreck coming? When will Adam Guettel have a new show? And how has musical theater come to this?
I could not have been more disappointed in both of them. I will start with the first, "The Drowsy Chaperone". Everywhere I had been reading this show was being heralded as a "completely original musical" meaning it wasn't based on any source material. With the recent popularization of movie's and song catalogue's being turned into crappy pop art, it seems miraculous that a show could be from someone's own imagination. That should be red flag enough for us to know that the art of the musical is in rapid decline as any emerging composer has yet to have a substantial amount of new material be produced on commercial Broadway. Nothing this season has even come close to touching "Light In The Piazza" in my eyes, which still stands as one of the most beautiful shows I have ever seen.
But back to "Drowsy". Despite a hugely talented cast, the show had me checking my watch and rolling my eyes from the very beginning. In the program beforehand I had read about how the creators wanted to take us back to a time where musicals were in a sense just frivolous fun. They even state that so many of the classic composers (Gershwin's, etc) don't get revived because the shows their songs are built around are so ludicrous plot wise. So why then are we getting a NEW musical that is just a stylized rendition of some crap from that time period? Songs pop out of nowhere, the plot is paper-thin, and this show within a show plot is oddly tired. The main character who is taking the audience on the journey (via his phonograph in his modern apartment) is relatable for someone like me who has a passion for being transported to another world by musical theater. But this world that we are taken to is somewhere I desperately wanted to escape.
The cast was incredible, but the material was in no way up to their level. Sutton Foster seems under-used, Beth Leavel has a show stopping number (which harks back more to the 40's than the 20's....Whoops) and the rest of the cast manages to make a little out of two dimensional characters. I understand that it is supposed to be just enjoyable, and the audience around me was eating it up, but I would rather watch Sondheim any day than another show that is wink-winking to musical theater in-jokes. Enough already. If this wins Best Musical as everyone is claiming it will, it will be another major awards ceremony where something completely undeserving takes the cake because it panders to the status-quo. When is someone going to come in and shake things up a bit?
Things definitely shake a TON at "The Wedding Singer" but it was yet another evening that I would have rather done without. The show starts and immediately you realize that there isn't really a script, instead a lot of wink-winking at 80's in jokes. The songs derive from all 80's pop music but instead of emulating the best of the crop they seem just like has-been hits that wont show up on anyone's "best of the 80's" compilation. This show is so obviously trying to be a never ending showstopper ala "Hairspray" but there were so many jokes that just don't land, and songs that get you riled up but mainly just because the sound system is so fucking loud, not due to any actual humor or excitement. The one redeeming part of the 80's flashback was the extremely entertaining and well executed choreography by Rob Ashford. This cast seems even more talented than most choruses I have seen lately and at least they get to dance A LOT or else this show would constantly be stumbling on itself.
The leads were enjoyable, even though you don't really get into the relationship between Robbie and Julia. From the very beginning, and not just because everyone has seen the movie, you know EXACTLY what is going to happen so you basically just don't care. Laura Benanti sounds incredible, but with such amateurish lyrics to sing I found myself almost stunned wondering if Margo Lion had just passed this off to her ten year old sun to write. I doubt there were even many words above two syllables thrown in there.
Overall two evenings in a row that just left me wondering "where, what, why, when and how". Where have the good shows gone? What the hell is this crap? Why are audiences giving enough demand to keep this dreck coming? When will Adam Guettel have a new show? And how has musical theater come to this?
posted by M at 1:47 PM
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