Broadway Musicals Are Bullshit

A thread for the rest of us.

Well, yeah.

https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimg3.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20141029130740%2Facademicjobs%2Fimages%2F9%2F98%2FHaters-gonna-hate.gif&f=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcrqnBKNgxA

Quite possibly my least favourite form of music. E v e r.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob4ZmHKbD28

omg High School the musical, I had totally erased that abomination from my mind

Surely some wit of a critic made an apt comment about the runtime of Rent feeling like 525,600 minutes. THAT WE'LL NEVER GET BACK.

had a teenaged niece that made me sit through those soundtracks

xp

broadway musicals I will rep: Hedwig and the Angry Inch, FELA!, Passing Strange.... um....

Sitting through all fifteen and three-quarters hours of Into the Woods was one of the most stultifyingly interminable experiences of my life.

there's a ton of great ones! vast majority of them were developed before, oh, 1980 though

I love movie musicals, and I've enjoyed some high school plays that my friends were acting in, but the only thing I've seen on Broadway was Les Mis when I was 14 or 15, on a family trip at my little sister's request. It was interminable.

xxp lol

My gf's parents love these things. I live in constant fear that they're going to excitedly present us with tickets someday. And even more afraid that showing polite approval of the gesture will lead to the mistaken impression that we'd like to accompany them on these journeys into hell with any degree of regularity.

Fun Home: The Musical is apparently a thing now. How the fuck is that a thing?

(Holding out for Maus!)

/Fun Home: The Musical/ is apparently a thing now. How the fuck is that a thing?

It's really good!

(Suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to write the book for Maus!)

For the most part, the sort of thing that I feel disconnected enough from that I can't get worked up about them.

Oh sorry didn't read the thread title, I guess I'll not belabor the point.

My gf's parents love these things. I live in constant fear that they're going to excitedly present us with tickets someday. And even more afraid that showing polite approval of the gesture will lead to the mistaken impression that we'd like to accompany them on these journeys into hell with any degree of regularity.

― I Still Don't Regret My Crazy Town Neck Tat, and Here's Why (Old Lunch), Friday, September 30, 2016 11:45 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yea my in-laws love this shit, they've bought us tickets to MAMMA MIA two times

broadway musicals make irrationally embarrassed, i can't stand them

ssmh

for me it's feeling embarrassed for the idiots on stage, and then getting angry because they not embarrassed and are in fact highly feeling themselves and i am suffering for them, like jesus, as they prance on about brigadoon or w/e ugh fuck musicals and everyone involved

feel same abt improv

I am relieved there is something ulysses is comfortable not liking.

Or will this really lead to a Broadway Musical listening project complete with a thousand-album Spotify playlist?

lol

from the thread that inspired this one:

I'm always creeped out by the tacit breaking of the 4th wall, when they perform with that dead-eyed focus at the back of the house or when they freeze and stare after each number, waiting for the applause.

I think there is something to this, this constant self-involved self-referentiality or need for constant reassurance from the audience that yes we are all aware of JUST HOW HARD THEY ARE ALL WORKING TO ENTERTAIN US as if that is something special and unique to them as precious snowflake performers. Naked exhibitionism is part of any performance art but with musical theater there's this off-putting emphasis on how great it is to be nakedly exhibitionist, a requirement that it's inherent value must be constantly acknowledged and emphasized.

Fun Home was pretty good actually.

ILM's Broadway Musicals are Bullshit Spotify Playlist 2016
^ collaborative!

i keep trying to like musicals because sometimes they are inexplicably good but just in general they are terribly embarrassing and fill me with hate

http://www.thewrap.com/grumpy-cat-claws-her-way-into-broadway-musical-cats/

Fun Home: The Musical is apparently a thing now. How the fuck is that a thing?

― I Still Don't Regret My Crazy Town Neck Tat, and Here's Why (Old Lunch)

uh, gay people love musicals?

i decided musicals weren't for me when i couldn't get myself interested in "the producers". i like "cabaret", but that's about it. though i probably ought to see the fiorello la guardia musical one of these days. still, my genuine love for vintage bollywood films means there's no way i'm going to get all high and mighty about it.

for me it's feeling embarrassed for the idiots on stage, and then getting angry because they not embarrassed and are in fact highly feeling themselves and i am suffering for them, like jesus, as they prance on about brigadoon or w/e ugh fuck musicals and everyone involved

― adam, Friday, September 30, 2016 10:53 AM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feel same abt improv

― adam, Friday, September 30, 2016 10:54 AM (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In the interests of full disclosure, I have done not just improv but full-on musical improv, so my posts itt should probably be viewed with skepticism and harshly judged accordingly.

oh my god, fiorello! is amazing. tom bosley as fiorello la guardia and howard da silva (the guy who did the really hokey tom baker episode narrations for the us market) as the heavy? this is brilliant.

vintage bollywood films

filmed musicals are an entirely different genre/medium from Broadway musicals imo

I wrote a nasty review of Avenue Q for extra credit in 9th grade English, and my teacher loved it and read it for the class. that's the extent of my experience with musical theater. i have no interest in ever seeing one again. I dig Singin' in the Rain, though. movie musicals are different. btw what's the scoop on La La Land? anyone seen it?

i am upset that i missed Fun Home.

there is an off-B'way revival of Fiorello! onstage right now.

Howard da Silva was blacklisted in the '50s, and also played Ben Franklin in the B'way and film versions of 1776.

there are tons of fine American stage musicals from 1945-64. After that it's mostly Sondheim.

uh, gay people love musicals?

kewl stereotype

and url

Morbz otm but '64 cutoff excludes Fosse so I'd extend that period a bit. really the rot starts to set in in the 70s (Weber/Sondheim)

It's really good!

if the rest of fun home resembles that awful "ring of keys" song i heard then nope

I'd stretch '64 to '66 to include Cabaret

list your most hated broadway musicals and songs here plz

andrew lloyd webber has a lot to answer for of course
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rsrcR5Q86o

Oh, I saw a touring edition of JCSS once. Forgot about that. Had both Neeley and Anderson iirc.

i don't consider that musical spam that originated in the UK "Broadway"

since we're talking alw you know, jesus christ superstar is really pretty good.

I watched the filmed version of JCSS years ago and was appalled that a) the songs were all so uniformly unmemorable and b) the rather blatantly racist casting of the lone black guy as Judas

I get the songs stuck in my head on a regular basis, despite not having listened/watched it since the early 90s.

Yvonne Elliman, who played Magdalene, is Amerasian

do you not find "I Don't Know How to Love Him" memorable, Shakes?

btw Ben Vereen was the first Broadway Judas!

Judas is by far the most charismatic character in the JCS film

Judas is v much not the villain in JCS but this isn't the thread for nuance so I'll stfu

HI DERE. What's the buzz?

Tangential except inasmuch as it features Ted Neeley and is kind of a beautiful encapsulation of many of the things that make bad musicals horrifying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WmOvoqlmZE

haha that whole thing is such a mess

in the '90s there was a B'way musical about the Hilton sisters (Siamese twins in showbiz, Freaks included)... This is the opening number of a recent revival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No5UFBIeLSM

It's not a bad show really, but that song plays rather Simpsony, I saw the original production gratis cuz i worked in the 'industry' sort of.

oh yeah that rolling stone tribute show was infamous. if we're talking infamously bad there's the '75 superman musical...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNXbdLDZLKM

I guess it was off Broadway, but Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter from a couple of years ago had one of the best soundtracks for a musical that I have ever heard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy13Oj8rHRQ

Misread Ted Neeley as Ted Healy.

Tangential except inasmuch as it features Ted Neeley and is kind of a beautiful encapsulation of many of the things that make bad musicals horrifying:

― I Still Don't Regret My Crazy Town Neck Tat, and Here's Why (Old Lunch), Friday, September 30, 2016 1:18 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

okay this is fuckin amazing

It reminds me of the time when I was a little kid when me and a friend came up with some dance routine for Michael Jackson's 'Human Nature' which involved swinging tree branches around because nature, you see, and because our brains weren't developed enough to understand the difference between literal and figurative language.

Was tempted to cut out of Day in the Decade early but I just had to look.

wow, Side Show reference upthread!

(Suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to write the book for Maus!)

― I Still Don't Regret My Crazy Town Neck Tat, and Here's Why (Old Lunch), 30. september 2016 17:47 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me as well! In my version the songs for the cats are based on songs from Cats of course.

Do you say of a maus / that it's worse than a rat?
Do you jut out your arm / when you walk in a group?

Because aryans can and aryans do
aryans do and aryans would...

Also, hopefully goes without saying that the showstopper at the end of act 1 will be that song from An American Tail.

Shit, it took me almost exactly 24 hours to make up that joke. Not quite sure it was worth it...

It's not a bad show really, but that song plays rather Simpsony, I saw the original production gratis cuz i worked in the 'industry' sort of.

Speaking of The Simpsons, I feel like "Stop the Planet of the Apes, I Want to Get Off!" is one of the more prescient jokes of the show's golden years.

yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4HoqYlx5m8

there are tons of fine American stage musicals from 1945-64. After that it's mostly Sondheim.

I can appreciate the craft of a "fine" musical but I still run away from them screaming after a couple minutes at most.

From this Laurie Anderson interview: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/06/laurie-anderson-qa-hamilton-trump-hillary/485054/

Graham: Have you seen Hamilton?

Anderson: [Sighs] I saw half of Hamilton. I walked. I just, you know, I thought, “It will be an exception, it won’t be like a musical.” I love all music except musicals. They just make me crazy. I just had to leave. I went to one to see a production designer’s work—-he was putting something down on this string, and he said, “You gotta see this, it looks so real.” And so I went and it was the musical Cats. I sat down and it starts out, “Da-da-da Cats! Da-da-da CATS!” I was like, “Oh my god, I’m gonna have a brain hemorrhage if I just stay here for 30 more seconds.” So we’re jammed in and I’m going, “Excuse me, excuse me.” People are like, “What? It just started?” I never saw the trick, and I just never saw more than like four bars of it. And Hamilton I left, you know, halfway. Did you see it?

Graham: No. But people keep telling me I need to.

Anderson: [shakes head] Do you like musicals?

Graham: No.

Anderson: You won’t like it. That’s the thing.

Graham: That’s the the thing, they say, well, it’s different—

Anderson: It’s not that different. It’s not that different. It’s history lite, and musical lite, and it’s just … It’s horrible. [laughs] Maybe I should be more open-minded. I just hate it.

i mean, anderson otm in a way, it's definitely a capital-B Broadway Musical, i would never recommend it to someone who hates that stuff

I feel like some of the better musical scenes I have seen are standalone songs that seem like overly theatrical music videos. The worst are people doing "I am siiingiiing the plooot" bits or character development where there's a pause and one character launches into a song to give their entire character exposition.

The Andrew Lloyd Weber junk sometimes goes into pure stage spectacle, songs about human impulses with ridiculous arpeggios and proto-edm organ stabs that try to get you excited

I feel like I should bump this after seeing a musical again.

Book of Mormon had songs that were either "I am trying to be a good Mormon but I want to be great!" songs alternating with "I just want to make it! Also I am Cartman (from South Park)" alternating with "we are everyone else and we have punchlines"

of all the people to complain about narrative music tho'

anderson, not you mh

it's true, all I do is complain

Guys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIm31z9HJ4w

Hopefully there will be a legit video available soon because that was one of the most gloriously terrible things I've seen in a very long time.

I dunno, that video has the right kind of dissociative quality.

new friends reboot energy

The parade is on delay here; I’m looking forward to seeing that bit on the big screen. (Right now, I’m watching Bebe Rexha perform on the Jennie-O turkey float.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/arts/tiktok-disney-ratatouille-musical.html
https://www.tiktok.com/@tristanmichaelmcintyre/video/6894839741158608134

I don't believe this, but watching this performance from the cast of Jagged Little Pill is making a convincing argument for the other side

like ok I know American Idiot was a musical but it was a concept album. are we just gonna make jukebox musicals out of the Billboard Top 500 from 25 years ago?

what Alanis's music needed is 5 part harmonies and stock choreo

christ it sounds like Rent outtakes

The only thing more unbelievable than how bad it is is how many people thought that it was the opposite of bad.

Would you guys say it’s like... ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife?

it's like meeting the man of your dreams, and then stabbing yourself with a knife

wait I think I messed that up

If the knife was intended to puncture both of my eardrums in quick succession, then yes.

Act I

Mary Jane (MJ) Healy, is a mother writing the yearly family Christmas letter. She writes about her husband Steve's job promotion, her daughter Frankie's art, and her son Nick's early admission to Harvard University. MJ writes that she got into a car crash, but is healing with the help of natural remedies.[18] What she doesn't write is that Steve is addicted to pornography, Frankie is making out with her best friend, Jo, as this letter is being written, and MJ is addicted to the painkillers from the car accident ("Right Through You"). MJ pressures Nick to be perfect to keep up the family's image ("All I Really Want"). At school, Frankie and Jo discuss how their mothers don't understand or accept them: Frankie's because of her disapproval of her self expression and Jo's mom not accepting her being gay or her gender expression ("Hand in My Pocket").

MJ tries to get drugs from the pharmacy, but she is out of refills. MJ moves through her day backwards, starting with getting her painkillers in the alley, doing her daily activities, and ending with her running out of the pills at the beginning of the day ("Smiling"). On the last day of Frankie's English class before winter break, she reads a short story she wrote aloud in a writer's workshop for her class to critique. The students in the class criticize her since things she claims to be ironic in her piece are not actually ironic, just bad things that happened to someone. A new student, Phoenix, defends Frankie and encourages her to finish ("Ironic"). A romantic attraction begins between the two. After class, Phoenix and Frankie decide to go to a party that night. At home, MJ and Steve get into an argument. Steve says he wants to see a marriage counselor, yet MJ refuses ("So Unsexy"). Nick comforts MJ after the fight. MJ claims that Nick is the only thing that she has ever done right. Nick reflects on the pressures of him from his mother to be perfect ("Perfect").

Frankie and Nick go to the party ("Lancer's Party (So Pure)"). Frankie and Phoenix find each other and leave the crowded party to talk alone, and they discuss their imperfect family lives. Meanwhile, Jo doesn't attend the party because her mom forced her to go to church function. Jo's mom scolds her for not dressing femininely enough ("That I Would Be Good"). The next morning, Jo shows Frankie pictures that are circulating throughout the school of Bella, Nick's friend, who was drunk, passed out, and had her shirt pulled up at the party. Students are making fun of Bella and calling her a slut. Frankie and Jo go to Bella's house, despite barely knowing her, to check on her. Bella reveals that Andrew, Nick's best friend, was the one who took the pictures and raped her. Frankie goes home and wakes Nick up to reprimand him about not going to the police because he was the only one who saw how drunk Bella was. Nick brushes off Bella's claim, saying that Bella was being dramatic per usual. MJ overhears the conversation and insists that Nick doesn't come forward as it might ruin his reputation. MJ blames Bella for what happened since she chose to drink, but she is visibly upset by the story ("Wake Up"). MJ walks to the church for the first time in a while to pray about her failing marriage, struggling relationship with Frankie, and for help with her addiction. She then reflects on her own memory of being raped in college, but blames herself and feels it was God's plan for her ("Forgiven").

Act II

Steve and MJ go to their first marriage counseling session, despite MJ's reluctance ("Not the Doctor"). Meanwhile, Frankie and Phoenix hang out at a playground and end up sleeping together ("Head over Feet"). Jo walks into the Healy's house uninvited ("Your House") and walks in on Frankie and Phoenix. Jo gets mad and storms out of her room. MJ and Steve come home early and Jo tells them that Frankie and Phoenix had sex. Phoenix leaves quickly, leaving Frankie alone with her parents. MJ and Steve reprimand her for having sex so young. Frankie comes out to her parents as bisexual, and she gets mad at her parents for disapproving of her consensual sex but not caring about Bella's rape. Frankie runs away to New York City. Steve and MJ fight about Steve not being present during Frankie's childhood. Frankie takes a train alone to New York ("Unprodigal Daughter"). When she gets lost in the city, Frankie calls Phoenix. She tells him that she loves him and that he should come pick her up. When Phoenix doesn't say 'I love you' back and that he needs to stay at home to help his sister with a medical condition, Frankie gets angry and feels that Phoenix used her for her body.

Students are gossiping about Bella and her accusations against Andrew. Bella comes to the Healy's house to talk to Nick, but the only person home is MJ. MJ tries to comfort Bella by telling her she was also raped in college. Bella asks MJ when she started to feel better after her rape, but MJ doesn't answer. Bella leaves realizing that it may never get better. Nick comes clean to MJ, telling her that he walked in on Andrew raping an unconscious Bella, but he did nothing and left ("Predator"). Nick says he wants to go to the police, but MJ says that it would ruin his life and not help Bella's. Nick accuses her of only caring about herself and her reputation, and not about Bella. MJ hits him. Jo comes to New York to pick up Frankie after she calls her out of desperation, lost and out of money. Frankie shows little remorse for sleeping with Phoenix since she didn't think her relationship with Jo was exclusive. She tells Jo that she is in love with Phoenix. Jo ends the relationship ("You Oughta Know"). At home, MJ overdoses on pills. Steve and Nick find her unconscious ("Uninvited"). When Steve gets to the hospital, he is devastated that he didn't know MJ had an addiction and promises her he will be there for her and the family from now on ("Mary Jane"). When Nick gets to the hospital, MJ tells him that he should go to the police, but Nick already told the police about what happened to Bella. Meanwhile, many students attend the rally that Frankie organized to get justice for Bella. Bella is mad at Nick since people only believed her once Nick came forward, and her statement wasn't enough ("No").

A year has passed, and MJ is writing the Christmas letter again. She writes about the progress being made in their relationships and lives. MJ tells Frankie that she wanted her to feel like every other kid and not be treated differently because of her race, but Frankie tells her that she wouldn't have wanted to fit in with the people in their town ("Thank U"). Frankie dares MJ to email the Christmas letter to everyone, despite it frankness about her overdose and her dislike of the culture in their town. MJ sends it, deciding that this will be her last Christmas letter. Jo and Frankie rekindle their friendship, and Jo has a new girlfriend. Frankie and Phoenix are now just friends. Frankie and MJ, Bella and Nick, and Bella and MJ all now appear to have mended their relationships ("You Learn").

WTAF

It wasn't even as much the music that made me cringe as it was the fact that all of the interactions and choreography felt very 'third week of a level one improv class'.

Seems like it would be a lot cheaper and less time-consuming to just stick your hand in a blender

the best way to watch a broadway musical is if someone else paid and doesn't go with you because then you can leave at the act break
cannot wait until covid is over so that i can do just that

Ha. So I was hanging with my Mom last night and I tell her there’s a Broadway special on. She says “I am not really interested.” Later she flips to it when she got bored with something else. A blonde woman was singing. Just ok. We moved on.

I saw the Jagged Little Pill in previews and it was Legit Good