First, a look back: Let's take a look at the last year's Broadway season. It seems to me, that the best of last season that Broadway had to offer was a story about people in Washington Heights and a lo- cal musical about a muse on rollerskates! I'm not saying that the 2007-2008 season was bad, but with the huge amount of adequate and unsuccsessful musicals, a.k.a "Cry Baby" and "Catered Affair," it leaves TP to ask this question. Can Broadway produce a single successful production that wasn't inspired by a movie, TV show, or a Broadway show archive? I guess not. (You can translate that into retread or revival...and divide revivals into old revivals (post vaudeville), golden age revivals (the Rogers and Hammerstein era), or the 70's and 80's (MP, mom preppy was at Barnard and remembered these shows totally).)I noticed that Broadway is not about wholesome entertainment anymore...nope. It's simply based on the poor tast of pre- teens who feel like seeing Legally Blonde and Grease or their parents who like that stuff, too. These are the people who think Disney World is a cultural icon.
So I thought, maybe this year's season would give me (TP is an explorer of the human condition) a bit more inspiration. The answer I found was still a big old no. When I saw the schedule of the new broadway season...let me just tell you there was nothing new about it. MP told me that I could dump my ancient playbill collection that a got from an estate sale, on the floor and pick one at random and chances are, that that play would be coming back to broadway this year. And that propbably is what the producers do in a think tank session. Their are so many ancient revials. Pal Joey, Godspell, West Side Story, Dancin', Guys and Dolls, even Brigadoon! Some of these plays were on Broadway when my grandparents were in their twenties! Do these sound familiar to you? Fenses by August Wilson, Desire Under Elms, All My Sons, The Seagull, A Man of All Seaons, For Colored Girls Who are Considering Sucide when the Rainbow is Enuf (that's the MP Barnard connection--she thinks Ntozake Shange went to Barnard), and The Wiz are the just some of the oldies coming back to broadway.
There are a good number of new ones coming this season such as Billy Elliot, Title of Show, The Big Time, 13. Then there's Shrek, 9 to 5, The Addams Family, Catch Me If you Can, The Tale of Two Cities, Guess Whos Coming to Dinner, Houdini, and White Noise, for example . For your information, only four of those shows were not inspired by any other form of entertainment. What are the producers thinking?! Where have all the good writers gone? Can't someone write a good new musical written for broadway? Don't get me wrong I love revials, but why bring them back all at once? I know... it's all about marketing. If the show can make money, you can guaranty it can be on broadway for years to come. Pretty soon we'll been seeing something like Harry Potter: the musical, or worse, how do you like 'Gossip Girl, the musical'
or 'Family Guy, the musical', or 'Lock-Up the musical'...hold on to your wallets!!!!! Sorry, but I forgot one that sure will be a big hit with the current policial climate...The Beverly Hillbillies, the musical or maybe Blue Collar, the musical with a big dance sequence called Red State /Blue State...Dukes of Hazard, the musical anyone?
No comments:
Post a Comment