Give My Rebukes to Broadway

[Mike in Seattle]

The big problem is the high cost of mounting a 30's-60's type of musical these days. Theatre lost audience to movies and more to T.V. and these days, video and DVD's. That started to drain away audiences and has continued to do so. For most, it's far more appealing to stay at home and pop something in a player to watch on TV, or see what's on cable.

About the only venues able to afford to put on the classic full orchestra, large cast musicals anymore are colleges and universities, where you have unpaid cast and unpaid musicians. When you calculate what the union wages are for a cast of 20-30 and 30-50 piece orchestra, script & score royalties & fees, crew, costumes, rehearsal & performance space costs, then divide that by the number who are going to buy tickets, you get an idea. As audience decreases, ticket prices have to increase and every time you raise ticket prices, you lose more audience. I've got friends "in the biz" who have to deal with it on an almost daily basis, and say Broadway, Vegas & London are about the only places that can draw the required audience numbers willing to pay high ticket prices in order to run in the black. Most local theatres are having to go to shows with 5-7 in the cast and a 3 piece combo for music. Remmber, too, that when you're seeing a show one night, there were weeks & weeks of rehearsals that musicians, cast & crew have to be paid for before the show opens.

And as others have mentioned, a lot of audiences today wants rock 'em, sock 'em special effects and shoot-em-up situations and loud music like they see in the movies because they've got short attention spans and need all the glitz & action & so forth to keep them involved with the show. They can't be bothered with simply enjoying the performances, and God forbid they have to think about the meaning of the shows.

 

[Senator Jack]

I find it funny how kids really believe that what they're idols are doing is new and different, and that we curmudgeons simply don't get it. But the truth is, these idols are doing nothing new at all. Rap is now pushing 30. The Adam Sandler pictures they watch are based on that National Lampoon irreverency that is quite old hat by now. At least when SNL, NL, and Lettermen all started out, they were doing something new.


I remember when Monty Python's Flying Circus was first broadcast in the States. Nobody understood it, and that's what made it funny. Same goes for SNL, SCTV and Letterman (I used to cut class just to catch Lettmerman's morning show) Simply because you were laughing at this irreverency, you felt as though you were in on the joke. But if everyone's in on the joke, then the joke's no longer funny, is it?

Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[LizzieMaine]

Anyone who thinks media-savvy snarkiness was invented in the '70s has never listened to Fred Allen's radio programs. Or Stoopnagle and Budd. Or Bob and Ray. Or Henry Morgan. There isn't a thing SNL et. al. have done in the last thirty years that they didn't do years before. (Except, I think, they did it better.)

 

[scotrace]

Sneaking

fftopic:

I LeRv Allen's Alley.

"You were expecting maybe Tura-lura-lura Nusbaum?"

 

[jake_fink]

The Three Penny Opera and Brecht's work as a whole is by nature politcal, and a play has got to be able to survive multiple and re - interpretations, otherwise it dies. Having said that, I'm sorry that this production was not successful. The Three Penny Opera is a great peice of work and deserves to be seen.

Theatre is on the wane. Serious dramatic works are few and far between while rancid musicals multiply like bacteria in warm jelly. Spamalot is about as much fun as a vomit bath, regurgitating Monty Python schtick as if it were suddenly new and fresh... horrrible. The last time I saw a new work I thought was any good was a number of years ago, Edward Albee's "The Goat." Now that's good clean family fun.

 

[Senator Jack]

Certainly you can trace irreverency/absurdism back to the Marx Bros and then down through Bob and Ray, Ernie Kovacs, The Burns and Allen Show (breaking that fourth wall) Mad Magazine, and the Smothers Brothers, but the Pythons and SNL were undoubtedly the next link in that chain. The problem with that comedic chain is that nothing developed after Animal House. It just stopped right there. Indeed, as vintage aficianados we always complain 'why can't they just make things like 'X',' yet we're seeing firsthand how mind-numbing it is when they continue to make things just like 'X'.


Regards,

Senator Jack

 

[Benny Holiday]

Fedora Lounge Culture versus 'hip' culture

What we have here is a collection of people who, while we might disagree on some personal issues - religion, politics, etc - share a greater understanding and love of fashion, ideals, etiquette, architecture, principles, everything, in fact, from a much broader perspective than your average man or woman in the street.

Most people today don't have an interest in anything that didn't happen more than an hour ago. They don't think for themselves; they are preprogrammed by today's culture to consume whatever they're told is the latest, 'hippest' fad in music, clothes, transportation, computing, and so on. Our interests, however, have led us to explore far beyond such cultural references, and we've been exposed to a much greater wealth of culture. Not just Golden Era culture, either, but a whole range of literature, music, and art from a broad variety of decades right up to the present.

An acquaintance of mine once asked why I wasn't 'into' the lastest fashion trends or music. When I listen every day to the talents of, say, Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jnr, and Dean Martin, what interest would I have in some electronic computer-generated doof-doof 'song' on the radio? After you've eaten New York prime-cut fillet steak in the finest restaurant in town, are you then going to be interested in eating someone's leftovers from the local greasy spoon? Not likely!

It's a sad commentary on modern culture, but most people wouldn't know anything about the Threepenny Opera. "Oh, cool," they'd say. "It's got bondage stuff in it and transvestites." Heck, today's generation wouldn't even think to complain that they might have ripped off Rocky Horror, because that's three decades old!

We know better, though. It's not that we're elitists, even if we do come off that way sometimes, but our interest in broader elements of our culture have made us mor eeducated and discerning. That's the difference. It's hard to see our beloved institions and art forms reduced to plastic rubbish, but at least we're here trying to preserve something special and worthwhile.

Part of this rant may not have been entirely fftopic:

 

[Briscoeteque]

Certainly you can trace irreverency/absurdism back to the Marx Bros and then down through Bob and Ray, Ernie Kovacs, The Burns and Allen Show (breaking that fourth wall) Mad Magazine, and the Smothers Brothers, but the Pythons and SNL were undoubtedly the next link in that chain. The problem with that comedic chain is that nothing developed after Animal House. It just stopped right there. Indeed, as vintage aficianados we always complain 'why can't they just make things like 'X',' yet we're seeing firsthand how mind-numbing it is when they continue to make things just like 'X'.


Regards,

Senator Jack

I hate to go fftopic: but it's far from dead if you ask me, you just need to go a little under the radar. I'm a huge fan of the absurdist comedy trio 'Stella' (www.stellacomedy.com), which can definately be dirty at times, but it is so surreal and definately well done. Part of their schtick too is that they wear suits all of the time, including on a hiking trip and in the bathtub. Michael Showalter's movie 'The Baxter' (http://www.thebaxtermovie.com) is a must-see too, plot and costumes inspired by 30's romantic comedies (though still undoubtedly modern). They're not for everyone, but I can't get enough. Comedy isn't a dead end, it's just that mainstream comedy is getting bland and homogenized.

That said, I'm disappointed the show was so bad. I love Threepenny, and I love Alan Cumming, and thought they'd make a good pair.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The problem with that comedic chain is that nothing developed after Animal House. It just stopped right there. Indeed, as vintage aficianados we always complain 'why can't they just make things like 'X',' yet we're seeing firsthand how mind-numbing it is when they continue to make things just like 'X'.

I think part of the problem is that our popular media has gotten to the point where it exists almost exclusively by feeding on its own past. Pardon me for a moment while I rant....

There was a time when the popular culture of the moment was just that -- *of the moment.* Radio programs sixty or seventy years ago aired once and that was it -- no perpetual cycles of reruns. Movies worked their way thru the first run houses, thru the neighborhood theatres, and then to the grind circuit, and then disappeared. A few might see occasional reissues, but in general, if you lived in 1946, the films of 1936 were just a foggy memory, and the films of 1926 were dim relics of the Stone Age. And unless you were a hard-core jazz fan, chasing down old records or limited-scale reissues, the music you heard was basically the music that was current.

It's not like that anymore. Flip around the TV, walk into a video or music store, or surf the Internet, and you'll find basically the entire last two-thirds of the twentieth century jammed and jostled together, thrown into some kind of big decontextualized chaotic heap. This is a fairly recent development -- maybe starting with the nostalgia crazes of the early 70s, and then on into the media-technology revolution of the '80s -- but since that time, an entire generation has come of age without any sense of chronological linearity. All eras of entertainment exist at once, side by side, and all can be mixed and matched and scratched and sampled at will -- and that cut-and-paste approach is all too often what passes for "creativity" nowadays. Why bother to come up with something original when you can pastiche someone else's originality?

Small wonder there's nothing new under the sun -- because, really, there *isn't.*

 

[Harp]

Broadway

I'll avoid any revival of The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

 

[skwerl-hat]

otterhound
I wonder whether musical comedy is just running out of steam as an art form,
... or maybe it will just retire in Vegas.

please dont kid about this!
theres enough perverted muppets and gross magicians in vegas to fill a sports stadium.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I'm lucky to be just old enough to have seen the last great musicals during their first runs: Sondheim's Pacific Overtures, Sunday in the Park with George, and Sweeney Todd; Webber and Rice's Evita; Les Miserables.


I'm sick of revivals. And if one must be staged, why not put on The Beggar's Opera, the 18th century English "superplay" which inspired The Threepenny Opera? It's old enough to seem new.

.

 

[Sefton]

I'm lucky to be just old enough to have seen the last great musicals during their first runs: Sondheim's Pacific Overtures, Sunday in the Park with George, and Sweeney Todd; Webber and Rice's Evita; Les Miserables.


I'm sick of revivals. And if one must be staged, why not put on The Beggar's Opera, the 18th century English "superplay" which inspired The Threepenny Opera? It's old enough to seem new.

.

Nah, why do that when they haven't yet done the musical version of "Three's Company" or "McHale's Navy".

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I just saw an excellent film, one of the few that was even better at the second viewing: The Prestige. An extremely well-crafted, practically ironclad screenplay. Know what? It would make a fine musical.

.

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

This involved a stage, but it was no Broadway. Imagine being at a theme park (Universal Studios), for a Halloween themed night, and imagine seeing a "Fear Factor Live show", not with people from the audience but celebrity impersonators, like George Bush (dressed as a cowboy), Michael Jackson, Tom Cruise (which was probably the best part of the show), Sadam Husein, Satan, among others, basically running around the stage trying to be funny, but not doing a single living thing other than running aroung the stage. Michael Jackson acts like an idiot (which he isn't) and there are bulked out men and women wearing hardly anything, and dancing around the stage, and add a little swearing. Now imagine a 12 year old boy with his mother on the first idle watching all of this. I felt sorry for that young boy to see this.......
Poisoned for life.

Now imagine MORE half naked women around the rest of the park. Now I may not enjoy this kind of entertainment, but if entertainment believes this IS entertainment at all, I'd like to ask them how they figure that. I felt like I was in an open strip club.

I'm going to be seeing Wicked early next year. I rarely go to a theatre. I saw a FANSTASTIC rendition of Le Miserables at a HIGH SCHOOL. Now that was Five Star theatre at it's peak.

 

[Haversack]

Although the dominance of irony was decried earlier, I am still waiting for Lloyd-Weber to actually do _Elephant!_ as parodied in the comedy, _The Tall Guy_.

As far as Musical revivals go, San Francisco was a couple of companies which specialize in them. One is The Lamplighters who have been doing first-rate canon productions of Gilbert and Sullivan's works for over 40 years. The other it 42nd Street Moon who do unstaged revivals of 1920s and 30s Broadway Musicals by the likes of Gershwin, Rogers& Hart, Cole Porter. No modern irony in either of them, just fun.

Haversack.