A somewhat delayed TONY Awards rant

The BBQ Pit
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I just got the Original Cast Recording (OCR) of Thoroughly Modern Millie, which won as best musical and I have to say to the people who voted it the best musical of the year:

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MINDS???

A bit of background: I live in Colorado. I have no chance of seeing any of the musicals that were nominated for 2-3 years, most likely, until they meander their way out west. But, IMO for a musical to win the “Best Musical” award, it should have the following three qualities: Great story, great music/lyrics, great choreography. If it doesn’t have at least two of the three, IMO it shouldn’t win. So I’m judging it primarily on the score (and the story. It’s yet another rehash of yet another mediocre movie-musical by hacks who can’t be bothered to come up with their own story)

The story to Thoroughly Modern Millie was just barely competent, if weirdly racist (Chinese white-slavers try to capture a young girl who’s come to the big city). Evil Chinese out to sully a white woman’s precious bodily fluids? (Don’t quibble that the ringleader is white. The implicacation is that white women are so pure and wholesome that the devil-Chinese can’t resist them.) Uh-huh. And a look at the synopsis shows that the plot is still there. Maybe the dialogue is great, I dunno. But still…given that the plot hinges on a pretty racist concept…hey! Maybe next year we can vote for BIRTH OF A NATION: THE MUSICAL about rampaging hordes of black men out to sully our white-women’s purity too! :rolleyes:

The choreography, from the clip that was on the Tony Award show actually looked good.

HOWEVER, now that I’ve gotten the OCR, I have to say there’s no way this piece of shit should have won: The score is a horrible mish-mash of multiple composers and one of the most blatant examples of plagiarism I’ve ever heard. The only song from the movie that I believe they used was the sprightly theme song by Sammy Cahn and James Van Husen(sp?). Who are uncredited, I might add. Completely. Their names appear nowhere on the recording. On the other hand, given the bloated orchestration and vomitous overproduction and sub-competent chorus that appeared during their song, perhaps that’s for the best. But it gets even worse from there:

Most of the new songs are extremely dull: utterly forgettable. (“Forget About the Boy” being one of the very few exceptions). And it gets even worse from there.

There’s already a pretty strong dichotomy from the tune/style of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and the other songs. So what do they do? They plagiarize a Gilbert and Sullivan tune and stuff it into the mix, presumably because the songwriters were too incompetent to write their own patter song. And the Gilbert and Sullivan song is uncredited too. There is NO doubt that it’s the G&S song (“The Madness Song” from RUDDIGORE (aka “It Really Doesn’t Matter”)) as they didn’t change a single note of music and the revised lyrics share about 15% with the original (and the revised lyrics are bad: I could do better. Hint: “rancid” doesn’t rhyme with “advanced” unless you pronounce it ad-VANCE-ID. And that sounds retard-ID) It doesn’t fit into the score, so it’s jarring. And it gets worse from there:

They stuffed the overture of the Nutcracker Suite (uncredited again, of course) into the mix. Why? Because they had incompetent songwriters.

So, they’ve got four composers in one musical (at least. They may have plagiarized others that I didn’t catch), none of whom have compatible styles.

I can’t believe that they had a score this bad (and this plagerized) and still won the Tony Award (yes two of the songs they swiped are public domain, but it still should be credited to the original composers or it’s plagiarism).

What really sucks is that hey had perfectly good musical that was original, weightier than the fluffy, mindless Mille in terms of story (touching on issues of government regulation, individual freedom vs the greater good, ecology, etc) with a great score and hysterical self-deprecating sense of humor, and, to quote the musical itself: a horrible title: URINETOWN: THE MUSICAL

A dialogue snippet from the song “Too Much Exposition”:

Little Sally: Say Officer Lockstock, is this where you tell the audience about the water shortage?

Officer Lockstock: What’s that, Little Sally?

Little Sally: You know: The water shortage. The hard times. The drought. A water shortage so awful that private toilets eventually became unthinkable? A premise so absurd…

Officer Lockstock: Whoa-whoa-whoa there Little Sally. Not all at once! We’ll hear more about the water shortage in the next scene.

Little Sally: Oh! I guess you don’t want to overload them with too much exposition, huh?

Officer Lockstock: Everything in it’s time, Little Sally. You’re too young to understand it right now, but nuthin’ can kill a show like too much exposition.

Little Sally: How 'bout bad subject matter? Or a bad title, even? That could kill a show pretty good!

Assuming that the rest of the dialogue is this funny (and from the other fragments on the album, it seems to be) this should’ve been the easy winner (given the wonderful score), but no. The TONY voters went for the safe choice and put another nail in Broadway’s coffin.

But wouldn’t it have been nice if the TONY voters could have picked an original musical? A musical that’s NOT a rehash of an old movie or a regurgitation of some pop-group’s songs which have been badly cobbled together? An honest-to-god new musical?

So, fuck you, TONY voters. You wonder why Broadway’s dying? Why the huge flow of musicals that we saw in the '40s and '50s has dribbled down to a trickle? Votes like this aren’t the only reason, but they sure as fuck don’t help. Assholes. I hope you spend the afterlife in a theater being forced to listen to THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLE over and over for all eternity.

Fenris

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Thoroughly Modern Millie is on my wife’s (admittedly long) list of favorite movies, not so much for the storyline as for the acting. When we had heard that they had made it into a Broadway musical and later that it had won the Tony, I added the OCR to my list of CDs to pick up. Thank you, Fenris, for saving me the cost of the CD.
Being in Chicago, we get to see the touring versions of Broadway musicals a little sooner than you do out West. In recent years, due to my wife’s health, getting out to the theater has become a Major Project[sup]TM[/sup] so we’ve had to become more selective about what we see. This has forced me to pay more attention to reviews and commentaries to decide if a show is worth the effort and expense. We have noticed with some dismay the dearth of original stories and the proliferation of recycled movies and “songfests”. The Producers has been the sole exception to this; we saw the Chicago preview (my wife would have crawled downtown and hung from the stage lights for a chance to see Nathan Lane in anything, much less a Mel Brooks show) and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
I seem to remember Urinetown showing in Chicago at some time, but can’t remember when it was or why we didn’t see it. We’ll have to check it out if we get a chance.

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Well, hello there!

Actually, I was registered last year and seem to have disappeared in what I now realize was called the Winter of Our Missed Content. And I’ve been lurking since '99 or so. But this seems as good a time as any to re-emerge. I’m a huge theater fan, living in NYC, and very active in the various boards and newsgroups than people in the biz hang out in. I’m in no rush to see MILLIE but have seen almost all the other Tony contenders and URINETOWN three times, the most recently this Thursday night.

And, up there in the cheap seats in the balcony (we theater nuts never pay full price!) I sat next to a delightful young woman in town for a conference on historic theaters, who had come to see the show and the old Henry Miller theater that it’s in. She was from Memphis and worked for the only Broadway-scale house there, and she also had been following the Tonys from there and agreed that MILLIE hadn’t been worthy. And she encapsulated the problem to me…

…it’s you, Fenris.

Well, not you of course, but Them Ign’rint People in The Rest of America. Those outside New York, in The Heartland or The West or The Bible Belt. The Memphis girl’s boss is a Tony voter. He’s a cultured man and likes theater but he has cobbled together a season consisting of touristy junk like PHANTOM, MISS SAIGON, MAMMA MIA, etc. because that’s ALL that people will pay for. The revenues from that will keep the theater’s physical plant (which also houses a ballet company and is hired out by topline entertainers and the occasional opera company) going and also subsidize their one ‘artistic’ show of the season, a little unknown bagatelle called WEST SIDE STORY.

Anyway, this guy voted for MILLIE so he could have people who’d heard of the movie in passing come to his theater. He knew URINETOWN was better, she said, just from the recording, but he couldn’t sell it. Hell, he couldn’t sell THE WHO’S TOMMY a couple of years ago, and you think people would have heard of The Who!

All of my friends in showbiz and fans like me predicted exactly what would happen–URINETOWN (which is indeed delightful to see onstage and very very witty) would win all the awards–best lyrics, music, book, and direction–but added up they would not make up the Best Musical. That had to go to something big and splashy and commercial. Now, to be fair to Millie, it does have some respected performers in it–Marc Kudisch and Harriet Harris, the featured actress winner–and some of my friends who see a lot of shows have said it’s not as bad as MAMMA MIA or CATS, but even they agree that URINETOWN and even the highly flawed SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS were closer to what a new American musical should be–daring, taking chances, telling stories, using imagination and skill. (SWEET SMELL, oddly enough, ended up straying too far from its original movie and tried to get you to care about the sister and her boyfriend when you just wanted them to get the hell off the stage so you could watch more JJ Hunsecker antics.)

Anyway, this isn’t the first time this has happened, not by a long shot. Last year was OK–THE PRODUCERS, while it didn’t deserve stuff like Scenery and Lighting, is an old-fashioned comedy put together by people who know and love Broadway, and it showed. But in 2000 CONTACT, which has no singing and no original music, won over THE DEAD and THE WILD PARTY, two great real musicals. In '99, the dance revue FOSSE, again with no original music, over the new and daring PARADE, a serious musical about the Leo Frank case. In '98, the exact same thing as this year–splashy, well-financed, shallow (except for Julie Taymor’s puppets and costumes) THE LION KING over the striking RAGTIME, which like URINETOWN took every other award. 1997, with the win of the beautiful operatic TITANIC (before the movie and quite unrelated to it) was the last time I was really happy with the result.

There’s a thread over at http://www.talkinbroadway.com/forum/ written by a longtime fan called “I may have to stop going to the theater altogether” which addresses some of these things you bring up. It’s a shame the Tony voters are so scared that America west of the Hudson and north of the Tappan Zee bridge will not accept _______–fill in the blank with irreverent, challenging, wacky, intellectual, revolutionary, politically charged, etc. shows. Hell, I’d be mad too–they’re selling you short.

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Oh, and Fenris, if you’re near Denver URINETOWN will be coming your way in 2003! :stuck_out_tongue:

http://www.broadwayacrossamerica.com/home/story.cfm?STID=842

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Mehitabel wrote:

What drove me nuts is about half-way through the show, someone (who was it?) came out and did a speech about how we have to nurture new, differerent, exciting musicals instead of bloatware like MILLIE. (I listened to the CD again to see if it was as bad as my first impression: it was worse. I can’t begin to describe how jarring the plagerised songs are)

CONTACT was where I gave up on the Tonys awards.

I’d love to see a new rule for the Tonys: Only musicals that have 100% new music (that includes “Let’s stripmine a composer’s work and cobble together a story to fit the songs” musicals. Unless all (most of?) the songs first appear in the show) can be considered for “Best Musical”. Stripmined affairs like MAMMA MIA, CRAZY FOR YOU, HOLLY, TOMMY, aargh…what was the Rogers and Hammerstein one? IT’S A GRAND NIGHT FOR SINGING(?) get a new category or go in “Best Revival” or “Best Use of Rehashed Music” or “Best Attempt to Stripmine” or something. But not “Best Musical”

Fenris

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I like the movie. I actually own it, mostly because of my continuing adoration of Julie Andrews. But I’ll avoid the musical, thankyouverymuch, Fenris, due to your comments. I’ll spend my money on something more worthy, instead.

What I don’t get is…how the hell is Into the Woods a revival? I mean, yeah, I suppose it is, but, Christ! the thing’s original run just ended a decade ago! (Oh, shit. It won the Best Score Tony in '88, didn’t it? I remember it beat Phantom. And it didn’t run for all that long. So it’s been longer than a decade.) Which takes SOME, but not all of the force from my rant. But still - my idea of a revival is a good twenty-year hiatus.

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LOL, Winnowill, people said the same thing about 42nd STREET last year. It’s a big problem. Producers love them because they can sell their familiarity, which is what’s keeping the surprisingly dismal OKLAHOMA open. But familiarity didn’t keep the BELLS ARE RINGING revival open last year, or the new JANE EYRE, a book that everybody’s read. Not even all movie adaptations succeed–SWEET SMELL just closed and in a few weeks, so will THE FULL MONTY. Sometime’s it’s random–THE FANTASTICKS ran for 42 years until the landlord got greedy and raised the rent so much on the desirable Greenwich Village building it had to close; even if they’d sold out every ticket they couldn’t pay it. I was at the last public performance and if sentiment could have paid the rent, it would still be running.

Plays are also wack. FORTUNE’S FOOL (which is fantastic and is closing Sunday) is a New Play that was written in 1848! TRUE WEST, that staple of college courses, was a new play last year or so because it was OFF-Broadway during its run.

But it IS hard to get all revved up about a revival when you’re under forty and remember its original ad campaign on the buses and taxis. And Fenris, although sometimes a few trunk songs are interpolated into a “revisal” I agree that a new show should HAVE NEW SONGS! AND PEOPLE SINGING! I was at the 2000 Tonys and CONTACT is actually a lot of fun and very well done and moving, but it’s a dance play, not a musical. I’d love to see them give an award for “Best Use of Rehashed Music”, though. Something like MAMMA MIA should not be competing with a new idea with songs that have never been heard before like URINETOWN.

You might want to visit the board I linked to above sometimes and do a Deja on the rec.arts.theatre.musicals newsgroup in the spring of 2000 to see the ruckus we had over CONTACT. And MILLIE doesn’t get a lot of respect there either, although it got much more than MAMMA MIA, which just makes most of us throw our hands up in the air with despair. Nobody’s saying you can’t have a good time there, nobody’s saying Abba’s the worst band in the world, but most of us do think it shouldn’t be in a Broadway house and leeching the sparse tourist dollar away from better shows. Oh well.

One thing I do want to know is, if shows like URINETOWN and A CLASS ACT or BAT BOY came to your cities, would people go to see them? NYC producers are convinced not so they vote their pocketbooks, hoping that the big shiny BEST MUSICAL OF 200x sign will bring the slack-jawed yokels shambling into the theater.

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** Mehitabel**,

I hung out on rec.arts.theatre.musicals for years, until it turned into a Republican/Democrat bitchfest (say, '98 or so) that occasionally discussed musicals. There were about 3 LOUDshrieky liberals and one shrieky LOUD conservative (she was Catholic too–this often figured into the screaming on BOTH sides, IIRC) and their flame-war dragged every other conversation into the war.

I poked my head back in recently, and it looks like there’s actually ON-TOPIC discussion there! :smiley: I may have to start hanging out there again.

As to whether people would go to see 'em in Denver, I dunno. *I * would. (Well, not BAT BOY which I didn’t like at all), but I’d go see NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY or EATING RAOUL: THE MUSICAL (what a bizarre recording!) or SATURDAY NIGHT or URINETOWN or even a revival of HIS MONKEY WIFE (an even more bizarre recording).

Y’know, I’m gonna start a “weird/unknown cast recordings thread”. We can continue this bit of the discussion there, if you’re interested. I’ll post a link to it later.

I love living in Colorado, but I envy the hell out of New Yorkers who can just go to see a musical like others can go to a baseball game. My folks lived near New York when they were first married and got to see the originals of MY FAIR LADY, CAMELOT, BELLS ARE RINGING, FIORELLO!, etc. They even saw tryout versions of musicals (I believe they saw a tryout of THE MUSIC MAN) and they occasionally gloat over this. My parents are evil. :wink:

And why the hell wasn’t the wonderful Kristen Chenowith offered the role’ of Millie?

Fenris