Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables has always been one of my favorite novels. But back in the early 80s, when I heard it was going to be a musical, I was extremely skeptical. I couldn’t imagine the characters actually singing to each other. It just didn’t make any sense, and I was sure the show would be canceled due to horrible reviews and sparse audience.
Were you ever this wrong about a musical?
I very thoroughly enjoyed Man of La Mancha, despite the fact that I was pretty much dragged to the show against my will, and was completely convinced that I was going to hate it.
On the other hand, I was dead on about Mama Mia! It was terrible. Pierce Brosnan should never be allowed to sing. Ever. For any reason. Even if the fate of the universe depends on him singing a lullabye, we should all just gracefully accept our fates instead.
All I knew about Cats when I went to see it here in San Francisco is that it had run on Broadway since the about the 13th Century, so it must be good, right?
I was wrong about Kiss Me Kate in that I predicted that it would have at least one redeeming quality.
If I ever hear anyone singing Brush Up Your Shakespeare again, I will beat that person up.
I read Phantom of the Opera and didn’t understand why it was so well known, since I thought it was a pretty shoddy piece of writing. Maybe it was the Lon Chaney movie that gained it its reputation. But I loved the musical.
I object! The one redeeming quality is the song “Too Darn Hot”. That being said, it doesn’t exactly bring the musical up to the level of repeatedly watchable.
We went to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the local theatre. I was NOT looking forward to it but ended up humming the tunes for a good week afterward.
That, and “So In Love.” And Bob Fosse’s dance number, if we’re talking about the movie version.
I figured Rent probably wouldn’t suck festering donkey balls.
I’ve rarely been more wrong.
The only good thing about the wretched piece of dreck was it gave us the “Everyone has AIDS” song from Team America.
Thank you for this. “Wretched piece of dreck” is a totally accurate description.
Oh, please. “Always True to You, Darling (in My Fashion),” “Where Was the Life Of Late I Led,” “Tom, Dick, and Harry,” “Too Darn Hot,”* “Wunderbar” (once you realize it’s a satire), “Another Openin’ Another Show,” (one of the greatest paeans to the theater; only “There’s No Business Like Show Business” tops it) and, yes, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” (I’m really sorry the original cast album cuts it down to nothing) are all great songs; it’s one of the dozen best scores on Broadway. The story is pretty good, too.
As for ones I’ve been wrong about, Mama Mia surprised me by being watchable. Not great, but I was able to tolerate it – and I detest ABBA.
Sunday in the Park with George, OTOH, was completely unwatchable – Sondheim’s usual third-rate songwriting with a story that gives new dimensions to the meaning of “pretentious.” Lots of cliches about art and not a single insight. Sondheim’s music is hard to take, but you can tolerate it when the plot is strong, but in this case, there was no plot, just arty self-consciousness.
*Especially if you realized what lyrics Porter probably had in mind when he wrote it.
I won a pair of tickets to a traveling production of Miss Saigon. At first I tried to give the tickets away but no one would take them. It was suggested my then 9 year old grand daughters might enjoy the show.
I bought a third ticket, my grand daughters and I got all dressed up and on a cold rainy day we went to Seattle to see the show. I fully expected to suffer through the experience but figured it was worth it for the girls.
I was surprised and really enjoyed the play. They even had real helicoptor drop from the rafters. My grand daughters loved it too.
They haven’t suggest going to see another play so I am lucky in that respect.
Was it really shoddy writing or merely a shoddy translation? For what it’s worth, I like the book, but not the musical.
I saw Cats in the West End in London, we were right at the front, the “cats” pawed at us, licked their lips at us, and generally 'played" to the front rows. It was pure magic.
Ever since that my wife complains if we sit in seats where she can’t smell the Actors. 
Wicked. A musical based on a retelling of the Wizard of Oz sounded like a recipe for disaster to me. (I hadn’t read the book then, but if I had, I would have been even more skeptical. And I liked the book!) But then my best friend from college all but tied me down and made me listen to the cast recording. Which I absolutely loved. It’s not going to win awards for Deep Meaningfulness, but it’s a lot of fun, the relationship between the friends really sells it (how many musicals do you know with a strong female friendship? and would you have guessed that a retelling of the Wizard of Oz would have been the one?), and Kristin Chenoweth as Galinda is just incredibly amazing. I would have done quite a bit to have seen her in this role on Broadway, had I known how awesome she was.
I didn’t see it in San Francisco, but otherwise that’s exactly what I swung by to say.
I had the exact opposite reaction. All I heard for ages was Wicked-Wicked-Wicked, and since there was no easy way to see a performance of it, I bought the original cast recording and listened to it several times over the course of a cross-country trip. Needless to say, I was seriously underwhelmed. I’m open to fantasy revisionism in musicals (I love Into the Woods, based on the CD alone), but I found the songs mundane and pop-pedestrian, so I had to assume the appeal (like the hidious Phantom) was in the production values, since there was nothing I heard that made me want to go out and see it live. Sure, there were some undeniably talented peformers involved, but all at the service of some pretty forgettable material.
My biggest problem was Meryl Streep and her friends (Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) talking about how Streep’s mother had thrown her out of the house when she became pregnant 20 years before. I kept thinking “Well damn woman, you were 40 years old! You should have been gone from home anyway!” No problem with 3 sixty year old actresses getting jobs, but have them play 60 (or at least 50) year old characters instead of the 40 year old (max) characters the play makes reference too.
One that hasn’t been made into a movie or gotten wide exposure is Fair & Tender Ladies, a bluegrass musical based on Lee Smith’s novelof the same name (which I hadn’t read when I went to see the play). I wasn’t looking forward to, fearing it would be another “Oh great, po’ but honest and proud country folks are victimized and we all learn somethin’ about life”, and it was great. The soundtrack (or actually the concept CD recording) is great- fiddle, dulcimer, banjo, mandolin, and all other traditional bluegrass instruments) and while the songs are mostly “book songs” they work beautifully, plus the staging was innovative and effective. (There are 3 actresses- one plays the main character [Ivy Rowe] from her teens to her 70s, the other 2 play several roles, and members of the 3 piece bluegrass band [2 men and 1 woman in the productions I’ve seen] occasionally take on roles as well.)
I’m not a big Sondheim fan- I’ll say he has his moments and a few great songs, but generally I agree with your assessment. I didn’t like the video of the stage play of **Sweeney Todd **(George Hearn and Angela Lansbury), I didn’t like the college production I’d seen, but since one of my biggest problems was age- one 30 year old man singing love songs about his obsession for a 16 year old while another 30 year old man plays a workshop waif- and these were fixed in the movie, plus it had Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall- all of whom I like- and Helena Bonham Carter who can give a good performance, I figured how bad could it be. The answer, to me, was “quite bad indeed”.
The complete lack of any likeable characters, plotholes you could pass the 19th century British empire through, mostly forgettable songs sung by people not known for their singing, and Depp’s Pepe Le Pew wig all left me looking at my watch in the theater. I should mention though that of the people I know who have seen the movie, I am the dissenting opinion as it was extremely popular with most.
A near complete ditto. I couldn’t get into the novel and I found the musical silly beyond repair. I should mention that I’m not a big fan of fantasy in general and can’t recall ever having seen Wizard of Oz all the way through in one sitting.
I got up and walked out halfway through.
Granted “got up and walked out” in this case translates as “turned off the DVD player,” but still.