Posted on 10/25/2004 9:38:04 AM PDT by Pharmboy
LONDON (Reuters) - For Oscar Wilde, there was no such thing as bad publicity.
In life he thrived on notoriety and once famously said: "There is only one thing worse in the world than being talked about and that is NOT being talked about."
He would, therefore, have thoroughly approved of the chorus of howls which greeted a musical about his life that closed in London after just one night -- one of the shortest runs on record.
The musical deals with the last six years in the life of the Irish playwright who died aged 46 in a Paris hotel in 1900, impoverished and disgraced after a scandal surrounding his homosexual affair with the son of a British aristocrat.
Critics slated the musical by former BBC radio disc jockey Mike Read, calling it "bilge, "excruciating" and "over two hours of leaden dross."
The press night for the show was packed with Read's showbusiness supporters like pop veterans Cliff Richard (news) and Alvin Stardust.
But the reviews proved so coruscating that just five of the 466 tickets were sold for the first public performance at the Shaw Theater.
Read said: "I am naturally devastated at the turn of events. We had a fantastic West End cast and the reaction of the audience at the press night was terrific."
Undeterred, Read said he now hopes to stage his next musical "YMCA" -- a tribute to gay icons The Village People.
Alvin Stardust?
Is it just my bigoted, homophobic imagination or have gays largely destroyed theatre?
Related to Ziggy, maybe?
A musical about a flaming sodomite wasn't a smash hit? I am shocked.
bump with no comment
My, my. You've got that right. "Angels in America"? That was like sticking small, sharp pins into my eyes. Mama mia - that was NOT a spicy meatball! More like moose scat. Ugh.
My, my. You've got that right. "Angels in America"? That was like sticking small, sharp pins into my eyes. Mama mia - that was NOT a spicy meatball! More like moose scat. Ugh.
I do not think "coruscating" means what the author thinks it means.
In fact, I know it doesn't.
Goes to show you can learn something from an idjit even. (I hadda look it up.)
(1) The musical.
(2) The serious drama.
(3) The athletic extravaganza.
(4) The radical off-off Broadway "underground".
The first is either revivals of old shows from the 40s-70s or Disney musicals for kids. The form is absolutely moribund.
(2) The serious drama consists of two schools: edgy psychological profiles like Copenhagen, Glengarry Glen Ross, or Proof and camped-up homosexual screeds like Angels in America.
The athletic extravaganza is stuff like Blue Man Group, Stomp, De La Guarda, etc.
The last is a hodge-podge of scatological or gimmicky garbage like Urinetown, Naked Boys Singing etc.
The sodomy regime has killed the Broadway musical as a vital creative force.
It has undermined the humanism and breadth of the serious drama by focusing more and more attention on narrow sexual politics.
It has encouraged the growth of "athletic" theater which is about new spectacles rather than tired revivals and advocacy theater.
The "underground" is now the most boring, alienated and repulsive segment of the theater world. One can almost predict the plot, dialogue and even jokes in an "underground" production with a just a few lines of description.
Theater in America is now mostly about bitchy, cliquey, incestuous, self-absorbed one-upmanship focused around no new ideas at all. It's pathetic, really.
coruscate - be lively or brilliant or exhibit virtuosity; “The musical performance sparkled”; “A scintillating conversation”; “his playing coruscated throughout the concert hall”
Definitely NOT the case with this play.
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