{"id":48064,"date":"2024-10-03T11:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-03T09:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/f93f0757-5f37-4617-b884-ef66c6325c1e"},"modified":"2024-10-03T12:07:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-03T10:07:16","slug":"two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Two hours of leaden dross’: the biggest stage musical flops of all time"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Thursday, 03 October 2024 at 09:11 AM<\/p>

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Read on to discover the stage musicals that flopped spectacularly…<\/strong><\/p>

I must be one of the few journalists still alive who interviewed, at different times, four of the five men who created West Side Story<\/a><\/strong> <\/em>\u2013 Leonard Bernstein<\/a><\/strong>, the composer; Jerome Robbins, the choreographer; Stephen Sondheim<\/a><\/strong>, the librettist; and Arthur Laurents, who wrote the dialogue. The fifth man, a fellow called William Shakespeare<\/a><\/strong> who worked a bit on the plot, never got back to me. \u00a0<\/p>

Stephen Sondheim: the composer’s best musicals<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>
So, I defer to nobody in my appreciation of the genius that goes into making the great musicals. But may I be permitted to play devil\u2019s advocate and put this shocking thought forward? Although the musicals genre has given us the most joyous entertainments humanity has known, it is also responsible for some of the worst evenings spent in the theatre.\u00a0<\/p>
And yes, I know spoken drama can be terrible too. I\u2019m a survivor of Peter O\u2019Toole\u2019s Macbeth<\/em>. Yet somehow, the fact that a musical involves so many dancers, singers, instrumentalists and (usually) epic stage effects, makes failure in this genre all the more catastrophic. \u00a0<\/p>
Stage musical flops… after just a few performances<\/h2>
Some dire musicals are put out of their misery after a few performances. Based on the Robin Hood legend, Lionel Bart\u2019s 1965 disaster Twang!!<\/em> (a show so bad it had two exclamation marks) lost \u00a3400,000\u00a0 before it closed \u2013 equivalent to about \u00a310m today \u2013 despite starring Barbara Windsor and Ronnie Corbett.<\/p>
15 of the best stage musicals of all time<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>
Bart wasn\u2019t fazed. After all, he had also written Oliver! <\/em>(with a little help from Charles Dickens), one of the great shows of the Sixties. So, after Twang!!<\/em> ended he decided to create a musical based on a complex Fellini film, La Strada<\/em>. It ran for\u00a0precisely one night.<\/p>
<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">‘Welcome to Sherwood’ from Lionel Bart’s <em>Twang!!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><p>A few years later the former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read managed the same feat \u2013 creating a musical about Oscar Wilde that survived just one performance: its press night. Not surprising really, considering what the press wrote. \u2018Two hours of leaden dross\u2019 was one of the kinder verdicts.\u00a0<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Stage musical flops… with ludicrous subject matter<\/h2><p>That surely failed, as so many musicals do, because the chosen subject matter was completely unsuited to the genre. In retrospect it seems ludicrous that anyone would turn<em> Moby-Dick,<\/em> Herman Melville\u2019s sprawling novel of macho whale-hunting, into a musical \u2013 let alone one set in the swimming pool of a girls\u2019 school. Yet Cameron Mackintosh, usually the West End\u2019s smartest impresario, poured a not-so-small fortune into getting this staged in the 1990s before general ridicule forced its closure. <\/p><p>And it was the Royal Shakespeare Company, no less, that dreamed up the idea of turning Stephen King\u2019s horror story <em>Carrie<\/em> into a rock musical. Despite being universally scorned by the critics, the RSC took it to the West End then Broadway, where it proceeded to lose a cool $8m.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Carrie The Musical - \u201cIn\u201d (Lyric Video)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3oAorlAxOd8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">‘In’ from <em>Carrie<\/em>, the musical<\/figcaption><\/figure><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/tv-and-film-music\/best-movie-musicals\">The 15 best movie musicals of all time… one decade gave us six of them!<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><p>Even that calamitous misjudgement pales into insignificance when set beside an extraordinary 1990s musical called<em> The Fields of Ambrosia <\/em>\u2013 about an American state executioner who falls in love with the woman he\u2019s about to put in the electric chair. He just about manages to sing the final chorus before being executed himself. As was the show \u2013 after one week.\u00a0<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Stage musical flops… even with God on their side<\/h2><p>Even with God on your side, musicals can flop. The success of<em> Jesus Christ Superstar <\/em>and<em> Godspell <\/em>in the 1970s prompted a spate of religious musicals, very few of which reached heavenly heights. I encountered two sacred turkeys. <em>Bernadette,<\/em> about a peasant girl who had visions of the Virgin Mary, was bizarrely booked into the Dominion, one of London\u2019s biggest theatres, where it spectacularly failed despite a blessing from the Pope. <\/p><p>Then came<em> Children of Eden<\/em>, based on the Book of Genesis, which told the story of the Flood in such uplifting lyrics as: \u2018Clearly God is miffed\/He\u2019s left us all adrift\u2019. Appropriately, it sank without a trace.<\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/the-best-musicals-by-andrew-lloyd-webber\">The best musicals by Andrew Lloyd Webber<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">And the unintentionally hilarious…<\/h2><p>But if I had to pick one unintentionally hilarious musical I would dearly love to see again it would be <em>Heathcliff,<\/em> an adaptation of <em>Wuthering Heights <\/em>specially written so that Cliff Richard could play the title role. Why anybody thought the world\u2019s most clean-cut pop icon could convincingly depict the savage, untamed anti-hero of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s novel is a mystery. The show had about as much dark, primordial melodrama as the average episode of<em> Blue Peter,<\/em> and the reviews were, as someone quipped at the time, \u2018withering rather than wuthering\u2019.\u00a0<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Cliff Richard & Olivia Newton-John - Had To Be (The Royal Variety Performance, 25.11.1995)\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OA5W6kfUDCw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/><\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Cliff Richard and Olivia Newton John sing ‘Had To Be’ from the musical <em>Heathcliff<\/em> in 1995<\/figcaption><\/figure><p>Yet the star had the last laugh. His loyal army of fans \u2013 the legendary \u2018cliff-hangers\u2019 \u2013 filled every performance with a sea of blue-rinsed heads, and the production made its backers a fortune.<\/p><ul><li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/10-of-the-best-songs-from-musicals\">10 of the best songs from musicals<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Thursday, 03 October 2024 at 09:11 AM Read on to discover the stage musicals that flopped spectacularly… I must be one of the few journalists still alive who interviewed, at different times, four of the five men who created West Side Story \u2013 Leonard Bernstein, the composer; Jerome Robbins, the choreographer; Stephen Sondheim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":48065,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"4"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/10\/two-hours-of-leaden-dross-the-biggest-stage-musical-flops-of-all-time.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Published: Thursday, 03 October 2024 at 09:11 AM Read on to discover the stage musicals that flopped spectacularly… I must be one of the few journalists still alive who interviewed, at different times, four of the five men who created West Side Story \u2013 Leonard Bernstein, the composer; Jerome Robbins, the choreographer; Stephen Sondheim,…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/48064"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}