| re: Brantley.... | |
| Posted by: | Delvino 11:31 pm EDT 03/30/14 |
| In reply to: | Brantley.... - Ncassidine 10:11 pm EDT 03/30/14 |
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| Better review than he gave WICKED. Seriously. Check. | |
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| Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | WaymanWong 10:46 am EDT 03/31/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Brantley.... - Delvino 11:31 pm EDT 03/30/14 |
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| You're right. Brantley's 2003 review of ''Wicked'' opened with a love letter to Kristin Chenoweth, but it was a huge pan of the show. He said she was ''the essential helium in a bloated production that might otherwise spend close to three hours flapping its wings without taking off. ... 'Wicked' does not, alas, speak hopefully for the future of the American musical.'' Nor was Brantley alone. Newsday's Linda Winer called ''Wicked'' an ''overproduced, overblown, confusingly dark and laboriously ambitious jumble.'' And John Lahr in the New Yorker wrote: ''The show's 22 songs were written by Stephen Schwartz, and not one of them is memorable.'' (Gee, ''Popular'' and ''Defying Gravity'' sound memorable to me.) Not all critics panned ''Wicked.'' Elysa Gardner in USA Today: ''The most complete, and most satisfying, new musical I've come across in a long time.'' So, ''Wicked'' gets the last laugh, having celebrated its 10th anniversary. If that's not ''Popular,'' what is? | |
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| Wicked is a bloated production and incredibly long and hyperactive n/m | |
| Posted by: | lowwriter 04:09 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
| In reply to: | Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - WaymanWong 10:46 am EDT 03/31/14 |
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| n/m | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | enoch10 01:31 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
| In reply to: | Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - WaymanWong 10:46 am EDT 03/31/14 |
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| and, once again, you are confusing popular success with artistic success. not the same thing. at all. | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | WaymanWong 12:32 am EDT 04/01/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - enoch10 01:31 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
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| That's not the point I was trying to make: I think you have to take critics with a grain of salt. And even critics can disagree about whether a show has achieved ''artistic success.'' Also, artistic successes CAN be popular, too. When John Lahr says that Stephen Schwartz hasn't written a single ''memorable'' tune in ''Wicked,'' that says more to me about Lahr's tastes than it does about Schwartz's tunes. Clearly, many people DO find ''memorable'' songs in ''Wicked.'' | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | enoch10 12:53 am EDT 04/02/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - WaymanWong 12:32 am EDT 04/01/14 |
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| but - >>So, ''Wicked'' gets the last laugh, having celebrated its 10th anniversary. If that's not ''Popular,'' what is? indicates to me you're arguing the popularity of WICKED invalidates lahr's position that it's a bad musical. a position i agree with, popular but bad. that's arguing quantity over quality. sorry if i am misreading it. | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | ryhog 01:55 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - enoch10 01:31 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
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| I don't think you can fault Wayman for the confusion. The fault lies at the feet of the creators of these shows. They have decided to pursue popular success by heading for Broadway (a commercial entertainment destination where, by definition, popular success is the only metric of success) rather than off-Broadway where that would not be the case. This is a choice. There are those here, perhaps including you, that imagine that Broadway is some larger version of Playwrights Horizons. It is not. It is a place people go to make money. That may be a tough pill for some fans of musical theatre to swallow, but that's the fact. If/ Then would not be on Broadway if the folks involved were not trying to make money. Ditto for all the other crap we are seeing this season. | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | enoch10 05:45 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - ryhog 01:55 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
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| though it may be a tough pill to swallow for some, perhaps including you, it is possible be a success in both realms and in venues beyond playwrights horizon. | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | ryhog 06:02 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - enoch10 05:45 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
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| Oh I agree, and that's a pill I gladly swallow. I can't imagine you would think otherwise. And of course there are works that succeed artistically and also on Broadway. But there are far too many shows that don't, and that's what I am addressing. Right now we have a season of artistic mediocrity, and it appears it may be headed for financial mediocrity as well. That's actually not a bad thing, if it causes a break in the right direction. The scary part is that it is equally or more likely to break the other way. | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | Chromolume 11:26 am EDT 03/31/14 |
| In reply to: | Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - WaymanWong 10:46 am EDT 03/31/14 |
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| "The show's 22 songs were written by Stephen Schwartz, and not one of them is memorable." (Gee, "Popular" and "Defying Gravity" sound memorable to me.) Which again defends the sensible point of view that very few new songs are instantly memorable - aside from jingles and the hook in a pop song, which are really designed to be "earworms." (Though I would argue that the "hooks" involving the titles of both songs you mentioned are, pretty much, instantly memorable). It takes a few hearings of almost anything to really start taking it in. I think "memorable" has become a friendly euphemism for "derivative" - in other words, something isn't "memorable" if it doesn't already sound like a song you've heard before. Which is why, unfortunately, jukebox shows are going to be around for a good long time, I fear - no chance of an "unmemorable" score when you can go in "humming the tunes" before you even buy the tickets. :-( | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | ryhog 12:04 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - Chromolume 11:26 am EDT 03/31/14 |
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| I think the whole "memorable" notion is yet another example of trying to peg some objective standard to something that is all about subjective appeal. The cold truth is that these new shows we keep trying to fathom (of which If/Then may be the ultimate poster child) are never going to develop into memorable scores, or even memorable songs. Jukebox scores function like insurance policies for producers, and they are utilized because precious little of the songwriting we are witnessing has much of what, in another industry, we would call curb appeal. Tom Kitt did a superb job of adapting, arranging and integrating the songs of American Idiot for the stage. At least a dozen of those songs-probably more-are materially better than any song in If/Then. Did we need to be "trained" to like Green Day's songs? I think not. What does that tell us about what is wrong with the songwriting on Broadway circa 2014? | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | WaymanWong 12:45 am EDT 04/01/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - ryhog 12:04 pm EDT 03/31/14 |
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| Whether a tune is ''memorable'' or ''hummable'' will always be a subjective call. I personally find Kitt's tunes from ''Next to Normal'' AND ''If/Then'' more appealing than some of Green Day's stuff. Yet for all of Green Day's worldwide success selling millions of records and winning Grammy Awards, somehow that still didn't translate into a Broadway hit. When ''West Side Story'' opened, there were critics who called the score ''unhummable.'' As Sondheim has said, it took radio airplay from the soundtrack of ''West Side Story'' to turn those tunes into the mainstream songs they are. Just as John Lahr branded Schwartz's songs to ''Wicked'' unhummable, time has proven that some of them are wildly popular. | |
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| re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed | |
| Posted by: | ryhog 01:38 am EDT 04/01/14 |
| In reply to: | re: Something ''Wicked'' this way, reviewed - WaymanWong 12:45 am EDT 04/01/14 |
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| I don't think there is any air between your view and mine on this memorable/hummable nonsense (even if we don't agree about Kitt's own work vs the Green Day). It's pretty simple to me-people like what they like. No one is going to convince any of us to like music that doesn't speak to us personally, and that's not a bad thing. | |
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