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| re: "Moose Murders" Follow-Up (Long) | |
| Posted by: NewtonUK 07:00 pm EDT 08/18/20 | |
| In reply to: re: "Moose Murders" Follow-Up (Long) - StageLover 06:58 pm EDT 08/18/20 | |
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| I wouldn't rush to judgment and place all the blame on the director, John Roach - tho much lies there. I recently re-read the play, and to my sensibility, the play is as awful as the direction must have been. It really didnt make any more sense on stage than it does on the page, stage directions or not. Sad to say. I know a lot of the people who were involved in that show - and directed one of the actors many times in better scripts. | |
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| I Agree... | |
| Posted by: Whistler 11:46 am EDT 08/19/20 | |
| In reply to: re: "Moose Murders" Follow-Up (Long) - NewtonUK 07:00 pm EDT 08/18/20 | |
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| I agree with you on the quality of the script and would never mean to say it's good. I was just trying to point out that it seems no worse than a lot of semi-successful Broadway comedies/farces over maybe the last hundred years, and with a good initial production, the script wouldn't have received the reputation of a disaster that it has. |
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| re: I Agree... | |
| Last Edit: AlanScott 03:21 pm EDT 08/19/20 | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 03:16 pm EDT 08/19/20 | |
| In reply to: I Agree... - Whistler 11:46 am EDT 08/19/20 | |
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| This brings to mind The Bed Before Yesterday, the sex comedy by Ben Travers that was produced in December 1975 when he was 89. He had supposedly started it in the early 1950s but didn't finish it either because it was too racy to be produced at the time or because he was depressed after his wife died in 1951. Different articles said different things about that. It was produced in London starring Joan Plowright, with Helen Mirren in a supporting role, directed by Lindsay Anderson. It was initially presented in repertory with The Seagull (Mirren was Nina to Plowright's Arkadina) and then continued on its own, running 16 months. Reviews had been mixed but leaning toward favorable, and audiences embraced it. Plowright was succeeded by Sheila Hancock in late July 176 and then Judy Cornwell took over around six months later. In October 1976, a pre-Broadway tour started with Carol Channing in the lead, again directed by Lindsay Anderson. After three months on tour to reviews that ranged from mediocre to awful, it closed. Broadway plans were canceled. Last year, I read it. I found it difficult to believe that the play could ever have been successful anywhere in any production, but apparently Plowright was brilliant, and it somehow worked in that first production (or worked well enough for enough people). I'm not Plowright's biggest fan, but it does seem to me that if anyone would be right for the central role, she was the person. But in reading, it seemed one of the worst things I'd ever read that had received a major commercial production. Around a month before the pre-Broadway tour started, Clive Barnes saw it in London and wrote this in the Times: “It used to be a compliment paid to certain English comedians that ‘they were funny without being vulgar.’ For too much of the time this play is vulgar without being funny." That can't have been encouraging for the play's Broadway prospects, but it seems to me about right, except that he might also have mentioned that it managed to seem both mechanical and incoherent (at least that's how it seemed to me in reading). In 1994, it was revived in London with Brenda Blethyn and was not a success. Lighting struck once under just the right circumstances. As for Moose Murders, I agree that it's far from the worst script of all time. In fact, it probably reads better than The Bed Before Yesterday. It's probably even more coherent than The Bed Before Yesterday. |
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| re: I Agree... | |
| Posted by: TMGnyc 10:23 am EDT 08/20/20 | |
| In reply to: re: I Agree... - AlanScott 03:16 pm EDT 08/19/20 | |
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| Alan, I saw The Bed Before Yesterday at the Morris Mechanic Theatre in Baltimore. I remember it as amusing. Carol Channing was delightful, and I recall her run through the set on the morning after her romp with.... whoever it was. Paxton Whitehead was the standout for me. I had not seen hom previously and thought he was just terrific. Unfortunately, I recall the show not making a whole lot of sense to me. And feeling it should have been much funnier. | |
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| re: I Agree... | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 05:16 pm EDT 08/20/20 | |
| In reply to: re: I Agree... - TMGnyc 10:23 am EDT 08/20/20 | |
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| Channing got some very good reviews and other reviews that said her mannerisms didn't fit. It's sad that she did not have a success in what seems to have been her last attempt to re-establish herself as a real actress with range, playing a character very unlike any she seems to have played before. I'm just now realizing that you and I have talked about this elsewhere. |
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| Great | |
| Posted by: Whistler 02:08 am EDT 08/20/20 | |
| In reply to: re: I Agree... - AlanScott 03:16 pm EDT 08/19/20 | |
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| Great. Now I have to read "The Bed Before Yesterday." But it's okay: I don't remember much about Ben Travers except his name. So I pulled an anthology of five plays. | |
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| re: Great | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 05:08 pm EDT 08/20/20 | |
| In reply to: Great - Whistler 02:08 am EDT 08/20/20 | |
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| I should read some of his earlier plays. I have to imagine that at least some of them are better (perhaps a lot better) than The Bed Before Yesterday. Of all 20th-century playwrights who were very popular in England, he is perhaps the one least produced in the U.S. Despite many West End successes, not a single play of his ever reached Broadway, but I think some are regarded as rather good | |
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| re: Great | |
| Last Edit: whereismikeyfl 11:03 pm EDT 08/20/20 | |
| Posted by: whereismikeyfl 11:01 pm EDT 08/20/20 | |
| In reply to: re: Great - AlanScott 05:08 pm EDT 08/20/20 | |
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| Ben Travers plays from the 1920s are really great. Thark and Rookery Nook are very funny. And as I recall Plunder is very interesting and atypical of Travers. I remember reading them and thinking that Orton's What the Bulter Saw did not so much subvert the Travers-style farce as reveal qualities that were already latent in the original plays. I never read Bed Before Yesterday, but I can imagine a play written 40 or 50 years after the work that made a writers reputation is likely to be a bit flat. |
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| re: Great | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 05:31 pm EDT 08/21/20 | |
| In reply to: re: Great - whereismikeyfl 11:01 pm EDT 08/20/20 | |
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| Thanks for the encouragement to read those plays. I will try to get hold of them. And I think I've read something somewhere pointing to Travers as a forerunner of Orton. | |
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