| I would think they probably feel a little too stylized for Broadway. The most common pastiche "throwback" for Broadway musicals is the 20's/30's (think Drowsy Chaperone), but anything much older than that in style isn't very common, and also there's a certain perceived "rigidity" to G&S that might just not play right to a general audience. Certainly the most successful "mainstream" G&S production was the Joe Papp Pirates Of Penzance, which kept the score intact but played with the performance style and the orchestrations to make it more "American musical theatre"-ish to the audience. (Other attempts, like A Gordon Greenberg/Nell Benjamin update of the same operetta - a seeming attempt to capitalize on that same kind of updating - was IMO much more crass, less thought through, and not nearly as entertaining on the whole.) There have also been versions like The Hot Mikado which have hung around a little - but I think the general idea is that audiences won't trust the originals as much as they would an updated take on the music and style. |
