| re: The worst Best Musical ever? | |
| Last Edit: Chromolume 09:42 pm EST 01/30/21 | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 09:40 pm EST 01/30/21 | |
| In reply to: re: The worst Best Musical ever? - Michael_Portantiere 07:00 pm EST 01/30/21 | |
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| ***I wouldn't classify "Will Rogers" as among the worst of the winners, as its bouncy score, great leading man and typically inventive Tommy Tune staging made it a reasonably satisfying, splashy evening of Americana.*** This comment points up the fact that some people in this thread seem to be rating the musicals based on the writing alone, whereas others are rating them based on the productions, which probably accounts for even more disagreement than usual :-) True enough. :-) I feel that the original production of Will Rogers was wonderful (n terms of production value, that amazing choreo, etc), but the writing is uneven - particularly the book. Certain aspects of it I love, including Ziegfeld's meddling resulting in the impromptu nature of some of the numbers - but there are too many times the book falls flat. And ultimately, the show just keeps telling us over and over and over and over and over again about everything Rogers did, which gets tired fast. (For me, the only real payoff for that is in "No Man Left For Me," where Betty can at least use yet another repeat of that litany to throw it back at him, lol. That's also one of my favorite songs in the score.) There are also certain songs ("Look Around," for one) that seem shoehorned in because they realized they needed to show yet another aspect of Rogers. I'm admittedly not a huge fan of the song (despite its message, which is even more timely now), but it also comes and goes so fast that it seems like it never gets to make much of a case. On the other hand, I'm ready to throttle Wiley every time he comes out AGAIN to say "Let's go flyin' Will..." :-) It also has always seemed off to me that "Ziegfeld's Favorite" (couldn't they have given her a name, lol?) ONLY has "Will-A-Mania" and nothing else of note, musically speaking. |
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