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| re: Amen. Yeah, Encores! is a terminal case right now. | |
| Last Edit: ShowGoer 05:19 pm EST 02/16/22 | |
| Posted by: ShowGoer 05:15 pm EST 02/16/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Amen. Yeah, Encores! is a terminal case right now. - theOtherJames 04:37 pm EST 02/16/22 | |
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| Exactly. I didn't renew, same as you, but relented and got a last-minute ticket for Tap Dance Kid, only to mostly regret it. (it had moments, but I wish I'd left my memories of the original production alone.) "The Life" seems poised to make the same mistakes. Even 25 years ago, most of the appeal of "The Life" was that we all knew it was kind of a trashy glitzy Frankenstein monster of a show – a musical conceived and begun in the 1980s about the seediness of Times Square during that period, but which took so long to develop that it happened to be opening the same year that "Lion King" re-opened the New Amsterdam and that the Disneyfication of 42nd Street was beginning, staged to a fare-thee-well by Michael Blakemore and with a terrific cast that included 4 of the show's eleven (!) Tony nominations (2 of whom of course won, Lillias White and Chuck Cooper). So it was already a period piece that asked us to care about its characters even as it somewhat romanticized the milieu they lived in, and still made room for catchy tunes like "Use What You Got (Until What You Got Is Gone)" and "My Body" which weren't that different from the dance-hall-girl numbers in Sweet Charity.... in short, the perfect example of a show that tried to have it both ways, and to a degree, love it or hate it, succeeded in its limited way. But love it or hate it, right from conception, that's all baked in to the material. What I can't imagine working, or that I have much interest in seeing (to borrow a phrase from portenopete) is a production of "The Life" that tries to make it into something profound and capable of changing history.... one that condems "the infrastructure that creates pimps, prostitutes and drug addicts", as Billy Porter said in the Times, at the expense of any of the wit and glitz that helped put "The Life" over in 1997 (or for that matter Sweet Charity 30 years before that). I'm loathe to pass judgment on anything before I've seen it, so I'll stop there. But you're absolutely right, the people who have supported Encores the last 3 decades tend to be people who have affection for the original shows, warts and all. People who like these old 'museum pieces', not only despite the flaws... but in some cases BECAUSE of them. That's the core base. And to alienate them by, for example, taking the fondly-remembered and Tony-nominated role of a heavyset teenage girl and making her into a generic thin adolescent whose problem is thus never quite clear, seems the apotheosis of not knowing (let alone respecting) your audience. |
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| re: Amen. Yeah, Encores! is a terminal case right now. | |
| Posted by: gcarl44 08:20 pm EST 02/18/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Amen. Yeah, Encores! is a terminal case right now. - ShowGoer 05:15 pm EST 02/16/22 | |
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| "People who like these old 'museum pieces', not only despite the flaws... but in some cases BECAUSE of them. That's the core base. And to alienate them by, for example, taking the fondly-remembered and Tony-nominated role of a heavyset teenage girl and making her into a generic thin adolescent whose problem is thus never quite clear, seems the apotheosis of not knowing (let alone respecting) your audience." For what it's worth, my thought is that they don't care about respecting their core audience, and I think that is why Debessonet is there. I think that they realize that their core audience is dying out, and they are trying the more woke approach to appeal to a younger, more contemporary audience. |
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| Happy endings and Diapers | |
| Posted by: toros 10:46 am EST 02/17/22 | |
| In reply to: re: Amen. Yeah, Encores! is a terminal case right now. - ShowGoer 05:15 pm EST 02/16/22 | |
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| I agree. These types of changes are patronizing to the audience, who knows how to put elements that have dated into context. We do it all the time with old movies. This process also defies the (original) mission of Encores!, as has been previously noted. And I'm disappointed that the Estates yeild so readily to these requests for changes. That said, Encores! has been inching in this direction for years - what's new is that now, it's officially a part of their new mission. It reminds me of when King Lear was rewritten so it had a happy ending, as Nathum Tate did in the early 1800's, or putting diapers on nude statues during the Rennaissance. This is the era in which we live. Will we look back on this era with horror or amusement or both? | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Happy endings and Diapers | |
| Last Edit: FinalPerformance 07:26 pm EST 02/18/22 | |
| Posted by: FinalPerformance 07:25 pm EST 02/18/22 | |
| In reply to: Happy endings and Diapers - toros 10:46 am EST 02/17/22 | |
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| I'll look back in horror. All these unnecessary changes to change history. Encores is on it's last legs with those running it into the ground. Went yearly but passed on Tap Dance Kid and ITW forget about it. | |
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