| re: SOME LIKE IT HOT - while, not earth shattering ... | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 08:40 pm EDT 11/04/22 | |
| In reply to: re: SOME LIKE IT HOT - while, not earth shattering ... - NewtonUK 07:56 am EDT 11/04/22 | |
|
|
|
| Perhaps worth mentioning is that Sugar is a good example of a show that went through tryout hell. Even by Merrick standards. Including a most unusual example of upheaval in the firing of the set designer, the venerable Jo Mielziner, and replacing all or almost all of the sets. According to some sources, this was unnecessary. They primarily needed to be painted different colors. A mistake that seems not to have been entirely Mielziner's fault was made, and both Champion and Merrick were more to blame, which Merrick perhaps acknowledged by hiring Mielziner for two more shows (Out Cry and The Baker's Wife). And by making Champion pay for the new sets, at least according to John Anthony Gilvey's not always accurate bio of Champion. Despite my uncertainty as to how much of the Sugar chapter is accurate, it certainly makes an interesting read, and I would think (hope) enough of it is reasonably accurate, perhaps even including the rather astonishing little note that Mielziner was relieved to be fired so he would not have to deal with any of the madness any longer. (After all, the guy had nothing to prove at that point.) And delays on top of delays. I will quote my own note that from ovrtur. "Early ads for the production listed a Broadway opening date of February 29, 1972. Even a couple of weeks after the opening of the first pre-Broadway engagement, which started at the Kennedy Center Opera House in Washington, D.C., on January 17, 1972, February 29 was still appearing in ads as the opening. By the third week after the Kennedy Center opening, the date of the Broadway opening was changed to March 14, and another pre-Broadway engagement was added: two weeks at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia, which was to follow a two-week run at the O'Keefe Centre in Toronto that had always been part of the schedule. At some point, another pre-Broadway engagement was added: three weeks at the Shubert in Boston. "Eventually, the Broadway opening was re-scheduled for April 6, a Thursday, with previews starting with an evening performance on Wednesday, March 29. Surprisingly, even though the production was playing a Monday through Saturday schedule, there were two performances on Sunday that week (April 2), with no day off till the following Sunday. "As late as Monday, April 3, listings for the production in the ABCs of New York newspapers still listed the opening as April 6, but by the following day, the opening was changed to Sunday, April 9." So much stress and mishegoss to produce a show generally felt to be mediocre, with primary enjoyment coming from the performances, Morse's by far most of all, and some effective staging. The source material and Morse carried it. There do seem to have been enough sufficiently high points that word of mouth was probably pretty decent, and there were some good Styne melodies, but some of those lyrics . . . geez. And why was the title character so undermusicalized? |
|
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | re: SOME LIKE IT HOT - while, not earth shattering ... - NewtonUK 07:56 am EDT 11/04/22 |
| Next: | Bobby Morse was a sassy delight - Genealley 02:34 pm EDT 11/05/22 |
| Thread: |
|
Time to render: 0.027698 seconds.