I had mentioned Triumph of Love, just in passing, in a post below. I had mentioned it at greater length in an earlier version, before I got timed out and lost the post. The show is a longtime favorite of mine, and I listen to it regularly. I think it has one of the best-crafted scores of its decade. It's a shame that one of the very best songs, Buckley's "If I Cannot Love," a breathtaking song, was cut from the show. It was replaced by "Serenity." Happily, the CD includes both songs in Buckley's original performances of them.
If I had to guess about why the show failed on Broadway, I'd speculate that one of the show's few flaws is that we're not always quite sure how seriously to take the characters. Clearly, the three servants are meant to be "just" clowns--and that's fine. But what of the four others? There's a great deal emotionally at stake in most of their songs--they're heartbreaking as well as funny, for the most part. But Hesione and Hermocrites, too, are sometimes treated as if they were "just" clowns. I find myself a bit taken aback by that, sometimes. |
