I think of the LaChiusa musical as the moment when one idea for what the future of Broadway musicals died and another was born. That entire show was so inventive, bold, complex, queer, and socially conscious, and for as complicated as the score was, it also featured a number of straight forward bangers that were LaChiusa putting on his very best Broadway face and trying to be crowd pleasing?
What went wrong? Two main things. One was that they never quite cracked the first ten minutes. Wolfe was trying something conceptually with the vaudeville becoming a flat drawing becoming a 3-D world that never quite cohered.
But more importantly, the characters are selfish, hedonistic artists who treat each other badly, and I think the mass audience just found them and their party inherently unlikable. Both of the Wild Partys, despite being so different, got similar reviews when it came to the story.
At least we have the album, though we were deprived of the version of “Gin” seen on stage, which was a group number and much more dynamic than the Mandy solo version. |
