Literally the worst
Nov. 30th, 2013 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotAfter seeing it last night at Proctor's, I can say with certainty that We Will Rock You is the worst Broadway musical I know of. No redeeming qualities. None.
The plot was stupid but could have been saved with a heartfelt book and original music, but instead the book read like it was written by high schoolers. Really. The clunkiest dialogue, and no actual jokes - just punchlineless references to Names People Know. Annoyingly, they would reference Bohemian Rhapsody in loads of ways but never delivered on it, forcing it into an encore like people wanted to hear just one more song! when people really just wanted to hear the song that seems like the only one that's actually central to the plot.
The set was terrible, trying to look like a rock concert with a big lighted rigging above the stage, but all that did was put all this empty space above the character's heads, drawing focus away from them and making them look small.
There are two worst things. I can't decide which is The One, so, two, illogical though it may be.
1) The whole show is about celebrating the freedom, spontaneity, and soul of rock music ... but a big-budget musical like this is tightly controlled and entirely under the direction of people other than the actors, including the producers, who are there to make a profit (how GlobalSoft). This one has been reproduced more than 30 times in the past decade, making it an incredibly manufactured and processed production. The use of the Hard Rock Café as a ~home of rock~ when it is in fact just as much about plastering the images and memes of music over a corporate shell might have been a deliberate poke at all this, but thinking it all over I'm pretty sure it was not. At the same time as people are pretending to really care about music with rocks in on the stage, there's a huge and very talented band up in the flies that gets covered with a scrim and occasionally shown.
(Speaking of music with rocks in, you know what would have been so much better? A Soul Music musical. I want to hear Sioni Bod Da played on a harp.)
2) THIS SHOW HAS ACHIEVED MASSIVE SUCCESS AND A WORLD TOUR DESPITE EXTREMELY NEGATIVE CRITICAL REVIEWS. Even though it's complete garbage, the greater part of a generation loves it because it spits up songs that were key to their adolescence/young adulthood. Everyone was standing from practically the beginning of the bows.
Ugh. I just really want to go see a revival of something from the early 20th century, when shows had shitty dialogue because they were 100% written as vehicles for songs and everyone was aware of that and didn't try to pretend otherwise. The songs in Babes in Arms have about 5% to do with the characterization or plot that's present, but it doesn't matter because they don't shine bright lights directly into my eyes.
ETA: I FORGOT TO SAY. You know what it really reminded me of? Hit List, the second show-withing-a-show in Smash. Hit List is the only thing that could be worse than this, because HL was all about that doofus composer getting back at the world.
The plot was stupid but could have been saved with a heartfelt book and original music, but instead the book read like it was written by high schoolers. Really. The clunkiest dialogue, and no actual jokes - just punchlineless references to Names People Know. Annoyingly, they would reference Bohemian Rhapsody in loads of ways but never delivered on it, forcing it into an encore like people wanted to hear just one more song! when people really just wanted to hear the song that seems like the only one that's actually central to the plot.
The set was terrible, trying to look like a rock concert with a big lighted rigging above the stage, but all that did was put all this empty space above the character's heads, drawing focus away from them and making them look small.
There are two worst things. I can't decide which is The One, so, two, illogical though it may be.
1) The whole show is about celebrating the freedom, spontaneity, and soul of rock music ... but a big-budget musical like this is tightly controlled and entirely under the direction of people other than the actors, including the producers, who are there to make a profit (how GlobalSoft). This one has been reproduced more than 30 times in the past decade, making it an incredibly manufactured and processed production. The use of the Hard Rock Café as a ~home of rock~ when it is in fact just as much about plastering the images and memes of music over a corporate shell might have been a deliberate poke at all this, but thinking it all over I'm pretty sure it was not. At the same time as people are pretending to really care about music with rocks in on the stage, there's a huge and very talented band up in the flies that gets covered with a scrim and occasionally shown.
(Speaking of music with rocks in, you know what would have been so much better? A Soul Music musical. I want to hear Sioni Bod Da played on a harp.)
2) THIS SHOW HAS ACHIEVED MASSIVE SUCCESS AND A WORLD TOUR DESPITE EXTREMELY NEGATIVE CRITICAL REVIEWS. Even though it's complete garbage, the greater part of a generation loves it because it spits up songs that were key to their adolescence/young adulthood. Everyone was standing from practically the beginning of the bows.
Ugh. I just really want to go see a revival of something from the early 20th century, when shows had shitty dialogue because they were 100% written as vehicles for songs and everyone was aware of that and didn't try to pretend otherwise. The songs in Babes in Arms have about 5% to do with the characterization or plot that's present, but it doesn't matter because they don't shine bright lights directly into my eyes.
ETA: I FORGOT TO SAY. You know what it really reminded me of? Hit List, the second show-withing-a-show in Smash. Hit List is the only thing that could be worse than this, because HL was all about that doofus composer getting back at the world.
no subject
Date: 2013-11-30 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-01 02:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-02 12:10 am (UTC)I was just thinking that I could totally see some sort of musical using BSB/Nsync songs, or a biopic of them, or something, in not too many years. The '90s nostalgia is starting ...
no subject
Date: 2013-12-02 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-03 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-03 01:51 am (UTC)