I saw it. The book is a noble but weak effort. The biggest problem,
however, is Fierstein. His character works against the fabric of the
drama.
Plain and simple - nothing to do with lofty standards or Puritanical
expectations.
Judging this musical on its own, I think it's enjoyable but flawed.
"Sweevil" <stephenoles@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:b93a449d-ab9c-4549-aa69-a3b83c3555f6@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> I'm sorry to see the show get such a negative review from Brantley,
> especially since I have the greatest respect and admiration for John
> Bucchino, but I think Brantley makes some good points about the sort
> of Puritanical expectations we've come to have of "new musicals" in
> the Sondheim era.
>
> Forbidden Broadway memorably described Sondheim's aesthetic (to the
> tune of "Comedy Tonight") as:
>
> Something elitist,
> Something defeatist,
> Nothing you'd care to underwrite ...
>
> If you want your new musical to be taken seriously by critics and
> musical theatre mavens, the theatrical Zeitgeist seems to forbid open-
> hearted sentiment, romance, optimism, generosity of spirit, beauty,
> elegance, and tenderness. The gentle liberal pieties of SOUTH PACIFIC
> devolved into the sledgehammer irony and sour victimization of shows
> like RENT, SIDE SHOW, and PARADE. New musicals must be harsh and "in
> your face" to be taken seriously, like SPRING AWAKENING. Why is it
> impossible to imagine critics praising a new show today as charming,
> beautiful, graceful, or witty?
>
> So even our most talented writers are drawn to small, dreary subjects
> like A CATERED AFFAIR, for fear of being called bourgeois or
> sentimental. If Verdi or Puccini had lived in our era, would they
> have had the courage to set down a single note?
>
> In a post-911 world, this aesthetic strikes me as seriously out of
> date. Nearly a century after its heydey in the 1930s, the idea that
> dour, sanctimonious agitprop is better and more "im****tant" than
> "mere" entertainment still has a stranglehold on our theatre and we
> have declining ticket sales to prove it.
>
> In the 90s I watched tedious, repetitively lefty agitprop pieces sink
> the Los Angeles Theatre Center. Over the past few years, I've seen
> David Esbjornsen nearly destroy the formerly robust Seattle Repertory
> theatre with the same kind of programing.
>
> I played Gaston last night in BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. At the curtain
> call I saw a young woman in the second row, totally bald presumably
> from cancer chemotherapy. She was beaming with pleasure. BATB is
> considered silly fluff by most critics and "serious" theatre
> aficionados, but I submit: how many preachy dreary "socially
> conscious" plays have made life better for a single person on this
> planet, as our silly show clearly did for this young woman last night?
>
> Victorian drama now is almost totally forgotten -- precisely because
> it labored under the same Puritanical notion, that the theatre's best
> purpose is to browbeat audiences with currently fa****onable
> progressive ideas. I'm all for progressive ideas, but one can get
> them from a million sources: from thinkers, politicians, on TV, books,
> magazines, newspapers, and all over the internet. Politics is
> everywhere nowadays, in every permutation from extreme Right to far
> Left. Why must theatre simply add to the chorus?
>
> Beauty, poetry, wit, charm, and entertainment (in its highest sense)
> are things we CANNOT generally get from all these other media. It's
> time the theatre got back to what it does best, and theatre artists
> stopped fooling themselves into believing that shows which preach the
> same old liberal pieties to affluent liberal audiences are somehow
> making the world a better place.
>
> Beauty, poetry, wit, charm, and entertainment in themselves can make
> the world a better place -- in today's theatrical climate, believing
> this may be the most radical idea of all.
>
>
>
|
