The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #24313   Message #280427
Posted By: GUEST,lamarca
18-Aug-00 - 05:09 PM
Thread Name: worst songs from musicals
Subject: RE: worst songs from musicals
Having worked in community theater for years, there is nothing quite so bad as an amateur production of musical that's bad or trite to begin with.

I love West Side Story - all except for "I Feel Pretty" (Sondheim getting a bit maudlin, there). Bernstein's orchestral finale as they're carrying Tony's body offstage still sends chills down my spine.

I grew up reading T. S. Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" and was really excited when I heard there was a musical made from the poems. It was the first, and last, A.L. Weber musical I ever attended - the music and adaptations of the poems were dreck, the characterizations of the cats were awful (the Rum-Tum-Tugger as an Elvis/Jagger impersonator???) - but the sets were great. That seems to be the pattern for Weber musicals; spend lots of money on fancy sets and special effects, and hope the audience doesn't notice the music and songs are crap.