Flops part two

Before starting the second column on this topic, I must add that the amount of commercial musical flops as opposed to the extraordinary success of so many commercial musicals is quite remarkable. So much care is taken with a big show before it comes to Australia to ensure timing and casting etc will all help to make it work. We see less and less commercial flops these days in Australia. I think it is important to make this point.

Before starting the second column on this topic, I must add that the amount of commercial musical flops as opposed to the extraordinary success of so many commercial musicals is quite remarkable. So much care is taken with a big show before it comes to Australia to ensure timing and casting etc will all help to make it work. We see less and less commercial flops these days in Australia. I think it is important to make this point.

One that surprised everyone when it failed is Spamalot. A big hit on Broadway, the show began what was expected to be a 12 month run at Her Majesty’s in Melbourne, but it barely scraped in six months and because the show had been booked as a show to go as long as possible in one venue, it was not budgeted for a tour, it folded and never made it to Sydney .

The show should have been a hit, but there were problems with the marketing, The Broadway element of the show didn’t really appeal to the die hard Python fans and the quirky Python humour didn’t appeal to those looking for traditional music theatre fare. It fell in between the cracks  and despite an excellent and sumptuous production, it was an example of how careful producers must be with product for Australia. A smash on Broadway doesn’t always translate locally.

The high camp humour of Spamalot was also evident in The Producers, hardly a flop, but never as successful as the expectations for it. This was an unusual show, on Broadway it rode so high on Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick and when they played it, it was the hottest ticket in town, but when others performed it, it fared poorly at the box office. Similarly the local version, was highly acclaimed and enjoyed a reasonable run in Sydney and Melbourne (but nowhere else)  it also struggled to appeal to the mid range family audience, as with Spamalot both shows heavily relied on high camp Broadway jewish humour. No go for Mr and Mrs Joe Average Australian. !!

A show that was expected to shine was The Witches of Eastwick, the musical version of the hit movie came to Australia with the Cameron mackintosh organisation in charge and, as we have seen with Mary Poppins, everything had to be done to perfection and the cast had to sparkle. They did!, The production was ambitious and delightful with  a great cast lead by Marina Prior, Paul McDermott, Pippa Grandison and Angela Toohey, but  (like Full Monty and Spamalot) never went anywhere after Melbourne, despite a planned national tour. This was a show full of crazy humour and created in the tradition of a true old  fashioned musical comedy, yet, it never really connected with an audience. It fared reasonably in London, but, despite its Broadway style and American setting, it never played New York, which might explain a little of why the Australian production just didn’t fire with a local   audience. The score was peppy but forgettable and the characters never very likeable. It works well now with amateurs and drama schools, falling comfortably into that niche of old fashioned Broadway musicals such as Bye Bye Birdie.

Now the shows I have mentioned last week and this, were all what I would call mid range failures. They generally received good reviews, were highly respectable productions that just didn’t ignite the box offie, but we have had a few flops that really equalled financial disasters over the years. Here I think of particularly –Applause, the stories are so extreme of this  early 70s flop that they require a column, no, possibly a book. Actors involved still tell them.

There have been others – recently, and sadly, sadly the Australian epic musical Eureka which attempted (perhaps too much) to be our Australian Les Miz. Fabulous cast but nobody wanted to know. Very few local musicals have worked box office wise, and the few that have (Priscilla, Shout, The Boy from Oz) have been successful partly because they offered a juke box score of traditional pop hits, which stops them from ever being referred to, as original Australian musicals.

Yet, as I said, the hits have out numbered the failures five to one or more—thank God for that.!!

AND A WEST SIDE WORD:- Finally, some weeks ago I criticised very strongly the producers of West Side Story for not giving their cast a decent number of previews to run the show in. On Sunday I was delighted to see the Melbourne opening of the show and the improvements are considerable, proving again a few extra shows would have made all the difference to the Sydney opening. I must add the show was a grand success in Sydney and looks set to emulate this in Melbourne.

I particularly would like to mention Josh Piterman as Tony. On opening night in Sydney he looked like he was rowing upstream without a paddle. To see the improvement in his performance now is something of a revelation and his singing now stops the show (jn his performance of “Maria”). This young man displays real star potential, something the producers saw from the outset . To make so much improvement in six weeks says much for the actor himself and his ability to keep evolving and growing into the role. Well done indeed. !!