Once upon a time musicals had the most inane plots imaginable and a show about, say, a man who won’t marry his fiancé until the Dow Jones Industrial Average hits 1,000 but fortunately she announces the numbers and causes a big financial panic when she lies about the Dow’s performance, would have been acceptable fodder for a musicals libretto.  But after Rogers and Hammerstein revolutionized the musical with Oklahoma!, such ridiculous plots fell out of fashion and were dead as the do-do by the era of Fiddler on the Roof, Man of La Mancha and Cabaret.  Yet that didn’t stop David Merrick from producing a show with the very same plot described above.

The book for How Now, Dow Jones was written by Max Shulman, best known for writing his stories about lovelorn teenager Dobie Gillis.  The music was by legendary screen composer Elmer Bernstein and the lyrics by Carolyn Leigh, who recently parted ways with her former songwriting partner Cy Coleman. An eighty-year-old George Abbott directed, and the choreography was handled by Gillian Lynne, the British dance director who had previously staged The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd for Mr. Merrick.  Unfortunately, she was replaced by an uncredited Michael Bennett and would have to wait until Cats for her to get the respect she deserved on Broadway.  Tony Roberts, Marilyn Mason and Brenda Vaccaro co-starred.

The show was professionally mounted, had some good tunes and some slick numbers but at the end of the day couldn’t overcome such a slim book.  It folded after 220 performances.  In 2009 a drastically revised revival was staged Off-Broadway as part of the FringeNYC festival where it was warmly received by critics.

For a show that never even made it to opening night, Rachael Lily Rosenbloom (And Don’t You Forget It) attracted a lot of repeat business during its seven previews. This intentionally trashy musical starred Ellen Green as the title character, a poor girl from Brooklyn who idolizes Barbara Streisand.  She goes from working in a fish market to becoming a Hollywood gossip columnist to Oscar winning actress to a mental patient after suffering a nervous breakdown. To get an idea of the tone of the show take the opening Oscar ceremony where the following nominees are announced:

Angela Lansbury for The Rosalind Russell Story.

Goldie Hawn for Via Galactica.

Diana Ross for The Angela Davis Story.

Angela Davis for The Diana Ross Story.

Rachael Lily Rosenbloom, for the only original film made this year, Cobra Godess on Flamingo Road.

The envelope and Cloris Leachman memorial letter opener please?

The winner is, Rachael Lily Rosenbloom!

Rachael Lily Rosenbloom was the brainchild of Paul Jabara, an actor turned songwriter who would go on to write “Last Dance” for Donna Summer and “It’s Raining Men” with Paul Shaffer. Jabara wrote the music, the lyrics and co-wrote the book with Tom Eyen, the future Dreamgirls librettist who at the time was best known for writing the Off-Broadway hit The Dirtiest Show in Town.  Truth is the show really should have been produced Off-Broadway, where such campiness is always welcome.  It was way too off beat for the main stem and producers Robert Stigwood and Ahmet Ertegun realized this early on, thus closing the show in previews. Truth is a whole cadre of theater fans had already discovered the show and made return visits during its brief stay at the Broadhurst Theater.

It should be noted that the show did have some remarkable talent in the cast.  Aside from Ellen Green, who was already making a name for herself as a cabaret performer and would later go on to play Audrey in the New York, London and film versions of Little Shop of Horrors, the cast included future Nine actress Anita Morris, future The Wiz, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and recent Tony winner for Hadestown actor Andre DeShields, and future Wicked choreographer Wayne Cilento.  Though no cast recording was made the shows legend has loomed large among theater geeks and in 2017 a highly acclaimed concert version was staged at Feinstein’s/54 Below.

Between the Broadway opening of Sunset Boulevard in 1994 and the opening of School of Rock in 2015, Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the scores for five new musicals, only one of which has thus far received a Broadway hearing.  And that one show is The Woman in White.

A few years before The Woman in White opened in the West End, Lloyd Webber appeared on a British talk show where he admitted that he had no idea at the moment for a new musical.  A number of books, plays and the like were sent to his office, including Wilkie Collins 1859 novel The Woman in White.  Intrigued by the story, he hired actress-turned playwright Charlotte Jones to adapt the book for the stage and David Zippel (City of Angels) to handle the lyrics.  The Woman in White became Lloyd Webbers fifth collaboration with director Trevor Nunn.

Moving the action up to the turn of the twentieth century, the show centered on an art teacher who takes a position at a country house and a strange ghostly figure that haunts the countryside.  The show received mixed reviews when it opened in London but sold enough tickets to keep the show open for nineteen months.  Just a year after it had opened in London The Woman in White took its New York bow.

The show was plagued with problems.  During the preview period lead actress Maria Freedman was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Amazingly she underwent treatment and was ready to perform on the scheduled opening night.  Later Michael Ball, who had replaced Michael Crawford in London as the villainous Count Fosco, came down with a viral infection in his throat.  Such setbacks hurt the show but nothing could withstand the damning reviews.  The show clearly suffered from a convoluted plot and the video effects that were used seemed far more appropriate for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child then for an intimate musical melodrama, yet Lloyd Webber’s score was often soaring and atmospheric.  Alas, The Woman in White folded after just 109 performances.  In 2017 a mercifully scaled down production opened at Charing Cross Theater in London. Well received by critics, The Woman in White might be another show that finds its bearings and audience later down the line.

In 2004 Broadway’s longest ongoing composer-lyricist collaboration came to an end when Fred Ebb of Kander and Ebb fame passed away at age seventy-six.  At the time of his death, he and composer John Kander were working on two other musicals. Curtains was a backstage murder mystery.  It made it to Broadway in 2007 and ran for over a year.  The other show they were working on was The Scottsboro Boys, which arrived on Broadway in 2010 (a third show, The Visit was posthumously produced on Broadway but had originally been presented in Chicago during Ebb’s lifetime).

The Scottsboro Boys dealt with a shameful chapter in American history when a pair of white prostitutes, riding on a train to Memphis, accuse a group of nine black men of rape in order to avoid arrest.  Soon these nine young men (one of whom is a mere adolescent) are sent to jail and find themselves trapped in a racist legal system and potentially facing the death penalty.

Ingeniously Kander, Ebb, librettist David Thompson and director-choreographer Susan Stroman, their collaborators on Steel Pier, decided not to tell the story in a straightforward manner but rather as a minstrel show, thus harkening back to their twin masterworks Cabaret and Chicago by using show business as a metaphor.  Significantly the nine black actors played every roll, even the two white women (this was all part of the minstrel tradition) with two exceptions.  The white “Interlocutor” who serves as the shows emcee and played by John Cullum, and a mysterious woman holding a cake box whose identity won’t be revealed until the end of the show.

The Scottsboro Boys premiered at the Vineyard Theater Off-Broadway and then played at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where it received rave reviews both times.  With that it moved to the Lyceum Theater where it again was critically acclaimed but had trouble selling tickets.  The simple fact was that this was a harrowing story and the decision to tell it in the style of a notoriously archaic musical genre made it that much harder for people to deal with.  The Scottsboro Boys only ran for forty-nine performances.  The show has enjoyed a life in regional theaters and enjoyed a sold out run at the Young Vic in London, followed by a limited engagement at the Garrick Theater.  Though they wrote their share of musical comedies like Woman of the Year and Curtains, Kander and Ebb were always at their best when challenging their audience.  The Scottsboro Boys  maybe their most challenging work and also one of their best.

One critic likened the opening of Mr. President to the sinking of the Titanic.  Well, it wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t that good either.  Mr. President was Irving Berlin’s first Broadway musical since Call Me Madam in 1950 and like that show it featured a geo-political themed libretto again written by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse.  This show centered on a U.S. President whose political career is turned upside down after a disastrous trip to the Soviet Union.  It also dealt with his sometimes-difficult relationship with his children.  Film stars Robert Ryan and Nanette Fabray starred as President Stephen Henderson and the First Lady.  Joshua Logan directed.

While the show had some attractive Berlin tunes it was hardly his best work.  The general consensus was that the entire show was dated and in lieu of such musical comedies as How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Mr. President did seem hopelessly old fashioned, even if it did contain a number called “The Washington Twist”.  The show did have a respectable run of 265 performances but considering all the big names involved it did go down as a disappointment.  Sadly, it was the last score that Berlin ever wrote for the Broadway stage.

Two fun facts:

The show was eventually put on at the Starlight Theatre in Kansas City where former president Harry Truman made a cameo.  He had to leave during intermission due to a non-fatal appendicitis.  

In 2001 Gerard Alessandrini, best known as the creator of the Forbidden Broadway revue, re-wrote the show as a spoof on the previous years election debacle.  The revised, Off-Broadway version received terrible reviews and closed immediately.  

Somewhere Frank Wildhorn must have a list of famous books and historic events that he’s been checking off one by one as he turns them into musicals.  His last Broadway outing to date has been his lyric retelling of the lives of Bonnie Barker and Clyde Barrow.

For this show he reunited with his Dracula lyricist Don Black. As usual, Frank Wildhorn released a concept album from which only five songs remained in the finished musical.  In Wildhorn’s words his score was “a nontraditional score combining rockabilly, blues and gospel music.”  The show had its world premiere at the La Jolla Playhouse outside of San Diego and a second run at Asolo Repertory Theater in Sarasota, Florida.  Both were well received, and the producers high tailed it to Broadway where the response was…meh.  Perhaps Erik Haagensen said it best in Backstage that “the one thing that a show about infamous killers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow should not be is safe.”  Yet safe is exactly what this show was, with the killings all taking place off stage.  Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan did receive good notices for playing the title characters but otherwise the show was shooting blanks.  Bonnie and Clyde ran out of ammo after 36 performances.  But like other Wildhorn shows it has enjoyed some international success, with productions mounted in Japan, South Korea, the U.K. and the Czech Republic.

Broadway has produced a number of characters over the years, both on-stage and off. One off-stage character was Tom O’Horgan.  A multi-talented musician and composer (he played dozens of instruments) O’Horgan was also an iconoclastic director of many avant garde Off-Off-Broadway productions who was hired to re-stage Hair when it came to Broadway.  His pyrotechnic staging suited the material perfectly and Hair became a Broadway sensation.  He later also directed Lenny, Julian Barry’s play about Lenny Bruce and the overblown Broadway premiere of Jesus Christ Superstar.  At one point these three shows joined a fourth called Inner City, giving him four shows running simultaneously on Broadway!

At best, O’Horgan’s work was lively, abrasive and all encompassing.  At worst it was gaudy, pretentious and downright incoherent.   And none of his Broadway outings showcased his weeknesses more then the incomprehensible 1989 fiasco Senator Joe.

As you can probably guess the musical was about the infamous red-baiting U.S. Senator from Wisconsin Joseph McCarthy.  O’Hargan not only directed but also wrote the music while an actor named Perry Arthur Kroeger penned the book and lyrics. While a show exploring what made this reviled Senator click might have made a good opera we instead got a crazy, utterly incoherent evening that included, among other on-stage oddities, a number staged in Mr. McCarthy’s liver, complete with dancing enzymes!

Senator Joe was produced by Adela Holzer, a shady character in her own right who not only produced another notoriously unwatchable show, the 1973 disaster Dude (which Tom O’Horgan also directed) but reportedly would show up with a garbage bag full of money to pay the actors.  The show was originally supposed to open at the Virginia Theater (now the August Wilson) but the funds were not forthcoming and so another show was booked even though the marquee for Senator Joe had been put up.  When Holzer eventually got the cash the Virginia was no longer available so she instead booked the Neil Simon across the street. She didn’t have enough money to move the marquee over so Senator Joe may be the only Broadway musical ever to have it’s marquee displayed on a theater across the street.

Senator Joe only lasted for three previews before it was mercifully blacklisted from Broadway. But those who saw the show are not likely to ever forget it.  How could they forget a show that included a musical number in the main characters liver with singing and dancing enzyms? No joke, they put that on stage!

O’Horgan never directed another show on Broadway.  Adela Holzer was eventually convicted of fraud and sent to jail.

The fifties gave us Lil’ Abner, the sixties You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.  Then we got Annie in the seventies. Perhaps it shouldn’t be too surprising that another musical based on a comic strip would surface in the eighties. And so, one did.  After twelve years of writing his daily strip Doonesbury, cartoonist Gary Trudeau took a two-year sabbatical in order to bring his characters to life on the stage.  Trudeau wrote the book and lyrics while Elizabeth Swados, best known for writing the musical Runaways, handled the music.

Whereas the comic strip Doonesbury centered on a commune of perpetual college students, the musical dealt with their graduation and plans for the future.  The problem was that Doonesbury tended to be a series of self-contained comic strips that commented on politics, social trends and the zeitgeist.  Building a narrative around Mike Doonesbury and his friends just didn’t make a lot of sense.  Doonesbury received mostly negative reviews and closed after 104 performances.  It did however have two repercussions for Gary Trudeau.  When he returned to his drafting table he took over where the musical had ended.  From then on, the characters were college graduates and they aged.  He also spun-off a second musical comedy revue called Rap Master Ronnie which had a successful run Off-Broadway the following year and also proves that Lin-Manuel Miranda was not the first person to ever use rap in a musical.

Once in an interview Stephen Sondheim said that he’d like to write a musical based on the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day.  The reason? It would give him the chance to write a theme and variation piece.  Alas, the great master eventually abandoned the idea, allowing composer-lyricist Tim Minchin (Matilda: The Musical) the chance to pick up the ball.  Danny Rubin, who co-wrote the original screenplay with the late Harold Ramis, adapted the book and Matthew Warchus directed.  The show was first seen at the Old Vic Theater in London where it received excellent reviews.  A transfer to the West End would seem more logical but a Broadway premiere had already been announced.  

The show made its way to the August Wilson Theater with Andy Karl reprising his role of conceded weatherman Phil Connors, who finds himself stuck in a time warp while covering a Groundhog Day festival in Puxitawny, Pennsylvania. Every morning he wakes up only to re-live that day again and again and again.  

Problems ensued when Karl injured his leg during a preview.  He soldiered on with the performance that night, appearing with a cane.  Though his understudy took over, Karl did indeed perform on the opening night (he would only perform four shows a week after the opening) and received rave reviews for his performance.  Truth is the reviews were overwhelmingly positive.  And yet for whatever reason, the public just didn’t come, and the show folded after 176 performances.  

What went wrong?  Were audiences unwilling to accept anyone but Bill Murray in the lead? Was it too difficult to recreate the continuing time warp on stage without the magic of film editing?  Or was Stephen Sondheim ultimately right, that the film was perfect the way it was and that setting it to music would be gilding the lily.  Sometimes the reason a show fails are as baffling as why one succeeds.

You’d think a show with the star power of Chita Rivera and Liza Minelli would guarantee a box office success.  Alas, even the biggest stars can’t always counteract bad reviews.  Truth is, The Rink was quite good.  It’s book by Terrance McNally centered on a woman (Rivera) who plans to sell her struggling roller rink on the Jersey shore.  Things are complicated with the arrival of her free-spirited daughter (Minelli) who has returned to connect with her past (in truth, Liza Minelli is only thirteen years younger than Ms. Rivera).  Preview audiences tended to like the show and both Kander and Ebb claimed it as the show that most closely reflected their original intentions but the brutal reviews the show received were just too much for it to survive.  Then, during the run Ms. Minelli had to take one of her trips to the Betty Ford clinic.  Though Stockard Channing took over and was excellent she didn’t have the star power. The Rink rolled out for good after 204 performances.

While the book had its problems the score featured some excellent songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb, stunning sets by Peter Larkin and a fine supporting cast that included Jason Alexander.  Also in the cast were Rob Marshall, who would later direct the film version of Chicagoand Scott Ellis who would direct a number of Kander and Ebb shows including Steel Pierand Curtains.

It briefly looked like The Rink might have a successful life across the pond when the show was presented in Manchester.  It was warmly received and was promptly followed by a West End opening.  Alas, it too failed.  Yet The Rink does have a following and has had a few stagings since.