| 1 | %% NOTE: Real life examples only. In-universe examples go on TroubledProduction/FictionalExamples. |
| 2 | ->''"If Hitler is alive, I hope he's out of town with a musical."'' |
| 3 | -->-- '''Larry Gelbart''', trapped out of town with ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conquering_Hero The Conquering Hero]]'' |
| 4 | |
| 5 | * Japan had planned a massive long show stage play based on the mega-popular ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', but it ended up getting cancelled when acrobat Kazutaka Yoshino fell to his death in an accident involving the equipment that was to be used for the wire swings. Because he was so important to the crew, the production company decided it wasn't worth trying to go forward and cancelled the entire thing. |
| 6 | * In 1971, ''Series/TheAvengers1960s'' spawned a stage play written by series mainstays Brian Clemens and Terence Feely, produced by John Mather and directed by Creator/LesliePhillips. The show was first put on at the Birmingham Theatre (now the Birmingham Hippodrome) for ten days and was a hugely ambitious production that featured fifteen scene changes, a vintage Rolls Royce, a helicopter and a brainwashing computer. Naturally, it was plagued with problems. |
| 7 | ** The villainess Madame Gerda and her henchwomen wore shiny PVC outfits designed by Ronald Cobb and made by fetish clothing manufacturer Atomage Ltd. Unfortunately, they tended to squeak when the actresses moved in them. |
| 8 | ** In her autobiography, ''It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time'', Sue Lloyd, who played heroine Hanna Wilde, recalled that someone in authority realised that the production was so technically challenging that the theatre's staffing levels were inadequate to cope with it, resulting in the management having to augment the team by drafting in additional stagehands from Birmingham's other main theatre, the Alexandra. |
| 9 | ** Creator/KateOMara, playing Madame Gerda, was hanging from a ladder on the helicopter prop when it broke, causing her to fall centre stage. Luckily, she was only bruised, but she insisted on wearing a harness for all future performances. |
| 10 | ** One scene required Hanna to knock a man out with a bottle. The plastic bottle Lloyd was holding slipped out of her hand and went bouncing across the stage, forcing her to improvise, something that the cast would frequently find themselves doing. |
| 11 | ** The script required Gerda to use the power of invisibility in order to destroy the world's spy agencies from within. This proved to be more difficult to achieve than anticipated and was the root of many of the play's problems. In her memoir ''Vamp Until Ready'', O'Mara outlined some of the difficulties caused by the special props and sets, including a wall section with two wide rubber strips through which she had to force herself in order to disappear from view in a scene where she becomes invisible. She recalled that the scene proved so difficult to achieve that she would sometimes rebound from the rubber strips into Simon Oates (playing John Steed), who was backing her up against what appeared to be a wall. A number of press reviews mentioned the theater lighting being momentarily cut to allow O'Mara to vanish seemingly into thin air in a "now you see me, now you don't" moment. |
| 12 | ** Some scenes were performed against back projection. On one occasion, the technician controlling this accidentally left the film in reverse. |
| 13 | ** Another of the special props was a mummy case containing a secret back door through which O'Mara could exit unseen by the audience in a scene where Madame Gerda uses invisibilty in order to escape Steed, who plunges his umbrella sword through the sarcophagus. One night, a stagehand forgot to unlock the secret backdoor, leaving O'Mara trapped inside the sarcophagus, as Oates prepared to lunge with his sword. She resorted to shaking the prop form side to side to draw attention to the fact that something was wrong. |
| 14 | ** A prop sofa became notorious for malfunctioning during performances due to the incorporation of a mechanism designed to create the illusion of characters becoming invisible. This allowed the prop to open up so that the castmembers concerned could pass through it and then wait out of sight behind it until an opportunity arose for them to leave the stage unseen. According to Sue Lloyd, Jeremy Lloyd became trapped in the sofa with only his head and shoulders sticking out. Unable to contain herself, she burst out laughing, causing the audience to do so and the curtain to fall. During the unexpected interlude, he was freed by some stagehands. It turned out that the lever the performers had to use in order to activate the mechanism whenever they wanted their character to vanish didn't always return to its original position. Hence when someone else sat on the sofa later on, they found themselves ejected out of the back without warning, leaving the other actors to improvise their way out of the situation. |
| 15 | ** A number of decorative columns that appeared to be solid were actually hollow and elasticated in order to allow O'Mara to disappear inside them. On one occasion when she entered one of these columns, the elasticated entrance caught her hairpiece when it snapped shut behind her, leaving it attached to the fake wall stonewall and fully visible for the audience to see for the rest of the scene. |
| 16 | ** The play later moved to the Prince of Wales Theatre in London, where, despite further rehearsals, mishaps still occurred. The creators hoped for a West End run, but due to declining audiences, it ended after just three weeks. |
| 17 | * Creator/CirqueDuSoleil productions have their ups and downs on the way to opening night, but ''Theatre/BananaShpeel'' was truly troubled. The original concept -- a fusion of Cirque's "house style", {{Vaudeville}}, and TheMusical -- proved to be too much for one coherent show, so the major characters who were going to handle the songs were dropped and new composers hired AFTER the 2008 ''Series/AmericasGotTalent'' finale featured the singers in question in a preview segment. Now a {{Slapstick}}-heavy show with only two acrobatic setpieces, it bombed with critics in its Chicago tryout at the end of 2009. A second revision with more acrobatics and a ''third'' score took so long to put together (with two comic principals being fired and rehired over the period) that its New York City debut was delayed by months. This ran into another problem -- Cirque's grand plan for 2010 was for ''Shpeel'' to debut in late winter and run indefinitely at the Beacon Theatre, while the tent tour ''Theatre/{{OVO}}'' had a springtime engagement and ''Wintuk'' a holiday season one. The delays meant that ''OVO'' arrived first... and ''Shpeel'', with reviews far worse than ''OVO'''s, was stuck in its shadow. The show closed in two months. Cirque tried to take it on the road afterward, but it closed permanently after one month in Toronto -- the company's first complete failure amongst its live shows. |
| 18 | * Before its first out-of-town tryout, ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_at_Tiffany%27s_(musical) Breakfast at Tiffany's]]'' seemed like a winner. Adapted from the [[Literature/BreakfastAtTiffanys bestselling Truman Capote novella]]; bolstered by name recognition thanks to the [[Film/BreakfastAtTiffanys recent Audrey Hepburn film]]; produced by powerhouse impresario [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Merrick David Merrick]]; book by Abe (''Theatre/GuysAndDolls'') Burrows; songs by Bob (''Theatre/FunnyGirl'') Merrill; starring Creator/MaryTylerMoore as Holly Golightly and Creator/RichardChamberlain as the Capote stand-in/love interest. What could possibly go wrong? |
| 19 | ** For their musical adaptation, Merrick and Merrill wanted to follow the example of Capote's hard-edged novella, less so the softer derivation that was the 1961 film. Both Nunnally Johnson and Sidney Michaels made an attempt at writing a book for such an unconventionally dark musical before admitting defeat. Joshua Logan toyed with directing until he decided that a hardened Holly just wouldn't play. Eventually, Abe Burrows took up both writing the book and directing what was then known as ''Holly Golightly''. |
| 20 | ** From its first tryout in Philadelphia to Boston, audiences that had been primed for a musical comedy were dismayed by its hard-edged heroine who couldn't have been more diametrically opposed to Moore's bright public persona. Moore went on each night while rumors swirled she was going to be replaced. |
| 21 | ** Truman Capote saw the show in Boston and, in a page-one interview with ''Women's Wear Daily'', declared he didn't care for the musical, suspecting that patterning it after the novella rather than the film may have been a bad idea. |
| 22 | ** During the Boston run, when it seemed like the creators might have had the insight to knead the material in a way that satisfied audiences while retaining its darker colors, Merrick recruited Edward Albee to write a brand new book. (He also reverted to the title ''Breakfast at Tiffany's''.) Albee's big change: Holly becomes a figment of the Capote stand-in's imagination, a character he's writing and revising in the moment. This was on top of the colorfully frank and filthy language on which Albee [[Theatre/WhosAfraidOfVirginiaWoolf had made]] [[Theatre/ADelicateBalance1967 his name]]. The billing changed from "a new musical comedy" to, simply, "a new musical". |
| 23 | ** Burrows, insulted by candid remarks Albee had made about his book in the news, resigned as director; he was replaced by Joseph Anthony. For his part, Merrill turned out an almost entirely new score to mesh with Albee's concept. |
| 24 | ** These changes did little good, and the Broadway production played [[https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/breakfast-at-tiffanys-12867 four previews]] to booing and catcalls. Merrick then made an announcement that, "rather than subject the drama critics and the public to an excruciatingly boring evening," he would close immediately. |
| 25 | * ''Theatre/{{Carrie}}'': The initial run of TheMusical of Creator/StephenKing's [[Literature/{{Carrie}} novel]] went down so poorly that a whole book on Broadway flops was titled ''Not Since Carrie''. That book and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTaAzFl_GYk&t=1233s&ab_channel=WaitintheWings Wait in the Wings]] detail what went wrong: |
| 26 | ** Lawrence D. Cohen, the screenwriter for [[Film/Carrie1976 Brian DePalma's film of the novel]], and composer Michael Gore, got the idea for the musical after they saw a 1981 performance of the opera ''Lulu''. Gore brought on his ''Film/{{Fame}}'' collaborator Dean Pitchford onboard, and they had a workshop version of Act 1 in 1984. Producers Fred Zollo and Barry & Fran Weissler came aboard in 1986. After numerous directors turned down the project, agent Sam Cohn got the creators in touch with Terrence Hands of the Royal Shakespeare Company and soon, the production went underway. |
| 27 | ** An early sign of trouble came during the design phase. Fran Weissler suggested to Hands to "think ''Film/{{Grease}}''" in terms of the artistic design. The concepts Hands presented to the producers were of minimal sets with [[WTHCostumingDepartment high-school students dressed in togas]]; apparently, Hands thought they meant "think ''Greece''", as in "Greek Tragedy." [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere Zollo and the Weisslers promptly left the production]] and producer Friedrich Kurz stepped in. |
| 28 | ** Under Hands' direction, the production grew bigger and bigger. There were elaborate pyrotechnics, lasers, automated scenery and a gigantic "[[EndingByAscending Staircase to Heaven]]" for the show's finale. But the crew was unable to douse Linzi Hateley, as Carrie herself, with fake blood without shorting out her microphone. Their solution was for Gene Anthony Ray and Charlotte d'Amboise, playing bullies Billy and Chris, to run on stage and dump a small bit of fake blood on Hateley. Hands also took a hatchet to the libretto, cutting much of the spoken dialogue to get to the songs faster. This unfortunately left things like, any explanation for Carrie's powers, completely absent. This also left the show's tone [[MoodWhiplash all over the place]]. |
| 29 | ** The show was first staged in February 1988 at Stratford-upon-Avon, with Broadway legend Barbara Cook headlining the cast as Carrie's mother, Margaret. Cook was [[HostilityOnTheSet infuriated with Hands' creative decisions and their relationship deteriorated]]. She quit the show when she was [[FatalMethodActing nearly decapitated on stage by a malfunctioning set piece]] on opening night, but agreed to stay on until her replacement could be found. That ended up lasting her the whole Stratford run. She was eventually replaced by the producers' first choice, Betty Buckley, [[CastingGag who played Gym teacher Ms. Collins in the DePalma film]]. |
| 30 | ** The show opened to a disastrous critical and audience reception in Stratford. It did little better when it opened Broadway on May 12, 1988. Despite the negative reception, it still [[CriticalDissonance played to sold out houses]] who viewed it as a morbid curiosity. Buckley and Hateley were given standing ovations for their performances. |
| 31 | ** But it was too late. The disastrous reviews led Kurz to close the show on May 15th with its fifth performance, making it the most expensive Broadway flop of the time. The cast and creators only learned of the closure when they saw a notice on the theatre door. This was hours after Kurz [[KickTheDog told them they'd stay open]]. |
| 32 | ** The show was revived in 2012 for an off-Broadway run with a revised book and score. This version was received much better than the earlier production, with a cast recording and numerous official and amateur productions to follow. |
| 33 | * Andrew Lloyd Webber's ''Theatre/{{Cats}}'' is one where the production troubles are the stuff of lore, given how overwhelming the odds against it and the inversely proportional success the musical enjoyed. |
| 34 | ** As ''The Washington Post'' [[https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/why-exactly-did-so-many-people-like-cats-in-the-first-place/2019/12/19/3503e3b8-2006-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html?utm_campaign=post_most&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1 put it when the film was released in 2019]]: |
| 35 | --->The story of the original London production has too many twists for even the hoariest backstage farce, and helps explain the fortuitous alchemy that made this thing work. The cast rehearses without any real script. The set is literally a pile of garbage. The characters have names such as Carbucketty and Bustopher Jones, something out of a toddler’s stuffed-animal pageant. The composer has to take a second mortgage on his house. |
| 36 | ** Even if investors had been willing to take a gamble on what they considered dubious source material and a thin plot, they were still put off by the absence of any recognizable stars in the cast. Outside of Lloyd Webber, the budget was met by small investments made by 220 people who answered a newspaper ad.[[note]]With an estimated return over the years of 3,500%, they are some of the luckiest in history[[/note]] |
| 37 | ** The score was barely complete when previews began, and kept getting revised as they went along. "Memory", later one of the musical's most (ahem) memorable songs, was added based on one of the poems Eliot had cut, feeling it was too sad for a children's book. Director Trevor Nunn wasn't finished with the lyrics until halfway through the previews. |
| 38 | ** Then Creator/JudiDench snapped her Achilles tendon within days of the premiere and had to be replaced by Elaine Paige on short notice. This led Lloyd Webber and producer Cameron Mackintosh to tell director Trevor Nunn that the show was over; Nunn ignored them and went ahead with the premiere despite the theater getting a bomb threat on opening night. |
| 39 | ** The reviews weren't all good but audiences loved it and kept coming back; ''Cats'' became the world's first megamusical, drawing international stars and making money hand over fist on the merchandising. Many of its perceived shortcomings during preproduction actually helped in that department: without big stars, it was easy to change the cast as necessary; the minimal story helped foreign-language tourists follow the plot, and the lack of a good review from ''The New York Times'' to put on the musical's poster didn't matter when the cats'-eyes image was iconic already. |
| 40 | * Strike up a conversation about ''Theatre/{{Chess}}'' with a fan of the show and the first question will be, "Which one?" Ask which production was most troubled...well, ''Vanity Fair'' had [[https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1988/5/chesss-backstage-drama a lot]] [[http://squareone.org/Chess/vanity.html to say]] about its way from London to Broadway. |
| 41 | ** After the ''Chess'' studio album (music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of Music/{{ABBA}}, lyrics by Tim Rice) was released to acclaim, Bernie Jacobs and Gerald Schoenfeld, heads of Broadway's Shubert Organization, optioned it for stage development, putting [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bennett_(theater) Michael Bennett]], director of the smash hits ''[[Theatre/AChorusLine A Chorus Line]]'' and ''Theatre/{{Dreamgirls}}'' and a Shubert golden boy, in the director's chair. Bennett then set to work on casting and the physical production. |
| 42 | ** However ingenious his concepts--not least of which was the presence of dozens upon dozens of video screens obsessively broadcasting the titular chess match--Rice suspects Bennett's heart really wasn't into ''Chess''. For one, two musicals of Bennett's, ''Scandal'' and ''The Children's Crusade'', had just died in the very workshop process he had helped form, and, even with two smashes to his name, Bennett was paranoiacally aware that Broadway only cares about one's last show. Moreover, Bennett was just beginning to make up with Bernie Jacobs, whom he regarded as a father figure, after the latter had thwarted his efforts to start a New York theatre empire of his own. |
| 43 | ** With cast in place, sets built, and a London theatre booked, Bennett vanished in a flurry of gossip and rumor. He was stricken with AIDS and ashamed of it, and so swore the producers to secrecy. To the press, Bennett declared his withdrawal was due to a heart condition. Meanwhile, Rice, Andersson, and Ulvaeus were left uninformed. |
| 44 | ** Seeking a director who could take the helm at such a late stage, the Shuberts, et al, approached Trevor Nunn to take over. Nunn agreed provided the Shuberts financed a revival engagement of his and John Caird's marathon adaptation of ''Nicholas Nickleby'', the production that made their Stateside careers. (The engagement eventually sank without a trace.) |
| 45 | ** The London production opened to mixed reviews but healthy houses, many critics and album fans recognizing the circumstances Nunn faced. When Nunn began to look to Broadway, he decided to start from square one, to do ''his'' ''Chess''. He ordered a new physical production and began altering the material extensively, this time with frequent collaborator Richard Nelson on book. Among other changes, there was now a bona fide book, as in, more spoken dialogue than usually found in a Tim Rice rock opera. For another, the character of Florence was changed from a Hungarian-born Englishwoman to a Hungarian-born American woman, effectively foreclosing the possibility of Elaine Paige reprising the role on Broadway. Rice (who had been having an open affair with Paige for years) was especially chagrined by rumors that Judy Kuhn, the new Florence and Broadway's first Cosette, was having an affair with Nunn. |
| 46 | ** Bernie Jacobs, the artistically minded of the Shuberts, was then afflicted by "transient global amnesia", effectively annihilating his long-term memory. Gerald Schoenfeld, who typically handled the organization's real estate concerns, had to handle Jacobs's matters, too. |
| 47 | ** Given all these late-occurring change-ups and obstacles, outside observers wondered why ''Chess'' seemed like it was barreling toward Broadway, especially with ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' poised as the musical to beat that season. ''Phantom'' itself might have been the reason; Rice would get to square off against his old collaborator just as Nunn would get to square off against the man who had had him fired from ''Phantom''. |
| 48 | ** Not only did ''Chess'' open on Broadway to apathetic reviews, by 1988, its Cold War plot was already old news. The writing was on the wall for both the Soviet Union and ''Chess'' on Broadway. |
| 49 | ** Following the hair-raising vicissitudes of putting ''Chess'' on stage, Andersson and Ulvaeus swore off musical theatre for good. That is, until, years later, when Judy Craymer, Rice's assistant during ''Chess'''s production, got them to sign off on using their ABBA songs for [[Theatre/MammaMia a musical]] of her own. |
| 50 | * The 2015 Broadway production of Creator/DavidMamet's ''China Doll'' was this even in previews, [[http://nypost.com/2015/10/29/al-pacino-totally-lost-over-his-terrible-new-broadway-play/ according to]] Michael Riedel of ''The New York Post''. |
| 51 | ** Creator/AlPacino reportedly had difficulty remembering his lines and as a result, three teleprompters had to be hidden in the set; he also [[EarpieceConversation got lines fed to him via Bluetooth on the headset he wore as a billionaire]]. This had a detrimental effect on the play's blocking, as it meant Pacino often faced away from other characters whom he would be more realistically facing so he could read his lines. One incident involved Pacino's headset going out and getting co-star Christopher Denham to replace it. ''[[EpicFail In the middle of a performance.]]'' |
| 52 | ** When director Pam [=MacKinnon=], who was apparently infamous for her [[ExtremeDoormat inability to stand up to big stars]], tried to give him a note, he told her "I'm not your fucking puppet!" and that was the end of that. Reportedly, he went back to his dressing room looking despondent after every performance; she spent the whole show pacing around backstage. |
| 53 | ** Pacino apparently believed the script needed serious revisions, but knew that where [[ProtectionFromEditors Mamet is concerned, you don't do that without consulting him]], but he'd been in Los Angeles since the first night and never responded to inquiries from New York, where audiences were reportedly walking out in great numbers during intermission. |
| 54 | ** The producers duly pushed the opening back... to a ''Friday'', [[GodzillaThreshold almost unheard of]] on Broadway. Despite the producers' response that they were just trying to avoid competing with the recently-opened musical adaptation of ''Film/SchoolOfRock'', everyone knew this was an attempt to make sure bad reviews would be buried since Saturday's newspapers are the least-read of any day of the week. Critics pounced right back by filing uniformly negative reviews in Friday's papers, based on the previews they had attended (again, a break with custom). |
| 55 | ** Riedel followed up with [[http://nypost.com/2015/12/13/tantrums-terror-b12-shots-inside-al-pacinos-broadway-bomb/ a longer article]] about the play's problems, mostly reiterating his earlier reporting in greater detail. He added that some investors [[TemptingFate admitted they should have thought twice when writing their checks]] as neither Mamet nor Pacino had had any major success on Broadway in years. |
| 56 | ** ...which was Pacino's problem as well. He hadn't realized until rehearsals began just how much of the dialogue was his, and at his age it turned out to be more than he could handle. His requests to Mamet for revisions were primarily meant to address this problem. All Mamet ultimately did was make a few small changes. |
| 57 | ** Another critic involved noted the rightward drift in Mamet's politics over the years, and said that the play, built around a billionaire's newly-purchased private jet, was basically Mamet's AuthorTract against the IRS.... |
| 58 | ** The play also had SpecialEffectsFailure to deal with. As originally written, at the end a model of the plane that was at the center of the plot was supposed to be used [[spoiler:by Pacino as he murders his assistant.]] On one of the first preview shows, it did... and got dented by the actor's head, leading to much unintended laughter from the audience. Better work by the prop department and a rewrite of the scene took care of the problem. |
| 59 | ** It was expected as of the beginning of 2016 [[http://nypost.com/2016/01/28/in-the-final-days-of-pacinos-broadway-play-audiences-are-hate-watching-it/ that the producers would close the play by early February]], offering what discounts they could to cut their losses. |
| 60 | * ''[[Theatre/CinderellaLloydWebber Cinderella]]'' ([[MarketBasedTitle retitled]] ''Bad Cinderella'' for its Broadway run) ended Creator/AndrewLloydWebber's decades-long uninterrupted run of always having at least one show running on Broadway when it bombed and shut down after just a few months. As [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvU8173saNw these]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgOIlVUfJYM videos]] by Ashley Norton and WebVideo/SarahZ demonstrate, it was beset by a litany of problems, of which the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic was just the start. |
| 61 | ** Lloyd Webber had been in an AudienceAlienatingEra ever since the mixed reception of ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'' in 2010, with the film adaptation of ''Film/{{Cats}}'' in 2019 coming in for especially heated criticism and mockery. Hoping to recover some of his spark, he teamed up with Creator/EmeraldFennell and David Zippel to create a hip, modern retelling of ''Literature/{{Cinderella}}'', with Fennell writing the book, Zippel writing the lyrics, and a planned opening on the West End in August or September 2020. |
| 62 | ** Then came the pandemic and the resulting quarantine, which saw the shutdown of all live theater. Continued lockdowns, restrictions, and actors catching COVID caused opening day to constantly get pushed back, much to Lloyd Webber's growing frustration, which he frequently voiced as the pandemic wore on. In particular, he opposed social distancing rules that would've required him to open at no more than 50% capacity, too little for the production to turn a profit, and so he chose to keep his theaters closed (barring previews in June 2021) until that restriction was lifted. |
| 63 | ** The show finally opened at full capacity on August 18, 2021, hyped up as the first opening of a new musical since the pandemic. Reviews of the West End production were positive, with particular praise going to the cast, though Norton speculated that at least some of the praise came down to overexuberance at being able to finally see a live musical on the West End again for the first time in over a year. Sure enough, as time wore on ticket sales declined, reviews (especially [[{{Foreshadowing}} from American critics]]) grew increasingly critical, and it only wound up nominated for one MediaNotes/LaurenceOlivierAward (for Victoria Hamilton-Barritt as the Stepmother) in a year that, due to the pandemic, saw it face little competition. Lloyd Webber, by various accounts, [[PrimaDonnaDirector grew combative]] as criticism piled in, allegedly [[HostilityOnTheSet berating cast members]] to the point of leaving them in tears and causing some of them to consider [[TakeThisJobAndShoveIt walking out]] or even going on strike. When asked about the matter, he responded by denying the allegations but saying that "nobody has a right to be on stage" and criticizing the show's younger cast members in particular for thinking that they weren't in the "service industry" as actors (begging the question of what industry ''he'' works in, especially given [[{{Hypocrite}} how hard he fought to get theaters reopened]]). |
| 64 | ** Furthermore, COVID wasn't done with ''Cinderella'' yet, as the Omicron variant of the virus caused production to shut down for a month in early 2022. |
| 65 | ** In early spring 2022, Carrie Hope Fletcher, who played Cinderella, announced that she would be leaving the production on July 13, 2022, followed soon after by most of her fellow castmates. New cast members were hired to replace them, indicating that the show was planned to go on. However, on May 1 the bomb dropped: it was announced that the show would have its final production and end its West End run on June 12. This was a shock to the cast, who only found out that they were losing their jobs after they'd completed the matinee performance that day and still had to put on another show later that night. Fletcher, who wasn't performing that day, only found out from other cast members and someone on the music team, as management had never told her anything before releasing the statement. The new cast members, who had just undergone their first costume fitting on April 28, were especially shocked, and many were furious and heartbroken by the announcement, especially since many of them were unknowns for whom this would've been their big break on the West End. Lloyd Webber did not attend the final production on June 12, instead having his director Laurence Connor read a letter he wrote afterwards in which [[NeverMyFault he blamed COVID for the show's failure]]. The audience booed in response, and many cast members could barely conceal the looks of disgust on their faces. |
| 66 | ** But that wasn't the end of it. The show's Broadway premiere was on its way, and Lloyd Webber promised it would be reworked into something bigger and better than the West End version. On October 3, in a splashy press event, a new title was announced for the show: ''Bad Cinderella''. The marketing went full-on {{camp}} in an attempt to go viral and perhaps embrace a SoBadItsGood fandom, and the first preview was held on February 17, 2023... whereupon the American critics were far more scathing than their West End counterparts. (Jesse Green, writing for ''The New York Times'', opened his rather representative review by straight-up telling potential audience goers to ''bring earplugs''.) There was many a ReviewIronicEcho poking fun at the new title, it received ''zero'' Tony Award nominations, and it played its final performance on June 4 after less than four months. This time, its early demise came to the surprise of absolutely nobody. |
| 67 | * ''Dance of the Vampires'', the Broadway version of ''Theatre/TanzDerVampire'', was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_of_the_vampires#Broadway probably doomed from the start]]. To summarize from both the Other Wiki and [[https://www.vulture.com/article/broadway-dance-of-the-vampires-bloody-disaster.html this 2020 retrospective]]: It was supposed to open in 1998 but didn't until 2002, for reasons that ranged from having to find a new director (owing to the original, Creator/RomanPolanski, being unable to return to the U.S. without facing arrest on infamous rape charges) to the 9-11 attacks! As the ball got rolling, the script received an extensive, jokier rewrite to appeal to American audiences who no longer cared for European "megamusicals", and the changes kept on coming with the casting of Michael Crawford as Krolock -- because that had been crucial to getting financing for the production, he had creative control over his dialogue, costumes, etc. Depending on who's telling the story, Music/JimSteinman was either fired or quit over the course of production. The director and choreographer, both fresh from ''Theatre/{{Urinetown}}'', proved unable to handle a production of this size and style, especially with so many dueling ideas and egos about. The result lasted only 56 performances and its reputation has discouraged other English-language productions. |
| 68 | * Following their groundbreaking smash hit, ''Theatre/{{Hair}}'', Galt [=McDermont=] and Gerome Ragni began work on their follow-up ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude_(musical) Dude]]'', but it was plagued with problems. The ''New York Times'' provided this [[https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/22/archives/dude-an-800000-disaster-where-did-they-go-wrong-dude-an-800000.html?searchResultPosition=2 post-mortem]]. |
| 69 | ** From the earliest backers' auditions to its closing, everyone involved fretted over Ragni's book, which was criticized as an incoherent jumble, effectively a country-fied Everyman story (and, according to producers who knew Ragni personally, mixed with heaping helpings of autobiography). Ragni was apparently more concerned with ''Dude'''s environmental presentation, which entailed gutting its theatre, dumping actual dirt on stage, and placing musicians throughout the auditorium. The result was a filthy, inaudible mess. |
| 70 | ** While the show quickly closed, the extensive environmental modifications to the Broadway Theatre helped inspire the staging of a successful revival of ''Theatre/{{Candide}}'' a couple of years later. |
| 71 | * Music/RichardWagner's second opera, ''Das Liebesverbot'' ("The Ban on Love", based on ''Theatre/MeasureForMeasure''), was his first opera to be staged, albeit with severe cuts. The Magdeburg company's opening night performance was ruined by underrehearsed singers and orchestra. Their second performance never even started, due to a feud breaking out among the cast. The opera was not performed again until 1923. |
| 72 | * The Creator/DisneyPlus series ''Encore'' reunites the casts of high school musical productions from years earlier to put the same show on again for their families and the rest of the town...and the whole thing has to be put together in just five days while everyone deals with learning their lines and cues again. More often than not serious personal issues triggered by being around costars, etc. again are brought to the surface. Rather miraculously the final shows themselves appear to mostly go off without a hitch; the biggest issue was in a staging of ''Beauty and the Beast'' where Lumiere's actor started to lose his pants and had to shuffle around with his legs splayed out for the rest of the scene (which actually kind of fits the character). |
| 73 | * ''Theatre/FunnyGirl'': While the musical itself went on to be a hit, its pre-Broadway tryout in 1964 suffered serious troubles. The opening performance in Boston was practically a fiasco. Feuds arose between Music/BarbraStreisand and Sydney Chaplin, and between everyone and the notoriously temperamental Jerome Robbins when he took over from credited director Garson Kanin. Ghostwriters struggled to keep up with rewrites demanded by Streisand and the Arnstein family (the show's producer was Nick Arnstein's son-in-law). Chaplin's part became equal to Streisand's in billing only; a secondary female role played by Allyn Ann [=McLerie=] was written out entirely. Dozens of {{Cut Song}}s were thrown out ("People" almost becoming one of them), and dance routines were in a constant state of flux. The final scene was rewritten 42 times, and its final version was being rehearsed immediately prior to the Broadway opening, which had been repeatedly postponed. |
| 74 | * After writing ''Theatre/AManForAllSeasons'' and his screenwriting debut with ''Film/LawrenceOfArabia'', Creator/RobertBolt received carte blanche for his next play by West End producer H.M. Tennent. Unfortunately, he produced ''Gentle Jack'', one of the most notorious theatrical flops of the '60s -- a play so poorly-received that it never again received a professional production. |
| 75 | ** For starters, [[AudienceAlienatingPremise the play itself was a hard sell]]: a fantasy parable about an office worker who visits his boss's estate in the countryside, then encounters a Nature God who offers the protagonist his powers [[FaustianBargain if he'll agree to murder one of his friends]]. It also featured a huge cast with their own subplots that deviated from the main storyline, along with elaborate set design and stage direction that ensured an expensive production. Many of Bolt's colleagues found the play baffling and tried warning him away from the project; Peter Hall, director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, even offered Bolt a chance to write a history play on the English Civil War if he abandoned ''Jack''. Bolt, however, considered the play an extremely personal project and refused to reconsider. |
| 76 | ** While Bolt landed [[AllStarCast a murderer's row of acting talent]] -- Creator/KennethWilliams, Dame Edith Evans, Creator/SianPhillips and Michael Bryant -- they were either dubious about the material themselves, or else miscast. Evans was the worst offender in all regards: at age 75, she was simply too old for her character, conceived by Bolt as a fortysomething businesswoman. She forgot or else refused to learn her lines, asked Bolt for rewrites to make her character more sympathetic, occasionally refused costuming beyond the clothes she wore to the theater (once showing up literally in her pajamas), and clashed with her costars. In particular, she irritated Kenneth Williams by asking director Noel Willman if Williams should be replaced, within earshot of the actor. Years later, Williams would make his impression of Evans' prima donna behavior a recurring joke in interviews and talk show appearances. |
| 77 | ** Williams harbored his own doubts about his role, as the titular Nature God. For one, he had to learn Welsh for large passages of the script, turning to Sian Phillips for help. He came to view Jack as "a lonely part and...a miserable part" that he couldn't get a grip on; he seriously considered quitting the production and ultimately stayed out of loyalty to Bolt, his friend, without ever truly believing in the material. Known for his broad comic acting in the Film/CarryOn films, Williams initially played Jack as a subtly menacing AntiVillain, hoping to [[PlayingAgainstType play against type]]. When Williams found audiences unresponsive, he began playing the character more and more broadly as the show's run continued, essentially reverting to his comedy persona. Williams was heartbroken by the negative reviews his performance received, and always blamed himself for the show's failure. |
| 78 | ** When ''Gentle Jack'' premiered in November 1963, it was universally panned: Bolt claimed that the critics "sat like mice, actively hating it" while Michael Bryant complained that audiences "thought we were disgusting." Kenneth Williams recalled that after one show, he and Bryant were confronted by viewers who demanded to know what the play meant. It was retired after seventy-five performances; its failure convinced Bolt to largely abandon the stage for the screen, agreeing to write the script for ''Film/DoctorZhivago'' immediately after its run concluded.[[note]]Bolt did ultimately write three more stage plays - ''Theatre/TheThwartingOfBaronBolligrew'', ''Vivat! Vivat Regina!'' and ''State of Revolution'' - all of which experienced their own difficulties. ''Revolution'', in particular, suffered many of the same problems as ''Jack'', along with a technician's strike that shut down production for weeks just before its scheduled premiere.[[/note]] Bolt spent his later years trying to rework ''Jack'' into something more presentable, but never finished it. |
| 79 | * The musical adaptation of ''Theatre/GroundhogDay'' was almost killed right off the bat in its move from London to Broadway when an issue with the onstage turntables stopped the first preview in the first 20 minutes. The cast performed the rest of the show concert-style, but it may have been an omen. Technical difficulties continued to plague the show (especially in the hugely ambitious car chase scene) during previews, in front of critics. Things seemed to be improving when, a few days before the show’s April 2017 opening, lead actor Andy Karl tore his ACL during a stunt — meaning the show risked having its opening night with an understudy on as Phil. He persevered, with help from his costume being refitted to include a leg brace, and the show received fantastic reviews and seven Tony nominations. Unfortunately, it won none and closed that September, possibly due to too much competition (''Theatre/DearEvanHansen'' and ''Theatre/ComeFromAway'' got even better reviews and word of mouth while ''Theatre/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Anastasia}}'' filled the "tourist-friendly adaptation of a well-known property" niche). |
| 80 | * ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Spot_(musical) Hot Spot]]'', a musical burlesque of the Peace Corps with Creator/JudyHolliday in what was to be her final starring role, flopped on Broadway in 1963 after encountering more than its share of troubles. Four days before rehearsals started, orchestrator Robert Ginzler (''Theatre/{{Gypsy}}'', ''Theatre/ByeByeBirdie'' and ''Theatre/HowToSucceedInBusinessWithoutReallyTrying'') suffered a fatal heart attack. The preview period was repeatedly extended for numerous ghostwriters (including Music/StephenSondheim, who helped write a new opening number) to improve the book and lyrics. By one account, the show went through nine directors. Herbert Ross ultimately took over both direction and choreography, but the program credited nobody for either. |
| 81 | * Even if it was the biggest money loser up to that point in time, 1965's one-performance Broadway musical ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_(musical) Kelly]]'' might have been forgotten had producer David Susskind not invited a journalist to tag along for the out-of-town tryouts. Lewis H. Lapham's subsequent [[https://www.google.com/books/edition/Second_Act_Trouble/H8mb_JMx4u0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22lewis+h.+lapham%22+AND+%22has+anybody+here+seen+kelly%22&pg=PA330&printsec=frontcover write-up]] captured the blow-by-blow in excruciating detail. |
| 82 | ** ''Kelly'' was written by Mark "Moose" Charlap (then best known for ''Theatre/PeterPan1954'') and Eddie Lawrence (then best known as a comic actor). It was loosely inspired by the exploits of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Brodie_(bridge_jumper) Steve Brodie]], the first man to (supposedly) jump from the Brooklyn Bridge and live, and heavily influenced by the prickly theatricality of [[Creator/BertoltBrecht Bertolt Brecht]]. Written in "nine days and nine nights of fierce inspiration", they then shopped it around to producers only to find that anyone interested wanted to make "unacceptable" changes. (Said Lawrence, producers "wanted to change the [Brodie-like leading character Hop Kelly] into some kind of knight in shining armor, like a crummy love story.") |
| 83 | ** David Susskind, primarily a film and television producer, backed by a team of other theatrical newbies, took up ''Kelly'' having met with Charlap and Lawrence's approval. (They were apparently attracted to the fact that its prickliness had scared off other producers.) Pre-Broadway tryouts were set for Philadelphia and Boston in winter 1964. |
| 84 | ** From Philadelphia on, audiences weren't warm to ''Kelly'', and the producers began to suspect the musical wasn't Brechtian so much as it was simply uninvolving and unsympathetic. Reneging on their initial enthusiasm, they began pressing Charlap and Lawrence to bring ''Kelly'' more in line with traditional musical comedy fare (i.e. the "crummy love story" Lawrence feared). Not only did the writers resist, by the time of the Boston run, they also filed an injunction in New York Supreme Court that would have prevented ''Kelly'' from opening unless it was as they had originally written it before changes were made. Meanwhile, desperate, the producers brought in [[Creator/MelBrooks Mel Brooks]] and Leonard Stern (both a few years off from writing [[Series/GetSmart Get Smart]]) to doctor the book. |
| 85 | ** One by one, nine of ''Kelly'''s seventeen songs were cut with little to replace them. ("The score is like a dead animal," said Charlap's hand-picked music director.) |
| 86 | ** [[Creator/DonFrancks Don Francks]], playing the title role in what was to be his New York stage debut, felt disheartened by the attempted softening of his character. Meanwhile, the role of Hop Kelly's mother, played by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Logan Ella Logan]] in what was to be a Broadway comeback, was a particular sticking point with audiences and the producers. They had attempted to nudge her out by widdling down the part to the bare minimum, hoping she would quit for reasons of pride (and, having quit as opposed to being fired, not have to pay her severance). Logan didn't take the bait, and, until she was finally written out for good, she was outspoken in her disapproval of the whole enterprise. |
| 87 | ** The writers' injunction motion failed, and the Broadway production opened in February 1965 to lethal reviews. The producers were forced to close after only [[https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/kelly-3225 one performance]] having effectively exhausted their funds. At a loss of $650,000, it was the biggest financial flop on Broadway to date. |
| 88 | * Giuseppe Verdi's famous opera ''Theatre/{{La traviata}}'', one of the biggest staples of the operatic world, had a troubled production when it was first composed, resulting in a disaster when it premiered in 1853. |
| 89 | ** First was the subject matter, as it was adapted from the novel ''La Dame aux Camélias'' by Alexandre Dumas fils, already a rather scandalous subject, considering that it's about the life and death of a Parisian courtesan. When the Teatro La Fenice discovered Verdi's plans to put a "common whore" on the opera stage, they forced him to change the title from ''Amore e Morte'' ("Love and Death") to ''La traviata'' ("The fallen woman"). |
| 90 | ** Even more, Verdi had planned for the opera to have a contemporary setting in the mid-19th century. However, the censors forced him to relocate the setting back by a century, much to Verdi's dismay. |
| 91 | ** The premiere cast themselves weren't any better, especially Fanny Salvini-Donatelli, the soprano cast as the heroine's role of Violetta Valéry. While she was an acclaimed singer, she was seen as too overweight to play a courtesan afflicted with tuberculosis, and Verdi's efforts to secure a different singer failed. |
| 92 | ** All of this culminated in a disastrous opening night, where Salvini-Donatelli was jeered at by audiences, and the rest of the cast fared no better. Tenor Lodovico Graziani, singing the role of Alfredo Germont, hadn't been up to snuff, while baritone Felice Varesi, singing the role of Pere Germont, hardly put any effort into his performance, due to him deeming the role as inferior. Verdi had been so devastated by the opening night that he wrote in a letter to a friend, "Was the fault mine or the singers'?". |
| 93 | ** Thankfully, the premiere run was a moderate financial success, and Verdi would make a few alterations to the opera, which would be performed at La Fenice a year later and become hugely successful, thanks to a better singer in the leading role. |
| 94 | * ''Legs Diamond'': This musical based on the life of Prohibition-era gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond and the 1960 BioPic ''The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond'' was a passion project for singer and star Peter Allen. But the show ended up becoming the second-biggest Broadway dud of 1988, as ''Not Since Carrie'' and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or51TrNMV4w&t=549s&ab_channel=WaitintheWings Wait in the Wings]] explained: |
| 95 | ** Allen got the idea for ''Legs Diamond'' after reading about a GenderFlip take on the 1960 film in the works with Creator/LilyTomlin. He and his friend Charles Suppon started working on the book in 1983. Allen began introducing songs from the musical in his cabaret act during the protracted creative process. It wasn't until producers Arthur Rubin, James Nederlander and Marvin A. Cross came along that the show went underway. |
| 96 | ** The producers wanted a fun and fancy musical as counterprogramming to the mega musicals popular at the time. They weren't keen on the initially dark and serious book, while director Robert Allan Ackerman was also concerned about Allen's ability to play [[VillainProtagonist the villainous Diamond]]. The producers brought along Creator/HarveyFierstein to revise the book. Fierstein was in agreement with their assessments, and he rewrote the story into one about Diamond trying to make it into showbusiness. The end result was given the full title of ''The Almost Totally Fictitious Musical [[RougeAnglesOfSatin Hystery]] of Legs Diamond.'' |
| 97 | ** The production was set to open at the Mark Hellinger Theatre after a few out-of-town tryouts. But [[SceneryPorn the massive sets]] and technical requirements made that financially impossible. So, the whole life cycle of the musical began and ended at the Mark Hellinger Theatre. The show began previews in October 1988 and finally opened in December; this would make it the longest preview period for a musical at the time. |
| 98 | ** During the previews, the central characters of Legs' wife Alice, and brother Eddie, were cut from the script. This meant costumes, set pieces and their portions of the plot would have to be jettisoned, which only added to the ballooning budget. In their place were monologues for Allen to talk to the audience. A new opening number, ''Just to Get My Name in Lights,'' was written for the show almost two weeks before it was set to be finalized, which the company and crew scrambled to incorporate. Other headaches included malfunctioning sets, new set pieces getting suddenly incorporated and the book getting near nightly rewrites. This took a toll on Allen, who was busy with his cabaret act in addition to the show, and Ackerman. |
| 99 | ** Choreographer Michael Shawn was fired that August and replaced with Alan Johnson. Shawn took the producers to court, alleging they had fired him for his diagnosis of AIDS. As Allen himself was a tireless champion of AIDS awareness, the lawsuit was something of an embarrassment. The case was settled out of court; Shawn died in April 1990. [[note]]Allen himself also died of AIDS in 1993. Suppon died of a brain tumor in March 1989.[[/note]] |
| 100 | ** When the show finally opened, it was shredded by a negative critical and audience reception. Allen's lack of acting ability and his [[QuestionableCasting unconvincing attempt at]] PlayingAgainstType bore the brunt of the critics' reviews. They also took umbrage with its style over substance approach. The show attracted an audience as a morbid curiosity. But it ended up closing on February 19, 1989, after 64 performances. The Nederlanders sold the Mark Hellinger Theatre to the Times Square Church, which turned it into its headquarters. |
| 101 | * According to legend, at least, the original production of William Shakespeare's ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'' was this. This legend has led to the rise of many of the superstitions associated with [[TheScottishTrope saying the play's name]]. [[note]]Legend also suggests that this play in general has had an especially high number of {{Troubled Production}}s, though this has never been studied and may be a case of ConfirmationBias.[[/note]] |
| 102 | * Before ''Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'' hit Broadway, 1983's ''Merlin'' was a fantasy musical (presenting the famous Arthurian character in his younger days) that had its own overlong preview period. Its official opening was postponed three times to the annoyance of critics -- so much like what happened with the Spidey show, ''The New York Times'' [[https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/31/theater/stage-magic-of-merlin-is-in-henning-s-illusions.html formally reviewed it early]]. The spectacle wasn't the problem, as leading man Doug Henning was a StageMagician legend who'd previously had a hit with ''The Magic Show'' in TheSeventies and his tricks for this show were equally impressive. But he didn't have to do much singing in the older show (Creator/StephenSchwartz gave the tunes to his supporting cast), and in this one he did... at least initially, as by the end of previews all his singing was cut. The original director was cut too, replaced by co-producer Creator/IvanReitman, and a second choreographer was added. Making matters worse, the Broadway production of ''Theatre/{{Cats}}'' had opened just months before and was monopolizing the attention of theatergoers -- particularly the families ''Merlin'' hoped to court. The producers pressed on ("It was the musical that wouldn't disappear" according to Creator/NathanLane, who played a bumbling villain), and it managed five Tony nominations in a weak season for musicals, but it won none and closed after 199 regular performances. |
| 103 | * ''Theatre/ParadiseSquare'', a Broadway musical about the New York City draft riots, suffered massive behind-the-scenes turmoil, most of which was revealed shortly after its July 17, 2022 closing night. Most of this was attributed to producer Garth Drabinsky, returning to Broadway after he was charged with fraud and forgery in 2009.[[note]]He wasn't even the only controversial person involved with the show, as Jeffrey Chrzczon had been blacklisted as a producer due to alleged unpaid union debts in 2018, but was able to join ''Paradise Square'' as general manager.[[/note]] [[https://variety.com/2022/legit/news/paradise-square-broadway-musical-lawsuits-bullying-1235319594/ Reportedly]], the show suffered budgeting issues since the beginning, with Drabinsky cutting the budget and rehearsal time, thus rushing an under-prepared cast and crew into unsafe situations. One crew member even lost their pinky finger during rehearsal. The unsafe conditions coupled with COVID-19 surges sweeping through Broadway led to frequent absences, and choreography and blocking would have to be improvised to account for a lack of rehearsal time. Cast and crew were underpaid or not properly paid at all, and many crew members (including multiple stage managers and the HR department) quit during the show due to a combination of high stress and unpaid wages. The fallout led to a lawsuit over the unpaid benefits and Garth Drabinsky [[RoleEndingMisdemeanor being placed on the Actors' Equity "Do Not Work" list]]. |
| 104 | * The 1917 ballet ''Theatre/{{Parade|1917}}'' (not to be confused with [[Theatre/Parade1998 the musical tragedy about the death of Leo Frank]]) was the product of the surrealist team consisting of Creator/JeanCocteau, Music/ErikSatie, and Creator/PabloPicasso, who of course turned out a highly ambitious and experimental piece involving BreakingTheFourthWall, gigantic and highly restrictive costumes, and use of ordinary objects as musical instruments. Unfortunately, this was all a bit beyond what the general public was prepared for at the time (the word "surrealism" was actually created to describe it, and the style wouldn't catch on in the art world for another three years), and it received a highly polarized reaction, with half the audience giving wild applause, which was the only thing stopping the other half from throwing a ''Rite of Spring'' level riot (see the trope's music page), and they still loudly booed throughout the whole thing. Afterwards, Satie was enraged by a negative review by composer and critic Jean Poueigh and sent him a postcard calling him a "cul sans musique," an ass without music. Poueigh sued him over it and he spent eight days in jail, and during the trial Cocteau was beaten by the police for repeatedly yelling "cul." |
| 105 | * ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' itself underwent much upheaval during its development and preview days -- numerous cast changes, backstage bickering over such changes, props and equipment frequently breaking down, and massive overhauling of nearly all the lyrics. Then, just as the show finally debuted, both of its lead actors took ill (Creator/MichaelCrawford suffered a hiatal hernia owing to the demanding score, and Steve Barton -- cast as Raoul -- suffered a fall after he replaced him as the Phantom) and then the ''understudies'' were knocked out of commission as well. Pretty much everybody wondered if the Phantom had put a curse on the show about him! |
| 106 | ** Plans for a French-language production at the Theatre Mogador in Paris were scuppered in 2016 when the theater caught on fire. |
| 107 | * After Andrew Lloyd Webber began work in earnest on the ''Phantom'' sequel ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'' after years in DevelopmentHell, his cat climbed on his digital piano and accidentally deleted the score. Plans to open the show in three different countries (England, the U.S., and China) at once fell through due to logistics. That was probably for the best: The London production was so poorly received, particularly by the ''Phantom'' fanbase, that by the end of 2010 it was extensively retooled. But the highly-unpopular underlying plot and changes to the characters were mostly intact, and it ultimately ran less than two years. The Broadway production that was supposed to follow on from London's in Fall 2010 never happened (and was even partially blamed for the premature closing of the Vegas production of ''Phantom'' in 2012, as it was expected to drum up interest in the original show). However, the retooled, better-received Australian production spawned several others, including a North American tour. |
| 108 | * The 1983 Broadway revival of ''Theatre/PrivateLives'', according to [[http://nymag.com/arts/theater/features/50176/ ''New York'' magazine]], had some significant problems. |
| 109 | ** One was casting Creator/ElizabethTaylor (who also coproduced) and Creator/RichardBurton as the leads. They had prepared for the parts by [[RealitySubtext marrying and divorcing each other ... twice]]. As Burton observed during rehearsals, the audience's awareness of that fact made some of their lines [[ActorAllusion far funnier than Coward could ever have intended]]. |
| 110 | ** The real problem was Milton Katselas, the director. The supporting cast members ''hated'' him, and after the production opened to mostly damning reviews in Boston he took the blame and was replaced within days. |
| 111 | * The aborted 2012 Broadway production of ''Theatre/{{Rebecca}}'', as detailed [[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/theater/rebecca-the-musical-and-the-vanishing-act-of-its-investor.html here]] and [[https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/06/rebecca-musical-betrayal-fake-death here]], had more twists than even Daphne du Maurier or Alfred Hitchcock could conceive. |
| 112 | ** After being floored by the smash-hit Viennese production of ''Rebecca'', American producer Ben Sprecher commissioned an English translation and attempted to put together a West End mounting. This was canceled after exploratory excavation under the desired theatre (conducted to determine if the theatre could house the production's signature effect, its fiery collapsing staircase) ended in a basement flood. Sprecher then set his sights on Broadway itself, but he had difficulty raising the money, attributed to both Sprecher's lack of experience with Euro-style mega-musicals as well as the possibility that said musicals were stylistically passé on Broadway. |
| 113 | ** The search for investors led to Mark C. Hotton, a Long Island stockbroker, who hooked up Sprecher with a wealthy Englishman named Paul Abrams who, with three associates, would invest $4.5 million, effectively completing ''Rebecca'''s capitalization. That this was far more than what the highest-rolling investors would usually put down even for a musical successfully produced elsewhere didn't phase Sprecher. |
| 114 | ** In September 2012, Abrams was said to have died of malaria without having actually given Sprecher the promised funds. Oddly, there were no obituaries in British newspapers for Abrams, nor were any death certificates issued for anyone with that name who had died of malaria. A spokesman for the Abrams estate refused to take calls and was using an email address that had been created only a month earlier. |
| 115 | ** Before Sprecher could pull the plug outright on Broadway, another man, Larry Runsdorf, having read of ''Rebecca'''s post-Abrams troubles in a press release, offered to replace most of the missing funds on condition of anonymity. However, just before rehearsals were set to begin, Runsdorf's lawyers began receiving emails warning about the perils of investing in the musical. On top of anemic ticket sales, these emails warned that Abrams was a fabrication and that Hotton (and possibly Sprecher) were committing fraud. His anonymity compromised, Runsdorf pulled his money and ''Rebecca'' was forced to cancel. |
| 116 | ** The FBI ended up arresting Hotton for unrelated charges of fraud, but, in a separate investigation, they provided concrete evidence that Abrams and his associates were indeed Hotton inventions. Had Sprecher perhaps been more diligent outright (or at least looked up "Mark C. Hotton" on Google), he may have found a trail of evidence implicating Hotton in fraudulent schemes dating back to the 1990s. |
| 117 | ** It was then revealed that Marc Thibodeau, ''Rebecca'''s publicist, had pseudonymously sent those emails to Runsdorf's lawyers, having done those very Google searches for himself. Sprecher sued Thibodeau for $10 million, both to recover some of the production costs--Sprecher had also by then lost the rights to produce the English ''Rebecca''--and to mitigate the damage to his reputation. He was ultimately only awarded $90,000. |
| 118 | ** It wouldn't be until September 2023 that the English translation of ''Rebecca'' would debut in London's off-West End. By then, Sprecher was on [[http://broadwayjournal.com/rebecca-producer-sentenced-to-five-years-of-probation-in-child-pornography-case probation]] for possession of child pornography. |
| 119 | * The popular Broadway musical ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' underwent some large production troubles. |
| 120 | ** The story was originally thought up by Billy Aronson. He teamed up with 29-year-old composer Jonathan Larson and started writing the songs in 1989. |
| 121 | ** Busy with other personal commitments, Aronson dropped the project and Larson picked it back up a couple of years later. |
| 122 | ** In 1993 it had its first on-stage reading which resulted in some criticism against the musical's over-complexity and length. A workshop version was penned and performed in 1994, which resulted in even more tweaks needing to be made to the story, and Larson ''again'' having to rework the songs to fit the changes. |
| 123 | ** Funding started to become an issue as many investors feared the musical's then-controversial subject matter, causing Larson to have to turn to other sources for money. |
| 124 | ** When he finally got a steady cast together and the show was scheduled to make its debut in early 1996, Larson died from an undiagnosed aortic aneurysm. His death caused the first preview of the musical to be canceled and the play was performed in front of a private audience in his memory. Ultimately it made its off-Broadway premiere on time and has since become one of the most beloved musicals of the 1990s. |
| 125 | * In 1995, Music/StephenSondheim and John Weidman received a commission to write a musical about the lives of Wilson and Addison Mizner. By 2004, when the show's score was recorded under its third WorkingTitle, ''Bounce'', production had seemingly been abandoned. It finally made it to New York in 2008 as the off-Broadway production ''Road Show'', but it lasted only two months (counting previews), and has had only a few productions since. |
| 126 | * ''Senator Joe'', a "popera" based on the life and times of [[UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy Joseph McCarthy]], limped onto Broadway in 1989 after two poorly publicized and attended out-of-town productions; it played all of [[https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/senator-joe-1063 three previews]] before closing indefinitely due to money problems. Intended as a comeback for producer Adela Holzer after she had served a stint in prison for fraud, the collapse of ''Senator Joe'' instead teed up her next stay behind bars. This [[https://www.vulture.com/article/senator-joe-broadway-musical-joseph-mccarthy-failed.html feature]] from ''Vulture'' has the whole scoop. |
| 127 | * ''Theatre/SpiderManTurnOffTheDark'' is quite possibly the most infamous, noteworthy, and widely mocked example in Broadway history. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Turn_Off_the_Dark#History Wikipedia]], [[https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2012/03/saga-of-spider-man-turn-off-dark.html this blog post]], and co-writer Glen Berger's memoir ''Song of Spider-Man'' weave a heckuva tale. |
| 128 | ** At first, back in 2002, ''Spider-Man'' seemed like it was gelling uncommonly well. Despite minimal experience in theatrical production, Tony Adams secured provisional rights from Marvel to make a stage musical out of the comics. From there, he got in contact with [=Paul McGuinness=], whom he knew from the days when both of them worked for director John Boorman. [=McGuinness=] had since turned to music management, and U2 was one of his acts, which is how Adams was able to court Bono and The Edge to write songs. Screenwriter Creator/NeilJordan just happened to be a neighbor of the bandmates, which is how he got involved writing the script. And two of Jordan's films were scored by Elliot Goldenthal, artistic and domestic partner of Creator/JulieTaymor, which is how they were able to court her to direct. |
| 129 | ** Despite her alleged claim that she "could stage anything," Jordan turned in a treatment that, however vividly written, struck Taymor as too cinematic, so he was let go. Taymor decided to take a firmer hand in crafting the story, and she recruited Glen Berger to join her as co-writer. (Whether theirs was an equal collaboration or if he was just "the words guy" was a question that would plague Berger years later.) |
| 130 | ** Taymor and Berger's subsequent treatment was a non-starter with Marvel for many years. In their words, the writers' concept was "entirely wrong and the tone...which is quite dark, is not what Marvel anticipated receiving at all.” Heated conversations on artistic matters ensued into 2005, by which time, legal matters were ironed out and contracts were generated for signature. Adams had secured everyone's signatures except The Edge's, but, while at the latter's Soho townhouse, Adams suffered a massive stroke. He died two days later. |
| 131 | ** Producing responsibilities fell to David Garfinkle, Adams's producing partner, the accountant to Adams's charmer. Garfinkle, acknowledging his own lack of theatrical producing experience, gave Taymor a great deal of creative freedom. Given Taymor had previously delivered a money geyser with her imaginative production of ''The Lion King'', such blue-sky thinking made a certain amount of sense. However, Disney had had a firm hand on that till and was able to curb Taymor's "artsier" instincts. In ''Spider-Man'''s case, Taymor's "artsier" instincts manifested in Arachne, a character that the Marvel suits, comic fans, and eventually audiences thought pulled focus from the title character. |
| 132 | ** Even with lingering story concerns following the production's one (and only) workshop presentation, work on the physical production began, and the team secured the largest theatre on Broadway to house it. |
| 133 | ** However, Garfinkle was ultimately only able to secure half the capitalization, then around $37.5 million. Exacerbating matters was the 2008 economic recession, which saw many potential investors shrink away. Despite the brand-name title, Marvel, nor its eventual buyer Disney, put money into the show. In light of this, Garfinkle ceded control to rock impresario Michael Cohl and Jeremiah Harris, the head of the company fabricating ''Spider-Man'''s scenery, Production Resource Group. |
| 134 | ** Cohl and Harris's financial resuscitation, on top of the lease payments to retain the theatre and the astronomical cost of all the flying equipment, ballooned the budget to $65 million. (Or, as Berger put it, ''Spider-Man'' was now a "thirty-million-dollar show dragging a thirty-million-dollar bag of waste behind it.") At those numbers, it would've had to have sold out every performance for three years to break even. |
| 135 | ** The [[FromBadToWorse the cavalcade of injured performers]] began in rehearsals and spilled over into press events, which opened up the floodgates for skepticism and derision. In time, Creator/StephenColbert would call it "Spider-Man: Notify Next of Kin"; ''Series/{{Conan}}'' ribbed it; ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'' ribbed it; even ''Series/SesameStreet'' got in on it. ''Series/LawAndOrderCriminalIntent'' got an [[RippedFromTheHeadlines episode]] out of it. It even got mocked during the [=65th=] Tony Awards to enthusiastic applause from the audience. |
| 136 | ---> '''Creator/NeilPatrickHarris:''' We've got swarms of Mormons, showgirls, sailors, dancing boys and nuns,[=/=]Plus a spider facing death-defying budget overruns! |
| 137 | ** After opening for previews at long last in late November 2010, the planned December opening kept getting pushed back and back. Fed up by the delays, theatre critics went rogue and reviewed the February 7, 2011 preview performance, which was particularly catastrophic. Most reviews were [[http://www.avclub.com/articles/spiderman-turn-off-the-dark-terrible-or-make-it-st,51518/ scathing]]. |
| 138 | ** In response, the producers brought in Creator/RobertoAguirreSacasa to overhaul the script, and they were able to get Bono and The Edge to write new songs while they took short breaks from their touring commitments. Taymor resisted making changes, particularly those concerning Arachne, and was either fired or quit. She was replaced by [=Philip William McKinley=], who had directed several Barnum & Bailey circus shows. Aguirre-Sacasa and [=McKinley=] made a show that was far more conventional and family-friendly than what it had been. This pleased the Marvel suits but none of the original creative team. ''Spider-Man'' finally opened in June 2011 to mixed reviews, many of which lamented that the new version, however much an improvement, lacked the original's messy bravado. |
| 139 | ** In March 2012, Taymor filed suit against the producers, Bono and The Edge, and Berger, both for what she claimed was her unjust firing and for unpaid co-writing and directing royalties. |
| 140 | ** In August 2013, yet ''another'' performer was seriously injured during a performance, and the producers settled with OSHA to institute even more safeguards. But it was the ticket sales that sealed the show's fate. Unable to meet its extraordinarily high weekly nut, ''Spider-Man'' closed January 2014, with $60 million of the producers' investment lost according to ''New York'' magazine. |
| 141 | ** The producers initially intended to reopen the show in Las Vegas in 2015, then decided to launch an arena tour in 2015-16 instead. However, nothing came of either effort. |
| 142 | * Contrary to popular perception, ''Series/SteptoeAndSon'' co-stars Creator/WilfridBrambell and Creator/HarryHCorbett had a cordial working relationship for most of the series' run (apart from an argument over top billing in the first series; the BBC compromised by swapping their billing every episode), even if they were never close friends. However, what tensions there were between them boiled over during the disastrous ''Steptoe & Son Down Under'' stage tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1977-78. |
| 143 | ** Although both Brambell and Corbett were trying, with little success, to move their careers past Albert and Harold Steptoe, they badly needed the money and signed on despite their misgivings about the repetition involved in playing the characters on stage. Series writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson grudgingly put a script together, but even during early rehearsals, it was clear Brambell and Corbett saw each other as symbols of everything they were trying to put behind themselves, and they knew all too well how to get under each other's skin as an outlet for their frustrations. |
| 144 | ** Their differing attitudes toward their host nations didn't help. Corbett had been to Australia multiple times and loved every minute, and he decided to bring his wife and children along to make it a working holiday. Brambell, however, was almost totally unfamiliar with Australia, and he had to leave his long-term partner behind and travel alone; while Corbett was all smiles as he disembarked the initial flight to Perth, Brambell was visibly unhappy, which set the tone for the next five and a half months. |
| 145 | ** Initially, things went well; Australian audiences welcomed the duo with open arms, and they had time to relax, with Brambell joining Corbett and his family on sightseeing days out. But as the tour continued, the punishing schedule, with eight shows and only one day off each week and long journeys between venues, took its toll on the stars' declining health; Brambell was drinking more heavily than ever, while Corbett was smoking multiple packs of cigarettes a day. They also found the script weak, and even though audiences enjoyed the performances, Brambell and Corbett thought it a long fall from their 1960s heyday as a ratings juggernaut. |
| 146 | ** As their respective moods deteriorated, they tried to keep their distance from each other between performances; Corbett went on more frequent sightseeing tours with his family, while Brambell drank whole bottles of gin in a single day or went cruising for male companionship. But eventually, they started lashing out at each other while together; on one occasion, a drunk Brambell lashed out at Corbett simply for travelling with his family (''in front of them''), causing Corbett to go into PapaWolf mode as he grabbed Brambell by the collar and growled, "Never my children." |
| 147 | ** Brambell was also frequently bad-tempered when dealing with audiences. In the interest of good PR, the two actors were told to sign autographs outside the theatre after performances, and while neither particularly wanted to do so, Corbett at least forced a polite smile as he spoke to fans. Brambell didn't even do that much, making no secret of how little he wanted to be there. One evening, he told an autograph hunter in so many words to "piss off", only for the tour manager to chastise him for his rudeness; he turned around and asked if she had a pen, but when she couldn't find one, he snapped, "What do you expect me to sign it with then, my prick!?" On another occasion, a drunken audience member tried to climb onto the stage in the middle of a performance, and Brambell, without missing a beat, kicked her back into the stalls with such force that it was a miracle she wasn't injured. |
| 148 | ** Corbett's embarrassment at Brambell's antics eventually led him to give up trying to keep him in line, so that task fell to his wife, Maureen. However, if the two had been fighting, they would engage in acts of retaliatory sabotage on and off stage. One evening, Brambell simply refused to go on, choosing instead to sit down to a roast beef dinner with the family of a theatre usher he had befriended while a livid Corbett was forced to do the show alone. |
| 149 | ** The tour hit rock bottom after the move to New Zealand; to accommodate the stars' growing exhaustion, the ''Steptoe & Son'' portion of the show was shortened, but a negative audience reaction led to damage control in the form of a promotional interview for radio in Christchurch. When the presenter asked Corbett what he thought of New Zealand's landscape and architecture, he declared it one of the most beautiful places he had ever been, but when the same question was asked to a badly hung over Brambell, he grumbled, "I hate your fucking town, and it's the lowest place I've been in all my life," to Corbett's horror. The broadcast was immediately cut, the switchboard was flooded with angry phone calls, and the stars and their entourage had to be smuggled out of the building. |
| 150 | ** The tour never recovered after Brambell's outburst, with the duo keeping a low profile until they returned to Sydney. However, their relationship ''did'' recover; once he had sobered up and realised how badly he had behaved, Brambell apologised profusely to Corbett and gave Maureen a large opal to thank her for putting up with him. Brambell and Corbett continued making joint appearances as Albert and Harold right up until Corbett's death in 1982 (a few months before a planned second Australian tour). |
| 151 | * The Metropolitan Opera's 2017-18 production of ''Theatre/{{Tosca}}'', directed by Sir David [=McVicar=], was particularly troubled, even by the standards of other troubled ''Tosca'' productions, with all three leads replaced, and the conductor himself being replaced three times by the time it premiered. When the production was first announced, the starry premiere cast consisted of Kristine Opolais in the title role, Jonas Kaufmann as Cavaradossi, and Sir Bryn Terfel as Scarpia, with the performance to be conducted by Andris Nelsons, Opolais' then-husband. The company created a world-class production to replace 2009's godawful Regietheatre styling by ''auteur'' Luc Bondy which had disgusted audiences with its Brutalist sets and crude sexual antics[[note]]including having Scarpia hump the statue of Mary in the church and having the Act II curtain rise on him getting a blow job from a topless prostitute. Among other things.[[/note]] who was literally ''booed'' when he came out for curtain calls at the premiere. So the new sets, costumes, art direction, stage management etc. were faithful to the historical period and looked wonderful, but from there, the troubles started: |
| 152 | ** First, Kaufmann withdrew from the production first, claiming that he didn't want to be abroad and away from his family for too long, and he was subsequently replaced by Vittorio Grigòlo, who had never sung Cavaradossi before. |
| 153 | ** Then, Kristine Opolais withdrew a few months later, citing personal reasons, and she was replaced by Sonya Yoncheva, who had never sung Tosca before. |
| 154 | ** Andris Nelsons subsequently dropped out after his then-wife withdrew. James Levine, the former Music Director of the Met Opera, was supposed to replace him, only for his career to be destroyed in a major sexual abuse scandal, resulting in Emmanuel Villaume, Music Director of the Dallas Opera, replacing him. |
| 155 | ** Lastly, Sir Bryn Terfel withdrew from the production, citing vocal fatigue, leading him to be replaced with Zeljko Lucic, who at least had some experience playing Scarpia. |
| 156 | ** Fortunately, once they got everybody in place, things went smoothly, and this is still the production used today. At least, at the Metropolitan. At some venues overseas, [[https://classicalvoiceamerica.org/2019/05/17/inept-tosca-gets-no-bounce-with-move-across-pond/ Bondy's drek is still in place]]. |
| 157 | * In November 1965, while Lionel Bart's ''Theatre/{{Oliver}}'' made history as the longest-running British musical, he threatened the West End with a production of his newest show ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twang!! Twang!!]]'' after it had played a shambling, acrimonious, and press-beset tryout in Manchester. |
| 158 | ** By 1965, Bart had known nothing but success as a writer for the pop charts and on the West End, and so he didn't want for producers to get in on any show he had going. After considering a large-scale adaptation of ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'', he opted instead to do a spoof on the [[Myth/RobinHood Robin Hood]] legend which would've been in tune with the then-present [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire_boom satire boom]]. |
| 159 | ** For his director, Bart wanted [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Littlewood Joan Littlewood]]. She was most famous for developing plays through extensive improvisation, and she had given Bart his start in the West End having selected him to write songs for ''Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be'', a smash hit when it transferred from the East End. Bart wanted that same improvisational frisson for the Robin Hood musical, now called ''Twang!!''. |
| 160 | ** At this point in their careers, Bart and Littlewood were accustomed to getting what they wanted, and they were able to convince the producers that, to best accommodate that improvisational energy, the actors would rehearse--unpaid--at Bart's house before the first try-out. After about two months of this, Littlewood decided the only way she could get a workable script was to write it herself. |
| 161 | ** In practice, Littlewood's techniques seemed to conflict with the structural discipline called for in a musical comedy on the scale Bart had in mind. Consequently, the book of the musical was in constant flux. So were the songs, which came and went in a heartbeat. (As Bart had once said, "I rarely spend more than an hour on a song. Songs should be like sneezes: spontaneous.") |
| 162 | ** Television writer Harvey Orkin was credited as co-bookwriter alongside Bart, but his contributions barely made it into any final product. Supposedly, Bart cut in Orkin on the show to settle a poker debt. |
| 163 | ** Curiously, too, few if any of the familiar Robin Hood stories were being satirized, and Robin himself was barely the lead part. Instead, the largely original story (such as it was) involved freeing a nymphomaniacal lady-in-waiting of Maid Marian's (played by [[Creator/BarbaraWindsor Barbara Windsor]]) from an arranged marriage that would ultimately benefit Prince John. Despite assurances to James Booth, their Robin, that his part would be expanded, the part remained essentially that of second banana. |
| 164 | ** When ''Twang!!'' moved to Manchester for the pre-West End tryout, Kenneth Moule, hitherto pulling double-duty as music director and orchestrator on a musical score that wouldn't gel, collapsed at the first dress rehearsal. Things didn't get better as Bart and Littlewood's working relationship cratered. (Among other things, she accused him of injudiciously indulging in psychedelic drugs, a claim that given circumstantial evidence perhaps wasn't too far removed from the truth.) |
| 165 | ** Reviews in Manchester were dire, as was the backstage gossip leaking into the press. Littlewood either walked away or was fired from the production. |
| 166 | ** Hiring Burt Shevelove as book doctor and replacement director did little to assuage producers, many of whom pulled their investments thus jeopardizing the West End run. Against all advice, Bart put his own money in the show; he had to bring it to London "just to show the knockers." |
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