This is again another book for theatre enthusiasts; so if the idea of musical theatre makes you want to run away screaming, then I suggest you stop reading this review now. However, if you know your Lloyd Webber from your Sondheim then you may well enjoy this book. Peter Filichia takes the hard task of picking one hit musical and one flop musical from each season from 1959 (The Sound of Music/Pink Jungle) to 2009 (Billy Elliot/9 to 5) and then explaining why each deserved their title.
The thing that most attracted me to reading this was that Peter Filichia is a contributor to the brilliant This Week on Broadway podcasts which discuss the weeks goings on on, off and around the Broadway community. With a seemingly endless memory back to the 1950s/60s, Filichia frequently offers really interesting insights into the starting process of musicals that have become really famous. The podcast, as well as his wonderful columns for Theatremania and Masterworks Broadway meant that I really just had to get my hands on this book.
And I did really enjoy it. Filichia's general criteria for a 'hit' is that it runs a fairly long time; this therefore means that shows like Mary Poppins beat out Spring Awakening in the season, the latter being more critically acclaimed but the former have far more longevity. His criteria for a flop is a little different; primarily it's loss of funds-as most shows that 'flop' close early and thus lose money. However, there are also cases were 'great expectations' can cause a show to be a flop, even if it doesn't lose quite the money that another show does. This means that Chess beats out the infamous Carrie; because more people expected the former to do well, whereas the latter was treated dubiously from the outset. Interestingly, Filichia also occasionally includes shows that never made it to Broadway, for instance Andrew Lloyd Webber's Whistle Down the Wind, as the biggest flop.
Filichia's insights are always really interesting. He introduces shows that I had never head of before; Lolita My Love (yes, a musical of Lolita) and Via Galatica being two of them. Rather than just outright criticising the flops, he also occasionally offers advice on how they could have fixed the show; he even has good things to say about vampire musical Lestat. When it comes to long-running hit shows like The Phantom of the Opera, Filichia doesn't just right about what happens in the show and its genesis; because generally, a lot of theatre people know about that, but he looks at it from the angle of George Lee Andrews, who has been with the show since it opened in 1988, moving from ensemble member to Monsieur Firmin to Monsieur Andre; only taking occasional breaks (one being to star in a wonderful production of A Little Night Music which you can see here).
It is also somewhat refreshing to see someone not being downright rude about Andrew Lloyd Webber, or Boubil & Schonberg or all jukebox musicals (well...he praises Jersey Boys). The only person that really comes under attack every time he's mentioned (with The Lion King, Aida and Billy Elliot being hits and Lestat being a flop) is Elton John, for not being involved enough in the creation of his musicals-but obviously with 3/4 being successful-it's obviously a method that works somewhat.
Of course, the thing that the book does it make you wonder what would be seen as the biggest hit/flop from the 2010 season. The biggest hit, in my view, would be Memphis, a musical that no one really knew anything about that starred no names; and that won the Best Musical Tony and is still running over a year later to around 80% capacity, still with no stars. The biggest flop? Perhaps Twyla Tharp's Come Fly Away, a dance-musical based on the songs of Frank Sinatra, or maybe a revival of Bye Bye Birdie which some said was the worst-sung musical they'd heard, or a revival of Ragtime that was loved in Washington DC but closed quickly on Broadway.
As for the current season, it's probably too early to call; although The Book of Mormon created by the writers of South Park was critically acclaimed and is playing to capacity. On the flop side...there are many! Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson was loved off-Broadway but didn't find an audience on the Great White Way; The Scottsboro Boys had a similar fate, despite being the last score by Kander & Ebb; Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown boasted a creative team including Jeffrey Lane & David Yazbeck (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and Bartlett Sher (South Pacific revival) and had an insane cast (Brian Stokes Mitchell, Patti LuPone, Sherie Rene Scott, Laura Benanti..) but proved less than great; and recently Wonderland, Baby It's You and The People in the Picture, all opened to a pretty negative response.
I really do recommend Filichia's novel; it's a really interesting insight into modern musical theatre history; which has progressed (?) from Oscar Hammerstein II & Richard Rodgers to Elton John, by way of Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber and ABBA.
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