that girl allison

And the first show of the 2011-2012 theatre season bites the dust (at least I’m pretty sure, someone correct me if I’m wrong). This is Frank Wildhorn’s second flop in a single year, and his fifth consecutive flop on Broadway.

Bonnie and Clyde spent years in development, or at least it seemed like we were hearing about it for years. I’d heard pretty good things about it out of town. Then it came to New York and word of mouth slowly started to take a turn for the worse. I declined an opportunity to help a friend raise money for the show, which he ended up declining altogether too (which he’s now happy he did), and I’m glad I did - duh. I absolutely wasn’t at all excited about it and how can you raise money for a show when you have no enthusiasm about it? You can’t. Unless you’re just very smooth - which I am not, yet.

In addition to Bonnie and Clyde, Frank Wildhorn has had Wonderland, The Civil War, Jekyll and Hyde, and The Scarlet Pimpernel on Broadway in the last decade or so, and I’ve seen them all (save for The Civil War). 

The verdict? Wildhorn can write one hell of a score. I mean, really gorgeous. How many times have you heard This Is The Moment (from Jekyll and Hyde) in the past? Yeah. That song is basically a classic. I did however doze of for a moment during Jekyll and Hyde because the book was awful and boring (I was also 9 or 10 at the time). I remember the same thing about The Scarlet Pimpernel. Great score! - but boring show.

Lest we forget Wonderland - this was a concept that had such potential and a couple of great songs. I think it could’ve been the next Wicked. If it had been good (or decent, because a lot of people don’t really like Wicked and consider it poorly written as well). The show, I heard, had a bunch of inexperienced producers behind it though (from Florida, where it had it’s out of town try out) who didn’t realize the massive amount of work that needed to be done on it. 

I wonder what Wildhorn’s next show will be. Maybe he’ll hire a new collaborator to stop another bomb from being produced. But now it’s the rush of all theatre flop-junkies (yours truly included) to see this seasons first huge flop before it closes and goes down as another to-be-written chapter in an updated version of Not Since Carrie.

I’ll be there, hopefully, on Tuesday night. Or maybe not hopefully? Nah, I think hopefully is the right word.