Some shows you just know are doomed virtually from the moment they are announced. An RSC-produced musical theatre adaptation of the Stephen King novel, Carrie – turned by director Terry Hands into a Greek tragedy with songs by the boys who wrote Fame – had people expecting blood on their hands, and not just because the title character’s onset of menstruation that sets the plot in motion. But that was, at least, an act of professional insanity: it was produced and staged by a company with solid theatrical credentials (which also made it even more baffling).
But it’s the amateur and/or vanity productions – from people with little musical theatre experience but who have monumental faith in their own material, and more importantly find the (usually naïve) investors to agree – that inspire the more morbid fascination. Shows from the infamous Bernadette – funded largely by public subscriptions – to the more recent Beautiful and Damned (brought to the stage thanks to a family who made their fortune in signage) and Behind the Iron Mask earlier this year, have all-too-predictably faltered in the warm lights of the West End night.
Costs are, of course, even higher on Broadway, and such projects have become sadly far more rare there. But last night one finally arrived in New York again, a new musical called In My Life entirely written (book, music and lyrics), as well as directed and produced, by Joseph Brooks. As Ben Brantley has remarked in his review in today’s New York Times, “Mr. Brooks’s head-to-toe participation here may be the most complete example of auteurism ever to enfold a Broadway musical. This means that you get to step inside the mind of the man who wrote the 1970’s pop mega-hit ‘You Light Up My Life’ (and directed the schmaltzy hit movie of the same title) and jingles for Volkswagen and Dr. Pepper ads. If only that mind had more interesting furniture.”
Calling it also “a musical Hallmark card, a pastel blend of the twinkly teddy bear and sentimental sunrise varieties”, he wrote of “drowning in a singing sea of syrup”.
Expectations of a flop were, admittedly, signalled from the moment word first got out of what it was about. In the words of the New York Post’s Clive Barnes (and also Stage contributor), “Any musical featuring a hero with Tourette’s syndrome and an ad-jingle composer called Al (who’s wisely kept his day job as God) sounds distinctly unpromising.” And, he notes in his review today, the result “fulfils every unpromise possible”.
But it sounds like it might be unmissable for those aficionados who have to collect notorious flops. As Variety’s David Rooney says, “this astonishing misfire will be a must-see for all the Broadway tuner-train wreck completists who still speak wistfully of Carrie.”
I will be there in New York next for a week from November 3, and my only hope is that it will still be running then….
