There’s no business like show business, goes the immortal Irving Berlin song, and nowhere are the ups and downs of it better expressed than in the opening lines: “The opening when your heart beats like a drum/ The closing when the customers won’t come”. As critics, we’re there for the openings, of course; and though some may say we hasten the closings at times, we’re typically not there for those.
But sometimes - with a show I’ve loved and supported, like Spring Awakening, or just occasionally with one I’ve not liked, like Desperately Seeking Susan — I return for one last look, to lock them in the memory somehow. As I’ve admitted before here, “Call me morbid, but I love to ambulance-chase dying musicals on their way to the graveyard”.
So it should be that a new fringe musical revue, the appropriately though clumsily titled Blink!… and you missed it, is right up my street.
Seeing it last Friday, it also afforded me my first chance to visit a new(ish) fringe venue in Victoria, the Above the Stag Theatre. When I had my last office job eight years ago, I used to frequent the downstairs pub regularly at lunchtimes; it was a little bit of gay London in an otherwise barren corporate and business district. Who knew they had this little room lurking upstairs, ripe for conversion into such a welcoming and intimate little space?
Blink, though, and you could miss this show, too: it’s only running to August 16. Shows fail primarily, of course, for the reason that Berlin stated: “When the customers won’t come”. Last Friday, we were barely in double figures, so this show might prove to be an example of itself.
But though I liked the idea behind the show - to showcase showstoppers from musicals that themselves stopped prematurely - and it is attractively performed by a five-strong ensemble, there isn’t an entirely logical governing motif to the choices included. Songs from Chicago, La Cage Aux Folles and Sweeney Todd all make the grade, because they failed first time round when they were imported from Broadway to London (though each have gone on far greater success on subsequent incarnations here); ditto Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Rocky Horror Show, for failing when they transferred from London to Broadway. That’s a sneaky way of including some songs that people actually know, of course.
The frequently stumbling narration, shared between the cast, tries to set them in some kind of context; but it would have been far better to choose shows that were all out-and-out flops, rather than commercial failures on opposite sides of the Atlantic that need such arduous explanations.
There is, in any case, surely more than enough to choose from - though as a programme note (and speech near the end) make clear, they’re looking for the sheet music for shows like Bernadette, Lautrec, Dance of the Vampires, Witch Witch and others. It’s also an ever-growing catalogue, of course. While Forbidden Broadway is currently mercilessly spoofing current West End and Broadway hits, the business of flops is an even bigger potential treasure trove, and this could become a franchise of its own with a little bit of care and attention.
Just this week I worry that another show may be lining up to join the others: Too Close to the Sun is arriving at the Comedy Theatre, and whatever the show’s merits or not (we’ll discover at the press night on Friday), it’s own lack of publicity and marketing is surely a strike against it already. As Carrie Dunn wrote in a blog yesterday, “Too Close To The Sun began previews at the Comedy Theatre this week. Not that you’d know it. I write about musical theatre for a living and so far the only publicity materials I’ve seen for it have been a small poster at a Tube station (one of the ones next to an escalator, rather than the big ones on the platform) and a single banner advert on a website… You know what you’re getting with Phantom, Les Mis and The Lion King; they’ve been around for years. In the case of shorter-running shows, a big name is a big draw - such as Priscilla (Jason Donovan), Hairspray (Michael Ball, soon to be Brian Conley), and La Cage Aux Folles (Graham Norton, and John Barrowman taking over in September). But what if, like Too Close To The Sun, you’ve got a new show that’s not been based on a famous film and doesn’t have a TV star to call upon for free publicity?”
What Too Close to the Sun has instead is the life of a famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, to trade on; and the rather more dubious credit of its composer, John Robinson, having previously been responsible for another notorious West End flop, <>Behind the Iron Mask.
But the life of someone famous is hardly enough to rescue shows: even when the person’s name is in the title, as witness Lautrec, Napoleon or King (as in Martin Luther King), those shows have quickly flopped. By coincidence, last night saw Martin Luther King back in the West End, too, courtesy of the transfer of Theatre 503’s production of Katori Hall’s play The Mountaintop to the Trafalgar Studios; it’s only booked as a limited run filler there, before the arrival of Lenny Henry’s Othello, but will, I suspect, already outrun that enjoyed by King, which opened at the Piccadilly April 23, 1990, and closed just a month later, on May 26.
How sad to take such a negative attitude to a new show (Too Close to the Sun).
I have seen quite a few pre-mentions of the Show in press material and elsewhere so far: granted no major marketing, but - unless a show attracts a huge publicity budget (yes, we know it should in an ideal world) blanket advertising is unlikely. What is perticularly questionable about the comments in this piece is its assertion that " John Robinson...previously been responsible for another notorious West End flop, Behind the Iron Mask". Presenting the failure of Too Close as a foregone conclusion before press night is surely neither fair nor professional?
Having *seen* Too Close To The Sun, I can guarantee that it deserves all of the negative press it's received and predict a bloodbath from the critics.
Of course, having gotten my ticket through non-press means, I was free to blog my review yesterday.
"I believe that with small theatre shows struggling, there is an opportunity for entertainers to be hired for corporate parties, by offering discounts to large organisations. Corporate entertainment can be the nucleus to help boost shows rating and appeal by work of mouth publicity, obviously this is a risky strategy, but I truly believe that with the right theatre show the corporate event would help to market the struggling shows.
It may be an opportunity for some theatre marketing managers, or corporate management to book a show now. If all else fails, hire a comedian, everyone loves a laugh.