Disucssing the 1988 musical version of Carrie, Schulman notes that the musical lasted a grand total of three days. It lost $7,000,000 ! It was compared to the Hindenburg disaster (really, people?!). It seems people compared the blood to "strawberry ice-cream topping." That's pretty bad.
So is Carrie the worst musical ever? Sculman explains his article: "I’ve taken an informal survey of some notable buffs to find out what they consider to be the absolute worst, most memorably tasteless, or inept piece of dreck of their theatre-going lives."
Of course, once Sculman turns it over to the "experts" they have to remind us of the "spiderman" musical. Michael Riedel of the New York Post says,
"I think my lasting memory of Broadway will forever be the climactic moment of the three-and-a-half-hour first act. Spider-Man stood at the foot of stage and took a huge leap into the audience, then got stuck hanging from a cable. He had to play the air guitar to entertain the audience. Finally, the stagehands got hold of him and pulled him back. I thought, For eighty million dollars you get three fat stagehands and a guy playing the air guitar!"Frank Rich comes the closest to defending the Carrie musical when he says, "Carrie was by no means the worst musical I saw while I was reviewing." So the best he can say is that it wasn't the worst!
Read the entire article, it's a joy!
Carrie is the worst musical I've never seen.
I'm a big theatre buff and there is a lot that Carrie the musical has going for it.
ReplyDeleteMany portions of the 1988 score are really incredible whilst some parts are, admittedly, pure trite.
It seems that in the recent revision that is about to be performed off-Broadway most of the good stuff is left alone whilst the rest has been re-worked.
Of course, it has a tragic plot which harkens back to the earliest forms of theatre but it's just that, when it first appeared, it suffered from a creative team that didn't always see eye-to-eye and the special effects just weren't capable of achieving what was required.
Technology used in theatre has improved dramatically so I can only imagine Carrie's resurrection being a more permanent one.