The Worst Show of 2011

Here it is, folks.  The moment you’ve all been waiting for.  There have been some truly odious shows in our countdown, but this last one takes the cake as the single worst piece of theatre I had the misfortune of seeing in 2011.  That show is (drumroll please)….

Spider-Man:  Turn Off the Dark

A scene from Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark

Now, some of you might think I am being unnecessarily harsh on a show that spent all of 2011 (and much 2010) as Broadway’s whipping boy.  Does the much-maligned megamusical really need to be further abused in print after all of the malicious things written about it in the past 12 months?

Yes.  Yes it does.  Because, my friends, any of you who actually saw Spider-Man know that it may possibly be even worse than the press has let on.  Let’s forget, for a moment, that the idea of a Spider-Man musical is already a patently terrible idea.  There is already a level of absurd fantasy in the idea of masked men with superpowers beating the snot out of each other.  Having these characters break out into song pushes things way past the point of credibility.  By musicalizing a superhero story, you also force yourself into the very expensive and danger-prone realm of having to physically execute feats of daring-do eight times a week.

But even if we forget that the concept is irrevocably busted from the start, Spider-Man remains such a poorly plotted, underwritten mess that many of the 8-year-olds in the audience have written better Spidey stories while playing with their action figures.  This is even more infuriating given that the writers of Turn Off the Dark (which is an awful, nonsensical subtitle that it pains me to type) have chosen to focus on Spider-Man’s origin story, something that has been done repeatedly in other mediums, and done well.  What should have been a simple matter of copying what has worked before is completely bungled by the inept writers, leaving a show with plot holes so big you could easily drive the show’s massive set pieces through them.

While I am more than familiar with Spider-Man’s comic book history, I am by no means a purist.  I accept that certain details will need to be altered or updated to make the show work for modern audiences.  That is fine.  What isn’t fine is to see a show that completely alters the basic personality traits of a plethora of beloved characters, and then fails to successful execute those changes.  I don’t know what comics Julie Taymor and company have been reading, but Aunt May has never been as sarcastic and mean-spirited as she is in this show.  Mary Jane may come from a broken home, but I barely recognize the sullen emo girl running around the Foxwoods Theatre stage.  It certainly isn’t the self-assured redhead whose famous first words to Peter Parker were, “Face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot.”  By altering these traits, the show completely throws the characters’ interpersonal dynamics out of whack, and doesn’t bother to replace them with interesting or believable new ones.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the acting is uniformly terrible.  I’m sure all the behind-the-scenes drama and months of tech work weren’t conducive to the acting process, but dammit, this is Broadway, and I expect a certain standard of work for my $100 ticket.  Many of the actors seem utterly lost onstage, as if they have never before set foot in a theatre.  Save for Patrick Page as the Green Goblin, the leads lack believability, chemistry, and the ability to sing on-pitch, with all of the show’s vocals sounding unbearably flat.

Which brings us to the atrocious pop-rock score by Bono and the Edge.  I am not a U2 fan, but I have to believe that the multiple Grammy-winners are capable of much better than the garbage they’ve written for Spider-Man.  Every song sounded the same (bad), with the “orchestra” (I use quotation marks because I didn’t hear more than 6 instruments the night I saw it) and singers so out of balance that it’s laughable.  There’s also a cast-wide diction problem, but given the quality of the lyrics I could understand I don’t think I’m missing much.  At least the songs are repetitive, giving the audience multiple chances to decipher what is going on.

And what did that reported $75 million budget get spent on, exactly?  The show I saw didn’t look any more impressive than something like Wicked, which while still expensive cost only a fraction of the amount spent on this disaster.  I didn’t find the much-ballyhooed stunts to be overly impressive, despite the producers repeated promises that it would be unlike anything I’d ever seen.  The various wires and flying apparatuses are blatantly apparent, and everything moves at such a slow pace that it saps any excitement from the aerial battles.  I should point out that I am all for the actors’ safety; I just feel that for that amount of money, they should have been able to come up with something that looked more impressive while still remaining safe.

The most disheartening thing about Spider-Man is that so far, it has been a financial success, proving that a large portion of the theatergoing public doesn’t give a rat’s ass about quality.  I can only urge all of you to avoid this show like the plague.  If you think it’s going to be a fun, Showgirls-like debacle, you are wrong.  While certainly a train wreck, it isn’t the least bit of fun, and is easily the Worst Show of 2011.

Note:  These observations are based on Julie Taymor’s original version, not the revised show currently playing the Foxwoods.  While the new version is reportedly better, the show I saw was so far gone that I cannot imagine they made enough improvements during the three week hiatus to salvage the endeavor.  For one thing, they were stuck working around Taymor’s costumes, sets, and aerial stunts, since all of these elements were far too expensive to simply throw out.  And given that Taymor’s version ran for five months, longer than several of the shows on my Best and Worst lists, I feel absolutely no qualms about naming it the Worst Show of 2011.

Worst of 2011: #2

Worst of 2011

#2 – Wonderland

Carly Rose Sonenclar, Janet Decal, and Darren Ritchie in Wonderland

Frank Wildhorn has been a busy boy this year, with two Broadway premieres to his credit a mere 8 months apart.  He really should have reconsidered the order he premiered them in, because I am convinced the atrocity known as Wonderland killed the surprisingly good Bonnie and Clyde before it even started previews.

Now, I personally think the Alice in Wonderland story doesn’t adapt well to begin with.  The novel is a series of unrelated incidents that have no bearing on one another; because nothing Alice learns from one encounter influences her behavior in the next, the scenes can be placed in any order, and the only reason anyone would know is because we are so familiar with the source material.  (This is also why it is so easy for adaptations to add elements from the book’s sequel, Through the Looking Glass.)  In print, this works because of the whimsical descriptions and evocative imagery used by author Lewis Carol, but to make the story work onstage, adaptors are basically forced to create both a throughline and some kind of conflict.  Which means any adaptation of Alice in Wonderland faces an uphill battle, and the low quality of the resultant musical isn’t entirely Frank Wildhorn and his book writers’ fault.

But dear God, they didn’t help matters!  The score is made up of the most generic-sounding pop music imaginable, all of them highlighting Wildhorn’s bad habits as a composer.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: a key change is not a substitute for emotion, and repeating a chorus 10 times does not automatically make it better or catchier.  At least in Jekyll & Hyde, another show I despise, Wildhorn was writing for the incredibly talented Linda Eder, whose luscious voice made all those ridiculous power ballads sound much better than they actually were.  No such luck for Wonderland.  Instead of Eder, we get the abysmal Janet Decal. 

As an ex-performer, I always try to assume the best about any actor, but Decal just sucks.  Period, the end.  She couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag, and her thin, reedy voice is not at all thrilling or inspiring to listen to.  There are chorus girls in a dozen other Broadway shows with far more impressive instruments than Decal possesses; hell, you could find a singer of her caliber in any decent undergraduate theatre program.  There is absolutely no reason this woman should be starring in a Broadway musical, and it honestly makes me angry that they cast her.

But Decal wasn’t the only one stinking up the stage of the Marquis Theatre.  Jose Llana was just as bad playing the Cheshire Cat, renamed El Gato for this “urban, modern” take on the story.  Llana’s only real success in the show was managing to cram every negative Latino stereotype possible into his limited stage time, which is not the sort of behavior that should be encouraged or rewarded.  And as the Queen of Hearts, Karen Mason chewed so much scenery that I’m surprised there was any left at the end of the show; maybe Wonderland’s rumored $15 million budget came from having the rebuild the set after every performance.  Watching reasonably talented individuals like Darren Ritchie and Kate Shindle (the White Knight and Mad Hatter, respectively) struggle to rise above all the crap going on around them was just plain sad.

The list of problems goes on and on.  The show was stuffed to the brim with outdated cultural references (if you still think boy bands are ripe for parody, Wonderland is the show for you!) and paper-thin characters.  There’s some nonsense about the grown up Alice regaining her inner child and patching things up with her estranged daughter and husband, who also appear in the Wonderland-set sequences like some third rate Wizard of Oz knockoff.  There were a couple of interesting stage pictures and perhaps three minutes that bordered on entertaining (not consecutive minutes, mind you), but on the whole this was one of the worst shows I’ve seen in a loooong time.

In the end, I don’t know which is more upsetting:  that a show as horrendously awful as Wonderland made it to Broadway, or that it was still only the *second* worst show I saw this year.

Worst of 2011: #3

Worst Shows of 2011

#3 – Arcadia

Bel Powley, Raul Esparza, Lea Williams, and Tom Riley in Arcadia

Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia represents everything I hate about that snobby entity known as “The Theatre.”  Here is a show so concerned with being highbrow that it blatantly disregards concepts like interesting characters and dramatic tension in favor of hyper-literate philosophical mouthpieces and intellectual debate.  The end result is one of the least entertaining plays of the past 20 years, made even more insufferable by David Leveaux’s miscast and plodding revival.

The show’s very premise is the first indication that someone involved (likely Stoppard) was more interested in showing off his highly educated mind than in writing a compelling drama.  There are two distinct plot threads, one involving the tutoring of a precocious young girl in 1809 and the other the investigation by present-day scholars into a previously unknown chapter of the poet Lord Byron’s life.  Linking the two storylines is their shared location (the entire play is set in front room of an English country house) and a lot of talk about high-level math.  Yes, math.

Now, I’m not saying that a play in which large portions of dialogue deal with the contested authorship of an obscure work of literature or a 13-year-old girl’s discovery of a complex mathematical theorem nearly 150 years before it is formally recognized can’t make for interesting drama (although it would be an uphill battle).  I am saying that if you purposely make the dialogue of such a play so dense that only someone with a specialized master’s degree can understand it, you need to provide characters who display recognizable emotional conflict.  That way, those of us not intimately familiar with fractal equations and the biographies of 19^th century poets have something to latch on to.  But I guess Stoppard was afraid that would be the same as dumbing down his brilliant work of genius, so he instead opted for an extremely pretentious show that runs north of 3 hours in length. 

The actors in this production did nothing to help matters.  For starters, the cast had the biggest case of mush-mouth since Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain, making them virtually impossible to understand.  Since they were already talking about concepts and using jargon the average audience member isn’t familiar with, the extra barrier to comprehension made it frustrating beyond belief to try and follow the plot (assuming there was one to begin with).  The characterizations tended towards shrill more often than not – I guess math and literature make these people extremely angry – which made sitting through Arcadia feel like some kind of bizarre torture.

Everyone involved in this production needs to learn a simple lesson: plays are meant to entertain.  This does not mean they cannot be intelligent, thought-provoking, or challenging an audience’s assumptions about life and the universe.  But if people aren’t enjoying themselves, they aren’t going to go home and have lengthy discussions about the Big Ideas you tried to cram into your show.  They’re going to say “that sucked” and do their best to forget about the time and money they wasted on your crappy play.  That's what I’m doing with Arcadia, something I intend to avoid like the plague from now on.

Worst of 2011: #4

Worst Shows of 2011

#4 Sister Act

Patina Miller and the cast of Sister Act

The creators of Sister Act are going to have to say a lot of Hail Marys to atone for the multitude of sins committed by this movie adaptation gone awry.  It’s not often that a show manages to insult my intelligence *and* offend me, but Sister Act did both with such ease it’s almost scary.

One of the show’s many unforgiveable sins is the absolutely atrocious, anachronism-filled book.  I shudder to think what the show was like in London if Douglas Carter Beane’s many rewrites are considered actual improvements.  The show makes a point of being set in the 1970s (presumably to compliment Alan Menkin’s disco-infused score), but almost all of the jokes and the manner in which they’re delivered are supremely contemporary.  They also aren’t particularly funny, making the choice even more irritating.

The script also suffers from particularly uneven characterization, oftentimes violating the show’s established rules in an attempt for laughs.  The biggest example of this comes during the number “It’s Good to Be a Nun,” in which the members of the convent complain about the various aspects of life as a nun, like early mornings prayers and hours of meditation and self-study.  Now last time I checked, nobody in modern day America is forced to join a convent, and if these nuns are all so miserable why don’t they just leave?  The song would have been equally effective if the nuns had been enthusiastic about their lives, highlighting the fish out of water scenario lead character Delores finds herself in while actually being true the characters onstage. 

Which points to a larger problem with the show: although not Catholic, I left the show vaguely offended by the way the show continually mocked the Catholic faith and those who choose to live by it.  You would expect The Book of Mormon, from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, to be the most offensive show of the year when it comes to religion, but I genuinely feel like it has a greater affinity for the religion at its core.  Mormon pokes fun at some of the religion’s tenants, but never crosses the line into condemning those who lead their lives based on those teachings.  Sister Act actively judges all of its characters, condemning them for choosing to participate in such a deeply ritualized faith, and yet expects us to simultaneously empathize with these women.  Talk about mixed messages!

Outside of the various structural problems, the performances in Sister Act are all over the map.  Patina Miller is clearly talented and generally quite strong in the role Whoopi Goldberg made famous, but her performance lacks that spark of vitality you expect in a big budget musical comedy.  After playing 2 years on the West End prior to coming to Broadway, Miller’s performance has started to feel stale, as if the actress is on autopilot.  Victoria Clark’s Mother Superior also doesn’t quite work, although for reasons harder to pinpoint.  On its own, her dry and understated delivery is often hilarious, but since everyone else in the show opts for a much broader acting style, Clark seems oddly out of place.

The musical takes forever to get going, with much of its first act wasted on unfunny one-liners and god-awful subplots involving the male characters.  The men are actually so poorly written and haphazardly performed, that an easy way to determine the entertainment value of an upcoming scene or song is to ask yourself, “Do I see a male onstage?”  If you do, it’s an excellent time to check your program or go to the bathroom.

Sister Act disappoints on so many levels that it makes my blood boil.  Unlike some screen to stage transfers, the show actually has a premise that naturally lends itself to musicalization.  And while I enjoyed the Whoopi Goldberg film of the same name, it is by no means one of my favorites, so I don’t have a problem with the stage version’s decision to jettison large swaths of the film in favor of original material.  What I do have a problem with is almost all of those changes being for the worse.  I’m personally hoping the show posts a closing notice soon, and puts all of us out of Sister Act’s misery.

The Worst Shows of 2011

So today I thought I’d take a break from my Best of 2011 list to begin an equally important endeavor:  my “Worst Shows of 2011” list.  Like the “best of” countdown, this list will be limited to shows I have personally seen, because I believe all show should be given a chance to prove themselves before being slapped with such a demeaning title.  And despite rumors to the contrary, I am NOT a total Scrooge who hates everything and everyone, so this list will be limited to 5 shows as opposed to 10. 

To make the list, it is not enough for a show to be merely bad.  The “Worst of 2011” title is reserved for those productions so jaw-droppingly awful that you cannot believe none of the dozens of talented people who worked on it ever said, “You know what? This isn’t working and we should fix it.” 

The scariest thing about this list is how easy it was to compile.  Most of these shows sprang instantly to mind when I sat down to list the year’s worst productions, and were so nearly equal in their awfulness that it was a genuine struggle to figure out what order to rank them in.  So batten down the hatches and get ready for the smack talk, because here comes the #5 worst show of the past year!

 Worst Shows of 2011

#5 Born Yesterday

Jim Belushi and Nina Arianda in Born Yesterday

Some shows should not be revived.  Having seen this extremely ill-advised production starring Nina Arianda and Jim Belushi, I feel confident in saying Born Yesterday is one of those shows.  A creaky old relic from a bygone era, the script’s brief moments of comedy do nothing to excuse the overarching dullness at the play’s center.  Director Doug Hughes made an all-too-common mistake of modern day directors and attempted to use a naturalistic approach to farce, simultaneously draining all entertainment value from the piece and highlighting the lack of substance at its proto-feminist center. 

Equally offensive was Jim Belushi’s positively maddening portrayal of domineering gangster Harry Brock.  His character ended up being so despicable (and not in a good way), that his every entrance prompted eye rolling and repeated prayers for his quick exit.  Not since Henry Higgins have I encountered such an unforgivable misogynist linked to a play’s protagonist, although on the bright side Born Yesterday eventually does free beleaguered protagonist Billie Dawn free of the louse.  This kind of relationship may have been acceptable and even funny to audiences in 1946, but in 2011 we need a bit more justification as to why Billie is dating such a cad in the first place.  Perhaps if somewhere in his portrayal Belushi had shown a moment of tenderness of charm, we the audience would have an easier time comprehending how she ended up in such an unhealthy relationship.

Now, to be fair, Born Yesterday had one very bright silver lining.  It allowed for the Broadway debut of the sensational Nina Arianda, who tried her damndest to save this sinking ship.  She brought excellent comic timing and a large amount of intelligence to Dawn, and was justly rewarded with a Tony nomination for her efforts.  But throughout the show’s runtime, I couldn’t help but wish Arianda had found a better vehicle for her talents.  (Luckily she has since found it, in the form of the excellent Venus in Fur.)

Given the thousands upon thousands of scripts ripe for revival, you really have to wonder what is running through producers’ heads when they pick a clunker like Born Yesterday.  Which is perhaps the greatest sin committed by this revival: it took prime Broadway real estate and money away from a more deserving show.  That money, time, and energy could have been put towards reviving a much better show, or heaven forbid, mounting a new one.  Or saving starving children in Africa.  You know, something worthwhile.