What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
KateSam
Understudy Joined: 9/24/16
#1What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 6:58am
I saw it thought it was meh. I did not care for it. I am just wondering if it should of had an out of town?
broadwayguy91
Broadway Star Joined: 12/23/15
#3What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 7:38am
It should have had an out of town tryout.
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jbird5
Broadway Star Joined: 12/20/15
#4What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 7:43am
It should have toured Pennsylvania first.
The Other One
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/1/08
#5What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 8:25am
broadwayguy91 said: "it's all Will Swenson's fault."
Ha! Good one.
Nobody cared about the historical significance and fall-out of a show nobody remembered to begin with. It's hard to tell people that something they never heard of is important. Or, it's hard to succeed at it when you have to spend so much money to do it.
#6What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 8:27am
Nothing really. It was slightly flawed brilliance IMO.
If you didn't like it in it's current form, I doubt any restructuring of the piece would've changed your opinion.
"Oh look at the time, three more intelligent plays just closed and THE ADDAMS FAMILY made another million dollars" -Jackie Hoffman, Broadway.com Audience Awards
#7What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 8:29am
I would say that, like most failures, the book was the biggest problem. It seemed to me to be overly diffuse, unfocused, meandering. And beefing up McDonald's role, which should really have been secondary, to suit her stardom was a big mistake. She had a lot of songs, but no real story to play. (This was, many believe, the same problem that killed Grind and Moon Over Buffalo.)
MrsSallyAdams
Broadway Star Joined: 11/12/13
#8What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 8:48am
The book was 3/4's exposition with little narrative and no character arcs.
Audra McDonald got her heart broken and her career wrecked by two characters we learn nothing about.
Billy Porter spent the whole show shouting and insulting his collaborators. The subtext was that he was a self-loathing gay man. The Larry Hart of the group. Then in his final bit of narration he shames the audience for assuming he was gay. I mentally screamed THEN WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT IS YOUR F**KING POINT?!
threepanelmusicals.blogspot.com
#9What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 8:55am
It was too bloated in my opinion. They tried to give all of the leads equal stage time which resulted in an exhausting evening where there was so much going on, but very little actually happened in the story.
"There’s nothing quite like the power and the passion of Broadway music. "
neonlightsxo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/29/08
#10What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 9:14am
I think if they had had another book writer or someone else in the room besides George it may have been a better result. I found the earlier, longer version to be much more interesting, though I guess objectively the second version was "better."
#11What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 9:24am
I found it unfocused, and really hated the narration throughout. Did it want to be a biopic of the authors or a show about the actual making of the show? They also showed very little of the actual Shuffle Along.
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#12What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 9:28am
I thought it was pretty fantastic. It was smart, incisive, and spectacular.
It did feel more like a Ken Burns documentary about Shuffle Along than it felt like a traditional musical. More scholarly than heartfelt. I do think it might have been more emotionally involving which in turn might have made it more successful.
Jesus saves. I spend.
BroadwayConcierge
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/24/15
#13What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 9:30am
The book was overblown and overwritten about a segment of history that it didn't try to make us care about.
#14What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 9:50am
I loved it, flaws and all. The first act was perfection; the second act is where things went off the rails, simply because the scope went from very tight- putting up Shuffle Along- to very, very broad- the impact of Shuffle Along on everyone and everything for decades.
If anything went wrong with it, it was that Wolfe banked on people caring about the show and its legacy based on facts and analysis alone. It was enough for me- I cared. In a Broadway musical theatre climate that favors easy emotions and gestures toward larger themes over deeper interrogation, I thought the show was a bold creation. It looked at race and history in a far more meaningful way than Hamilton, even. But I can see that not everyone wants to sit for 3 hours for that.
"...everyone finally shut up, and the audience could enjoy the beginning of the Anatevka Pogram in peace."
Updated On: 9/30/16 at 09:50 AM
#15What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 10:08am
I'm afraid that I can't agree that the show had something cogent to say about race and history; it was not only often reductive, it also was full of Trump-style lies. For instance, Shuffle Along was not the first Broadway show to feature a jazz score - the reviews for Gershwin's La La Lucille, two whole years earlier, called it "the incarnation of jazz." And Gershwin certainly didn't steal a clarinet riff and turn it into "I Got Rhythm" - a song that wasn't even written until eight years after Shuffle Along closed.
The book's heart was in the right place; but the truth is good enough to tell this story without resorting to fabricated showbiz clichés that feel old, no matter how new they might be.
neonlightsxo
Broadway Legend Joined: 7/29/08
#16What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 10:09am
And Gershwin certainly didn't steal a clarinet riff and turn it into "I Got Rhythm" - a song that wasn't even written until eight years after Shuffle Along closed.
As soon as I heard that line I was like: how can they possibly prove that? I need the receipts on that one, George.
10086sunset
Broadway Legend Joined: 2/8/16
#17What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 10:15am
jbird5 said: "It should have toured Pennsylvania first."
Hilarious...
broadwayguy91
Broadway Star Joined: 12/23/15
#18What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 11:11am
I wonder if Forbbiden Broadway will parody Shuffle Along at some point.
#19What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 12:56pm
neonlightsxo said: "And Gershwin certainly didn't steal a clarinet riff and turn it into "I Got Rhythm" - a song that wasn't even written until eight years after Shuffle Along closed.
As soon as I heard that line I was like: how can they possibly prove that? I need the receipts on that one, George.
"
https://books.google.com/books?id=7n6Ir7OUS8MC&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=i+got+rhythm+plagiarism&source=bl&ots=ThVPXMaL&sig=bAVl_5un79pmPKN7n98jYHvmVJ8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx0MOLx7fPAhXFNx4KHSCgDJg4ChDoAQgqMAU#v=onepage&q=i%20got%20rhythm%20plagiarism&f=false
Broadwaybeauty2
Chorus Member Joined: 9/29/16
#20What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 1:14pm
I too loved it. And the Tony nominating committee loved it as well. I'm not sure it's for everyone, but it was well done, and the singing and dancing was superb. George continues to amaze me in every show he directs.
#21What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 1:17pm
broadwayguy91 said: "I wonder if Forbbiden Broadway will parody Shuffle Along at some point.
There is pregnant "Audra" in Spamilton and a couple of lines as to why she left the show.
#23What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 1:25pm
It seems to me that the excerpt to which Dancingthrulife2 links does more to disprove the ridiculous notion that a brilliant composer like George Gershwin stole four notes from a pit musician and turned them into the entirety of "I Got Rhythm." Clearly, this passage is the source for Wolfe's dialogue (it seems to my memory to be stated almost verbatim in the show - talk about plagiarism), but it's utterly ridiculous - mainly because it's musically idiotic.
The book claims that the purloined notes are C#-D#-F#-G#; those notes would be the notes for the lyric "I got rhythm" (and "I got my man" and others), but only when the song is in the key of F#, which is not a key often employed; in fact, most musicians would just use the enharmonic key of Gb, which is easier (but not easy) to read. (In Gb, the notes would be Db-Eb-Gb-Ab.)
In solfège, the progression is Sol La Do Re, 4 simple ascending notes. The rhythm is a blank downbeat, three dotted quarter notes, and an eighth note tied to a half note. It's astonishingly simple; not a complex progression worth stealing - AND it's merely a fraction of a full melody, sans harmonics.
Gershwin had been contributing syncopated/jazz songs to Broadway shows since 1918, three years before Shuffle Along (Blake's first show score - prior to that he was a performer on the vaudeville circuit).
So yes, the story has been made (up), and repeated; but there's absolutely no reason to put any credence in it.
#24What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 1:50pm
New, I think the more important point in the book cited was that African-Americans felt/feel their musical language was appropriated. And thus were more likely to believe that Gershwin "stole" those four notes.
This is not to say your argument isn't convincing, because it is. By the same token, I seriously doubt Richard Rodgers stole the first few notes of "Bali Hai" from "Over the Rainbow".
#25What went wrong with Shuffle Along?
Posted: 9/30/16 at 2:02pm
True, true, Gaveston - we are an exceptionally territorial, acquisitive, and selfish species, living in terror that someone will take away something that we think "belongs" to us.
Music is music; it all belongs to everyone. No group ever "owned" syncopation, just as China doesn't "own" the pentatonic scale, nor the Irish 6/8 time.