Interview about demise of Wonderland on Broadway

[kmbrlee8252]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 3:41pm

Article by the St. Petersburg times in Tampa is with Judy Lisi, a producer for Wonderland. Probably the most atrocious treatment of an actor I've ever seen. Blaming the flop that show was on Decal? Ridiculous. I saw the show, I almost walked out, the writing, story and choreography was atrocious. The concept recording was great, the end product sucked, plain and simple.
Read the article here

[newintown]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 3:57pm

"The failure of Wonderland was a huge blow to the reputation of Wildhorn..."

He already had a reputation for writing the musical equivalent of Velveeta - how could that get any worse?

[Barcelona]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:02pm

Eek, today is not a good day for Florida.

I was under the impression that Wildhorn's reputation was already going down the drain...

[trentsketch]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:06pm

Are you kidding me? Dacal gave an unfocused performance? Where's my swooning couch. I'm about to faint from shock.

Unfocused is the last thing I'd call her performance. She had a terrible arc in a show that was supposed to be about her character and she sold it like a champ. How can this producer blame Janet for the dance songs getting cut from the show? How can this producer blame Janet for the choreography and book rewrites? Is she insane? I hope she doesn't produce again if she has no idea what clearly went so wrong with a big flop like that.

[Eris0303]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:10pm

"Well, Janet fell in love and got happy," Lisi said, suggesting that Dacal had lost the laserlike focus that a top-notch performance demands. "There are personal things about a show that you just can't anticipate."

In the one happy ending for Wonderland, Dacal and her co-star Darren Ritchie, who played Alice's husband, Jack, had a storybook backstage romance. After the curtain call of the final performance, Ritchie proposed to her onstage, and Dacal gleefully accepted.

Um, forgive me if I'm wrong but didn't Ritchie say in his proposal that he'd fallen for her two years prior? She didn't fall in love between Tampa and NYC as I recall. If you're going to create a scapegoat at least get your facts straight, lady. Sheesh.

[LegallyBroadway2]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:11pm

Kate Shindle is pissed.

[egghumor]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:11pm

Yeah, it's rather amusing reading about Wildhorn's "reputation" as if it wasn't already down the tubes long before WONDERLAND. Ms. Lisi even admits that Michael David warned her that Wildhorn was "poison with the critics." How much more of a tip-off do you need, lady? I didn't find her comments about Janet Dacal all that bad. To me, she was talking about how the role suffered greatly after changes made by the "doctors" in New York, and that Dacal's central character was now more of a witness -- and one she could not salvage through performance. At least that's how it read to me.

If you read post-mortem comments by creators and prodcuers after a flop, they almost always blame anyone other than themselves. These people in Florida foolishly lost a mountain of money, and so it's not surprising that they're scrambling for explanation.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:16pm

egghumor, she point blank accused Janet of not doing her job because she fell in love with Darren. "Unfocused," she said, as if Janet did a terrible job because of her relationship with Darren. I don't see that as blaming the rewrites. That's blaming the actor.

[LizzieCurry]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:18pm

THIS IS DISGUSTING. @wonderlandbway owes janet dacal an apology. yes, blame the actors who worked their balls off. MAD.
http://twitter.com/#!/kateshindle/status/88320864659054592

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:26pm

The world premiere first preview of this show was a workable piece of musical theatre that could have done well. The bottom line is that between Tampa and Broadway they took about a million steps backwards, and the final product on Broadway was just a joke. I love the music, I know a lot of people don't, but the story (and I use that word very loosely here) was a mess, and the book was a wreck. Blaming the performers is ridiculous. The cast can only do so much with bad material.

[philly03]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 4:30pm

I'm surprised this article took so long to get on this board...

Darren and Janet MET at the recording studio for the concept album around August I believe in 2009, singing songs such as "Love Begins" together.

Janet did all that was asked of her and was up against some big walls - firstly, she was playing Alice, totally crashing against the norm of appearance for Alice. They had two others do the workshops and want not (Burkhardt & L. Kennedy), who fit that old mold.

Janet was asked to play three very different characters... My least favourite was the role she had on Broadway. It wasn't her fault, it was the new writers.

They are entirely idiots (writers and producing team alike) to take out all of the romance of the piece. The Broadway production lacked any kind of love song, and only a brief scene. The show on Broadway was such a travesty, and even though Janet got some really bad notices (including one that called her "un-engaging") it's not and cannot be entirely her fault.

That being said, I actually sat there and witnessed Judy (who is a very nice lady and headlined the Wonderland project) at a talkback in Tampa in January stand up mid-way in the audience to start answering questions and negativity toward the comments people were giving to the cast about how many plotholes there were. She stood and told everyone of how they needed to iron some stuff out, but we didn't understand because of all the previous scripts there were that made them that way and other awful answers.
Updated On: 7/5/11 at 04:30 PM

[IdinaBellFoster]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 5:14pm

Yup blame the actor who tried to make your 3 Million dollar music work.

[Anakela]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 5:33pm

So that's what it takes to get a non-"tightrope walking" (her words) response about Wonderland from Shindle... I love pissed off Shindle. Wanna buy her some shots and hear some Wonderland stories.

And sorry, even if I wasn't a Dacal fan the only person who comes off poorly in that piece is Lisi. Aside from the shot at Dacal ("fell in love and got happy" is a *negative*? That sure sounds like a fun place to work.), the lead producer went on record saying that she didn't know about the hiring of a co-author of the book? How as a producer do you not know about something like that? What else did she not know about?

[BroadwayBen]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 5:57pm

Anyone witnessing Wonderland could tell it was produced by total incompetents. This article is just the etching on the tombstone.

[evic]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 6:00pm

If these rich producers didn't like the direction that the show was taking, then they should have stood up to the creative staff and threatened to yank their money.....the show evidently lacked a focus and a concept and the creatives were afraid to commit to one and they panicked and hired outsiders who had nothing to do with the original creation =a recipe for disaster. Scott Ellis was the best they could find?-Don't you dare blame the actors- you are talking about the most professional group of people to be found in any business. You wanted to be in the big league- somewhere that you evidently have no business playing in. Amateurs!

[philly03]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 6:18pm

The producers were so convinced they had this great show back in January, and when critics uninvited showed up to review they relized they had problems. Not to mention it's word of mouth wasn't good either.

It went from musical comedy to drama, and this piece is supposed to be funny, light hearted not dramatic.

I couldn't agree more ... they brought in two people who clearly had not seen either of the previous incarnations and ruined it. They picked the concept of "home" as their concept and it just was not what it was about. (I'm baffled they found some sort of huge devout fans (though few) through it all, especially those who had only seen the Broadway version)

[philly03]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 7:07pm

And Darren Ritchie responds...

"[Wonderland] has closed and it had nothing to do with me or Janet it had everything to do with that the show was not received well.. It's dead, over and we are so glad we got to be a part of it!!
J.Flemming misquoted Lisi to make a story. Period. "
Darren's Twitter

[lizliz]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 7:51pm

The failure of Wonderland was a huge blow to the reputation of Wildhorn, a prolific composer who once had three musicals running simultaneously on Broadway: Jekyll & Hyde, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Civil War. His previous show, Dracula, the Musical, which opened in 2004, was a flop, though.

Didn't "The Civil War" run for all of about three months? I always jokingly refer to myself as "one of the tens of people who saw TCW on Broadway." How does that one get counted as a success?

[Anakela]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 7:55pm

I don't think it's being counted as a 'success,' rather just being counted in the three shows at once factoid? Although it does read weirdly when followed by spelling out of Dracula as a flop.

And ibdb says seven weeks (excluding previews), so you really were one of the tens. :)
Updated On: 7/5/11 at 07:55 PM

[philly03]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 8:00pm

Jekyll made money on the road, but the rest all flopped (all 5 productions). Jekyll, Pimerpnel and Civil War all lost $20 MIL together.

Civil War at least got a few Tony nominations (and had a ground-breaking concept album, it was (mostly) very famous country and soul singers including Patti LaBelle, Hootie and the Blowfish, and even such Broadway legends as Betty Buckley); Dracula was a total all around flop and really destroyed Frank's credibility on Broadway.


Updated On: 7/5/11 at 08:00 PM

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 8:14pm

No matter how good a Wildhorn show will be, it will not succeed. The critics will see to it

He is the Jerry Lewis of Broadway

[adamgreer]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 9:39pm

I thought Dacal was pretty terrible in the show (and proved she can't carry a show), but her falling in love had nothing to do with that.

Nor was her performance the sole reason the show flopped. Updated On: 7/5/11 at 09:39 PM

[ravnquest1]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 9:57pm

Well, many people (including me) were wondering who keeps giving Wildhorn and his collaborators money to produce these turds. Now we know. I feel somewhat sorry for the Tampa- area investors that were sold on this show by people like Judy Lisi. What a classless interview.

[hyperbole_and_a_half]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 10:01pm

Meh, I don't understand the fake outrage over this. A producer gave a post-mortem for a failed show. She discussed various failures, including the composer's reputation with critics, the director's over-involvement, the toxic vultures in the New York press, and the performance of the lead actress...but it's only lead actress part we're wounded about? Or did I miss Kate Shindle's tweet in which she took up a banner in Michael Riedel's defense?

Spare me. Janet Dacal had been with the show for quite some time and was not divorced from the creative process. She may not have been a shot-caller, but she certainly was no peon either. Could she have turned the role of Alice into Mother Courage v2.0? No, but regardless of the way the character was written, she did not do the show any favors with her bland, forgettable performance.

Are producers not allowed to have opinions? If anything, I'd suggest that the next time she puts on a Lead Producer hat, Ms. Lisi needs to be a little free-er with her opinions; doing so for Wonderland might have saved the show.

[trentsketch]

Posted: 7/5/11 at 10:08pm

My outrage isn't fake. I really liked Dacal in this (her character arc was terrible, going from anger to confusion to reluctant acceptance to...whatever happened in the Victorian Gentleman scene). I thought she did more than the script called for her to do. The problem was the character Alice being passive in the "and here's the next character, and here's the next character, and here's the next character, and here's the next character, and here's the intermission" structure of the show. Alice didn't drive the change, the other characters did. Janet did what the script called for her. Short of improvising onstage and possibly getting fired, I don't see how Janet could have done anything to fix that character. And I'm talking "there used to be a great song here, so here's this pointless scene instead" levels of improv, not change a line or note improv.

The problem with the show was the wretched book. I can live with the block set design and the scattered score. The story of Alice isn't exactly linear, but at least it makes sense. Wonderland did not make sense. It made my head hurt in Act II.