Examples of miscasting that damaged a show- Page 4
Examples of miscasting that damaged a show
#75Examples of miscasting that damaged a show
Posted: 10/24/12 at 4:02amI was actually really excited to see Rubin-vega as Fantine when she was first announced. I thought it was such interesting daring casing for a role that over the years had become over sung. I love divas belting big notes as much as the next gay but I thought it would be really interesting to hear a woman with a raw rough sounding voice act the song with a new interpretation. It was just a train wreck though. She couldn't sing it she didn't act it she just murdered the ear drums of everyone in the theater with her.
Thparkaly
Stand-by Joined: 9/11/12
#76Examples of miscasting that damaged a show
Posted: 10/25/12 at 11:40amUpdated On: 11/8/17 at 11:40 AM
#77Examples of miscasting that damaged a show
Posted: 10/25/12 at 5:44pm
I would strongly question the assertion that Sean Hayes damaged PROMISES, PROMISES. The production recouped, I believe (or came close to recouping), and his notices were pretty positive overall. The main problem I have with some of the names put forth in this thread is that they seem to come from a place of personal displeasure in an individual performance, rather than a case in which someone's presence actually HURT a show.
One example I thought of that I think works on all levels is Ben Stiller and Jennifer Jason Leigh in THE HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES. Both were miscast and not very good (Stiller mostly just weak, Leigh downright embarrassing), and their performances seemed to tank the revival, which closed early and at a loss despite having a decent advance prior to opening. That's what I consider a miscasting that damaged a show--if it leads to financial difficulties and the like.
"You travel alone because other people are only there to remind you how much that hook hurts that we all bit down on. Wait for that one day we can bite free and get back out there in space where we belong, sail back over water, over skies, into space, the hook finally out of our mouths and we wander back out there in space spawning to other planets never to return hurrah to earth and we'll look back and can't even see these lives here anymore. Only the taste of blood to remind us we ever existed. The earth is small. We're gone. We're dead. We're safe."
-John Guare, Landscape of the Body
#78Examples of miscasting that damaged a show
Posted: 10/25/12 at 6:07pm
As I've always heard the word used, an actor is "miscast" if his or her immutable characteristics (age, body, face, voice, personality, etc.) make his or her presence in the role unbelievable or distracting. That is different from an actor who makes bold choices that ultimately don't work.
Lauren Bacall headlined a tour of WONDERFUL TOWN in 1976. She was miscast because in playing Ruth Sherwood she required one to believe that a small town Ohio woman ventured to NYC to become a famous writer at the ripe old age of 52. (And did so without ever thinking of herself as a spinster.)
Once one got over the improbable casting, Bacall was quite good in sections of the show and she certainly sold tickets wherever she went. But a purist might rightly claim that we weren't seeing the "real" WONDERFUL TOWN and ought to wonder why George Hearn was marrying his mother.
Updated On: 10/25/12 at 06:07 PM
