what is the most overrated musical of all time- Page 10

[bexplex]

Posted: 10/6/17 at 10:00am

ebizzle said: "Dear Evan Hansen, hands down"

You are over rated!!! DEH saved my life. I almost did it but then I thought I could be like Him and get zoey so I didn’t do it. And now I manage a corporate HQ in NYC

[Patti LuPone FANatic]

Posted: 10/7/17 at 7:49am

Passing Strange:  When it was on Broadway, I thought:  "huh?"  Around 2010 or so, I saw "Spamalot" on tour in Dallas.  I liked the Lady of the Lake.  Overall, I thought it was highly pretentious and too precious.  Their type of humor bored me to no end.  I left at intermission.  

[BroadwayBrat]

Posted: 10/8/17 at 9:53am

Phantom!

[skies]

Posted: 10/9/17 at 3:45am

Man of La Mancha,  "to dream the impossible dream"...play that torturous number nonstop on a poor sap and they might prefer waterboarding.

[falsettoswasrobbed]

Posted: 10/9/17 at 2:50pm

coreman009 said: "Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812......I will now get attacked by the stans."

i’m just curious, but what’s your reasoning? i don’t mean to attack you in any way and i don’t want to start anything, but i’ve seen it show up quite a few times on here but no one’s really explained it so i was just wondering :)

[bryan32]

Posted: 10/9/17 at 3:09pm

poto is overrated it needs to colesd

[ebizzle]

Posted: 10/9/17 at 4:03pm

bexplex said: "ebizzle said: "Dear Evan Hansen, hands down"

You are over rated!!! DEH saved my life. I almost did it but then I thought I could be like Him and get zoey so I didn’t do it. And now I manage a corporate HQ in NYC"

This is dizzyingly incoherent 
 

Updated On: 10/9/17 at 04:03 PM

[denali.fire]

Posted: 10/9/17 at 4:28pm

Hamilton

Cats

Mormon

Memphis

 

 

[daisybeetle]

Posted: 10/9/17 at 11:25pm

Cats

[JayG 2]

Posted: 10/10/17 at 6:43pm

Come From Away.  A musical that made me uncomfortable and, finally, angry.

[VoteBenanti]

Posted: 10/13/17 at 3:02am

ohmygod dear evan hansen and then also the fans of great comet have made it so overrated and need to calm the eff down

[IHeartNY2]

Posted: 10/13/17 at 9:59am

Hamilton

[Jarethan]

Posted: 10/15/17 at 12:29am

1.  Oklahoma.  Maybe in 1943, it was good in its time; however, the first time I saw it live was in the early 70s revival at the Palace, and I thought it was agony to get through. In my pantheon of awfulness, the top is reserved permanently for everything to do with the Ado Annie, Ali Hakim, Will Parker subplot.

2.  Fun Home.  I know a lot of people on this board love it.  I think it is a bloody bore, although I do admit to liking a decent amount of the CD.

3. The Threepenny Opera.  I am willing to concede that I may not have seen a decent production yet -- I sat through Alan Cumming and Sting productions -- but also the highly acclaimed version with Raul Julia.  Hated all three.

4.  Not sure about Cats.  I don't know if it got the kind of reviews that would make it eligible as 'overrated'.  If it did, it is eligible to be tied for #1 with Oklahoma.

5.  Meta-musical: Fosse.  Not a true musical IMO, but still totally awful (again IMO), despite getting a lot of great reviews and winning the Tony.

6.  Others that may not be good enough to be eligible for 'most overrated', but still bloody bores IMO compared to the reviews and awards:  Once, 2 Gentlemen From Verona, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, City of Angels, Into the Woods.

7.  Good, but just not as good as the hype: A Chorus Line, Annie. Book of Mormon.

[GeorgeandDot]

Posted: 10/15/17 at 12:33am

Oy.  Checked into this thread for two seconds and I already have a headache.

[denali.fire]

Posted: 10/15/17 at 8:40am

These threads are meant to give migraines.

[David10086]

Posted: 10/15/17 at 11:06am

Miss Saigon (the original run)

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 10/15/17 at 12:18pm

poto is overrated it needs to colesd

Any show that is still selling tickets, making a profit and still in demand doesn't need to close.  Quite the opposite, in fact. Phantom will close when it is losing money instead of making money, just like any other show.

[BroadwayRox3588]

Posted: 10/15/17 at 12:30pm

bryan32 said: "poto is overrated it needs to colesd"

Good luck with that.

[broadwaybabywannabe2]

Posted: 10/15/17 at 1:33pm

HELLO DOLLY!...even with Midler in the title role this musical is terrible...how many times does Jerry Herman have to repeat 'Hello Dolly'  in the title song...yikes!

and even though i hate the title song from MAME for the reasons listed above, i find the rest of the score to be brilliant...so essentially they are the same musical but MAME has a better over-all score!

[CallMeAl2]

Posted: 10/15/17 at 8:38pm

 Cats. Hands down. Four decades of theater-going and it is hard to find the context for this theme park musical. It's a dance concert based on poems - which is fine if that's what people took it for. But God's gift to revive Broadway - which is what it became - it is not.

Another barometer - ask the cast 9 months in to the run. It gets incredibly boring. There is no dramatic through-line for anyone - nothing to play night after night. Initially the dancing is a challenge and some of the songs are fun - but it is essentially vaudeville. It's a revue. 

I have no ill feelings towards it and the spectacle is fun and I get the entertainment value. But it's empty calories pretending to be a meal.

Let me add a note for the people who hate my favorite musical, A Chorus Line. I get it. I took some friends to see the tour about five years in to the run and was very disappointed myself. Each actor was just going up there and delivering their big song. There didn't seem to be much drama pulling the audience through the evening.

Please understand that is not the way it started out. The tension in the original cast (I saw them twice) was uncomfortable. You felt like a voyeur prying into these people's lives. Paul's monologue was so painful you wanted to stand up and tell him to just stop. And then when he twisted his ankle and was taken away you were just in shock that everything he had done was for nothing. (Which took you in to "What I Did for Love" .

That experience may not be possible to recreate. God knows Michael Bennett tortured those kids to get that performance on stage - he made their life hell for a year. And now no one will really be blown away by "One" because we've seen it so many times. The stardust of "genius" has faded from exposure. 

So go ahead and call it overrated. I don't mind. At this point, you may be right. But I will always see it in my mind the way it was when it was a revelation. 

Updated On: 10/15/17 at 08:38 PM

[Jarethan]

Posted: 10/16/17 at 12:00am

CallMeAl2 said: "Cats.Hands down. Four decades of theater-going and it is hard to find the context for this theme park musical. It's a dance concert based on poems -which is fine if that's what people took it for. But God's gift to revive Broadway - which is what it became - it is not.

Another barometer - ask the cast 9 months in to the run. It gets incredibly boring. There is no dramatic through-line for anyone - nothing to play night after night. Initially the dancing is a challenge and some of the songs are fun - but it is essentially vaudeville. It's a revue.

I have no ill feelings towards it and the spectacle is fun and I get the entertainment value. But it's empty calories pretending to be a meal.

Let me add a note for the people who hate my favorite musical, A Chorus Line. I get it. I took some friends to see the tour about five years in to the run and was very disappointedmyself. Each actor was just going up there and delivering their big song. There didn't seem to be much drama pulling the audience through the evening.

Please understand that is not the way it started out. The tension in the original cast (I saw them twice) was uncomfortable. You felt like a voyeur prying into these people's lives. Paul's monologue was so painful you wanted to stand up and tell him to just stop. And then when he twisted his ankle and was taken away you were just in shock that everything he had done was for nothing. (Which took you in to "What I Did for Love" .

That experience may not be possible to recreate. God knows Michael Bennett tortured those kids to get that performance on stage - he made their life hell for a year. And now no one will really be blown away by "One" because we've seen it so many times. The stardust of "genius" has faded from exposure.

So go ahead and call it overrated. I don't mind. At this point, you may be right. But I will always see it in my mind the way it was when it was a revelation."

I saw ACL three times before the end of 1975.  I was disappointed the first time, based on the hoopla, but enjoyed it.  I saw it a second time because I had already purchased tickets for two performances...same reaction: enjoyable, but what is the fuss...Chicago is much better; saw it a third time when friends visited and HAD to see it.  (I don't know why, but it was a lot easier to get standing room in those days).  Same reaction.  Maybe you had to be in show business, which I was not.  I thought the direction / choreography were great, the score was mediocre (my opinion hasn't changed in 42 years), thought the stories were a little too 'episodic'.

Somehow, after seeing it 3 times in 4 - 5 months, I never had interest in seeing it again.   Probably not helped by the fact that I saw the movie, which is tied with The Producers and The Wiz as the worst film version of a hit musical EVER!!!

[CUADncrSweeti]

Posted: 10/16/17 at 1:19am

SO many Sondheim haters on here 

[Sivan2]

Posted: 10/16/17 at 9:32am

Wicked. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike it but I just felt it was too expensive for just being okay. I also didn't care for the music. 

 

I would have said Les Mis because I thought it was boring, but I really liked the music. Cats to me also had great music but I admit the overall theme is bizarre when I think about it. No joke, I always thought Cats would have made for a great animated musical lol...

Although I haven't seen it, Hamilton has 0 appeal to me. I would only see it if by chance I could get a decent ticket really cheap (yeah never going to happen) just to see it to see the hype. I watched the thing about it on PBS. A musical with rap and trying to have a diverse cast simply for the sake of being diverse and PC (but today's standards) is nauseating to me. 

 

My favorite musical is Phantom. I loved the music and did not think the story line was boring at all.

Updated On: 10/16/17 at 09:32 AM

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 10/16/17 at 2:55pm

A musical with rap and trying to have a diverse cast simply for the sake of being diverse and PC (but today's standards) is nauseating to me. 

It's not "just for the sake of being diverse and PC".  It was a very deliberate and brilliant artistic choice that makes perfect sense.  Ditto with the musical styles he utilized and the characters/scenes they were assigned.  Perhaps if you saw the show you might understand why he made the choices he did.  It sounds like you find it "nauseating" because you've made a snap judgment without knowing much about the show at all.

[forgetmenotnyc]

Posted: 10/17/17 at 2:46pm

I guess it's any show that you felt you needed to see even if you had to cough up more money than you've ever paid before in order to satisfy the overall extremely high "ratings" & then be major disappointed? I agree with lots here: CATS, PRODUCERS, PASSING STRANGE, SPRING AWAKENING, MEMPHIS, BETTE MIDLER/HELLO DOLLY. I would say ONCE but the hype never worked on me so I never saw it. What about shows that you saw & didn't pay much for but later can't remember what the hell it was about & why you went in the first place? One that fits that category for me was BROOKLYN. Did it even have anything to do with the boro?

Updated On: 10/23/17 at 02:46 PM