Did anyone see this monstrous bomb about Joe McCarthy in 1989?
The music was by HAIR director Tom O'Horgan, and the show was sung-through as was popular at the time. It played three previews before being shut down due to "financial problems." Reportedly only 11% of the seats for its three performances were sold and backer Adela Holzer was later arrested for fraud due to her backdoor funding of the show.
I saw the 3rd and final preview because I heard it was closing. What I remember is Michel Leslie being a hoot, not being sure if it was supposed to be satirical with no consistent tone to give a clue, the score being...I'd already forgotten by the curtain call, a but ugly physical production top to bottom, and the actors, all in flop sweat, visibly counting the minutes until they could flee the theater. Not one for the ages,
Actually, I thought it was, by its awfulness, which was stunning. In hindsight, though, I much preferred sitting through it to the critically-acclaimed bores and juvenilia we are forced to endure nowadays.
I was in the show and things always seem different when your are inside of a production like this rather than looking from the outside. There were problems, not the least of which was a Producer arrested for embezzlement, but it had an extraordinary cast. Jp Daugherty as Joe McCarthy, Rick Ryder as Roy Cohn were wonderful. The late Tom O'Horgan discovered me and was responsible for my subsequent career. After all these years, it still hurts that we did not open.
Wilmington: Thank you very much for your kind words. I needed to see them at this time.
joined:2/2/14
joined:
2/2/14
Posted: 4/28/16 at 8:06pm