Shows You Grew to Dislike After Being Involved With a Production of It? - Page 2

[ACL2006]

Posted: 1/6/18 at 5:19pm

Oklahoma
Kiss Me, Kate
Peter Pan
The King and I

[elephantseye]

Posted: 1/6/18 at 7:57pm

My school did Grease and Bye Bye Birdie in the same year and I almost quit the department.

[SchuylWERKsister]

Posted: 1/6/18 at 10:19pm

I disliked Once on this Island for quite a while after being in it.

[smidge]

Posted: 1/6/18 at 10:50pm

Leaf Coneybear said: "Hello Dolly. It was one of my favorites before O was cast, just thought it was cute with catchy songs. By the first run through I realized how mind numbingly boring it is. "

Oh, Bette!!!

[BwayDreamer00]

Posted: 1/6/18 at 11:54pm

The Addams Family 

The songs are fun but only to an extent......singing When Your An Addams and Full Disclosure are fun at first and listening to Pulled backstage is also a fun little lipsync party but once the show ended hearing them come up on shuffle on my phone made me want to throw it into a sewer....also the show is uncannily short and there's really no resolution it just kind of ends? Wednesday and Lucas get married at 18...because? Fester goes to the moon bye? Alice and Mal work it out in one 40 second reprise of Crazier Than You and Grandma and Pugsley don't really have an ending. It was fun just now ugh 

[John Adams]

Posted: 1/7/18 at 8:13am

smidge said: "Leaf Coneybear said: "Hello Dolly. It was one of my favorites before O was cast, just thought it was cute with catchy songs. By the first run through I realized how mind numbingly boring it is. "

Oh, Bette!!!"

I thought he was referring to Oprah.... That would have soured me on the show, too.

[MarkBearSF]

Posted: 1/7/18 at 10:29am

At least the production of Addams Family you were involved in didn't have the giant squid of the Bway version. The worst.

I've not been involved since High School (many years ago) but I recall that our musical my Senior year was "South Pacific" which to our teenaged minds in 1973 seemed hopelessly hokey and old-fashioned. It wasn't until I saw the tour of Bart Sher's revival that I came to appreciate it for all its glory and simple power.

[phantomcrazy14]

Posted: 1/7/18 at 1:13pm

So this is going back, but in middle school the first production we did was great, the director had full on sets and lighting and costume changes.

Then the next year, a new director took over and she changed it to the whole cast sitting on the steps of the stage the whole time staring off into the distance when they didn't have something to do, with the leads doing their scenes on the stage behind them. No sets. The same lighting throughout. Color coordinated costumes.

We did Seussical Jr and Once On This Island Jr (yes these days that would be very problematic) and I hated every second of it and to this day hate both of those shows. Also because I didn't understand how either of those shows could be any more junior than they already were.

[SkylarElizabeth]

Posted: 1/12/18 at 12:14am

I was in Little Shop of Horrors my freshman year and hearing the opening song over and over again really got irritating.  Now I can't stand to listen to it.

[SempreLiberal]

Posted: 1/12/18 at 12:59am

Anyone Can Whistle - I played the piano for a production in college (University of Scranton in 1987). The music intrigued me, but the show was painful, with a plot and character development that made MadLibs seem logocal. The show played for 2 weekends, which was 2 weekends too long.

Our next show was Jacques Brel, which made up for it.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 1/12/18 at 7:48am

ANNIE. Used to love the show until I played Warbucks in a dinner theater production of it.The backstage area was cramped to begin with and it was filled with little girls , their mothers, a dog and a Miss Hannigan who was really a drunk. And for this I shaved my head?

[JennH]

Posted: 1/12/18 at 9:59am

elephantseye said: "My school did Grease and Bye Bye Birdie in the same year and I almost quit the department."

Good lawd, I might have too...and while I never have heard of Music Man being the biggest culprit of this, I totally believe, because I've found that this is show people either love or hate ;P I was in once many eons ago, and while I don't dislike it at all, my liking for it has lessened over the years for the sam reasons. 

Another show I was involved in that I don't want to say I grew to dislike after being in it TWICE, is Honk. I actually think the show is charming, being it twice I was just...over it. I've listened to it, MAYBE once or twice since my second round in it, and that was YEARS ago.

[characterism]

Posted: 1/12/18 at 2:25pm

Chicago.  I still love listening to the cast album(s), but the production I was in was very poorly handled by the director.  It left a bad taste in most everyone involved's mouth.

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 1/12/18 at 5:03pm

The Boy Friend for me. I saw a production of it in elementary school and remember thinking it was wonderful. Several years later when I found out my high school was doing it (and, bonus, I got a big role), I was ecstatic! Turns out that it's a really, really, really stupid show.

This was about two decades ago and I still can't listen to it. There's a reason it hasn't been revived.

[Bell0708]

Posted: 1/12/18 at 5:20pm

A Streetcar Named Desire.  I was initially supposed to play Stella, then got bumped up to Blanche.  I grew to hate the character, she was so pathetic.

[asoftplacetoland]

Posted: 2/9/18 at 7:34pm

Update: we’re about halfway through with the Music Man and I can say that it’s definitely not the most pleasurable experience. Hopefully we only go up from here!

[Dollypop]

Posted: 2/10/18 at 9:18am

Updated On: 2/10/18 at 09:18 AM

[MrsSallyAdams]

Posted: 2/10/18 at 10:32am

I've been in bad productions of Crazy for You and Jekyll and Hyde but I didn't like those shows much to begin with.

A good show I've soured on is Guys and Dolls. I adored the Jerry Zaks production in the 90's, then had a miserable time in a high school production. The productions I saw afterwards were dull with one note Adelaide's and wooden Sky and Sarah's. I've avoided it since.

[Lousy]

Posted: 2/10/18 at 10:53pm

Oh, this has happened so many times with so many shows. If I never have to hear the bland pop of First Date again, it'll still be too soon.

Also was in a production of Sweeney Todd that was just so draining and bleak (and not in an artistic way) that after the first two weeks of performances it was like the all of us in the cast had received a personality lobotomy.

Updated On: 2/10/18 at 10:53 PM

[¿Macavity?]

Posted: 2/11/18 at 12:22am

(Warning, I wrote this on mobile)


My friend’s son is in a high school production of Anything Goes and he is apparently feeling worse and worse after every rehearsal. He made himself familiar with the piece long before auditions in preparation and became quite a fan.

He now feels guilty being involved with the show after being cast as one of the male leads because the show has been horribly rewritten. He mentioned to the directors that the changes being made must be illegal but the directors assured him that they are perfectly legal.

I read the script and it’s really quite bad the way they changed it. The Chinese men are now two old ladies, and anything that pokes fun at Christianity has been removed. Apparently they only changed the characters to old women as no Chinese people auditioned so they tried asking random Asian (and Native American) students at the school to play the parts but none would. To put it simply, that’s messed up.

Other changes include: all bits of alcohol are cut, with the exception of Whitney’s drinking habits, most sexual implications are cut, and all swear words are cut. In addition to swear words I’d like to add that “God” is considered a swear word in this production. Instead of Moonface’s comical prayer in his cabin “Arts father, Holloween is thy name” or something like that, is changed to “prayers, prayers, prayers, prayers”. Another one of Moon’s lines was changed from “You want me to kill him?” To “You want me to rub him out?” Which is......noticeably worse. There’s many other things to mention, but I’ll leave it at that.

Apparently, the whole cast is at a point where they don’t even associate their production to the actual musical. Unknown to the directors they call the show (pardon my language) “Everything Blows”. Immature? Yes. Funny? It is to me

I’m happy to have learned that the production is currently under investigation by Tams-Witmark.

Updated On: 2/11/18 at 12:22 AM

[StephieElise]

Posted: 2/11/18 at 4:56am

Into the Woods for me. It was my last high school production and by far my least favourite. Most of the cast were terrible and were more concerned with who was dating whom (we were an all girl’s school so shows were some of the few times to meet boys from our brother school - FYI the Baker was dating Rapunzel - they’re actually married now! and the Baker’s Wife and Cinderella’s Prince were very bitter exes).

[Sydney Hagen]

Posted: 2/11/18 at 5:52pm

Oliver. I was the sound designer for it in high school, and NO ONE could do the accent. I mean, literally no one. We had a few passable Brits, and handful of Australians, and then a bunch of people who I still, five years later, have no idea what accent they were even attempting. We had also brought in a ton of tone-deaf elementary and middle schoolers to play the orphans, and they were just awful. Not only could they not sing, but we'd lose them during rehearsals and performances, they'd break props, they just sucked. In addition, the director decided that "steampunk Oliver" should be a thing, and just, no. It looked like total garbage and she lit everything in yellow. It was literally one of the worst shows I've ever been a part of- I don't know if I can ever listen to the opening number again if I'm being honest.

[leighmiserables]

Posted: 2/11/18 at 5:56pm

Doing Heathers now. It was great at first because it was the show all of us seniors first bonded over when we were freshmen, but now revisiting it four years later we're beginning to realize how poorly written many of the scenes/songs are. Not to mention we're doing the high school version, which edits out all the profanity, and honestly without the profanity—what's the point? 

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 2/12/18 at 11:47am

"The Best of Times" which is basically ONE VERSE sung over and over again ever louder and shriller as it modulates up the scale.

Audiences love being hammered in the head with a signature Jerry Herman earworm.  You forgot the fermatas over each note that leads into the final verse!  How will the audience know when they should thrill over the BIG FINISH?!?!  He was lucky to get away with it three times.  And if the production is not exceptional, the signature tune becomes insufferable.

I was in a production over 25 years ago of Sweeney Todd for roughly a year, including rehearsals.  To this day, I still have little interest in seeing or hearing it again.  Especially since having seen the film that destroyed most of the material.  I'd probably go to this new Off-Broadway production because the concept sounds wonderful, but it's the only time I recall that I'd considered seeing it on stage since then.

[shrekster224]

Posted: 2/12/18 at 1:24pm

Rent and Hair.