I've always thought this show was interesting, after reading about it in Not Since Carrie and hearing A House in Algiers on Marcia Lewis' CD... but I don't know too much beyond that. Where have you guys gotten your material from? A demo CD? I know there's no recording... P.S. I love the flop love
This got me to thinking- what other unrecorded flops have had songs recorded by Broadway artists on their solo CDs? Off the top of my head, there's the Marcia Lewis Roza number, both Alice and Emily's and Betty Buckley's recording of songs from Carrie... Anyone know other good ones?
Roza first was performed at Baltimore's Center Stage. I loved this musical. What a thrill to meet and get autographs from Hal Prince and all the other talented people involved in this production.
Do any of the new posters of the last eight years have anything new to say about this show? I've heard the score and while parts of it are catchy, it's more than a bit overwrought with a very late-eighties sound.
This show has always fascinated me. I've read the novel in French for school as a teen (I believe the English name is Momo) and seen Madame Roza, the French movie version, but only heard brief bits of the musical. The fact that the composer did one of my fave cheezy 1960s French songs (Et Maintenant--performed in English as What Now My Love?) has me intrigued as well. I suppose Prince wasn't too upset at its flop status since he had just had a hit with Phantom in London and knew it would be coming into New York.
I love the film and Georgia Brown, and I really looked forward to the production in LA.
Alas, Dimitri2 sums it up well. He only neglects to mention a truly appalling song about being crowded by the Nazis into the Paris velodrome, in which Roza sang repeatedly that "They put a number on my arm!" (as if that were the worst thing the Nazis ever did). (The song is based on an historical incident, but that was cold comfort.)
I in no way blamed Miss Brown for the production's failure. She worked as hard as she always does in my experience. Bob Gunton played a transvestite, so there was that.
It's odd--Wiki says that composer Gilbert Bécaud brought the property to Hal Prince, because he was such a fan of Sweeney, and always wanted to do a musical of the property. Prince finally gave in as long as Prince got to choose the librettist/lyricist. He chose Julian More. I can't find ANY info on Julian--was he the son of Prince's college roommate or something? Because the lyrics are pretty awful--and you'd think with Prince's circle of friends he coulda gotten... well someone else.