I didn't want to go into this on the board, but your post referred to Catered Affair and Catered Affair. Unless there's some other Catered Affair lurking in the backgroud, I assume you're referring the PS or Cry-Baby? Just puzzled.
I meant A Catered Affair and Cry-Baby, both of which i saw in San Diego. I can't say I liked A Catered Affair despite superb performances by Leslie Kritser and Faith Prince but I am going to withhold comemnt, hoping that the show's re-writes will be fixing the show's problems.
"It does what a musical is supposed to do; it takes you to another world. And it gives you a little tune to carry in your head. Something to take you away from the dreary horrors of the real world. A little something for when you're feeling blue. You know?"
Not enough people read this to enable us to be butchers--any NYC newspaper has hundreds of thousands more readers.
And we're all just "normal people" who have no more credibility than a person on the street--if shows fail, it's not because one of us said something tacky.
Lots of shows failed before the internet was even created...
Word of mouth does have a huge impact on a show and I do see that on average, people here tend to trash a show more often than they praise a show no matter what stage it's in. I don't really know how many people buy or don't buy tickets just based on what they read here (probably no one if they're smart) but it does make me wonder why people are more eager to complain about a show or bash a show than they are to praise something they've seen. EVERYTHING can't be terrible.
"But I can tell you that Raoul, who was so handsome in "The Phantom," is now a drunken wreck."
'"Contrairiwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."'
~Lewis Carroll