Rumple Foreskin
The AH Patriarch
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2002
- Posts
- 11,109
Next time a critique of your writing cuts a little close to the bone, remember the fate of this musical:
LONDON - AP - Like the career of its subject, London's latest musical began in a blaze of publicity, set tongues wagging and ended, prematurely, in disgrace.
"Oscar Wilde" opened Tuesday at the 500-seat Shaw Theatre. It closed the next day after receiving excoriating reviews and selling just five tickets for its second performance.
Written, produced and directed by Mike Read, a radio DJ whose fame peaked in the 1980s, "Oscar Wilde" set out, according to its publicity material, to chart Wilde's "tragic descent from idolization to isolation." The script is written entirely in rhyming couplets.
The Daily Telegraph declared the show "a pitiful vanity project." The Evening Standard judged it "a musical of exquisite awfulness." And the Times said Wilde would be "chewing his green carnation in dismay" if forced to watch the production.
Read, undeterred, is working on a new musical — a tribute to the campy 1970s disco act The Village People. The title: "YMCA: The Musical."
LONDON - AP - Like the career of its subject, London's latest musical began in a blaze of publicity, set tongues wagging and ended, prematurely, in disgrace.
"Oscar Wilde" opened Tuesday at the 500-seat Shaw Theatre. It closed the next day after receiving excoriating reviews and selling just five tickets for its second performance.
Written, produced and directed by Mike Read, a radio DJ whose fame peaked in the 1980s, "Oscar Wilde" set out, according to its publicity material, to chart Wilde's "tragic descent from idolization to isolation." The script is written entirely in rhyming couplets.
The Daily Telegraph declared the show "a pitiful vanity project." The Evening Standard judged it "a musical of exquisite awfulness." And the Times said Wilde would be "chewing his green carnation in dismay" if forced to watch the production.
Read, undeterred, is working on a new musical — a tribute to the campy 1970s disco act The Village People. The title: "YMCA: The Musical."
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