Musical Misfires: Three Decades of Broadway Musical Heartbreak looks at 151 musicals that did not run long enough to be considered hits. Such shows were once called flops but that is no longer an appropriate description. Some of these were superb pieces of musical theatre that, for one reason or another, couldn't find an audience, did not please the critics, couldn't pay the high weekly bills, or just were not right for the time and place in which they opened. Oft-overlooked gems like The Scottsboro Boys, Grey Gardens, Sweet Smell of Success, Xanadu, If/Then, Caroline, or Change, Bright Star, Steel Pier, The Last Ship, and Tuck Everlasting are explored alongside such famous musicals as American Idiot, Victor/Victoria, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Sister Act, All Shook Up, Be More Chill, Shrek the Musical, Seussical, and Young Frankenstein that never reached hit status on Broadway. Jukebox musicals, cutting-edge musicals, movie adaptations, teenage musicals, biographical musicals, history musicals, and even horror musicals are among the many genres included in this captivating journey of Broadway shows from 1989 to 2020 in search of success. Illustrated with forty-two photographs (most in color) and filled with backstage stories, reviews from the press, and commentary on why the musicals were not hits, Musical Misfires is indispensable reading for anyone who loves musical theatre, both its triumphs and it heartbreaks.

Introduction
What Is a Musical Misfire?

When you sit down to write a book about Broadway musicals that didn’t work (for one reason or another), it is not because you revel in their failure or enjoy taking on the role of “ambulance chaser.” In fact, you write a book like this because you are rooting for each and every show to succeed and feel a piece of the heartbreak when one doesn’t. You write a book like this because you are a champion of the underdog, a standard-bearer for keeping the artistry and hard work that were poured into a misfire as alive for posterity as those who record the story behind critical darlings and runaway hits. It is with love and admiration for anything daring to make the difficult journey to the Great White Way that you examine and chronicle the story behind what we are calling “musical misfires.” 

So what is a musical misfire exactly? In the past, Broadway musical fans and theatre historians would have called these shows “flops.” Forty or fifty years ago, it was usually (but not always) clear-cut which musicals were deemed a flop and which had been anointed successes. If critics tore a musical to shreds, the odds were very good that the audiences would not come, it would shutter relatively quickly, and the show would lose money. From this, a long line of legendary flops like Flahooley, Hazel Flagg, Jennie, Greenwillow, Darling of the Day, Mack and Mabel, King of Hearts, The Rink, and Grind would emerge. Today these titles are still remembered for components that stood out (usually their scores) despite the fact that the overall production didn’t work or didn’t run.

From the onset of the 1990s through the aborted 2019-2020 Broadway season and beyond, we simply cannot, in all fairness, continue to call shows that fail to run, do not make money, or cannot please the masses “flops.” Too many factors nowadays work against the steep, uphill climb toward success for a Broadway show. Economics have made it cost-prohibitive to keep a musical running with the hope it might catch on. If the show isn’t an instant hit, then it is often doomed to failure. Even a well-reviewed musical has to run at capacity, sometimes for well over a year, before it can even dream of recouping its initial investment. Some shows are uniquely original, critically praised, and represent some of the best work there is in the musical theatre writing field, yet finding an audience for its commercial success is almost impossible because it is in a particular niche or not a crowd pleaser. That doesn’t mean it “flopped.” There has also been a shift away from the critics having the sway they used to hold (for good and bad) and many shows survive instead by word-of-mouth and, in the last-decade or so, due to a strong social media presence. There just isn’t that clear-cut definition of a “flop” anymore.

We have chosen the phrase “musical misfires” to encompass a wide-range of musicals that have opened on Broadway since 1989 that, for one reason or another, failed to meet all three components of that essential trifecta: audience acceptance, critical approval, and financial success. It doesn’t suffice to use the word “flop” because, as you will see, there were many shows that ran for a very long time and lost money, or that critics adored but for which audiences failed to show up. Yes, some musicals were just plain problematic and serve as a reminder of what could not or would not work. Defining it a “musical misfire” simply suggests that a show was launched with great hope, brought some sparkle to the firmament, but didn’t achieve everything it aspired to or what Broadway expected. 

Why do we choose to begin with 1989? The American musical and the history of its hits, also-rans, and failures, have been well-documented up to this point, with many celebrated authors exploring the topic such as Stanley Green, Gerald Bordman, Ken Mandelbaum, Ethan Mordden, and Martin Gottfried. Since then, the story of the American musical has become more fragmented. Much of the old guard of composers, lyricists, book writers, directors, and choreographers have retired or passed away and the new guard has begun to establish its own voice. As we watch new talents take hold, documentation of their stories is only beginning to happen. We also chose the transition that happened circa 1990 because this was where the rules began to change. The mounting expenses of producing musicals on Broadway; the gentrification of Times Square and the Theatre District into a family-friendly, tourist destination; the decline of the all-powerful theatre critic; and the evolution of social media marketing around this time quickly saw Broadway transform into a very different place.

As we were writing this book we wished to explore the many outside factors that affect the success and failure of a Broadway musical. In the past, newspaper strikes, for example, were a deathblow to Broadway business, particularly for shows opening and getting no reviews, advertising, or other coverage. Today such a print media strike would have minimal effect on Broadway. There are still the occasional strikes by the actors’ and other labor unions, Stock Market fluctuations, and recessions. The aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center and hurricane Sandy certainly had major but, thankfully, short-term impacts on Broadway. We considered these as we wrote about the musicals affected by such outside forces. But nothing prepared us for the possibility of Broadway going completely dark on March 12, 2020. The unprecedented devastation that the Coronavirus has had on all aspects of life around the world is overwhelming to behold. We have added a final chapter to this book about the Covid 19 effect on Broadway musicals and how successful shows might find themselves in the “misfires” category. 

A few things about the scope of this book. Musical Misfires: Three Decades of Broadway Musical Heartbreak does not strive to be all-inclusive. For the daunting reason that there are far too many titles that could be discussed, we have limited ourselves to covering only book musicals (no revues) and only musicals that ran on Broadway (no out-of-town closures and no Off-Broadway shows unless they ended up on Broadway). We have not included “limited runs” such as holiday musicals which closed at the end of the season no matter how successful or not. We have included musicals by theatre organizations, such as Lincoln Center Theatre and Manhattan Theatre Club, whose musicals were announced as “limited runs” when it was obvious that if the show was a hit it would become an open run. Finally, we have tried to offer a sampling of titles that support the groupings we have chosen to discuss in this book. Even with those parameters, we will still explore 151 titles, delving into their history, their construction, and offering thoughts on what was both worthwhile and what kept them from becoming unqualified hits. In the end, we hope this book commemorates and celebrates with candor and clarity the stories behind the musicals that didn’t succeed, our musical misfires. 

— August 2020

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 STEEL PIER

A musical by David Thompson; music by John Kander; lyrics by Fred Ebb

Directed by Scott Ellis; choreography by Susan Stroman 

Cast included Karen Ziemba, Gregory Harrison, Daniel McDonald, Debra Monk, Ronn Carroll, Kristin Chenoweth, Joel Blum, Jim Newman, Alison Bevan

Tony Award nominations: Best Musical; David Thompson (Best Book of a Musical); John Kander - music, Fred Ebb - lyrics (Best Original Score); Daniel McDonald (Best Actor in a Musical); Karen Ziemba (Best Actress in a Musical); Joel Blum (Best Featured Actor in a Musical); Debra Monk (Best Featured Actress in a Musical); Scott Ellis (Best Direction of a Musical); Susan Stroman (Best Choreography); Tony Walton (Best Scenic Design); Michael Gibson (Best Orchestrations)

Opened 24 April 1997, Richard Rodgers Theatre, 76 performances

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 Steel Pier, a dark fantasy musical about marathon dancers, was superb in every category but it was a bit too amorphous for many audience members. One had to be patient to discover what was really going on and many theatergoers lost interest waiting for things to be clearly explained. Also creating difficulty was the subject matter. Many playgoers did not know about or understand the marathon dance craze of the late 1920s and the 1930s. What started as a talent show in the Roaring Twenties turned into a masochistic form of entertainment during the Depression. Couples had to dance around the clock with only a fifteen-minute break every hour. Patrons paid a quarter to watch these desperate couples dance for weeks or even months, each duo hoping to outlast all the others and win the big cash prize. The marathon dance business got so gruesome that they were eventually outlawed. In 1935, Horace McCoy wrote a scathing novel about the marathon dances called They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Old Hollywood wouldn’t touch such a disturbing story. Actress-singer June Havoc (sister of Gypsy Rose Lee and the original Baby June in Gypsy), who had participated in such competitions during hard times, wrote a play about the craze titled Marathon ’33 which was presented on Broadway in 1963. It was not popular. Five years later, an excellent film version of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was made that didn’t pull its punches and revealed how pathetic and even tragic the marathon dance business was. The adventurous songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb were interested in doing a musical about the marathon craze and enlisted David Thompson to come up with an original story set on the famous Steel Pier in Atlantic City. Whereas McCoy’s book and the movie version of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? were both starkly realistic, the musical Thompson, Kander, and Ebb envisioned was a fantasy.

Steel Pier begins with the lifeless body of the stunt pilot Bill Kelly lying on the beach. Is he asleep? Is he dead? Bill then comes to life, jumps up, and rejoices that he has “Three weeks!” and runs off. The action for the rest of the musical is set mostly inside the dance hall on the pier where contestants are signing up for a marathon dance competition with a big payoff. The emcee and promoter Mick Hamilton had made Rita Racine temporarily famous by arranging for her to publicly kiss Charles Lindbergh on his return from France. Touting her as “Lindy’s Lovebird,” Mick used Rita to make some money and even married her. Their marriage is kept a secret as she enters the marathon and is partnered with Bill. Among the colorful co-participants in the competition are the sultry, foul-mouthed Shelby Stevens, the brother and sister team of Buddy and Bette Becker, the harmonica-playing Luke Adams, the Olympic wrestler Johnny Adel, and the hick farmer Happy McGuire and his flirtatious wife Precious. As the dancing drags on, Rita starts to fall in love with Bill who promises to take her flying someday. When the marathon dancers are forced to do the Sprints, a torturous race in which the last couple is eliminated, Rita falls and it looks like they will be eliminated. But Bill magically makes time stop, allowing Rita to get up and catch up with the others. On this mystical note the first act ended. As a publicity stunt, Mick suggests a phony wedding with Rita and Bill as bride and groom. Precious sings at the mock ceremony which is held during the fifteen-minute break. Then Bill informs Rita that he died when his plane crashed there weeks ago. He was given a “second chance” at life but the time is up and he must go. Heartbroken, Rita quits the marathon and, realizing that Mick doesn’t love her and is just using her, she leaves him as well. The ghost of Bill appears to Rita, engages her in one final dance, and then disappears after encouraging to go on and find her “second chance” in life, just as he was given.

The Kander and Ebb score for Steel Pier is among their best, tuneful but sometimes devilishly bitter. Mick encourages the contestants with the uptempo “Everybody Dance” yet there is something sinister in his enthusiasm. Bill’s “The Last Girl” is fraught with pathos; Rita is indeed the last girl he will ever dance with. Shelby’s “Everybody’s Girl” is a racy showstopper, possibly the naughtiest song in the Kander and Ebb catalog. Precious McGuire trills away with the mock-operatic “Two Little Words” during the fake wedding. Bill’s solo “Second Chance” and Rita’s “Willing to Ride” are first-rate character songs. For the big fantasy dream number, with a bi-plane in flight with chorus girls dancing on the wings, the songwriters came up with “Leave the World Behind,” a song as carefree and airborne as Rita’s imagination. In addition to a full score, Steel Pier had almost continuous dance music. This meant almost continuous choreography which Susan Stroman provided with remarkable skill. The featured dance numbers were impressive but it was the way the background dance continued on without distracting the audience from the scenes presented downstage that was so brilliant. Scott Ellis was the able director who kept the large production (a cast of thirty-one who remained onstage most of the time) in focus and knew when to pull out the stops, as in that dream sequence which was an homage to the title number from the 1933 movie musical Flying Down to Rio. Yet for all the music, dance, and story, Steel Pier was never escapist fun. It was always about an unhappy subject and there was an edge to everything that reminded you of desperate people in desperate times.

Steel Pier opened on April 24, 1997, to mixed notices. Some critics found the musical dreary and a chore to sit through. Others got excited about what Kander, Ebb, and Thompson were attempting and recommended the show. There was general praise for the cast. The role of Rita was written with Karen Ziemba in mind and she was excellent but it was not the kind of principal character that endeared one. Gregory Harrison’s Mick was solid but his character was even less endearing. Daniel McDonald was more engaging as Bill and one was caught up with his character even as one was unsure of exactly who or what he was. Two of the supporting players stood out: Debra Monk, whose bawdy Shelby provided the much-wanted comic relief, and Kristin Chenoweth, who made a splashy Broadway debut as the eager Precious whose soprano voice hit the ballroom rafters during the wedding scene. Most audience members agreed with the reviews which found Steel Pier a downer but it had its advocates and to this day many rank it highly in the Kander and Ebb repertoire. The show was nominated for a whopping eleven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, but won none. Most of the trophies, including Best Musical, that season went to Titanic. Evidently a maritime disaster provided more entertainment value than a Depression-era dance competition. Ironically, the other competing hit that season was the revival of Kander and Ebb’s Chicago. The scaled-down version of the 1975 favorite, which opened on Broadway four months before Steel Pier, went on to win five Tony Awards and to run longer than any other revival in the history of Broadway. It would be nice to say Steel Pier will reappear on Broadway or elsewhere someday but subsequent productions have been infrequent. The musical is just too large and, as written, nearly impossible to trim down in size. A marathon dance competition with only six couples just doesn’t hack it. Instead one is left with a splendid score by one of the American theatre’s finest songwriting teams.

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TUCK EVERLASTING

A musical fantasy by Claudia Shear, Tim Federle, based on the 1975 novel by Natalie Babbitt; music by Chris Miller; lyrics by Nathan Tyson

Directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw

Cast included Andrew Keegan-Bolger, Carolee Carmello, Michael Park, Robert Lenzi, Terrence Mann, Sarah Charles Lewis, Pippa Pearthree, Michael Wartella, Fred Applegate, Valerie Wright

Tony Award nomination: Gregg Barnes (Best Costume Design)

Opened 26 April 2016, Broadhurst Theatre, 39 performances

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 Some Broadway musical misfires are terrific shows that simply failed to catch on. This was the case with Tuck Everlasting, a stage adaptation of the beloved 1975 Natalie Babbit children’s novel of the same name. Set in Treegap, New Hampshire, in the 1880s, the story concerns the teenage girl Winnie Foster (Sarah Charles Lewis) who encounters the Tucks, a family consisting of Mae and Angus Tuck (Carolee Carmello, Michael Park), a middle-aged couple, and their two sons, the sprightly Jesse (Andrew Keenan-Bolger), and the melancholy Miles (Robert Lenzi). We soon learn that the Tucks have been around for decades, never growing older, having drunk from a spring that grants eternal life. As a result, the Tucks must keep moving around, seldom staying in one place in order to ward-off suspicion over their ever-static ages. When Winnie becomes fast friends with Jesse, the two begin to fall in love, but in order to marry into the Tuck family, the girl must be let in on the family secret and decide if she, too, will sip the water from the mysterious spring. There is also the menacing “Man in the Yellow Suit” (Terrence Mann), a stranger who is following the Tucks, on the verge of learning their secret and revealing it to the world. In the end, Winnie decides to choose a traditional life of growing older, having a family, and ultimately dying. The Tucks, however, must live on and watch the world change around them, even as they remain as young as the day we met them.

The Chris Miller (music) and Nathan Tysen (lyrics) score for Tuck Everlasting superbly captured the time, place, heart and emotion of Babbit’s characters. From the opening number “Live Like This,” a set-piece designed to introduce most of the characters and their predicaments, to the final ballad “Everlasting,” a summation of what Winnie has gained from her experiences with the Tucks, the score brimmed with vibrant melody, an aching urgency, and a wistful nostalgia. Of particular note was the haunting “Time” sung by Miles Tuck, revealing how he had once been married and the father of a little boy. His wife, frightened by her husband not aging, took the child, leaving Miles heartbroken. The song underscored the story’s guiding theme that, without the sense of mortality that comes with the promise of our eventual demise, “Time” and how we choose to spend it doesn’t have the same meaning. Other standout numbers included the vibrant “Top of the World” for Jesse and Winnie, the hypnotic “My Most Beautiful Day” for Mae and Angus Tuck, and the jubilant “Join the Parade” and the oily “Everything’s Golden,” both for the Man in the Yellow Suit.

Book writers Claudia Shear and Tim Federle gave Natalie Babbit’s novel a faithful adaptation, remaining true to the original while only making slight alterations for the stage. One of the chief deviations from the book came in aging the character of Winnie to her mid-teens, rather than the ten-year-old as in the novel. This was a smart choice, affording Winnie’s burgeoning romance with Jesse a more emotional stake generated by pubescent curiosity and the pangs of first love. This also eliminated suspicion that her male suitor, who was clearly close to being an adult, was a pedophile. But the book’s writers never failed to keep the spirit of the beloved characters intact and fans of the novel could watch Tuck Everlasting with the assurance that they would not be disappointed.

Director-choreographer Casey Nicholaw took a gentle touch with the musical, keeping the proceedings sentimental and without the usual trappings of over-produced Broadway spectacles for which he has been mostly associated. One of the most-arresting sequences in Tuck Everlasting was the musical’s finale, a heart-wrenching ballet staged to show the passing of time. As an enormous turntable revolved, almost as if the hands on a clock were whirling us through the years, we witnessed the young Winnie grow up, fall in love, marry, and raise a family, concluding with Jesse visiting her grave. It was the ideal culmination of a show that reminded us that time is fleeting and that, unlike the Tucks, we have only so many days to make the most of our lives.

It was originally planned that Tuck Everlasting would have its premiere at Boston’s Colonial Theatre in 2013, but the lack of available venues in NYC for a subsequent engagement saw the production put on hold. Instead, the show had its premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2015 where it received promising reviews, prompting producers to bring it to Broadway in the spring of 2016. Tuck Everlasting opened at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 26, 2016, where it remained for only 39 performances. Perhaps the most-disappointing aspect of Tuck Everlasting’s reception was, despite a beautiful production all-around, the costumes by Gregg Barnes received the musical’s singular Tony nomination.

Though it failed to ignite on Broadway, Tuck Everlasting received a strong review from Charles Isherwood in The New York Times which typically would have secured its success, “Family-friendly musicals on Broadway generally come in just one flavor: flashy. Enter Tuck Everlasting, a warm-spirited and piercingly touching musical that has nothing flashy or splashy about it.” Melissa Rose Bernardo in Entertainment Weekly was less enchanted “Tuck Everlasting is a beautifully drawn, evocative tale about an eternal-life-giving spring, the trapped-in-time family who drank from it, and a curious young girl who stumbles upon both. Little wonder it’s been made into movies twice. Who doesn’t love a plucky preteen protagonist? Plus: magic water. Yet on stage, this fantasy-driven story remains stubbornly earthbound.” There was much praise for the performances, particularly those of Lewis and Keenan-Bolger, and audiences admired the always reliable Carmello and Mann. 

The biggest mistake that Tuck Everlasting was guilty of was having the audacity to be old fashioned.  In a season where the contemporary  juggernaut Hamilton was scooping up awards galore and being heralded a musical milestone, Tuck Everlasting felt quaint, a throwback to the 1950s, perhaps a little too tender and innocent to appeal by the standards of what modern audiences were looking for. Tuck Everlasting was everything a family musical should be: poignant, tuneful, character-driven, warm, and a thoughtful adaptation of a beloved novel. It should prove to be a popular title in the repertory of regional theatres, summer stock, community theatres, and high schools.