Carrie: The Musical (1988)… why did it flop so bad that it closed after just 3 days?!

not knowing their audience,

not knowing their critics,

many of the choices of the musical

and generally most everyone view it as quick cash grab.

however, it did sell well when it was inevitably adapted for high school productions and community theatre.

there's been a few mainstream, off broadway, revivals of it, too. . . but the culture had shifted considerably since it's original performance. so...

Every show was sold out but the the financial backers pulled their money out of the show because they didn’t wanna be associated with it, which led to it being shut down.

OP needs to read this.

R3 I want to

R3, you beat me to it! I love that book, have a copy on a shelf with a bunch of scripts and few other tomes about theatre/musicals.

The mother/daughter scenes were really great and Betty Buckley has never sounded better, but the rest of the production was ill conceived. The newer productions have fixed a few of the issues, but few have been able to supply a satisfactory climax at the prom. There's only so much you can do to recreate something like that on stage.

"Carrie: The Musical" should have opened in San Francisco like "Legally Blonde." I bought tickets for L.B. (in SF) and immediately regretted it, but it was actually hilarious, and the audience loved it. San Francisco audiences have a much more twisted and light hearted sense of humor than those in NY.

The great reviews that LB received paved the way for success in NY.

Anyone agree?

R7 I agree because some shows were able to get a good start in NY by opening in London first, or Chicago. Grease is the perfect example of a show gaining so much hype that people were traveling to Chicago to see it. It ended up moving to NY.

A treat for the weirdest ones of you, a full length video of Carrie by the Sick and Twisted Players from San Francisco, 1998. I was in the audience, and at the end, tampons were passed out for the audience to throw at Carrie. Let me know if any of you saw this. This is why we love SF, among other reasons. So funny, but maybe you had to be there!

listening to the cast recording right now. it's good. i'm shocked!

The music was supposedly good and the two leads were great but everything else was terrible.

1988 vs 2012 versions

With songs like "Out For Blood" how could it NOT flop miserably?:

NOW IT'S YOUR CHANCE TO PROVE YOU'RE A STUD

IT'S A SIMPLE LITTLE GIG, YOU HELP ME KILL A PIG

AND THEN I'VE GOT SOME PLANS FOR THE BLOOD

Boys: (chant)

Kill the pig, pig, pig, pig

Kill him, kill him, kill him and make him bleed

Get the blood, blood, blood, blood

Kill the pig, make him bleed

Take the blood that's all we need

Out for blood

Oh yeah, kill the pig, make him bleed

Get the blood that's all we need

Out for blood

Now, now, now, now, now, now!

R13 see r12. That one is powerful!

The original Stratford-upon-Avon version in its entirety, before it went to Broadway in NYC.

February, 1988.

It would open on Broadway 3 months later with most of its original cast, minus the actress who plays Margaret. They recast her with Betty Buckley.

The prom scenes.

2012 was far superior. Omg. What was up with those laser beams in the 1988 version? Was she Cyclops? I’m confused.

They should have left some of the original lyrics in the 2012 version though. “God has seen your sinning” etc. was great.

I read the 2015 LA revival was the best of the three. Supposedly it blew the 1988 and 2012 versions out of the water.

In "Not Since Carrie" it said that the audience watching "Carrie" had the same look as the audience in 'The Producers" when they were watching "Springtime For Hitler."

The LA productions prom scene. Much much better than the other two. They put a lot more effort into it, having her use her telekinesis to throw Chris and her fly in the air. Very good!

I just wish a better quality version existed.

Original cast and creative team reunited for a Carrie Reunion

For R16:

The legendary Barbara Cook played Carrie's mother originally. She smelled the turd and refused to go with the show to Broadway, which opened the door for La Buckley. While some of the material was problematic, the show was really done in by its director and designers.

Because "Dirty Pillows" or "Toss Carrie a Cork" are not songs one could whistle while leaving the theater.

I'm sorry, I checked my program, and it was "Toss a Cork at Carrie." My error.

OP how many shitty fucking threads are you gonna start?

What about Rochelle, Rochelle - the musical?!?

Another reason Barbara Cook refused to continue with the show was that she was nearly decapitated one night when the scenery malfunctioned.

There is on you tube a comprehensive doc on the original production. It's very enjoyable and the production itself looks like it was done in by the very arrogant idiot director from the Royal Shakespeare Company who Cook detested. The non Carrie and her mother parts look so much like dreadful schlock.

One of the great theatrical anecdotes is the Weisslers when they heard about the National Theater developing the project thought it might be a good bet for Broadway. They spoke with the director by phone and told him it should have some of the quality of Grease. They went to England to speak with him and he showed them the costume sketches. They were all of Grecian tunics and dresses. The Weisslers were WTF? He said you told me you wanted it like Greece. And they replied. 'The musical not the country!' Like Cook they knew it would be shit and scooted out of there.

R26 that was opening night. They asked her to not leave until they could find her replacement and she agreed. They never found a replacement. It was a setup to keep her.

A friend of mine who saw it in previews said she enjoyed it. It was an audacious idea but it would take a certain guiding genius to make it work, and it just didn't have it.

It was kind of common for shows to close in 4 performances or even on opening night back then and in the decades prior. Now it never seems to happen.

The documentary referenced above says the foreign investor saw the reviews and hopped on a plane home and they had to close. Jujamcyn head Rocco Landesman has said that was his biggest producing regret. He felt the audience response was such that he could have sold the show as a curiosity factor (and people did seem to really like the Carrie/her mother scenes.)

As for Cook this was her "return" to the musical theater after years of drinking. I don't think she was in shape (both literally and figuratively) to carry the show. I think she saw how a daring choice worked for Angela Lansbury in Sweeney Todd and went for this hoping it would do the same for her.

Opening at the RSC was a mistake too. The snob factor of having a musical let alone an outrageous one like this put a mark on the show and by the time the show got to NYC, delayed previews so long they missed the Tony cutoff, and the glaringly odd stuff in some of the show put a scent in the water and critics smelled blood and went for the jugular. (these were the days when critics were known for being boldly viscious and said as nasty of things as they could to make a name for themselves. See Frank Rich, and of course John Simon.)

The problem with adapting Carrie to the stage is the fact you have two plot threads going on that run throughout the plot: Carrie and the relationship with her mother and Carrie and her relationships with her high school peers.

Carrie & Mom is classic, operatic tragedy...a fraught relationship between a mother and daughter. In the musical, these scenes have power and depth. And, the best songs.

Carrie & The High School Kids feels like a bad After School Special combined with Grease. And, the songs in this part are all awful.

Part of the problem is the fact that the villain in Carrie is the truly revolting uber bitch Chris who has no redeeming qualities. She just wants to humiliate Carrie for the sake of humiliating her. You can get away with having such a nasty bitch in the original novel because it's just a fun sleazy potboiler thriller and it doesn't matter. And, in the film, it's fine for the same reason because it's just a fun, sleazy pop corn movie (and Nancy Allen is really good at playing the role). But, on stage, the character needs more depth and motivation for it to work.

In the book Chris has more motivation. It is hinted at that she might be being beaten at home (but her father is a big shot in town so no one reports it.)

She's doing to Carrie what was done to her. (and she does it to other kids too.)

In the movie there is less explanation but as you said Nancy Allen is so good it doesn't matter until you really think about it. (Why so obsessed with Carrie?)

I saw Carrie on a class trip my senior year. I was kinda too young to really appreciate the badness, but I was SO underwhelmed by the moment when LeRoy and co poured the blood on Carrie. Really, in my head looking back, that moment was really a fatal flaw. No way the production could've survived it

If they could crash a chandelier, land a helicopter, and roller skate throughout a theater in the 80s they couldn't figure out how to dump some red water on Carrie?

R33 it lasted 3 days yet you went to see it on a school trip?

R34 they kept changing how it was done during the England production because the mic kept malfunctioning afterward.

It ran about 3 weeks or so including previews r35.

R37 previews don’t get school trips.

I was in school a very long time ago and I'm pretty sure we occasionally went to a preview. Probably because you could get cheaper seats and they were trying to fill the house with group sales.

What school was this?

Carrie The Musical had swearing and nudity at the beginning.

No school was taking a class to see that.

I didn't have nudity. That was one of the bizarre aspects of the show. The girls showered in their gym clothes.

As for swearing..........tons of students saw A Chorus Line.

Why are you giving this person a hard time about going there on a class trip? Maybe the teacher had connections or was a fan of the film or King. Our field trips sometimes were based on our teachers knowing someone involved with a show.

Because I know for a fact NY schools RARELY do Broadway shows, and certainly not previews.

The poster isn’t from NY.

R35 we went to a matinee during previews.

R44 that didn’t happen.

My god R43 you are an idiot. I was in high school and we saw Broadway shows, off Broadway and Lincoln Center. There was nudity and there was swearing. Please just shut the fuck up. You don't have a clue.

Oh wait. People dont believe I went? It was a class trip for the drama club at Middletown High School South in Middletown, NJ. We were supposed to go maybe in February, but then it got delayed till May. I believe it was because Barbara Cook left and they needed more time for Betty Buckley.

One thing I remember was while Buckley was on stage, a piece of the set malfunctioned, I think it was one of the basketball hoops that suggested the gym set. It made a massive cracking sound as it was being retracted, and Betty ran to the front of the stage and looked back at it. The show was stopped for about 20 minutes, and then started again.

considering what the basketball hoop did to her in the film I can see why that would startle her r47!

R48 I never thought of that. That's so funny. When I remember it, I just think what almost happened to Cook in London would be in her head. But you're right.

The blood spill in the movie is also a little awkward. The prom is like perfect except for when the blood hits Spacek's head it sort of misses and just hits the back of her and off to the side....yet her front is then covered in blood.

It's the one thing I wish DePalma had fixed.

Was the Broadway version a direct transfer from Great Britain, i.e., same staging, choreography, sets, costumes, etc., or was it a new production?

transfer from the UK but tinkered with and they tried to make it better.

They put a lot of faith in Betty Buckley being able to save the show and she did in her scenes. Problem was she wasn't in all the scenes in the show.

I can remember Debbie Allen being on TV and asked point blank that the had been poorly received in the UK. She answered that they have worked to improve it and that Buckley brings a real force to the role of the mother which wasn't there before.

The original Broadway production is one of those shows that 50,000 old theater homos claim to have seen when in reality most of them are lying.

Amazingly, this 500,000 year old homo actually saw it on a class trip. Senior year in high school, 1988. Seven months later, I saw Patti LuPone in Anything Goes, and everything changed for me forever. And I was hosting Standing Room Only on WERS.

What doomed the show was:

Choreographed by Debbie Allen

Debbie Allen was a great dancer and not a bad choreographer. A favorite of Fosse. She was the best thing about that early 80s West Side Story revival as Anita.

It was never supposed to open in February. It opened in February IN THE UK. It wasn’t even an idea for the states yet. It quickly was rushed and brought to the states in May.

There were no schools going to it.

Cooke never held up the US production. She worked on the UK one and when it was brought to the states she declined immediately. There was no hold up. They had Betty Buckley lined up already in case that happened. They wanted an American star in one of the roles anyway.

Cook wasn't an American star? But yes, she fulfilled her legal obligations by playing out her UK contract but wanted nothing more to do with the show after the set almost killed her.

And she of course sang her songs brilliantly.

Haha ok R57. I'm fuzzy on the details, but it was definitely rescheduled from whatever the original date was.

It's so funny on here when people refuse to believe that people do things. I always assume that their lives are so empty and dull, they can't conceive anyone else does anything interesting.

Excerpt from Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops By Ken Mandelbaum

"Carrie postponed its New York previews more than once, and for a while it looked as if Carrie might never begin performances here at all."

So that producer who told the Broadway cast of the original production that he was going to support the show and was fully behind it building up their confidence and hopes then immediately pulled out as much money as he could and was gone to Europe that night or the next day did he ever show his face in NY again?

I wouldn't have chosen Carrie for a musical (The Shining or even Salem's Lot has more potential to me), but then who would have thought the life of Eva Peron would have made a great musical show? I always suspected Webber and Rice initially wanted to do Isabel Peron's story ("when will the chorus girl ever learn?" fits Isabel, who actually was one, better than Eva, who wasn't), which has that wonderful Gothic Rebeccaesque layer of rivalry between the dead first wife and the second one--with the second wife literally combing the hair of the first wife's corpse, preserved lovingly by their shared husband--but apparently not.

I recall Darlene Love being underwhelming as the gym teacher, especially after Buckley had been so iconic in the movie. I saw that Laurie Beechman played it in the workshop. That would've been better. Or maybe even Debbie Allen herself would've been better in that role.

R61, just who the Hell do you think you are trying to confuse dedicated DL posters with actual facts?

Meanwhile, i lived in New York in 1978 and I remember there was a lot of secrecy about the new Prince/Sondheim musical and when it was finally announced that the show was about a serial killer barber and his cannibal associate, people thought Prince and Sondheim had lost their minds. A MUSICAL about THAT? It was a joke around town.

Then it opened and it was the hottest ticket to be had

Sweeney Todd was NEVER a hot ticket. What alternate universe are you living in? You could walk up to the box office before any performance and get a ticket or even at tkts.

The British stage version "Carry On, Carrie" was much more entertaining.

[quote] The British stage version "Carry On, Carrie" was much more entertaining.

Too smutty for my taste. Those British and their double entendres!

[quote]I saw Patti LuPone in Anything Goes,

I saw Patti in Evita. Theater trip Spring 1980. The year before I saw Lansbury in Sweeney Todd about six weeks after opening.

Yes, I'm old.

R69 Patti in Evita is my holy grail of theater experiences. I was only 9 at the time, so while I saw the ad run over and over and over I was too young to see it.

Short of the invention of a time machine, I'll never get to see it. But the tape of her doing Rainbow High in that production is supernatural.

How was she when you saw her?