Have you ever hated a play?

Yes, Evitia hated it...I did love Hair and saw the original

I remember seeing some Sam Shepherd play when I was in college. I thought it was beyond weird and idiotic. It had a scene where a girl pretends to be a lobster. I felt like I was in a Woody Allen movie, everyone around me pretending to like it. Anyone know what it was? I may have been young and stupid, but I might not have been wrong.

I loathed Laughter on the 23rd Floor. It was grueling just to get through it without walking out.

I rarely have liked a play.

Deborah Kerr in something wretched at the Schubert in LA. We left before intermission.

Yes, very much, but in my case, I was actually part of the cast. I auditioned for the female lead, as did my roommates, but none of us got the part. We all had a bit of a crush on the lead actor and as it turns out, he was sleeping with all of the women in the cast! One of my roommates confronted him on stage, the audience thought the drama was part of the show and we got a standing ovation. What a lech he turned out to be.

3 sisters by Chekov. Had to read it for acting class.God what a bore. Bored rich people whinning and all the names sounded the same so it was virtually impossible to distinguish the characters.

Please don't ask.

Unless it' s Sondheim, we hate every play.

Lost In Yonkers.

I went to see The Threepenny Opera in WeHo in the early 90s and disliked it very much.

Pinter's "No Man's Land", starring Patrick Steward and Ian McKellen.

BORING.

The only good thing was that Patrick Stewart is "hit" and falls to the ground at one point. He did this performance after performance at the age of 76.

That was impressive.

Amateur production of Brigadoon. Holy god. Had to stay though because I knew someone in the play. But the story was terrible.

I used to hate anything by the elliptical Harold Pinter. As time has passed, I’ve come to appreciate his technique, even if the ?????? of what’s going on in his plays is frustrating.

He started as an actor, and noticed certain things an audience responded to. When he was in a tour of King Lear, he noticed how the audience became strangely spellbound when the Lear performer held a crown silently over his own head, and paused. The viewer was in some primal way focused on the prop, the imagery. So Pinter went on to prompt that same response when he would have a character silently pour and drink a glass of water. The audience was hooked in ways they didn’t understand.

He’s still not a playwright I enjoy, but I do acknowledge his well thought out approach.

The Sam Shepard lobster play might be "Cowboy Mouth," a short play he wrote and performed with Patti Smith. They order lobster and it's delivered by "Lobster Man" who attempts suicide at the end of the play. But I can't remember the Patti Smith character pretending to be a lobster...

I thought it was like a trial run for his next play, "The Tooth of Crime," which is one of his best.

When I saw Rent on Broadway - huge letdown.

I saw a performance of the Glass Menagerie at a play festival and it was performed in the round and there were only two chairs and no props so the actors mimed acting with props.

The Laura was SO over the top. She had the most exaggerated limp and when she should have been shy and quiet, she was hammy and scenery chewing. And pretending to pick up the little glass figurines was like watching the worst mime act ever.

I wanted to go onstage and slap an imaginary glass figurine out of her hand.

Cats! Only musical I've ever walked out of...and I've seen some bad musicals.

Also wasn't a fan of Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, even with Stockard Channing and Judith Light in the cast. It just didn't live up to it's hype.

Mary Zimmerman's "The Arabian Nights". I attended a production by my alma mater a few years ago. It was BEAUTIFULLY designed (I even spotted the gorgeous coat in changeable bottle green & warm gold taffeta that I'd made for Polonius in a previous production of "Hamlet"), but wow is it dull. And it dragged, and DRAGGED. I even fell asleep at one point.

Zimmerman was trying so hard to produce something along the lines of Brecht's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" (which I ALSO worked on in undergrad, and really enjoyed), but failed. It is the worst play I've ever seen. At least, it's the most boring. And the Middle Eastern exchange students behind me didn't like it either. That theatre department typically does beautiful work, but they don't typically choose crap like that.

But, at least my coat is living on in other productions! I was really happy to see it.

I would love to see Lens as Laura; I know she'd bring her unique personal touch to the role.

The only shows ever walked out of was Titanic and Will Rogers Follies. Pieces of shite.

The OP isn't distinguishing between a playwright's work and the particular production of a play.

'King Richard the Third' is a fairly fast-moving play with some fabulous lines (the movie with Olivier was VERY entertaining).

I saw an uncut production on a bare stage with colour-blind casting and every character cross-dressing and Cate Blanchett in a supporting role that we left at the second interval.

R22: "The OP isn't distinguishing between a playwright's work and the particular production of a play."

OP gets to distinguish however OP decides to distinguish (or not distinguish). That is her prerogative.

R7 I find Chekhov plays interesting to read and analyze, but fucking bore to watch.

[quote]I would love to see Lens as Laura; I know she'd bring her unique personal touch to the role.

We’d get never before scenes like when Laura instructs her younger sister to put the glass figurines in her vagina. Her pleurosis is replaced by endometriosis and. Jim calls her “damn, those some meaty roses” and her limp is a product of fibromyalgia. And we see her tits for no good reason other than she wants us to.

I've been watching quite a few Pinter plays in recent years to try to expand my appreciation. No Man's Land was the most recent. I honestly don't know what to make of it. It started out promising; I like ambiguity. But when it turns into incomprehensibility (to me), that's when I get frustrated.

I will say that The Homecoming included one of the craziest "WTF??" moments I can recall in a play.

My most hated play?

Why it's the Immaculate Reception

Broadway productions of Rent and Cats. I was with at least five friends each time, so I couldn’t pick up and leave.

I fucking hate Equus. The only thing interesting about this boring ass navel gazer is the nudity. I have never seen it performed well. Always over the top and gratuitous. Fuck this awful play.

[quote] "I find Chekhov plays interesting to read and analyze, but fucking bore to watch."

It's because everything actually happens offstage, while all of that action is just discussed and alluded to onstage, R24. I didn't like Chekhov for most of undergrad, and he still isn't my favorite, but I eventually came to appreciate his work.

Oh, and I'll add JM Barrie's "Mary Rose" to the list. It's a fun show to design & build, but oy was it dreadful. The cast looks for the titular character, and continually yells "Mary Rose! Mary Rose!" at different points.

When we did it in undergrad, one guy in the audience answered his phone out loud during a performance (trash behavior), and in what seemed like a response to the action onstage (and without missing a beat after a cast member yelled that aforementioned phrase) and said "Where you at?!" when he took the call.

There are things I appreciate about the play, but I'll avoid seeing it again in the future.

The American General put me to sleep. It was one of those situations where I was a guest of the ticketholder, but knew I'd hate the production, and I did, beginning in medias res as it did with no exposition whatsoever.

"The Last Five Years." Awful, awful, awful. We were at the end of the row and couldn't exit without disturbing about a dozen people so we waited for the intermission to leave.

My husband said it seemed like eternity and should have been titled "It Lasted Five Years."

I suppose because it's been done a million times, it seems that each production of The Glass Menagerie I've seen in the past 20 years has been trying to out weird the last. The one with Sally Field that made it to Broadway a few years ago was a disaster. Sally was great, but I could only imagine how great she would have been in a proper production of the show. Every directorial choice seemed to go against the text.

[quote] "The Last Five Years." Awful, awful, awful. We were at the end of the row and couldn't exit without disturbing about a dozen people so we waited for the intermission to leave.

Is there really an intermission in TL5Y?

R19 I've seen a few Mary Zimmerman pieces in Chicago, including one where the actors performed in a reflective pool that may or may not have been water (forgive me, this was 25 years ago and memory fails me).

Anyway, I enjoyed the shows I saw but so much of her work is heavy on metaphor and symbolism that it confused and overwhelmed me at times.

Perhaps, R33, you didn't see the Cherry Jones/Zachary Quinto revival on Broadway in 2013.

Ben Brantley's NYT review, Sept. 26, 2013

How can something be this delicate and this strong, so elusive and yet so tenacious? That question radiates from John Tiffany’s stunning production of Tennessee Williams’s “Glass Menagerie,” which opened on Thursday night at the Booth Theater and promises to be the most revealing revival of a cornerstone classic for many a year to come.

More than any interpretation I’ve seen of the 1944 drama that made Williams’s name, this “Menagerie” — which stars Cherry Jones and Zachary Quinto in career-defining performances — finds the brute force in a play often described, a bit condescendingly, as lyrical, wispy, elegiac. Yes, the tapered fingers of poetry shape “The Glass Menagerie.” But when these fingers curl into a fist — and they do so again and again in this production, before you quite realize it — be prepared to have the breath knocked out of you.

I hated Endgame, mainly because Iron Man died. I can only imagine how lousy the special effects were if they performed it as a play.

[quote]Cats! Only musical I've ever walked out of...and I've seen some bad musicals.

Ah, but with the right director and choreographer, Broadway’s finest actors, and the production lighting is on point, and the orchestra’s at its finest, Cats is still just a really shitty musical.

I saw an absolutely horrible play at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton by David Rabe called "Those the River Keeps," which was kind of a sequel to "Hurlyburly." It was the original production, and Rabe was very closely involved with it, so it was what he wanted it to look like. It was just terrible--characters stepping forward to make boring long soliloquies.

Cats is bad, but it’s not the worst musical.

It’s not even the worst Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Just be glad you never saw Stephen Ward, Starlight Express, Whistle Down the Wind, The Beautiful Game, or Aspects of Love

In high school saw a version of A Chorus Line done by one of those national touring companies. Sat the whole time thinking my high school could have done a better job. The pacing was slow and the actors were average at best. Our drama teacher even used it as an example of how not to put on a musical.

I despise Book of Mormon

Stupid and painfully unfunny

Yes [ R 36 ] I adored the Cherry Jones/Zachary Quinto production of The Glass Menagerie.

The 2 plays that I most hated were Avenue Q and Wicked. Torture. Torture. Torture.

Chekhov's The Three Sisters was one of the best and one of the worst theater experiences of my life. When Chekhov is well performed and produced, it's a joy. I saw a production decades ago of T3S with Jeff Daniels as Andrei (I recoil at the memory of having had endured this performance....correct grammar?) at the Manhahattan Theater Club that was truly a test of patience. Luckily I had seen it produced well so as not to think the problems were in any way the fault of Chekhov.

No need for spaces between numbers and letters, R43.

Many local productions of 1980s and 1990s German plays.

R43, since you asked, you don't need the "had" there. Otherwise, great!

Glengarry Glen Ross. For me, excruciatingly awful. Nothing redeeming. I couldn't wait for it to be over.

Hamilton After 30 minutes of tuneless wall-wall singing and leaping and twirling about substituting as choreography I wanted to leave and did at intermission.

[quote]r22 I saw an uncut production on a bare stage

I don’t like uncut.

4 1/2 hours of my college friend's production of Nicholas Nickelby. I hate Dickens. I wanted to kill myself.

I am so glad you didn’t, r50. Be aware there’s a television version that’s sometimes on PBS. Change channels carefully.

Yes: "Our American Cousin."

But maybe it was just the production I saw...

"Hello Dolly". The harder the cast tried to make the audience love it, the more I hated it.

Chicago: I saw it on Broadway with an unknown cast. It was worse than a high school production.

Take Me Out: The penises were nice, but Jesse Tyler Ferguson ruined the show.

This one. Amazing actors, horrible play.

God of Carnage in Los Angeles

The original Broadway cast of Yasmina Reza's Tony Award-winning black comedy God of Carnage, including Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels and Hope Davis, will duke it out for Los Angeles audiences this spring.

[quote] Deborah Kerr in something wretched at the Schubert in LA. We left before intermission.

I sympathise, R5. I'm interested in seeing movie stars in the flesh but this overlong, tedious, repetitious play can defeat professionally-trained thespians such as Vanessa Redgrave.

Deborah Kerr occasional uses a plaintive tone in an upper register to express a sense of drama in her movies but four hours of it would be painful. And Chuck Heston had the luck to star in that well-crafted movie 'Ben-Hur' but he's so pretentious when he attempts Shakespeare.

I walked out of a revival of Hair within 10 minutes -it was beyond dreadful . 2 other couples followed suit. We all ended up at the Bemelman Bar and trashed the play together . It was a fun night !

Gemini original Broadway run.

Live theatre is best for young people with disposable income who are keen to get out and socialise and perhaps learn about "culture".

It's also OK for middle-aged people with with disposable income who are bored with their home life.

I believe Live Theatre is a dying profession. Of course, there should be some theatre subsidised to revive classic, well-written plays but the bulk of modern plays are drivel.

A college production of The Robber Bridegroom. It was like a church service for the retarded

[R46] Thank you for the correction. The "had" seemed superfluous.

Sometimes I teach 'Waiting for Godot' by Beckett. I love how mad some students get that they even have to read it.

I saw the recent touring production of Hadestown and it brought about a hate for theater I never knew I had. The actors were all good, and the production good but I couldn’t stand the repetitiveness of the music and the completely awful story.

I did see the original New York production of Cats and fell asleep because 1) the play is terrible and 2) the Winter Garden was kept at 85 degrees.

Musicals are more fun than real plays.

They have color and movement!

I saw Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys fame walk out of Spring Awakening.

Waiting for Godot

i left at intermission of HADESTOWN/ national tour. Such a letdown. Don't understand what the fans see in it.

R62, what do say about Beckett to your students? Just a little something. I find his plays very moving, but I don't always completely understand. I've seen or read quite a few of them. I'd like to know what a teacher likes to impart to his students about the work.

"Endgame" makes me feel ill, especially the early scenes. So I sympathize with OP.

Beckett is Dada. There is no meaning.

A sympathetic actor might leaven our boredom but Beckett is meaningless and pointless.

'Hillary and Clinton' with Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow as Lauire Metcalf and John Lithgow. I left about 30 mins in. How did this thong make it to Broadway? It folded due to underwhelming ticket sales

No one wanted to see John Lithgow in a thong, anyway.

[quote]Beckett is Dada. There is no meaning.

Well, he sure worked painstakingly on his writing and with his actors to get across that "no meaning," then.

R33 The one with Zachary Quinto was excellent, except for Zachary Quinto. His southern accent was so forced he almost killed every scene he was in. He was lucky to have such a strong supporting cast.

Don't know the exact term, but there were a lot of sort of silent vignettes they would do to transition between scenes that I thought were beautiful, it was almost like ballet.

Sally Field did do a more traditional production of Glass Menagerie at the Kennedy Center some years prior to the Broadway disaster (another crapfest from director Sam Gold).

The DC production was directed by Gregory Mother and had Jason Butler Harner as Tom and Jennifer Dundas as Laura. Solid production and Field was impressive. It wasn't on the same level as the John Tiffany production with Cherry Jones though.

Worst play I ever saw: a toss-up between Sex & Longing (a Christopher Durang disaster that wasted Sigourney Weaver) and God's Heart (one of many awful works by Craig Lucas).

I saw a West End production of Grease that was no better than your average community college theater production. Cheap sets and costumes, awful acting, and shitty American accents.

The Baz Luhrmann La Boheme on Broadway looked great, but despite the glitzy sets and costumes, it was somehow boring as hell.

"Aged in Wood" with Margo Channing. She was far too old for the part.

The TV version of Glass Menagerie directed by Paul Newman is quite good. It's very stagey, but that somehow works. Features a young John Malkovich and Karen Allen, and they manage to not beat the southern accents into the ground.

It's on Youtube if you are curious.

[quote] Baz Luhrmann

Yes, lots of glitzy razzmatazz.

Yet, utterly empty-headed.

R68 They were shouting SO LOUD, and Clove was STOMPING AROUND, and then they would mumble under their breath a little and then CLOOOOOOOVE!

R71 actually it was Monica in the thong

[quote] Samuel Beckett hated the audience

Yes, he belongs into that special genre which was very popular in the 1960s.

A friend and I went to see "To My Girls" with Brian Batt & others at Second Stage, a reputable off-Broadway theater company.

It was one of the worst plays I've seen in many years. Embarrassing and the longest ninety-five minutes in memory.

[quote]Deborah Kerr in something wretched at the Schubert in LA. We left before intermission.

Was it that old war horse "The Last of Mrs. Cheney" in 1980?

[quote]Also wasn't a fan of Other Desert Cities...

Ohmygawd, I HATED that play! Such bourgeois crap wrapped in a jokey Neil Simon package....of CRAP! It was painful to sit through, especially as some regarded it as something other than the shit sandwich of a play it is!

R83, see R56.

Yes r85, I see it now, but how puzzling the poster didn't remember it was "Long Day's Journey"! That's why I thought it might have been a far less known and regarded play.

I might be the only one on planet Earth but I hated To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday

Speed the Plow with Madonna was terrible. Tedious and amateurish. Years later a friend took me to see the same play with Elizabeth Moss. I had forgotten I’d seen it before but realized once I read the Playbill. I was going to escape before it began but my seat was in the middle of the aisle. The play was still pretty but much more tolerable with Moss and Jeremy Piven who was quite good. Good actors can make all the difference.

…pretty bad …

I saw John Malkovich and Joan Allen in Burn This but they didn't make a difference. I've never understood the appeal of that show. Dancer falls for angsty bad boy with a stupid name as they grieve his dead brother. Never rises over the level of a soap opera.

[quote] Good actors can make all the difference.

Good actors can make tedious plays entertaining.

So many good choices to hate!

Speed the Plow with Madonna (and ALL Mamet) was INSUFFERABLE!

To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday was the whitest and most boring show I can recall from that era. Like a play written for someone like Blythe Danner as its core audience!

Burn This is PURE TEDIUM and also makes no sense at all. The characters do things a writer thinks are cool, but actual people don't do, plus it is three bloody hours long! I hated Malkovich's scenery chewing and Korean hair wig! Needless to say straight people seem to love it.

I'll add Hurlyburly. My gawd what a fucling bore!

Who is afraid of Virginia Wolf ?

Dear R93, you have misspelled my husband's surname AGAIN.

"The Fantasticks," How it ran for 50-plus years Off Broadway is beyond me. I remember seeing it when I worked in Manhattan but not that I hated it. When I saw a local production many years later, I remembered just how terrible a show it is, or at least the score is. I knew people in the cast and couldn't leave.

I prided myself that I never saw "Cats" on Broadway, but I got stuck seeing it when it was part of my season tickets for a regional theater. "Memory" is a pretty enough song, but not by the fourth or fifth reprise. Plus, people dressed up like cats is creepy. The show just felt like it lasted "always and forever."

"Fun Home." Awful. The graphic novel is OK, but as a musical it sucked.

I walked out (or away) from a site-specific play called "The Brothers Karamazov," that took place in the meat-packing district in NYC and which had nothing to do with the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Almost anything by Sondheim, with the exception of "West Side Story" and "Gypsy."

R81 So he did it on purpose? Maybe these people were geniuses.

"Tru," a one-man play based on the words of Truman Capote staring Robert Morse on Broadway. It was incredibly amateurish. I left during intermission.

Miss Saigon - was like a bad Oliver Stone musical on steroids;

Death of a Maiden - unintentionally hilarious, though thankfully Roman Polanski got the film adaptation right.

Miss Channing is ageless, R76.

Thank you, R95. Cat-faced people in leotards leaping around is deeply creepy and I've always wondered why nobody else seemed bothered by it.

R98 God I hope there's never such a thing as an Oliver Stone musical.

[quote] "Tru," a one-man play based on the words of Truman Capote staring Robert Morse

R97 One-man plays are never easy. I enjoyed Robert Morley's 'one-man play' which was really just a monologue in 2 acts; they changed the decor in the second half.

The Truman Capote play is now on Youtube.

The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, a Brecht play, at the Berliner Ensemble.

I hated the production so much I vowed never to see a play again in Germany.

" Slave Play." Tedious and self-indulgent tripe, embraced only by the self- proclaimed NYC intelligentsia who kept telling me that it was brilliant and that I just didn't understand the inherent racism of white people. Paul Nolan's ass was nice, but it couldn't save this shit.

" King Kong, the Musical." How did the theater manage to take a Beauty and the Beast story and turn it into a female empowerment crap- fest? The bitch betrayed Kong in order to further her own career and then, after he is killed, she stands at the top of the Empire State Bldg and sings a song about how the experience had made her a stronger woman. I so wanted her to jump. BTW, what ever happened to musical theater songs with melody?

The play Art. Pretentious as fuck.

I don’t hate it per se, but “Death of a Salesman” is highly overrated

I kind of agree, though I could see why it got so much praise at the time. Its just that many plays after repeated similar themes and in the same way. I feel most Tennessee Williams plays, Miller's would be rival (though they were friends) stand out as more original and harder to mimic.

Let me rephrase that. I feel William's plays stand out as more original and harder to mimic than Miller's, his would be rival, though in fact they were good friends.

Jasper in Deadland was a shrill mess.

Instantly forgettable.

It's everything wrong with modern musicals.

Hated it.

We had to read Art for a French class I was in, it was like pulling teeth. Musing about the nature of art and the life of an artist while looking at a painting and just, like, being deep, man. Of course it's French.

I love Tennessee Williams, but I hated his "The Two Character Play" when I saw it with Amanda Plummer and Brad Dourif. It was like he was trying to be Harold Pinter instead of just being himself.

I found David Byrne's musical about Joan of Arc to be incredibly boring and tuneless, which is quite a feat considering both the subject matter and his talent. (I enjoyed his Imelda Marcos musical "Here Lies Love.")

And put me in the camp that loathed "Other Desert Cities" as a play. I enjoyed the performances.

The Lady from Dubuque - the 2012 revival put me in the foulest mood I have ever been after leaving the theater. Albee at his most arch and ugly.

R109 Seems awfully reminiscent of Dr. Horrible's Sing-along blog.

Spring Awakening, Dear Evan Hansen.

This is heresy, I know, but I have never liked or really understood "Angels in America."

I've seen it at least three times - more if you count performances that were only Part I or Part II - and it bores me to tears. I'm not a particularly stupid person, but I just don't get all the raves. I only understand partial bits of the play. Maybe I'm dumber than I think. I keep going to performances as if I'm going to have some type of awakening and it will all come together. An 'aha' moment.

But no. Not so far.

Is there a 'Cliff Notes' version available that might help? (I guess that belies any intelligence that I might think I have.)

There are LOTS of things going on in this thread:

* bad productions of GOOD plays

* GOOD plays that some people just don't like (I'd put Long Day's Journey in that category for myself)

* plays vs. musicals

* and just plain BAD PLAYS

I've walked out of many plays. But I stayed for PRYMATE because is was just so shockingly bad. Andre de Shields playing an ape. Seriously.

R115 I think AiA it is a tad overrated but there are parts where it's beautifully written.

Prymate was also the play with soap actress and perpetual Pinched Sphincter Syndrome sufferer Heather Tom.

Copenhagen - WTF were they talking about? They lost me.

God Of Carnage - Boring people arguing about boring stuff. Nobody cared.

The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? - The absolute worst POS Albee had written. Just awful. It was either heavy-handed symbolism bashed over our heads or it was simply about a man fucking a goat. I puked afterwards.

[quote] I found David Byrne's musical about Joan of Arc to be incredibly boring and tuneless, which is quite a feat considering both the subject matter and his talent. (I enjoyed his Imelda Marcos musical "Here Lies Love.")

I haven't hated anything as much as this POS in a very long time. I wanted to walk out so much, but we were stuck in the middle of a very long, very tight and narrow row, the place was packed, and my friend refused to stand and do a lengthy "pardon me, 'scuse me" where everyone, including the actors, would see us disrupting the play. I, on the other hand, didn't give a shit. I paid $125 for that ticket, and that entitles me to the right to leave if I hate it.

I once saw a play by Adam Bock in Los Angeles in an oddly shaped theater that had raked rows on three sides of a somewhat thrust stage. There was only one non-emergency door into or out of the theater, and in order to get to any of the seats, you had to walk across the very front of the stage. I had chosen to sit on the far side of the house, well across from the door. The play was so fucking bad, I was writhing in my seat. I noticed there was no intermission, so I was stuck, because there was no way of getting out without literally walking across the stage. Finally I could take no more, and I did just that- I walked as close to the edge of the stage as I could, but it went right up to the first row of seats, and the poor actors- I felt terrible for them, but not as terrible as I did thinking about suffering through another hour of that show.

I once got the giggles in the last scene of a very serious, badly acted period drama (“Bloody Poetry” by Howard Brenton.) One of the actors later chastised my friend for not removing me from the theater, “as you would a howling baby.”

Add me to the short list of people who saw PRYMATE. A truly terrible play but I stayed. I saw MOOSE MURDERS, too. I'll never forget either.

THREE TALL WOMEN. (saw a regional production, not NYC)

Butt crusher extraordinaire!

August Wilson’s “Seven Guitars” was more boring than watching paint dry. “Martin Guerre” was the worst professional musical I’ve ever seen. Absolutely dreadful

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

I wanted to walk out of Sondheim's Passion but they had removed the intermission, allegedly due to people leaving. But people started yelling at the actors near the end. When Fresca or whatever her name was threw herself on her knees and grabbed the lead actor around his knees and shouted "What can I do to show how much I love you?" someone said loudly "Let go of his legs." Later the doctor came out and announced Fosca had died. The audience spontaneously erupted into applause. That wasn't the intended effect.

Before Prymate, there was Wrong Mountain, David Hirson's follow-up to La Bete. It starred Ron Rifkin and Daniel Davis. A friend of mine got comps because she lived at one of those subsidized Actors Fund buildings and would invite me to shows now and then. I went, not knowing anything about the play, but because Daniel Jenkins, who I was a fan of, was also in it.

Our seats were in the orchestra of the Eugene O'Neill, but towards the back. The theater wasn't terribly full, maybe 2/3 full, and I believe the mezzanine had been closed. The show was in previews and it was a weeknight in January. So we were invited before the show started to move up to the front of the orchestra.

The play was so bad, so incomprehensible, and before the intermission came along, my friend had been already making overtures about leaving. But I wanted to see Dan Jenkins. Intermission came, we stood up and turned around, and a good hundred or so people had left during the first act. My friend insisted on going, and I felt it was rude to stay when she had invited me, so we left, but I always felt like the thing was going to burst into Moose Murders territory in Act 2 and I was sorry we didn't stay.

When I saw Into the Light, a musical about the Shroud of Turin, the mime came out with the Little Boy at the opening of Act II and the audience started screaming "Oh, no! Not that mime again!" and started throwing their programs at him. It was so embarrassing for the actors.

At least “Long Day’s Journey into Night” has an accurate title

R119 I remember the PBS version of Copenhagen being pretty good. That might be material better suited for TV, though.

Inherently pretentious plays, of which, Waiting For Godot sits at the top, with Equess a close second. I once saw a production of The School For Scandal, which can be a riot, but the director was clearly humourless, the actors had no conception of what they were doing, and to top it off, the stage floor was covered in 3 inches of shredded paper as some form of artistic statement. One couldn’t even hear the lines for all the rustling. I took a leaf from a piece of very rough trade a friend had picked up who always spoke his mind whatever the occasion and left my seat, bellowed THIS IS ABSOLUTE TOTAL SHIT! before making my way out. Only then did I feel I’d got my money’s worth.

I hate anything with overacting precocious Jewish children.

The School for Scandal is usually hilarious. It takes a particular talent to fuck that up.

A Chorus Line is another I almost walked out of. The book must be one of the worst of any musical: so agonisingly cliched and tedious. And the big dance number of the chick who had the affair with the director — leap, arm fling, leap, leap, arm fling, desperate arm fling — no bitch, I’d be putting a line through yer name as well. Next!

Any production of Annie .. que the precocious Jewish child screaming/singing to the audience.

I almost got booted out of the the theater when I got the giggles at the guy pulling out his artificial leg from under the bed in JERKER.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

I saw A Chorus Line four weeks after it opened at the Shubert with the original the original cast. Didn't see it downtown. I saw all the replacement casts and several of the tours and it never worked so well again.

[quote] I almost got booted out of the the theater when I got the giggles at the guy pulling out his artificial leg from under the bed in JERKER.

That had to be a directorial choice because neither of the characters in Jerker has an artificial leg (nor do they need one to make the play more compelling).

^ The one that worked the best was the 2001 tour directed by Baayork Lee that I saw at the Paper Mill Playhouse. My first trip out of Manhattan after 9/11, so maybe that affected my appreciation. The final closing cast on Broadway with Laurie Gamache was pretty good too.

But nothing ever compared to the original cast.

Book of Mormon. Made it all the more uncomfortable watching in a theater full of white people listening to stuff about Africans with AIDs and raping babies. Was not fun. Yes, I know the creators but thought it'd be better but it wasn't for me at all.

I walked out of the Lehman Chronicles in London. I really enjoyed the first act but by the end of Act 3 I was dying when I saw there was still 1/2 hour to go. Fortunately, I was in the last row near the aisle. I pretended to cough violently and walked into,the lobby and escaped. It wasn’t a bad play just way too long and ultimately pointless. The rest of the audience seemed enthralled. I also walked out of Wicked and Fela. I usually wait until intermission but sometimes that’s impossible.

Oh god, Lehman was painfully boring. I bailed about 20 min into the 2nd act.

Angels in America needs a full tilt AIDS crisis to work at all.

The revival showed what overheated tripe so much of it is. I found the original compelling having no idea if I myself would live or die, which really helped the play.

Plus, Jesus Christ get an editor!

Wicked is one of the most boring shows I've ever seen next to Miss Saigon.

Hasn't The Lehman Chronicles since been abridged for current productions? Open to correction.

For the sake of the audience, I hope it has been abridged. In my opinion it should end after Act 1.

The characters, the plot, everything about ‘night Mother was awful. The awful daughter announces to her awful mother that she’s going to commit suicide, then proceeds to torment the awful mother with said intention for the next two hours. The whole dysfunctional mess was so annoying that I found myself thinking, ‘Just go and kill yourself already!’

Cats was agony. I was chaperoning a group, so I couldn’t leave. I wanted to shoot myself.

Two different productions of "Wit" or "W!t" -- they had different names for the same play. One was a high school production that was cut to about 30 minutes so the language and such was cleaned up. What was dirty, I don't know, but that's high school. Just terrible. Then a production at the UVM Medical school for first years. I guess they did it to show them cancer(?) I dunno. The acting was terrible. Some of the cast was reading lines off of props. Vivian Bearing was whiny and just couldn't act. The programme said the actress really had cancer. I'm sorry, but it's called ACTING.

Oh, you poor dear, having to sit through the entirety of Cats. Seriously.

There's never been a show so built on its original cast as A Chorus Line. The subsequent productions were never going to work as well,

line

Wow, what is the point of a high school group doing Wit? That's insane. It's like going to see them do Spring Awakening.

I actually went to a tiny professional theater in Burbank back in 2004 to see a production of Neil LaBute's Bash. I had seen the Off-Bway production back in '99 and was now living in LA and a friend was visiting. I told her how amazing the play was, and even though this was a no-name cast, the play was still super powerful.

We went, and the production was not very good, and I kept feeling like something was off. I figured it was just the acting, but I had taped the production when it played on Showtime in 2000, and had never watched it. I pulled it out and we sat down to watch- I realized what the problem was. The director had cut every reference to Mormonism in the play. I have no idea why, and I am certain LaBute had no idea. The play was not published that way.

I hate Macbeth.

It's not a play, it's more a series of disjointed episodes. Some great lines and some great opportunities for her OTT histrionics but each episode stops and is followed by a comic episode or a clunky episode.

The opening episode (with the 3 witches) is strong but dissolves away (just like the similar opening episode in 'The Magic Flute'). The closing episode of the play (with its portable trees and Caesarian births) is as clunky and unstage-worthy as William Schwenk Gilbert at his worst.

Freud found this meagre play unsatisfying and Speilberg complained about its lack of a story arc.

If you are ever on Jeopardy, Lady Macbeth's first name was Gruoch.

Yes, the one where Patti LuPone yelled at the nice audience member.

Hasn't everyone?

left during the first of 2 intermissions of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin.

left during the intermission of the original Broadway production of Take Me Out aka Get Me Out aka Naked Boys Not Singing

(r128) I oo saw INTO THE LIGHT- "science without data, you can't get from alpha to beta." ... tap dancing nuns ... best night EVER!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Many fans don't like it.

Our Town

I didn't like Hedwig & the Angry Inch. Didn't like the character and didn't think it was funny or interesting The songs were meh.

You were born too late, r153! I’m sure Dame Ellen Terry’s beetle wing embroidered costume in 1888 would have left us all [italic]riveted!

PS: Ellen Terry sounds… successful:

[quote] Men were bowled over by Terry, both on and off stage. Her third marriage came in 1907, to James Carew, her co-star on an American tour. She was 60 and he was 30.

Dame Ellen Terry was Sir John Gielgud's aunt. Wasn't she?

Yes. Or, I believe his great aunt.

Trivia: She was notorious for having a terrible time learning lines, even for plays she’d already done in the past facing revivals. I think her costars were always on edge that she’d go blank (!)

[quote] Ellen Terry lingered in absent-minded old age, appearing occasionally in guest engagements. As my great aunt she was to me the perfect fairy godmother, and I shall always be proud of having seen her on the stage as well as acting to her both in my parents' house and at her delightful farmhouse at Smallhythe where she is so charmingly perpetuated. She somehow managed to preserve the impulsive, humorous timelessness which made her so famously endearing to audiences and family alike. - John Geilgud

John Gielgud was caught misbehaving in a public men's room in the early19 50s. He decided to retire rather than face the public again. His friends convinced him to make a comeback and instead of the boos he expected stepping onstage he received a standing ovation.

Whore.

(Just like his cradle robbing aunt.)

I have misbehaved in a public men's room and I am not ashamed.

Guys just like to have fun!

I hated "Waiting for Godot," and I was acting in it at the time.

Most Shakespearean scholars agree that the version we have of Macbeth is a cut down version that was meant for some special occasion, like a command performance for Elizabeth the First. Most off his tragedies run over four hours. Macbeth runs only two and a half.

I bet Dame Ellen understood the importance of lubrication!

The Scottish tragedy is probably better for being abridged.

I think it was Ellen Terry’s Lady Macbeth that put Stella Tanner to sleep in her theater box.

She was startled awake during the wailing in the sleepwalking scene and cried, “There is [italic]someone in the room!”… [/italic]quite surprising the audience.

I wonder if I’m mixing up my gay plays.

R128 Sounds like a great show honestly. Maybe not good... but great.

Plaza Suite.

Were you a student, R170?

I have a general rule that I'm not interested in plays about theater, R138. They are always shallow and pointless for the audience.

Chu Chem, I think it was at the Marquis Theater on Broadway. Some musical about a Chinese and Jewish couple that couldn't get married, and the guy dressed in drag. It was so weird, but not bad enough to be interesting.

The Substance of Fire at Lincoln Center. Good Lord what an amazingly bad play, and made worse by Sarah Jessica Parker, who was delivering line readings as if she were approaching the script for the first time.

In the Summer House at the Beaumont Theater. Hilariously stupid...I never figured it what it was about, just some rich girl who likes to sit in her summer house and her mother, played by Dianne Weist, was frequently trying to get her to leave it...

[quote]R179 I have a general rule that I'm not interested in plays about theater. They are always shallow and pointless for the audience.

But what of our beloved It’s Only a Play? The reckless and adorable Noises Off? The bubbly yet stately Light Up the Sky?

Oh please, won’t you reconsider?

That play put on by that miserable piece of filth daughter of my best friend.

Given a choice between something "meaningful" like Equus or Waiting for Godot, or a shameless farce like Run For Your Wife, I have no pride.

Tales of the City, the Musical. Good cast, but it just didn't work.

Wasn't that in San Francisco and it never moved to New York?

Les Miserables. It went on forever. Unfortunately, I made an ass of myself sitting close to the stage. I had enough of the drawn-out death scene of Fantine and said, "hurry up and die". My friends were mortified since the actors heard me. Needless to say, I remained quiet for the rest of the boring play. Embarrassing behavior on my part.

Slave Play. I saw a preview on Broadway. Pretentious glitter. The Snow Geese at Manhattan Theater Club with MLParker. Wooden. Why. The Christians at Playwrights. A good idea, but dreadful dull and pretentious.

I've never left a play at intermission. But if I had it would be these three by Harris, White, and Hnath. The actors were all good (except Ms Parker.) The fault lay with the playwrights.

Add to this much of Neil Simon.

Into the Light. The nuns pulled up their habits to show a bit of leg as they tapped. Insane, crazy and wonderful. And then it closed.

Six Degrees Of Separation without Stockard Channing was just a boring piece of shit, like most John Guare plays. Saw it again with Stockard and it was bearable.

Anything written by Sam Shepard. Except Simpatico. Really like that one.

I have hated Noises Off since the original production. It's a terrible play. by the 3rd act, you want to poke hot needles into your eyes.

Into the Light. It was a musical about the Shroud of Turin. Do you get that? It was a MUSICAL about THE SHROUD OF TURIN!!!!

Starlight Express. I regard it as a musical play. It sucked.

Into the Light was the most misguided thing I ever saw on a stage in 50 years of NYC theater going. Except for maybe Lapine's Passion.

I've never heard of it before today, R195, but you're all making it sound kind of amazing. It looks craptastic and weird, I don't know that I would have hated it.

[quote]Were you a student, R170?

No, I was appearing in a regional theater production.

^^ For R178. ^^

Danny Gerard of Into the Light was one of the most brilliant child actors I ever saw. I saw him once off Broadway, then once on Broadway, then he had a short run on some CBS TV show that was supposed to take place in Brooklyn.

I've seen lots of plays I've disliked, as I'm sure we all have, but the biggest piece of crap I ever suffered through was written by Edward Albee. It was called "The Man Who Had Three Arms" and it was ran briefly (although not briefly enough) on Broadway in 1983. The title tells it. The three-armed man, it soon became painfully clear, was a stand-in for Albee himself. A man mysteriously grows a third arm and becomes a media celebrity. Then one day his third arm disappears, and no one cares about him anymore. It was basically two hours of Albee whining about the fact that the theater establishment didn't love him anymore. It was an ordeal. I would have asked for my money back, but I had gotten a free ticket from Equity.

[quote] Danny Gerard of Into the Light was one of the most brilliant child actors I ever saw. I saw him once off Broadway, then once on Broadway, then he had a short run on some CBS TV show that was supposed to take place in Brooklyn.

Well, I hope he could act because he couldn't sing for shit.

I think the single play I hated the most was that thing Edward Albee wrote that starred Frank Langella and Deborah Kerr about the lizards that crawled up on the beach.

Doesn’t Oscar Jaffee in On The Twentieth Century in the song The Legacy want to leave his two sidekicks “a wig of Ellen Terry’s”? Always made me laugh!

[quote] I think the single play I hated the most was that thing Edward Albee wrote that starred Frank Langella and Deborah Kerr about the lizards that crawled up on the beach.

Sunset Boulevard?

Seascape, r202, Between the actors and the author everyone was expecting so much but it turn out so dire.

^ turned out. Whatever.

This person hated " what the end will be" at Roundabout:

If there was any justice in the world, this would be a career-ender for multiple people involved in this cartoonishly terrible production at Roundabout’s Laura Pels theatre.

The writing is atrocious, but real fault must lay with any artistic staff that fast-tracked this “topical” (post-pandemic) and “important” (every character is gay and/or a person of color) piece of shit - in lieu of any other worthy piece of theatre to present in such a coveted slot. These gatekeepers are an embarrassment to any larger artistic community and should be run out of town, tarred and feathered for the cons they are. This production alone is grounds to replace all upper artistic staff at Roundabout.

The nothing of a play - a labored slog at less than ninety minutes - is only made worse by the most amateur staging I’ve ever seen on a professional stage and abysmal performances and casting (Ben Platt’s high school student is decades younger than the actor cast as the eighteen year-old son).

Man, when you think theatre can’t get any worse the universe steps up to say: THE BAR CAN BE LOWER! When people say they don’t enjoy theatre, THIS is what they mean.

To be avoided at all costs.

R179 then you never saw Noises Off

R187 thank God Miss Patti wasn't there

R208 As I rule, I would avoid it. I haven't had the opportunity to pass on that one, though. What's different about it?

CSC once presented an absolute horror of a play called "Flaubert's Parrot", after which I called and canceled my subscription.

R210 "Noises Off is as sidesplitting a farce as I have seen. Ever? Ever." -John Simon New York Magazine

Saw both the original Broadway production and the revival and except for A Behanding in Spokane I've never experienced such nonstop laughter in a theater.

We watch the rehearsal for a play from the perspective from which the audience will see it and then view everything from a backstage perspective on opening night and how it all goes wrong.

Simon again "it creates an atmosphere so charged that sparks whiz about everywhere, detonating hilarity even between specific laughs"

So true. A friend of mine said she laughed so much that she couldn't even keep up with what she was laughing about.

I hated Slave Play with the heat of a thousand suns. Utter trash for woke white liberals written by someone grifting all of them and Broadway and getting away with it.

Noises Off is so funny that even Peter Bogdanovich's dreadful movie version could not dampen the laughs. Terrible film that was side-splittingly funny. Even Marilu Henner and Nicolette Sheridan couldn't kill the laughs.

R211, Flaubert' Parrot is a book that would be near impossible to make into a play. Are you sure you aren't thinking of Flaubert's Latest by Peter Parnell?

Curious has anyone under 35 posted here? You old gay men are such theater queens.

Yes, a thread about hating plays would tend to draw theater queens. What's your point, R216?

R212-I don't care what John Simon liked. His opinion is the last one I'd respect. I've seen 3 productions on Broadway and every time I give this piece of shit another chance, I'm enraged all over again. The Bogdonavich movie of it is more entertaining.

R213-I don't know why I remember this as "Flaubert's Parrot". It was "A Simple Heart" by Flaubert in a staging by CSC. Maybe it was that giant bird cage on the set. It was 1995, and I don't believe it ever actually opened, it was so bad.

R216-All you theatre kids want to post about is "Which Way To The Stage" and "A Strange Loop". I understand your misfortune. You know nothing about the history of live theatre and never will. Did I make that simple enough for you?

Suburban millennials have almost killed live theater in the U.S. Theater camps should be banned.

[quote] We watch the rehearsal for a play from the perspective from which the audience will see it and then view everything from a backstage perspective on opening night and how it all goes wrong.

Unfortunately, there’s a third act as well

R12, re: that No Man's Land performance with Stewart & McKellen -- it was being performed in repertory at the Cort, alternating with Waiting for Godot, starring Stewart, McKellen, Shuler Hensley, and Billy Crudup. I saw the Waiting for Godot performance and thought it was brilliant. I've always loved Dada and absurdity. I haven't seen other WfG productions, but I thought this one was directed with a sufficiently light touch and the performances were very good to superior throughout.

I debated seeing No Man's Land as well with the same cast, but my dreariness-dar tingled a bit, and I decided to skip it. I guess I made the right choice.

"A Simple Heart" played for 3 weeks in 1999

My favorite line in “Noises Off” is when the production is falling apart and the actress comes onstage with a doorknob instead of the prop dress that’s usually there.

She’s supposed to say something like, “Whose is this? I’d never buy anything so tarty.” But stuck with the doorknob she says, “Whose is this? I’d never buy anything so… brassy.”

For some reason that cracks me up - maybe because I’ve had too many Actors Nightmares.

[quote] Curious has anyone under 35 posted here? You old gay men are such theater queens.

Theatre is a dead medium.

See my post at R59. People under 35 amuse themselves in other ways.

I know they are considered second-tier Webber, but I must admit when I saw Miss Saigon and Starlight Express in London, I thoroughly enjoyed them. The staging for Starlight was amazing, and the music for Saigon was wonderful.

Right, OP. "Godot" is one thing. "Endgame" is quite another, a bathetic burlesque of the obvious, because dropping the usual themes like dry dog turds for an interminable time is NOT worth the grief. No.

I saw the original London production of Noises Off and while that was a long time ago, I do recall laughing harder than I ever have at a play before or since.

Never saw either Broadway production because I couldn't imagine it being better. I'm sure they were much more broadly played. Plus I never much liked Dorothy Loudon. The wonderful Patricia Routledge played that role in London, and she was hilarious.

Couldn't watch more than 10 minutes of the movie. Flat and unfunny.

Dorothy Louden was fucking brilliant in the original Broadway production on 'Noises Off". The whole thing crackled. I saw both revivals and they just sat there. Patti LuPone crushed every laugh into dust making me realize how incredible Louden was. The most recent revival was like a bad high school play.

[quote]I think the single play I hated the most was that thing Edward Albee wrote that starred Frank Langella and Deborah Kerr about the lizards that crawled up on the beach.

You mean Albee's "Seascape", which is always weird, but not always dull. The last Broadway revival was pretty dull, with the sturdy yet never exciting Frances Sternhagen (still alive at 92!) as the female lead. All the while I kept thinking, "This thing would totally KILL if they'd cast Marian Seldes!"

As I was leaving, stepping onto the sidewalk I bump smack dab into Marian Seldes herself. I excused myself for crushing into her and without another word, she read my mind and asked, "Wasn't Franny brilliant?" as if to force me to remain silent on my thoughts of who should have played the role! I told her instead how much I loved her in Albee's "Three Tall Women" and as Queen Margaret in "Richard III" with Kevin Kline decades earlier. She cupped my face in her hands, said "Bless you, my dear" kissed me gently on the cheek, and disappeared into the crowd.

This is why I love New York!

[quote] I know they are considered second-tier Webber, but I must admit when I saw Miss Saigon and Starlight Express in London, I thoroughly enjoyed them. The staging for Starlight was amazing, and the music for Saigon was wonderful.

Webber did not write Miss Saigon

My late partner took his aunt to see the original Broadway production of Miss Saigon because she wanted to see it and was surprised to enjoy it. I think the special effects and costuming were that good. Plus all the stolen tunes. ("Why, God, why God why?" "There's a small hotel" Love me some good Rodgers and Hart.)

[quote]Noises Off is so funny that even Peter Bogdanovich's dreadful movie version

That was like Beyond Therapy: a production I saw was achingly witty. Robert Altman's bizarrely inept film adaption of it is desperately unfunny. I can only presume he's completely and utterly humorous.

R 228, I would think that you would have said, " That's the reason I love Marian Seldes."

Numerous times:

There was a musical version of Remembrance of Things Past by Proust at Playwright's Horizons.

A truly horrible production the British sex farce Run For Your Wife. The play is pretty bad in itself. The movie version is considered one of the worst films of this century (2000s). It was a community theater production that was performed at a glacial pace, and the sex kittens were in their 50s and 60s.

The Cherry Jones Glass Menagerie. Laura entered and exited from a sofa (yes, you read that correctly.) Cherry Jones played Laura like "good New England stock". The telephone scene was a disaster. The set was surrounded by a puddle of water. In it was a small semi circle. I believe that when completed with its reflection in water, it was supposed to be the "silver slipper of a moon." In reality, it looked like a shark was circling the set. The only decent performance was The Gentleman Caller.

In My Life. A musical about an obsessive-compulsive girl and a guy with Tourette's syndrome and a brain tumor. Plus a chorus of dancing pirate skeletons.

The Band’s Visit. Snorefest.

R233 I'm amazed anyone could have hated that performance. It has its flaws- I was the one whining about Zachary quinto's accent upthread- but it was sublime. They did that shit.

R235, yup, shit pretty much describes it.

Waiting for Godot is not Dada. It is an allegory for how Man tries to live in and make sense of a world where he secretly knows there is no God. How does he find meaning, or even go on day by day, when The Great Meaning can no longer be relied on? It is arguably the great play of the 20th century because it hits the Zeitgeist dead-centre. Even moreso in the bombed-out, still shocked years after WWII when it was written (in France. In French.). If it has longueurs that's because boredom is part of the characters' experience, but properly played it's as funny as it is horrifying.

R236 Well, I don't think it's weird for a crippled girl to get up on a couch. The mother was supposed to be destitute from an old money background. I remember Cherry Jones paying her as desperate, highly affected, and tacky which fits her perfectly. Southern WASPs aren't all that different from northern ones. Sorry you weren't enthralled.

My sentiments.

R238, she entered and exited "from the couch". The actress literally pushed herself through an opening between the back and the seat of the couch.

Southern gentry are very different from New Englanders, and even more at the time the play was written. Amanda's life would have been very much colored by the Civil War. If we assume that Amanda is based on his mother, she would have been born around 1885. Furthermore, Amanda grew up in Mississippi, which is not by any means WASP adjacent.

Nearly all plays--and live theater in general--are intolerable.

Cherry Jones was directed to play Amanda Wingfield as if she were Mama Rose. Brian J. Smith stole the show.

Amanda's children are in their early 20s, and she probably had them when she was around 20. That would make her born around 1900, not 1885. She would only have heard about the Civil War from elderly relatives.

R243, The play is a memory play. Tom is middle aged as the narrator. It is clear from his monologues that the events in the memory play are from many years ago. The play does not take place in 1944, more like 1934. Also, it is clear in the play that Amanda spent so much time dithering at being the southern belle and juggling suitors, that time passed her by. She would have been in her lat 20s or even early 30s when she had her children.

In the early 1900s, there were many people alive who were in the Civil War. A twenty year-old soldier in 1865 would be 55 in 1900 ; so, yes there would be plenty of people Amanda knew who experienced the war first hand. Also remember the Birth of a Nation and the erecting of most of the Civil War memorials and statues were from the early 20th century (1900-1930), not the 1860s.

The play takes place in 1939, as Tom's monologue shows.

I'm not arguing that Amanda wouldn't have known elderly relatives who remembered the Civil War, but the setting of the play is really, really clearly established by Williams.

[quote]Adventure and change were imminent in this year. They were waiting around the corner for all these kids. Suspended in the mist over Berchtesgaden, caught in the folds of Chamberlain's umbrella. In Spain there was Guernica! But here there was only hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, ban, and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom like a chandelier and flooded the world with brief, deceptive rainbows. ... All the world was waiting for bombardments !

[quote]R 228, I would think that you would have said, " That's the reason I love Marian Seldes."

Marian WAS New York City!

The Lehman Trilogy. I know it is critically acclaimed but a 3 hour and 20 minute play was too much for me. Also because it starred only 3 people. I know the story of the Lehman family and their significance but this one bored the fuck out of me. What a waste of money.

I enjoyed those entrances and transitions, R240. I remember Quinto would do this intense lean and then stumble onto the stage, almost like a cartoon character, and it was the perfect entrance into the character's story. The guy stumbled around in his life and was kind of absurd, although surrounded by tragedy. The timing was done so it wasn't humorous. It was alarming.

The whole thing is the main character's hazy memories, anyway. I don't remember the sister crawling out of the couch, but since she essentially lived on the couch it's a solid metaphor to have her living inside of it, like she can't be separated from it in his memory.

I'm southern and I though Cherry Jones played southern very well. She gave it an unusual amount of depth and nuance, which I appreciated. She treated her character like a fully rounded person and not a stereotype. Everyone in the South well into modern times acted like they fought in the Civil War personally.

As a southerner, I do think southern gentry are very WASP-like. It ain't all me, though, is it?

There was something in the way Jones played Amanda that I really loved and felt was a fascinating interpretation of the character. Julie Harris did the same thing, but a different interpretation than Jones, and both found shades of Amanda that I had never seen before. The thing about Harris was she understood the play was not about Amanda. She allowed all the other characters to take center stage and it was the first time I realized the play was about Laura as much as anyone else. She gave Calista Flockhart room to shine, and in her portrayal you could see that Amanda actually resented her daughter and her handicaps (physical and emotional).

Jones played it as though she knew something the others didn't, maybe Amanda wasn't long for this world and she wanted to make sure that above everything else, Laura was taken care of before she shuffled off this mortal coil. There was a quiet desperation and a proud fierceness to her portrayal. And what I loved about both actresses was neither did the easy, faded southern belle routine.

Unfortunately for Jones, she was saddled with the minimally talented Celia Keenan-Bolger, but was lucky enough to have two very talented men working with her.

For how revered the role of Amanda is for women of a certain age, I've always felt it was missing something that all the truly great roles have. It's not as rich as Blanche DuBois or Martha or even Mama Rose. As R249 said, it really is more of a supporting role.

The most recent revival of Oklahoma. Saw it on tour a few weeks ago and could not have hated it more. I felt my blood pressure rising throughout the second act and left the theater absolutely livid.

R251 tell us more. Why was it horrible?

R212 You spent time and money 3 times on something you hated! For Hamiton, American Psycho, Take Me Out and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf I left at intermission and for the 1 act 90min Clinton and Hillary I left after 30 mins. Why keep punishing yourself?

^ R218

R218 was the Cher Show sold out?

Celia Keenan-Bolger is not a very good actress and she's really trolly looking. Her success astounds me, frankly.

Years ago there was an actress who always played younger than her years who excelled at these roles named Jenny Dundas.

Totally agree, R256. Apart from Jeff Daniels I thought much of the acting in Mockingbird left a lot to be desired.

I cannot believe Celia has been nominated for a Tony so many times and actually won. But again, it's the nature of the times. There are fewer and fewer stage talents these days.

Paula Vogel’s The Baltimore Waltz is the play I enjoyed less than any other I’ve seen. I have no idea what it was about.

I wish I liked Jon Robin Baitz’s plays more than I did. The only thing I’ve enjoyed though is season one of The Sally Field Programme.

And I’m another one who doesn’t love AIA. Not even with my favorite person Andrew Garfield. It was fun seeing him be so queeny though.

I remember being bored by (a touring production of) AIA, but my 2 frau sisters loved it. I was a wild child back then and it seemed like a boring message play.

I adored the first part of AiA. I went to see the original Bway production in the Spring of 1993. Got a student ticket in the balcony and wound up sitting next to a guy my age. We were both there by ourselves and got to talking during the intermissions and we wound up dating all that summer.

Went that winter to see the 2nd part and I hated it. It was such a let down from the brilliant first part. (And I had broken up with the guy so I went to Pt 2 by myself.)

R218 your opinion is the last one I'd respect, and you sound like Amber Heard always going back thinking things will change

Robert Schenkkan’s ‘The Kentucky Cycle’.

It's a six-hour, nine-play cycle that takes place over two nights.

It has something to do with the American frontier and the Wild West with some Native American stuff thrown in to allow even more sanctimonious pontificating.

Being waterboarded at Gitmo would have been less painful.

Inexplicably, it won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Could people please cut back on the use of acronyms? It is very hard to keep track of what all these initials mean when you're often responding to someone ten or more up-thread. It's not like you have to write the name of the play 15 times.

It doesn't sound knowledgeable. It sounds like you spend too much time in a fandom group on your socials.

Same problem on the Theatre Gossip threads, since I'm sure there's overlap in the readership with this thread.

Beckett is difficult to read; it's meant to be performed. I saw it with Ian Mckellan, and it was sublime. Equus is pretentious psychobabble. Out of historical context, Rent is unbearable. Be interesting to see how history regards Angels in America.

R265 Godot with Mckellan?

This may mark me out as a philistine, but I love the HBO version of Angels in America. Justin Kirk's Prior Walter is better than any of the other PW's I've seen on stage (admittedly, this is youtube clips of those performances, but my God Andrew Scott is overrated).

A thousand years ago I saw the brief semi-sensation amazingly much awarded musical The Drowsy Chaperone. (So it isn't really a play but it isn't a sung through, either.) I hated it. Thought it was amateur and if you called it corny that would be a step up. And I'm no theatre snob. I like alot of ALW for god's sake.

I hated an early Jon Robin Baitz play, "The End Of The Day" so much, I arrived home and cancelled my season subscription to Playwrights horizons. Wrote a letter to the artistic director, who wrote back to apologize. Apparently, a lot of subscribers felt the same way.

[quote] This may mark me out as a philistine, but I love the HBO version of Angels in America. Justin Kirk's Prior Walter is better than any of the other PW's I've seen on stage (admittedly, this is youtube clips of those performances, but my God Andrew Scott is overrated).

I didn't love it, but it's nowhere near as bad as people give it hell for. And of all the Harpers I have seen, Mary Louise Parker is the ONLY one who played it correctly.

R268, my response to Drowsy Chaperone was "Loved him, hated her." I though the "Man in the Chair" monologues were quite good. The "20s musical" was crap. It seemed like 60% of the time it was referencing 1940s musicals such as Lady in the Dark and King and I. Even the Latin lover was more Caesar Romero than Rudolf Valentino or Ramon Navarro. Sutton Foster has no sex appeal. She isn't the type to distract a man so he has an accident. She is the type that would rush over in full girl guide mode with a first aid kit in hand. Even the shtick of having the characters enter from the refrigerator was stolen from an earlier musical titled Mail.

[quote]I like alot of ALW for god's sake.

Might be why you hated "The Drowsy Chaperone."

[quote]I didn't love it, but it's nowhere near as bad as people give it hell for. And of all the Harpers I have seen, Mary Louise Parker is the ONLY one who played it correctly.

Correctly? You mean in the same flat, low-energy monotone she plays every other role with? She gives the exact same lousy performance she gives in "The West Wing"! I thought she STANK UP the HBO version of this overrated opus!

r266 Yes...Godot with Mckellan and Patrick Stewart...perfection.

[quote] it won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

They hand that thing out to any ratbag nowdays.

[quote]Have you ever hated a play?

Sure, we all have!

Everything by David Mamet since Glengarry Glen Ross.

I saw Copenhagen on Broadway 20 years or more ago and was bored stiff. Maybe I would like it more today, but I doubt it.

Ah, my list is plentiful.

"Passion Play" - by Sarah Ruehl, it is three LONG acts and was basically written when she was a student, so the whole thing comes off as, well, student work. Features that oh-so-trite trope of a having a man playing Queen Elizabeth.

"A Civil War Christmas" - another snoozer from Paula Vogel, I slept through most of it.

"The Cradle Will Rock" - I actually like this and have seen it done well, but a "semi-pro" production I saw years ago clearly had not done a tech rehearsal as there was the smell of fresh paint, and a few actors stumbled down a staircase that was a part of the set which they were obviously using for the first time. One actress was in heels, and did more of a controlled fall, fortunately on her ass. And the direction in some places just came off as full of it, such as having the accompanist come out and dedicate the show to Bertolt Brecht (while having very few Brechtian moments).

Oh, and "It's Only a Play", which was basically a star-studded shitshow, except for the then-unknown actor playing the coat check boy.

That coat check boy has a pretty big dick. And he knows how to use it.

Isn't coat check boy currently fucking Chris Perfetti from "Abbott Elementary"?

You just reminded me, Avenue Q was not to my taste. Puppets.

I would definitely hate this.

I will be avoiding this.

The best seats for this short show costs more than a dollar per minute.

No price reduction to watch the understudy.

r281, lucky coat check boy.

I know r284 thinks his math sounds expensive but it isn’t.

r271: I found the targets in the "Man In Chair' monologues to be very obvious - he loves the lovely music of older musicals, tut-tutting Elton John and the monolithic Disney musicals, but he is exactly the sort of old-school theater queen to disdain Sondheim for writing nothing hummable. But you'd never have any character say that on stage today.

"Man in Chair" is a bit creepy. It would be twisted fun to portray him as a serial killer, with wrapped body parts tumbling out of his freezer.

I actually liked Sutton a lot more in DROWSY than MILLIE. She was working very hard in the latter, but she was saucy and fun in DROWSY.

R271, I think" man in t chair" is obvious because it is accurate. I liked that they did not shy away form the potentially "creepy" aspects. Anyone who is obsessive has a certain creepy factor.

I agree that Sutton was saucy and fun, but in a "tennis anyone" kind of way which is not the character.

[quote]"Man in Chair" is a bit creepy. It would be twisted fun to portray him as a serial killer, with wrapped body parts tumbling out of his freezer.

I suggest keeping your day job.

R278,

I left Copenhagen at intermission. It was not that long after 9/11, and I didn't have the patience or stamina to endure the play. Years later I sat down and read the script. It's terrific. Might be a better play to read than see.

R233,

I too suffered through My Life with Albertine, the musical version of Remembrance of Things Past you are referring to. Or at least the first act. It was so godawful. Playwrights Horizons had a ferociously shitty season. I actually preferred In My Life, as awful as it was.

I have to laugh at the person who listed The Glass Menagerie with Cherry Jones as an all-time unfavorite. I saw that show twice, on Broadway and in Edinburgh, and if that's the worst you've seen, you are one lucky theatergoer.

Current hate: A Case for the Existence of God. If God existed, this play would not exist.

R290-Wow, your taste in theatre truly sucks. You fly in the face of most opinions of the shows you listed.

R290, I saw Copenhagen. It screamed "I am an important play!" at every turn.

Excruciating.

New York must have had a really terrible production of Copenhagen. It was such a big hit at the Sydney Theatre Company they had to bring it back the next year and it sold out again then. I found it entrancing and so did everyone I know who saw it.

If you hated A Case For The Existence Of God, you have no soul. The audience last night was one big puddle of tears at the end.

Several community theater and school productions. I don't always blame the play itself, though. I've discovered not even the best play is 100% fool proof, but the best ones can at least muster up a few laughs or tears even when presented by the most incompetent of creative teams.

Steel Magnolias is done to death and I've seen more productions than I can even name, but something about that play allows even the worst actors to shine. It always gets laughs and you can always hear a few people sniffling in the last act.

R295 That's a good point. I've seen True West multiple times and it's never actively terrible, even though some productions are lightyears better than others.

Oh come on. There is no play that a dreadful enough director can't destroy.

Brainy plays are especially susceptible. Most audiences will cry at a melodrama, but if the play is cerebral and the director doesn't know what the characters are on about after he's read it multiple times, then the actors probably won't either (certainly not uniformly so they play it as a team) and the audience will never work it out on the fly.

Many musicals are musicals because without the unreal musical insertions the play would be unwatchable. 'Sunday In The Park' was one such musical except the music was...well. let's just say no one would be leaving the theater humming it.

That's Sunday In the Park With George. A Pretentious Nothing.

To be fair, R298, without the soliloquies Hamlet would be little more than just its plot, and a soliloquy is the same thing as a solo song.

There is no point even arguing with someone who is still alleging Sondheim's music "isn't hummable". This POV has been satirised so often you are sending yourself up.

Ever hear of Sondheim derangement syndrome? A good guy but no Shakespeare.

"The art of making ARRRRRRRRRRT!!!! Is putting it together. Bit by bit."

Genius.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ . Sunday in the Park - so pretentious.

[quote]Have you ever hated a play?

You've never seen "Ladies in Retirement," I gather.

Into The Woods has a good first act but the second act is not needed and soooo preachy. I got so tired of people running on the stage to tell us what they've learned.

I also don't get the "Copenhagen" hate. Saw it on Broadway and was enthralled.

This old theatre queen once saw Marlo Thomas in a play called Thieves. A long night in the theatre.

I saw "Prymate", and yes, it was as bad as its reputation. What isn't as remarked upon is that Andre De Shields was really good and committed and tried to give the ape some real thought and feeling. However, James Naughton gave his very typical same performance that he almost always gives, though I think he may have taken his shirt off, so helped a bit. But a notorious flop.

I saw "A Chorus Line" about a year or so after it opened on Broadway. The only original cast member left with a big solo was Wayne Cilento. Ann Reinking was not a natural for Michael Bennett's choreography as she had been for Bob Fosse's, as she fell during "The Music and the Mirror". And I felt disappointed that the Diana, who has the most solos, Loida Iglesias, really couldn't sing that well. Two of the best numbers in the show, too.

The Full Monty--a good movie--was a bit tedious as a stage musical.

And the flash of frontal nudity at the end was too brief.

There was that Jake Gyllenhall-appearing play off-Broadway where he played an uncle who somehow steps into this play where the stage is flooded for some strange reason. Bizarre, and he couldn't save it.

R291,

My taste sucks because I hated My Life with Albertine (which you clearly did not see) and A Case For the Existence of God, which I'm guessing you did suffer through recently and found to be worthwhile? Bully for you. I acknowledged that I was in no mental place to sit through Copenhagen and really liked the play when I sat down and read the script years later. And that production of The Glass Menagerie I liked was wildly acclaimed. And I've seen my share of Williams's plays. I think you need to see more before you start calling out someone else's taste level.

R294,

Darling, I have soul aplenty. A Case for the Existence of God is an overly earnest, dramatically inert turd with an unearned, virtue-seeking ending. I didn't truly loathe the piece until the very end, and that was the breaking point. I saw the show in previews before a few critics told the public that this was a great play, and trust me, everyone around me was bored out of their minds. Any tears came from ennui. And for the record, I like a lot of Hunter's other plays. Not this dreck. Theatrically it is a big black hole, an overwrought snooze.

R312-John Simon, we thought you were dead.

R305 - agree with you and also feel the same way about Wicked. The second act of Wicked strikes me as so pointless because most audiences already know what's going to happen. It makes a little more sense in the original book, but as live-action it loses it entirely.

I am surprised no one has made a comment about "Merrily We Roll Along".

Passing Strange.

Phantom Of The Opera owns this thread.

Passion - ugh.

I absolutely hated Aspect of Love.

Pretty Woman in the West End, not long before lockdown. I left at the interval. I've since decided it was worse than COVID.

Aspects of Love is barf worthy.

I love Sondheim, but Passion really is a chore to sit through. I never once bought why this handsome guy would fall for this horrible woman who isn't just physically repulsive, but has the most dour, depressing personality. I could buy it if she were unattractive but witty, fun, dynamite in bed, or possessed some redeemable trait, but she's just repulsive in every conceivable way. You feel relief when she finally dies.

I have no idea what he was going for with that show.

R316 excuse you. POTO doesn't even rent this thread. The music may be shmalzy and corny and not all that original but the story still makes me tear up at times, especially if I watch MIchael Crawford as the 6Phantom.

I also saw the Cherry Jones/John Tiffany GLASS MENAGERIE on Broadway and in Edinburgh, and though Jones was even better in the latter mounting (though the rest of the cast wasn't quite as good).

If you want to hate a production of MENAGERIE, then you should pile on that ghastly version that Sam Gold did. Or Gold's fuck-ups of KING LEAR and/or MACBETH.

My Grammy called soaps, "stories" and the comics page "the funnies".

West Side Story. Hate it, but the score is wonderful.

Think you got the wrong thread, R324

Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind" was torture.

I saw the original Broadway production of "Hurlyburly" and wanted to scream at the stage it was so terrible in every way possible. Naturally the always awful Cynthia Nixon was in it, mercifully in a small role.

[quote]r309 Ann Reinking was not a natural for Michael Bennett's choreography as she had been for Bob Fosse's, as she fell during "The Music and the Mirror".

Oh my.

^^ Somehow… I almost wish I could see that! (I’m suddenly imagining her skidding with great energy across the whole stage. Maybe into the wings.)

I once played a hater.

R323 I know you're probably British and you're just using phrasing I'm unfamiliar with, but you did make it sound in your post like John Tiffany had mounted Cherry Jones on stage and we she was excellent. Thanks for the laugh.

I mentioned Prymate already, but on some level it was entertaining. But the play that actually left me angry was the stage adaptation of the film Festen with Julianna Margulies, Jeremy Sisto and Ali MacGraw! Simply awful.

King Kong, the Musical. Great love story of beauty and the beast turned into a woke female empowerment piece of trash.

R327-Back then, Cynthia Nixon was young and unassuming. She certainly wasn't "awful". It wasn't until SATC when she became a cunt.

I walked out of the Yale Repertory Theater's production of Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days" featuring Dianne Wiest as "Winnie".

Within 20 very long minutes, I turned to my friend and said, I can't take this I'm leaving. You'll have to take an Uber home because I'm not waiting around.

Was she playing Marian Cunningham or Pinky Tuscadero?

[QUOTE] I turned to my friend and said, I can't take this I'm leaving. You'll have to take an Uber home because I'm not waiting around.

R335, you sound like a narcissist.

I hope your friend dropped you after that.

I like Beckett, and I liked that Diane Weist production of HAPPY DAYS. But when Beckett is bad, it's torture!

R338 I can only agree.

Like The Nathan Lane "Waiting For Godot".

Resurrection Blues was probably the worst play I've ever seen. It was at the Old Vic and 'starred' Neve Campbell among others. I go to the theatre a lot and can genuinely say I've never seen so many people leave at the interval, especially for The Old Vic where the tickets aren't cheap.

I knew someone in the cast so went backstage afterward to say hello and he was completely miserable, almost embarrassed to be in such a shit play. I've seen better am dram productions.

"Oh Nathan, if that play isn't funny, it's just one long fucking night in the theater!"

[quote][R327]-Back then, Cynthia Nixon was young and unassuming. She certainly wasn't "awful".

Were you there? I was and I said she was AWFUL.

I'm not interested in, nor seeking your concurrence.

[quote] I'm not interested in, nor seeking your concurrence

Mary has stated her boundaries pretty clearly. She sounds like someone who spends most of the day analyzing Sondheim lyrics, then posting them on DL, hoping that someone will think she's intelligent, thereby making her life worthwhile.

If Yale Repertory mounted a play based on Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Kings New Clothes' it would be incestuous.

I so loathed "Tom And Viv" at the Public, I left at intermission. It was boring and pointless and so so British.

A friend took me to THE ADDAMS FAMILY. We fled at intermission. Sheer hell.

The Jessica Lange/Christian Slater "Glass Menagerie" was utter shit. Especially the shower curtains.

Every classical play that Cate Blanchett’s husband Andrew Upton has adapted sucks balls.

Doubly so if he directs it.

[quote]R349 Every classical play that Cate Blanchett’s husband Andrew Upton has adapted sucks balls. Doubly so if he directs it.

Their 2003 production of THE MAIDS was supposed to be great. (Or is that not “adapted”… or even classical. sorry, if so.)

R350

Mixed reviews on Blanchett & Upton's The Maids.

Race by David Mamet

[quote] Were you there? I was and I said she was AWFUL. I'm not interested in, nor seeking your concurrence.

R343 Live theatre changes every night.

"Boston Marriage" by David Mamet - pretty bad, even with a good cast down at the Public Theater

[quote] I so loathed "Tom And Viv" at the Public, I left at intermission. It was boring and pointless and so so British.

You would have hated the book on which it was based. It went into graphic detail about her menstrual bleeding. And it used the dates of her menstrual bleeding to calculate the chronology of his and her travels.

R350 I saw it in Sydney. The set direction was fun, as was Elizabeth Debicki looking 8 feet tall and gorgeous in a bit part but it was a disaster because Isabelle Huppert couldn’t cope with the Upton’s ambly rambly sing-song prose. Hell, most actors can’t. I saw everything he wrote or directed when I was a Sydney Theatre Company subscriber and his writing style killed in everything he “adapted”. Let alone his awful original pieces Hanging Man and Riflemind.

[quote] I was a Sydney Theatre Company subscriber

I am a LAPSED Sydney Theatre Company subscriber.

The company was run by gay men who knew that theatre could entertain a paying audience. Now it's run by self-Haters and preachy Woke Feminists who believe theatre must brow-beat their captive audience.

[quote] Elizabeth Debicki looking 8 feet tall

Theatre is a visual medium. Visuals are more important than dialogue.

Human beings with her giraffe-like physical impairment are an impossible distraction.

[quote]A friend took me to THE ADDAMS FAMILY. We fled at intermission. Sheer hell.

The Addams Family got really lousy reviews, bad enough to really kill a show, yet not only did it run at solid capacity for over a year and a half, but since the release of the stock and amatuer rights has regularly been the most produced musical in America.

I think the creators improved the libretto a bit and audiences seem to love it!

R359, I saw Addams Family recently. The libretto is not really improved. It has been rewritten to remove all of the special effects and puppetry. The basic libretto is still Abie's Irish Rose with cobwebs.

Most produced high school plays and musicals 2020

I'd generally a fan of Stoppard (love R&G are Dead, think Arcadia is sublime, admire The Real Thing), but absolutely hated Jumpers. I saw the 2003 production in London with Simon Russell Beale and thought it was even more bizarre than Pinter.

I've seen Fugard in Arabic (which I do not speak) make more sense than that production of Jumpers.

CATS was terrible when I first saw it in high school. There was such hype and I detested it.

Flash forward three decades, when the Bway revival was announced I thought--was my original opinion true? Now that I'm older and know the music, maybe I'll appreciate it more. So I went.

It was even worse than I remembered.

While NYC has tons of theatre, much of it is utterly terrible. I usually suffer through everything hoping it will get better. I rarely does.

fando & lis

Another vote for " Slave Play." Would anyone want to socialize with these pompous actors?

^ Yes, painfully pompous performers.

R366, the more people talk with their hands, the more full of shit they izz.

R362, agree 100% about JUMPERS. It was a perfect example of Stoppard getting carried away with his own cleverness and erudition.

Speaking of Andrew Upton and Blanchett, did Upton have anything to do with the STREETCAR that Blanchett did? I didn't see it but recall it got great reviews.

I did see the HEDDA GABLER with Blanchett and it was awful, which is why I bother seeing the STREETCAR.

R369 Liv Ullman directed that Streetcar. Always wanted to see it. They taped it but its under lock and key in the NYPL vaults. I still don't get why they don't allow people to watch tapings of shows that are no longer running.

To R40...You are correct about Aspects of Love. The best part of Aspects was the production assistant (Ed Windsor) who was fucking & sucking every male who was visiting backstage. Michael Ball was his "friend" along with many other mens. My private name for Ed was "Princess a love nutt" He had a great ass too, so did Michael Ball. The Union guys loved Miss Windsor too.

Oh, right R370. I'd forgotten that Ullmann did that production. Thanks.

R371 Are there any pictures of production assistant Ed Windsor with the 'great ass'? I can't see any on Google.

To R373, you would have to ask Sir Miss Andrew L. Webber& the Really Useful Group about photos of Ed Windsor's ass. Check Google under "Great creamy pale white asses that Love taking dick& cum loads" or ask Miss Michael Ball(she liked to share).Do u think the BRF would allow pics of Ed Windsor backstage to be published after all the shit he was asked about his "alleged interest in Homosex". Fags in the BRF, NEVER!!

R374 Ah, I finally realised you're talking about "Prince Edward".

The " actors " talking about "Slave Play" remind me of Sondheimites on DL talking about "Follies."

Sondheimites = Sodomites

Gee, thanks, r377. Any other obvious tidbits to share with us?

[quote] Mary Zimmerman's "The Arabian Nights". I attended a production by my alma mater a few years ago. It was BEAUTIFULLY designed (I even spotted the gorgeous coat in changeable bottle green & warm gold taffeta that I'd made for Polonius in a previous production of "Hamlet"), but wow is it dull. And it dragged, and DRAGGED. I even fell asleep at one point.

I saw an incredible production of it ten years ago in Portland, OR, and thought it was fantastic.

[quote] Mixed reviews on Blanchett & Upton's The Maids.

Kate Upton? Was she in it?

I watched "Aspects of Love" from the front row of the mezzanine. During the first act, I was deciding on where I would get a corned beef sandwich after the show. During the second act, I was speculating on whether or not I could hit Kevin Colson on stage if I threw a baseball at him.

[quote]I watched "Aspects of Love" from the front row of the mezzanine. During the first act, I was deciding on where I would get a corned beef sandwich after the show. During the second act, I was speculating on whether or not I could hit Kevin Colson on stage if I threw a baseball at him.

I like the way you think, r381. I have never walked out on a show, but will engage in mental gymnastics like yours to busy myself. I was the one who hated Passing Strange. Stew was just such an insufferable git.

R369 I preferred the Rachel Weisz and the Gillian Anderson Streetcars as overall productions, and I preferred the casts, especially the Stellas and Stanley.

Blanchett was fine - but unsurprising, she was exactly how you would expect a Cate Blanchett Blanche to be.

hmmm. I did see Gillian Anderson's production and was not a fan. Anderson was way over dramatic and played Blanche like a white trash hussy with no class. And she's already gone crazy before Stan even rapes her. Did not like Stanley either for the most part, not vulnerable enough at the right parts annoying. I DID love Stella in that production though, Vanessa Kirby. Which just shows her talent because Stella can be a very easy role to ignore.

I would have liked to see Rachel's as well, though I heard the Stanley was awful. And I love Joel Edgerton and by most accounts I heard he was great too, so still hoping I one day get to see it. I'm a little scared Blanchett might have camped it up.

R384-The Stanley was the only watchable part of that Streetcar with Rachel Weisz. Rob Ashford had that silly bitch play Blanche as a 24/7 drunkard. She also had a ghost dead husband.

[quote] Suburban millennials have almost killed live theater in the U.S. Theater camps should be banned.

R219 please expand, for a curious non-American?

Aspects of Love had a romantic moment where Michael Ball appeared shirtless. As the run continued .... Michael's weight balooned..... the stage hands then began referring to the turkey as Aspects of Love Handles.

I have a total phobia of any plays I saw as a teenager at The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester UK.

My school must have had a great deal with them, but 'Theatre in the Round' (Central Staging) is a terrible way to watch anything.

The worst has to be 'The Government Insector' by Nikolai Gogol, I got so bored that I never went back after the interval (went to the pub around the corner, easy if you were 14 and 6ft). Nobody noticed either.

R386 Arts that have a whiff of class to them- theater, poetry, classical music, etc.- get taken over in the U.S. by upper middle class people building college resumes for their children.

Over the past few decades wealthy parents trying to get their children into exclusive colleges have become the financial backbone of American theater, because they'll spend an inordinate amount of money and the reward is having their child on stage (the show doesn't have to make a profit.)

It has rotted American theater from the inside out. A few of the children grow up to be marginally talented theater professionals. It's not a system that fosters talent, you work in theater because you did theater as a kid and your parents sent you to theater camp when you were twelve. You fit in socially and assist the next generation in engaging in the same system, so you keep your job and you get paid.

R389 There's also the issue of government arts councils all being infested with former theater kids who favor their own when distributing grant money. They have their pets that they dote on, too, but their concerns are not about the quality of the work that will be produced with the grants they hand out. If something worthy gets made it's a fluke.

This is a situation that exists with all arts in the U.S. (nepotistic, corrupt, and conformist.) The main reason Americans have lost interest in the Arts in general.

Most artistic expression that has any value to it is done online, outside of their control.

R390, while we are on this diversion, one of the problems with arts in the USA is the corporate nature of out tax exempt program. It is actively harmful to arts organizations. They tend to get top heavy with management leaving the actual creators in the dust. There is a movement among arts organizations to either reject tax exemption entirely or to get tax exemption through another entity.

R391 Yep, another source of stagnation. Too many administrators.

The non-profit industrial complex 😉

HATED Emily Mann's turgid production of The Glass Menagerie with Dylan McDermott playing Tom as a limp-wristed Tennessee Williams.

And Shirley Knight was horrible as Amanda, Judy Kuhn ok as Laura.

"Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz" is a TERRIBLE play.

and so do the vast majority of people over 35 R224 including theater queens. How much does the average person let alone theater queen spend in a theater over the course of a year? as much time as the average DLer spends online in a week?

PS you type old trying to sound young

Arther Miller's last play Resurrection Blues.

It's the only time I've seen people in the audience squirm with boredom at such a big name play at such an esteemed theatre (The Old Vic) and half of them didn't return after the interval. It was excruciating. Us Brits tend toward the polite, but the smattering of applause at the end was so half-hearted you could tell they just wanted to get up on that stage and punch everyone involved. Usually people mill around in the foyer afterward but the place cleared out in seconds. I've never seen anything like it.

I saw the infamous Broadway flop MOOSE MURDERS - in fact, saw the one (and only) preview with Eve Arden and ... omfg.

So, yes, the play was so bad one normally would want to slit their wrists 5 minutes in - but what I saw that night was so breathtakingly bad that I knew I was experiencing theatre history. 6 minutes in, the cat-calling began and after that it was absolute bedlam. I had never experienced anything like it before.

And I loved every second of it.

The National's 'All About Eve'. Every sharp line transformed into a dull blur.

Hated the ridiculous production of "Corsicana" with incompetent direction and staging by one-time wonder boy Sam Gold.

Loved Heroes Of The Fourth Turning, but the same playwright's Corsicana was a piece of dogshit. Deidre O'Connell is always a pleasure to watch, but the piece was worthless.

"Long Day's Journey Into Night" at the Wyndham Theatre in 2018. Due entirely to the cast -- non-stop tedium, with the exception of the exceptional Jeremy Irons.

The insipid Janis Joplin musical -- "A Night with Janis Joplin" -- on Broadway. What was I thinking?

"The Front Page" on Broadway with John Goodman, in 2016. Because of John Goodman. Ugh.

"Waitress." Loathed everything about it, especially the story line. One fabulous old actor in the role of a father/grandfather figure being the only exception.

Wolf Hall was too many hours of watching Elizabethan paint dry.

I saw the National Theatre Live production of Angels in America with Andrew Garfield, in a movie theatre in the USA. Did they shoot it from the balcony? I wish I'd seen it in New York.

I remember thinking I was enduring some kind of Lifetime Television for Women Movie when I sat through "On Golden Pond" with Charles Durning and Julie Harris at the Ahmanson Theatre. .. Thing is, it was 1980 and Lifetime hadn't been invented yet.

That AIA was pretty uneven, particularly Garfield's performance. When Prior acted queeny, Garfield was so fake it was painful to watch. But no one is likely to play Prior better than Stephen Spinella did.

Circling back to Chekhov, he's a playwright whose plays are extremely difficult to pull off. Some directors go too much toward sorrowful tragedy and some go too far in the comedic direction and in both cases it turns out badly. One of the better productions in the recent past IMO was the Ian Rickson production of THE SEAGULL with Kristen Scott Thomas, Carey Mulligan (a superb Nina), Mackenzie Crook, and unfortunately, Peter Sarsgaard as Trigorin (the far more talented Chiwetel Ejiofor played the role in London).

But many American-borne productions of Chekhov I've seen are just awful. Someone above mentioned the dreadful early 80's Manhattan Theater Club THREE SISTERS with Dianne Wiest, Jeff Daniels, and Sam Waterston directed by the mediocre Lynne Meadow. The Roundabout also managed to fuck up the same play in the late 90's thanks to the talent-free direction of Scott Elliott (cast included Lily Taylor, Amy Irving, Jeanne Tripplehorn, David Strathairn, Billy Crudup, Calista Flockhart, and Eric Stoltz). Then there was a godawful UNCLE VANYA - also courtesy of The Roundabout - where Derek Jacobi, Roger Rees, Laura Linney, Brian Murray, and Amy Ryan seem to be in different plays, no surprise given the director was the clueless Michael Mayer.

Sam Gold is scheduled to make Three Sisters unwatchable at NYTW next season.

I've hated every play Richard Greenberg has attempted to write since Take Me Out. I remember an especially heinous 3 hour slog at Manhattan Theatre Club about a gay stripper and his wealthy family.

Speaking of Greenberg, he's written a number of crappy plays:

EVERETT BEEKIN: I've never heard so many people leave the theater saying "Do you have any idea what that was about?", myself included.

THE HOUSE IN TOWN

THE VIOLET HOUR

I forgot the name of the SEAGULL/VANYA mashup with Blythe Danner.

The only Greenberg plays I liked much were EASTERN STANDARD and THREE DAYS OF RAIN and I saw them so long ago I don't know if they would hold up.

Shirley Valentine. Was taken by an agent friend, sat a few rows from the stage, and never laughed. This bugged the solitary lead actress so she made eye contact and directed all the jokes at me. I couldn't walk out-- which I've done many times-- since I was a guest.

People who walk out of plays (as opposed to waiting until intermission), are high-maintenance drama queens.

No, r411, they're trying to recoup their investments. If they can't get their ridiculous ticket price refunded, at least they can get back the time.

[R332] i don’t know if i did this correctly but i agree with R332. FESTEN and Ali McGraw’s awful acting was beyond amateur night at the theatre.

Once the original cast left the play, Hurlyburly turned out to be the piece of shit we all thought it was in the first place.

A Lie Of The Mind can also be included. Once the original off-Bway cast was gone, it was as boring as Charlton Heston's hairpieces.

There was an idiotic play by Suzanne Lori-Parks called. "White Noise" the Public hoped would go to Broadway. But it was incomprehensible and racist.

Nice Fish by Mark Rylance and directed by his wife at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. Interminable, boring, unfunny. Basically 2 hours of a Prairie Home Companion with unfunny slapstick and impenetrable, boring poems. No intermission because they knew everyone would leave. And not a single critical article to be found, thanks theater critics!

R398, you experienced history!

CATS!

Playwrights Horizons once did a horribly anti-American rant by Jon Robin Baitz entitled "The End Of The Day". He was in the lobby as we exited and I screamed at him until he ducked out onto 42nd Street.

My father invested in 2 plays-- a 70s scheme where lots of people put in a little and got to say they invested in theatre. The first one was a hit. Wish I could remember. Had something to do with the Marx Brothers. My father made a nice profit. The second was I REMEMBER MAMA with Liv Ullman, I think. My father flew to NYC and took me to the opening. It was so very bad. My father listened to the tepid applause and asked if I thought it would be a success. I didn't lie. Sitting through bad plays is excruciating. I always wonder how actors can act in bad plays. They don't seem to know the difference.

A Day in Hollywood/Night in the Ukraine, r420?

The piece of trash that was "The Boys Of Winter". Matt Dillon was particularly hideous.

R420. The hit was probably “A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine.”

Someone mentioned the failed Sally Field “The Glass Menagerie” on Broadway and thought she would have worked in a more traditional production.

Let me tell you that she does. In the summer of 2004, The Kennedy Center did a summer of Tennessee Williams and I saw all three productions. The Patricia Clarkson “Streetcar” was sort of what you expect it would be.. Clarkson was good for the most part, but I never felt surprised by anything.

The “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” with Mary Stuart Masterson as Maggie the Cat was interesting but she ultimately felt very miscast.

The final play was Sally Field in “The Glass Menagerie.” She was absolutely stunning. One of the best performances I have seen. I remember Diane Keaton’s lesbian daughter from The First Wives Club played Laura. So, Sally can actually nail Amanda Wingfield.

On topic:

I once saw a local production of “The Normal Heart” in Burlington, Vermont in the late ‘90s in which they just completely eliminated the fact that Dr. Emma Brookner is in a wheelchair and just had her full-on walking.

[QUOTE] Frances Sternhagen (still alive at 92!)

I went to college with Frances’s great-niece who is a prolific vlogger and sometimes comic.

[QUOTE] Blanchett was fine - but unsurprising, she was exactly how you would expect a Cate Blanchett Blanche to be.

This is kind of what I said about Patricia Clarkson in the role. Cate, however, did this broken flamingo thing on the bed after being raped that was really interesting.

[quote]The non-profit industrial complex 😉

As famed Public Theater and Lincoln Center Theater producer Bernie Gersten was fond of saying, "There's no profit like non-profit!"

R421 and R423 Yes! Thank you for reminding me.

I heard that the Broadway version of FESTEN was godawful. I don't know what happened as it crossed the pond (besides the total recasting), but I saw it in London and it was amazing. Even got five Olivier nominations, including Best Play. I was planning to see it again in NYC but when I heard how dreadful it was I decided to stick with my memory of the London production.

I'm the poster who loathed A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.

I found out about a month ago, via an antigen test, that I had COVID back in February.

My body started giving out on me as I saw CASE at the Signature. I remember feeling more and more lousy as the night went on, and now I know why. Might not have been just the ending of the play, which I despised. I remember walking home feeling awful, and I was down for the count the next day, and then the next week. The home tests kept showing up as negative, but now I know for a fact that I had gotten COVID, and that night was the start of the misery.

So:

1. I can sassily say A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD gave me COVID. (And I was front row center, so thank goodness masks were required in that theatre. I'd have hated to have given COVID to those two actors.) 2. I can be fair and read the play when it's published and see how I feel about it without having COVID. And that's what I'm going to do. I generally like Hunter's work, so it's entirely possible I was feeling so wretched by evening's end that enjoyment was impossible.

In summation, I'm going to retract my total hatred for CASE. For now.

I thought I was the only person physically repelled by Cats. I saw it on Broadway a long time ago (I’m old OK) I was connected with the cover girl modeling contest at that time they also offered to take us to starlight express and I noped out of it after seeing the people in cats running all up into the isles, getting into the audience’s faces by just walking up to them and singing as loudly as possible (they were running up to people and putting their faces 1 inch away from audience members) and just being generally cringe worthy. The only good thing about that play is that it requires good singing but it is canceled out by all the annoyances

Quite honestly, I would say I've more 'good' amateur productions than I have professional.

So many of the latter, you can tell they're still workshopping it on stage.

It's rather a bit like how every short film or independent video game is a student's thesis/project.

There's some (mostly international and while technically professional just don't get the same respect) plays I really couldn't imagine them doing in the U.S. -- just too many would protest, if not just scoff at the notion.

like there's numerous Australian playwrights to consider.. so, little in the way of translation problems yet I couldn't imagine some of the most popular plays in the the last decade would ever make it past the sniff test in the states.

so much is so disney'fied in commercial theatre.

I hate Play-Doh.

R427, in what ways did FESTEN work in the West End? I thought what really killed the show in the USA was that it was done one a proscenium stage. Same with the CORAM BOY. In my opinion, both plays need a thrust stage. In the case of FESTEN, it really should have been done at the Armory as immersive theater.

"Amy's View" on Broadway seemed like only minor David Hare, but at the National Theatre, it was fucking magic.

I saw a production of “A Doll’s House” at The Kennedy Center where the children were played by kids who literally had the condition called progeria (making them appear like old people). Also, at one point, Nora was swinging naked and it felt like her bush bush felt was coming towards me and/or dropping secretions on the audience. It was just disturbing all around.

Yes. Frankly, anything starring Madeline Ashton!

There was a ghastly play by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy which featured Keith Baxter, Sam Jaffe and DL fave hustler, Keith McDermott, at the Palace titled A Meeting By The River. I think it lasted 2 performances. Nobody wanted to like it.

R436. Which is a shame as Isherwood’s novel is quite good—but probably not right for dramatization

Boring plays are the worst medicine of all. I can do bad, but not boring and bad. The Chairs on Broadway was torture, as was The Visit. That show with Cate Blanchette was so unwatchable - I was so excited for it to be over, but realized we had only reached intermission. And an Off-Broadway "Happy Days" with Lea DeLaria was by far the most boring 2 hours of my life.

"Cats." Now and forever.

That godawful production of Ghosts that played BAM.

[quote]There was a ghastly play by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy

R436 = Gloria Upson

I left Urban Cowboy at intermission. I left Rock of Ages after about 10 minutes. I don’t care how much I paid. If I hate it, I go.

Phyllis Hammerow in "The Diary of Anne Frank".

She was way too old, and she stunk up the theatre!

The revival of The Heidi Chronicles, proving what we really thought about it the first time around.

I saw Stephen Sondheim's play, GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER, on Broadway.

pretty effing dreadful

R434 Sounds like a bad acid trip.

I hated the 3 hour slog that was Oslo with the heat of a thousand suns. Dreary, miserable writing and cast.

Good lord, I really hated Nathan Lane in Butley. Especially after having seen both Alan Bates and Dominic West play the role.

The follow-up to 'Aspects of Love' (Love never dies) is pretty much universally called 'Paint Never Dries' here in the UK.

Merrily We Roll along is dreadful, I went to see it on a school trip and excused myself to go to the toilet after about 30 minutes.

I went to the pub next door, never went back in and got a taxi home.

Love Never Dies is the follow up to Phantom, not Aspects. And Merrily is a heartbreaker but you need to see a good production.

I've seem Blood Brothers about 20 times.

If you want to try heartbreaking try that?

I saw Dear Evan Hansen twice. Too bad it didn't age well.

The new Death Of A Salesman is a pile of shit. The actors who play Biff and Happy are terrible.

OP Ive never hated a play only underwhelmed and disappointed. I walk out shaking my head, usually doing intermission if there is one.

[quote]And Merrily is a heartbreaker but you need to see a good production.

Oh, dear....

Do we tell him?

The above mentions of Other Desert Cities reminded me of the production I saw. The genius director had the bright ideas to use a white fluorescent light and sand on the stage floor to indicate the desert. The light was blinding as you entered the theatre and the sand on the floor got unintentional laughs as the actors walked over it with crunch effects. I had a front row seat and there was a man next to me who was annoying me by breathing loudly. There seat on my other side was free so I decided to move but had to wait for a good moment. I went for it when the leading lady had her back to me but my moving got her attention and she turned around and glared at me. Have no memory of the actual play.