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Dec. 8th, 2013 02:20 pmFor December 8th, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
evewithanapple asked me about my least favorite playwright/composers and why!
. . . I don't actually have a lot of least favorites, because when it comes to musical theater, I really love things that are terrible . . . so I am going to seize the opportunity to do the exact opposite and talk instead about my FAVORITE terrible playwright/composer, ~*~*~Frank Wildhorn~*~*~*~.
Frank Wildhorn, y'all. FRANK WILDHORN. Frank Wildhorn is an extremely prolific writer of amazingly cheesy musicals. All of his work is committed to being as spectacularly over-the-top as possible and none of it is at all committed to sounding any different from his previous work. I have experienced nowhere near all of his oeuvre, but I am COMMITTED to expanding my knowledge whenever I get a chance. Wildhorn musicals with which I am familiar (and which I have picspammed previously on my DW) include:
The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I actually love completely unironically in all of its over-the-top glory. This musical was my formative Scarlet Pimpernel iteration. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.
Jekyll and Hyde, which I watched whenever it came over PBS when I was a kid, and will still watch whenever I have the opportunity, and which is HILARIOUSLY TERRIBLE. Or at least the version with which I am familiar with, starring DAVID HASSELHOFF, is hilariously terrible. Jekyll's inexplicable daddy issues! Lucy the Sexy Prostitute and Emma the Pure Fiancee and the absolute textbook virgin/whore dichotomy! "Confrontation," in which the Hoff wears HALF A WIG and flings his hair back and forth like he just don't care before ripping open his shirt in a rage-driven frenzy! Oh, Jekyll and Hyde. What an amazing piece of musical theater.
Wonderland, a musically derivative but visually spectacular musical in which our heroine -- having had her marriage founder because she is the sole breadwinner -- dreams about her estranged husband rescuing her from her dark side, who wants to take over the kingdom of Wonderland from her mother-in-law. Then this saves her marriage. THANKS, FRANK WILDHORN.
I am also a little bit familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo because of that half a kdrama I watched which was about a production of Wildhorn's Count of Monte Cristo, but seeing that show in full is absolutely on my bucket list because over-the-top Dumasian revenge is EXACTLY the kind of thing Wildhorn is best suited for.
Frank Wildhorn's current projects include a musical about Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, which I feel confident will include a lot of really dramatically angsty power ballads and a lot of sentimental and hugely problematic tropes about mental illness, and Excalibur, which is a Frank Wildhorn musical ABOUT KING ARTHUR oh my god it's going to be so bad, I'M SO THERE.
But let's be real, when it comes to Frank Wildhorn, I am always there. It is a beautiful hatemance for the ages. No matter how much bad his stuff gets, no matter how I may be seething with rage 3/4 of the way through the show, I SWEAR TO YOU, I WILL BE THERE!
evewithanapple asked me about my least favorite playwright/composers and why! . . . I don't actually have a lot of least favorites, because when it comes to musical theater, I really love things that are terrible . . . so I am going to seize the opportunity to do the exact opposite and talk instead about my FAVORITE terrible playwright/composer, ~*~*~Frank Wildhorn~*~*~*~.
Frank Wildhorn, y'all. FRANK WILDHORN. Frank Wildhorn is an extremely prolific writer of amazingly cheesy musicals. All of his work is committed to being as spectacularly over-the-top as possible and none of it is at all committed to sounding any different from his previous work. I have experienced nowhere near all of his oeuvre, but I am COMMITTED to expanding my knowledge whenever I get a chance. Wildhorn musicals with which I am familiar (and which I have picspammed previously on my DW) include:
The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I actually love completely unironically in all of its over-the-top glory. This musical was my formative Scarlet Pimpernel iteration. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.
Jekyll and Hyde, which I watched whenever it came over PBS when I was a kid, and will still watch whenever I have the opportunity, and which is HILARIOUSLY TERRIBLE. Or at least the version with which I am familiar with, starring DAVID HASSELHOFF, is hilariously terrible. Jekyll's inexplicable daddy issues! Lucy the Sexy Prostitute and Emma the Pure Fiancee and the absolute textbook virgin/whore dichotomy! "Confrontation," in which the Hoff wears HALF A WIG and flings his hair back and forth like he just don't care before ripping open his shirt in a rage-driven frenzy! Oh, Jekyll and Hyde. What an amazing piece of musical theater.
Wonderland, a musically derivative but visually spectacular musical in which our heroine -- having had her marriage founder because she is the sole breadwinner -- dreams about her estranged husband rescuing her from her dark side, who wants to take over the kingdom of Wonderland from her mother-in-law. Then this saves her marriage. THANKS, FRANK WILDHORN.
I am also a little bit familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo because of that half a kdrama I watched which was about a production of Wildhorn's Count of Monte Cristo, but seeing that show in full is absolutely on my bucket list because over-the-top Dumasian revenge is EXACTLY the kind of thing Wildhorn is best suited for.
Frank Wildhorn's current projects include a musical about Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, which I feel confident will include a lot of really dramatically angsty power ballads and a lot of sentimental and hugely problematic tropes about mental illness, and Excalibur, which is a Frank Wildhorn musical ABOUT KING ARTHUR oh my god it's going to be so bad, I'M SO THERE.
But let's be real, when it comes to Frank Wildhorn, I am always there. It is a beautiful hatemance for the ages. No matter how much bad his stuff gets, no matter how I may be seething with rage 3/4 of the way through the show, I SWEAR TO YOU, I WILL BE THERE!
