skygiants | (no subject)

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!

Crossposts: http://bookelfe.livejournal.com/357739.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

rymenhild

oh holy God, Excalibur????

um. I think that you and I would be the DREAM TEAM of reviewers for this musical, is there any chance we can make it happen?

From your link:

"The Arthurian legend has many different Christian, Celtic and Oriental origins. The music will be correspondingly diverse: Pop music will melt with monumental symphonic elements and Celtic sounds. We hope to create something entirely new with Artus," said composer Frank Wildhorn.

oriental
ORIENTAL
ORIENTAL ORIGINS OF KING ARTHUR
oh dear

From:

skygiants

IN MY DREAMS. Right now it's only scheduled to open in Switzerland. ;___; If we are very, very good, though, maybe it will make it all the way to previews in the US where we can experience THE MAGIC of . . . whatever this is going to be . . . AS WE OUGHT.

Or maybe there will be a bootleg download. >.>

From:

genarti

WHAT

SO MUCH WHAT I DO NOT EVEN KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN

From:

skygiants

I DON'T REALLY NEED TO SAY 'WELCOME TO FRANK WILDHORN,' DO I?

From:

petra

Wildhorn makes up a new top and then goes over it, as a matter of course.

From:

skygiants

THAT'S WHAT MAKES IT SO TERRIBEAUTIFUL.

From:

jothra

...I will watch the Count of Monte Cristo one with you.

From:

skygiants

If it ever comes to the US, it's a date! That's another one that has been making the rounds of Switzerland/Korea/Japan, but tragically never seen the bright lights of Broadway . . .

From:

swankyfunk

I saw Wonderland! It was full of crack and wtf'ery, but I enjoyed the visual spectacle. Seriously, those costumes were the greatest. I loved the zoot suit caterpillar who was like a mix between Snoop Dogg and Sammy Davis Jr. I think the show closed after less than a month, ahaha poor thing.

From:

skygiants

The visuals were great! The Queen of Hearts costume, man. The HATS. We were enjoying it so much until we started doing the subtext math...

From:

sovay

This musical was my formative Scarlet Pimpernel iteration. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES.

My formative Scarlet Pimpernel was Leslie Howard, but I love the music for Wildhorn's show. I saw a touring production of the second stage version some years ago and the book seemed insurmountably broken. I don't know if it was better or worse before then. I still listen to the soundtrack, though.

He also wrote a musical version of the Mayerling incident in which a distant relative of mine appears as the Machiavellian villain. I am incredibly amused by this.

From:

skygiants

I don't even know which version I saw when I first saw it, honestly -- there have been so many! The touring version I saw was in 2002 or so, so I think it was an earlier one than whatever is most recently extant. But when we saw the takarazuka version I could not even tell whether it had been substantially changed for a Japanese audience, or whether that was just the most recent version.

My other formative Pimpernel was the super 80s Anthony Andrews version, but I've recently been brainwashed into accepting the Leslie Howard into my mental canon because it's my roommates' favorite and they play it ALL THE TIME and gradually, inevitably it supercedes.

...also, omg, what! OF COURSE HE DID. That's amazing. You have a much better reason than I do to embrace Frank Wildhorn as your hilarious personal nemesis!

From:

sovay

I don't even know which version I saw when I first saw it, honestly -- there have been so many!

The music really is excellent! I'm fine with Marguerite and Chauvelin's backstory! The book had not figured out how to balance the humor of Percy's mask with the gravity of the real situation, so that the dramatic tension kept getting interrupted by glittering disco hat parties. It felt like something that should—and could—have been fixed in workshop. I'm genuinely not sure what happened that it wasn't, except I guess Frank Wildhorn doesn't work that way.

but I've recently been brainwashed into accepting the Leslie Howard into my mental canon because it's my roommates' favorite and they play it ALL THE TIME and gradually, inevitably it supercedes.

(Hell, it is no longer on Netflix; this makes the recommendation more difficult. I hope this copy three minutes' Googling has just turned up is good.) Now you must get them to watch Pimpernel Smith (1941), Leslie Howard's wartime update: it's his next-to-last starring film and it's brilliant. I posted about it a little when I discovered it, although I really did write mostly at Jeff VanderMeer's blog. Horatio Smith is an English classical archaeologist who under pretext of unearthing an ancient Aryan civilization in mid-Europe is secretly engaged in spiriting refugees out of Nazi Germany in 1939; Reichsminister von Graum knows a dangerous resistance leader exists, because artists and scientists and radicals and ordinary people who didn't deserve their fates keep disappearing from deportations, house arrests, sometimes even work camps, but no one has yet thought to connect him with the absent-minded professor who drifts around museums in his leather-patched tweeds, caustically interrupting tourists to correct their misapprehensions about classical art, and doesn't seem to have a political bone in his body. The Marguerite figure is the daughter of an imprisoned Polish dissident whose life will be forfeit if Ludmila can't ferret out the identity of the latter-day Pimpernel; one of the things I quite like about the film is that once this is understood by Smith, his prompt course of action is to mount a rescue of Ludmila's father from the concentration camp where he's being held, because then von Graum won't have anything to hold over her. He doesn't expect her to sacrifice her father for his cause and it's the sort of crazy-ass heroic thing he does anyway. The film went on to influence Raoul Wallenberg. I do not understand why it's not on DVD.

...also, omg, what! OF COURSE HE DID. That's amazing.

He gets an entire villain number about chessmastering everybody and pulling their strings! I ran into it in 2010 when I was reading online about the Mayerling affair! I had not expected it.

(I should not have been surprised, really, considering that the Mayerling affair is a historical-tragical vortex of batshit, fatal love, and conspiracy theories, but I still stared at it a lot.)

From:

skygiants

Ha! I think we are coming at this from different angles; for me, the fact that the gravitas keeps getting interrupted by sparkly Regency disco parties is not a bug but in fact a glorious feature.

Also: OMG THANK YOU FOR THIS LINK, I have been wanting to see Pimpernel Smith FOREVER, or at least ever since I found out about it! I'M SO EXCITED.

. .. but have you listened to the villain number? Is it good? Inquiring minds want to know!

From:

sovay

for me, the fact that the gravitas keeps getting interrupted by sparkly Regency disco parties is not a bug but in fact a glorious feature.

See, The Scarlet Pimpernel was my first exposure to Frank Wildhorn, so I didn't know to expect the sparkly Regency disco parties. I'd heard the original cast recording (and nothing from Jekyll & Hyde except for "This Is the Moment," because at some point every baritone on earth with a high extension auditions with it), but never seen a production. I was blindsided. You can't tell there's glitterballs from the music!

I'M SO EXCITED.

Enjoy! I love the movie—I'm just waiting for Criterion (or any qualified arthouse distributor, I'm not picky) to notice it exists!

. .. but have you listened to the villain number? Is it good? Inquiring minds want to know!

Well, I encountered it first as a vid for Kronprinz Rudolf (2006), which disoriented me immensely by casting as Eduard Graf Taaffe an actor who looked strikingly like my uncle Peter, but the YouTube link appears to have broken since 2010. A further minute on the internet seems to present me with the Viennese stage production, which aaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

(It has a menacing group tango.)

From:

skygiants

Well, there is "The Creation of Man!" It is difficult to disentangle "The Creation of Man" from glitterballs in my head, although admittedly that may be due to having had the very special costumes for "The Creation of Man" burned into my brain.

. . . oh my god. Clicking that link was the best choice I have made all day, I am sitting here with an expression of stunned delight on my face. WHAT AN AMAZING PERFORMANCE. WILDHORN! I KNEW YOU WOULD NOT DISAPPOINT.

From:

sovay

It is difficult to disentangle "The Creation of Man" from glitterballs in my head, although admittedly that may be due to having had the very special costumes for "The Creation of Man" burned into my brain.

Yeah, see, on the radio it just sounds like fashion.

WHAT AN AMAZING PERFORMANCE. WILDHORN! I KNEW YOU WOULD NOT DISAPPOINT.

AUSTRIAN HISTORY CANNOT BE BLAMED FOR NOT FORESEEING THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN TO IT. MITTELEUROPA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY WORRIED ABOUT A LOT OF THINGS, BUT THE MENACING GROUP TANGO WITH THE STRATEGICALLY PLACED GALLOWS AND THE LITERAL BEDROOM ANTICS WAS NOT ONE OF THEM. I WOULDN'T HAVE SEEN IT COMING.

From:

bookblather

Scarlet Pimpernel SHOULD BE over the top and insane and crazy and ridiculously so bad it's good, that's basically what the Scarlet Pimpernel IS and it's part of why I love the Pink Carnation series so much because they took the ridiculous over the topness of the Scarlet Pimpernel and ran with it. To India.

From:

sovay

the Pink Carnation series so much because they took the ridiculous over the topness of the Scarlet Pimpernel and ran with it. To India.

Wait, what?

From:

skygiants

EXACTLY!! If it's not full of terrible jokes and really ridiculous disguises and DRAMATIC REVEALS!!!!, you're doing it wrong.

From:

evewithanapple

I feel like Frank Wildhorn is my musical theatre equivalent of mediocre horror movies: SO BAD AND YET I LOVE IT SO MUCH. I love "Facade" and "Bring on the Men!" I love "The Riddle!" I even love bits of "Tale of Two Cities!" ("Let Her Be A Child." It's cheesy and saccharine as all hell, I know, but . . . I love it . . . so much . . .)

Except "Bonnie and Clyde." I will defend "Bonnie and Clyde" as a genuinely good musical. TO THE DEATH.

From:

skygiants

Oh, man, "The Riddle." I desperately want to waltz to "The Riddle" someday. Back when there were semi-regular waltz classes/parties in my area I kept sort of bringing it in optimistically to see if anyone would let me put it on, but nobody ever did. :(

I'm still SO MAD I missed "Bonnie and Clyde" when it was in New York! I HAD THE CHANCE. IT WAS RIGHT THERE. (I'm also mad I missed the J&H NYC revival. I have to learn to jump on these Wildhorn opportunities as soon as they appear because they WON'T LAST LONG.)

From:

sandrylene

Oh man, reading through this post and its comments I have pretty much laughed until I hurt. *wipes away a tear*

I clearly need to see more of this stuff. For uh. Learning. Yes, definitely learning. :P