Soft spots for short-running or unliked musicals?

[Gervais]

Oh, Repo! Yes! I love that movie as well.

I'm not sure if it counts (67% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I know several people who don't like it*) but since we're talking rock opera films, The Wall. It is popular with most though, so maybe it doesn't count for this list.

*"Several people" referring to some of my more conservative and/or easily freaked out friends, which is a fair amount of people.

[Acaila]

Everyone loves the Wall right?! It's so awesome
Damn, I hope that doesn't start another Pink Floyd kick....thanks Gervais

Right now, I've been obsessively listening to Catch Me If You Can. Nothing to do with a certain leading man....*innocent face*. But I'm totally in love with the song Seven Wonders.

[Aurelia Combeferre]

Yeah. Like I've been listening/humming "Next to Normal" also.

[Acaila]

So good to know I'm not alone!
I'd like to get into Next to Normal actually because I like what I've heard. I think I've just got the attention span of a goldfish for musicals at the moment, I can't stay still for more than the length of one song.

[Aurelia Combeferre]

I'm curious since it's quite psychological (and I did take up psych as a teenager). And because some songs are great earworms.

[MamzelleCombeferre]

I absolutely adore Next to Normal. It takes a little getting used to in the beginning, but once you fall in love with it, I swear it's all you'll listen to for at least a week. Natalie is a dream role for me.

[MamzelleCombeferre]

Just recently fell head over heels for 35MM by Ryan Scott Oliver, particularly this song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNFOaF5ntzU

[LaserUnicornJedi]

I love Love Never Dies. The story doesn't make sense and the characters are definitely out-of-character. There are two reasons why I enjoy it:

The music

Ramin Karimloo.

Last week I suddenly became obsessed with The Pirate Queen. I love the songs and Hadley Fraser was darn adorable. "Woman" is my new audition song, since it's from an obscure musical.

[Rachelle]

I've just gotten into The Pirate Queen recently. It has such potential and I think that if it was taken to the west end and had some serious work done to it, it could be successful.
I would really like to try Woman as an audition song as well.

[MmeBahorel]

As someone who saw it, Pirate Queen needs a lot of work. Some serious story editing, but also, the production was a bit unfortunate. Grania's father's death was staged EXACTLY LIKE Valjean's death. Should never have gone there. The drunks in the tavern song kinda needs to go - we don't need one in every show and it added nothing. Bill Youmans as Queen Elizabeth's minister was in an entirely different show, something cartoonish.

I think they need to strip it back down to bare bones. Isolate the story, then rebuild from story, not from "oh hey, we got the Riverdance people!"

Though knowing a bit more about Grace O'Malley, I'm not that into the main story they chose for Pirate Queen. Husband #1 was kinda, well, ok, he was hot but a dick. So she left him. Husband #2, however, totally deserves to be portrayed because his name was Richard, he was called "Iron Dick" because he apparently never took his armour off, and the rumours about their sex life (or lack thereof - speculation about her children by him) were awesome. So I'm not sure any revision of Pirate Queen that kept the basic plot intact is ever going to be my cup of tea.

[deHavilland]

Well, hey, if we're going Boublil and Schonberg, can we bring up the fact that CamMack recently mentioned in interview that while he acknowledges it still needs more work, he'd be interested in bringing back Martin Guerre?

There's one that needs to see some serious reworking. Particularly in the, as I was saying to Acaila the other day, religious subplots of the story. While I understand what they're getting at with the Catholic/Protestant thing from a historical standpoint, from a theatre-goer who is sitting in the audience and has no preconceived notions of what's going on: lost. So very, very lost.

It's been through how many rewrites and we still haven't cleared that all up yet?

To keep it on topic: brought up because yes, I have a soft spot for stompy peasant dancing. And for Martin Guerre.

[MmeBahorel]

I'm desperate for him to hand it over to Eric Schaeffer and let him go at it. Martin Guerre really belongs in a smaller format that Signature's space is perfect for, and Cammack has trusted Eric with other things before (namely Witches of Eastwick). We'll see how Miss Saigon goes this autumn, but Eric did the best LM I've ever seen.

I think what it really needs is the plot and lyrics of the London closing version in the scene order of the fully revised (UK/US tour) version. Benoit was better, the issues with religion and the land inheritance/sale were better explicated, and Louison on fire always wins. But I completely understand the reordering, since our main character is Arnaud, and a better exploration of the relationship between Martin and Arnaud helps explain how Arnaud was able to pull some of this off.

The problem is that Cammack doesn't want to pay residuals to anyone who worked on the London version, so unfortunately, I don't think he'll ever hand over everything to anyone.

My French class first year at uni was really a preparation for writing in French so we'd be better prepared to take additional classes. So that we'd have a topic, the professor I had focused on Martin Guerre. We watched Le Retour de Martin Guerre and Sommersby and were writing papers comparing them (but we didn't read the Natalie Zemon Davis book). And I got permission to write about the B&S version too because my prof was cool like that And at the end of that term, I went to Detroit because it was the closest venue the tour was coming, and I cried my way through and it was amazing (Stephen Buntrock and Hugh Panaro had a really phenomenal vocal mix on their duets, and Jose Llana was an utterly heartbreaking Guillaume). And then the whole "not Broadway" thing was handled terribly, very unprofessionally.

"Don't let the tides of your heart rise or they'll tear you apart" - that show taught me so much about show business. I was an old, bitter hand by the time Jane Eyre went to Broadway.

[deHavilland]

Yes, I caught Buntrock, Dilly and Panaro on the tour - before the whole "oh wait, hmm, better not" thing happened with the Broadway opening. I was going to say that I know the original London production, but not necessarily the changes they made before closing and how those hold in comparison to the tour.

I did like that they give Martin a better reason for leaving Artigat than just, "boo, they made me marry Bertrande and I don't want to sleep with her" by adding in the actual abuse at the hands of the priests. But even so, still totally lost on why exactly any of this is important. Martin's such a terrible anti-hero. Boo hoo, I won't sleep with my wife who actually wants to give me a chance at making this work, I'm going to go away and then come back later and screw everything up for this otherwise perfectly nice guy about a life I never even wanted falls so terribly flat with me. The actual story is so much better than the musical itself, in some ways I think they took too much liberty with it.

Driving along with Jane Eyre, I have the recording for the Original Toronto, and while I can't remember if I saw it or not - five years old, but my father was working on it, so it's very likely I could have, not that it would count given my lack of memory - I will at least give it the acknowledgement that I like Barbour much better than Crivello as Rochester. There's something about the substantially deeper quality to his voice that makes his Rochester for me. Other, less-pleasurable changes aside.

And oh, hello there again, Buntrock.

[Rachelle]

As someone who saw it, Pirate Queen needs a lot of work. Some serious story editing, but also, the production was a bit unfortunate. Grania's father's death was staged EXACTLY LIKE Valjean's death. Should never have gone there. The drunks in the tavern song kinda needs to go - we don't need one in every show and it added nothing. Bill Youmans as Queen Elizabeth's minister was in an entirely different show, something cartoonish.

I think they need to strip it back down to bare bones. Isolate the story, then rebuild from story, not from "oh hey, we got the Riverdance people!"

Though knowing a bit more about Grace O'Malley, I'm not that into the main story they chose for Pirate Queen. Husband #1 was kinda, well, ok, he was hot but a dick. So she left him. Husband #2, however, totally deserves to be portrayed because his name was Richard, he was called "Iron Dick" because he apparently never took his armour off, and the rumours about their sex life (or lack thereof - speculation about her children by him) were awesome. So I'm not sure any revision of Pirate Queen that kept the basic plot intact is ever going to be my cup of tea.

Being Irish I'm quite familiar with Grace's story as well. The main story is pretty inaccurate and I would prefer if they fixed it a bit but I actually don't mind the Grace/Tiarnan love story that they added, even if he's not a real historical person as far as I can discover.

[Acaila]

Adding in an opportunity for Hadley? Sure you don't mind it?
Pirate Queen really did seem, from what I saw, to be an attempt at a cash in on the Riverdance appreciation. I've tried to give it a listen (since Martin Guerre at least had a couple of earworms) but just nothing about it stuck for me

Would Zanna, Don't! fit this thread? I've caught myself listening to it a lot again recently, it's just adorably cute.