Arts Cry-Baby Postponed
posted by on October 10 at 15:31 PM
This February, the 5th Avenue was scheduled to premiere Cry-Baby, a musical adaptation of the John Waters movie starring that one guy:
In the tradition of Hairspray and The Wedding Singer, the theater wanted to open the movie-turned-musical in Seattle, then send it to Broadway. But the theater has wiped the show from its current season because its can’t arrange a straight-to-Broadway transition.
The 5th Ave is having trouble locking in a Broadway theater because, according to an enthusiastic email from 5th Ave spokesperson Jennifer Rice: “Broadway is hot, baby!!! Shows aren’t closing. You’ve got a ton of shows like Hairspray, Chicago, Lion King, Beauty & The Beast, Phantom, RENT, Producers… that would normally be closed by now to make room for the newbies. But they’re still selling tons of tickets so they won’t give up their theaters. In this high-tech, reality-TV, TIVO, germ free, fast-paced world there’s still no replacing LIVE theater!”
Who knew?
Which dredges up the second question: Why is it so important for Cry-Baby to go straight from Seattle to Broadway? “It’s all about the hype baby! [I love it when she calls me baby.] When a show gets rolling, even if it’s far from NY, you don’t want to cut the momentum. If you have a big lag time between pre-Broadway and Broadway openings you have additional costs (storage of sets and costumes) and you run the risk of losing actors to other gigs. And oh the list goes on and on.”
The 5th Avenue is replacing Cry-Baby in its season with another story about a misfit with a guitar (and the man to whom Elvis Costello owes everything), Buddy: the Buddy Holly Story.
I like the idea of a Buddy Holly play even more. The rockabilly romantic made some fine music in his short time span.
Why the hell would anyone want to make a play out of Cry Baby? It's gotta be one of the most unwatchable movies ever. You'd think they'd just want to try to forget it. I guess Hairspray is a hit so now every John Waters movie is fair game.
Why the hell would anyone want to make a play out of Cry Baby? It's gotta be one of the most unwatchable movies ever. You'd think they'd just want to try to forget it. I guess Hairspray is a hit so now every John Waters movie is fair game.
Crybaby is being done by the guys who adapted Hairspray; it was in workshop here in NY and was really fun.
Marc Shaiman did the music for Hairspray, as well as the South Park movie. I was looking forward to Crybaby... Disney should take their crap off Broadway and put it in their theme parks where it belongs.
I'd rather see a musical version of "Female Trouble"...
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).