Not Since Carrie

"It’s such a juicy read. He divides the flops by theme, and defines flop very specifically. If you’re talking about shows that fail to make their money back, most shows are flops. But Ken draws the line at 250 performances, which may sound like a lot but in the post-war era very few musicals can make any money in that time. There is a whole chapter devoted to Carrie, a [1988] musical based on the Stephen King horror story and the movie adapted from the book. It was famously terrible. It was considered the highpoint of musical disasters, and has retained its reputation as one of the greatest flops of all time – even though, strangely enough, it’s being revived off-Broadway this season. They’re trying to show us that it wasn’t too terrible after all. We shall soon see if there is a point to be made. Most of the shows he writes about are unfamiliar, even to me. His descriptions of what went wrong, and why, are very entertaining. He has one chapter with rules about what you shouldn’t do. Rule number one is: Don’t musicalise works that can’t be musicalised. He talks about an adaptation of Shogun which seems destined for disaster. Another rule is: Don’t musicalise stories that don’t need music. In other words, if you’re not adding anything to a show by making it a musical, it’s probably not a good idea to do it. The funny thing is, these rules seem self-evident but a lot of people spend a lot of time and money on productions that flout them. If Broadway producers read this book, we probably wouldn’t have as many flops as we do today. I see The Book of Mormon as part of a new genre directly derived from the history of musical flops. The Book of Mormon , The Producers and Urinetown all mock their own form. They send up the conventions of Broadway very successfully."