| Dance Of The Vampires - Part Two | |
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steven_stuart 04:22 am UTC 12/29/10 |
| In reply to: | Dance Of The Vampires - steven_stuart 03:56 am UTC 12/29/10 |
| "A torn Kunze reluctantly withdrew his objection. Even with the small battles he'd won and lost, Michael Kunze had a feeling the show wouldn't succeed, and the other creatives were echoing his opinions. There is no love lost for rock musicals, he was told, at the New York Times. They'll probably call it something like a failed attempt to revive a faded genre, and say that Germans should stick to writing dramas and stay away from musicals. One of the producers even had a betting pool as to whether or not the New York Times had already written their review, and another betting pool on how insulting the reviews would be! (This might sound like a lack of confidence to some, but in reality, pre-opening jitters make this pretty much a commonality for many shows.) And it was talk like this that aroused Kunze's fighting spirit. So what if we're "too modern" for Broadway? Screw the conservative critics, with their classical music, and their step-dancing, and their straw hats, and that terrible big band sound! Screw the tourist parties that came in by bus from New Jersey! This was for a young audience. This could even be a new Rocky Horror Picture Show. We've made $6 million in advance sales! We have a celebrated rock composer, a critics' darling who wrote several popular Off-Broadway plays doing the book, a Tony-winning comedy team doing the directing and choreography, and a high-wattage star! New York in December. Snow was falling, and the curtain was about to go up on Michael Kunze's first Broadway musical. He was pale and somewhat tired, and everything was different from how he'd always imagined it would be. On opening night, their "young audience" was mostly gone, and the house was packed with what he perceived to be the enemy: tourist parties from New Jersey; all those women with their stiff formal hairstyles packed high; all those men with their hair parted down the middle who'd rather be catching the game at home, but their wives begged them to come. And in the program, Michael Kunze was in third place behind David Ives and Jim Steinman. The man who'd already proven himself in Europe was reduced to the status of an unknown here. It starts with a rock and roll light show that blinds the audience. Out of the sudden blackness, a scream and three girls running through a forest, afraid of creatures of the night lurking in the shadows all around them. Thunder rolls as a huge coffin rises from the ground. The lid opens; it's Michael Crawford's big entrance. (The star deserves a spectacular entrance whenever he decides he should have one, Kunze reminds himself. This is Broadway. The shows cost four times as much to put on, so let's play by their rules.) He's dressed in black, with an odd smile and his face caked in white make-up. "God has left the building!" he declares, and the audience raves. The show goes off without a hitch, aside from two lines that Kunze still cringes at. In a new scene where Sarah receives a blood transfusion from Alfred, her father tells him (paraphrasing here) that Alfred may have given her blood, but that will be the last bodily fluid they exchange under his roof. In another scene where Krolock offers Alfred a sponge (which is almost like the German version), the sponge is shaped...well...shaped like a...there's no other way to put this, folks, it's shaped like a penis. But those are really the only two moments Kunze dislikes. The rest, he really has no control over. And everyone's misgivings about Crawford are, for the moment, allayed. He's funny. He's got a good voice (and proves it with a note he holds for half a minute at the end of the first act). And he hogs the big entrances: an enormous drawbridge emerges from the darkness through which he enters; a different time, he dances down a staircase like a rock star and gives the other vampires autographs. And finally, he dies spectacularly, crying, calling for help, turning to ashes in the light of the sun. (Kunze hopes no one notices the ball was set at midnight throughout the rest of the show.) Sure, Crawford's always a tad himself, but that's not a huge problem. The first performance of Dance of the Vampires was met with a standing ovation from the audience. Kunze couldn't help but find himself standing and applauding along with them. The show may not belong in Europe anymore, but here, it seemed to fit right in. At the opening night party, he saw everyone from the show. Lots of congratulatory handshakes and back-patting. But where was Jim? Barry Keating said he was ill; one of the producers said he'd heard it was bad luck for the composer to attend the opening night performance. Oh well... The way everyone talks about the show today, you'd think that the critics all outright hated the show. But there was a lot of stuff that people liked. Had the producers taken advantage of the practice of "pull quotes," maybe the show would have run a little longer. Think of what they could have done with these: "Dance of the Vampires...may well turn out to be a bat-out-of-hell hit. DOTV rises...thanks to a book loaded with comic one-liners that have the zany ring of the work of co-author David Ives. It fully comes to life in its deliriously Gothic set designs by David Gallo, tongue-in-cheek direction by John Rando, and a dead-on cast led by Michael Crawford, all of whom know how to bite into a gag... Mandy Gonzalez, who plays the show's heroine, Sarah...is this season's Sutton Foster, come out of nowhere to give a galvanizing performance... Mark Price is priceless as a put-upon servant who is happily turned into a vampire. Ron Orbach gives a juicy performance as a flawed father and husband... many people will find it wildly entertaining." - Barbara & Scott Siegel, Theatremania.com "Arch musicals are in at the moment, and any show based on the Roman Polanski film The Fearless Vampire Killers is going to have a satirical sensibility perfectly in keeping with today's Broadway. With an established composer for the score (Jim Steinman), a popular director-choreographer team (John Rando and John Carrafa) and a high-wattage star (Michael Crawford), sheer force of will could clearly transform Dance of the Vampires into a hit... some of the most opulent set designs seen on Broadway in years. David Gallo has outdone even his previous exceptional work here. The least stunning of his concoctions - a spooky forest, a smoky inn, an attic bedchamber, a great Gothic bedroom - are remarkably atmospheric...his most impressive creations comprise a graveyard (complete with coffins) that floats in from the fly space, and a mammoth drawbridge emerging from complete demonic blackness. Spectacle, yes, but eminently theatrical.... Max von Essen...is generally the best straight man in the wackiness of the world around him. He's also a remarkably durable singer... Rene Auberjonois brings a certain dignity to Professor Abronsius, the vampire hunter come to take down Krolock..." - Matthew Murray, Talkin' Broadway "Glitz aficionados might even want to check out Dance purely for the scenery and special effects." - Elysa Gardner, USA Today "Dance of the Vampires, the new musical currently running at the Minskoff Theatre, is a GREAT BIG SHOW! Rock and roll lighting flashes and blinds, dry ice wafts, leggy showgirls prance, and amplified voices throb. Jaw-dropping set piece after jaw-dropping set piece rolls in. Its attitude alone - one of unbridled, over-the-top showmanship - is enough to make it the biggest show on Broadway. [DOTV] is funny...[the] breezy, cavalier book by David Ives, Jim Steinman, and Michael Kunze contains a ton of jokes... Steinman's tuneful pop/rock pastiche of a score lays the bombast on thick, and leaves plenty of room for vocal histrionics. He even plagiarizes himself a couple of times...these moments...are quite entertaining... Director John Rando has fun mocking everything from 1960s Hammer horror films to 1980s pop/rock musicals, and choreographer John Carrafa has fun ripping off Staying Alive and Thriller. Their work keeps Dance of the Vampires moving at such a crazy, breathless pace that I forgot to look at my watch all throughout the performance. And, the actors all have fun, too...Crawford trades on his personality, poses well on stage, and relishes the ridiculousness...[as] the young lovers, Gonzalez proves she can shriek and trill with the best of the pop divas, and Von Essen displays a gorgeous traditional Broadway voice. Best of all is Auberjonois, who plays the whole show as seriously as possible - which only makes him funnier... Dance of the Vampires is unlike any musical you've ever seen before, and any you will ever see after." - Michael Criscuolo, NYTheatre.com "Spectacular!" - Clive Barnes, New York Post "Michael Crawford gives a powerhouse performance." - Robyn Carter, WCBS-TV "Michael Crawford is a mega-star who sends up his triumph in Phantom with joy and hilarity." - Michael Coveney, London Daily Mail "I liked it. I've had a soft spot in my head heart for Steinman since he wrote the Bat Out of Hell album for Meat Loaf, back in prehistoric vinyl days. The vigor of 'Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young' and his other songs for the film Streets of Fire, which I saw in Los Angeles in 1984, sent me racing along Mulholland Drive, to keep up with the propulsive beat. I swooned under the operatic pretensions of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart,' his 1983 hit for Bonnie Tyler. Steinman was the guy I kept calling for to rejuvenate, or just plain juvenate, the Broadway musical. [...] 50s rock 'n roll with a 70s preen [...] I knew from the first number - an angelic trio with a beguiling (what did they used to call it?) melody and some expert (the Andrews Sisters used to do it) harmony - that this would be my kind of score. [...] The production, in the rock-mock-Wagnerian style that tends to play better in London and Las Vegas than in Manhattan, boasts some fine voices and sexy dancers." - Richard Corliss, Time Magazine But the critics with fangs outweighed the critics watching the castle, and DOTV was not going to succeed. A $300,000 TV commercial filmed December 16 (Steinman and the producers still had a sense of humor: the show's tag-line was "the one Broadway musical that really sucks") could not save it. Daily ticket sales of about $60,000 aren't enough to support a weekly overhead of $600,000. By January, the show had drained its advance sales money, and it shriveled up and blew away like a vampire caught in the light of day, after 56 performances, at a loss of an amount estimated from $12-$15 million, becoming reckoned in the record books as one of the biggest financial flops in Broadway history. Jim Steinman didn't even show up on opening night. He came public disavowing any responsibility, telling Michael Riedel in the NY Post that "[the] show I wrote is not at the Minskoff. The show that is dear to me is still running in Vienna. The one at the Minskoff was just a job." To this day, he denies he was responsible for any of the changes, claiming he hated the show as it became and was disgusted by it. He refers to it on his blog as "a shit pile" and "UTTER SHIT!" and says his music was "wasted" on the show. Publicly, he recently laid the blame at Michael Crawford's door for turning his character into a clown and compared the show's producers to the Bush government ("they may have been everywhere, but they didn't know anything"). David Sonenberg is still Jim's manager, but for a period of time after the show finished its run, they weren't speaking, and Jim was seeking other management. Michael Kunze was angry with Jim for publicly distancing himself from the piece after the premiere. "[That's] about the most unfair thing one can do - not only because he was responsible for most of the changes, but also because it's simply unfair to try to save your own reputation at the cost of others'." When he castigated Jim for it, Jim claimed (in typical two-faced fashion) first that he said none of the statements Michael Riedel reported, and then that he was misquoted, but noticeably not taking responsibility for what he said. He wasn't entirely unhappy that the U.S. version didn't work; it meant his version would continue to thrive on foreign shores. "You learn from mistakes. And besides, I didn't expect my first piece to open on Broadway to be an instant success anyway." And what did he learn from this mistake? "I learned to make sure that no one, be it a production company, a partner, or anyone else, ever takes control of my piece away from me again." Tanz der Vampire has since played several cities in Germany (Hamburg, Berlin, Oberhausen, and opens in Stuttgart again next month), Poland (Warsaw), Japan (Tokyo), Austria (in a tenth anniversary concert, followed by a full-fledged production, both in Vienna), and Hungary (Budapest), with plans for Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, and a Portuguese-speaking country in the works. A film was recently announced as being in the planning stages, with Roman Polanski to star as Professor Abronsius (echoing his having played the role of Alfred in the original source film). There have been talks afoot about a production in the UK, but producers are reportedly unwilling to touch it for the two-fold reason of a) the title not being changed, and b) the show's unfortunate Broadway reputation. That aside, a new English version is currently in the works." Please understand that although I think this is an interesting and very well written account of "Dance Of The Vampires", I don't agree with everything said. There are more comments from other posters at the website. Please follow the link. | |
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