Last week, I posted about my current Boston Conservatory students and their selections for the most overrated musicals of all time. My blog traffic saw a nice little spike, and readers comments rose as well. Clearly, my readers love lists, as well as attitude.
So, yesterday, when this same crop of students handed in their papers defending their choices for the most underrated musicals, I knew I needed to share their choices on my blog as well. (What can I say? I'm just a whore for page hits.)
Here are the shows that my students chose as the subject of their underrated papers, along with the number of students who wrote about that particular show.
Bat Boy - 2
Children of Eden - 2
She Loves Me - 2
The Last Five Years - 2
The Secret Garden - 2
The Scarlet Pimpernel - 2
So, whaddya think, huh? Lots of choices that warm the cockles of my barren heart. I've long been a huge fan of Bat Boy. It's not only a very smart and funny show, it also has one of the best scores of the past ten years. Composer/lyricist Laurence O'Keefe is definitely someone to keep an eye on in the future, the forgettable nature of most of his work on Legally Blonde notwithstanding.
I was also very pleased to see two of my sentimental favorites make the list: The Secret Garden and She Loves Me. I adore both of these lovely shows, and it's great to see that they're not forgotten by the next generation of theater queens. (A term I use in an ecumenical sense: you don't have to be a gay male to be a TQ.) I find in particularly gratifying that The Secret Garden seems to have outlasted The Will Rogers Follies in the public consciousness, as well as in regional productions. As I've said here before, although Will Rogers won the 1991 Tony Award for best musical, it was easily the least distinguished show nominated that year, the others being The Secret Garden, Once on This Island, and Miss Saigon. (Yes, I even think Miss Saigon is better than The Will Rogers Follies. So sue me.)
Here are the shows that received one "vote" (i.e. paper) each: A Little Night Music, Baby, Carousel, Fiorello, Flower Drum Song, Mack and Mabel, Seussical, The Full Monty, The Light in the Piazza, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, The Wedding Singer, The Wiz, Wicked, and Xanadu.
It's quite a melange, although for me certain shows stand out as perhaps not quite fitting the underrated bill. A Little Night Music is one of very few Stephen Sondheim shows to actually turn a profit on Broadway. Sure, there hasn't yet been a revival, but the show is performed quite frequently, and may see a full-scale New York staging next year with no less than Natasha Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave as its stars.
Another show with questionable "underrated" status is Spelling Bee, which ran for two years, made back its investment, and will very likely see a long and healthy afterlife. And Carousel? Underrated? I suppose if you think about its estimation with the general public that might be so, but the show receives profuse and deserved acclaim in the theatrical world as being a landmark show, in many ways superior to its elder Rodgers and Hammerstein sibling, Oklahoma.
And then there's Fiorello. This is always the show that trips my students up when I ask them to name all seven musicals that have won the Pulitzer Prize. (Chronologically, Of Thee I Sing, South Pacific, Fiorello, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Chorus Line, Sunday in the Park With George, and Rent). Fiorello also has the historical distinction of splitting the 1959 Tony Award for best musical with The Sound of Music, with both shows besting the infinitely superior Gypsy. But Fiorello, while virtually forgotten, and pretty much unrevivable, has an outstanding score by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, one that anyone who cares about music thater show really become familiar with.
Of course, it's not really the student's choice for underrated musical that makes for a successful paper. It's how well they defend and support their choices. So, depending on the approach, a compelling case could be made for practically any show as being "underrated," at least by some subsection of the population. So, dear reader, if you were one of my students, what show would *you* choose to write about?
