Armageddon -- the Musical

Don't ask me why, but for some reason the other day I found myself Googling the words "Armageddon" and "musical." And, sure enough, the search bore fruit.

As far as I can tell, Armageddon -- the Musical is just meant to be an absurdist title to a Douglas-Adams-esque sci-fi romp. There appears to be no actual musical in the book, although the story does prominently feature Elvis Presley. The book is by one Robert Rankin, who also wrote something called "The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse," so I guess the man traffics in whimsy.

But it got me thinking about what a great punchline "...the musical" has become. Just pick your most unlikely candidate, add "the musical" as a suffix, and voila -- instant comedy. For example:

Schindler's List -- The Musical
Antiques Road Show  -- the Musical
The Warren Report -- the Musical
The Blair Witch Project -- the Musical
9/11 -- the Musical
America's Test Kitchen -- the Musical
'Night, Mother -- the Musical
NPR -- the Musical
Root Canal -- the musical
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary  -- the Musical
Lord of the Rings -- the Musical
Showgirls -- the Musical
The Apprentice -- the Musical
Thalidomide -- the Musical
Titanic -- the Musical

Of course, those last five are no joke, at least in terms of their being real projects. But remember when they first announced Titanic would become a musical? I remember I laughed out loud. But then I saw the show, and really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's far from perfect. The characters are indistinct, and the show has no real focus. (Say what you want about James Cameron's Oscar-winning opus, it certainly had focus, albeit on two fictional characters.) I remember thinking when the Strausses came out to sing the very moving "Still" in the second act, "Wow, this is great, But who the f*#@ are these people?" The show had failed to set up the Strausses as sympathetic, three-dimensional characters, so the power of the the song was lost.

Anyway, whenever I have that kind of negative gut reaction to some idea for a musical, I have to remind myself of the well-worn maxim that I repeat time and again in my Conservatory course: "There's no such thing as a bad idea for a musical, only bad execution."