Word: flopped
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...NOVEMBER just such a show opened at the Colonial Theatre in Boston. The show, Dear World, had all the earmarks of a hit: a hot star (Angela Lansbury); a composer-lyricist who had never written for a flop (Jerry Herman, whose previous efforts included Hello Dolly and Mame); and a successful librettist team (Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, authors of Mame and Inherit the Wind). Dear World's five-week tryout engagement here was a virtual sellout before the opening night...
Realizing that his show -- now the most expensive in Broadway history--would be a sure flop unless more radical changes could be made, producer Cohen decided to postpone the opening indefinitely, with all performances in New York designated as "previews" until he considered Dear World ready for an opening before critics. While critics accept this practice of previews as an addition to the road tryout period, they could not abide by Cohen's plan to play the unfinished show into the distant future before paying audiences. Several of the first-nighters threatened to show up at the show unannounced...
Lately about four plays per season close on the road in this manner. This fall's big road flop was the musicalization of Bruce Jay Friedman's novel, A Mother's Kisses. Friedman did his own adaptation (on the heels of his successful off-Broadway comedy, Scuba Duba), and it closed in Baltimore...
...groups of raiders almost shot it out, each thinking the other was Israeli. Last month, the fedayeen set up a council to coordinate raids between El Fatah and its two chief rivals, the Palestine Liberation Force and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or P.F.L.P. (inevitably pronounced "flop" by Westerners on the scene), a militantly leftist merger of several splinter organizations on the scene...
Indeed Dear World has failure written all over it, and all the doctoring in the world probably cannot change that. Alexander Cohen at least can be thankful that he doesn't have a flop on his hands. It's probably small consolation to him, but it's even less consolation to the audience...