Word: flopped
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...Depression-era high of more than 1,000,-000, the national census of rootless men (and women) has dropped to a scant 100,000, most of them over 50. On the Bowery, a squalid mile-long stretch on Manhattan's Lower East Side bordered by wine dispensaries, flop houses and rescue missions, annual head counts of the residents have disclosed a steady attrition. Between 1949 and 1967, the population of the Bowery fell from 13,675 to 4,851. Every year the population declines another 5%-a rate that would reduce it to virtually nothing...
...thing/ Find you own dream/ Dig your own soul/ Or dig your own hole and die." This is nothing compared to "The Middle Years," a paean to middle-age that is a trifle too reminiscent of Birdie's "Kids" and The Girl Who Came to Supper's (a 1963 flop) "How do Do do, Middle Age." If nothing else, Your Own Thing shows exactly how big a sell-out Hair could have been...
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...
Still--and this is what keeps the ritual of the road alive--productions can be saved, or almost saved, on the road. An "almost saved" show is one that looks like an embarrassing flop on the road, but, through revisions, opens in New York to enough praise to keep it running eight or nine months. (Examples: the Julie Harris musical Skyscraper and last season's The Happy Time...