Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 8:20 AM by Gene

The Branson East strike may be a LONG one -- because the theme-park owners are represented by the same HARD-CORE law firm that led New York's transit authority into a "disastrous" strike two years ago! (So this says.)

As for the notion that this is a calamity, well, I think we can counter that:

[T]he woes on Broadway aren't merely caused by industrial action. My latest visit, just before the strike kicked in, confirmed my suspicion that the Broadway musical, at its best a form of popular entertainment that reaches the realms of high art, is in a state of possibly terminal decline.

Originality and panache have been largely replaced by rip-offs from old movies, or juke-box shows featuring songs the audience already know.

One of the shows still running during the strike is Xanadu, a surprise hit based on a terrible old film starring Olivia Newton-John. The plot concerns an ancient Greek muse who inspires a present-day Californian artist to create a roller disco. The show - one of the most cynical and shabbily produced I have ever seen on Broadway - is just an excuse for a supercilious snigger and loads of knowing camp.

The artist is played by a handsome hunk in shorts to keep the gay men and the teenage girls who comprise most of the audience happy, and there's a perfunctorily performed score of old ELO hits and a starlet with perky breasts and a terrible Australian accent to lull lecherous middle-aged men into a stupor.

The jokes misfire, the dialogue isn't nearly as sharp as it fondly imagines, and the whole lazy show should have been eviscerated by the critics. Instead both the New York Times and the New Yorker have hailed it as a feast of fun and the producers can't believe their luck.

When intelligent reviewers start praising dross, you know a culture is in trouble. To have moved from West Side Story to Xanadu in half a century strikes me as tragic, and this ghastly little show seems symptomatic of a disastrous failure of vision in commercial theatre on both sides of the Atlantic.

But of course Branson East stumbles blind -- all the way to the bank, as they say. At least it did. And this sums up why we hope for a long bitter strike there too.

(Second link via ArtsJournal)