My Favorite Year
My Favorite Year
anewlife2011
Chorus Member Joined: 1/2/11
#1My Favorite Year
Posted: 5/28/13 at 7:31pmDoes anyone know if this musical was any good? Or popular at all? I bought the cd for .68 haven't listened to it yet, but it has Andrea Martin in it. Any thoughts opinions?
broadway guy
Broadway Legend Joined: 8/5/11
#2My Favorite Year
Posted: 5/28/13 at 7:34pmThe show flopped. Wasn't popular at all. Its a shame cause i love the cast recording. A lot of high schools do it.
anewlife2011
Chorus Member Joined: 1/2/11
brian.klimowski
Understudy Joined: 7/30/10
#4My Favorite Year
Posted: 5/28/13 at 8:19pm
^ Is it overdone?
Because I just searched for it in youtube and the whole first page is filled with college renditions.
BewareTheUndertoad
Chorus Member Joined: 4/26/13
#5My Favorite Year
Posted: 5/30/13 at 5:33pm^Terribly overdone. That YouTube search would be a good indication.
ErinDillyFan
Broadway Star Joined: 7/14/06
#6My Favorite Year
Posted: 5/31/13 at 9:35am
Terribly overdone? I love the cast recording and have been trying to find some local theater performing it for years. It is rarely done. There are only 3 productions scheduled in the world in the next year. (Check out mtishows.com)
Hopefully, I will be seeing one of them next weekend.
It is a show about a 1954 TV comedy show. All the jokes are old. And like most of the new shows on broadway in 1992 it flopped.
Updated On: 5/31/13 at 09:35 AM
Mr Roxy
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/17/03
#7My Favorite Year
Posted: 5/31/13 at 9:44am
The lyric "porcelain angels" s wrong. It should be plaster angels but porcelain sounds nicer
Poster Emeritus
#8My Favorite Year
Posted: 5/31/13 at 9:45am
Beware meant that the song "Larger Than Life" is overdone (by young, overly-earnest singer/actors).
Much of the score is enjoyable, and if you hadn't seen the leaden, plodding, unfunny book, you would be excusably mystified as to why it would flop. Serious structural problems, with wild turns from schticky comedy to unearned pathos, no build to a climax, a tertiary role (Andrea Martin's) that was padded into a primary role because the actor was so good (but the character has nothing to do with moving the story) - stuff like that.
Swann (Curry's character) has 2 of the most self-pitying songs in the American musical theatre, and one happens at the end of act I and the other at the top of Act II - the rest of his material is negligible. Benjie was changed from a quirky young Mel Brooks type into a standard musical theatre juvenile.
It would need a completely new book to be more than intermittently and mildly enjoyable, even in the best possible production.
#9My Favorite Year
Posted: 5/31/13 at 11:37amI played Swann in high school, and enjoyed the role tremendously (as much as a 18-year-old playing an aging drunk can enjoy it), but yes, the show's got issues. Everything newintown mentioned is true (though I'm a more fond of the book than you are) but that being said it's a good show for young actors who want to stretch themselves: mostly everyone gets a number, and there's ample opportunity to play against type. There's only a few songs that are negligible: The Mother's song "Rookie in the Ring" is kind of stupid, but the only one that serves no purpose is "The Gospel According to King", a song about show business superstition. The others are rather nice: "Shut Up and Dance", "The Musketeer Sketch", "Exits"... I'm not saying it's a lost gem, but it deserves another look. And preferrably a few rewrites.
Videos