A legendary musical that disastrously bombed on Broadway in 1988 is set to make its Off-Broadway debut this week, courtesy of MCC Theater. In the annals of theatrical mega-failures, few disasters loom quite as large as Carrie, the 1988 musical based on the eponymous Stephen King novel about a homely telekinetic girl, her fanatically religious mother, and a bucket of pig blood.

Remembered primarily for its bizarre staging (teenage girls performing calisthenics while wearing togas, a bloody girl crawling down an enormous white staircase) and trash-tastic songs (including a production number featuring high school boys slaughtering swine – with appropriate sound effects, of course), the show closed after only 16 previews and 5 regular performances, and lost its entire investment of $7 million (a record sum at the time).

However, the musical also had its share of virtues, including stunning near-operatic arias and duets, searingly performed by a cast that included Broadway diva Betty Buckley and Motown star Darlene Love. Audio bootlegs of the original Broadway production have been eagerly passed down from collector to collector, cementing Carrie’s status as a cult classic.

Still, quite a few eyebrows were raised when MCC announced that they will be premiering an extensively retooled version of the musical Off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. But should this really be such a surprise? Over the years, several flop Broadway shows have had their reputations salvaged by reconceived, pared-down, rewritten Off-Broadway revivals. In honor of the upcoming Carrie, here’s a look back at some of our favorite shows that got a second chance Off-Broadway

Lotte Lenya in the 1954 production of The Threepenny Opera

THE THREEPENNY OPERA
Within five years of its 1928 Berlin premiere, The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht had been translated into 18 languages and had been performed over 10,000 times on European stages. However, the 1933 New York premiere on Broadway was a qualified dud, with The Herald-Tribune calling it “a torpid affectation, sluggish, and ghastly,” though The Times praised the “splendid score.” Still, Depression-era audiences did not cotton to Threepenny’s Marxist leanings, its heavy-handedness, and its lack of humor, and abandoned it after twelve performances.

Ironically, the show became a bedrock of the burgeoning Off-Broadway movement when it received a rapturously received scaled-down revival (with a new translation by Marc Blitzstein) in 1954 at The Theatre de Lys (since renamed The Lucille Lortel Theatre after Off-Broadway champion and Threepenny producer Lucille Lortel). The production had to close after 96 performances because of a prior booking, but The Threepenny Opera roared back in 1955 (with a cast that included Bea Arthur, John Astin, Jo Sullivan and Lotte Lenya – Weill’s widow, a premier interpreter of his work). The show’s signature song “Mack the Knife” became an oft-recorded standard, and the show continued to reign until 1961, racking up over 2700 performances in the process, surpassing Oklahoma! as the longest-running show in New York theatrical history up til that time.

The original Broadway production of Merrily We Roll Along. Photo by Martha Swope.

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG
After a string of successful collaborations in the 1970s including Company, Follies, and Sweeney Todd, composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim and director Hal Prince struck out with this 1981 Broadway musical that moves backwards chronologically from 1976 to the 1957 as its characters grow younger, less bitter and angry, and more idealistic and hopeful.

Featuring an enthusiastic if inexperienced cast of teenagers and twenty-somethings, the show was hampered by its unconventional narrative and initially unlikable characters. After an astonishing 52 preview performances, the show opened to poor reviews and closed two weeks later. As Frank Rich of The New York Times wrote, “To be a Stephen Sondheim fan is to have one's heart broken at regular intervals.”

On the strength of the cast recording, the show was periodically revived and revised across the country throughout the Reagan/Bush Sr. years. In 1994, the York Theatre (which had similarly presented a scaled-down production of Sondheim’s succès d'estime Pacific Overtures in 1984) tackled Merrily to critical acclaim, garnering a 1995 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival, Obie Award for star Malcolm Gets and director Susan Schulman, and a new cast recording featuring a number cut during the Broadway run, “The Blob,” and the new song “Growing Up.”

Josh Grisetti and company in the York Theatre production of Enter Laughing

ENTER LAUGHING
Carl Reiner’s semi-autobiographical novel Enter Laughing was transformed by playwright Joseph Stein into a long-running Broadway comedy of the same name in 1963, which itself was adapted as a Hollywood film in 1967. The tale about a stagestruck kid in the Bronx whose parents wanted him to be a druggist proved to be remarkably resilient, but luck ran out when the story became a Broadway musical in 1976. So Long, 174th Street, as the show was called, was not kindly received by critics or the public, and suffered through 16 performances before calling it quits.

Enter the York Theatre again. As part of its Musicals in Mufti series featuring bare-bones, scripts-in-hand versions of rarely produced tuners, the York presented the musical, now titled Enter Laughing: The Musical, for five rapturously received sold-out performances in September 2007, and for another four showings in December.

Public demand was still not satiated, and the show received a full-scale revival in September-October 2008 with a return engagement in January-March 2009. The critics were a little kinder this time, calling it “The funniest tuner to hit town since The Producers” (NY Daily News). The cast album was released in August 2010, and plans are afoot for a Broadway transfer.

Theatreworks USA's Off-Broadway production of Seussical. Photo by Joan Marcus.

SEUSSICAL
Fresh off of their Tony-winning triumph Ragtime, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens teamed with Eric Idle (of Monty Python fame) to adapt the imaginative works of children’s author Dr. Seuss. Sounds like a sure-fire recipe for success, right?  However, Seussical the Musical was criticized as an expensive, elephantine mess and gave up the ghost after just 198 performances on Broadway. A funny thing happened on the way to the musical graveyard, though. Ahrens and Flaherty reconceived the show for a 2002 national tour, and later further rewrote it as an 80-minute musical appropriate for young audiences, throwing out an entire subplot, a few songs, and several characters in the process.

Manhattan-based children’s theatre company Theatreworks USA began touring this shorter version of the musical in 2006, and brought it Off-Broadway in 2007. Director-choreographer Marcia Milgrom Dodge took the opening song “Oh, the Thinks You Can Think” to heart and transformed the show into a celebration of children’s imagination as a dozen college-age actors portrayed archetypal schoolchildren on a playground enacting the Seuss tales. Gone were the enormous sets and elaborate effects, replaced by a winning simplicity: an inner tube and ball became a nest and egg, actors wearing bomber jackets with elongated sleeves portrayed a gang of monkeys, and a shower poof became a clover on which rests the fate of the planet of Who.

Based on the success of this mounting, Theatreworks recommenced their national tour of Seussical, which is currently scheduled to continue through at least 2013, and which has spawned a recording of the revised score. Seussical has gone on to become one of the most frequently produced musicals in America, proving enormously popular with school, community, and professional groups across the country.

Email

Over the past seven years, the annual Under the Radar Festival, produced by the Public Theater, has shined a spotlight on eclectic artists and companies from around the world who push the boundaries of what theatre can be.

Photo by David Baltzer

The toast of the 2011 festival, the British/German multimedia collective Gob Squad, now returns to the Public with a limited run of their live stage reconstruction of Andy Warhol’s films, GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN (YOU’VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD) – one of the weirdest, most wonderful shows now playing in New York.

The audience’s first clue that we’re in for an unorthodox theatrical experience comes before the show even begins – we are ushered onto the stage to pass through the production’s set – cameras focused on a bed, a kitchen, and a couch – on their way to the seats, from where we see a trio of movie screens.

The wildly entertaining GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN takes us to Andy Warhol’s world, circa 1965, focusing on his idea of exploring authenticity on film – the way people act when they’re not aware they’re being observed. 95% of the action takes place behind the screens and is projected for all the audience to see.

Little by little, the GOB SQUAD company members break down the fourth wall and replace themselves onstage with selected members of the audience, who are given microphones and headsets through which the performers feed them staging and dialogue. (Don’t let the idea of audience participation frighten you – prospective participants can decline taking part in the show – and at the performance we saw, several did decline.)

The coup de theatre is that we, the audience in our seats observe the audience members brought into the film observing the weird world unfolding before them. These stand-ins soon let down their guard (a benefit of our being able to see them while they can’t see us), and Warhol’s brand of cinéma veríté takes center stage. Whether the onstage participants are observing each other, tossing breakfast cereal at each other, or even making out with a company member, the audience gets a fascinating voyeuristic thrill at watching others being watched. (And it’s far less fraught than staring at that dozing subway passenger across the way!)

Following the stellar success of her play Crooked at The Women's Project Theater in 2008, Catherine Trieschmann returns with HOW THE WORLD BEGAN, a new play about Susan, a high school biology teacher who leaves Manhattan for a job in Plainview, Kansas. Susan is ready for more than a little culture shock, but she’s not prepared for the firestorm that engulfs the town when she makes an off-handed comment about the origins of the universe. Below photos are by Carol Rosegg.

Paula Vogel's HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE was one of the most sensationally acclaimed plays of the late 90s, racking up nearly every imaginable Best Play accolade including citations from The New York Drama Critics Circle, The Lucille Lortel Award, the Drama Desk, the OBIE, the Outer Critics Circle, and (drumroll please) the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. And now, Second Stage Theatre is preparing for the first major New York revival of the seminal work in nearly 15 years.

As Second Stage describes it, "HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE explores the complex relationship between Li’l Bit (Elizabeth Reaser) and her Uncle Peck (Norbert Leo Butz), as a series of driving lessons progresses from innocence to something much darker."

Be sure to watch the below video of Ms. Vogel discussing the work and its return to the New York stage.

The world can be divided into two groups: those who saw CARRIE and those who didn't. The Broadway musical adaptation of Stephen King's novel was a legendary five-performance flop in 1988, but has engendered a rabid cult following - live audio recordings taken from the show's sound board have been distributed from collector to collector for over two decades, and theatre-lovers have clamored for a chance to experience the lush score and melodramatic thrills in person.

And now, MCC Theater is preparing for the show's first-ever revival (albeit heavily revised), and musical theatre aficionados are salivating in anticipation. To fan the flames, MCC is hosting a video contest for fans to post videos about why they're excited about the show's return. The winner will win a pair of VIP tickets to MCC Theater's opening night performance of CARRIE at The Lucille Lortel Theatre on Mar 1 at 8pm, and the party that follows. For more information click HERE.

Need some inspiration? Check out the below video of the production's actors and creative team discussion why they're excited about the show's return!

Forget the holidays -- THIS is the most wonderful time of the year!

Thirty-eight Off-Broadway shows have joined forces with NYC & Company (New York City’s official marketing, tourism and partnership organization), The Off-Broadway League and Time Out New York for OFF-BROADWAY WEEK 2012, a special two-for-one deal on tickets to the city's best theatre! To book half-price tickets for performances January 30 - February 13, click HERE. (Yes, Off-Broadway week technically lasts two weeks, but we're not complaining...)

“This winter, Off-Broadway Week will offer visitors and New Yorkers an affordable way to experience some of the City’s best theater with two-for-one tickets to 38 Off-Broadway shows—more than ever before,” said George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company. “Off-Broadway Week gives us a forum to showcase the depth of talent found in these unique shows across Manhattan at a discounted price.”

“On behalf of The Off-Broadway League, we are excited to partner with NYC & Company on the fifth iteration of the program to offer New Yorkers and visitors more value this winter through the Off-Broadway Week two-for-one ticket promotion,” said George Forbes, president of The Off-Broadway League. “The Off-Broadway theater community encourages everyone to take advantage of this tremendous offer and to experience the excitement of an Off-Broadway show.”

Productions participating in Off-Broadway Week:*

• The Amazing Max and the Box of Interesting Things
• Assistance
• Avenue Q
• The Awesome 80s Prom
• The Berenstain Bears LIVE!
• Black Angels Over Tuskegee
• Blue Man Group
• Carrie
• Channeling Kevin Spacey
• CQ/CX
• Danny and Sylvia: The Danny Kaye Musical
• The Devil's Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith
• The Fantasticks
• Freckleface Strawberry, The Musical
• Freud’s Last Session
• Fuerza Bruta: Look Up
• Galileo
• Gazillion Bubble Show
• How I Learned to Drive
• Ionescopade
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
• Look Back in Anger
• Love, Loss, and What I Wore
• Million Dollar Quartet
• Miss Abigail’s Guide to Dating, Mating, & Marriage
• My Sinatra
• Perfect Crime
• The Philanderer
• Psycho Therapy
• Rated P... for Parenthood – A New Musical
• Rent
• Russian Transport
• Rx
• Sam Eaton's The Quantum Eye – Mentalism and Magic Show
• Silence! The Musical
• Sistas: The Musical
• Stomp
• Traces

*Subject to availability. Blackout dates may apply.

A film made live on stage with bad coffee, nervous breakdowns, wild parties and modern hairstyles.

The Public describes GOB SQUAD'S KITCHEN as such: "It's 1965 and everything is just about to happen. The German/British collective Gob Squad invites you to take the hand of the King of Pop himself, Andy Warhol, and take a trip back to the underground cinemas of New York City, back to where it all began. GOB SQUAD'S KITCHEN reconstructs Warhol's films in the quest to illuminate the past for a new generation, reflecting on the nature of authenticity, the here and now, and the hidden depths beneath the shiny surfaces of modern life."

Warhol would probably agree, though, that a picture is worth a thousand words. So how much is a video clip worth? Click below and see for yourself!

Vineyard Theatre (The Lyons, The Scottsboro Boys, Avenue Q and Naked Angels (Next Fall, This Wide Night) are joining forces this spring to present the world premiere of Zayd Dohrn's new cross-cultural dark comedy OUTSIDE PEOPLE.

"Set among an international crowd in in modern-day Beijing," according to the Vineyard and Naked Angels, "OUTSIDE PEOPLE is the story of a young American man, Malcolm, who falls in love with a young Chinese woman, Xiao Mei. But as his eyes open to the subtle social, political and economic forces that inform their relationship, he must confront his complex place in this foreign culture, the friendship that brought him there, and his own deepest fears and desires."

What are your favorite holiday memories? Decorating cookies with Grandma… tucking the kids into bed and settling down for a long night of trying to figure out how to assemble a Barbie dream house… How about great theatre? All of us at OffBroadway.com are reminiscing about a few beloved holiday-set shows that have played Off-Broadway over the last fifty or so years. In alphabetical order:

BLACK NATIVITY
In 1961, Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes scored a late-career triumph with Black Nativity, a re-imagining of the traditional Nativity story with a cast made up entirely of African-Americans Though The New York Times criticized the slight plot, audiences responded positively to the musical's soulful arrangements of classic and new holiday songs. The show premiered at the 41st Street Theatre, and later transferred to the York Playhouse at 61st and 1st Avenue (not to be confused with the current home of The York Theatre Company at 54th and Lexington). Black Nativity has gone on to become a holiday tradition in many communities, including Boston (where it is celebrating its 40th anniversary season) and Seattle, where it's been a mainstay at the Intiman Theatre for over a decade. A critically-acclaimed revival starring André De Shields was produced by The Classical Theatre of Harlem at The Duke on 42nd Street in 2007. (Photo of revival production with Mr. De Shields: Rahav Segev for The New York Times.)

A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN WALES
and other holiday shows at The Irish Repertory Theatre
Christmas is a time for traditions – the heirloom tree ornaments, the perennial gift of fruitcake, and of course, theatre. The Irish Repertory Theatre has established a nearly-annual tradition of presenting holiday-themed shows, and over the past 15 years, they have presented their adaptation of A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas’s memoir of spending the yuletide in Cardiff, six times. The Irish Rep’s other seasonal offerings over the years have included A Celtic Christmas, The Bells of Christmas, and Christmas with Tommy Makem. And in 2006, they produced a revival of the theatrical adaptation of the classic film Meet Me in St. Louis, which, though not strictly a holiday story, features the song “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” one of the most devastating seasonal songs ever written.

CHRISTMAS AT THE IVANOVS’
Something of an anti-Christmas show, this piece of Russian absurdism takes place on Christmas Eve. While bathing the family’s children who range in age from 1 to 82, the nurse has had enough with the 32-year-old child’s boasting about the size of her breasts and insulting of the nurse’s private parts, so the nurse beheads her with an axe. Will the family (incidentally named Puzyrov, not Ivanov) be able to have a happy Christmas despite this tragedy? Classic Stage Company, under Artistic Director David Esbjornson, presented this festive little play by early 20th century avant garde poet/playwright Aleksandr Vvedensky in 1997.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
There have been thousands of film and stage adaptations of Dickens’ seasonal chestnut, starring everyone from Jim Carrey (in the animated version currently in movie theatres) to Mickey Mouse, the Muppets, Patrick Stewart, and in what many people consider the ultimate adaptation, a 1951 film featuring Alistair Sims. Off-Broadway has also seen at least three versions of the story, including a 1992 version at the Perry Street Theatre, written by and starring Orson Bean (best known as a panelist on the TV game show “To Tell the Truth”), and a 2005 kid-friendly musical adaptation from Theatreworks USA at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. At left: Herndon Lackey in Theatreworks USA's version of the story, photo by Joan Marcus.

FORBIDDEN CHRISTMAS
Over its 30-year run, the ever-evolving Forbidden Broadway skewered all things theatrical, but for the holiday season in 1991 and 1992, creator Gerard Alessandrini altered the show’s scope a bit to include, among other holiday-centric songs and parodies, a skit that featured miserly critic John Simon as Scrooge, with Ethel Merman as the Ghost of Christmas Past and Stephen Sondheim as the Ghost of Christmas Present, in addition to Topol pondering life “If I Were a Gentile Man” and Andrew Lloyd Webber in a Nativity scene that featured pop star Madonna as... well… The Madonna.

THE LONG CHRISTMAS RIDE HOME
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel asserts that this work, which ran at the Vineyard Theatre in November 2003, is not Christmas-themed, even though it takes place during the holiday season. Dramatizing a road trip by two parents and three young children to visit the grandparents, Mark Brokaw’s evocative production depicted the children as bunraku puppets (designed by Basil Twist) manipulated by the actors who later played the adult versions of these characters. Photo at left: Mark Blum, Enid Graham, Will McCormack, Catherine Kellner, and Randy Graff, photo by Carol Rosegg.

OTHER DESERT CITIES
Lincoln Center Theater's winter 2010 triumph is now the toast of Broadway! In Jon Robin Baitz's Broadway playwrighting debut, a daughter makes a Christmastime visit to Palm Springs and drops a bombshell on her wealthy, conservative family. Joe Mantello directed a stellar ensemble cast that included Stockard Channing, Linda Lavin, Stacey Keach, and in a Lortel Award-winning turn, Thomas Sadoski. The show originally played at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre in January-February 2011, and transferred to the Booth in November of this year. The show found itself on several annual top ten lists, including The New York Times, Newsday, the Associated Press, and more.

SANTA CLAUS/A CHRISTMAS ORATORIO
Off-Broadway impresario Lucille Lortel, in association with ANTA (American National Theatre and Academy) presented a one-performance only event in December 1957 at the Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street (which was eventually re-named in honor of Ms. Lortel). The double-bill featured Anglo-American poet W.H. Auden's work A Christmas Oratorio and a reading of Santa Claus, e.e. cumming’s allegorical morality play, in which Death and jolly old Saint Nick decide to trade faces for a day.

THE SANTALAND DIARIES
In 1992, an unknown humorist appeared on NPR to read a hilarious, barbed account of his experiences as an elf at Macy’s. The broadcast was a huge hit and led to the author of that essay, David Sedaris, writing several best-selling books of semi-autobiographical stories, including Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and more. In 1996, The Santaland Diaries was transformed into a one-man play at the Atlantic Theatre Company’s Linda Gross Theater, courtesy of adapter/director Joe Mantello (who already had Love! Valour! Compassion! under his belt and would go on to direct Take Me Out and Wicked), with sets by Ian Falconer, who has since become a literary sensation himself with a series of children’s books about the pugnacious pig Olivia.

STRIKING 12
The indie pop-rock-trip Groovelily (Gene Lewin on drums, Brendan Milburn on keyboards and Valerie Vigoda on electric violin) collaborated with bookwriter Rachel Sheinkin (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) for this critically acclaimed musical about a modern urban grump who discovers Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Little Match Girl” on New Year’s Eve. Performed by Groovelily, Striking 12 ran for two months at the Daryl Roth Theatre, and was nominated for the 2007 Lucille Lortel Award for “Outstanding Musical.” Photo at right: Gene Lewin, Valerie Vigoda, Brendan Milburn.

THAT TIME OF THE YEAR
Everywhere you turn, there’s another Santa in a store window, another Nativity scene, and another Christmas-themed show to attend. What’s a Jew to do? The creators of That Time of the Year met this community halfway with a musical revue celebrating both Christian and Jewish traditions with original songs such as “Rock & Roll Hanukkah,” “Under the Mistletoe,” “Mama’s Latkes,” and a fruitcake-themed lament. Laurence Holzman and Felicia Needleman contributed lyrics to music by a wide range of composers in this York Theatre Company presentation from 2006.