Posted on 04/26/2006 11:39:37 AM PDT by frogjerk
By Claudia Parsons
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The third vampire musical to try its luck on Broadway in four years drew all the familiar puns in scathing reviews Thursday that said "Lestat" was "bloody awful," "sucked of life" and the "kiss of death."
"Lestat" was Hollywood studio Warner Bros.' first attempt to challenge Disney's dominance of the mass-market musical genre, reportedly with a budget of up to $12 million. Based on Anne Rice's vampire novels, the show features songs by Elton John and his writing partner, Bernie Taupin.
Expectations had been low after a critically savaged trial run in San Francisco. History was also against "Lestat" after the failure of two previous vampire musicals, "Dance of the Vampires" in 2002 and "Dracula, the Musical" in 2004.
In a review headlined "Vampires, the musical kiss of death," The Washington Post's Peter Marks said the fixation with singing vampires had to stop. "Give the bloodsucker a ballad, and it's his show that joins the walking dead."
"The only thing distinguishing this musical from its late, unlamented predecessors is that the lead vampires play for the, er, other team," he said. "'Lestat's' contribution to art and equality is demonstrating that a gay vampire with a two-octave range can be just as dull as a straight one."
The New York Post's verdict was "Bloody Awful" and Newark, New Jersey's The Star-Ledger said it was "just deadly."
The plot, from Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" books, follows the 18th century Frenchman Lestat, who is bitten by a vampire after slaughtering a pack of wolves. The books were made into a hit film starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in 1994.
'CLAUDIA HAS TWO DADDIES' Continued...
It bites.
Apparently it sucks too...
"It sucked the life out of me"
The curtain's coming down fast....
Put a stake in it.
ping
Shine some light on this stinking corpse, and let it vaporize in the light of day!
OMG, what have they done to my Lestat?!
Horrors!
Dark & ironic musicals. We've had a few since The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, but I really think it's a terrible combination.
The word went out that after 9/11 Hollywood would turn away from irony. Unfortunately, they did so for only about two weeks, before it was back to the old postmodernist stand.
How about we have some real heroes and heroines? Some good guys winning and getting married at the end? Evil villains defeated? Harmony, clarity, and good time had by all. A few sad songs can come in the middle, when things look dark, but not at the end, please.
With a lead pillow biting vampire... apparrently in more ways than one..
Should gone with that "Brokeback Frankenstein" script, I guess.
Good one...or rather "BROKEBACK DRACULA"
"BROKEBACULA"
Why did the vampire enjoy ballroom dancing? ... He could really get into the vaultz
P.S. They made the head vampire a homo too!
Once again, the Arts serve up a steaming bowl of perversion, and wonder why they can't even get artsy gothics to attend. (That, and the show certainly stunk as well.)
They probably took it to the extreme but Anne Rice wrote vampires as if they were gay, heterosexual, multi-sexual, whatever!
Before they were turned to the dark side there was a gay erotica theme to the male characters. Then once they were "undead" they were attracted by anything aesthetically pleasing though their normal body functions no longer worked. Then they could only dream of the good old days of drunken abhorrent behavior.
PS- I am still LOL over Brokebacula :)
Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan at NY Post.
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