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Re: Pshychoderelict, Quad on stage, Astley haters banquet



>The reason Psychoderelict is weak is because it fails to connect with the 
>audience in an emotional way.

Aha.  It's a "cool" piece of work, rather than a "hot" one.  This is one 
major difference between Pete solo and The Who.  Now and then Roger and John 
will produce something cool, but mostly they're into HOTHOTHOT, so The Who 
always connects emotionally.

Cool is the realm of the intellectual, and of jazz.  It's something you 
contemplate.  You listen carefully and pick up fine points of meaning in the 
inflections and the lyrics.  You're right it won't play on Broadway.  We'll 
definitely have to add SEX.


>It is a work of complete cynicism and is too personal.  Only those who are 
>into Pete will have any understanding of the themes and conlficts.

I don't know if it's that bad, but Pete would definitely have to cut the 
LIFEHOUSE references.  That IS too personal, and it's too much to expect a 
general audience to follow the part about Spinner and Athena, etc.  Still, 
this is Pete's best dramatic piece so far.  He's actually produced a 
storyline here that reads like a soap opera.  It's a complex plot, complete 
with intrigue and deception, and then a sudden twist at the end where they 
all end up in bed together.

I love it.


>Art about the difficulties of the artistic process is very diffucult to 
>pull off.  (Nearly impossible IMO.)

Meta-art.  Now and then people get it right, though.  I think THE PRODUCERS 
is meta-art, and Woody Allen does stuff like that, too.  It has to have 
sympathetic characters the audience gets involved with, though.  Notice they 
got Nathan Lane in for a lead in THE PRODUCERS.


>For Quad to work in the theater they need to emphasize the cool dramatic 
>gimmick of the 4 characters within a character.  Every successful musical 
>needs a gimmick to make the audience think it innovative.  One gimmick that 
>people can grasp, and then make everything else bland.  Bland music, bland 
>performances, bland costumes will all work great if they can pull off a 
>neato torpedo 4-characters-in-one dramatic device.

Hmmm.  Do you suppose they could come up with quadruplets that could sing 
and dance?  Guys with similar build?  Maybe a costume change?
Good idea.  You're right that this is the most interesting device within 
QUAD--something like the third layer down in interpretation.  The gang 
war/romance will tend to play like WEST SIDE STORY, and the politics mirror 
won't rescue it, but that trememdous crash where Jimmy splinters and dies, 
and is then reborn will be the big hook.

Was TOMMY the musical cool, BTW?  I think you're put your finger on 
something that I don't normally like about Broadway, Jeff.  The singing 
style is detached, and therefore cooler and more artificial than I like.

Did you listen to Pete's workshop mp3s on QUAD?  He had cooled it off 
considerably from Roger's performance of same.  I thought Roger meant to be 
involved in production on this one, as he and John didn't much like the 
results with TOMMY--likely it was too cool for them, and they wanted to heat 
QUAD up with more of a rock sound.  Think it would play better that way?


keets