Thursday, September 15, 2005

"Lennon" Closes

From Yahoo!:

"Lennon," the musical about the life and music of former Beatle John Lennon that earned dismal reviews, will close just six weeks after it opened on Broadway, the show's producers said on Thursday. Created with the help of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, the musical had a troubled road to Broadway that involved major rewrites after it was first produced in San Francisco.

Critics slammed it for what The New York Times called its "Ono-centric" view of Lennon's life, and audiences have dwindled since opening night on August 15, falling to around 40 percent capacity in recent weeks.
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I think the problem wasn't so much that it was "Ono-centric" as it was just a bad idea badly executed. I don't think we've seen the end of the jukebox musical, though. There was just no camp in John Lennon, unlike Abba or Queen. If Yoko Ono wanted to do a musical, she would have been much better off setting it to the music of the Bay City Rollers. Which, come to think of it, isn't a bad idea.

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