I just reached Fringe show number 30 and I think this last one may have finally burned me out. "John Goldfarb Please Come Home" has a strong pedigree, with a book by William Peter Blatty, writer of "The Exorcist," and music by the composers of "The Song of Singapore." Well, Blatty must not have lost his touch for horror, because this was one of the most horrific musicals I have ever had the displeasure to sit through. It supposedly runs two hours, but I escaped after an hour and fifteen minuts, screaming for mercy. I think I was around number 10 from my side of the theatre, and someone else from the other side left at the same time I did. Thank goodness I chose a seat near the back of the theatre and that the Skirball Center is one of the few Fringe venues that doesn't require walking across the stage to escape (I think the two others are the Lucille Lortel and the Players Theatre). This is apparently based on a movie, which I guess must not be as ghastly as the musical if these people decided to adapt it for the stage (well, a quick look at IMDB says that Blatty wrote the screenplay too, so maybe it is just as bad...). The basic plot is that a female reporter goes to Saudi Arabia to do an expose on harems, the king's son is kicked out of Notre Dame but still wants to play football, and some loser army guy gets lost on the way to Russia and ends up as a football coach for the kings's new team. The book is full of unfunny lines like "I've grown accustomed to his fez" and "1: Are you Jewish? 2: Yes. Is that a problem? 1: No, just don't do it again." There is not one memorable song in the first hour and fifteen minutes - all the songs I heard were bland, tuneless and dull. The choreography was also really sub-par, making the all overly long dance numbers particularly snooze inducing.
Looking around at the audience while the show was going on, I saw quite a bit of slouching and squirming, so I don't think I was the only one in pain. I wonder how much longer most of those people lasted before reaching their breaking point. That's gotta be one long two hour, intermissionless show.
For what it's worth, the other show I saw tonight was "Bash'd," a gay rap opera. It came highly recommended, and tonight was an added performance, so I thought I'd check it out. The story was sort of sweet, but it was an hour long and really an hour of non-stop rapping is simply just more than I can take.
