Monday, April 07, 2008
Curtain call
smh.com.au: "Spamalot, the Monty Python-inspired musical, has been a broadway hit, but the Melbourne show barely got off the ground. Bryce Hallett asks what went wrong."
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6 comments:
what may be another factor to lack of success is the humor and its lack of relation to the melbourne audiences. because no matter how good or not good the marketing is, if the humor does not come accross then the show will fail, especially with this show where all there is is humor.
It is interesting to see that Spamalot is not doing that well in Australia, and I agree with Peter about another possible cause. However, it also makes sense that just because the show did well on Broadway doesn't mean it will do well everywhere — there is a fair amount of difference between shows on Broadway and shows in London's West End. Still, if the audiences leaving Spamalot thought that it was a good show, then I am somewhat surprised that it didn't catch on.
I can't decide about how secular the humor in this show really is. I saw the show a while ago, and I certainly remember enjoying the humor, but I can't remember whether or not the humor wouldn't work in Melbourne. I want to say that this is not the case, and the humor would work. It would not work, though, if the Melbourne audience isn't familiar with Broadway-style musicals. Spamalot is, at its core, a parody of the Broadway musical. The Melbourne audience may not have appreciated this.
I think the most prominent reason why Spamalot wasn't a hit in Melbourne is because it is not a major tourist town. Sydney is the big tourist city of Australia, and Melbourne is a more localized city. I would love to see zipcode statistics from the New York and London runs of Spamalot, just to see where people come from when they see these shows. I wouldn't be surprised if it was up to 50% were tourists.
I think this may be both due to differences in culture and also differences in venue. Remember what happened to Young Frankenstein when it went from small time to big time, it lost all of the appeal it had. I saw the tour of the show here in Pittsburgh and can say that is it they type of show that requires a very specific audience, and Americans are the only people who really love Monty Python.
1. It sounds like they didn't market this properly.
2. Tickets were too expensive.
3. Do Australians even care for Monty Python?
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