Friday, December 9, 2011

Term of the Moment: To Wildhorn, Wildhorned

To Wildhorn--So Frank Wildhorn has had another mutilated show on the Broadway boards. "His "Bonnie and Clyde" just went down after a savaging by the New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley last week. I was telling people that "Bonnie and Clyde" was gunned down by sheriffs' deputies from three Texas counties. In March, Wildhorn's retelling of "Alice in Wonderland, a hip-hop fable called "Wonderland," also closed very quickly. My new term, "to wildhorn" a musical is when a reviewer hates the music and body of work of a particular composer. The reviewer will damn the new musical with the composer's previously detested work. A sample sentence would be, "Ben Brantley doesn't like James Lapine, so he always wildhorns his new musicals."