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Seinfeld Is Unfunny/Theatre: Difference between revisions
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:: ''[[Henry V]]'' is particularly susceptible to this, as it's been mined, deconstructed, or outright stolen from for basically every war movie ever made.
** In fact, it's a common joke amongst theater folks: a woman (for some reason, it's always a woman) sees ''[[Hamlet]]'' for the first time and complains, "I don't know why people make such a big deal about it. It's just a bunch of quotes strung together."
* ''[[Oklahoma!]]'': Broadway musicals like this one may seem quaint, dated, and silly now, but compared to the typical showgirl fare of the time, their integration of music, dance, and plot, as well as their darker themes, were ground-breaking. Both ''Show Boat'' and ''Oklahoma!'' were written by the same librettist, Oscar Hammerstein II. Whichever show one chooses to credit, Hammerstein was instrumental in this development of a kind of musical based more on narrative and character than entertaining numbers. And without Hammerstein there would certainly have been no Stephen Sondheim, who took that development even further. Sondheim has pointed this trope out as well (''Allegro'' is another, less well known, Rodgers and Hammerstein show): "People don't understand how experimental ''Show Boat'' and ''Oklahoma!'' felt at the time they were done. Oscar is not about the 'lark that is learning to pray' -- that's easy to make fun of. He's about ''Allegro''."
* ''[[Hair (theatre)]]''. When it came out over 40 years ago, it was incredibly daring and edgy. There was [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|nudity, sex, drugs, homosexuality, cross-dressing, and]] ''[[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|interracial dating]]'', and its rock score was never heard before on stage. But with the success of musicals like ''[[Rent]]'' and ''[[Spring Awakening]]'', that shock factor can be lost on modern audiences.
** Revivals of the play these days take this into account by trying to make you forget it's a play at all, performing it in the open instead of on a stage, making it more like a "happening" and thus preserving the original spirit.
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[[Category:Seinfeld Is Unfunny]]▼
[[Category:Theater]]
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