Article: The Flop and Revival of "Carrie"

“Carrie” was originally a book by Stephen King and then turned into a famous movie in 1976. Because the movie was such a hit it was turned into a Broadway production in 1988 and was a show to remember, but not in a good way. On Broadway there is a saying that goes “Not Since Carrie.” It was an eight million dollar flop that ran for five performances before closing. “Carrie” is a show about a teenage girl with telekinetic powers who is emotionally bullied at school and at home by her mother. The infamous scene was Carrie’s prom night, “Out for Blood,” where the mean kids slaughtered pigs offstage (the noise still haunts those who watched the show) and then their leader dumped the blood over Carrie, who in turn killed all her classmates with her powers. When Carrie returned home her mother stabbed her and as Carrie lay dying she killed her mother as well. This bloody production of “Carrie” still haunts Broadway today. But this past winter “Carrie” was redone off Broadway. While the performance ran for eight weeks, it still closed two weeks early. There have been mixed reviews about the performance, some say that the show, now revised, lost its hard and horrible touch. People say that getting rid of the dumping of blood on Carrie (and instead just doing projections) was a horrific idea. They claim that they would have been happier if the people in the first two rows had been given rain coats so that they could get blood splashed on them. Despite all the criticism, the writers are happy that the show did as well as it did. After the 1988 flop they were absolutely devastated, but this off-Broadway performance was not a full flop and so they see the show becoming better. Mr. Cohen claimed, “Having faced all the baggage and all the naysayers who said ‘Carrie’ would never happen again onstage, and on a stage in New York no less, we did what we wanted to do — fix the show.”

I was very surprised to hear that “Carrie” had done so well onstage. “Carrie” is such a hard play to do because there are emotions and situations that are hard to write good music for and it is hard to find good actors to portray those emotions. For example how does an actor sing a song about how she want to kill her own child? It is not exactly easy to do. I was also surprised to hear the news because it seems illogical to retry a show the fully failed in 1988. It seems to me that it was a big risk to bring this show out of the ashes. But I fully respect the director for trying to fix the production so that “Carrie” could be remembered as an ok show instead of the worst Broadway failure.

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