I have a horrid fascination with KLG and Hoda on the Today Show...

They sort of remind me of the iconic duo on the series 'Absolutely Fabulous'.  They are up in the morning drinking wine, dishing, being 'naughty', have fixed 'dazzling' personalities that are so fake you think they have pin walls at home to paste on their smiles once they get out of work and get maybe grim, are social climbing sorts of beasts who like to brag about who they are going out with in the evenings, who are mostly high B list, and can generally either bemuse or irritate me. 

The UK had sort of a duo like that in the above mentioned series.

They were cult.  The one an over the hill pill popping, drug taking former hippie and 'alternative culture' person, the other a dessicated alcoholic ex model, best friends, and utterly destructive.  But funny.

Kathie Lee Griffin and Hoda Kotb are sort of mirror personalities to those two, and whether it's a gag or not, they often become parody despite themselves.

 

 

Whatever.  I couldn't find a clip from two days ago, but you get the idea. 

 

 

Now the eternally baked in youthful looking KLG spent twelve years writing a musical.  About Aimee Semple McPherson.  She was an evangelical faith healer who was so famous, she is in the lyrics of the song 'Hooray for Hollywood'.   Just after 'Shirley Temple'. 

 

 

She was a huckster and base founder of the evangelical movement, but had her ups and downs, so, yes interesting subject. 

 

So after many years of sweating blood over it...  It opened on Broadway on Thursday.  Which news I saw Friday, which meant the dread NY Times had already reviewed. 

 

 

Now I and the viewers had been (mal)treated to some of the songs from the show and clips here and there and it was interesting to see what you have to do to get a show there accepted and then try to get it off the ground...   I found the idea interesting, but the music was...   forgettable.  Not good, not bad, sometimes nice...  and I thought I was being unfair.

 

So I called up the Times on my internets, and yup, there was the review.  It was unkind to Ms. Griffin, but basically said what I'd been thinking of her all along...  and described it as too long, not 'deep' enough into the subject matter, and the music was 'generic'. 

 

Autsch!  Au weh!...   The reviewer did say it wasn't the Thanksgiving turkey that had been hoped for....   And that Broadway had seen too many 'religious and evangelical productions of late of the gospel variety'.  Such as 'Leap of Faith' and revivals of 'Godspell' and 'Jesus Christ Superstar'. 

 

The reader reviews so far weren't so good either.  I think this was something where you have a good idea, but it comes in just a hair's breadth too late, something I learned when sending out manuscripts and getting told 'oh, it was so good, but we just published something just like it.'

 

So on the one hand?  Yeah, I have a bit of schadenfreude.  On the other?  If they're smart, they'll bus in scads of evangelicals from Kansas or 'gawwd' knows where and get their investment back, maybe make a bit of profit.

 

Such things are always big gambles.