• No products in the cart.
  • No products in the cart.
Back To Top
Image Alt

Once Is Not Nearly Enough

Once Is Not Nearly Enough

We saw “Once” last night on Broadway, the musical that won 8 Tonys. It’s a bore.

The dozen people on stage are hugely talented, all of whom played primarily stringed instruments and sang well. There’s a clever opening, where the audience is invited to go up on stage and order drinks (the set is a pub). The cast is there, playing and singing. The audience is eventually shown back to their seats and the program begins with the lights finally dimming about a quarter hour after the non-curtain.

The story is simplistic and uninteresting (boy meets girl, yada yada yada), there is some light humor, but I could not name you or hum one of the songs right now if my life depended on it. And this won the Tony for best musical!

At the conclusion, the audience of course rises to its feet, largely because people want to convince themselves and everyone else that the $250 they forked out was for an outstanding entertainment evening, as evidenced by…well…their standing up and applauding stupidly for what is actually perfect mediocrity.

Great talent, dumb story, boring music. “Once” was one time too many.

Tonight we’re seeing “The Best Man.” Let’s hope that it is.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.

Written by

Alan Weiss is a consultant, speaker, and author of over 60 books. His consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc., has attracted clients from over 500 leading organizations around the world.

Post a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.