Help me recall a play/musical about a crazed gunman and media sensation?
August 2, 2020 9:38 PM Subscribe
CW: Question below the fold discusses guns, shooting, killing, media sensationalizing and capital punishment
In my high school years (that's the mid-1990s) I discovered that my local library had lots and lots of those small Samuel French books that were the scripts for plays. Since I'm a fast reader, I found that whenever I needed to kill some time in the library waiting for someone, I could pull one of those off the shelf, start it in one sitting and likely finish it by the second sitting.
Some of these I remember reading in great detail -- Crimes of the Heart, You Can't Take It With You, True West -- and others I don't remember at all. But one has always half-stuck in my head for being weird, and I can only remember a few details:
It was a play/musical where the main character was an emotionally disturbed man who succeeds in gunning down a woman (girlfriend? stalking victim?) In the course of standing trial, he is manipulated by his lawyer and the prosecutor to make his crime sound as lurid as possible so that both lawyers get famous from the case.
Besides that, when the news stations get wind of him they compete with each other to get a televised interview with him. (I think they even sent a pretty young woman to interview him because of how much she resembled his victim.) The killer is overwhelmed by all the media attention, it inflates his ego and makes him think that the fame he's earned somehow justifies his crime. There are songs.
In the end, the killer is convicted and sent to the electric chair. The finale is a big musical number where, in the killer's mind, everyone he's met along the way (his family, his victim, the lawyers, an adoring public) sing him off to the chair in a big, old-fashioned showstopper song that culminates in the chair's switch being thrown.
1) IT ISN'T SONDHEIM'S "ASSASSINS". Sorry if I sound peeved, but that's everyone's first guess.
2) I think the name of the play was "Coming Attractions" or "Latest Attractions" or something like that, but those are terrible terms to put into Google search -- I've tried and gotten no good results.
3) Even if that wasn't the title, I'm pretty sure the phrase "Coming Attractions" appears multiple times in the big showstopper at the end, the lyric was something like "Get yourself a coming attraction / Make yourself the latest craze!"
4) Even teenage Me realized this is pretty heavy-handed satire. The target of the play was media sensationalizing of crime, however all the media depicted are print journalism or television -- this play predates what we would now call "reality television" or "social media".
After reading that script, I never encountered the play again and have no idea if it ever made it to Broadway, or how it was received when it did (though I'm guessing "not well"). Can anyone fill in some details?
In my high school years (that's the mid-1990s) I discovered that my local library had lots and lots of those small Samuel French books that were the scripts for plays. Since I'm a fast reader, I found that whenever I needed to kill some time in the library waiting for someone, I could pull one of those off the shelf, start it in one sitting and likely finish it by the second sitting.
Some of these I remember reading in great detail -- Crimes of the Heart, You Can't Take It With You, True West -- and others I don't remember at all. But one has always half-stuck in my head for being weird, and I can only remember a few details:
It was a play/musical where the main character was an emotionally disturbed man who succeeds in gunning down a woman (girlfriend? stalking victim?) In the course of standing trial, he is manipulated by his lawyer and the prosecutor to make his crime sound as lurid as possible so that both lawyers get famous from the case.
Besides that, when the news stations get wind of him they compete with each other to get a televised interview with him. (I think they even sent a pretty young woman to interview him because of how much she resembled his victim.) The killer is overwhelmed by all the media attention, it inflates his ego and makes him think that the fame he's earned somehow justifies his crime. There are songs.
In the end, the killer is convicted and sent to the electric chair. The finale is a big musical number where, in the killer's mind, everyone he's met along the way (his family, his victim, the lawyers, an adoring public) sing him off to the chair in a big, old-fashioned showstopper song that culminates in the chair's switch being thrown.
1) IT ISN'T SONDHEIM'S "ASSASSINS". Sorry if I sound peeved, but that's everyone's first guess.
2) I think the name of the play was "Coming Attractions" or "Latest Attractions" or something like that, but those are terrible terms to put into Google search -- I've tried and gotten no good results.
3) Even if that wasn't the title, I'm pretty sure the phrase "Coming Attractions" appears multiple times in the big showstopper at the end, the lyric was something like "Get yourself a coming attraction / Make yourself the latest craze!"
4) Even teenage Me realized this is pretty heavy-handed satire. The target of the play was media sensationalizing of crime, however all the media depicted are print journalism or television -- this play predates what we would now call "reality television" or "social media".
After reading that script, I never encountered the play again and have no idea if it ever made it to Broadway, or how it was received when it did (though I'm guessing "not well"). Can anyone fill in some details?
Best answer: this one?
posted by nothing as something as one at 6:01 AM on August 3, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by nothing as something as one at 6:01 AM on August 3, 2020 [2 favorites]
parade is about the true story of the lynching of the innocent leo frank for the murder of mary phagan, the evidence points to the murderer being a night watchman at the factory where they all worked.
posted by brujita at 8:08 AM on August 3, 2020
posted by brujita at 8:08 AM on August 3, 2020
This is definitely not a description of Parade, which I saw on Broadway and remember in excruciating detail for reasons beyond the scope of this question.
posted by holborne at 12:16 PM on August 3, 2020
posted by holborne at 12:16 PM on August 3, 2020
Response by poster: Thank you to nothing as something as one! It seems my brain smeared a few details -- I completely forgot about the Miss America pageant angle, and instead of devilish lawyers it was a devilish talent agent, but I'm surprised that I actually had the title and finale pretty accurately.
I still can't find if this ever premiered on or off-Broadway (it definitely showed in California), but the playwright Ted Tally is apparently the same Tally who wrote the screenplay for The Silence of the Lambs.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:44 PM on August 3, 2020
I still can't find if this ever premiered on or off-Broadway (it definitely showed in California), but the playwright Ted Tally is apparently the same Tally who wrote the screenplay for The Silence of the Lambs.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:44 PM on August 3, 2020
I saw it on Broadway too. I'll amend my earlier post to the plot is about the trial, imprisonment and lynching.
posted by brujita at 11:06 AM on August 4, 2020
posted by brujita at 11:06 AM on August 4, 2020
Response by poster: For the record, I too have seen Parade, which is how I knew the play/musical I was thinking of wasn't Parade.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:26 PM on August 5, 2020
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 3:26 PM on August 5, 2020
« Older MIKA's "Grace Kelly" but as an AskMeta Question | What did it feel like when you first went into... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by snowmentality at 5:44 AM on August 3, 2020