Darlings, This Bitch Should Be Slapped By Every Theater Queen, Only I Am Afraid He Would Like It!!!!!!!!!

This bitch, girls, has been the bane of Theater Queens for several seasons!!!! I had hoped he had gone into some kind of career hibernation, or ended up on the Island Of Outcast Directors, like Diane Paulus and Julie Taymor, but now I hear he is at it again!!!!!!!!

I am talking, of course, about this week's winner of the Raving Queen Bitch Of The Week Award...John Doyle!!!!!!!!!!

Now, I know a lovely man named John Doyle, whom I always see when I go to Dignity services, so let me reassure everyone, this is not he!!!!!!!!!!!!!

John Doyle is the British director who singlehandedly began ruining musical theater for us Theater Queens, by using the most potent master of them all--composer Stephen Sondheim. And just how old is this coot, anyway??????? Take him to the canner's!!!!!!!!! In 2004, in London, he restaged a "Sweeney Todd" which gave the show a 'Caligari' like air by imagining that all the performers acting it out are inmates in an asylum. This was actually not a bad idea. What got in the way was Doyle's gimmick to have the actors play their own instruments--not only having to sing the score, but play it. Of course, it detracted from the power of the work. When this was brought over to Broadway in the Spring of 2005, I was appalled. I can still recall, at Intermission, some people walking out, and I do not blame them. To this day I have never seen Patti Lupone more uncomfortable onstage than when she was trying to master the timing in when to strike her triangle. Like an over anxious grade schooler in a band recital!!!!!!!! And, girls you know this is NOT Patti--she breathes confidence the way Gojira breathes fire!!!!!!!!!!!!

Doyle, obviously had, at some early point in life, heard the song "You Gotta Get A Gimmick." He thought he had found one, and stuck with it. So, when "Company" came over next, I was prepared to hate it, but somehow, the chamber nature of the piece already made it somehow work. I still would have preferred the actors minus the instruments, but in this way they did not impede the show.

And, in the back of my mind, that was that, I thought. Though I always feared, with Henrik already playing the cello in "A Little Night Music," it would not be long before Doyle tried this trick on that show!!!!!! Or--horrors!--subjecting middle-agers and beyond to dancing full out to something like "Who's That Woman?" while playing, too, in an instrumentally revamped "Follies"!!!!!!!! God forbid!!!!!!!

But I just found out Doyle has something more insidious planned. He is going to do the same stale act with Sondheim's most soaring score--"Merrily We Roll Along!!!!!!!!" Not only that, it sounds like he is going to deconstruct the entire show--using a cast of only 13, once again making the mistake of not using "The Hills Of Tomorrow," and making judicious edits in the songs and text. I think all the actors, like in "Company," will be played by those in their forties, which could work. But then you have those damned instruments again!!!!!!!!!

Darlings, if you go to London, stay away from this one!!!!!! And producers--don't let this piece of truncated desecration come over here. Enough is enough. Hey, John, go take your stale act to the provinces, where no one knows anything, then maybe you will be called a genius. At best, now you are just a gimmicked hack!!!!!!! Hack this, you bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, here is to John Doyle, this week's Bitch Of The Week!!!!!! Like I said he should be slapped silly, but you know those Brits--they like that sort of thing!!!!!!!!!

See you at teatime, sweeties!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!