What’s even better than a theater hit? A theater flop — at least among turkey connoisseurs, for whom everyday is Thanksgiving when it comes to stage flameouts.
And this year had some doozies.
1. David Mamet’s “China Doll,” was preceded by terrible word of mouth. The show turned out to be even worse than anybody anticipated: a lazy, incoherent play mishandled by a lost Al Pacino — at the obscene prices for which Broadway has sadly become famous.
2. Kathleen Turner directed and starred in “Would You Still Love Me If . . . ,” about one half of a lesbian couple transitioning into her male self. The show was terrible yet oddly compelling, like a Lifetime movie helmed by Ed Wood.
3. In one swift move, Dan Lauria eradicated the good will he’d earned in “The Wonder Years” and Broadway’s “Lombardi” by writing and starring in “Dinner With the Boys,” a wretched comedy about cannibalistic mafia enforcers. It did sport a hilariously bad death scene, which in this context counts as a small blessing.
4. Before chairs became the main set element in the revival of “The Color Purple,” the doomed musical “Doctor Zhivago” used them to render Russian battlefields. Needless to say, the chairs came up short. But then so did everything else in this big-budgeted, ham-fisted fiasco. You know a show is on the wrong track when an audience member — OK, it was me — is seized by an uncontrollable laughing fit during a supposedly intense scene.
5. Strictly reserved for terminal Anglophiles with Earl Grey coursing through their veins — and even they may have been tested — “Wolf Hall” was a snooze-inducing non-event. A six-hour-long non-event. How many of those pseudo-highbrow, dull-as-hell British imports must we endure? (See also: “King Charles III”) Sadly, there is apparently no limit.