Has this ever happened to

you? You manage to get tickets for some hot new musical. The show is

months and months away. The night of the performance

gets closer and closer. When the day finally arrives, you begin to convince

yourself that this is going to be great! Then you get ushered to your

seat and wait patiently while you flip through your Playbill. Finally

everyone has found their seats and the overture begins. Suddenly it's

showtime and you sit there with this constipated look of enjoyment on

your face while the same tired dance moves and the same loudmouth singers

cavort in front of you for two hours until you just want to stand up

and scream, "CUT!"

I hate to be a party pooper,

but the goofy, over-the-top mugging and exaggerated gesticulating of

Broadway stage performers makes me wince.

Everyone always comes out of these shows like they've just seen

the secrets of the universe. I'm sorry, but the stage musicals these

days seems about as culturally relevant as Bozo the Clown. Not that the

old ones, "Oklahoma!", "Kiss Me, Kate", "Pippin", "South

Pacific" (etcetera, etcetera) were any better. They just seemed

better because there wasn't anything else to compare it to. Revived

to death, these shows come