“Broadway Or Bust”: Too Many Cliches
With regard to “Broadway or Bust,” the three-part documentary about the National High School Musical Theater Awards, that premiered last night on PBS, I agree with the New York Times reviewer who said that the series is full of “tidy cliches”: “One student after another pops in front of the camera to gush about how fabulously wonderful all the other competitors are and what a life-changing honor it is to be able to perform on a Broadway stage and how wowie-zowie amazing New York is.” Still, there were interesting bits in the premiere installment, especially the sequence in which Michael Feinstein critiques a student practicing “They Can’t Take That Away From Me.” I hope the next two episodes feature more such exchanges, and contain fewer students singing such chestnuts as “And I Am Telling You.”
