It Both Bites and Sucks: Lestat, the Musical (2006).

I've seen some pretty dreadful musicals in my day. (Incidentally, my day was from 1996 to 2022, when I decided to shift from tourism in the States, to Japan, a decision I doubled down on more recently, you now can't even pay me to enter the U.S. under current (2026) conditions).

I miss the good and great musicals, not the many mediocre ones, but I have a soft spot for the truly abysmal: in their own way, attending them, even if I tried to escape as soon as possible sometimes, stands out as peak memories for me.

I spent the least amount of time at Glory Days (in previews), which opened and closed the same night in 2008. It's the sort of well-meaning early work that a young writer might make, probably autobiographical, that needs to play for a week in their home town in a small black-box theatre while they hone their craft. I was mystified it was on Broadway. I waited until the entire cast (of 4) turned their back to the audience as they climbed the only set pieces (small bleachers), and then I ran for the exit. Everyone around me was there from papered tickets (free tickets given out to try to get some kind of audience for the cast to react to). Unaccountably it's received over 50 productions since, but I suppose it's cheap to mount, and you can claim it's a Broadway Show.

One of the worst was The Times They Are a-Changin' (2006) featuring Bob Dylan music and Twyla Tharp almost-everything-else. In a first since early flop Via Galactica (1972) she incorporated trampoline sets and set this show in a dreamlike circus. It's the rare show where I not only felt bad for the cast, I felt bad for me: as if by participating in the show, even as audience member, I was somehow degrading myself. It made me feel dirty. I can only assume this is what she was going for. Gee, thanks.

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (2011) is a famous disaster, injuring multiple cast members, and remaining in the limbo stage of previews for an unprecedented 182 performances (most shows manage with 3 to 4 weeks). It apparently veered during those weeks from interesting but horrible (and gained an average F+ from critics refusing to wait until previews ended before releasing reviews) up to not-very-interesting and dull (and an average C rating, which seems high to me, for that's when I saw it), probably because director Julie Taymor left the production. There was one good song ("Rise Above"), and other music by U2's Bono and the Edge, who appeared uninterested in sticking around to help improve anything.

Many, many dull shows abound: Pretty Woman, Dr. Zhivago, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, all based on movies, all dreadful. But the worst (best worst?) musical I've seen was Lestat (2006), also previously seen in movie form.

Unlike the Spider-Man musical, which started horrible-but-interesting in its early incarnation, but ended up mediocre-but-dull by the time it opened, Lestat went the other way. It had an out-of-town tryout in San Francisco, where it was flawed, and then ... choices were made ... and it opened on Broadway as a glorious mess. The score was by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and contained one good song if taken out of context. The book was by Linda Woolverton, who wrote the screenplays for several beloved Disney musical classics (as well as the later live-action Alice in Wonderland and Maleficent and their sequels).

It played for almost exactly two months on Broadway. I thought it might run longer: I told everybody I met (my hotel front desk clerks, various baristas, chatty servers, audience members at other shows sitting near me) that they should run to the Palace and see this, because it was likely the worst thing ever to appear on a Broadway stage. I was very enthusiastic, and may have helped bring in a ticket or two, but one man can't save a show on its own, even if it's the Worst Show Ever on Broadway, in my opinion.

It was never dull, except if you turned off your thinking brain and just tried to enjoy it as a normal musical, in which case, yikes. But so long as you could engage with it, and wonder "why on earth would they do this thing that's happening now?", you would be richly rewarded.

Do you know the plot? Have you read the book ("Interview with the Vampire") or seen the Tom Cruise / Brad Pitt / Kirsten Dunst / Antonio Banderas film? (Or the recent TV series, but I haven't seen it so can't vouch for it). Here's a refresher: there's this guy Lestat, he becomes a vampire, he gets a boyfriend (or "friend", in the movie), they "adopt" a daughter, Lestat's family tries to kill him, they move on, yada yada yada, he's still alive, stuff happens.

The film and book are very much from the perspective of Louis (the Brad Pitt character), but the musical is firmly from Lestat's perspective.

When I saw it (which might have been previews, it may have changed slightly since) it began with Lestat (Hugh Panaro, handsome, skinny) exulting about how he has killed wolves and how their blood has somehow made him feel powerful. (I am confused: is that how he becomes a vampire? Is this some sort of werewolf thing? What's happening? Who knows?). He sings "From the Dead," a confusing number, where he sings "What I set out to kill found me, and henceforth blood did flow. My horse came out from under me, my dogs died in the snow." It's confusing and funny. The show is also absolutely loaded with inadvertent and advertent gay stuff (not that there's anything wrong with that, I'm gay myself): it's here that he sings "as if there were twenty men inside of me," making me stifle giggles.

He returns home, apparently not a werewolf or vampire, despite having sung a whole song about blood and being changed and "purified by battle and the smell of death." It's weird. And then, despite being this amazing wolf-hunter, his father isn't impressed and thinks he's just a big pansy who can't do anything right, which isn't supported by the text: we literally just saw him achieving a great, manly, physical deed. So you start to think: who wrote this crap and why didn't they adjust Scene A or Scene B so they make sense back-to-back?

Lestat decides to leave, even though he loves his mother, and he heads off to Paris where his (former?) boyfriend awaits. His mother encourages the departure, though she's a bit sad, and perhaps a bit incestuous: she tells him she dreams "that I strip off all my clothes and bathe in the mountain stream naked, " as one does. Because mom's played by Carolee Carmello she gets a big unnecessary song that they added after tryouts, where she sings "walk away, and don't look back, go now boy," and he does, so she then sings "and now he's gone," because it's that kind of musical. One starts to suspect Bernie Taupin (the lyricist) is not well, but he's apparently still alive and in good health, so that's not the reason. She finishes her song (all about how self-sacrificing she was to encourage him to leave because now her life is over and all she has is memories etc. etc.)

Lestat gets to Paris, where former boyfriend Nicholas lives, and it's apparently all gay-positive and there they can truly be happy. And we get to see the ensemble for the first time, because in a terrible musical, when characters change locations, everyone sings about it: "In Paris," they warble, "the bells of Notre Dame ring out!" Gosh, really? I love learning new things at Broadway shows. Tell me more about Paris. Did I mention it's apprently really gay? "I saw with my own eyes," sings one bystander, "that sweet God-fearing family man entwined around a lad outside!" They aren't sure of the pronunciation of the city they live in, sometimes singing "In Paris we'll search for fame," but "In Paree we are born again" depending on whether they need an iamb or a trochee to fit the rhythm.

Alone at last, Nicholas sings to Lestat such compelling lyrics as "don't be afraid, there's nothing out there," except, supposedly, "the bugs and the bears." (Which is not how I remember Paris, but perhaps it's changed since the 18th Century). Sometimes he sings "ne t'effraie pas, pas besoin secours," except, of course, "les mouches et les ours," showing off he knows both English and French, except presumably it's all been in French all along, hurting my brain like when German characters speak (presumably) German to Germans in a U.S. movie but it's English with a German accent. Or how ancient Romans sound like various classes of British folk, depending.

Anyhoo, after being instructed that everything's fine out there (except bears), Lestat has a stroll and is attacked by a vampire. The vampire attacks from behind, and grinds into Lestat while biting his neck in the closest approximation I've seen to anal sex on stage, at least as convincing as anything on Heated Rivalry. He wrestles with his new thirst in a song called "The Thirst," and in a bit of gay self-loathing wonders if he deserves it, "wait, did I invite this fate? This invitation from the damned? This introduction to the dark?" He seems to get into it though, eventually exulting in "a power beyond belief, a power beyond my wildest dreams."

Mom comes to visit, and she's sick, so she begs her son to turn her into a vampire (he doesn't hide it well), with an overwrought number singing "tear the wings off angels that would lift me from your heart," she doesn't seem like a sad, lonely, dying provincial mother, she seems like a violent sex offender slash serial killer seeking her people. Amazing how a few weeks can change someone. So, obligingly, Lestat turns her into a vampire (more biting from behind, the hint of incestuous anal sex, etc.)

And so it goes for a while, with terrible songs, odd staging choices, bewildering plot serves, inconsistent character motivation, and so forth. Lestat tries to transform Nicholas but it doesn't go as well. Mom leaves. Lestat seeks out the oldest living vampire, who appears at the end of Act One floating from the ceiling. It's actually kind of spectacular and exciting: it makes you feel that perhaps Act Two will deliver something a little special. And then you realise they're just doing the end of Wicked Act One, but with orange and gold instead of green.

I enjoyed intermission, I had a chance to process all the dreadfulness of the last hour and a bit. Either the show would get better, which would be nice, or it could get worse, which seemed impossible but if so, how amazing! I relished some of the terrible lyrics: "don't look to me for answers, they're written in your hearts, so take a look, and you will see," as I wondered what lay in store for Act Two.

The somewhat thrilling end of Act One held a promise that was swiftly dashed: the character of Oldest Living Vampire urges Lestat to go to America, and then OLV leaves, and so much for him. Act Two followed more familiar lines, telling the Interview with the Vampire story. Lestat does go to America, and, natch, the ensemble sings about it. "Welcome to the New World, you preening puffed-up Europeans." Lestat is enthusiastic: "In America I'll reconstruct my dreams."

Lestat meets and turns Louis (bites from behind, anal sex), kidnaps and turns Claudia (bites from behind, anal sex), and (after the child unaccountably sings a country-western song, "I Want More"), Lestat's new family tries to kill him and burn down their house. Later (one scene later, but it's "later" in the show's internal chronology) Lestat runs into them again, and they try to kill him again, leaving him in the street with broken legs awaiting the sun's arrival.

Instead, his Mom and the oldest living vampire show up (how'd they meet?) and rescue him, and he has a quick change to modern clothes, announces "I will live forever," and we try to figure out how much applause one gives to something this ghastly, that still required considerable effort from the cast, who are the ones bowing.

That night I will attempt to sleep—and surely recalling the soporific anthem "Embrace It" will help—but no, the show's too outrageously awful to lull me to slumber. I don't think I've seen a show before where I thought the lighting was wrong, usually I don't notice things like that, I'm following the plot and the songs ... but I can promise you, the lighting was particularly not-quite-right in this production, as if someone was more concerned with putting together a magnificent lighting demo package than in doing justice to the show. Maybe the orchestrator escaped unscathed: the songs were too awful for me to notice whether they were also poorly arranged for the musicians.

But most of all, one has to blame the author, the director, and the lyricist. Elton John, you get a pass: you can only do so much with those lyrics,I forgive you. There were two choreographers, who did very little; the second was added "to give his perspective on the staging," according to Playbill. The director was Robert Jess Roth, who did the Beauty and the Beast musical on Broadwahttp://youtube.comy, which was pretty good and had a nice long run. Lestat not being successful, he has also directed Beauty and the Beast National tours, productions in foreign cities, etc. etc., it must be a good gig.

I will close with the immortal words of the musical Lestat, from the song "Sail Me Away":

My callous shadows mock and make it clear

Some things were not enough to make them stay

The moment time stands still is the moment the writing's on the wall.

If that makes any sense to you, my condolences.

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Lestat - blurry, shaky, but complete video at youtube.com.