25 September 2006

High Fidelity: A Travesty

I am convinced that the producer of this new show must have drugged Nick Horby, thrown a potato sack over his head and is currently hiding him in his basement. Otherwise, I cannot imagine how Hornby could have allowed this travesty to occur. "High Fidelity," his fantastic book and movie, have been turned into a gooey Broadway musical. This is even more rancid because the show doesn't include any of the songs mentioned in the book but a warped original score of twangy, country-fried tunes. A snippet of the song "Desert Island Top Five" is currently featured in the show's radio ad -- that snippet alone will likely repel Hornby's audience. But I suppose the musical will appeal to a whole nutha genre -- which may be the point. Soon, a whole new generation of suckers will be organizing their mp3s chronologically and compartmentalizing their sad little lives into top fives -- just as we did so many years ago. "High Fidelity" opens at the Colonial Theatre in Boston tomorrow night and runs through October 22nd before making its Broadway debut in December. Confession: I kind of want to see it -- purely out of curiousity -- but I don't think I could live with myself.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is bullshit. I can't believe Hornsby agreed to this. The movie came out just shy of John Cusack's expiration date as everybody's favorite sensitive, Gen-X, alt-hero...if they had done it just a year or two later, it would have missed its mark. And now...a musical? If "Singles" becomes a musical, I'm burning my soundtrack CD (filed under "S" in my CD case, of course) in protest.