Gil Hates Everything

So yeah, this was turned into a musical in 1972 but its name was changed to “Sugar”. And now I’ve listened to the 1992 West End revival, where they changed the name back. Did I tell you I don’t like Tommy Steele? He’s in… this too.

The songs are by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill. Now Jule Styne is a particular kind of composer. Old-school, shall we say. He wrote the tunes for “Gypsy” and “Bells Are Ringing” and “Funny Girl”, amongst many, many others. So listening to this now is kinda painful, in that “oh, so this is where my parents – or possibly grandparents – go when I’m not watching, to watch tripe like this”. It does exactly what it says on the tin, but unfortunately, what it says on the tin is “random bunch of songs not obviously connected to the plot”, with “or any good” in small print. By 1992, this surely must have seemed a bit desperate.

But amusingly, I see that reviewers in 1972 weren’t that impressed by it either. I’m not sure I can improve upon the Time review from 1972 – unless you reckon my inserting random “fuck”s here and there would be an improvement. Here’s what they said: “If hummable songs are a plus, Jule Styne’s songs are hummable, though you may not know quite which homogenized number you are humming. As for Bob Merrill’s lyrics, they are the labored products of a man hovering over a rhyming dictionary. Sugar is almost a textbook case of a musical born after its time. It may well enjoy great wads of audience favor. But in the past three years, Company and Follies have altered the critical perspective by providing a musical form that is spare, intelligent, ironic, mature and capable of sustaining three-dimensional characters.”

That right there is why it’s important to evaluate shows in a modern context, and not just in terms of how they sounded at the time. Julian Cope says “Concerning this kind of progressive/experimental music, it is specifically designed to cause a change in the listener – if it doesn’t do this properly, then it is obsolete”, but I think this is somewhat applicable beyond that genre; being obsolete doesn’t mean you aren’t allowed to enjoy it, and you might not always want to live on the cutting edge, but it does mean you don’t have to revere it. The only quality that can preserve a show from obsolescence is its success at being timeless; lots of shows claim to be timeless, but they really just mean they’re old. The Time reviewer thought this show sounded old on its opening night; imagine how it sounds now. The songs are generic crap, and that’s dignifying them with more words than they really deserve.

This musical didn’t have much of a reason to exist at the time, and nearly forty years later is definitely one for the vaults, or possibly for burial, where at some point in the future it can become the musicals equivalent of coal or oil: unrecognizable for what it was, but handy for burning.

Random Panda awards “Some Like It Hot” one piece of bamboo out of ten. Really, don’t even bother. Watch the movie instead, if you absolutely must.

(originally posted 2009)