For those who came in late…. Each spring, I ask my ITHACON students to submit a column on pop culture as if they were the author of this space. Our crack editorial staff pours over the submissions and selects a winner, and they get published on the Pop Culture Squad website And there’s more. Every year we embrace this annual tradition with the With Further Ado column.
This week we’ll share another winner! Molly Heichel is sharing her love a special musical. (Two musical-based winners in a row- can you tell we have a robust music department?) . I hope you enjoy Molly’s column as much as we did.
Creepy Carrie: The Haunting Legacy of Carrie The Musical By Molly Heichel
If you were anywhere near a TV with access to the CW or even mildly active on the internet in 2017, chances are you’ve heard of the American TV show Riverdale. And if you’re anything like me, you may have only paid attention when the show aired its annual musical episodes, those gloriously over the top, auto-tuned spectacles that somehow still managed to push the plot forward. Chapter Thirty-One: A Night to Remember, began one of my longest-running obsessions with musical theatre, and I couldn’t be more excited to write about it.
Carrie: The Musical. Yes, that Carrie. The 1974 Stephen King horror novel. The cult classic film where Sissy Spacek ends up drenched in blood. The telekinetic teen who turns prom night into a massacre. I’ve been obsessed with Carrie ever since I watched the 2013 remake at the tender age of nine, and when I found out there was a musical adaptation. Game over. My poor little brother had to endure the 2012 cast recording on repeat for the entirety of a family vacation. Over. And over. And over again.
But what makes Carrie: The Musical so special? Well, of course, it all starts with the book. Carrie, published in 1974, was Stephen King’s debut novel, and the one that launched his career as the master of horror. The story follows Carrie White, a painfully shy, awkward teenage girl raised by her abusive, religious fanatic mother and relentlessly bullied at school. But Carrie has a secret: she’s developing powerful telekinetic abilities. And when a cruel prank at prom pushes her too far, all hell breaks loose, quite literally.
Dark, tragic, and uncomfortably real in its portrayal of teenage cruelty, Carrie is filled with the teenage angst every girl past the age of twelve can relate to. And, of course, then came Brian De Palma’s 1976 film adaptation. Pure horror cinema gold. The film took King’s already unsettling story and turned it into an iconic nightmare that ends in one of the most unforgettable prom scenes in movie history. A true cult classic, though for very different reasons than the musical that would follow fourteen years later.
The idea to turn Carrie into a musical happened after composer Michael Gore and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen attended a performance of Alban Berg’s Lulu. Inspired by the intense, operatic drama, they began imagining Carrie on stage. Gore teamed up with Dean Pitchford to write the music and lyrics, while Cohen adapted his original screenplay into a stage-friendly script. But bringing Carrie: The Musical to life proved to be anything but easy, the journey to Broadway was long, chaotic, and full of more drama than the show itself.
Before Carrie hit Broadway in New York, it had its world premiere in 1988 at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. While the setting was prestigious, the production itself was already on the edge of disaster. The cast included theater stars like Barbara Cook as Margaret White and up and coming Linzi Hateley in her stage debut as leading lady Carrie. Despite the twos talent, the show was plagued with technical problems, last-minute changes, and wildly conflicting creative visions. However, eventually, the production moved to the states and made its Broadway debut!
The creative team was hoping for a fresh Broadway start, however Carrie’s Broadway debut became a rollercoaster of expectation and disappointment. The production had undergone significant changes after Stratford, including reworked music, new costumes, and even a new director. But the budget was still high, and the technical difficulties persisted, with disastrous results. On opening night, the audience was treated to an ambitious, and at times rather bewildering, spectacle. The set featured a gigantic, moving staircase, effects that were supposed to evoke Carrie’s telekinetic powers, and an infamous pig’s blood finale that was as messy as it sounds. The show’s drama and emotional stakes were overshadowed by the chaotic staging and confusing tonal shifts. Despite the production’s star power, it couldn’t recover from its troubled, bloody path. After just five performances, Carrie: The Musical officially closed, one of Broadway’s most infamous flops. But its legacy? Oh, that was just the beginning.
Carrie: The Musical’s legacy isn’t defined by its failure; it’s defined by its survival. It went from being the punchline of Broadway’s biggest flop to a musical that’s studied, loved, and even staged by amateur theatre groups across the world. Carrie’s reputation grew through bootleg recordings, fan communities, and the internet, turning it into a cherished oddity in musical theatre history. The show was revived Off-Broadway in 2012 with a revised script, new music, and a much tighter, more self-aware approach. This revival proved that there was real potential in the Carrie musical that had been stifled by its original Broadway run. In the end,
Carrie found its place in musical theatre history, not as a success, but as a testament to the power of failure and the enduring magic of the stage.
