9 Big Bad Broadway Play Flops.

While the most well known flops on Broadway are usually the big budget musicals, it's about time we paid attention to the plays brought to the Great White Way that, while not lacking in ambition or star power, failed to bring in the big sales. If you thought Spider-Man musicals were as weird as it got...

1. Looped

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Some shows are designed to be star vehicles, a chance for an actor to chew some scenery and show the world just what they're capable of. Matthew Lombardo's play gave us Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead but, while she garnered a Tony nomination for her effort, failed to ignite the passions of the theatre going audience and closed after 27 previews and 25 performances.)

Based on a real life event, where an extremely drunk Bankhead took 8 hours to redub one line of dialogue from her final project 'Die! Die! My Darling!', critics didn't see the play as being strong enough for Broadway but more suited to the regional theatres it toured in before coming to New York, although there was undeniable entertainment to be found in Harper slurring about vaginas.

2. The Anarchist

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David Mamet is one of the few bona fide forces of nature on the Broadway stage: a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who can not only take a play straight to Broadway without out of town reviews but can do so solely on the strength of his name, free of big stars in the cast (although his work does attract them by the boatload.) A two person play full of his trademark snappy dialogue, centred on a former domestic terrorist trying to convince her interrogator that she has repented and found Jesus, sounds like vintage Mamet. The addition of Broadway goddess Patti LuPone certainly didn't hurt.

And yet it only lasted 23 previews and 17 performances. Ouch. The critics had a ball tearing the play to pieces, calling it "an embarrassment of a show" and claiming Mamet was more interested in having a political rant than writing a play. When you have people complaining that your 70 minute story is too long, you've written one hell of a bad play.

3. Lolita

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The advertising for Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the infamous Vladimir Nabokov novel asked "How did they ever make a movie out of Lolita?" One could ask the same thing about the 1981 play, although it may have been more accurate to ask why did they even bother.

Proving that even 3 time Pulitzer Prize winners have their off days, Edward Albee's adaptation was reviled during its out of town previews in Boston and creative differences between him, the producer and the star Donald Sutherland were well documented. The play closed after 31 previews and 12 performances. Albee can pull off many outlandish concepts, from giant talking lizards to bestial love with a goat, but nymphets and Humbert's twisted obsession is destined to be kept off the stage. Don't believe me? A decade before this, someone made a musical of the story. Ah, toe tapping paedophilia numbers are always popular.

4. Elling

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A West End transfer is often considered guaranteed money in the bank for a producer, and adaptations of films and other recognisable stories an even safer investment, although probably not so much when said story is a Norwegian film. After a critically acclaimed and sold out run in London with John "The Master" Simm receiving an Olivier nomination for his role, Simon Bent's play was transferred to Broadway with an eclectic (to say the least) cast including Jennifer Coolidge, Brendan Fraser and Denis O'Hare.

It fared less well overseas, closing after 22 previews and 9 performances, proving, if nothing else, that a big name Hollywood actor in a Broadway show does not an instant hit make.

5. High

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Kathleen Turner as a drunk nun? What's not to like?

Everything, apparently. Matthew Lombardo's next play after Looped went down about as well with critics and audiences as his previous effort, becoming the shortest run of the season. Written off as clichéd, saccharine, boring, contrived and just plain bad, the play closed after 29 previews and 7 performances, with no Tony nomination for Turner. She did stick with the play afterwards, leading the cast as it toured the country.

6. Prymate

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Boy, where to start with this one.

A deaf scientist lives in the jungle with a gorilla she has taught to communicate with sign language (and occasionally dances with), ends up embroiled in a custody battle style fight with her researcher ex boyfriend who has turned up in the jungle with a sexy interpreter, and who has infected the gorilla with AIDS as part of his work.

It also involves masturbation and urination between the woman and the gorilla.

And the gorilla is played, entirely free of make-up or costuming, by a black actor.

Yeah.

Honestly, the core idea wasn't a bad one. Themes of identity, love, the reach of science and what it means to be human are common in drama, with or without the bestiality (Edward Albee did it better), but it's no surprise that the play didn't click with audiences. Even with the producer taking out a full page New York Times ad practically begging for sales, the show closed after 22 previews and 5 performances.

7. Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

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Even in the risky business of Broadway, it's an increasing rarity to see a show close after only one performance. That's exactly what happened to Ellen Burstyn's one woman play, based on a well loved and extremely lengthy novel that told the story basically described in the title. It's no mean feat condensing a 700 plus page book into a one woman show, and Martin Tahse's effort just couldn't live up to its TV movie predecessors.

8. Moose Murders

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The bad Broadway play that all bad Broadway plays are measured against, critic Frank Rich said of the self-style mystery farce that from that day there would "always be two groups of theater-goers in this world: those who have seen Moose Murders, and those who have not". He also declared it to be the single worst play seen on the Broafway stage, and most critics agreed with him, leading it to open and close on its debut performance. They just didn't click with the attempted incest and mummified wheelchair users kicking a man dressed as a moose in the testicles.

Like many great turkeys, the play has garnered something of a cult following, making it the Troll 2 of the stage for community theatre groups around America. Some have even declared it to be an avant garde piece of performance art, although we're not entirely sure said people know what art is.

9. Face Value

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Closing after one official performance is embarrassing enough. Closing during the previews is a whole new level of creative cringe.

David Henry Hwang, writer of the far more successful M. Butterfly, decided to channel his entirely justified anger over the then controversial race bending of the musical Miss Saigon into his 2nd Broadway production. Hwang led many of the protests, citing the erasure of Asian actors from Asian roles in major productions with the casting of Jonathan Pryce in the role of a Eurasian pimp. But after Miss Saigon producer Cameron MacKintosh threatened to have the entire production shut down unless Pryce kept his role, the show went ahead and he won a Tony for his efforts.

Hwang's attempt to create a farce of mistaken racial identity inspired by the entire incident came with a top notch cast and award winning director, Jerry Zaks. Unfortunately, the play was such a disaster that it didn't make it past 8 previews, much less an official performance. The flop hit Hwang bad, although he did manage to turn the flop into a hit with another play, Yellow Face, satirising the show with much more success. If at first you don't succeed...