Bring Back ‘Moose Murders’!

"Titanically bad!' "The worst play I've ever seen!" "Abysmally imbecile!" Such were the reviews for Moose Murders, 1983's legendary Broadway flop, revisited in today's Times by Campbell Robertson in a piece about the show's afterlife as performance art in a bowling alley an arts center* in Rochester. Reading Robertson's discussion of the show's epically awful notices — and reading Frank Rich's vicious Times review, which has helpfully been linked to the piece — made us nostalgic for a time when reviewers would trash a show without worrying about hurting anyone's feelings. The show made such an impression on Rich that he trashed it again a month later, even though the play closed on opening night!

Today's piece made us wonder: If Frank Rich was this mean, what on earth did New York's John Simon think of the play? So we dug up his review to find out.

It's a keeper, all right; our favorite part might be where he openly mocked the Texas rubes he'd heard funded the show, and vividly described the "enormous, pear-shaped individual" who stumbled into the preview late and covered in vomit. "Moose Murders," Simon wrote, "is the only stage play I ever saw presented in stereo-odoriferous Smellovision."

But what's that we smell? We hope it's … a revival! Surely we'll be seeing this new, ironic production of Moose Murders at the Fringe next summer, right? We can only hope so.

John Simon's original review of Moose Murders [NYM, March 7, 1983]

A Broadway Flop Again Raises Its Antlers [NYT]
'Moose Murders,' a Brand of Whodunit [NYT]
On the Particular Pleasure of Seeing a Legendary Flop [NYT]

*Note! Someone affiliated with this show called us to tell us that the after-party was in a bowling alley. The show itself took place at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center.