Audience-Alienating Premise: In the 19th century, a young soldier has a Stalker with a Crush — a mentally unbalanced, homely, terminally ill woman who adores him. Notable for having the shortest-ever run of a Broadway show that won the Best Musical Tony Award, with 280 performances — less than a year's worth.
Critical Dissonance: This show is famous for being polarizing, partially because of its Stalker with a Crush premise. When it opened in 1994, critical reviews were very positive, and it won the Tony Award for Best Musical. However, audiences were said to be "repulsed" by Fosca, with one member of the audience actually shouting "Die, Fosca! Die!" from the balcony at one performance. Audiences were known to applaud whenever Fosca broke down. Stephen Sondheim maintains that this is due to the show's honesty, and that the audience identified with Giorgio and Fosca "too readily and uncomfortably"; it ultimately had the shortest run of a Best Musical winner to date, closing in less than a year. Such unfortunate audience reactions stopped after alterations to the book: Dialogue was added to make Fosca and Giorgio seem more alike (the scenes in which they talk of enjoying the same Rousseau novel and one in which Giorgio tells Fosca how he dreamed of being able to visit the stars as a child), and Fosca's "ugliness" was referred to as "wretchedness" instead. The popular "Loving You" was also added.
Draco in Leather Pants: Despite the initial negative reaction to Fosca, it's very easy for audiences nowadays to view her with increasing sympathy considering her status as The Woobie combined with her tragic backstory...but she is technically the antagonist of the show and a lot of her actions regarding Giorgio are questionable at best.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the musical was very unpopular on Broadway, it did much better in the UK, playing for over 200 performances on its original West End run, producing a live cast album and winning multiple awards for its later London revival.
Hollywood Homely: Sondheim has said one of the reasons they weren't sure of Donna Murphy for the role of Fosca before her stellar audition was because she was (and still is) exotically beautiful; he is of the opinion that they never really fixed that problem, even with the hair and makeup treatment they gave her to make her look sickly. He also noted that, given the utter hatred many audience members felt for Fosca in the initial run, the stylists of the production were forced to repeatedly try new looks until they hit just the "right" level of faux-unattractiveness—if Fosca looked genuinely repulsive, viewers would lose their already-limited sympathy for her.
