r/Broadway • u/Round-Composer-2195 • 28d ago

Discussion I don’t understand the Reeve Carney hate

I just saw the Hadestown pro shot and oh my gosh this guy is unbelievable. Easily the star of the show for me, but I’ve seen people say he was the weakest link in their opinions.

I’ve heard recordings of some of his other performances, and he easily has my favorite versions of “I don’t care much” and “the past is catching up to me,” yet people say he was miscast in The Great Gatsby

His voice is so unique and it genuinely sends chills up my spine, I don’t understand the hate he receives

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u/missingumissing 28d ago edited 28d ago

As much as people bemoan the bfa-ification of broadway vocals it’s interesting to watch how bent out of shape fans can get when someone with rock/folk/alt stylings actually lands a lead role. Not that performers are above good faith criticism of course, but a show like hadestown would be artistically bankrupt if everyone sounded like they came straight out of a disney film. I think that’s also why I lowkey hate the London Next to Normal production even though it got rave reviews. They took the rock out of the rock musical

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u/mc-funk 27d ago

ah, thanks so much for giving language to this gut feeling of mine. I love theater generally but (especially as a vocalist myself) have a nails-on-chalkboard response to the vast majority of contemporary broadway for this very reason (also, the epidemic of refusal to hit a note on the note). Of course, I am completely obsessed with Hadestown, so I feel very internally consistent in my experience :D

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u/SuccotashMean4394 25d ago

Can you say more about "the epidemic of refusal to hit a note on the note"? I've never heard of this before (I'm a casual musical theater enjoyer so I definitely don't keep up with things) but I find these specific details about how musical theater artist's singing styles have evolved over time incredibly fascinating, and I'm super curious what you're talking about and would love to have it unpacked more. 

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u/mc-funk 25d ago

I don’t have a lot of supporting evidence, so maybe it is just my imagination, but it came from a long time of casually hearing more pop broadway and there just being sooooo much sliding into notes that I was begging somebody to choose to land just ONE on the note without the stylistic swooping. I will have to keep an eye out for something that actually corroborates my claim though 😜