On This Day in History: February 22

Moose Murders

AUDIO VERSION HERE

To be “notorious” is to be well-known, but for the wrong reasons. This isn’t about a rapper dying in a hail of gunfire, but a notoriously terrible Broadway play that had its opening and closing on the same night. Titled Moose Murders, it became the gold standard for sucking in the theater community.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: February 22, 1983--

This was 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special levels of bad idea, and like that interstellar atrocity, I expect this play also involved significant amounts of cocaine. It was billed as a “mystery farce” and was the Broadway debut by playwright Arthur “I don’t have a Wikipedia page for a reason” Bicknell. On February 22, 1983 its premiere stunk up the Eugene O’Neill Theater so bad that single night was the extent of its run. This is a medium that embraced suicidal singing cats.

What’s it about? Some family buys the Wild Moose Lodge in the Adirondacks and on their first night they’re trapped there with some other people because of a storm and they entertain themselves with a murder mystery game and some guy tries to fuck his mom and people die. Apparently, there is ableism too, because making fun of people with disabilities is fucking hilarious. Just ask Donald Trump.

The director was a no name and gave top billing to his not-an-actress wife, who inherited boatloads of Texas oil money to fund the lighted-stage shitfuckery. The only recognizable performer later played the mom on Two and a Half Men. Enthusiasm was so low they pulled people off the street to fill seats, one of whom was covered in his own vomit. Perhaps he knew how bad it was going to be and blew his groceries in advance.

So, yeah. They play a murder mystery game and people mysteriously die so it’s murder mystery inception and additionally there is a moose that . . . eats people? Right. A vegetarian animal that eats people. The audience was stunned with how horrible it was. June Gable was the only other actor of any note (she played Joey’s agent on Friends), and said, “I don’t think there ever was a show in the history of Broadway where you took a bow to silence.”

The reviews fucking eviscerated it. The critics were so merciless that a bunch of people showed up the next night just to witness how god-fucking-awful it was, only to discover it was shuttered. A critic for the New York Times later proclaimed Moose Murders to be “a show so preposterous that it made minor celebrities out of everyone who witnessed it.” Fifteen years later it was referenced in a review of the terrible TV show Encore! Encore! when the critic referred to it as “The ‘Moose Murders’ of sitcoms.”

Like I said: Gold standard of sucking.

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