I remember really liking the 1980 movie Fame. I saw it at a Writers Guild screening and a few weeks later when it was released for mass audiences, I took a date to see it and she loved it, too. A few years later, it was a TV show and a jacket and a chain of acting schools and a merchandising bonanza and I was unsurprised when it was announced that someone was turning it into a musical for Broadway. I probably said, "Gee, I'll have to go see that." But it never got to Broadway.
It has played all over this country in many, many productions. There was even one in Los Angeles in 1994 (in Glendale, actually) but somehow I never got out there to see it, nor did I see the off-Broadway production that played in New York for about eight months. My enthusiasm for it may have been diminished when I heard that its book was substantially different from the movie and that they only used the title song and nothing else from the film score.
So I've never seen it. I have though seen this video of the opening number and it…well, you can only judge a musical by its opening number a bit more than you can judge a book by its cover. I have friends who watch the sample numbers presented each year on the Tony Awards telecast and we don't judge the shows but we do say of a performance, "That doesn't make me want to buy a ticket." See if this number makes you want to buy a ticket for Fame — The Musical…