I thought this would happen, and a good job, too.

I thought this would happen, and a good job, too. From The Guardian:

Why the Holocaust musical was right to close

'Conceptual cheesiness' ... Imagine This. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

So Imagine This has announced that it will close at the New London Theatre on December 20, the latest musical casualty in a West End year rife with them. In this case, the wonder truly is that the production, set in the Warsaw ghetto among a Jewish community apparently willing to put on bad Vegas-style floor shows on their way to extermination, lasted as long as it did.

At least Marguerite, another misfire that closed early, had a substantial pedigree of talent - although its Third Reich backdrop further suggests that the musical theatre might want to quit for a while when it comes to Nazis. And Gone With the Wind was, well, gone with the wind.

I can appreciate the frustration expressed by producer Beth Trachtenberg in earlier radio interviews and today's press release announcing the show's demise. But the daring subject matter of groundbreaking musicals such as Cabaret or Sweeney Todd in a stroke disproves Trachtenberg's attack on what she perceives, according to the release, to be "a narrow-minded critical belief that musicals are limited in their emotional impact and ability to deal with meaningful subject matter in a powerful and sensitive manner".

Moreover, one could argue that the very success of something like Cabaret - which, after all, deals with the emergence of Nazism – shows up the conceptual cheesiness of Imagine This. All we are left with at the New London are lots of anodyne lyrics to the effect that, "Somehow, we'll be free to love." Gee, thanks.

More worrying is Trachtenberg's claim, which runs as follows: "Fundamentally I do not think the critics should be making a moral judgement over the subject matter." But isn't one of the very aims of criticism to assess work not just aesthetically but morally, particularly - though by no means exclusively - when the topic is as immense as the Holocaust? The films Life is Beautiful, its trophies notwithstanding, and Robin Williams's 1999 entry Jakob the Liar are just two examples of works that polarised spectators, many of whom felt the Holocaust was being co-opted to legitimise and lend cachet to deficient art.

To that extent, one could argue, I suppose, that Imagine This is part of an ongoing tradition; much as I'd like to think such stories won't be so cavalierly inflicted upon us in the future, I'm sure they will. In the meantime, I can guarantee one thing about the fate of this show if it had opened in New York rather than London. On Broadway, a street where Jewish sensitivities are much more acute than they are here, I can't imagine Imagine This lasting a week