This article is from the archive of our partner .
Yesterday, director Adam Shankman announced—via Instagram—the celebrity-filled cast for his production of Hair at the Hollywood Bowl this summer. Thus the likes of Kristen Bell, Hunter Parrish, and a bunch of Glee cast members will join a tradition of famous people belting out musical theater hits at one of Los Angeles' legendary concert venues. We know Bell, who is playing Sheila, can hit a note thanks to her performance in Frozen, and Parrish is a Broadway vet, but other celebrities have not fared as well on the Bowl's vast stage.
Though the Bowl started putting on basically fully staged shows in 2000, the venue started doing three performances a year starting in 2006, with a production of The Sound of Music, Karen Wada reported in the Los Angeles Times. That show cast Marni Nixon, so often only heard in feature films, as the Mother Abbess. But things have gone downhill since then, as the Bowl has favored titles with more star power than actual talent. On top of that, the Bowl—which seats over 17,000 people—is an awkward place to stage musicals.
Jumping down the YouTube rabbit hole of these performances is sort of a mixed bag—even the footage itself can be rough, considering the venue's enormity—but here are some of the good, bad, and the ugly. (Hi, Vanessa Hudgens!)