Michael Kunze and “Dramamusicals”

BroadwayWorld recently published an interview with Michael Kunze about his musical adaptation of Rebecca, which is aiming for an English language transfer to the a major commercial centre like the West End or Broadway. Kunze takes great pains to try and distinguish his work from traditional Broadway fare, so let’s take what he says, put it under a microscope and see if it holds up. The boxed sections below are all quotations from the interview.

The dramamusical is a tool to make clear that this is not a typical Broadway-type musical, which is more a musical-comedy. In what I do, we do drama with music. The way I write the shows is that I basically write the drama, of course with the music in mind, but the music is something that comes next, like a movie. The music is a very important element, but the most important element of the drama is the story, so the music really serves the story, and the music doesn’t really have a right in its own beside the story, like a number that is just made for the music and the dance.

Huh? It seems that Mr Kunze hasn’t seen any musical since 1926. He doesn’t seem to be aware of – for example – Show Boat, South Pacific, Sweeney Todd, Marie Christine, The Light in the Piazza. He doesn’t seem to be aware that musical theatre in the American tradition extends beyond the tradition of musical comedy that was dominant until the 1940s, but which made way for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play, in which music is most certainly in the service of the drama and for the various forms of the concept musical, in which the music is often related most clearly to the ideas that are being communicated in the show from the very moment of its inception. Even if we look at the musical comedies that have appeared after the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, many are far more integrated than their counterparts in the 1920s and 1930s. So I’m left to wonder whether this is a case of ignorance or self-importance.

It really isn’t something that I’ve invented. Jesus Christ Superstar [and] the other Andrew Lloyd Webber stuff, if you exclude Cats, follows the same kind of basic idea. Well, Andrew would never say that the music only serves the story, but that’s what it really is. He uses the music to tell the story, and that’s what all dramamusicals do.

All right, so he seems to know something about British musical theatre and deems it of a high enough standard to rank alongside his “dramamusicals”. But is it true of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals that the music serves the story? Without engaging in an elaborate discussion on the matter, I’d be willing to bet that there is at least one example in each of the Lloyd Webber musicals where the music does not serve the drama fully. Off the top of my head – and to keep in line with the example Kunze himself cites – there’s “King Herod’s Song” in Jesus Christ Superstar, although the newer, rock-flavoured arrangement does help its cause somewhat. So it seems that perhaps the music does not need a particularly profound dramatic agency for it to serve the drama in these “dramamusicals”, which of course contradicts Kunze’s original thesis, that ‘the music doesn’t really have a right in its own beside the story’. What other purpose does a song like “You Can Get Away With Anything” in The Woman in White, for example, have if it doesn’t really serve the character and the humour comes not from the lyrics but from a pair of rats that clamber in and out of the actor’s costume? Or is Kunze saying that the music in a case like this still serves a dramatic purpose, even though the song as a whole is a failure because of the lyrics?

I think all the shows that concentrate on a dramatic story are dramamusicals. Billy Elliot is a dramamusical. Wicked is a dramamusical. I just want to distinguish where theatre is more theatrical than in a classical Broadway musical which is based on the vaudeville tradition, on dance, on spectacular things happening, and this is not what I look for…. I think (Wicked is) a milestone in the development of the musical, because in the history of the musical, this show will be regarded as the first one that really combines the European tradition with the Broadway tradition.

Now I’m just beginning to chuckle. Wicked being taken as a prime example where the music exists in service of the drama? The book of Wicked was forced to fit in with Stephen Schwartz’s ideas regarding the way the story should be told. The book in its best moments is competent, but completely falls to pieces in the second act, completely ignoring the very concept that Maguire had in the first place: to fill in the gaps of the story behind The Wonderful Wizard of Oz without contradicting the basic mythology in that particular book in the series and its iconic movie musical adaptation and thereby offer a different perspective on the story. Winnie Holzman, spurred on by Schwartz, creates a story that prides itself in tying itself all up very neatly, but it does so with little sense of logic and the songs that punctuate the book become less and less credible as dramatic building blocks as we speed towards the final curtain. This doesn’t even begin to engage with ideas around the way the music is orchestrated, which separates it out even further from the given circumstances of the show. It doesn’t even work to access the show from the perspective of post-modern deconstruction, which is surely the very point of creating a musical of this nature, because the choices are so inconsistent – and in contradiction to Kunze’s view on the show, constructed around “spectacular things happening” rather than on any firm set of dramaturgical principles. Perhaps Wicked is a milestone, but it’s not one that develops musical theatre as an art form. In what is commercial, yes; in what is popular, sure. In what artistically successful and dramatically compelling; most certainly not. And I’m still not clear on what specifically European musical theatre traditions are incorporated into this hybrid form, but based on what Kunze has said about the “dramamusical”, I’m convinced they do more harm than good.

I believe in drama as the key entertainment in theatre, and I think I’m not the only one who does. I didn’t even invent the name dramamusical, that was invented by a journalist. I just think it’s more European because I think the tradition of opera with the highly dramatic stories lent more to that kind of art-form, and I think that also our audiences in Europe, and I really include here in England, are more interested in going to theatre and have a real theatrical experience, a real emotional experience at last, not just an entertaining evening, but something they can discuss after the show.

Well, at least Kunze displays some humility by admitting that he did not come up with the idea of a dramatically integrated musical. I wonder who the journalist who coined the term is; I’d love to have a look at what he has to say about this potent new musical theatre form he has identified….

The comparison with opera that follows is not one that works for Kunze’s argument either. Opera by its nature is led by the music; it is music theatre rather than musical theatre and, as long as it is technically well-performed, opera often manages to be excused in its shortcomings as drama. This is, of course, a generalisation as there are operas, particularly those that are more contemporary that do integrate dramatic aspects more successfully into the theatrical whole and certainly even many traditional operas have a strong narrative and thematic thrust – but they are still led first and foremost by the music, hence the prominence of the composer and the conductor in any discussion of any opera.

Then we get to what effect Kunze believes a musical should have on its audience. In his eyes, musicals like Wicked, The Phantom of the Opera and his own shows offer a rare, real emotional experience that delivers a sense of enlightenment hitherto unseen in the musical theatre canon and one to which the American musical theatre tradition holds no claim. Clearly, he’s never heard of Carousel, Cabaret or Pacific Overtures. Obviously, there is no such experience to be had in Camelot, Follies, Fiddler on the Roof.

I’ve never really engaged with Kunze’s musicals, but his work must be truly phenomenal if it is what he implies they are: impeccable examples of musicals in which all other elements are in service to the drama. I must get my hands on Elisabeth, Tanz der Vampire or this impending masterpiece of the musical stage, Rebecca, and see for myself – but they had better live up to the high expectations that Kunze has created for them….

5 Cookin’ Musicals of the 1950s

What’s buzzin, cuzzins? This is a list of 5 of my favourite musicals of the 1950s, with slang courtesy of Fifties Web.

1. Gypsy

Gypsy is one of the greatest musicals of all time. Word from the bird, my friends, it is. A great book complemented by a great score. Take any song out and it leaves a big gaping theatrical gap in the show. Even a seemingly silly list number like “Mr Goldstone” shifts the show dramatically. Without it, we’d never know how genuinely thrilled Rose and her cohorts are, nor would we gain the insight that we do into Rose’s personality and capabilities that the song reveals. “Together Wherever We Go” shows us how the relationship between Rose, Louise and Herbie has shifted since the end of the first act. “Little Lamb” tells us almost everything we need to know about Louise. The vaudeville numbers provide period, yes, but their design also tells us about Rose and their performance reveals insight into June and Louise that a conventional scene couldn’t convey. And then we get Rose’s trio of numbers: the seductive “Some People”, the chillingly ironic “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and the masterful “Rose’s Turn”. Every number has its purpose; there’s a perfect balance between the elements of musical theatre in this show. We could also get into the great “best Rose” debate, but that’s a no-brainer really: it’s Angela Lansbury, of course!

2. West Side Story

West Side Story is cool. A musical that fully integrated acting, singing and dance, that was set in contemporary urban society and that dealt with topical issues that are still relevant today – well, it’s groundbreaking in its conception any way you look at it. Then we get to the stunning Jerome Robbins staging, with choreographic contributions by Peter Gennaro. What was going through Arthur Laurents’s head when he cut down the “Somewhere” ballet, I’ll never know. That decision communicates a misunderstanding of the role of dance in live musical theatre that I simply can’t understand. (Yes, it was cut from the film, but it wouldn’t have worked there. It’s too abstract and is designed for the live energy of musical theatre performance in front of a real audience who is experiencing the show in the moment.) The original cast recording is an essential for any musical theatre fan’s collection and for a comparison of different recordings of the show, I’d refer to you a previous blog on this site dealing with that very issue. Sometimes the show is criticized these days for being dated, miscast with models or actors that are too old or both and so on, but it still has an ineffable magic that hits home when you see it. Perhaps a recent review I read sums it up: “it is after all West Side Story.

3. The Boy Friend

Sometimes I forget about The Boyfriend. But when I play the cast recording on Itunes, I always remember how much it razzes my berries. There is a notoriously bad film adaptation of the show, but this was my first exposure to the show and I watched it almost on a permanent loop when I was a child. For those who are not in the know, The Boyfriend is a 1950s show about the 1920s. Polly – Julie Andrews in the original Broadway cast – meets Tony and in true romantic comedy style, we know they will be together by the fall of the final curtain. Along the way, there’s a lot of fun to be had – camp fun, witty lyrics, mixed messages, cross purposes. It’s commedia dell’arte filtered through an English pastiche of the American musical. A true hybrid, then, and a winning one.

4. Guys and Dolls

Guys and Dolls. One of the most popular musicals of all time; people go ape for it. Even I’ve been involved in two productions: in high school I played the drunk and the Hot Box MC and danced in “Havana” and “The Crap Shooter’s Ballet” and a couple of years ago I choreographed a high school production of the show. In the decade in between, I’ve seen countless productions announced and produced. Generally, there’s a perception that it’s flop-proof, but I guess the most recent Broadway revival proved that theory wrong. People are ambivalent about the film and, while it’s not perfect, there’s much to enjoy: Brando as Sky, the stunning scene between Sarah and Sky in the mission, Michael Kidd’s choreography and so on. The show itself has a super book by Abe burrows and the score is – in a word – fantastic. Every number is memorable. For a special treat, get yourself a copy of the African-American 1976 Broadway Revival’s cast recording. It’s super, and the numbers are reborn in their new disco and gospel influences arrangements. Of course this is a supplement to either the original Broadway cast recording or the excellent 1995 studio recording of the complete score – one that perhaps sets the standard for all Guys and Dolls recordings.

5. My Fair Lady

Some people will tell you that My Fair Lady is perfect. I hate to be the party pooper, but it isn’t. It’s almost perfect and is certainly excellent for the most part, but in the opening number Higgins says that people who use English badly should be hung. And with that one lyric, Alan Jay Lerner contradicts every given circumstance of the character. In, say, Paint Your Wagon the mistake might not matter, given the character in whose mouth the words might be put. But here it matters in spades. It’s not the only linguistic error given to Higgins either, but I suppose we should just remember that Lerner was the Tim Rice of his day and be done with it. After all, there is a great deal to appreciate in the show: one of the most joyous overtures ever created, a book that is literary in its quality (thanks to the source material, natch) and many great songs (“I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face”, “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?”, “Show Me”, and the list goes on.) It’s a classic, and it deserves to be. But it’s not perfect.

5 Smashing Musicals of the 1940s

This is a list of 5 of my favourite musicals of the 1940s. Anyone who is even vaguely interested in musical theatre should know about these shows and if you don’t… well, there’s no better time than the present to begin!

1. South Pacific

South Pacific is my favourite of the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows. To take a couple of short stories and weave them into a full length musical is no mean feat, but to do it with a book that really stands on its own feet dramatically and a score in which there are no bad songs is simply amazing. Only one minor problem exists in the last half of the second act, when the score tapers away to allow the action to wrap itself up, but the montage of scenes that tells what what happens with De Beque and Cable is probably the only way that part of the story and the reprises probably serve the show better by reinforcing theme, character and development than introducing a number of new songs would. It’s perhaps the prefect representation of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

2. Oklahoma!

Oklahoma! It’s all about a picnic, right? A simple romance with the lovers working at cross purposes until they finally get together before the final curtain falls. I suppose that’s the easy way to look at it, but in the hands of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma! transcends its humble narrative and becomes and allegory for a time in American history that was fraught with conflict and uncertainty, the mileau against which the show itself is set. What else does it have to offer? One – a charming score with songs that sound so much like the American landscape that one wonders at the fact that they didn’t exist before Rodgers and Hammerstein created them for this show. Two – a mode of storytelling that uses dance as an inextricable part of the action, not just in the famous dream ballet but throughout the show. Three – when it’s done right, a show that really rises to the mark in terms of dramatic tension; just who is going to win that auction on the picnic basket? Don’t know? Well go and buy the DVD of the RNT production and find out!

3. Carousel

Carousel offers us the rawest emotional experience of any Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. As in Oklahoma!, we have a largely excellent score and an engaging multi-modal storytelling experience. It’s true that perhaps some elements of the show fall just short of knitting into a perfect whole, but almost perfect is good enough for me. The highlights of this show are breathtaking: the opening “Carousel Waltz”, the flawlessly constructed bench scene, Louise’s heart-wrenching ballet in the second act and one of Rodgers’ most dynamic scores. If you don’t have a cast recording of this show, you need to get at least one. Not sure which? Read this blog which compares the various recordings of the show and get one now!

4. On the Town

“Finally”, I hear you say, “We are out of Rodgers and Hammerstein territory!” And the show that gets us there is On the Town. On the Town is haunted by two tragedies: firstly, the original Jerome Robbins choreography was never notated so all we have on record is what he could remember when he reconstructed his work for Jerome Robbins’ Broadway and, secondly, the film version chucked out the heart of the score leaving us with all entertainment and no enlightenment and hoofing instead of dance. (That said, the film version is very entertaining, but it is so different that it is an entirely separate entity.) Leonard Bernstein’s score (with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green) is by turns thrilling (“New York New York”), comical (“Come Up to My Place”, “I Can Cook Too”) and deeply moving (“Lonely Town”). It’s the classic show from the 1940s that perhaps deserves more recognition that it receives.

5. Kiss Me, Kate

Last show on this list is another not quite perfect show: Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate. What’s wrong with it? Well, conceptually, there’s no real clear choice made regarding what the show within the show is supposed to be, resulting in some moments in which require one to push to the limits of one’s suspension of disbelief, not the least of which involves two gangsters suddenly performing a musical number within the scope of the show within the show. That’s one of the very few things the film adaptation got right, shifting the song into the alley behind the theatre as a non-diegetic piece of advice for leading man Fred Graham. But once you’re that conceptual flaw, there’s a great love story being told here with a great score, offering some of Porter’s most moving work (“So in Love”) and some of his wittiest lyrics (“Wunderbar, “Tom, Dick, or Harry” and “Where is the Life that Late I Led?”). It’s a gem.

Longest Running Broadway Musicals

This is the list as it stands at present. You can find out more about most of the shows on this list by visiting the pages in the links bar above.

1. The Phantom of the Opera – 9027 performances, still running
2. Cats – 7485 performances
3. Les Misérables – 6680 performances
4. A Chorus Line – 6137 performances
5. Oh! Calcutta! (Revival) – 5959 performances
6. Beauty and the Beast – 5461 performances
7. Chicago (Revival) – 5356 performances, still running
8. Rent 5124 performances
9. The Lion King – 4941 performances, still running
10. Miss Saigon – 4097 performances
11. 42nd Street – 3486 performances
12. Grease – 3388 performances
13. Mamma Mia! – 3304 performances, still running
14. Fiddler on the Roof – 3242 performances
15. Hello, Dolly! – 2844 performances
16. My Fair Lady – 2717 performances
17. Hairspray – 2641 performances
18. Avenue Q – 2534 performances
19. The Producers – 2502 performances
20. Wicked – 2462 performances, still running

5 Great Musicals of the 1990s

This is a list of 5 of my favourite musicals of the 1990s. If you don’t know them – head straight to Amazon and pick up a cast recording! These are definitely shows that should be on your radar.

1. Marie Christine

Simply put, Michael John LaChiusa is the best of the new generation of serious musical theatre composers and Marie Christine represents one of his lushest and most seductive scores. Loosely based on the Greek play, Medea, the show transposes the action to 1890s New Orleans where Marie finds herself spurned by her love, Dante, and exacts a tragic revenge. Add a touch of voodoo and a dash of history by way of the real-life figure Marie Laveau and you have the makings of a compelling tale of mythic proportions. LaChiusa’s score is filled with ravishing melodies and haunting motifs and the original cast recording preserves a tour de force performance from Audra McDonald in the titular role.

2. Passion

Passion is a haunting show, a musical of immense emotional depth and intellect. It’s not perhaps the most easily accessible of musical theatre scores: the score is not compartmentalized into extractable, toe-tapping songs, but uses a series of motifs to develop narrative and character in an immensely sophisticated manner. Emotionally we’re looking at some of the things that drive us all: the nature and meaning of love, and the thin line between passion and obsession. It’s disquieting how easily one can see something of oneself in Fosca, as broken in her soul as she is in her body, or in Giorgio, a man whose life is completely transformed by his experiences with this woman. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine challenge conventional ideas about the relationship between love, passion and obsession from three perspectives: what people expect them to be, what they truly are and what they have the potential to become. It’s dark and brooding and brilliant.

3. Assassins

In contrast, Sondheim’s Assassins has a score that is almost immediately accessible, owing to its brilliant use of pastiche and the inclusion of a range of characters that lurk within the boundaries of our public consciousness. Even if one hasn’t heard of the assassins whose perspectives placed at the centre of this muiscal, one has surely heard of the American presidents who were their targets. From the variations on “Hail to the Chief” to the series of ballads that tell the stories of those who would see the chief fall, every number in the show is memorable. The original Off-Broadway cast recording also preserves the chilling climactic scene in full and, if you’re lucky enough to see the show live, there are other treats that await in the book: the monologues of Samuel Byck, would-be Richard Nixon assassin, and the hysterically funny scenes between Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sara Jane Moore, who both attempt to assassinate Gerald Ford. It’s a satirical gem that works best without the latter day addition of “Something Just Broke”, a song that forces us back into our traditional perceptions of the assassins and their deeds and which dilutes the experience we should undergo as we experience this show.

4. Sunset Boulevard

Some people ask why Andrew Lloyd Webber turned what is considered by many to be an untouchable film into a musical. Well, I prefer my divas singing, so it suits me just fine. Sunset Boulevard is not particularly subtle, but its broadness suits its mileau and characters. There are some haunting pieces of music here: the instrumental use of “The Greatest Star of All”, for instance, or the ghostly introduction to the titular tune, or the two instantly memorable songs given to Norma Desmond, “With One Look” and “As If We Never Said Goodbye”, and even smaller numbers like “The Perfect Year” are melodic little gems that stay with you long after the last time you listened to the score.

5. Titanic

In 1997, two different versions of the Titanic story were told in two different styles in two different mediums. The film offered Leonardio DiCaprio and Kate Winslet frolicking in a fictional love story set against the backdrop of the ill-fated ship of dreams, while the musical used the stories of the real life Titanic passengers as a basis for telling its Robert Altman-like version of the tale. These days, I find myself returning to my cast album of the stage score rather than the film. It’s a moving piece of musical theatre, from the opening sequence to the haunting contra-punctual duet “The Proposal/The Night Was Alive”, from the exquisitely structured sequence at the end of the first act (where the ship hits the iceberg) to the chilling lifeboat sequence that climaxes with the stirring anthem, “We’ll Meet Tomorrow”. And any of these is many times better than “My Heart Will Go On”….

Behind the Scenes of CRAZY FOR YOU

A “new” Gershwin musical comedy, Crazy For You was the quintessential musical – one where everybody sings, everybody dances and where anything on hand is used to make music. The plot was nothing new, having been adapted from the 1930s musical, Girl Crazy, but with an energetic cast, a touch of outrageously funny humor, colorful costumes, great scenery and one of the best musical scores of the century – who could ask for anything more?

George and Ira Gershwin were an incomparable team, responsible for some of the best-known American standards from Tin Pan Alley, stage and screen. Even George’s classical compositions, resonating with jazz and African-American influences, can be hummed whistled or sung by us all. The Gershwins and their compositions are part of the collective American consciousness. Crazy For You uses seven great Gershwin songs from Girl Crazy, including “Bidin’ My Time”, “Embraceable You”, “I Got Rhythm”, and “But Not for Me”. 13 other Gershwin songs are added: from Broadway shows like Treasure Girl, Oh, Kay!, Show Girl and Ladies First, Hollywood films like Shall We Dance and Damsel in Distress, and one addition, “Naughty Baby”, which was not written either for the stage or films.

Though the book for Crazy For You needed work, nothing was done to Ira’s lyrics, other than a little pronoun gender-bending here and there. Those for Girl Crazy are among his best – in fact, they are poetry of an indelible, universal sort. Just think of ‘I’m biding my time, ’cause that’s the kinda gal I’m', or ‘Embrace me, my sweet embraceable you! Embrace me, you irreplaceable you!’ The creators of the show stated: “We wanted audiences to believe that each song was written especially for Crazy for You – that they couldn’t possibly have come from anywhere else…. [One night] we overheard a couple talking about the show. The woman asked, ‘Are George and Ira Gershwin still alive?’ And her husband said, ‘They must be. They’re still writing musicals.’

Crazy For You was produced in reaction to the conservative backlash that developed because of the extravagant excesses of the 1980s; in a world where change and uncertainty are commonplace, where cultural programs and funding have been cut within school systems and professional theatres, an upbeat, musical to remind us of “the good old days” was extremely welcome. Any similarities to context of the original production of Girl Crazy? Yes! During the Great Depression, the American public craved a different kind of entertainment. This sort of musical comedy alleviated the worries and offered some relief from the seriousness of everyday life. Work on the stage remake began in 1988 with the involvement of multimillionaire Roger Horchow. A lifelong fan of George Gershwin’s music, he remembered meeting the famed composer-pianist at his parents’ home: ‘I don’t remember what he played, of course. I just remember loving it!’ Mr. Horchow sold his mail order business, he earmarked the profit toward the fulfillment of a dream: a production of his favourite show, Girl Crazy, on Broadway. Licensing rights were granted by the Gershwin estate and Horchow hired the director, writers and designers and booked the Shubert Theatre for the show’s opening. Investing more than $5 million of his own money into the $7.5 million project, he adamantly declared to the New York Post that it was his first and last show: ‘This is the only one I wanted to do. We hope to do it in other cities, but not any more shows.’

Despite its fine score, Girl Crazy had a storyline completely inappropriate for today’s society and audiences. In an interview with Kevin Kelly of the Boston Globe, playwright Ken Ludwig (of Lend Me a Tenor fame) said, ‘All those musicals’ books of the ’20s and ’30s were awful, but Girl Crazy seemed to me the awfullest (sic) of all! It was dumb, silly, beyond silly. And full of ethnic humor that wasn’t funny at all. I decided I’d have to rewrite from scratch. And I wondered how this would play with the Gershwin estate, principally the three Gershwin nephews. To be honest, they were more than willing to do anything to get the show back onstage, partly, of course, because of continuing copyrights, but also as ongoing testimony to George and Ira.’ Given access to the entire Gershwin music catalogue, Ludwig (along with director Mike Ockrent) conceptualized a “new” plot, rearranged the score, deleted some songs and borrowed others, including “K-ra-zy For You”, which provided the musical with a new name.

Crazy for You opened at the Shubert Theatre February 19, 1992 to critical acclaim. Frank Rich of the New York Times said, ‘The show is bursting with original talent that takes off on its own cocky path, pointedly mocking recent British musicals even as it sassily rethinks the American musical tradition stretching from the Gershwins to (Michael) Bennett.’ Other critics were equally ecstatic: ‘Bright, recession-proof, stuffed with one-line zingers… We’re back in the lost paradise of the American musical, with glitter and girls, legs and voices, melodies of insouciant mastery… An exuberant evening of amusing sight gags invented by Mr. Ockrent, stunning costumes by William Ivey Long, energetic, clever dances by Susan Stroman and marvelous Gershwin music.’ Four years later, the final Broadway curtain dropped. Crazy for You had won 3 Tonys (Musical, Costume Design, Choreography); 2 Drama Desk Awards (Musical, Choreography) and 5 Outer Critics Circle Awards (Broadway Musical, Choreography, Scenic Design, Costumes, Lighting). Since the Broadway version has closed, any company that can pay the royalties is allowed to stage Crazy for You. Licenses have gone as far as Cape Town, Helsinki, Oslo, Budapest, Australia, Mexico City, London and Indianapolis.

The Crazy for You page at Musical Cyberspace is available here. You’ll find production information, a synopsis with musical numbers, a mini galley and related merchandise links there. Enjoy!

ASSASSINS on film?

Having been rather ill this week, I’ve had some time to think about the idea of a film version of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, which I discussed a lot with my favourite guy, Eric, in the many hours I couldn’t sleep or during which I was drugged up on cortisone and antibiotics. I’m not sure how to put it all into words, but Eric had said something about political cartoons and Assassins the day before and I had kind of thought about it a lot more when I couldn’t sleep during the night.

The gist of it was that the whole thing might become a kind of animated political cartoon with a framework in which the Proprietor was the cartoonist/animator musing over his drawings, which then come to life in animation and enact the material we see in the stage show. So we might get shots where we see the hands sketching the characters, like in “Brazil” from Sauldos Amigos:

Or – and this is definitely more what I had in mind – in this video of Billy Joel singing “When You Wish Upon a Star”, the whole animator:

I kinda like the idea that the Proprietor might appear as a live action figure, as the Geppetto-styled animator in the latter video does. So it would recall, structurally, the 1940s animated Disney compilation features and the animated sections, featuring the assassins, would be styled using the conventions of political cartoons, in the way Sleeping Beauty uses medieval tapestry or Aladdin uses the techniques of Al Hirschfeld in the way it uses line.

I think it’s a pretty neat idea. I’d go watch it.

“Discouraging Words”: Lyrics for Musical Theatre

In 1998, Steven Winn wrote an article about lyric writing in contemporary musical theatre for the San Francisco Chronicle: Discouraging Words. The general thrust of his article is that “Broadway lyrics, with a few exceptions, have lost the wit and range of the classics”. Framing the piece with a superficial comparison between My Fair Lady and Miss Saigon, Winn’s beef really seems to be with the way that the musical has developed into a piece that serves the character before the lyricist him- or herself and is little more than a grumpy rant about how “they don’t make ‘em like they used to”. Read through it for yourself, but what follows is what I make of it all. The boxed sections are all quotations from the article.

In Miss Saigon, another young girl hit the big city with uncertain prospects and fell under the sway of an older man. “I’m 17 and I’m new here today,” Kim sang when she arrived in war-torn Saigon. “The village I came from is so far away.” … Miss Saigon demonstrates the demoralized state of Broadway lyrics-writing today. There’s hardly a line in Miss Saigon that rises above pedestrian sentiments and lockjawed rhyme.

Miss Saigon may not have the greatest lyrics, but it sometimes gets a short shrift. For example, I really like Kim’s introduction, simple though it may be, because it sounds like something one of the Dreamland girls would say on that stage. Immediately, the simplicity stands in contrast to the crude lines from the other girls and, later, we discover that, for Kim, these words are in fact the truth. It works for the character, for the situation and provides a dramatic building block for the play as a whole. There are other lyrics in the show far more deserving of criticism than this one, but I think there are are other things to consider too. Lyrics aren’t lyrics wherever they may be; we simply can’t take that as a given principle if we believe that content dictates form.

Compare the work of almost any contemporary lyricist with that of Lerner, Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer and even the more workmanlike Oscar Hammerstein II and Irvin Berlin, and the gap is yawning. The virtues of classic Broadway songs – which can register emotion, character revelation, narrative, poetry, wit, surprise and the sheer pleasure of melodious verbal dexterity – rarely come together at once in new musicals.

I think the juxtaposition of these two statements is somewhat amusing, possibly even ironic. I don’t think Winn has unpacked enough the work of the lyricists he has so deftly named. There are many examples where Hart, in particular, but also Porter and Gershwin and even Lerner sacrifice character and narrative for the sake of wit and verbal dexterity and, for me, wordplay for the sake of wordplay or merely to appear witty can sometimes be even more destructive than a lyric that is perhaps more pedestrian but more suited to character and situation. The lyricist should show off the character, not him- or herself.

Of course, that kind of peacocking was routine and acceptable, even expected, during the 1920s and 1930s when musical theatre songs and popular songs were one and the same thing, with the former feeding the latter in a very prominent fashion. That link still exists, but in a way it’s kind of reversed now and we see popular music being transferred onto the musical theatre stage not only in the form of jukebox musicals but also in the way that musical characters speak and sing in, say, the contemporary equivalents of classic musical comedies like The Wedding Singer, Legally Blonde or Hairspray, which themselves have their origins as popular films. But even in these latter-day equivalents, disposable as they may be, there is a far greater attempt to knit together the pop idioms with the characters on display, which – to return to my original point – just isn’t true of some of the “classic” musical theatre composers, even if their skill as lyricists of popular songs was incomparable. The virtues that Winn names may not all be in evidence in every new musical that comes along, but they did not always all “come together at once” in older musicals either.

That Sondheim’s extraordinary range and sophistication stand so distant from the competition only proves the point: he’s working in an age of lyrical mediocrity. George Jean Nathan’s remark about Cole Porter comes to mind. Like Porter, Sondheim seems “so far ahead of the other boys in New York that there is no race at all.”

Am I alone in finding this a strange attitude towards lyric-writing? Or perhaps it is just a critics attitude towards lyrics writing that I, as a writer, find disquieting? Creating art is not a race. Yes, from the outside, comparisons are inevitable, but if you’re writing lyrics with the goal of trying to be as good as somebody else, be it Sondheim or Porter or whichever lyricist you choose, you probably never will be. If we look at Jason Robert Brown for a second, a composer-lyricist who seems to try and emulate Sondheim in many ways, we can see that his work often just appears to be a pale imitation, even in cases where it is great work – as in certain parts of Parade, for example. I wish he would shake off whatever chip he has on his shoulder and delve deeper into his creative self and emerge with something that is truly his and no-one else’s. I think that musical might be amazing. I guess I just think you should be immersed in telling the story you’re telling. But I guess this whole issue is part of what is debate by Sondheim himself in Sunday in the Park with George, particularly in “Putting It Together”.

The catalogs in Noise/Funk operate in a fundamentally different way from that of the famous zoological one Porter marshaled in “Let’s Do It.” Gaines’ lines spring from a rhythmic and political impulse rather than a literary one. The Noise/Funk lyrics testify, in a street-smart, immediate way.

Seriously? I think to imply that the lyrics for “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love” spring from a literary impulse is a bit of a stretch. The narrative of Paris is so slim it might as well not be there at all and the link between the song and the narrative is so superficial and tenuous that the song was able to be extracted verbatim for the 1931 revue Wake Up and Dream. I highly doubt that Porter was very concerned with character and narrative when he wrote the song; it certainly is a bit sophisticated for an imperious matron from Massachusetts, even if she is pretending to be drunk. I would say it springs from an impulse to be witty and and verbally dexterous more than anything else; in that sense they are more street smart than literary, wouldn’t you say?

Noise/Funk, which turns to first-person autobiography in the second act, is a unique creation. But it also has roots in shows like Hair in the 1960s, A Chorus Line in the 1970s and The Who’s Tommy in the 1980s. Released from their traditional obligations, lyrics have become battlecry, confession and pop cultural anthems.

I’m not sure what Winn is saying here. At first I thought he was saying that there are certain baseline obligations for musical theatre lyrics. But this doesn’t allow for the principle of “content dictates form”, that a musical like Hair might need different lyrics than a musical like Anything Goes, and Winn then offers, almost begrudgingly, the idea these kinds of musicals actually can be released from those expectations, I suppose because of what they’re about. So is he actually criticizing the subject matter of new musicals, rather than the lyrics? Is he saying that the subject matter of contemporary musical theatre doesn’t offer opportunities for a lyricist to write good lyrics? But his idea of what comprises a good lyric is already in question – so where does that leave us. This article is not convincing me of the thesis that Winn has set out for it.

Critic John Lahr is concerned that the concept musical “is too often merely a song cycle… A smart lyric in the mouth of a stick figure is a theatrical nothing.” One trend, argues Lahr, is that “instead of being a game of show-and-tell the musical has become a song-heavy game of tell-and tell.” Examples abound in recent Broadway annals, from the long-running Cats and the curdled Jekyll and Hyde to Sondheim’s overly static Passion. Finding the right balance, for music, words and spectacle, is an eternal dilemma, no matter how much musicals change.

Now I think that either Steven Winn or John Lahr or both is oversimplifying what a concept musical is or can be and certainly his choice of examples is something I find a little confusing. As I see it, when it comes to concept musicals, we get at least three different kinds of concept musicals:

• Concept musicals that employ a narrative structure similar to book musicals, but which nonetheless always return to a central image, e.g. Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof;
• Concept musicals that break down linear narrative forms or employ an episodic structure in favour of the central idea, e.g. Company; Nine; and
• Concept musicals that abandon plot, creating a series of character studies by placing a group of people in a common situation, e.g. A Chorus Line, Hair.

Now already, as far as I’m concerned, the first group is some kind of hybrid form of what I suppose we could call the musical play and the other two, going perhaps one step further towards being more presentational than representational. And, to get back to Winn and Lahr, I’m not certain that song cycles belong here, unless they are on the extreme end of the spectrum just before the form shifts into musical revue. I guess that’s what separates, slightly, something like Songs for a New World from And the World Goes ‘Round.

The point is that the field is wider than either is willing to admit and I don’t think any of the musicals in the three categories named above is guilty of merely putting “a smart lyric in the mouth of a stick figure”. But if we look at song cycles like like Songs for a New World or Closer Than Ever, the criticism snaps into focus.

Also, to consider this point in the wider context of the article, isn’t putting “a smart lyric in the mouth of a stick figure” precisely what lyricists like Hart, Gershwin and Porter did in many of their shows, musical comedies which were much slighter dramatically – much great “theatrical nothings” as Lahr might put it – than almost any of the concept musicals named in the little definitions list above.

Then if we look at the examples he’s chosen, Cats at least makes sense as a choice in that it is similar to concept musicals like A Chorus Line by presenting character studies of the cats as they compete for their spot in the Heavyside Layer, even though he doesn’t explore how the show might support the point he is trying to make. But I am not sure that using Jekyll and Hyde or Passion is much use to his discussion either. Both are is based on a particular thesis or theme, yes, are they concept musicals? I don’t think so.

Writing lyrics, Lerner said, was “a little above photography and wood carving.” But a serious sense of purpose, an aesthetic of fitting the words to a larger purpose, defines his work. A lyricist, he believed, was “a dramatist who wrote part of his plays in rhyme.” Lerner wrote at a time when musicals were much closer to their source in operetta. My Fair Lady, and to a lesser degree Camelot, are models of unified effect, with the music and lyrics poised like mutually enhancing counterweights.

What I have to say now might not be popular, I guess. But it doesn’t surprise me that Lerner equates lyric-writing with something like photography or wood-carving, which are hobbies for the masses but which only become art in the hands of a gifted minority. For me, Lerner was the Tim Rice of his era. I don’t rank him as highly as someone like Porter for wit and wordplay and he is no match for Hammerstein when it comes to character. I also think he tends to be a bit lazy and showy. I can’t handle “hung” instead of “hanged” coming from the mouth of Higgins or the mention of bobolinks in Camelot, when it is a species that is native to United States. And while we all know about the other minor lyric controversies in these two musicals, which arguably represent some of his best work, the errors and inconsistencies proliferate when we get to works like On a Clear Day. So I don’t agree with Winn that Lerner offered musical theatre a kind of unattainable perfection that will never be seen again.

But maybe lyrics have simply had a golden age that can’t, and shouldn’t, come again. If the form is going to thrive, musicals must reach an audience geared to high-speed transmissions, high-volume music and visually dominated ways of receiving and processing information. What can the chances possibly be of getting a few well-chosen words in edgewise?

Winn’s conclusion sums up for me the problem of his article as a whole. Although I can figure out, I think, what he is trying to say, but he isn’t clear about what he’s criticising. Does he want lyrics like Porter’s (which are smart and witty, often at the expense of character) or like Lerner’s (retaining a “sparkling” quality while making concessions for dramatic credibility)? He clearly doesn’t want a perfect marriage between character and lyric (“the more workmanlike Hammerstein”), although he does give Sondheim his dues. I think what’s he saying is he doesn’t like the way that musical theatre has developed, with lyricists writing for character instead of merely showcasing him- or herself as a wordsmith.

Winn says that he wants songs to “register emotion, character revelation, narrative, poetry, wit, surprise and the sheer pleasure of melodious verbal dexterity”, but he seems quite happy to leave emotion, character and narrative out of the equation if the lyric itself has poetry, wit or verbal dexterity. I think there is not a character inconsistency that Winn would not forgive if the lyric is sophisticated enough, and when it comes to musical theatre, that just doesn’t cut the mustard for me.

The Big Move III

So the another section of the site content has been moved over to WordPress. Perhaps less bittersweet now than urgent… but what’s here now?

All the material that was on the old “Live, Laugh, Love” section of the site is here and can be accessed using the page links in the bar above.
Sondheim has played a part in the creation of many influential musicals during the past fifty years: some have catered perfectly for the tastes of contemporary musical theatre audiences; others have been less popular but nonetheless expanded the boundaries of the genre. So whether you’re a fan who travels “into the woods” every day someone who’s just experienced West Side Story for the first time ever – come along with us and explore the worlds that Sondheim and his collaborators have created. Show listings are all alphabetical.

Step three of the big move is over. When that’s all done, I’ll continue blogging as I did before Geocities announced their date of closure and things began to feel a bit more urgent. There’s not much more left to do now…

The Big Move II

So the next section of the site content has been moved over to WordPress. That bittersweet feeling of seeing the old pass away and the new come into being applies. So what’s here now?

All the material that was on the old “Any Dream Will Do” section of the site is here and can be accessed using the page links in the bar above.
Yes, I know there are still a few of the ALW Musicals missing, but these were housed in the general long-running shows section. So they will be here shortly.

Lloyd Webber has created some of the most commercially successful musicals of the past four decades: some have catered perfectly for the tastes of the contemporary musical ear; others have been less popular but nonetheless given audience several of the most visually spectacular productions ever seen. So whether you’re a fan who listens to “the music of the night” all day long or someone who’s just experienced Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for the first time ever – come along with us and explore the worlds that Andrew Lloyd Webber and his many collaborators have created. Show listings are all alphabetical.

Step two of the big move is over. When that’s all done, I’ll continue blogging as I did before Geocities announced their date of closure and things began to feel a bit more urgent.