Arena Stage "Music Man"-set in the 1930's... — Page 4

Ooooh...interesting. I like that idea. I would also be interested in perhaps something of the orchestrations for other numbers getting a little 'dustbowly'.

I will say that I'm someone who can have purist tendencies...but I've fought my whole creative life against them. So this argument is interesting to me because it's the argument I've been having with myself since I started doing theatre.

lida, I didn't mean to say the show's PRIMARY purpose is a history lesson. Obviously not. I just think it's a shame to lose the historical color by negating it with a change of setting.

But I agree with your second point: THE MUSIC MAN will continue to exist (on stage and on film) as Willson intended. This production isn't a calamity.

I'm not sure the same sort of innocence existed in the 1930s. People had radios by then and listened to the President live every week. They went to the movies regularly and saw people playing pool on screen. They had lived through Prohibition and the rampant criminality associated with it.

Of course, there were all sorts of religious hucksters in revival tents and maybe that's what this director is going for.

But Harold Hill isn't a preacher and the list of reasons why the show does NOT belong in the 30s is a lot longer than the list of reasons why it does.

Is it just me, or does the ensemble look really sloppy in those clips (specifically in "Shipoopi" and "Trouble")?

Whoops.

Updated On: 5/24/12 at 04:57 PM

For the record, Gav & Newintown, I agree with your earlier posts about Music Man.

And for the record, I'm glad I don't do theatre with Robbie, either. And that's said with lots and lots of love, too, just like he said.

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I don't think anyone is arguing against the the concept in theory, but when a director of an opera or a play makes a choice that contradicts the original setting, that interpretation can then be debated not only on execution but also on the conception itself.

Which is why I passionately defend the right of people in this thread to comment on the idea of it without seeing it--and get irritated by people who say, "Well, you didn't SEE it, so your opinions are not valid."

The classic questions of literary criticism, as I learned 'em back from Professor Harold Hill, are:

1. What did the artist set out to do?
2. How well did the artist do that?
3. Was it worth doing?

On BroadwayWorld, we are fond of commenting on Nos. 1 and 3, but if we haven't seen it, due to geographical or financial reasons, we usually skip No. 2. (Except, of course, for the people who comment after listening to or watching bootlegs.)

So the question those of us who have not seen the production are discussing is NOT how well did Director Smith carry out her concept, but was it worth setting The Music Man in the 1930s (or nondescript 1930s) at all?

Meredith Willson didn't just set the story in the period he did for "color," as lida rose says, eager to dismiss our distaste.

The time period of The Music Man contributes a certain style and a specific world-view that were part of the world he wove. He was able to create the specific characters he created BECAUSE they lived in a certain place at a certain time. They are timeless BECAUSE of their specificity, not despite it.

And if they had lived during the Great Depression or in New York City, they would have lived under different circumstances. Marian the Librarian might be innocent in comparison to other girls onstage but her innocence would not be the same sense of innocence as that of the character Willson wrote, and Harold Hill would be a very different kind of flim-flam man.

And that would be an entirely different musical. That musical might have been called "The Grapes of Wrath." And it is a musical that Meredith Willson wouldn't have written at all.

Is it possible that a different director or a more talented director or a less pretentious director could have made the Nondescript 1930's Depression-era Dust Bowl Music Man work?

Yes, of course. In art, anything is possible. But it's also possible that a different/more talented/less pretentious director would have decided that setting The Music Man in the Depression-era Dust Bowl just wasn't worth doing.

Here's a little clip of Meredith Willson (who was a very popular radio bandleader before he wrote The Music Man) doing some very clever entertaining. It will give you a little more insight into the man who thought up "Lida Rose" in the first place:




Meredith Willson on I've Got a Secret

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Updated On: 5/24/12 at 05:18 PM

Well put, PJ.

A few more thoughts on "creative adapting" ...

Setting up a flashback framework in "Grease" or in the case of "Music Man," having the Depression-Era town yearn for the bygone days of the early 20th century aren't bad ideas at all. But they're rewrites. You would have to get permission to rewrite and adapt Meredith Wilson's book and lyrics to make that work.

Just to throw 1930s costumes on the characters and utilize a unit gymnasium set and ignore the written word completely, which so clearly is serving a specific period in time, doesn't work for me ... no more than setting "Grease" in 1988 and then doing the show as written works.

And for the record, Shakespearian productions of Richard III set in Nazi Germany, for example, always turn me off at first, too. I have liked a few of these "easy conceits," usually because the story manages to come through in spite of the setting, not because of it, and the performances were good. It's a clever creative hurdle to overcome rather than bringing anything interesting to the play.

But something like "West Side Story" or even "Clueless" can be refreshing and occasionally brilliant works adapted from the original sources. That's a different scenario entirely.

I wouldn't mind seeing a creative team (not just a wayward director who's bored with the show she's been given) adapting Music Man fully from the ground up.

But you'll have to wait until Meredith Willson loses his copyright and stops turning over in his grave first.

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Updated On: 5/26/12 at 05:35 PM

Best12, what you mentions almost warrants another debate: What constitutes as re-writing an author's works? Can a progressive staging (even if not a line of text is altered) be considered the same as a re-write?

I know Ted Chapin who represents the Rodgers and Hamerstein holdings feels that it can, while also being torn artistically by the validity of such stagings.

I've basically heard him say that his job is to protect the works as they are, but that he really wishes he could see the productions that will be done after the copyrights expire, because he thinks many will be absolutely visionary and right on point with the essence of what R&H were trying to create in the time they lived in for then contemporary audiences.

Updated On: 5/24/12 at 05:44 PM

Great post, as usual, paljoey!

To be fair to lida rose, it was I who used the phrase "historical color"; he was merely responding to my usage. And I didn't mean "color" as a derogatory term; I think historical color is a big contributor to THE MUSIC MAN's charm. Yet another reason why I am suspicious of pushing the story into the 1930s.

A director I worked with once said that any directorial concept that resets the period of a play should do three things:

1. Tell us something about the play we wouldn't have otherwise known.
2. Tell us something about the new period in which the play is set.
3. Tell us something about the original period in which the play was set.

Thus far, in the posts defending this production I haven't read any suggestion that it does any of the above. Thus far...

Washington Post review
Arena Stage’s ‘Music Man’ is Iowa stubborn and Washington smooth

And this is why I get upset at most of the new posters. They have no idea what history means. Or they feel free to talk about things they know nothing about.

no, but really. i've stated over and over in this thread my deference to willson's original intentions for the show, as well as my reservations about the re-setting of this production. but i don't think being open to the deconstruction of a canonized work-- that is, taking it out of the time it is specifically linked to to see if it is still successful-- means i have no respect for history.

i may have gotten a little caught up in playing devil's advocate for directorial choices that i don't necessarily agree with or understand, which i think confused my argument for some people. i hope this clears up my position. i didn't mean to imply that i don't think the historical details are important, because of course they are, and the piece is stronger for them. but i also don't think it totally falls apart without them.

Updated On: 5/25/12 at 03:35 AM

I think the setting vaguely in the 1930s is an interesting choice. It is not set in the depression, but rather a time in the past. As it was explained last night, in 1957 Willson wrote it about a time in his past. In fact, Willson wrote references into the script that had not appeared yet in 1912: poetic license.

This production is more about how if we eliminate music, art, dance from our lives in a slow erosion of consciousness, we eliminate color, passion and expression from our lives. This unknowing con artist comes to a dull, stubborn town seeing an opportunity to cash in on that void. He gets his "foot caught in the door" and falls in love. But the town gradually, subtly comes alive in color, joy and romance thanks to the awareness he brings.

Our generation can relate to the 1930s still. Our parents and/or grandparents grew up in that dramatic era. The Victorian era has been somewhat idealized in its revival in the 1980s.

And I agree that Music Man is not an historical musical. It is a story of much more depth.

The photos and video cannot represent the experience I had last night in the theater. I look forward to everyone's seeing it and sharing post impressions.