Thanks for that BBE. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed "Movin Out" -- one of the best uses of dance to tell a story and flesh our characters and make for an exciting evening of theatre that I have ever seen on a Broadway stage. Tharp and her dancers were brilliant and used the Joel songs with intelligence and a great understanding what they were saying lyrically. The dance and staging made sense and were crafted and developed with a keen sense of theatre and in a way that logically reflected the essential stories behind the pop songs being danced to. Really a terrific show (that led me to see her company at the Joyce a month or two later do one of their regular evenings of modern dance -- also brilliant).
My issue isn't with pop music being used in Broadway shows, it's that in MAMMA MIA and certain other shows, that there was a lack of care and craft and know-how employed in the ways that these songs were used within a dramatic framework. Look, it's HARD to tell a story using music and dance, the greatest practitioners of the artform (Prince, Bennett, Robbins, Sondheim, Rodgers et al) could tell you many stories about how difficult it is and how much they struggled to get just a small moment to work. So it's galling to see shows that have obvious shortcomings and gaping holes in logic in their narratives, be able to sell themselves to the public, flaws and all, just because they've hitched their wagons to a pop music catalogue that will sell tickets no matter how bad the underlying show happens to be.
There's a world of difference in terms of talent and professionalism and "know-how" between shows like MAMMA MIA, or FAME THE MUSICAL (the original movie, incidentally, is a favorite of mine), or SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER OR URBAN COWBOY or FOOTLOOSE and shows like HAIRSPRAY and DREAMGIRLS and HEDWIG and BRING IN DA NOISE and MOVIN' OUT. In the former group, you have folks who really had no idea what they were doing and yet were trying to sell a "product" to the masses with inferior story-telling and character development, figuring the audience would accept the mediocre package because it contained a bunch of well-known songs -- with the exception of MAMMA MIA, the audience refused to bite (and that's mostly because of the big audience-participation dance concert at the end). In the latter group you have creative teams who understand how to tell a story and develop characters using contemporary musical forms, who knew how to put on fun and entertaining shows that speak to today's audiences, who managed to be dazzling and exciting, and still be smart and have substance -- all those shows had something to say, but still made for a fun night out at the theatre.
Personally, I see CAROLINE in the same light. I really don't see it as pretentious or as some kind of "tea and crumpet" experience. It's not as if any of it resembles some 20th century opera by Strauss or Hindemith or Virgil Thompson or Ned Rorem or one of the experimental atonal composers that only a half dozen people on the upper west side understands. Tesori wrote a score that was mostly blues and jazz and gospel and 60's R&B ..... considering how utterly dismissed those genres have been by the so-called "elite" for most of their histories, how on earth can something written in any of those forms EVER be considered "pretentious" or for the "tea and crumpet" set? Those people spent most of the last century spitting on this kind of music.
CAROLINE consists almost entirely of musical themes and melodies that are straight out of Cab Calloway and Bessie Smith and Etta James and Sam Cooke and Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens and Lower East Side klezmer bands and the Marvellettes and the Vandellas -- stuff that came pouring out of radios in 1963. I wasn't born then, but I responded strongly to this score, because so much of it reminded me of what I used to hear growing up from my parents' jazz and oldies r&b radio stations. My affinity for this score is not pretentious, it's a remarkable reflection of the pop and jazz and blues music I grew to love through my parents' records and radio stations (incidentally, they saw the show and absolutely loved it).
Perhaps, the recitatives are not to your liking. You probably hate Veanne Cox's music as Rose, as well as any conversations involving her -- the music is prickly, disjointed, talky, everything I'm sure you just can't stand about Sondheim and other modern composers (understand, though, that they often write the most annoying and unattractive music for the characters they don't want you to like, or for the characters they want to set apart in the plot -- trust me, there's a reason that Cox barely has a single pretty or melodic phrase in the entire show).
You make a very interesting point when you say "If I want a great story and great acting that's more challenging, I go to a straight play." One of the real break-throughs that I think CAROLINE was trying to achieve was to crack the whole straight play/musical dichotomy in the theatre-going audience. It's been the oddest thing for me -- all of my friends that typically enjoy ONLY plays and hate any and ALL musicals have all seemed to have fallen in love with CAROLINE (including one rock musician friend of mine who actually walked out with 3 friends from his band of the last revival of "Man of La Mancha" after "The Impossible Dream" because they were utterly miserable from the experience -- he and those same friends have seen CAROLINE 4 times already and plan to go back once more before it closes), while several of my friends who prefer musicals generally didn't like CAROLINE initially when they saw it, and only after repeated listens to the cast album are they now even grudgingly willing to accept it (though a couple of them really love it now).
For many musical fans, it's just TOO different from the expectations one normally has when one walks into a musical. By the time, some people I know GOT that this wasn't your typical musical and that it had a pace and vibe that was all its own, it was too late -- the show had pissed them off and they just couldn't adjust to its very different rhythms and mode of story-telling that it was employing.
The funny thing is that Tesori (Millie), Wolfe (Jelly's Last Jam, Bring in Da Noise) and Kushner (Angels) have all demonstrated very well that they know exactly how to provide "flash" and hoopla and pizzazz to an audience. They know full well what all of the cardinal rules and audience expectations they are supposed to satisfy in the case of a musical show. But in this case, for this story, they ignored all of them and decided to follow only the dictates of this particular story and the very particular character whose rhythms are different, whose sensibilty is different -- the internal logic of this piece as constructed dictated that there couldn't be any splashy chorus numbers or showstopping dance breaks. Wolfe has certainly put them together for other shows before this one (and Tesori certainly knew how to write that kind of music), but such crowd-pleasing measures wouldn't have been true to the piece. Had Wolfe and Tesori done that, perhaps the show wouldn't be closing in two weeks, but apparently such compromises were never considered. I salute them or their courage and artistic integrity.
I have loved this show since the first time I saw it at the 3rd preview at the Public, and my sense of enjoyment had absolutely nothing to do with any "high art" pretension. Tonya Pinkins' Caroline broke my heart -- she reminds me of way too many relatives and parents of friends whom I knew growing up who were trapped in dead end existences, but continued on in their situations for the sake of their families. Her story speaks to me. Her music speaks to me. The entire show hits me on a very basic, human level that few theatrical pieces have ever managed to. The show has managed to capture a story that resonates with me on so many levels -- I frankly don't care if you or critics or other people hate it, don't get it, think its pretentious, think its about nothing ...... I have no desire to argue about this anymore...... for me it's powerful, intense and a deeply meaningful thing to experience. If it isn't for you, then so be it.
"What a story........ everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at her rear end." -- Birdie
[http://margochanning.broadwayworld.com/]
"The Devil Be Hittin' Me" -- Whitney
Updated On: 8/10/04 at 02:45 AM
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