Is Once a Musical?

I was listening to this musical theatre podcast (Jim and Tomic's Musical Theatre Happy Hour, which I highly recommend), and they were talking about how Once beat Newsies at the Tonys. One of the podcast members said he doesn't think Once is musical, but a play with songs. The more I listen to Once, the more I see it. Almost every song is diagetic, and there's a disproportionately low amount music to the length of the musical. I wouldn't personally call it a play with music, but I feel it definitely comes really close.

My vague recollection about ONCE is that the songs are not only entirely diagetic, but their lyrics are only tangentially tethered to what's happening onstage. The 1st solo song, "Leave", is about the end of a relationship where we never even meet one half of that couple. "Falling Slowly", the breakout hit number, is a love song sung by 2 people who have only just barely spoken to each other. None of these songs seem to serve the purpose of a song in a conventional musical-- to be the logical extension of dialogue to take up in song when words alone won't suffice. It seemed like you could randomly shuffle the song list between characters and scenes without impacting the plot in the slightest.

Ultimately for me, this new experiment of a musical left me impressed by its lovely music making, but utterly unmoved by the story since the songs failed to connect with the characters. For me that was a deal-breaker.

Alex Kulak2 said: "I was listening to this musical theatre podcast (Jim and Tomic's Musical Theatre Happy Hour, which I highly recommend), and they were talking about how Once beat Newsies at the Tonys. One of the podcast members said he doesn't think Once is musical, but a play with songs. The more I listen to Once, the more I see it. Almost every song is diagetic, and there's a disproportionately low amount music to the length of the musical. I wouldn't personally call it a play with music, but I feel it definitely comes really close."

Err, did you see the show, though? Seems a broad assumption based on a random podcast and listening to the OBC.

I loved Newsies, but this was a far superior, intimate experience.

I've heard the argument both ways. I personally consider it a musical, albeit an unconventional one.

Even when the film came out, there were critics who struggled to reconcile it with their notions of a musical. I always described it as a musical where the characters sings songs they don't even realize are a reflection of what they are going through in the moment. The characters are performing or writing songs in their story. Their goal is to perform/write good songs. That they draw from their own experience is lost on them until it's literally too late to act on those impulses in a meaningful way.

The play with music argument comes from the length of the show in relation to the amount of music in the score. There's validity to it, as well. I think a lot would come down to staging. If the actors in the Broadway production didn't play their own instruments, it might have more easily read as a play with music. The incorporation of the instruments into every facet of the music and choreography put the songs at the forefront even in the book scenes.

It won Best Musical.

Someone in a Tree2 said: "but their lyrics are only tangentially tethered to what's happening onstage."

To be fair, that's kinda what Spring Awakening did. It's not really about the lyrics, it's about the music evolving out of a powerful act of emotion. It's unconventional, but when done well, (like in Spring Awakening or in Once), it can work really well.